Morning Fog

Decentralizing The Federal Government

The summer season is upon us.  It's a time when non-stories beging to predominate over real stories, as Congress goes into recess and Washington DC settles into its steamy summer, this year steamier than usual.  The poster child for this sort of thing is the leaking of purported secret papers about Afghanistan recently - meaningless because the secrets are widely known.

A close second, though, is a story I read in the Sunday opinion section of a "major metropolitan newspaper" by one Alex MacGillis, entitled "The Case for Breaking Up Washington ..."  Mr. MacGillis's argument is that there are many governmental functions that could be done from almost anywhere, and need not be located in Washington; these federal offices, he says, should be moved to areas where jobs are needed, where costs are lower, and the like.  Well, that makes a lot of sense, and in fact, it sounds kind of familiar. 

That's because MacGillis is effectively proposing something that has, by and large, already been accomplished.  That's one way to bolster your credentials as a far-seeing social analyst!

As MacGillis tells us in his own article, an astonishing 83% of all civilian federal employees are already located outside the Washington DC area.  Further, he informs us, if we consider only civilians who are not employed by the military and Dept. of Veterans Affairs (why, pray tell, should we do that?) still, 75% of that group are located outside DC.   In short, the writer proposes an idea that's already been implemented, as most federal agencies long ago figured out either that they need branch offices around the country to perform their missions, or that functions like payroll, data processing, records maintenance, and others could easily be located anywhere in the country with no harm to the parent agency. 

I think this writer may have confused the idea of "Washington" as a symbol for the federal government with Washington, the city.  Just as we associate automobiles with Detroit, aircraft with Wichita, or movies with Hollywood, government pops into our minds when someone says "Washington."  But that doesn't mean, as MacGillis's article itself demonstrates, that government doesn't take place anywhere else, any more than thinking "Detroit=cars" disguises the reality that automobiles are being build in Tennessee, Ohio, Alabama, and many other places. 

For government or for any large organization, there's a line along the continuum of field to field office to central headquarters, at which more farming out adds more to cost than it does efficiency.  Multiple buildings, multiple leases, multiple support structures -- these all add to costs. That's why, for example, big organizations are often working to reduce locations and centralize operations.  I suspect we may already be at the stage where more "breaking up" doesn't make much sense. 

This whole long article didn't deserve to occupy space in the Sunday paper, but I think MacGillis may be primed to follow in the footsteps of Thomas Friedman, who has written several books identifying "new trends" several years after the trend had already left the station.  

Jindal Channels Big Oil

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has published an opinion piece in which he laments the efforts of the U.S. Government to declare a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf.  Jindal claims this will "add insult to injury" (the injury being the leak and its economic effects) by denying people in the region the well-paying jobs on those deepwater rigs. 

From Jindal's parochial point of view, it's clear:  Louisiana is hurting economically, and the loss of income from the deepwater wells (not just in jobs but in other ways) is going to extend the pain.  Also, there's a certain common-sense appeal about keeping things going as long as they appear to do no harm.  Morning Fog argued this point in connection with A Whale, whose status and effectiveness remained in doubt as of last week.  No reports since then, but at least there are no claims that it hurt anything.

On the other hand, it's unreasonable to suggest, as Jindal does, that shutting down drilling is equivalent to grounding all airlines after a single plane crash -- unlike airplanes, these wells operate 24/7; a failure in another one would almost certainly have far more serious and widespread consequences than the loss of a couple hundred more lives in a second air disaster.  And, while we can understand that Jindal's concern is his own state, the rest of us (and our government) might want to take into account the potential for a similar oil spill polluting other coastlines - Florida or Texas anyone?

So what's the answer?   I'd say, let drilling operations continue wherever they are currently in progress.  The government's moratorium sought to block both new AND ongoing operations, which seems too much of a reach.  There is risk, of course, but it is more sensible for companies to be required to check and test (is that even possible?) blowout preventers in the near term, perhaps within 90 days.  The only problem with that last part is that the companies which so like to complain of government slowness would howl that such a deadline is too short.  No doubt they'd file suits to prevent or indefinitely delay checks.

Which brings me to the real crux of the matter.  In all the resistance to a moratorium, or even to added safety measures, it's not the economy, stupid - it's the politics.  Here's an issue on which economically or technologically, different views are possible, but so are compromise solutions.  Politically, though, it's not that easy.  Jindal, and very possibly the judge who ruled originally against the first moratorium attempt, live in Louisiana, a state that can be plausibly argued to be an oil-industry-captive or, as Steven Mufson has put it, the "closest thing America has to a petro-state."  

