. . . because much of the content relates both to Washington, D.C., and "outside the beltway" -- the heartland, specifically Iowa -- and because after going from Iowa to Washington via Texas and California I subsequently returned, From DC 2 Iowa.
In the 12 years that I spent on the council, I tried several times to get the council to pass a 21 ordinance. University of Iowa presidents Mary Sue Coleman and David Skorton also encouraged the council to pass such an ordinance -- along with the UI College of Public Health, the public school system and numerous others within the community. In fact, every piece of credible evidence presented to the council called for a 21 ordinance -- all of which the council ignored, choosing instead to listen to the bar owners and patrons of the bars.
Unfortunately, even that report doesn't seem to have had much effect in stiffening the spines of those who, if they were to do anything meaningful, would have to stand toe-to-toe with the powerful alcohol industry, bar owners, and their landlords.
Meanwhile, the latest in a decades-long string of alcohol committees and task forces has now decided the subject is so sensitive that they have to exclude the public from its meetings and conduct their conversations in secret. Regina Zilbermints, "Alcohol group meets — in private,"Daily Iowan, December 15, 2009.
The Iowa City City Council is unwilling to enforce the law in the way that rational cities do: with ordinances providing that those who are legally forbidden to possess, buy, or consume alcohol cannot be admitted to establishments the sole purpose of which is to profit from selling them alcohol. See, e.g., Rachel Gallegos, "Ames 21-only ordinance 'piece of a larger strategy,'"Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 27, 2007. (The Council and UI were even unwilling to support an ordinance that would have permitted them to consume alcohol illegally up until 10:00 p.m., but required them to leave the bars during the hours when the fights break out, from 10:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m.) So it focuses on the number of underage drinkers found in the bars, and refuses to grant liquor licenses to the worst offenders. In addition to being irrational, there are three other things wrong with this approach: (1) with 50 bars within walking distance of the campus, closing one or two won't have much effect on the levels, and consequences, of binge drinking. (2) The bars aren't closed, they are permitted to continue to operate while they appeal. (3) And how's even this weak-kneed approach been working for the City? Not well. Josh O'Leary, "Judge: Bars should be allowed to serve alcohol,"Iowa City Press-Citizen, December 16, 2009; Nicole Karlis, "Judge overturns liquor-license denials,"Daily Iowan, December 16, 2009.
The Council's other worthless effort is the requirement that bars can only be within a given distance of each other. Why worthless? No bars are closed; they are all grandfathered in. Moreover, as I understand it, if any bar owner ever did want to give up his or her liquor license, this license to print money, all they would need to do is to sell the bar to another bar owner. That would not be considered the establishment of a new bar.
Fortunately, there is one adult in Iowa City who is internationally recognized for his research and knowledge of this subject. That's the good news. The bad news is that little more attention has been paid to his findings by Iowa City's powers that be than has been paid to my comparable suggestions (which are, admittedly, less worthy of attention than his). Peter Nathan, "Guest: To curb drinking problem, look to research and parental involvement,"Daily Iowan, December 15, 2009.
I cite, and am about to quote from, this op ed column not for the specifics of what it contains. There's no way that a lifetime of Peter Nathan's research can be presented in a brief op ed column.
No, I refer to it for the broader observation I have often made in writing about this subject over the years: In dealing with problems of alcohol abuse and its consequences on college campuses, the challenge is not one of finding possible solutions. It may be science, but it's not rocket science. The solutions, the data, the best practices, are out there. Indeed, in addition to the results from colleges and cities around the country (and the world) the U.S. Department of Education has an entire center devoted to the subject: The U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence Prevention.
No, the challenge, Iowa City's challenge, is figuring out how to get those who could implement those solutions to do so.
The Dec. 7 Daily Iowan article “The siren song of alcohol” brought home with great immediacy the terrible consequences of high-risk drinking at the UI. Admittedly, a good deal of what was written is familiar: Iowa’s dubious standing as one of the nation’s leaders in abusive drinking, the high rates of student self-reports of adverse consequences of this drinking, the growing numbers of arrests for alcohol-related events in Iowa City, and the proliferation of bars in the city. But interwoven with these familiar observations were the graphic, eyewitness reports chronicling the suffering of UI lethal drinkers because of their drinking. That was new on the pages of the DI. . . .
It’s hard to read about the college-age man crumpled and abandoned on the curb outside One-Eyed Jakes, his body immobilized by alcohol. Or the Code 3 young woman, disoriented and covered with blood, unsure of where she is. Or the bloodied student outside Summit Bar and Restaurant, punched by someone he didn’t know. . . .
[I]t’s hard to deny that high-risk drinking takes a huge toll on UI students. . . .
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has compiled a list of programs that “have proven effectiveness.” . . .
[S]trategies include increased enforcement of the minimum drinking-age laws, enforcement of other laws to reduce alcohol-impaired driving, restrictions on the density of alcohol outlets, increased prices on alcoholic beverages, and more responsible beverage-server policies. . . . [A] more rigorous and consistent effort to change the drinking environment here may be worth the effort.
[It] could well include a solicitation for greater involvement of parents . . .. Research done at universities elsewhere suggests that increased parental involvement in their students’ decisions about drinking may help moderate abusive drinking.
As I noted earlier, it's neither Nathan's purpose nor mine to itemize and explain even the best, let alone all, of the strategies supported by research and other universities' experience.
As I wrote over a year ago on the occasion when a number of university presidents were proposing lowering the drinking age to a 18 (a movement that UI's President Sally Mason, commendably, refused to join):
The problem is that when these academic leaders are called on the fact they are ignoring the scientific literature on the subject that has come from research at "America's Best" academic institutions, they do the little sidestep . . .
[The preceding one-minute fair use clip is from the delightful 1982 R-rated full-length musical comedy, "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," staring Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton, among a great many other accomplished and well-known actors, and still available for rental and sale. It's based on a true story of a brothel outside LaGrange, Texas, that was ultimately closed down in 1973, following the work of investigative reporter Marvin Zindler of KTRK-TV, Houston. The writing was done by Larry King (whom I remember from Austin in the 1950s), the Governor was played by Charles Durning, and the studio was RKO Pictures. The film is copyright by, presumably, RKO. The use of this miniaturized, very brief clip is for non-commercial, educational and commentary fair use purposes only. Any other use may require the permission of the copyright owner.]
. . . and say, "Oh, we're not really proposing the age be dropped to 18, our statement just calls for 'an informed and dispassionate public debate.'" Which, indeed, it does.
But for a group of academics to say they want an informed debate while simultaneously excluding from that debate any and all solid evidence that is contrary to their position, and urging little better by way of support than one could get from any drunken undergraduate at one of their campus bars on a Friday night, does not speak well for "the academy."
Perhaps most telling is this statement under "Interventions for Preventing Underage Drinking": "Increasing the age at which people can legally purchase and drink alcohol has been the most successful intervention to date . . .."
The "most successful intervention to date" and these 114 "higher education leaders" (a) make no reference to the finding, and (b) pick doing away with it as their top priority for treating the binge-drinking problem?
No, the purpose of this blog entry is simply to make the point again, as I have over and over during the past couple of decades, that until the Council and UI administrators demonstrate the willingness to take whatever political heat may result from effective action, illegal alcohol consumption by UI's undergraduates will continue to cause all too many to continue to flunk out, drop out, and pass out.
