Has Obama lost healthcare reform?

Way back, on February 1st--yes, six months ago it was--I blogged about the Tom Daschle nomination fiasco as a major blow for healthcare reform. Not because I cared for Daschle. But because he would have been an influential cabinet secretary with extensive legislative connections--the kind of combination needed for all the political stuff that needed to happen. Further, the fiasco meant that Team Obama was back sorting through the list of qualified people, and more time was therefore going to be lost in the process.

Through all this, Obama played healthcare over-carefully. He tried to stay only at the big picture level and succeeded. And, at the same time, he did not seem to come across as eagerly and loudly a supporter of "his" healthcare proposals as he did when it came to the stimulus bill. In fact, one might want to refresh memories on how he went aroudn trumpeting the stimulus bill, bank rescue operations and, of course, the auto industry bailout where he even came across as the country's car dealer-in-chief.

Clive Crook has written more about this aloofness of Obama's when it comes to healthcare, and why reform is stalling:

This failure has three separate aspects. First, though politicians and commentators talk about the president’s plan, he does not have one. Learning the lessons of “Hillarycare” far too well, Mr Obama has set out broad goals for reform and some principles to guide the design, but no more. This self-imposed distance is bad both substantively and politically. It is substantively bad because left to its own devices an unguided, disputatious, difference-splitting Congress was bound to make a hash of it. And it is politically bad because the public understands this.

Opinion is turning against health reform partly because watching this initiative lurch to and fro on Capitol Hill without adult supervision is scary. Anything could happen, thinks the median voter, and probably will. Note too that when the president decided to glide above it all and take credit for whatever emerged, he squandered his political capital. He is still expending his popularity on making the case for reform in the abstract, not on advancing a specific blueprint. That was all right at the outset, but no longer. The debate has moved on to specifics, leaving the president behind.

Mr Obama’s second failure is even more surprising: one of salesmanship. He still pitches for comprehensive reform, but with apparently weakening conviction. In his televised talk on the subject last week, he seemed almost bored.

Worse, the president’s message is at odds with the product taking shape in Congress. This is all about controlling costs, he says: without reform, healthcare will bankrupt the country. That would be an excellent line if Congress was seriously trying to build control of costs into its bills, but it is not. Widening coverage is the priority. So it should be, you might argue – but in that case the president has to sell access and health security as things worth paying for, an entirely different proposition.

Every measure on the table would increase costs. The administration, despite all it says about “bending the curve”, is demanding only deficit-neutrality over 10 years. Every time Mr Obama stresses cost control, he diminishes his credibility.

The third failure goes beyond healthcare. Elected as a moderate, a centrist and a pragmatist, Mr Obama has repeatedly sided with the liberal left of his party on economic policy. The design of the fiscal stimulus, the shape of the budget, and Mr Obama’s willingness at every turn to support higher spending and higher taxes on the better-off – to pay for health reform, social security reform, infrastructure investment, expanded educational opportunities, wage subsidies for the poor, you name it – has delighted the party’s left and alarmed its centrists. The related charge of fiscal indiscipline is starting to stick, and it colours the health debate.

If health reform does go down to defeat, it will not be because of Republican opposition, but because of dissenting conservative Democrats and disaffected moderates in the country at large. In disappointing these people, Mr Obama has badly miscalculated. His political power depends on them. He must take the lead in devising a health reform capable of appealing to the centre. For his own good and the country’s, he needs to be the president the US thought it was electing.

In India, man has yet to make peace with nature

I visited Mumbai to spend a couple of days with my great-aunt, who lives with her daughter’s family in a suburb. Suburbs, according to a typical joke in urban planning, are places where street names bear the names of trees that were cut down en masse to make way for the development.

The Mumbai suburb that I went to, Mulund, has names of trees that are not even native to the local geography. The name of a multi-storied housing complex is “Silver Birch” and, oddly enough, there are quite a few other complexes in the same neighborhood with names such as “Pinewood” and “Silver Oaks.”

Of considerably more importance than names of alien tree species is how these residential complexes reflect a critical tension between urbanization and green space.

The geographic expansion into the suburbs has meant a slow encroachment on forest areas and the hills that surround Mumbai. Mulund is a poster-child for this encroachment. Loss of trees and green space has become a heated public policy issue here, and elsewhere. Finally!

As viewers of the Oscar-winning “Slumdog Millionaire” might recall, Mumbai is a huge metropolis with a population of more than 13 million — though it feels as if there are a hundred times more. The housing needs, as one might imagine, are immense, as was evident in the same movie, which is also why middle- and upper-middle classes commute for hours from distant suburbs.