Jindal's entire opinion article is based in the politics of the moment, garbed for decency in more saleable mantras about jobs and "human impact."  Although he begins with a complaint about "the pace at which the government has worked," but nowhere does he criticize BP - not for its faulty equipment that caused the spill, nor its failure to conduct effective safety tests, nor its pace of operation on the cleanup, nor its many efforts to disguise the truth about the extent of the disaster.  No, indeed.  Jindal conjures up an imagined conspiracy in which the federal government has launched a covert operation against the state of Louisiana and the defenseless oil companies that operate there. 

Costly cleanup or not, BP and its industry "competitors" still have plenty of money to spend.  They're spending it heavily again (after about a 30-day lull of mourning for the Gulf) for television commercials against new taxes on the industry (there's that pesky government conspiracy again!), and they'll spend it elsewhere to fight anything that could inconvenience them.  Jindal knows on which side his bread is buttered (or oiled?).

Good News, Bad News

Sometimes the media (of all types) are criticized for publishing only "bad" news.  But Thursday was one remarkable exception, with big, positive developments coming on at least two fronts -- after 87 days, the flow of oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig appears to have been stopped for at least a while; and after an even longer period, reform legislation bringing needed changes to financial markets and practices has been passed.

The news about the Gulf of Mexico oil leak is especially welcome because it suggests we're in the end game of finally stopping the flow and with luck, soon being able to plug the well from below, permanently.  Even Republicans haven't managed to find anything in this news to complain about.  (Well, not yet, anyway - it's only been half a day.)

As for financial regulation, not everyone agrees its passage is good news; nearly all Republicans, incredibly, declined to take steps to help head off a future economic disaster of the sort they created this time.  And partly for that reason, the new financial regulations are only the first step, analogous to the new sealing cap on the well.  The spewing of pollutive financial practices may have been halted for the moment, but will they just erupt again later under the combined pressure of financial institutions and the legislators they so easily influence through their political contributions?  There's no final "kill" technology in sight for this problem.  Given a decade or so, financial institutions will find their way around many of the new limitations.

Charles Krauthammer is one who dislikes the new financial package.  His economic analysis is politically colored and extreme, though he makes one valid point: the continuing expansion of "entitlement" spending is not a good thing.  But that's not a Democratic Party problem, as he suggests; it's a problem politicians of both parties have created, and it won't be dealt with until the Republicans show more interest in working cooperatively to fix what's broken.

Krauthammer's political point, however is perceptive:  Don't underestimate Obama.  Of course there was euphoria when Obama was elected, but six months in, as the problems began to mount, who would have supposed this young President would have achieved two major, game-changing pieces of legislation, plus an economic rescue package, in so short a time?  Krauthammer might have mentioned that this was done even while fighting several disasters that would be a challenge for any President, but nevertheless, the underlying point is well taken. 

Health Care - An Appointment With Innovation

There are varying opinions floating around regarding Obama's recess appointment of Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).  Given what I said just yesterday about the positive role of experimentation and innovation in health care choices, I can wholeheartedly agree with David Ignatius, who points out that need, and realistically assesses the foolish partisan bickering that anti-reform political forces would have unleashed if Obama had gone through the more normal "advise and consent" process. 

Ruth Marcus, by contrast, is far too unrealistic in assessing the willingness of the GOP ("Geezers Obstructing Progress") to play politics with the national interest.  If we accept the argument that the President ought to have been prepared to fight the good fight if he wanted to nominate a person of Berwick's incendiary (to opponents) policy views, then surely we must concede Obama made the right decision with the recess appointment by avoiding the equally incendiary (to opponents) policy views of senior Republican Congressmen. 

Marcus admits that the real purpose of recess appointments has long since been lost amidst the smoke and fire of political battles, which indeed it has.  This originally well-intended procedure for enabling government to keep functioning has unfortunately gone the way of the Supreme Court nomination process.  Both have become overly politicized.  But that being the case, politicians across the spectrum will continue to employ them as political tools (clubs?) when they can. 

In Virginia, Rural Rules The Roost (And The Roads)

Since I just wrote about the political divide between broadly-urban and broadly-rural  constituencies on a national scale, it's timely to look at the same phenomenon in Virginia, where the identical tug-of-war goes on between the high-growth, most populous areas of the state and those whose population and traffic density is far less. 

Because Virginia's state assembly has the same structural problems as Congress (i.e. that legislative officials representing a distinct minority of the state's population may nevertheless dominate decision-making), it's usually the urban areas that get the short end of the state funding stick.

That's true in spades in the roads and transportation budget, as the Washington Post reports today.  This article points up the results of drastic budget cuts that come about as a result of the slow economy; it fails to report how the decisions are made on where the cuts fall.  I don't know of anyone in the northern Virginia area who doesn't think the cuts fall disproportionately on us. 

