How to kill a policy initiative

How do you kill a piece of proposed legislation or paralyze a policy decision that you don't like? There are several methods, perfected by experienced opponents:

1. start a PR campaign that distorts the issue and turn an asset into a liability.
2. appoint a study group and delay a vote until the results are in.
3. stall for time by doing a survey -- and word the questions so that they will tend to get the result you want.
4. if passing the law is inevitable, let it pass but make sure it never gets funded.

The House has passed an appropriations bill that also overturns Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It is yet to be voted on in the Senate. But the military generals who oppose it won the proviso that it not be implemented until they have assessed the effects on military preparedness. We're seeing #1-3 now, and it's only premature for #4.

I have just read the survey questions and am appalled at the subtle bias that pervades it. No, it doesn't use derogatory epithets or ask blatant questions, like "Do you hate gays?" It's more subtle.

Most questions are of the type: "Have you served with a person you perceived to be gay or lesbian?" And then how did it affect unit morale? Or "How do you anticipate socialization among your unit would be effected?

The questions obviously were written by someone who expects, and desires, a negative outcome. The focus is all on "how bad do you think it will be?" There is no place to give a positive attitude, or to recall how someone you really admired and respected and were comfortable around was gay. The best one can do is show the absence of negative attitude; there's no clearcut way to show a positive attitude.

Here's a sample question: "If don't ask, don't tell is repealed and a gay or lesbian service member attended a military social function with a same-sex partner, which are you most likely to do?"

-- Continue to attend military social functions
-- Stop bringing my spouse, significant other or other family members with me to military social functions
-- Stop attending military social functions
-- Something else
-- Don't know

Why didn't the choices include: "Make friends with them and try to make them feel welcome"?

Another question has to do with being assigned to share a bathroom with open bay showers, and the only choice that could be considered positive is: "Take no action." Others are options for dealing with negative feelings about it.

Well . . . for good or bad, this is the survey they're doing; and at least we can make clear how bias is built into the questions themselves.

The best outcome would be for the results to show that a majority would accept openly gay comrades, in spite of the biased survey questions. My guess is that the results won't be as negative as the opponents hope for, nor as positive as I would like for them to be.

The bottom line is that this is a compromise to appease the biased generals and colonels who are older than most service people and who grew up in a more homophobic era. They might be surprised. On the other hand, there will be enough residual homophobia, even in younger people, that will get triggered by the questions.

It has been noted that Harry Truman didn't ask for an attitude survey before he ended racial segregation in the military. He did it because it was the right thing to do. And it worked.

Ralph

News briefs

1. A federal judge in Boston has ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, because it interferes with each state's right to define marriage and because it therefore denies federal benefits to married gay couples.

DOMA doesn't actually ban gay marriage in states where it is legal. But it says that other states don't have to recognize them, and it prevents those legally married couples from getting the same federal benefits that the straight couples get.

To be clear about what this does: it says a federal law is unconstitutional because it interferes with state laws. What a turn of events. "States Rights" is usually the battle cry of the conservatives who are protesting more liberal federal laws on civil rights, abortion,guns, etc. But here we have a more conservative federal law interfering with more liberal state law. It applies only to Massachusetts but could have broader influence.


2. The Rich Get Richer. Since 1979, the gap between the income of wealthiest Americans and that of the working and middle classes has more than tripled.

In those three decades, the lower and middle incomes have gone up 16% and 20%, while that of the wealthiest segment has gone up 128%. This is after-tax dollars -- and the Bush tax cuts that favored the wealthiest are mostly reponsible.

Some of us think it's a good thing that there is not such a wide gap between the haves and have-nots. The other side argues that the government has no business interfering by using tax policy to equalize the classes. But, according to this, that's a major factor in how the rich got so rich -- by having their taxes cut. So why isn't it equally valid for Democrats to raise their taxes to reverse that advantage?

3. Russian spies. Well, the Russian spies have gone home after pleading guilty so they can be used in an exchange for our spies that Russia was holding. What a deja vu moment: echoes of the Cold War, Russian spies, state secrets, high drama, scary.

I still don't understand what this was all about. This was such an elaborate network, going to such lengths to establish fake identities, and for such a long time -- and apparently with nothing to show for it. I don't get it. There's got to be a back story that we'll never know about. There's another whole world out there that we are blithely unaware of, apparently.

Ralph

To the highest bidder . . .

Leaking information about GOP financing for the 2010 campaigns for federal offices has it that they have pledges for almost $300 million. This includes the Chamber of Commerce $75M, American Crossroads $52M, Americans for Prosperity $45M, NRA $20M -- all adding up to at least twice what they spend on the 2008 election -- and that was a presidential election.

Democrats are described as "stunned" by these figures -- and will have to try to match them. Labor will give large amounts, but no one expects the Dems to come close to the GOP.

This is obscene, disheartening, and scary. I think we've lost all hope of having an election that is about the difference in core principles such as: the role of government in people's lives and specific issues like war, regulation of industries, and providing health care.

What it boils down to is: who can spend the most money to spout what your focus group researchers have said will play well with your target constituencies. The more you repeat distortions and lies, the more people believe them. So TV advertising really does count a lot.