Suburbanization has resulted in significant loss of green space. It is not that the government or the people were unconcerned; when a government is resource-starved, and with hundreds of thousands clamoring to find a place of their own, it was easier for everyone to be in denial. Or, a policy of benign neglect, as we sometimes refer to such practices in the profession.

But when urban forests have been replaced by concrete buildings that seem to be taller and wider than the redwood trees after which at least one building is named, benign neglect cannot continue forever.

Thanks to the work of environmentalists and the government, too, it appears that large-scale destruction of forests has been slowed down, if not completely halted. These efforts are also reflected in the manner in which metropolitan areas now review land development proposals. To such an extent that it was feared that the government would swing a wrecking ball to demolish all structures that compromised urban green spaces. Such a retroactive decision would, obviously, add to the chaos that characterizes life in India.

The courts have taken a rational view in their recent decision to regularize all developments constructed before 2005. The status of more recent constructions is not quite clear, however.

This competition between nature and humans is not merely in the metropolitan area of Mumbai. It is a story that is repeated in many ways all over the country. According to India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests, “Due to the impact of biotic pressure on our forests, many forest areas spread across the country have been depleted and degraded, which is a serious concern.”

Recent incidents are telling: A couple of hundred miles away from Mumbai, in the forest areas, villagers stoned a leopard to death, even while forest officials stood by. And the story gets even worse — it was the third such leopard-stoning in the country within a matter of days. The villagers pelted the big cat because it had strayed into the village searching for food and water and, in the process, attacked a couple of youngsters.

Also in the news a few days ago was a story about the absence of tigers in one of India’s tiger parks — Panna National Park — which is in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Apparently it was not the first occurrence in India — tigers have yet to be spotted in another reserve in the same state, and in a third protected area in the state of Rajasthan, which is in northwestern India.

It is clear that the flora and fauna will continue to face intense competition from humans in villages and cities alike. I hope that Mumbaikars and other Indians, too, will soon figure out how to peacefully coexist with nature, as much as we in Oregon — with “real” birches and oaks — have, by and large, worked out. We ought to thank pioneering visionaries like Gov. Tom McCall for that.

For The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Saturday, Aug 1, 2009

Google, education, and knowledge

The fantastic availability of information, and made easy thanks to Google, has made many of us sit back and wonder if all these are good or bad news. Like that old Chinese parable. You wonder which one? Email me for that :-)

A couple of months ago, this essay in the Atlantic asked whether Google was making us stupid. At the same time, we have a whole bunch of people complaining that high school and college graduates seem to be uninformed and incompetent. And, comedians like Jay Leno routinely joke about the prevailing dumbness in society. I suspect that we are only beginning the next iteration of discussions. Why do I say this is the "next iteration?" According to Brian Cathcart, this is nothing but a reformulation of a situation from 2400 years ago:

... the story of the Egyptian god Thoth. I looked it up, and it was told by Plato. It goes like this: Thoth has invented writing and proudly offers it as a gift to the king of Egypt, declaring it “an elixir of memory and wisdom”. But the king is horrified, and tells him: “This invention will induce forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it, because they will not need to exercise their memories, being able to rely on what is written…rather than, from within, their own unaided powers to call things to mind. So it’s not a remedy for memory, but for reminding, that you have discovered. And as for wisdom, you are equipping your pupils with only a semblance of it, not with truth.”

That was written 2,400 years ago, and Lloyd pointed out that similar arguments about inevitable damage to human thinking and memory attended the arrival of printing in the 15th century AD. We seem to have survived both shocks with our capacity for general knowledge intact, indeed enhanced. That puts modern concerns into perspective.

But, yes, as much as I am a HUGE fan of the web, Google, and many other widgets out there, I wonder whether we are outsourcing away too much of what we ought to be doing ourselves.

What does Cathcart say?

There will always be dimwits, and their feats of stupidity will always make news. Equally, there will always be teachers and parents who shake their heads at the supposed ignorance of the young. We need to be careful before we construct trends from such things. But the internet is different, and it lifts the discussion onto a different plane. We are bound to tap into it for general knowledge, and the young will do it first. Schools are surely right to encourage them. The story of Thoth tells us that the curmudgeonly response—“This invention will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it”—is a waste of breath.