And regardless of how the cuts are made, it's easy to see how years, even decades, of short-changing from Richmond have produced inequities in the road network of the state.  A simple drive to Virginia Beach or Roanoke will show roads in fine repair in the south and west, or around Richmond, with recently painted highway markings and in some areas, even those little reflectors built into the center line of the road.  By contrast, driving back into the state's northern counties (say, Fairfax or Prince William), roadways are literally falling apart.  (If we were to look at roads alone, the difference is like crossing the border between Austria and Czechoslovakia in the 1980s.)

The situation is worsened by the state's (technically, it's a "commonwealth") centralized authority structure.  Far too many decisions that should be local have to be made centrally.  For example, officials in Arlington County cannot decide on their own to change the traffic lights at an intersection to include (say) a left-turn arrow.  Not if one of the roads involved is a "state" road.  That requires state-level approval. 

Tension and/or downright hostility between "downstate" legislators who dominate the Assembly, and the northern section, which includes at least 1/3 of the population and a greater proportion of the state's economic growth, is so longstanding that half-serious proposals have been made for the north to secede from Virginia and become its own state.  Not such a bad idea, but politically improbable since the less urban areas will want to keep the north in thrall.

Fight Over Unemployment Benefits Demonstrates Rural-Urban Dichotomy

Once again Republicans, abetted by a handful of Dinos, have shown their mettle.  Like little Hans Brinker with his finger in the dike, like that stalwart gang that defended the Alamo, like many other heroes up against great odds, these guys have succeeded in turning back a dire threat to the Republic and the American way of life -- namely, they blocked legislation that would extend unemployment benefits, and perhaps give the jobless a bit of a break from the economic meltdown they (the Republicans, not the jobless) created. 

GOP party leaders and their Democratic remoras say that they're just protecting the fiscal soundness of the nation.  Ridiculous.  First, a few million here or there will hardly alter the admittedly deep chasm of debt we face.  Second, these protectors of the Treasury expressed no qualms about debt with George Bush was at the helm of the ship of state. And third, under the circumstances, doesn't extending unemployment benefits just seem like the right thing to do?

I know, it's an old story, but let's not let them bury it:  The national debt now totals $13 trillion, for $10 trillion of which - roughly three-quarters - we have only the Bush administration to thank.  A huge percentage of the remaining  3 trillion is for the continuation of the wars Bush started, and for attempts to fix the economic mess he created.  Where was Mitch McConnell when we needed him?  From the way he acts today, he must have been off getting himself lobotomized. 

Here's an interesting quote from the article linked above:

 "This is going to cut the heart right out of consumer spending. If they want to cut short the recovery, this is the best way to do it."  (Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, as quoted here by Ezra Klein.)

And there's the key.  It has nothing to do with budgetary conservatism, and everything to do with politics.  The opponents of this legislation would like nothing better than to "cut short the recovery," regardless of its effects on the unemployed, because the worse the recovery looks, the more they hope to gain at the polls in November.   It seems to me there's a definite politic risk in proceeding that way, but it fits with tactical decisions the GOP has made in the past 18 months.

So, politics as usual.  This is another case, however, that suggests the real political divisions of the U.S. today are not between Republican and Democrat so much as between urban and rural constituencies.  Obama is our first truly urban President (I discount those urban sons of privilege like JFK and FDR), the first to see current problems through the prism of the cityscape in which the large majority of Americans now live.  His ascent to the Presidency presents a challenge to the longstanding political predominance of non-urban states and attitudes in our politics. 

That's the real tide that current Republicans (whose political strength, you may note, lies much more heavily in thinly populated areas) are desperately holding back, with some help from Democrats like Kent Conrad (of teeming North Dakota) and Ben Nelson (from overcrowded Nebraska).

Recommended Reading: The Spill, Its Causes

Occasionally, it's nice to be able to sit back and point to well-written columns you may not have seen, and which neatly encapsulate my own views.

Today I recommend at least two such:

Ruth Marcus, in the Washington Post, "You Can't Plug This Satire Spill."  I think many of us have been struck by the seeming inanity of some of the developments that have occurred lately.  Beyond the whole oil spill issue, Gen. McChrystal's own weirdly timed "spill" - of beans, in the presence of a Rolling Stone reporter, must also be considered a part of the grand satire.

