Alliances and Their Discontents
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Foreign Policy, Iran, War on Islamism on May 5th, 2013
The Sunday Times is reporting that several Arab countries are prepared to join Israel and Turkey in a missile-defensive alliance designed to contain the threat from a nuclear Iran:
The plan would see Israel join with Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to create a Middle Eastern “moderate crescent,” according to the Sunday Times, which cited an unnamed Israeli official. Israel does not currently maintain formal ties with Riyadh or Abu Dhabi, and relations with Ankara have been strained since 2009.
According to the report, Israel would gain access to radar stations in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and in exchange share its own early warning radar information and anti-ballistic missile defense systems, though it’s not clear in what form. The report details that Jordan would be protected by Israel’s Arrow long-range anti-missile batteries.
The so-called 4+1 plan is being brokered by Washington, and would mark a sharp shift in stated policy for the White House, which has insisted the US is not interested in containing Iran but rather stopping it before it reaches nuclear weapon capability.
The idea of finally breaking the ice between Israel and its longtime Arab enemies in a meaningful way has got to be tremendously appealing. If the stalwart Saudis could be brought publicly on board with such a plan, it makes it easier for other Gulf States and Arab countries to be added in eventually, and forces the more recalcitrant states to explain why their people’s survival is less important to their rulers than the Saudi subjects’ is to their king.
It puts the lie to the idea that the Palestinians present the paramount, insurmountable obstacle to such cooperation. The Israelis will never agree to return to the Auschwitz boundaries, but for those obsessed with the “peace process,” by playing on Palestinian fears that Israel and the rest of the Arab world are prepared to move on without them, in however limited a way, it may force the Palestinians to re-examine their own obstructionism. And it surely brings to the surface the internal contradictions of a Muslim world that tries to isolate Israel even as it makes its own accommodations to its existence.
Put in the context of recent developments, it also places Obama’s attempt to get Israel and Turkey talking again as a first move in a plan to contain Iran. If the administration is finally looking to create more alternatives for itself, rather than paint itself into rhetorical corners, it’s also a welcome sign of some belated maturity.
But all of these are largely long-term effects, the sort of thing that take years, even decades to mature into tangible benefits. It may be that a military threat from Iran is what is forcing the Arabs and Turkey to publicly look to Israel for cooperation, but a solid trade relationship would accomplish much the same thing.
The risk is that the military benefits and diplomatic durability of such an alliance get oversold, with the result that the lack of one leads to the collapse of the other.
In point of fact, none of the players very much likes any of the others; it’s a potential alliance with 10 difference two-way relationships, almost all of which are fraught with distrust and hostility. Such alliances are often useful over the short-run, and become, over time, extremely vulnerable to diplomatic maneuvers designed to exploit these fault lines. Moreover, the Turks have never really cut off trade relations with the Iranians, they they share a common interest in keepin’ the Kurd down. Once the Syrian regime has fallen, it’s anyone’s guess whether that country will continue to be a source of irritation between Iran and Syria.
We don’t have to detail every individual scenario – some are obvious, others less so – in order to understand how that works. Purely defensive alliances by definition put the initiative in the hands of the enemy. Without persuasive offensive options, such alliances allow the enemy opportunities and time to manipulate the diplomatic landscape. It allows them to choose when they’ll make their moves, and if they’re smart, they’ll wait until a moment of tension between two or more of those allies. If they’re really smart, they’ll help create that tension themselves. And the Iranians have shown themselves adept at avoiding actual containment, both through the threats of terror abroad, and the availability of their oil to willing buyers.
Ultimately, these are the wages of appeasement. With the United States not only being evidently unwilling to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities itself, but also having publicly restrained Israel from doing so when it might have, we are now left with this option. Instead of having acted when we might have, and still might, we seem resigned to the deeply immoral policy of MAD. As long as we understand its severe time and extent limitations, it may serve as part of a fall-back plan.
Game of Thrones, High Altitude Edition
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Foreign Policy on April 28th, 2013
Walter Russell Mead has aptly characterized the ongoing re-working of strategic relationships in Asia as the “Game of Thrones,” and he takes notice of the latest developments on the disputed Chinese-Indian border.
The government on Friday for the first time admitted that People’s Liberation Army(PLA) troops had intruded as much as 19 km inside Indian territory to pitch their tents there, even as it kept a third flag meeting between local commanders in eastern Ladakh “on hold” to give China “time and space” to withdraw its soldiers on its own.