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For other recent blog entries you may be looking for, go to "There Is No War in Afghanistan," December 4, 2009, and look through the links at the bottom of that blog entry. _______________ * Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
# # #
Here are 31 prior blog entries regarding Iowa City's alcohol problem, its consequences, and possible remedies:
"More College Football Conflicts & Concerns," October 7, 2006 ("The University of Iowa, ranked even highter nationally for the quantity of its students' drinking than for the quality of its football team (now 15th), professes to be making efforts to curb student drunkenness. It has something called the 'Stepping Up Project, which encourages students to avoid alcohol.' The co-chair is Jim Clayton. He was not enthusiastic about the 'University of Iowa plan to sell alcohol to people in Kinnick Stadium’s luxury seating areas this year,' because as he says, 'It’s a cultural message that we send to young people that alcohol has to be part of a sporting event.'");
"I'll Drink to That; Binge and problem drinking by college (and high school) students," October 10, 2006 ("Finding ideas regarding what can be done to alleviate college students' excessive drinking is not a tough research job. Put both "alcohol" and "college" into Google . . . and you get 29,700,000 hits in 3/10ths of one second. . . . But the one at the top of that list, 'College Drinking,' is not a bad place to start. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health seemed to me an especially rich repository of information, research data, and best practices. And if that's not enough, as noted, there are another 29,000,000 to explore.");
"'Hat's Off' to the Press-Citizen," October 12, 2006 ("Both the Press-Citizen and The Gazette editorialized this morning (October 12) regarding the recent task force proposals about UI undergraduates' binge drinking. . . . Both took positions consistent with my blog entry yesterday, that the problems, and recommendations, have been around for decades and that nothing gets accomplished, not for a lack of solutions, but for a lack of will on the part of the Iowa City City Council, seemingly beholden to the local owners of the 42 bars competing for student drunks.");
"Public Officials and Private Actions," August 7, 2007 ("However serious DWI may be, however appropriate editorial and other campaigns to prevent it may be, I don't think it's warranted to select and publicize such an offense as a means of attacking an 'enemy,' and calling for his or her resignation (which the attacker would have wished for anyway, with or without the DWI) -- unless there is reason to believe the official's performance in their job has been impaired in some way.");
"We're Number 5! and Athletes Crowding Jails," August 21, 2007 ("by golly we're 5th in the nation for students' consumption of hard liquor according to the Princeton Review (not to mention number of bars per student and "most profitable market in which to operate a bar with the least City Council and University oversight" according to me). Hey, at least we're known for something positive around here. Hieu Pham, "UI Again Ranks Among Party Schools; School Also Ranks 5th for Hard Liquor Use, 18th for Beer Use," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 21, 2007, p. A1. . . . The University's own statistics reveal that 'nearly 70 percent of U of I students surveyed last fall by Student Health Services said they had participated in binge drinking in the previous two weeks.'");
"Abu Ghraib, Rumsfeld, and Athletes' Facebook Photos," August 23, 2007 ("'The Facebook pages of more than 20 underaged University of Iowa football players have photos appearing to show them engaging alcohol in various ways, from drinking to posing with liquor bottles or beer cans. . . . "She can't say no if her mouth is taped shut," is posted as a favorite quote on one player's page.' Brian Morelli, "Alcohol Abundant on Players' Sites; Review Shows Questionable Material," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 23, 2007. You see, the problem is not that athletes (and other students) might feel that way, think those things, or even say those things. The problem is that when they put them up on their Facebook page it risks embarrassing the University. . . . Is it that we really care one way or the other whether our students are abusing alcohol, consider rape a matter of right, and credit cards free for the taking? Or is it just that we don't want to suffer the institutional 'embarrassment' of having our students' behavior -- and our obvious attitudes about it, as reflected in our inaction -- reported by the media or otherwise widely known?");
"Hawkeye Football's Externalities," September 9, 2007 ("[My intention] is simply to try to portray, through pictures, the impact that the football program has on one of Iowa City's most historic residential neighborhoods when the football machine is fueled on alcohol and left to run without supervision.");
"Serious Reflections on "Football's Externalities," September 13, 2007("the most serious aspect of out-of-control, unsupervised, drunken mobs is their potential to create significant, regrettable disasters. You name it, you imagine it, it could happen. Fights between fans of rival teams that involve increasing numbers of people, and the resulting serious injuries or death as guns or knives are ultimately involved. When a drunken student suffocates to death on his own vomit, or falls from a building to his death (it's usually a 'his'), it may make the news. The hundreds of injuries from assaults and accidents do not. We've seen the extent of injury and death from drunken, out-of-control mobs of soccer fans around the world. It could happen here. Excessive alcohol can encourage deliberate vandalism and property damage, possibly even involving accidental or deliberate fire damage.");
"Iowa City's 'Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,'" September 22, 2007("[There is] some question as to why the local bar owners (and their advocates on the City Council) are fearful of less revenue, since presumably they would assert they're not selling to under-age patrons now anyway -- either before or after 10:00 p.m. Iowa City's version of '21-only' doesn't even go so far as to enforce the laws already on the books in a rational way -- as is done in Ames! It leaves open the opportunity bar owners have to sell as much alcohol to under-age drinkers as they can possibly get away with up until 10:00 p.m.! And you call that 'prohibition'??!! Give me a break.");
"Music Management Revenue Alcohol -- and Good News/Alcohol and 'A Tale of Two Cities,'" October 6, 2007("As evidence that it doesn't have to be this way, that other cities take a different approach, consider what Marion, Iowa, has just done. It doesn't wink at illegal sales of alcohol to underage patrons of bars. It doesn't try to represent that kicking them out of the bars at 10 p.m. is a meaningful restriction on binge drinking. Its idea of a real loosening of restrictions on a meaningful '21-only' restriction is to permit underage patrons to enter bars (a) that do "a majority of their business in food sales," not prior to 10 p.m., but (b) between the hours of 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. for those who want to buy lunch! 'Underage Patrons OK in Bars During Midday,' The Gazette, October 6, 2007, p. B1.");
"Why '21-Only' Isn't," October 19, 2007 ("There's lots of action -- or at least discussion -- about the so-called '21-Only' proposal. Why 'so-called'? Because it's not about '21-only' at all -- notwithstanding that characterization by supporters and opponents alike. The Daily Iowan editorializes [that it's an] 'ordinance banning anyone under the age of 21 from the Iowa City bars' -- a brazenly inaccurate characterization. Editorial, "21-Only Voting Might Spur Increased Student Engagement," The Daily Iowan, October 19, 2007, p. A6. Under this proposal the Iowa law would continue to be openly violated in Iowa City's bars up until 10:00 p.m. You may think that's a good idea, you may think it's a bad idea, but it is clearly not 'banning anyone under the age of 21 from the Iowa City bars.'");
"Sidestepping; 'It's a Possible Maybe,'" October 29, 2007 ("When it comes to . . . arming campus police with handguns it is suggested that this is desirable because (a) the police advise it would be a good thing to do, and (b) 'everybody's doing it' on other Big Ten campuses. (2) But when it comes to taking a position on binge drinking . . . there is absolutely no meaningful action proposed or taken, notwithstanding that (a) the police advise it would be good to support this proposed ordinance, and (b) what "everybody's doing" -- virtually all Big Ten campuses, as well as our own sister Regents' university -- is to . . . use the common sense, no-brainer approach of banning the entry into bars of those who cannot legally engage in the activity that profits the owners of those establishments.");