It’s Time for the US to Declare Victory and Go Home

That is the bottom line from Col. Timothy Reese:

The general lack of progress in essential services and good governance is now so broad that it ought to be clear that we no longer are moving the Iraqis “forward.” Below is an outline of the information on which I base this assessment:

1. The ineffectiveness and corruption of GOI Ministries is the stuff of legend.
2. The anti-corruption drive is little more than a campaign tool for Maliki
3. The GOI is failing to take rational steps to improve its electrical infrastructure and to improve their oil exploration, production and exports.
4. There is no progress towards resolving the Kirkuk situation.
5. Sunni Reconciliation is at best at a standstill and probably going backwards.
6. Sons of Iraq (SOI) or Sahwa transition to ISF and GOI civil service is not happening, and SOI monthly paydays continue to fall further behind.
7. The Kurdish situation continues to fester.
8. Political violence and intimidation is rampant in the civilian community as well as military and legal institutions.
9. The Vice President received a rather cool reception this past weekend and was publicly told that the internal affairs of Iraq are none of the US’s business.

Yes, please bring them home.
And, more importantly, please do not keep sending more to Afghanistan.

Guaranteed: A PhD for every American!

[Why] not aim to have every American receive a college degree? Better yet, why not aim to have every American earn a Ph.D.?

Thus writes Michael Rizzo.

We are way too preoccupied with a college degree. And with college education. As far as I understand it, there are supposedly two reasons for college:

• To enhance the economic productivity of people
• To help them have an enriched life

Yes, education helps with economic performance. With few exceptions, literate people are more productive than illiterates. With few exceptions, high school grads are more productive than those who have completed only six years of schooling. But, division of labor and the increasingly complex society does not mean that everybody needs a college degree--not at all. I am more and more worried about students who graduate from college with huge loans to pay and with no real jobs upon graduation. And we won't even go near the topic of overproduction at the PhD level!

When we begin to point out such facts, then the pro-higher education lobby (yes, every single one is a lobbyist, whether registered as one or not) then quickly falls back on the much higher value that education delivers but, unfortunately, which economic calculations cannot capture. This is where I think to myself that it is becoming f***ing crazy. Why? It takes on a seemingly religious posture--just as religions promise eternal life and peace that nobody can verify because, well, it is after death, these education fundamentalists want to deliver sermons from the ivory towers with the message that such education is good for the soul. Secular fundamentalists these are.

Even if we want to achieve these two objectives, I cannot keep asking the same question over and over again: what is preventing us from realizing these within the K-12 system? If high school graduates do not seem to have an idea of how education is good for their soul, well, how is that magically going to happen in the 13th year of education or the 14th? And, BTW, is there anybody who believes that all those partying away as undergraduates went to universities because they believe higher education will lead them to a richer understanding of life? Please!

So, you want to be an "ayatollah" ....

You get up early morning because you have to pray. Many good clerics even get up at two or three o'clock in the early morning to pray. After the morning prayer, for example at 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock, they start to read. And at 7 o'clock, the courses start. Usually the courses are 45 minutes. Each student chooses a fellow [student] to discuss each course with him each day. Sometimes I play the role of teacher for you; I teach you the same thing I was taught yesterday. If I say anything wrong, you correct me. Tomorrow you're going to be my teacher. In this way, [students] repeat the courses and correct each others' possible misunderstandings. Usually, you take three or four courses per day.

At noon, you go back to your home or, if you live in a traditional school, you go to the school. You eat something, and you get some rest. At four o'clock, you start your classes until sunset. At sunset, you pray your sunset prayer. After that, you go home and you start to read. You go to bed early because you have to get up early.

So says Mehdi Khalaji in this very interesting piece in FP

But, what he describes is, Khalaji notes, the seminary life before the full effects of the Islamic Revolution were felt in Iran. A generation later, seminary life is very different:

people are not going to the seminary for the study of religion; people are going because the seminary became a place for training employees for the government. They are going to become wealthy and to become close to the political circles. After 30 years, the new generation of the seminary is intellectually very poor but economically very rich -- just the opposite of what it used to be.

Empty boxes and global trade

Two summers ago, I reviewed The Box for the Professional Geographer. The book was authored by Marc Levinson, who worked for the Economist at one point. In the book, Levinson argues that the box--the shipping container--catalyzed global trade and economic growth.

About the same time as my book review was published, James Fallows had a fantastic piece on the Pearl River Delta of Guandong Province in China. In that, Fallows wrote:

From the major ports serving the area, Hong Kong and Shenzhen harbors, cargo ships left last year carrying the equivalent of more than 40 million of the standard 20-foot-long metal containers that end up on trucks or railroad cars. That’s one per second, round the clock and year-round—and it’s less than half of China’s export total.

