Morning Fog

China Stressing Science

John Pomfret's recent report, "China Pushing the Envelope,"says that China is pouring loads of money and talent into developing scientists.  The thrust of the article is economic -- that China is becoming "the second superpower" and will increasingly become a threat to U.S. economic dominance.

That may be true, and if so, it would be regrettable for us.  But... well, that's competition.  I think we in the U.S. still understand a little something about competition, and we've prospered without placing much emphasis on "pure" scientific research.  We prefer the applied version, and have done well commercially by picking up and developing ideas conceived and researched by others.    So it is not a foregone conclusion that we are losing our competitive edge just because the Chinese are investing scads of money in science education.

There was one telling line in Pomfret's piece, though, that stood out to me:  "Unburdened by social and legal constraints common in the West, China's trailblazing scientists are also pushing the limits of ethics and principle...."

One of our burdens in the U.S., and one that could seriously harm us, is the alienation of a large part of our population from science as they flock to various forms of anti-scientific religious doctrine.   Religious objections to stem cell research, a turn toward forms of non-scientific medicine, belief in "creationism" -- all these and more weaken our efforts to develop science and scientists.  Yes, we can easily lose our technological lead if we refuse to go where research leads us, and cower ignorantly under rocks instead.

Supreme Court Votes NRA

It was predictable.  It was predicted.  The Roberts court has struck down handgun restrictions that have been in place in Chicago for some years, using the completely insupportable argument that "bearing arms" is a fundamental right, and ignoring the context in which the framers asserted that right, to wit, the "well-regulated militia."  Note that this qualification of the right to bear arms was apparently so important to the framers that they stated it up front, even before specifying the "bearing arms" bit they were talking about.

Such blatant and purposeful disregard for the letter of the Constitution is to my mind, malfeasance by at least five justices of the supreme Court.  At the very least, as I said in February, it should dispel any claims that Roberts and his benchmen don't want to "make law," and just want to get back to the basic texts of the Constitution.  But then, we already knew that, didn't we?

Civilian Control Of The Military

Further on this topic, which I discussed a few days ago, I like today's analytical piece by Andrew Bacevich, "Endless War, a Recipe for Four-Star Arrogance."

Bacevich fails to call for the reinstatement of conscription, which I believe would be one helpful way of changing the civilian culture of ignoring the military, by making all of us a part of it again.  And he's completely correct in pointing out that Petraeus is no different from McChrystal, except to the extent of being more politically savvy.

Finally, Bacevich touches also on a favorite theme of mine, quoting Marcus Flavius on the nature of relations between the military and the society it serves.  I note that one major factor in the fall of the Roman Empire was the increasing reliance on professional soldiers, and, when those could no longer be recruited in sufficient number, on non-Roman mercenaries.  Ultimately the process led to the inability of civilians to control their ever-more-demanding protectors.  The same was true of the Ottomans.  This is not to suggest that the U.S. is an "empire" nor that our professional warriors are in rebellion; yet like those empire of earlier times, we are a world power with widespread interests requiring protection, and we are taking a convenient but risky course by relying wholly on a paid, professional military.  

Big Business, Small Business

Steven Pearlstein has written an excellent and largely correct critique ("Big Business's Hypocritical Country-Club Nonsense") concerning big business's blithe refusal to see any fault in its own practices, or to acknowledge any responsibility for the economic downturn we are now in.  Enough said.  It's all too true, all too evident that such is the case.

However, the article made me consider what we mean when we talk about "business." 

Business is not monolithic: there are giant multinationals, mom-and-pop stores, and everything in between.  In analyzing our social and economic problems, we need to distinguish among the various types, because they behave quite differently.  "Big businesses," as Pearlstein's article and the Verizon executive whom he features in it both make clear, are mature if not aging; they're looking to preserve its advantages, stifle competition, and maximize its return.  They are the enemy of many government and other efforts to improve the lot of workers, provide basic social services, or introduce fairness or transparency into the ongoing processes of large corporations.

"Small business" has a much better reputation in the U.S. - not that they can't be unfair in dealing with employees, or cut a corner here and there on quality or safety, but they're less likely to do so because they are often rooted in a particular community or area and depend on goodwill. 

On the job-creation front, Pearlstein mentions that the big-business claim -- that every dime spent by corporations for increased taxes would otherwise be spent on "productive" job creation or research -- is spurious.  When it comes to jobs, "small business," as we so often hear, creates most new employment.  That's a bit of a myth, too, particularly as it relates to the common "man-in-the-street" misperception that "small" business is that little family-owned grocery store on the corner.  (In fact, "small" is commonly defined as an operation that has fewer than 500 employees; and that in fact can be quite large.)  But at times when it IS true, it's because the smaller guys can be more nimble in responding to market forces and because their businesses are more likely to be in their growth stages than in their overgrown stages. 

Policymakers need to keep in mind the different classes of business, and the differing ways in which they are affected by economic changes and government action.  It may not be such a bad deal that "community banks," for example, have mostly succeeded in writing themselves out of new legislation aimed at curbing unwholesome practices in the financial industry.

  

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.