"Bikes and Ballots," November 7, 2007 ("Bar owners are operating establishments the sole purpose of which is to profit from the sale and consumption of alcohol, knowing that a significant proportion of the consumption of alcohol from which they are profiting is being done by those who are doing so illegally. Therefore, I contend, they are illegal drug dealers -- with a political and economic power, not unlike the Medellín Drug Cartel in Colombia, to control our City Council and University.");
"Election Returns; City Votes FOR 10:00 p.m. Drinking Break, 90% of Residential Precincts Favor Ordinance!" November 8, 2007 ("The University is going to appoint a Task Force??!! You're going to have conversations with students and bar owners??!! You've got to be kidding -- except by now it's so damn obvious what you're doing that you're no longer kidding anyone. This University has gone through hundreds of thousands of dollars from foundations and others for its 'Stepping Up' project with no discernible impact whatsoever -- except an increase in the number of students 'Stepping Up' to the bar, binge drinking, and then staggering out (or passing out)");
"Getting Real About Alcohol; Don't Get Tough, Get Effective," January 18, 2008 ("We should not be surprised that our nation's number one hard drug problem by any measure (e.g., economic impact, health/medical consequences, numbers of people affected, involvement in crime and violence, adverse impact on the brain, prison population, unwanted sexual activity ('accidents cause people'), impact on fetus, automobile and other death and injury) is a major problem in Iowa as well.");
"Alcohol, Three Items and a Comment," January 22, 2008; ("So what are [the five] alternative approaches? (1) Enforce the 21-only law; and the most rational and administratively feasible way to do that is to follow Ames' example. If you don't want under-age students to drink you don't permit them to enter establishments the sole purpose of which is to prosper from the sale of alcohol. . . .");
"UI and the ATF II/Alcohol," February 15, 2008 ("Alcohol abuse is still in the news, creating its easily predictable consequences. (And note how many of these stories were all in one day's paper!)");
"Solving Illegal Behavior Problems by Making It Legal; Higher Education's 'Leadership,'" August 20, 2008 ("for a group of academics to say they want an informed debate while simultaneously excluding from that debate any and all solid evidence that is contrary to their position, and urging little better by way of support than one could get from any drunken undergraduate at one of their campus bars on a Friday night, does not speak well for 'the academy.'");
"Alcohol Update," September 6, 2008 ("The Iowa City City Council is responsible for the wink and a nod it all too often gives to Iowa City's alcohol industry -- the radical increase in number of bars close to campus, the drink specials and other practices designed to encourage excessive student drinking, the failure to lift liquor licenses for violations, and the (what better phrase than 'idiotically ridiculous') policy of permitting underage students into bars, the sole business purpose of which is to profit from the sale of alcohol -- presumably assuming that they're not going to drink once there.");
"The Economics of Binge Drinking: A Proposal," September 18, 2008 ("[This is] a sub-set of the focus on keg sales, beer pitcher specials, and what the Council referred to as 'well-drink or mixed-drink pitchers.' Would it be possible for the Council to legislate the elimination of such discounts? . . . Each bar owner could continue to [set prices] -- presumably coming up with prices that would maximize his or her income. But it would be required to be a permanent, fixed price -- per ounce or other volume -- that would not vary by occasion (e.g., 21st birthday), day of the week or year, or time of the day (e.g., "happy hour");
"Drunken Fights and Digital Photos; We're Going to Fight, Fight, Fight at Iowa!" April 13, 2009 ("Unlike the out-of-sight, out-of-mind -- and out of the media -- consequences of alcohol abuse noted in this blog entry's lead, fights inside, and immediately outside, of bars can be witnessed by police and pedestrians and photographed by anyone with a digital camera. They are, therefore, much harder to ignore.");
"Bulls, Bars and Brawls; Red Bull: 'the non-stop party-animal's hot secret,'" May 7, 2009 ("'[The death of a] student who died on a nightclub dance floor [around 3:00 a.m.] . . . may have been triggered by caffeine in the Red Bull she had been drinking . . . around four cans . . . and several VKs - a vodka based drink which also contains caffeine . . . despite efforts from staff and paramedics to revive her.' . . . I've never thought that 'educating' college students with regard to the potentially adverse consequences of alcohol abuse would do much to slow down those youngsters determined to expend their new-found "freedom" on drunkenness. . . . I do hope, however, that to the extent we are trying to provide some useful guidance that at least some mention is being made of 'energy drinks,' how they interact with alcohol, and what the consequences of that interaction can be."); "UI's AA: Alcohol and Athletics; Alcohol, Athletics and the Inevitability of the Avoidance of Responsibility," June 28, 2009 ("We have a serious problem right here in River City, and I've finally and reluctantly come to the conclusion that nothing effective will ever be done about it. I'm referring to the consequences that flow from alcohol abuse by college students, athletes and non-athletes alike. . . . In fairness to the football program . . . the coaches would like to be able to avoid the adverse . . . publicity that comes with the criminal records of their players. . . . [I]t's possible that it would be worthwhile for them to put even more emphasis on knowing more about [their recruits'] . . . anti-social records . . . before they are brought to Iowa City. There are obvious limits to what any athletic program can do to reverse . . . an 'I'm so special the rules don't apply to me' sense of entitlement already firmly ingrained in a 17-or-18-year-old.");
"Some Solutions to College Binge Drinking; More on Binge Drinking -- With Some Suggestions for Solutions," July 2, 2009 ("[I]t turns out Iowa City's binge drinking problem really is both the creation and the responsibility of the University of Iowa -- although it also needs the support of the broader community. Binge drinking was not caused by the 21-only Iowa (and national) law, and it cannot be solved by lowering the age to 18. As I have argued over the years, a little research on the Internet should provide far more solutions than we've ever tried. . . . If we have not made significant strides in resolving the problem -- and we have not -- it turns out that is not because there are no potential solutions available. Since that's not the reason, I will leave it to others to speculate as to what the reasons may be.");
"Alcohol's Impact on Iowa City; Police Toss Bar Closing Recommendation to Council; Loh Talking Tough," July 24, 2009 ("Iowa City Police Chief Sam Hargadine has made a radical proposal to the City Council: don't continue to grant liquor licenses to bars that consistently flout the law. What a concept! . . . Perhaps most impressive to me is Provost Loh's reference to some metrics for measuring 'success': alcohol-related dropouts and emergency room admissions, and blood alcohol levels in students arrested and tested. There's really no substitute for the business adage 'you get what you measure.'");
"UI Has a Drinking Problem; I'll Drink to That," November 18, 2009 ("[Last week a] Drake student with a blood alcohol level of 0.5 . . . 'nearly died' from alcohol poisoning. . . . Students will die -- whether in hospitals from alcohol poisoning, falls from buildings, choking on their own vomit, fights with or without guns, or freezing in an Iowa winter snow drift after passing out. We just don't know who or when. Students will be raped -- or as Loh and Rocklin prefer to call it, suffer an 'unwanted sexual experience.' We just don't know who, or when, or whether it will ever be reported. UI administrators will continue to suffer -- although by comparison with the students, in far less dramatic ways -- as a result. We just don't know who and when. . . . We may not need a Carrie Nation swinging her hatchet at bars and barrels of whiskey, but we do need someone with an equivalent focus, will and political courage if we're ever going to do anything meaningful about these problems. . . . Like the fellow who saw a billboard that said, 'Drink Canada Dry,' and went up there to try to do it, Iowa's students are going to continue to binge drink and they, and all the rest of us, will continue to pay the heavy, heavy consequences.")