In "Reality Check: Feds vs. Business," Howard Kurtz recaps a lot of excellent history about the constant ebb-and-surge between government efforts to regulate business, and businesses' efforts to blunt, overturn, or circumvent regulation.  In so many of the problems we face today, from the Gulf oil spill to the banking and financial crises, the culprit is the failure of regulatory efforts.  Kurtz has some ideas as to what's needed to make those efforts stronger and more lasting, and he rightly points out that businesses themselves - the honest among them anyway - have a stake in proper regulation.

Women In Politics - Mean Business

As many pundits have pointed out, last Tuesday's primaries were notable, among other ways, by the number of women who won; and by the fact that these women appear to be a "new breed" of female politician or, as Ruth Marcus writes in the Washington Post:

"At the risk of incurring the wrath of PTA moms -- they're not just PTA moms anymore. Or widows and daughters of male politicians. Fiorina and Whitman are former chief executives of major companies (Hewlett-Packard and eBay, respectively). Lincoln is an incumbent senator. Haley broke some kind of gender barrier as a female candidate for major office caught up in an alleged sex scandal. Angle seems like a nut, but at least a self-made nut."

I suppose that's true, but what's more noticeable to me is that this "new breed" shares a lot of the hubris of the "old breed" when it comes to the promises they make after an election victory.  "Things are going to change, we're going to do things differently."  It seldom works.

Taking center stage these days is the off-mike (and off-message) remark California Senatorial candidate Carly Fiorina made about her opponent's coiffure.  No change there.  What's disappointing, I guess, is to find that this high-powered exec still thinks in rather petty terms.  She'll need to demonstrate more gravitas to win Boxer's seat.

Even more interesting was the over-the-top exuberance of Meg Whitman, former CEO of Ebay, who in her victory speech to supporters after Tuesday's primary, was full of talk about applying her experience as a businesswoman to the solution of California's problems.  I've lost my notes from that speech, and it's curiously difficult to find online (no doubt it's an embarrassment now), but I recall talk of knowing how to "create jobs" and make up a budget. 

Well, maybe.  The reality, though, is that there are huge differences between the private and public sector, specifically in areas like budgets and jobs.  Government isn't inherently less efficient than a corporation (in fact I would argue that huge size, whether in government or in business, relates directly to the degree of inefficiency); but government is funded differently.  In business, you don't need your customers' approval to increase your spending or shift budget priorities.  

If we look at Ms. Whitman's Ebay as an example, we see an innovative idea created by someone else, and turned into a huge empire under Whitman's direction.  Ebay has prospered by charging prices unrelated to the value of their service, but more related to what the market will bear.  When Ebay acquired Paypal (which many Ebay customers use to pay for their services), far from giving customers a break for synergy, the prices of both services went up.  This is not a model that's going to take Whitman very far in government. 

Ah well, in fact this reality will be mostly lost on voters.  Appearances matter (just ask Fiorina), and the ancient Jerry Brown doesn't have the look of freshness, nor of a winner.  At a time when the voters are in the mood for a change, Whitman's chances of defeating Brown are probably far better - though far from a sure thing - than Fiorina's of unseating Boxer.

Extremists Fuel Frustration

Somewhere lately (it may have been on ABC News, I just don't recall) I saw a graphic representing a poll in which 69% of American voters declare themselves to be "frustrated" over today's political situation.  Actually, I suspect a lot of the lassitude stems from situations and events that no politician could hope to have prevented or quickly solved (Gulf of Mexico oil spill? Our two-faced attitude about immigration? The weather?), but to the extent it's really political, it arises largely from the unrealistic expectations of extremists on both sides of the political spectrum.

I've written in the past about the assinine posture of Congressional Republicans over the past year, retreating into dogma and refusing to be a part of any solution (which makes them a part of the problem).  This group, dedicated to the proposition that blocking progress IS progress, can take responsibility for planting the seeds of the current frustration by creating deadlock in government, and by substituting the incitement of anger for political leadership. 

On the right, deadlock fueled the "tea party," extremists of a populist vein They  support for candidates like Ron Paul or Sharron Angle, who espouse the most simplistic solutions for complex problems.  On the left, today a piece by Dana Milbank about a recent gathering of Democrats points up similar extremist reaction among Democrats against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's compromises of "pure" liberalism, as does the recent labor union challenge to Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln. 

All these extremists have one thing in common; they reject the reality of politics as a give-and-take process, they fail to perceive themselves as the tiny minorities they are, and they now suggest that the answer to deadlock is to adhere more tightly to the fringiest of proposals.  So radical Democrats criticize Pelosi and Lincoln for failing to stick with the "public option" in health care, though it was clearly dead as much as a year ago.  Reactionary Republicans want to solve all our problems by getting us out of the UN, or abolishing taxes.