Today, my optimism is in a funk.

Ralph

An anti-government tsunami?

There was a very thoughtful piece about the courts, the constitution, and the fate of progressive political philosophy in the June 27 issue of the New York Times Magazine. It is by Noah Feldman, who is a Harvard Law School professor. He summed up the roots of the current debate between liberals and conservatives about what we need to fear the most: liberals most fear unconstrained market forces, while conservatives most fear an overreaching state.

Feldman says that the recent Supreme Court decision in favor of Citizens United that removed limits on corporate campaign financing is a clear example of this division. And he goes on to discuss what constitutes an "activist court," meaning a preponderance of decisions that overturn precedent rather than deferring to prior decisions. By that marker, it's the Republicans who are the activist justices. The Roberts court definitely sides with corporate litigants.

That's a thoughtful, rational analysis of all the heat. But those are not the words that are stirring up the tea party crowd. It's the tactics of Rush Limbaugh & Friends that scare me. Like this (from Huffington Post):

Rush Limbaugh said on his July 2 radio show that he believes Obama tanked the economy on purpose, both as "payback" for 230 years of racial oppression and because Obama simply doesn't like America.

He railed: "Who is Obama? Why is he doing this? Why? Why is he doing it? Is he stupid? Is it an accident? Is he doing it on purpose or what have you? ... I think we face something we've never faced before in the country -- and that is, we're now governed by people who do not like the country, who do not have the same reverence for it that we do. Our greatest threat (and this is saying something) is internal."

Rush doesn't even make "crazy sense." He just says stuff to get people riled up, unthinkingly. An example: he cited a woman whose unemployment benefits expired and how the liberal media used that as an indictment against the Republicans and conservative Democrats who voted against extending benefits. But Rush twists this around to saying that blame is misplaced. It's really Obama and "payback" for racial oppression.

Payback time. This woman's going to find out what it was like, in Obama's view, for other Americans to live as they did in this unfair and immoral country for the 230 years we've been around.

That makes no sense at all. African-Americans are suffering disproportionately in the jobless market. Besides, Obama was pushing for the bill to be passed to extend benefits. The conservative block voted against it and it didn't pass. But somehow it's Obama's fault and it's really intended to make the other side suffer?

And back to Rush's first comments: that Obama "tanked the economy." The economy tanked while Bush was president.

The sad and frightening thing is that Rush knows that many of his listeners will just swallow it whole -- and he's intentionally building up this automatic association of Obama's name with anything bad these people fear. So Obama becomes like Hitler or determined to impose a socialist state that will control every aspect of our lives. (And let's just forget that until now these same people's rallying cry was for government to control people's sexual relationships and reproductive lives.)

Our cherished First Amendment allows Rush to talk such trash. Democrats -- and Independents too -- have got to figure out a way to counter it or we're going to wind up with a bunch of rabid, ignorant, and incompetent people running our government.

Ralph

The Afghan War

Replacing Gen. McChrystal with Gen. Petraeus is a definite signal that we're going to stay and continue to try to "win" in Afghanistan.

And now Republicans are taking up the mantra: "Afghanistan is Obama's war !!"

Well, yes, in one sense that is true. He has been Commander in Chief for 18 months, he called it "the necessary war" (in contrast to that other, unnecessary one), and his surge of troop levels there is still in the build-up stage.

But more and more people from the middle and the right are joining those on the left who opposed continuing it. Michael Steele's remarks got him in trouble, but he said what a lot of his own party members are saying.

From a different part of the political spectrum, Fareed Zakaria is calling it "disproportionate." Referring to CIA chief Leon Panetta's comment that the number of Taliban in Afghanistan may be down to as few as 50 to 100, he said on CNN yesterday:

If Al Qaeda is down to 100 men there at the most, why are we fighting a major war?

. . . Last month alone there were more than 100 NATO troops killed in Afghanistan. That's more than one allied death for each living Al Qaeda member in the country in just one month. . .

Why are we investing so much time, energy, and effort when Al Qaeda is so weak? Is there a more cost-effective way to keep Al Qaeda on the ropes than fight a major land and air war in Afghanistan? I hope someone in Washington is thinking about this and not simply saying we're going to stay the course because, well, we must stay the course.

Good questions to be asking. I'm sure there are better answers than simply "because . . ." But it does seem that we're heading for a quagmire, not unlike Viet Nam. It's not oil this time, like in Iraq, although the recent publicity about the mineral mining possibilities puts the greed issue back on the table.

My hunch is that the Obama administration would like nothing better than to get out and concentrate on our huge domestic problems. But I think it's fair to say that it would have been political suicide for Obama to walk away from Afghanistan. Those same Republicans who are hanging it around his neck now would be whooping it up and condemning him for cowardice and weakness if he had even hinted at wanting to end it short of total victory.

I think one simple answer to the "disproportionate" argument is that few Taliban are there now because they simply moved over into Pakistan. If we left, they would just return and set up their training camps and intimidate the people again.

The one glimmer of hope -- short of some sudden miraculous victory -- is that Petraeus is held in such high regard across the political spectrum that he might be the one person who could conclude that we had done all we can, that we're now doing more harm than good, and that we should leave.

Ralph