For more on the related issues regarding the often-alcohol-induced criminal behavior of football players, see
"Hawkeyes' Criminal Record Lengthens," February 25, 2008 ("Shame on us, if a part of the reason they have become that way is because the adults in their lives have contributed to these young men's belief that skilled athletes are entitled to special treatment; a culture and law of their own; second, third, fourth and fifth chances; a wink and a nod from coaches, high school principals, and judges -- so long as they can contribute to winning teams. That doesn't excuse college athletes' behavior, but it does require us to think about the extent to which it is we who have at least contributed to the creation of the problem we confront -- from Little League through professional sports -- including right here in Hawkeye land.");
"Sexual Assaults, Athletics and the Academy; The Academy and Football: Rape and Risk Management," January 9, 2009 (it turns out that athletes' sexual assaults are sufficiently common to warrant a commercial firm's offer of training for educational administrators regarding ways to minimize the public relations damage; "[There] is a recent story out of California that also involved two football players and an unconscious young woman. . . . [I]n the California case the football players have eased the task of the prosecution somewhat by providing a videotape of their alleged crime. The primary difference between the two cases, aside from the videotaping, is that the California football players are in jail on $100,000 bond, the former Iowa players (although charged) were permitted to transfer to other schools where they are continuing to play football.");
Tying Pay to Social Value (brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
"There should be a relationship between what we are paid and the value our work generates for society. We've found a way to calculate that." -- Eilis Lawlor, New Economics Foundation
Not that you've ever doubted it, I suspect, but it really does turn out that the folks who clean our hospitals are making a greater economic contribution to our society than bankers. At least that's what the New Economics Foundation has asserted and documented in a report this morning.
For the past 75 years the non-profit, independent Consumers Union, with its subscriber-supported, advertising-free Consumer Reports publication and online service, has been putting the lie to the old adage "you get what you pay for." You don't. If you're interested in the quality of products, their life expectancy, repair bills, and number of consumer complaints, you're more likely to find the answer by looking at the Consumers Union laboratory results than by looking at the price tags on the products.
It turns out that it's also a lie that we get what we, as a society, are paying for labor. Some of those who are paid the least are actually creating more social and economic value than some of the administrators and professionals -- including the Wall Street bankers -- who are paid the most. Not only is it not true that "you get what you pay for," you may very well "give more than what you're paid for" as well.
"If You Can't Trust Your Banker . . ."
[Credit: "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres," Maverick, 2nd Season, 1958. The popular early television series, Maverick, "starring James Garner and Jack Kelly, remains the most famous and widely discussed episode of the Western comedy television series Maverick. Written by Roy Huggins and Douglas Heyes and directed by Leslie H. Martinson, this 1958 second season episode depicts gambler Bret Maverick (James Garner) being swindled by a crooked banker (John Dehner) after depositing the proceeds from a late-night poker game, then recruiting his brother Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly) to mount an elaborate sting operation to recover the money." It's also the source of two oft-quoted lines: "If you can't trust your banker, whom can you trust?" and "I'm working on it." See, "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres," wikipedia.org.]
As the NEF reports, "Paid between £500,000 and £80m a year, leading bankers destroy £7 of value for every pound they generate." (This calculation looks back over 20 years and even credits the bankers with the taxes they paid over those years.)
Because the NEF is a British think tank all its numbers are in British pounds rather than dollars. I'm not going to convert all of them in this blog entry. If you want to do a rough conversion in your head as you read, assume a multiplier of 1.5 -- for example, 10 British pounds (£) would be the equivalent of 15 U.S. dollars ($). (The actual exchange rate has been bouncing around 1.4 to 1.7 for the past year.)
Here's how the NEF introduces its report:
This report takes a new approach to looking at the value of work. We go beyond how much different professions are paid to look at what they contribute to society. We use some of the principles and valuation techniques of Social Return on Investment analysis to quantify the social, environmental and economic value that these roles produce – or in some cases undermine. . . .
[T]o what extent does what we get paid confer ‘worth’? Beyond a narrow notion of productivity, what impact does our work have on the rest of society, and do the financial rewards we receive correspond to this? Do those that get more contribute more to society?
Our report tells the story of six different jobs. We have chosen jobs from across the private and public sectors and deliberately chosen ones that illustrate the problem. Three are low paid – a hospital cleaner, a recycling plant worker and a childcare worker. The others are highly paid – a City banker, an advertising executive and a tax accountant. We examined the contributions they make to society, and found that, in this case, it was the lower paid jobs which involved more valuable work.
The report goes on to challenge ten of the most enduring myths surrounding pay and work. People who earn more don't necessarily work harder than those who earn less. The private sector is not necessarily more efficient than the public sector. And high salaries don't necessarily reflect talent.
The report offers a series of policy recommendations that would reduce the inequality between different incomes and reconnect salaries with the value of work.
The full report is available as a printed document and also as a pdf file from the link, above -- though of course the NEF server is so overloaded this morning that you may need to wait to get it.
The research, carried out by think tank the New Economics Foundation, says hospital cleaners create £10 of value for every £1 they are paid.
It claims bankers are a drain on the country because of the damage they caused to the global economy.
They reportedly destroy £7 of value for every £1 they earn. Meanwhile, senior advertising executives are said to "create stress".
The study says they are responsible for campaigns which create dissatisfaction and misery, and encourage over-consumption.
And tax accountants damage the country by devising schemes to cut the amount of money available to the government, the research suggests.
By contrast, child minders and waste recyclers are also doing jobs that create net wealth to the country.
The Foundation has used a new form of job evaluation to calculate the total contribution various jobs make to society, including for the first time the impact on communities and environment.
Eilis Lawlor, spokeswoman for the New Economics Foundation, said: "Pay levels often don't reflect the true value that is being created. As a society, we need a pay structure which rewards those jobs that create most societal benefit rather than those that generate profits at the expense of society and the environment".
She said the aim of the research was not to target individuals in highly paid jobs, or suggest people in low paid jobs should earn more.
"The point we are making is more fundamental - that there should be a relationship between what we are paid and the value our work generates for society. We've found a way to calculate that," she said.
A total of six different jobs were analysed to assess their overall value. These are the study's main findings:
* The elite banker
"Rather than being wealth creators bankers are being handsomely rewarded for bringing the global financial system to the brink of collapse
Paid between £500,000 and £80m a year, leading bankers destroy £7 of value for every pound they generate".
* Childcare workers
"Both for families and society as a whole, looking after children could not be more important. As well as providing a valuable service for families, they release earnings potential by allowing parents to continue working. For every pound they are paid they generate up to £9.50 worth of benefits to society."
* Hospital cleaners
"Play a vital role in the workings of healthcare facilities. They not only clean hospitals and maintain hygiene standards but also contribute to wider health outcomes. For every pound paid, over £10 in social value is created."
* Advertising executives
The industry "encourages high spending and indebtedness. It can create insatiable aspirations, fuelling feelings of dissatisfaction, inadequacy and stress. For a salary of between £50,000 and £12m top advertising executives destroy £11 of value for every pound in value they generate".
* Tax accountants
"Every pound that a tax accountant saves a client is a pound which otherwise would have gone to HM Revenue. For a salary of between £75,000 and £200,000, tax accountants destroy £47 in value, for every pound they generate."
* Waste recycling workers
"Do a range of different jobs that relate to processing and preventing waste and promoting recycling. Carbon emissions are significantly reduced. There is also a value in reusing goods. For every pound of value spent on wages, £12 of value is generated for society."
The research also makes a variety of policy recommendations to align pay more closely with the value of work.
These include establishing a high pay commission, building social and environmental value into prices, and introducing more progressive taxation.