That's one frustration:  the self-generated frustration of extremists that they have to settle for compromise.  The other frustration, more important, is that of the majority of voters of common sense, who know deep down, even if they don't articulate, that small minorities of true believers on left and right are preventing us from dealing sensibly with a whole host of problems that need solving. 

It's not clear whether the latter group can reclaim their collective hand on the rudder of politics just yet.  The results of yesterday's primary elections are mixed; elections in November will tell a clearer story.  I have hope that the current ferment will produce a return to politics as usual (not a bad thing if it means effective, realistic compromise), but it may take another two-year election cycle to bring that about. 

The Politics Of Texas Schoolbooks

For some time now, a mini-controversy has been roiling around the eccentric actions of the Texas Board of Education.  At issue are the efforts of a regressivist majority on that body to tinker with the approved language of school textbooks to be used in the Lone Star State over the next decade.   You can find many internet references to at least some of the specific changes the Board approved last Friday (May 21), but I think it's fair to say they tend toward conservatism, both political and religious.

The above-linked article by Michael Brick is fairly restrained in its summary:

Last year, conservatives on the board changed the state science curriculum to undermine the teaching of evolution, cell formation and the Big Bang.

While many of the changes to the science curriculum used coded language to advance conservative principles, some additions to the history standards were more overtly political. Board members planned to add language requiring high school students of the civil rights movement to “describe the role of individuals such as governors George Wallace, Orval Faubus, and Lester Maddox and groups, including the Congressional bloc of southern Democrats, that sought to maintain the status quo.”

In another passage, the board would require students to explain the roles of “Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.”

Many groups have expressed concern, often approaching outrage, about these changes because the publishers of school textbooks have historically tailored their texts for the entire country to the parochial tastes of Texas.  (That's because Texas is big, folks.)

Personally I don't agree with some of the changes that passed last week, but I suspect the dangers of the Board's textual deviation are being much exaggerated.  Several of these arch-conservatives have already been voted out, so their work can be redone if necessary.  Publishers these days can easily produce different editions of textbooks for different regional "tastes," and surely will be required by other states to to so.   Technologically, textbooks are obsolete, and I'm not so sure kids really pay much attention to what's in their school books. 

And if they do, isn't it perhaps OK for them to learn - to take one example - a little bit about such opponents of desegregation as Lester Maddox or OrvaI Faubus?   If nothing else, our sons and daughters will be wowed to discover that there once was a culture that named people Orval and Lester.  And I think students and pupils today will probably see through any attempt to rehabilitate the segregationist image; even the briefest consideration of the record will make clear these guys weren't heroes and weren't admirable.  

There's another reason to make them a part of the curriculum, though.  These politicians of the past receded into obscurity for a reason.  The forward progress of mankind brushed them almost unnoticed from the road of history like an armadillo hit by a speeding pick-up truck.  Their obstructionist and regressive views were discredited, but just as there are neo-Nazi groups around the world today, there are Lester Maddoxes and even Jefferson Davises at large in the land, and people who romanticize them.  They're the Texas Board of Education crowd, and the current Attorneys-General of several states (including my current state, Virginia) who seek to refight old battles by petitioning to have health care reform declared unconstitutional; and the Governor of Texas (Texas again?) who's trying to defy U.S. law in order to give polluters more wiggle room.

Thus, the political lesson of the Texas Schoolbook caper is that voter apathy can allow an organized minority of wackos to take over.  I'm sure that a lot of Texans didn't think very hard about the significance of the state Board of Education, or even go vote.   I don't have kids in my local school system so I don't really bother to find out what candidates for my county school board are planning, but I should - it can be important.  The hijacking of the Texas school board had a precursor in a similar takeover in Kansas a few years ago (that's when, if you recall, Kansas officials declared creationism should be taught in schools there in lieu of evolution.  With elections pending in an atmosphere of extreme partisanship, anti-incumbent mood, and tea-partyism, voters should avoid the temptation to wallow in their own economic problems, and never suppose that any office up for grabs "doesn't matter."  They should look at the issues, find out what's what, and go vote in primaries and in the general election.

Beyond that political lesson, all the to-do about Texas schoolbooks is more laughable than serious.  So the state that gave us the Inarticulate President has a bunch of clowns on its Board of Education?  Har har, who cares?  Well... except for those poor Texans who would rather their state not be a national joke, or who would like to see their kids educated in science rather than religious opinion, and in history rather than political bias.  They should take this seriously, and do something about it.

For the rest of us, let's remember the role played in 1963 by the Texas School Book Depository in one attempt to resist progress; now perhaps we should label this episode the Texas School Book Suppository, to give the Texas B of E a hint as to what the rest of the country would like them to do with their curriculum tweaks.