That was then when exports and global trade were booming like never before. And then came the Great Recession. How much have things changed? Here is the Economist:

But by November exports were worth 17.3% less than a year earlier, before slumping by a whopping 32.6% in the year to January. In March the managers of South Korea’s Busan port, long one of the world’s busiest, said that it had run out of space to store nearly 32,000 empty containers. The Baltic Dry Index, which measures demand for the ships that transport bulk goods such as iron ore or coal, fell from 11,793 at the end of May last year to a pitiful 663 in early December.
Estimates by the World Trade Organisation suggest that trade volumes will shrink by around a tenth this year.

Interestingly enough, Fallows and this Economist piece have shipping containers for illustration. Very different stories though!

Anyway, what might the story of global trade look like? The Economist seems confident that we have bottomed-out. However,

More people out of work will mean a further fall in global demand. China's boom (GDP grew by 7.9% in the second quarter) is fuelled by government investment and by the stimulus, not a rise in private consumption. Nor are other consumers stepping in. Without a move towards more private consumption in countries such as Germany and China, the world is in for a prolonged period of slow growth and correspondingly sluggish trade.

The sound of the Chinese bubble bursting?

James Fallows and Thomas Friedman, among others, have written a lot about how China needs to maintain a minimum economic growth rate, in order to keep its people happy, while at the same time ensuring growth by lending to its biggest customer--the United States. China now owns about 2.2 trillion dollars of US treasury notes that it simply cannot convert without causing chaos within its economy, and to the rest of the world. Well, this is a ground that has been well covered.

The new twist to this story, which maybe I missed before but I read for the first time now, is this:

[Don't] confuse fast growth with sustainable growth. Much of China's growth over the past decade has come from lending to the United States. The country suffers from real overcapacity. And now growth comes from borrowing -- and hundreds of billion-dollar decisions made on the fly don't inspire a lot of confidence. For example, a nearly completed, 13-story building in Shanghai collapsed in June due to the poor quality of its construction.

This growth will result in a huge pile of bad debt -- as forced lending is bad lending. The list of negative consequences is very long, but the bottom line is simple: There is no miracle in the Chinese miracle growth, and China will pay a price. The only question is when and how much.

Read the complete essay for how this argument is built up; pretty fascinating.

Jon Stewart v. Jon Leibowitz

As my posts in this blog show, I am a big fan of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. Ron Rosenbaum writes that it is high time Jon Stewart changed his name back to its original:

I want you to change your name. Back to Leibowitz. Stewart is just so 20^th-century, a relic of that dark age when Jews in show biz changed their names because they feared "real Americans" wouldn't accept the originals.

In the same piece, Rosenbaum wonders "whether Dylan would have become Dylan—despite all that talent—if he'd remained Zimmerman."

I think Rosenbaum has a great point when he writes:

Now, you have every right to wonder why I'm singling you out like this. I think it has something to do with what I like most about your show, which is that you, like the best satirists, focus on making fun of those who put up a false front. Not that Stewart is false in any malign sense of the word. (It was your middle name—well, Stuart was!) But that it's a kind of mask, and you spend most of your time making fun of the pretentious masks that politicians, celebrities, and big shots adopt.

You're all three now—a politician, a celebrity, and a big shot—in the sense that you have remarkable influence politically. In fact, pols and political writers often establish their identities in their appearances on your show because you have a way of exposing their authentic selves however inauthentic the "authenticity" is. They either pass or fail the Jon Stewart authenticity test. And now we learn from a new poll that you're the new Cronkite, the nation's most trusted news source. All the more reason not to use a name that doesn't completely pass the Jon Stewart authenticity test, does it right?

Unemployment: Nobody seems to be hiring :-(

Why worry about unemployment? Here is why, according to Roger Lowenstein:

In terms of its impact on society, a dearth of hiring is far more troubling than an excess of layoffs. Job losses have to end sooner or later. Even if they persist (as, say, in the auto industry), the government can intervene. But the government cannot force firms to hire. Ultimately, each new job depends on the boss’s belief — or hope — that sufficient work will materialize. It’s a bit of black magic also described as confidence. ...

...Along with double-digit unemployment, the country is facing a second potential scare headline: falling wages. Even during recessions, businesses don’t like to lower pay, because it reduces morale. But layoffs are also a downer. And in this recession, employers ranging from the State of California to publishers (including this newspaper) have cut back on pay. In effect, job losses have been so severe that businesses have been forced to spread the pain. In June, overall wage growth was zero. Zandi thinks the United States could see negative wage growth.

How would Obama, not to mention Congress, respond to declining employment and falling wages? The pressure for another stimulus (and greater deficits) would be intense. So would that for demagogic solutions like trade barriers. Robert Reich, the former labor secretary, says most lost jobs are not coming back. The huge question is when — or whether — new ones will take their place.