I'm sure that before the sun sets this evening the bankers' economists, publicists and lobbyists will be doing their best to counter this awful truth. Meanwhile, there may be something here of use to Governor Culver and the Board of Regents.
Could it be that the greatest value to the State of Iowa might be to keep the cleaning crews on the payroll (and in fairness give them a raise) and get maximum savings from layoffs by getting rid of administrators?
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For the recent blog entries you may be looking for, go to "There Is No War in Afghanistan," December 4, 2009, and look through the links at the bottom of that blog entry. _______________ * Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
Support the Troopers: A Rational Approach to Taxation (brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Governor Chet Culver, looking down the well into a near-billion-dollar 2010 deficit, wants to take $46 million from Iowa's $1.144 billion Road Use Tax Fund to keep the State's Highway Patrol on the roads. Thomas Beaumont and William Petroski, "Culver takes on road industry,"Des Moines Register, December 12, 2009.
Few if any industries have more power over states' legislatures than their highway lobbies. Iowa's no exception. They are an important sub-set of the industries that, together, have created America's global-warming-auto-dependent transportation system -- leaving us without the passenger rail networks other nations have. Think about it: the oil companies and their station owner-operators; the automobile manufacturers, unions, and dealers; the cement, steel, heavy equipment, and highway contractor companies; all the independent auto repair businesses; the auto scrap steel firms -- it goes on and on. We've paved some 61,000 square miles of America for roads and parking lots. That's an area that, if it were a state, would make it the 24th largest state in the country. It's roughly half the 76 million acres of soybeans, or 85 million acres of corn, farmers predicted they'd plant this year. "USDA Expects Corn, Soybean Acres on Par with Last Year," Newsroom USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, March 31, 2009.
As the Register reports, "'This will be a bloodbath if it goes forward. This will absolutely be one of the most controversial issues of the session,' said Scott Newhard, vice president of the Associated General Contractors of Iowa." On the other hand, "The State Police Officers Council, a bargaining unit for troopers, 'is very much in favor' of Culver's plan to divert road fund money for the State Patrol, said Sue Brown, the council's executive director."
So there you have the level of analysis of this proposal at the moment: "bloodbath" vs. "support the troopers."
Can we do better? I think so. But rather than take sides in this battle of the titans, here's an effort to bring some rational, neutral principles to the analysis.
1. "What do you mean?'and 'How do you know?'" For starters, to have a rational and civil discussion we need to agree to use a more precise language and support it with data. Railing against "taxes" or "government" isn't very productive.
2. Taxes as currency. Taxes are just another way we buy stuff. We may use cash, checks or credit cards to buy clothes at the mall. We may use loans from a credit union, or auto dealer, to get a car. We may have deductions from our paycheck for a retirement fund or health insurance. We use taxes to buy our kids' K-12 education, the roads and sidewalks they travel to get there, our police and fire protection.
3. No system's perfect. You may buy a toy for your kid at the mall that breaks shortly after you get it home. The auto dealer may sell you a lemon, and then refuse to do anything about it. Your health insurance company may refuse to pay for a procedure that you think is covered by the policy you have been faithfully paying for. And we've just seen what Wall Street banks can do to our entire economy. Is there ever "waste, fraud and abuse" in government programs? Of course. (See, e.g., "State of Iowa Agency Reports on Tax Credits," December 14, 2009 (a pdf file); Clark Kauffman, "Audit: State Jobs Office Failed to Track Money,"Des Moines Register, December 12, 2009.) But that's more a human condition than something endemic to government enterprise.
4. Think programs, not taxes. "Cost," standing alone is almost meaningless. It needs to be related to "benefit;" that's why there's such a thing as "benefit-cost" analysis. It's the same in for-profit businesses and government programs; the question is not "what are we paying?" it is "what are we getting for what we are paying?" It's not "how much did we invest?" it is "what is our return on this investment?" We can and do argue about values and ideology, and the validity of the formulas and data we use to arrive at those representations of costs and benefits. But at least those arguments about the utility of government programs are much more productive than arguing about "taxes" qua taxes.
5. Consequences, fairness and alternative taxes. There are many ways of raising money through taxation. Among the more familiar are income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes (and the related "value added" or VAT taxes), "sin taxes" (e.g., cigarette and alcohol taxes), capital gains, estate taxes, and "user fees" (e.g., entrance fees for public parks, swimming pools or museums; as distinguished from the "free" use of K-12 schools, for which there may also be fees).
Even if there is agreement about the benefit-cost utility of a given government program there can still be disagreement about the most appropriate and fair type of tax, and way of assessing and collecting enough taxes to pay for it (e.g., the poor may pay a disproportionately higher percentage of their income in sales and FICA taxes than the rich; property taxes may drive the elderly on fixed Social Security or other income from homes being taxed on assessed values ten times or more what they originally paid for their house).
The principle of "progressive" income tax rates has been with us since 1862, "History of the Income Tax in the United States," Information Please -- that is the notion that it's only fair the rich should pay at a higher rate than the poor (Sweden's marginal rate in 1979 was 87%) as well as paying that rate on a larger pot of income. Given that the wealthy have been notoriously more generous with their campaign contributions than the poor, legislators have tended to reduce the difference between the rates paid by each of those groups of constituents. "Between 1983 and 2003 the average (top) corporate tax rate of advanced OECD countries fell from around 50 to around 32 percent, the average top personal rate from around 66 to 48 percent." Steffen Ganghof, "Progressive Income Taxation in Advanced OECD Countries. Revisiting the Structural Dependence of the State on Capital," Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, August 23, 2004. The U.S. top marginal rate of 35% is, of course, well below the OECD average. And see Alan Reynolds, "Marginal Tax Rates," The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (with a table of 47 countries' marginal tax rates that places the U.S. in the bottom half). Many Fortune 500 corporations pay nothing at all. Robert McIntyre and T.D. Coo Nguyen, "Freeloaders: Declining Corporate Tax Payments in the Bush Years,"Multinational Monitor, vol. 25, no. 11 (November 2004).
(Speaking of progressive taxation, Sherman Johnson has emailed me his suggestion for applying the principle to fines. He's got a point: "Fixed fines are outrageously regressive and unfair. A typical ticket for a moving violation might be $150. Parking in a handicapped space is $250. That represents less than one hour of work for an attorney or accountant -- about one minute for a CEO making $20M per year. Not much of a deterrent. For someone working a minimum wage (or close to minimum wage) job -- say $8 per hour -- that $150 ticket is about half of a weekly paycheck. That's before taxes. After taxes, that $150 is the majority of their take-home pay for the week.")
6. "Tax breaks" as subsidies. Some critics question the validity of ever transferring taxpayers' money to the bottom line of for-profit corporations, regardless of the purpose. They'd prefer to let the "free market" work its will with entrepreneurs. (For one reason why, see "State of Iowa Agency Reports on Tax Credits," December 14, 2009 (a pdf file); Lee Rood, "Other Tax Credits Raised Red Flags,"Des Moines Register, December 13, 2009; Lee Rood, "IDED Moves to Recover Funding from 4 Firms,"Des Moines Register, December 13, 2009.) Advocates cite the benefit in job creation, and increased revenues for the state, from such programs. Regardless of the merits of such arguments, the fact remains that the only difference between an out-and-out subsidy and a "tax break" is transparency; which is why some critics say, if you're going to give my tax money to for-profit enterprises at least appropriate it, do it above the table where we can see the money and see who's getting it. Don't hide it in the tax code. Whether you give me $100, or tell me I don't have to pay $100 I thought I would, it's $100 in my pocket that wouldn't otherwise have been there.