Dysconnection

Census workers being attacked and threatened?  It's happening.  There are lots of other signs of dissatisfaction with government, and of a more general malaise in the country these days.  It reflects ignorance, and certainly, frustration with the economic disaster brought on by eight years of Bush "spend and don't tax" policies, not to mention an inordinate concatenation of disasters, natural and man-made.

Yet I don't think that explains the extent to which we're seeing unprecedented examples of man's basic inhumanity to man.  Another recent news item, for example, points out the rising use of texting to threaten, cajole, and otherwise seek to destroy a person's privacy, perhaps their life. 

In a world where we are all supposedly so interconnected via new technologies ranging from smart phones and the internet through social networking and texting, we're really not connected at all -- not in ways that count.   The technology in this case has tended to lock people away in compartments. 

Real human interaction becomes more and more rare.  In the 1940s, you might go call on your neighbor; in the 1960s, you might have phoned him; in the timid new world of the 21st century, you're likely to text him.  Rather than going out to a movie, people sit at home and watch a DVD on their gigantic plasma television. They fail to socialize, to learn to deal with others.  And naturally, though unfortunately, it's the weird and the dwellers on the fringe who succumb most readily to the tempations of sitting in front of a screen, connecting without connecting. 

Virtual reality, after all, is not reality.  It all boils down to dysconnection, rather than connection. 

Far From McChrystal Clear

"What to do about Gen. McChrystal" seems to be the question on everybody's lips today.  Should he be fired, or not?  Or something in between, like a public emasculation?  It's a tough call for Obama, one that really depends on what he decides is at stake here. 

First, I read the remarks McChrystal made in The Rolling Stone and was amazed that such a tempest could arise in the first place.  I see a military stereotype who may be effective in his calling; who reflects the biases the professional military often exhibits toward civilians, especially those who are their bosses; and, who possesses so little understanding of the civilian political world that he would make such statements knowing they'd become public.  But I did NOT see Douglas MacArthur, directly and publicly challenging the decisions of the country's civilian leaders.  The current general-in-the-spotlight may have doubts about policy, but he didn't express them in this interview.

So I'm not entirely persuaded by those like Jonathan Capehart, who says McChrystal must go; nor am I much swayed by Jackson Diehl, who argues he must stay because he's essential to the conduct of the war.  Neither is entirely true.  The general is replaceable without noticeable harm to the war in Afghanistan (Diehl exhibits his naivete in suggesting that war is "winnable" in the classic sense anyway); but his transgressions aren't the stuff of insubordination, either.

A President's response to this kind of situation will depend a lot on personality.  The irascible Harry Truman would probably already have canned him; Jimmy Carter might keep him on and hold a prayer session with him.  Obama is somewhere in between, but I think most observers would agree confrontation is not his style (if it were, he'd be a general).  Firing is unlikely, but a dressing-down, public or private, seems not only likely but essential .  Under these circumstances too, Obama will need to ride herd on "his" general a little more tightly.

Ultimately, McChrystal is in my view emblematic of what's wrong with today's military (or, if you will, what our civilian government decisions have turned it into).  In airing his petty insults publicly, McChrystal demonstrated that he doesn't really understand the relationship between our civilian and military leadership.  A general without that understanding could never have been promoted to McChrystal's level in the brown-boot army of WWII. Professionalism is to be admired, but it leads to isolation, self-cloning, and a skewed perception of the world.  Our best military heroes have always provided their best advice, but worked within the decisions made and parameters set by civilian authority.  

The fact is that McChrystal isn't necessarily entitled to the expression of any opinion about war strategy; his job is to execute it.  But the abolition of conscription, and the tendency of Presidents and Congress to turn to more and more to military men for their political opinions, has led us astray.  It's yet another situation we need to deal with, but we're unlikely to do so in the midst of an ongoing military engagement.  If Obama, the Constitutional lawyer, chooses to tackle it now, my "personality" argument may not win the day, for constitutionally, Obama could only make this point by firing Stanley McChrystal -- just because he can.

 

Rebranding Government?

The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency cobbled together from parts of other agencies in the government reorganization post-9/11, is seeking to "rebrand" itself to take the focus off its high-profile and rather unpopular immigrant deportation work, and turn more attention to its anti-terrorism duties.

This is an odd report in a couple ways.  First, though it appears in the Washington Post, it is credited to Andrew Becker, of the Center for Investigative Reporting.  So is it the Post, or isn't it?  Second, it's reported in the "Metro" section of the Post whereas it seems more like national news. 

Then, as Becker points out, the whole concept of "rebranding" a government agency seems ridiculous.  It is what it is; it has certain duties; it may or may not perform them well; what does "rebranding" mean when no actual change has taken place?

Finally, however unpopular the deportation of immigrants may be in some quarters, it seems to me the agency's best face, perhaps its only possible face, is that it's performing the job it is mandated to do.   Why change the focus from that?

Personally, I think the consolidation of customs and immigration functions in one agency makes a lot of sense; both have a good deal to do with protecting and securing our borders. 

But I would guess that the two parts of ICE, which came from different agencies nine years ago (Immigration was in Justice while Customs was in Treasury, I think) have never successfully been melded into a cohesive unit.  No doubt rivalries and different ways of doing things still plague this bureaucracy.  So the promise of improved border control likely hasn't been fulfilled, nor even begun.