“With Blood On Their Hands”: Neocons Fail Negotiation 101 Yet Again
If you want to know how the neoconservatives who brought us the Iraq War are reacting to the interim deal to freeze Iran’s nuclear program, the best way is to head over to the website of the Weekly Standard, where you can witness their wailing chagrin that the Obama administration doesn’t share their hunger for yet another Middle East war. All five of the featured articles on the site concern Iran, including editor Bill Kristol’s “No Deal” (illustrated with twinned photos of Bibi Netanyahu and Abraham Lincoln, believe it or not), one titled “Don’t Trust, Can’t Verify,” and “Abject Surrender By the United States” by the always measured John Bolton.
These people would be simply ridiculous if they didn’t already have so much blood on their hands from Iraq, and the idea that anyone would listen to them after what happened a decade ago tells you a lot about how Washington operates. But there is something important to understand in the arguments conservatives are making about Iran. Their essential position is that now that Iran has finally agreed to negotiate, we must “keep the pressure on” by not negotiating until they offer, to use Bolton’s words, an actual abject surrender. We should not just maintain but increase sanctions, to make them understand that they’ll get nothing and like it. The only way to get future concessions from Iran is to maximize their pain now.
You’ll recall how much progress the Bush administration made in getting Iran to pull back its nuclear development with this approach (none). It seems pretty clear that the neocons understand about as much about negotiating as my dog does about delayed gratification. So let me suggest that an easing of sanctions now is exactly what could get them to agree to more concessions at the end of the interim agreement’s period of six months. The reason is that what we’ve done is give the Iranians not only something to gain, but something to lose.
You may be familiar with the theory of loss aversion, which states that we tend to fear losses more than we are eager for gains. The pain of losing ten dollars you have is greater than the pleasure of gaining ten you don’t yet have. According to Daniel Kahneman, who pioneered the theory with his late colleague Amos Tversky, the “loss aversion ratio” in experiments is usually around two to one. For instance, if I offer you a bet in which you’ll lose $100 if you’re wrong, I’ll probably have to offer you $200 if you win in order to induce you to take the bet. Loss aversion has been demonstrated in a large number of experiments in a wide variety of contexts.
But as Bob Dylan said, when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose, which brings us back to Iran. Sanctions have by all accounts had a devastating effect on the Iranian economy. What conservatives would like to offer Iran is continued economic misery, in the hopes that a little more of that will get them to do what we want, i.e. dismantle their nuclear program. But under this new agreement, they’ll get a bit of temporary relief. Money will flow in to their economy, easing some of that misery. It might not be actual prosperity, but things will be better than they are now. The Iranian public will be pleased about the improved economy, likely making the regime feel more politically secure. Then at the end of the agreement’s time frame in six months, the country as a whole and the government in particular will have something to lose. The western powers will be able to say to them: Things are going better for you now. If you don’t take the next step in dismantling the nuclear program, we’ll reimpose the sanctions, and you’ll squander what you’ve gained.
Obviously, there are many other variables at play—the need to save face, the desire to be considered a world power, and so on. But if this agreement gives the Iranians something to lose, it might be just the thing to induce them to give up more later.
Or we could just listen to the neocons and start another war. Because that always works out well.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, November 26, 2013
“California, Here We Come?”: If Obamacare Can Work For 38 Million People In California, It Can Work For America
It goes without saying that the rollout of Obamacare was an epic disaster. But what kind of disaster was it? Was it a failure of management, messing up the initial implementation of a fundamentally sound policy? Or was it a demonstration that the Affordable Care Act is inherently unworkable?
We know what each side of the partisan divide wants you to believe. The Obama administration is telling the public that everything will eventually be fixed, and urging Congressional Democrats to keep their nerve. Republicans, on the other hand, are declaring the program an irredeemable failure, which must be scrapped and replaced with … well, they don’t really want to replace it with anything.
At a time like this, you really want a controlled experiment. What would happen if we unveiled a program that looked like Obamacare, in a place that looked like America, but with competent project management that produced a working website?
Well, your wish is granted. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you California.
Now, California isn’t the only place where Obamacare is looking pretty good. A number of states that are running their own online health exchanges instead of relying on HealthCare.gov are doing well. Kentucky’s Kynect is a huge success; so is Access Health CT in Connecticut. New York is doing O.K. And we shouldn’t forget that Massachusetts has had an Obamacare-like program since 2006, put into effect by a guy named Mitt Romney.