7. Tying pay to benefit. A part of the rationale for "public" K-12 schools, paid for by everyone in the community, is that everyone benefits from living in a community where everyone else has at least a K-12 education: less crime, a more skilled workforce, more interesting conversations with neighbors, and better quality elected officials. (A similar rationale could be, but has not been successfully, used for "universal, single-payer" health care.) But there are also the "user fees," mentioned above, in which all, or most, of the cost of a public program is paid for by those who are its primary beneficiaries. For example, student tuition at the Regents' universities could be thought of as a partial "user fee," representing perhaps something on the order of one-half the actual cost per student of providing this "public university" education (as distinguished from the virtual free ride for those whose children attend K-12 public schools). It is not always clear which public programs should be paid for by users, and which by the general taxpaying public (because, presumably, there is a general public benefit, as with public K-12 schools) -- and if users should pay what proportion of the cost they should pay.
8. Highway funds and the Highway Patrol. Which brings us to the Governor's proposed use of highway funds for Highway Patrol payroll. The Register's sidebar indicates the sources of the highway fund include "Fuel taxes, motor vehicle registration fees, fees for new registration (formerly the use tax), underground tank fees, title fees, trailer fees, special plate fees, driver's license fees, Underground Storage Tank Fund, motorcycle education, other vehicle taxes and fees, other miscellaneous and interest." It is, in short, an almost perfect example of a "user-fee" based funding system for a government program, that is, road building and maintenance. If you don't own a road worthy vehicle you don't pay registration fees or gasoline taxes. If you do, you do -- and the more you drive, the more gasoline you buy, and the more gas taxes you pay. All drivers benefit from the roads, all contribute to their need for repair, and all pay their proportionate share (assuming the big trucks and heavy equipment, which cause more damage, are paying more than just the gas tax).
That being the case, it is not irrational to argue that the Highway Patrol, the job of which is, as the name suggests, to patrol the highways, should be paid for by the same users who are paying for the highways themselves.
[December 14 modification. Since writing this, "factsgetintheway" posted the following comment on the Register's online version of its story:
"The Iowa State Patrol is the state's law enforcement agency, and their functions extend way beyond traffic/motor vehicle enforcement. The Iowa Constitution clearly did not intend for functions outside of highways to be supported by the RUTF. At a minimum, those activities should be supported by the General Fund. Some of those duties & special ISP units include: assistance during prison riots & labor disputes; emergency assistance and law enforcement during disasters; an airwing used to fly emergency blood and tissue match relays, search for lost persons and other victims; Amber Alert program; canine unit for narcotics detection and criminal apprehension; Chaplains Program; executive protection for the governor and first family, Lt. Gov.; State Capitol security; safety education; and special enforcement team for intercepting illegal drugs.
"Many of these new duties have come about since 1975 when their name was changed from Iowa Highway Patrol to Iowa State Patrol.
12/13/2009 4:22:25 PM"
Assuming all of the content of this comment is true (and I have no reason to believe it's not), while it would not affect the analytical model I've laid out, it certainly would affect the result. I would agree that "at a minimum," as the commenter suggests, to the extent that the other-than-highway-related functions of the ISP can be separated out, there is not a "user fee" rationale for having them paid for out of the Highway Fund. There may, of course, be some other rationale for doing so, just not a "user fee" basis.]
That is not to say there are no contrary arguments, that anyone gives a darn about rational analysis, or that the ultimate decision will not be dictated by campaign contributions and raw political power at its worst.
But for what it is worth, this is at least a way to bring a little more rational analysis, and a little less emotion, to the resolution of a very tough budget debate.
_______________
For the recent blog entries you may be looking for, go to "There Is No War in Afghanistan," December 4, 2009, and go to the bottom of that blog entry. _______________ * Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
Media Watch: "Woman allegedly drove into backyard" (brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Is the concept of "journalistic ethics" an oxymoron?
Yesterday's Press-Citizen resolved the issue once and for all. Not only does the journalistic profession have ethics, they are sometimes applied to excess.
Consider the paper's headline from yesterday: "Woman Allegedly Drove Into Backyard." Here is the story in its entirety (with the "driver's" name deleted:
An Iowa City woman was arrested early Saturday after she allegedly drove her vehicle drunk into the yard behind a house on Hotz Avenue in Iowa City, according to police.
Iowa City police responded at 3:06 a.m. Saturday and found the car still running with [name], 23, passed out behind the wheel, police said.
Officers woke [her] and found she had vomit on her clothing, a strong odor of alcohol, poor balance and was disoriented, police said.
Officers administered two tests to determine [her] blood-alcohol content. The preliminary breath test showed a blood-alcohol content of .155 and the DataMaster test showed a .146 blood-alcohol content, both above the legal limit of .08 to operate a motor vehicle in Iowa, police said.
[She] faces the charge of drunken driving. A number for [her] could not be found, and she could not be reached for comment.
I couldn't resist putting the following comment on the Press-Citizen's Web site reproduction of this story:
Let us address for a moment the use of the word "allegedly." It is commendable that the media has -- for the most part, and for some time now -- used the qualifier "allegedly" to avoid charging (and possibly defaming) someone with a false assertion of having committed a crime when there are not yet any formal findings or convictions.
However, when a woman is found by the police behind the wheel in a car with vomit on her clothing, and the engine running, in the backyard of her own or someone else's home, what are the possibilities other than that she drove there?
She and the car fell out of the tree. She was brought in by a tow truck, and left as a prank. Someone else drove the car into the back yard, brought the woman from elsewhere, vomited on her clothing, and placed her inside the car. The car simply materialized (though not yet even allegedly) having been beamed down from an alien craft of some sort.
Let it never again be said that "journalistic ethics" is an oxymoron.
12/7/2009 9:39:52 AM
To assert in a headline that someone is guilty of drunk driving when they have not yet been convicted would be one thing. But all that this headline "alleged" was that she "drove" -- albeit into someone's back yard. It seems to me, given the rest of this story, that the paper could have legitimately and ethically asserted as fact that she "drove into backyard."
With this kind of display of ethical caution let no one ever suspect that journalistic ethics is an oxymoron.
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For the recent blog entries you may be looking for, go to "There Is No War in Afghanistan," December 4, 2009, and go to the bottom of that blog entry. _______________ * Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
Why Are We There? (brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
It turns out that President Obama's war plan for Afghanistan is even worse than I thought.
Yesterday I hunkered down by myself and tried to think it through. I ended up concluding that, although no one had really specified exactly what the metrics would be for ever deciding whether it had been "successful," it seemed to me doomed to "failure" by any rational standard I could imagine. "Obama's Afghanistan; He Can't Win, Can't Break Even, and Can't Get Out of the Game," December 3, 2009 (borrowing, and setting forth the lyrics from Michael Jackson's version of "The Wiz"). In an effort to be more than merely critical, that entry concludes with what our policy and anti-terrorist strategy ought to be to produce better results at much, much lower cost.
The entire transcript is well worth reading. It includes the text of video clips she used, and the discussions she had with, among others, Presidents Obama and George Bush, Secretary Clinton, and "from Afghanistan . . . NBC‘s Richard Engel [and] from Washington . . . Retired Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, who literally wrote the book on modern counterinsurgency theory."
Here are some especially relevant excerpts for our purposes, followed by my own take-away from them:
MADDOW: President Obama tonight spoke at the site where President Bush unveiled the Bush doctrine—the proclamation that the United States would no longer reserve the right just to wage war against countries or forces that threatened us, but that we would wage war to stop the emergence of threats in the future.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. The war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Before they emerge, before they emerge. We must confront threats that might happen someday.