The move has to be seen in at least 4 different contexts. First, there’s the simple straightforward ongoing border dispute with India. India still has bad memories of having lost that war, and is clearly shying away from a direct confrontation this time. It doesn’t have the organization to take on the Chinese right now, and doesn’t have the irredentist passion that existed in, say, pre-1914 France. Anyone who’s ever tried to climb a 14er, or has followed a rescue from such a peak, understands the difficulty of conducting operations in such an environment. So the Chinese may have stolen a 12-mile push forward, but it’s not as though there’s much more than pride at stake here.
Of course, Chinese-Indian tensions now extend well beyond the Himalayas. As Robert Kaplan as pointed out, the Chinese have made Pakistan a strategic ally, with an eye towards an outlet to the Indian Ocean; the two countries are engaged in a struggle for economic influence in Burma, which has a direct bearing on the question of who will end up being responsible for naval security in the vital Straits of Malacca. And the Indians have taken suitable umbrage at Chinese resource claims in the South China Sea. China’s Hiamalayan gambit can also be seen as an effort to put India back on its heels.
Not only does this serve as a remind to India of who’s in front right now, it also reminds others in the region that India can’t protect them, and of their own, weaker positions vis-a-vis China. And globally, it calls into question the United States’s willingness and ability to continue to stabilize the situation in Asia.
Thus the fruits of taking punch at your strongest rival in his weakest spot.
The risks, of course, are they someday you’ll misjudge your own strength or your neighbors’ willingness to resist such incursions, even as your strengthen their resolve. China, without serious allies in Asia (unless you count Russia’s willingness to make distracting trouble elsewhere), now has simmering direct or proxy disputes with India, Burma, the Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.
It’s also worth remembering that China’s population is becoming older and unbalanced, with more men that women, thanks to sex-selective abortions, putting it in a mid-term (no longer a long-term) demographic bind. This, even as the population grows increasingly displeased with Communist Party rule, has led the Party to stoke nationalist flames.
The analogy to pre-WWI Germany is looking increasingly apt, with baleful possibilities for all concerned.
It’s About Politics, Not Governance, With Guns
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, National Politics, PPC on April 9th, 2013
As the US Senate begins today’s debate on gun control, Coloradoans can be forgiven for having a feeling of deja vu. That’s because the debate in Congress is intended to mimic the one in Colorado, and because it’s about politics, not about governance.
The one piece of the president’s broad gun control agenda that has survived public scrutiny is background checks on sales. This is a broadly popular idea, and even gun owners support it by large margins in poll after poll. But Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute has shown that in Congress, as in Colorado, while the bill will be sold as checks on sales, it actually does much, much more:
While the woman is out of town on a business trip for two weeks, she gives the gun to her husband or her sister. If the woman lives on a farm, she allows all her relatives to take the rifle into the fields for pest and predator control — and sometimes, when friends are visiting, she takes them to a safe place on the farm where they spend an hour or two target shooting, passing herover gun back and forth. At other times, she and her friends go target shooting in open spaces of land owned by the National Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management.
Or perhaps the woman is in a same-sex civil union, and she allows her partner to take her gun to a target range one afternoon. Another time, she allows her cousin to borrow the gun for an afternoon of target shooting. If the woman is in the Army Reserve and she is called up for an overseas deployment, she gives the gun to her sister for temporary safekeeping.
One time, she learns that her neighbor is being threatened by an abusive ex-boyfriend, and she lets this woman borrow a gun for several days until she can buy her own gun. And if the woman becomes a firearms-safety instructor, she regularly teaches classes at office parks, in school buildings at nights and on weekends, at gun stores, and so on. Following the standard curriculum of gun-safety classes (such as NRA safety courses), the woman will bring some unloaded guns to the classroom, and under her supervision, students will learn the first steps in how to handle the guns, including how to load and unload them (using dummy ammunition). During the class, the firearms will be “transferred” dozens of times, since students must practice how to hand a gun to someone else safely. As a Boy Scout den mother or 4-H leader, the woman may also transfer her gun to young people dozens of times while instructing them in gun safety.
These are not far-out scenarios. Kopel notes that “transfers” are defined very specifically in the bill, with specific exceptions. And lest “transfer” be read narrowly to exclude loans, where someone retains possession, time limits on such transfers are laid out. In order to escape such notice, guns could be “gifted” to family members, but presumably those gifts would be considered taxable events.
The bill does include some exceptions, designed to provide plausible deniability to senators who want to claim they’ve made reasonable allowances. Those exceptions are subject to such severe restraints so as to make them all but meaningless. This was largely the same legislative and debate strategy used here in Colorado, and for fun, count the number of times reference is made on the floor of the Senate to what happened here.