California is, however, an especially useful test case. First of all, it’s huge: if a system can work for 38 million people, it can work for America as a whole. Also, it’s hard to argue that California has had any special advantages other than that of having a government that actually wants to help the uninsured. When Massachusetts put Romneycare into effect, it already had a relatively low number of uninsured residents. California, however, came into health reform with 22 percent of its nonelderly population uninsured, compared with a national average of 18 percent.
Finally, the California authorities have been especially forthcoming with data tracking the progress of enrollment. And the numbers are increasingly encouraging.
For one thing, enrollment is surging. At this point, more than 10,000 applications are being completed per day, putting the state well on track to meet its overall targets for 2014 coverage. Just imagine, by the way, how different press coverage would be right now if Obama officials had produced a comparable success, and around 100,000 people a day were signing up nationwide.
Equally important is the information on who is enrolling. To work as planned, health reform has to produce a balanced risk pool — that is, it must sign up young, healthy Americans as well as their older, less healthy compatriots. And so far, so good: in October, 22.5 percent of California enrollees were between the ages of 18 and 34, slightly above that group’s share of the population.
What we have in California, then, is a proof of concept. Yes, Obamacare is workable — in fact, done right, it works just fine.
The bad news, of course, is that most Americans aren’t lucky enough to live in states in which Obamacare has, in fact, been done right. They’re stuck either with HealthCare.gov or with one of the state exchanges, like Oregon’s, that have similar or worse problems. Will they ever get to experience successful health reform?
The answer is, probably yes. There won’t be a moment when the clouds suddenly lift, but the exchanges are gradually getting better — a point inadvertently illustrated a few days ago by John Boehner, the speaker of the House. Mr. Boehner staged a publicity stunt in which he tried to sign up on the D.C. health exchange, then triumphantly posted an entry on his blog declaring that he had been unsuccessful. At the bottom of his post, however, is a postscript admitting that the health exchange had called back “a few hours later,” and that he is now enrolled.
And maybe the transaction would have proceeded faster if Mr. Boehner’s office hadn’t, according to the D.C. exchange, put its agent — who was calling to help finish the enrollment — on hold for 35 minutes, listening to “lots of patriotic hold music.”
There will also probably be growing use of workarounds — for example, encouraging people to go directly to insurers. This will temporarily defeat one of the purposes of the exchanges, which was to make price comparisons easy, but it will be good enough as a short-term patch. And one shouldn’t forget that the insurance industry has a big financial stake in the success of Obamacare, and will soon be pitching in with big efforts to sign people up.
Again, Obamacare’s rollout was a disaster. But in California we can see what health reform will look like, beyond the glitches. And it’s going to work.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, November 24, 2013
“With Every Waking Moment”: Republicans Seeing The World Through An ACA Lens
On Saturday night, for the first time in a generation, the West and Iran reached a diplomatic breakthrough. Love the deal or hate it, the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program was a historic development with sweeping international implications.
Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), an 11-year veteran of the institution and the second most powerful Republican in the chamber, immediately turned to Twitter: “Amazing what WH will do to distract attention from O-care.”
I kept waiting for the “just kidding, folks” follow-up, which never came. The Republican leader wasn’t mocking the caricature of unhinged GOP lawmakers; he’d become the caricature of unhinged GOP lawmakers. Indeed, as the notoriety of Cornyn’s message spread, he added, “Isn’t it true that WH are masters of distraction?”
It’s unsettling, of course, when powerful congressional leaders approach foreign policy with all the seriousness of a right-wing blog’s comments section, but it was even more disappointing when CBS’s Bob Schieffer asked House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on “Face the Nation” yesterday:
“You know, I was on airplanes this weekend, and more than one person I was talking to about this whole deal pending with Iran, and they were saying, this might be a diversionary tactic by the administration, which is desperately looking for good news. Would you put it in that category yet?”
Why lend credence to such silly conspiracy theories? The international diplomacy, involving major world powers, involved months of behind-the-scenes talks. Why would any serious person perceive this as a domestic political ploy, intended to “distract” or “divert” attention from a health care website that’s slowly improving?
The answer, I suspect, is that Republicans and much of the political establishment has become preoccupied with the Affordable Care Act in ways that are hard to defend.
Late last week, for example, National Review’s Jonathan Strong published an interesting piece, explaining why the Republican response to the “nuclear option” was muted: “Harry Reid may have detonated a nuclear bomb, but Senate Republicans don’t want a war if it would distract from the disastrous Obamacare rollout, senior GOP aides say.”