And thus was born not only the justification for, in the name of 9/11, attacking a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, but also the maximalist Bush doctrine concept of America at war globally, indefinitely, against anyone at our own discretion.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: Our security will require transforming the military you [i.e., West Point cadets] will lead, a military that must be ready to strike at a moment‘s notice in any dark corner of the world. We must uncover terrorist cells in 60 or more countries. All nations that decide for aggression and terror will pay a price.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: The Bush doctrine was probably the single most radical thing about the Bush presidency, because it dropped the requirement that the United States actually be threatened before we‘d start a war with someone, instead saying that if we just thought we might be threatened sometime in the future, that would be justification enough for us now to start a war. It is a really radical concept, if you think about it, not only about war, but about us, about America.
And it may have survived the Bush presidency. President Obama tonight is explaining his second escalation of the war in Afghanistan, announcing that the 32,000 Americans who were in Afghanistan when he took office will become 100,000 by next year. A war reborn in what the president is describing as his own image, his own strategic terms, but which is justified fundamentally by what sounds like the Bush doctrine.
The administration admitting that we are not actually threatened now as a nation by Afghanistan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEN. JAMES JONES, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: Obviously, the good news that Americans should feel at least good about in Afghanistan is that the al Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: No ability to attack us or our allies.
Afghanistan poses no threat to us, and yet, our war there is being doubled and tripled in size. Why? It‘s because we think there might be a threat from Afghanistan in the future, if a safe haven for terrorism there re-emerges in the future. In other words.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Is the massive escalation of the war in Afghanistan announced tonight President Obama‘s own implementation of the preventive war Bush doctrine that . . . no one has really been able to justify?
This war is not about threats to the United States from Afghanistan. To the extent that it is justified by preventing threats to us from emerging from Pakistan sometime in the future, that‘s preventive war. That‘s the Bush doctrine—in all its Orwellian extremism.
To the extent, though, that this war is not about some potential future threat but a real current one, like the president described tonight, a current one that—he didn‘t say it bluntly, but he meant it—one that exists in Pakistan. To the extent that our 100,000 troops in Afghanistan are there simply to backstop and contain the real war against the real threat next door in Pakistan, then tell me this—how are we fighting our war in Pakistan?
We‘re fighting it using the CIA, which effectively functions as a fifth secret branch of the U.S. military now. They even have their own Air Force. They‘re a fifth secret branch of the military now which our civilian leaders as a matter of policy do not answer for. They don‘t even bother explaining what they‘re doing.
Do you remember when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was questioned about our secret CIA drone war when she was recently in Pakistan?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At the same time, the drone attacks are still going on in Waziristan. What does madam or America in general plans to do with that, because it‘s creating a lot of frustration among our people.
(APPLAUSE)
HILLARY CLINTON, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, I will not talk about that specifically, but generally, let me say that there‘s a war going on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Pakistani parliament, of course, has also requested that these drone attacks be stopped yet they continue and the Pakistani people have begun to resent them and associate them with U.S. policy towards Pakistan as a whole.
CLINTON: You know, I think what‘s important here is that there—there is a war going on, as several of you have said. And I won‘t comment on that specific matter.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: I won‘t comment on that specific matter. I won‘t talk about that specific thing, but there is a war. That war, that secret one—because CIA actions, even when there‘s a war, are covert and deniable.
If the real war is Pakistan and we‘re fighting this war not to prevent some threat to us in the future, not as an extension of the Bush doctrine, but rather than to respond to a real threat now, why are we fighting it with our secret military that we don‘t admit to? Why are we fighting it with our CIA?
Maybe there will someday be an Obama doctrine to replace the Bush doctrine. If that‘s going to happen, then, first, the Bush doctrine needs to be ended. No more wars to prevent future threats that may or may not emerge.
But, secondly, at some point, this president will need to be able to explain and take the credit or the blame for his real wars that right now are still getting only a “no comment.”
My take-away:
1. Sources. Because I don't like it when useful source material on the Internet does not provide a full citation, I like to provide sources and links when making assertions in blog entries. Yesterday's blog entry provided no sources for the assertions that al Qaeda was probably in 60 countries, al Qaeda should be identified as the real enemy (not the Taliban), less than 100 al Qaeda are in Afghanistan, and that they and the Talaban pose no real threat to us. They were just my best estimates. The transcript, above, provides sources: President Bush: "We must uncover terrorist cells in 60 or more countries." President Obama's National Security Advisor, General James Jones: "The maximum estimate is less than 100 [al Qaeda] operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies."
2. True motive. The entire transcript, beyond that quoted above, creates the sense that this entire effort, with the 30,000-troop build up, may really be just a skillfully crafted, bizarre, political, public relations approach to an exit strategy. The White House, which apparently offered the President options including immediate withdrawal, may think that a build up, followed by announced little "victories" over the Taliban of one kind and another, will insure the appearance that no one "lost their life in this useless folly of a war," and that we did not "lose" the "war in Afghanistan." We can then "declare victory and come home" -- without impliedly criticizing the judgment of President Bush or his military, and with the acceptance of Congress, American veterans and their families (including the families of those who died there), the American people, and our NATO allies.
3. The Taliban are not "the enemy" of the Afghan people, the Taliban ARE the Afghan people. NBC's Richard Engel in Afghanistan: "Only about 6 percent of the people want the Taliban to come back. But they‘re not seen as occupiers, or they‘re not seen as outsiders. They‘re seen as part of the society here that should be brought back into the fold. . . . [T]he Taliban are not, by and large, attacking civilians in this country. [C]ompared to Iraq, [where] you had market bombings, al Qaeda militants that were killing civilians by the dozens every single day . . . [in Afghanistan] it‘s mostly a conflict between the Taliban and foreign forces in this country. People are hoping that there can be some sort of reconciliation between the two." There are many lessons for the U.S. in that observation.
4. Pakistan. As has been clear from the beginning, Pakistan has nuclear weapons, Afghanistan just barely has IEDs. The shared border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is almost irrelevant. There may well be very few who even know precisely where it is, and fewer still who actually care. In a region dominated by tribal loyalties and the territories they control, it wouldn't even have to be a "porous" border. But it is that, too. So it seems the real story, the real war, is the "CIA Army and Air Force's" war in Pakistan -- the war that neither the Secretary of State nor the President are even willing to acknowledge, let alone talk about and explain to the American people.
More troops to the "war in Afghanistan"? What war in Afghanistan?
_______________
Here are links to earlier entries on some of the other hot topics from the past week or so that are now getting the most direct hits, along with links to "updates" in the form of subsequent news articles, among which may be the entries you came here looking for:
"Contributions from patients" proposal: "UIHC: 'Sick Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?'; A Check-In and a Check," October 31, 2009, 7:00 a.m. (with numerous updates through November 4, links to additional, related material -- and now with over 30 of the Press-Citizen readers' comments on B.A. Morelli's stories) [see "Updates," below]
Press-Citizen editorial: Hold off on VP for Strategic Communications:Editorial, "Stakes Have Risen for UI's Strategic Communication,"Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 20, 2009, p. A7 ("it's wrong when UI seems to care more about finding the right way to spin its decisions than about making the right decisions in the first place. The best strategy for UI communication is for officials to be more forthright and to show more common sense.");
_______________ * Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
He Can't Win, Can't Break Even, and Can't Get Out of the Game (brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Afghanistan is extremely poor, landlocked, and highly dependent on foreign aid, agriculture, and trade with neighboring countries. Much of the population continues to suffer from shortages of housing, clean water, electricity, medical care, and jobs. Criminality, insecurity, and the Afghan Government's inability to extend rule of law to all parts of the country pose challenges to future economic growth. . . . Afghanistan's living standards [are] among the lowest in the world. . . . . Expanding poppy cultivation and a growing opium trade generate roughly $3 billion in illicit economic activity and looms as one of Kabul's most serious policy concerns. Other long-term challenges include: budget sustainability, job creation, corruption, government capacity, and rebuilding war torn infrastructure.