All of these scenarios will fly under the radar. The plan is for the press to continue to repeat the “40% of sales” myth and to deflect attention from the real burdens of the proposed law. Western Democrats will be given enough cover to present their votes as reasonable to the folks back home, and Republicans opposing them will have the Hobson’s Choice of either caving (and dispiriting and disillusioning their supporters) or appearing obstructionist and unreasonable.
It’s the same strategy that the Democrats used with the Violence Against Women Act: take a non-controversial piece of legislation, load it up with partisan baggage, and dare the other side to vote against it. It was a key element in the 2012 campaign theme of a “War on Women,” and it didn’t really have anything to do with governing. Obama and the Democrats now hope to repeat the same trick, and set up the 2014 Congressional campaigns as one of the Republicans against the Suburbs, newly-competitive territory which the Dems see as the key to long-term victory.
The bills, largely written by Mayor Bloomberg of New York, suffer from the same lack of public process, examination, amendment, and debate as Obamacare and the ill-thought-out, and supposedly much simpler, magazine ban rushed through the New York State legislature in the wake of Newtown. That’s by design; while the mayor and the president may be true believers in disarming citizens, President Obama is a greater believer in winning elections.
To thwart this strategy, the Republicans will have to do more than filibuster. Their amendments – and thus the floor debate – will have to be focused on the question of “transfers” and the absurd outcomes that this bill creates. They’ll never have a better time to make their case publicly.
Even A Failed Nork EMP Attack Is Bad
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Uncategorized on April 7th, 2013
In the wake of Kim Jong Un’s loud talk from and missile movements within the Hermit Kingdom, there has been much speculation about what he’s actually up to. My own pet theory is that it’s an EMP attack, the sort that would wipe out the electrical grid, fry a great deal of electronic infrastructure, and more or less set us back to 1850 (although we’d have battery-powered devices and personal generators available for a while).
The odds of North Korea actually being able to pull off such an attack successfully remain thankfully low, but even failure shouldn’t leave us too complacent. Here are a number of ways in which such an attack could fall short or be thwarted, and yet not really let us breathe much of a sigh of relief.
- Technical failure: Obviously, such an attack is still a tricky thing to pull off. The missile has the launch, the warhead has to deploy and explode properly. But men are solving technical problems all the time, and the easiest ones to solve are those that have already been solved by someone else.
- Our Countermeasures Discourage the Attack: In part, this is a variant of the last. Technical countermeasures, such as THAAD, are always subject to technical solutions. In part, it’s also a strategic thinning of our defenses, since once up, we’ll never really be able to let these stand down.
- THAAD: This is probably the best option. In war, our actually using a weapon is an intelligence coup for the enemy, and don’t think there aren’t other enemies who’ll be looking. But a THAAD intercept from a forward deployment won’t tell them much they don’t already know, since THAAD has been around for a while. And a successful intercept of a presumed attack launch provides a lot of pretext go ahead and bomb all sorts of North Korean missile and nuclear facilities. It also suggests they don’t have a real warhead (since an EMP attack is a high-altitude explosion), making a nuclear response to a sustained bombing campaign not a credible threat.
- Our ASAT: We actually have tested several successful anti-satellite systems, most famously the plane-launched ASAT in the 1980s, most recently a ship-based weapon designed to send a message of deterrence to the Chinese. My understanding is that the tracking needed for this weapons to work reliable will only work once the warhead is no longer being boosted, so it’s kind of a last line of defense. You would always rather hit things earlier rather than later, since that cedes far less of the actual attack timeline to the enemy.
- Chinese ASAT: We could also be talking to the Chinese about their ASAT. Or having the Chinese talk to the Norks about their ASAT. This is probably the worst option, since even if the weapon isn’t actually used, it puts our defense in the hands of a primary adversary.
A word about ASAT weapons in general. The administration has historically been very cool on the idea of ASATs, mostly for the same ideological reasons that lead it to think that unilateral nuclear disarmament is a good idea. In 2011, they were talking ASAT limitations with the EU – as though the EU were our major worry on that front. One hopes that, just as the current crisis has led them to rethink their position on missile defense, it has also led them to reconsider their position on ASAT weapons.
Ultimately, my own feeling is that an EMP attack remains an extraordinarily cost-effective temptation for the Norkos or the Iranians to try against us. The failure, defeat, or deterrence of one attack shouldn’t lead us to be complacent about what can happen, or the need to harden our power generation infrastructure against a future assault.
Why PERA’s Presumptions Are Faulty
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, PERA, PPC on March 28th, 2013
Did you recognize the faulty presumptions in PERA’s spirited defense of defined benefit plans?
You have been given a false choice about why defined benefits plans are better than defined contribution plans.