As hard as this may be to believe, many Capitol Hill Republicans believe Senate Democrats rebelled against obstructionism, not to improve the confirmation process, but to shift the focus from “Obamacare” and bait Republicans into a big fight that has nothing to do with health care.
Naturally, then, when months of diplomacy resulted in a deal with Iran, Republicans once more assumed this, too, must relate to the health care law – because “Obamacare” is the prism through which all light shines.
The obsession has reached farcical levels and it’s well past time for a reality-check. To think that every development, everywhere, is some kind of ploy related to health.gov is to lose all sense of reason. Democrats are heavily invested in improving Americans’ health care security, but it doesn’t dominate their every waking moment.
I don’t seriously expect Republicans to end their crusade against moderate health care law first championed by Mitt Romney, but a little perspective is clearly in order.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 25, 2013
“Fried, Whipped And Canned”: Thanksgiving Isn’t Healthy And I Don’t Care!
The guests at Ilyssa Israel’s Thanksgiving table will get a chance to try a couple new healthy dishes she’s adding to her menu, such as roasted Brussels sprouts with quinoa and cranberries and garlic mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes. But those will be served alongside the traditional green bean casserole she makes every year – you know, the kind with cream-of-mushroom soup and those fried onion bits that come in a can.
Israel, 37, an executive assistant from Secaucus, N.J., will use her late mother’s recipe of sprinkling breadcrumbs on top followed by six pats of butter. “It’s so not healthy for you, but I don’t care,” she says. “It’s comfort food. My mom passed away when I was 27. When I think back to our Thanksgivings together, I think of happy times, and that meal always included this string bean casserole.”
What is it about holiday comfort foods that evoke such strong nostalgia? During this time of year, we crave items we wouldn’t touch any other day: gelatin deserts with fake whipped cream, deep-fried turkey or canned cranberries. Even the most die-hard foodies find themselves saying, “It’s not Thanksgiving until I have Mom’s maple-flavored, marshmallow-whipped sweet potato mash.” And recent research shows that a bit of nostalgia is good for us. When we think of fond memories from our past, we feel more socially connected and optimistic about the future.
The smells, tastes and traditions of Thanksgiving food tap into such powerful emotions, says Dr. Charlotte Biltekoff, assistant professor of American studies at the University of California, Davis and author of “Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Dietary Health.”
“The rituals around holiday food connect us to the fantasy we have of the past, which we imagine was more wholesome, natural and simple,” says Biltekoff. “These connections are stronger than the reasons that normally govern our eating choices, like taste, convenience and health.” In other words, comfort foods temporarily make us feel better about living in a complicated, fragmented world.
The foods we choose to celebrate our national holiday also reveal our deeper values as a country, adds Rachel Laudan, a British food historian and author of “Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History.” Unlike other cultures that celebrate festivals with fancier fare, Americans stick with the basics of turkey, gravy and potatoes. “You don’t have fancy sauces or mousses or elaborate desserts,” she says. “It’s a meal that anyone can cook and encapsulates the middle-class ideal.” It’s also a family holiday and symbolizes motherhood and nurturing, she added.
For Israel, that green bean casserole takes her back to the square, white-walled kitchen of the house she grew up in. “As soon as I take a bite, I feel like my mother is with me,” she says. “We’re laughing and reminiscing, and it’s like she hasn’t been gone for the last 10 years.”
By: Sarah Elizabeth Richards, Contributor, TODAY Health, November 25, 2013
“Less Than American”: It Is In The Public Interest To Have People Assimilated And Participating Stakeholders In Our Democracy
Not so long ago, it seemed the debate over immigration reform was all about borders. Politicians competed to offer the most draconian solutions — higher fences, longer fences, electrified fences, armies of guards, fleets of drones, moats and crocodiles. Never mind that the Border Patrol had already more than doubled in a decade. Never mind that many of those here illegally never hopped a fence but simply overstayed a student or tourist visa. The nativist mythology has us under siege from relentless hordes striding toward Arizona on, in the fevered imagination of Tea Party Congressman Steve King, “calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” To pacify the border neurotics, authors of the bill that passed the Senate last summer included $46.3 billion to militarize our southern flank.
Now, with the bill stranded in the House, it seems the immigration debate is all about citizenship. To opponents, the idea of offering 11-plus million undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship — even a 13-year slog like the one envisioned by the Senate bill — is anathema, so politically toxic that the measure’s most prominent Republican sponsor, Senator Marco Rubio, pulled back as if he’d put his hand on a lit stove. To proponents of comprehensive reform, or at least to activists on the issue, citizenship is the prize, and nonnegotiable.