Here are some additional, illustrative details from that publication.
Afghanistan is a country of 652,000 square miles and 28 million people speaking over 30 languages with primary loyalties to regions, tribes and war lords -- over six square miles and 280 people for each of 100,000 troops. It's ranked 222 out of 224 countries in infant mortality at 152 deaths per 1000 live births. (The U.S. is 44th at 6.26.) Life expectancy is 44 years. Among Afghan women, 87% are illiterate (57% of the men). It's 208th in the world in number of Internet hosts. It has 7500 miles of paved roads (compared to our 2.6 million miles). It ranks 219th in the world in GDP per capita ($800; the U.S. is 10th at $47,500). Its total GDP ($22 billion) is roughly half of what the Obama Administration generously gifted to a single corporation as a bailout (the Bank of America, which in fairness says it's now willing to return to taxpayers).
Bringing this country to the vision implicit in some of our politicians' rhetoric not only cannot be done in 18 months, it cannot be done in 18 years. It would take generations. (As Tom Friedman put it Tuesday, "The Afghanistan invasion, for me, was about the 'war on terrorists.' To me, it was about getting bin Laden and depriving Al Qaeda of a sanctuary — period. I never thought we could make Afghanistan into Norway — and even if we did, it would not resonate beyond its borders . . .." Thomas L. Friedman, "This I Believe,"New York Times, December 2, 2009, p. A35.)
However serious the problems created by the Taliban, and Afghanistan's associated lack of security, they are dwarfed by those set forth above -- problems that even General McCrystal recognized in his report as essential prerequisites to resolving anything militarily.
Given that the presence of American troops produces increased Taliban recruitment and terrorist acts, adding more Americans, and keeping them there longer, reduces rather than increases our national security.
As in Viet Nam and Iraq, we are sending American troops into a country where they will inevitably be perceived as invaders or occupiers (and not the first in Afghan history and memory), do not know any of the 30 languages, religions, tribal customs and relationships, culture, history, and terrain of the country they are to "save." If that is not by definition "mission impossible" it is very close to it.
Even if more troops had a positive rather than negative impact, the addition of 30,000 is too little, too late. Most put the necessary troop strength at closer to 350-500,000 troops -- eight years ago -- to "secure" the country.
Our plans call for training Afghan police and military to make up at least part of that slack. Given the recruits' poverty, illiteracy, conflicting loyalties, acceptance of corruption, lack of education and experience, this is a task in almost no respect similar to American military training. Moreover, once trained the recruits remain largely undisciplined, inclined to desert (25% of the force leaves each year), and willing to change sides with perceived shifts of power or better financial offers.
I would have to agree with Senator McCain, other Republicans, and others, that putting an 18-month "exit" on our strategy may be a mistake -- in terms of Afghan and Pakistan support among other things. Survival for their people requires thinking beyond 18 months in predicting who will hold the power under which they must live.
The deadline is also disingenuous and inconsistent with the proposal. Getting out in 18 months, while perhaps a recipe for some measurable short-term gains, holds no more promise for permanent change than leaving now. Whatever the rationale may be for sending more troops now will be equally applicable to staying, or sending even more troops, later.
The Taliban are not a national, uniformed, fighting force along front lines. They are constantly shifting, indigenous, loosely organized, and interwoven into the civilian population, countryside and mountains. "Securing" an urban area from them, when possible at all, is at best a temporary achievement -- an area to which they can and will return as soon as we move our troops elsewhere in the country or leave, in our endless and unproductive exercise that is so very costly in American and Afghan lives, wounded, and dollars with no permanent accomplishment to show for it over time.
Even if it were possible to drive them out of Afghanistan, which it is not, they would simply move into Pakistan.
We're like a procrastinator who continues to work on every item on his or her "to do" list -- except for the one that has the highest priority. Given the characteristics of the Afghanistan population, and the challenges they confront, it is highly unlikely that they would have the inclination or resources to come to America to do us harm (especially when it's so much easier and cheaper to kill us in their home country). Their primary goal is to get us out of their country.
Our enemy remains the one we're least focused upon, and least successful in tracking down: al Qaeda (and other loosely organized terrorists with the will and resources to do us serious harm inside our borders). From the best information I've seen there are no more than 100 al Qaeda in Afghanistan. They are in Pakistan -- and probably another 60 countries around the world. They are even more mobile than the Taliban. All they need to get organized is an apartment in Hamburg, Germany, or London, England, or any city in the U.S. To the extent they want to bother finding a training ground for terrorists there are plenty of countries available to them.
There are times when a president needs to select the best single approach to a problem, forget about consensus and pleasing disparate constituents, and just bull ahead. As I wrote last Monday, President Franklin Roosevelt put the Civilian Conservation Corps in place over the opposition of the U.S. Army (which had at least partial responsibility for administering it), and his Secretaries of the Interior and Labor. No telling what a "compromise" CCC might have looked like. As it was, he bulled ahead, had the legislation written, passed by Congress, and signed less than 30 days after taking office, with 25,000 employed by the end of the first week -- soon to be three million.
That's the kind of presidential leadership our Afghanistan adventure requires -- and didn't get. I admire President Obama, and concede it's likely he has access to a little more information than I have. But here's what I would have done:
1. Maintain a military anti-terrorism ability, yes. But one that is lean and mean, and available to rapid deployment to any spot on earth where needed for a single, brief operation -- not a conventional, uniformed, occupying force of tens of thousands, quasi-permanently stationed in a country to provide it "stability."
2. Spend most of the $40 billion a year it's going to cost us in Afghanistan on (1) intelligence gathering (personnel on the ground as well as electronic), (2) international cooperation and diplomacy, and (3) homeland security.
3. Focus our energies, personnel and resources on known terrorists, their evolving plans and operations.
Not only is it cheaper, it also works.
Staying in Afghanistan is self-defeating and counter productive.
You can't win You can't break even And you can't get out of the game People keep sayin' Things are gonna change But they look just like they're staying the same You get in Way over your head And you've only got yourself to blame -- "You Can't Win"
Support the troops. Bring them home.
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Here are links to earlier entries on some of the other hot topics from the past week or so that are now getting the most direct hits, along with links to "updates" in the form of subsequent news articles, among which may be the entries you came here looking for:
"Contributions from patients" proposal: "UIHC: 'Sick Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?'; A Check-In and a Check," October 31, 2009, 7:00 a.m. (with numerous updates through November 4, links to additional, related material -- and now with over 30 of the Press-Citizen readers' comments on B.A. Morelli's stories) [see "Updates," below]
Press-Citizen editorial: Hold off on VP for Strategic Communications:Editorial, "Stakes Have Risen for UI's Strategic Communication,"Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 20, 2009, p. A7 ("it's wrong when UI seems to care more about finding the right way to spin its decisions than about making the right decisions in the first place. The best strategy for UI communication is for officials to be more forthright and to show more common sense.");
_______________ * Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