It’s beginning to look as if advocates of fixing our broken immigration system will face an unpleasant choice: no bill at all, or a bill that legalizes the foreigners who are already here but does not offer most of them a chance to become citizens. On Capitol Hill several lawmakers are quietly drafting compromises that give the undocumented millions little hope of full membership in America.
The first thing to note is that this is progress. The Republican mainstream view has moved in the last year or so, from Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” to something considerably less callous. Most Republicans in Congress now say they can live with legalizing the undocumented as long as (a) we don’t call it amnesty and (b) we don’t reward lawbreakers by bestowing the precious gift of citizenship.
The second point that needs making — and my Times colleague Julia Preston made it last week — is that while citizenship is the priority for pro-immigration activists, to immigrants living here as a fearful underclass the aim is not so clear cut. For many of them, the priority is to be made legal, to come out of hiding and live their lives without the threat of deportation, without the risk of exploitation by unscrupulous employers, without wondering whether your spouse will make it home at night.
“The entire narrative behind comprehensive immigration reform has elevated the path to citizenship as this must-have component of an acceptable bill,” said Oscar Chacon, executive director of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, a network of immigrant organizations that includes many foreigners here without visas. “What you hear from the undocumented is: ‘We like the idea of citizenship, but what really hurts us is that we are vulnerable, that I can’t easily get a job to feed my family, that I can’t drive a car without being at risk, that I want to be able to visit relatives back home and come back safely.”
Just to be clear, I believe (and so does Oscar Chacon) that deliberately creating a class of disenfranchised residents goes against the American grain. There are few precedents for consigning whole categories of people to a sub-citizen limbo, and they are not proud moments in our history. (See the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.) It is clearly in the public interest to have people become assimilated, taxpaying, participating stakeholders in our democracy. Most Americans polled, including a majority of Republicans, agree that those now in the country illegally should be allowed to eventually apply for citizenship.
If House Speaker John Boehner is willing to brave the fury of his extreme flank and put the matter to a vote, a path to citizenship stands a decent chance of passing the House with a majority of Democrats and a minority of Republicans. You might even think Republicans would want to get immigration settled and off the table so they could begin wooing Hispanic voters on more favorable ground — social issues, taxes, education. But among the people most immersed in this issue, I can’t find many who expect Boehner to suddenly become a statesman and defy his fanatics. In part, let’s be honest, that’s because the Republican stance is, “We protect America from Obama.” It is also in part because they fear newly enfranchised Hispanics will become Democrats — which the Republicans, by opposing citizenship, make a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So it may well be that supporters of immigration reform have to choose between half a loaf and none at all. Half a loaf might include a prospect of citizenship for some undocumented immigrants — the so-called Dreamers, who entered the country as children, and those in the military — but not the majority. If that’s the option, should Democrats swallow hard and take it?
Yes, and here’s why.
First, even without a prospect of citizenship, legalization would make the undocumented much safer from the family-wrecking heartbreak of deportation, which has continued at record numbers under President Obama. It would free them to press for better education for their children, to approach the police when they are victims of crime, to challenge abusive employers, to seek medical care without fear of exposure. Some advocates of citizenship-or-nothing suggest that the president should simply use his prosecutorial discretion to stop deportations altogether, as he has done for the Dreamers and undocumented soldiers. But the public would view that as a grievous abuse of power, and Congress might very well take away his authority. An executive order is no substitute for a protection enshrined in the law.
Second, the legislation has other good things going for it. It puts a little sense into our archaic legal immigration system, and establishes some meaningful protection against future illegal immigration (like holding employers rigorously accountable for assuring their workers have legal status, much more important than fortifying the border.)
Third, this is not the end of the story. We elect a new Congress in 2014, and another in 2016, and so on, and the electoral clout of Hispanics will continue to grow. “I’m a firm believer in the notion of incremental change,” Chacon told me. “The best public policies — look at gay rights — have evolved, they didn’t happen all at once.”
And fourth, even if many undocumented workers never make it to citizenship, the injustice will last for just one generation. Their children are citizens by birth. Young Latinos are reaching voting age at the rate of about 50,000 per month. I suspect many in that rising generation will remember, and punish, the politicians who decided their parents should remain less than American.
By: Bill Keller, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, November 24, 2013
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