In a recent EdNews Colorado Voices column, Colorado PERA Executive Director Greg Smith avers that PERA’s existing defined benefit structure best serves both the teachers and the taxpayers of Colorado. He was responding to a report by the National Council on Teacher Quality that leads the reader to support reforms to move away from the existing scheme and toward a defined contribution plan. Smith’s claims are wrong about the advantages of defined benefit plans in general, and PERA’s actuarial soundness in particular.
Smith cites a National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) report that claims three advantages for defined benefit plans over defined contribution plans:
- Less error in the amount saved for retirement,
- Less need to rebalance and re-allocate assets over time, and
- Better returns, largely as a result of lower transaction costs.
Each advantage turns out not to be dependent on having a defined benefit plan, but on having a professionally-managed, aggregated plan. The same advantages would accrue to a similar defined contribution plan that was also aggregated and professionally-managed.
PERA already has such an option, PERA Plus. It’s organized as a three-part 457(b) / 401(k) / Defined Contribution option. Like any set of diversified retirement offerings, it includes a variety of funds with different investment goals. For our discussion, the most relevant set of funds are those with target retirement dates. PERA has nine of these, with target dates every five years from 2015 to 2055, and an Income Fund designed to provide current income for current retirees.
Over time, as the target date for each fund approaches, that individual fund reallocates its assets into more conservative investments, before maturing and merging into the Income Fund. While each individual fund “ages,” all the funds collectively are maintaining a proper average. Taken together, they continue to represent the aggregate ages and target retirement dates of the entire set of members, the very source of the first two alleged advantages. The third, that of lower transaction costs, is completely independent of how liabilities are calculated.
There is no inherent reason why the assets of a DB plan should earn a higher return than those of an identically-invested DC plan. The only mandatory difference is that the defined benefit plan beneficiary has a share only in the specific benefits to be paid – the fund’s liabilities. By comparison, the owner of a defined contribution plan has a property right in the assets. Therefore, while a defined contribution plan is, by definition, always fully-funded, a defined benefit plan may have to seek additional funding, or trim back on its promises, in order to remain so.
The danger of unrealistic promises
It is therefore imperative that the promises being made to future retirees be realistic. All the more so if the promised benefits are being used to attract and retain qualified or exceptional teachers. Unfortunately, it is far from certain that PERA can afford the promises it is making, given its current funding levels. Recent legislative reforms (Senate Bill 10-001 in particular), while welcome and substantial, simply do not close the gap.
By PERA’s most recent published calculations, its unfunded liabilities remain at a staggering $26 billion, and its overall funded level is well below 60 percent, on a par with the chronically ill Illinois public pensions. In fact, a recent study by Barry Poulson suggests that PERA could be in the worst shape of any statewide plan in the country.
Let’s give credit where credit is due. PERA’s adoption of a 401(k)-like portability is indeed commendable. But if it’s designed to mimic the properties of a 401(k), it can hardly then provide an advantage over one.
While PERA is no longer “letting it ride,” as it did with its stock market investments of the late 90s, the 8 percent returns needed for a return to solvency come with risk. Even better-than-average returns during regular years won’t make up for prior losses in bad years, because funds must then catch up, while payments can’t be deferred.
What success SB1 does offer is predicated on both benefit reductions and payment increases. However, a court challenge to the limitation of COLAs to 2 percent has been upheld by a State Court of Appeals, and its future is uncertain at best. Should the lower courts find that limitation not to be justified, most of the immediate reduction in PERA’s unfunded liability will be wiped out.
On the contribution side, PERA plans to require supplemental increases, rising incrementally from 2 percent to 5.5 percent until 2018. School districts have been picking up the tab for these increases, rather than passing them on to the teachers themselves, as they are allowed to do. As a result, PERA now absorbs upwards of 15 percent of annual operating expenses in many large school districts, a number that is expected to rise to 20 percent as the existing plan increases for make-up contributions.
Disclosure of ties to lobbying group needed
It is also worth noting that the institute that issued the favorable DB article (NIRS) is the lobbying and public policy arm of the defined benefit public pensions, with a particularly close relationship with Colorado PERA. Smith sits on the board of directors of NIRS, as does Meredith Williams, PERA’s former executive director. Colorado PERA is both a charter member and in NIRS’s Visionary Circle, along with such other public plans as CalPERS and the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund.
Inasmuch as NIRS is not an independent think tank, but instead is a creation of interested parties to the debate over public pensions, this relationship ought to have been disclosed.
While there is no doubt that total compensation is an important part of attracting and retaining effective teachers, those promises must be grounded in reality. Until realistic arguments are used, PERA will continue to fail not only its member teachers, but also the schools and parents it is intended to serve.
This article originally appeared in EdNewsColorado.
It’s A National Political Strategy
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, National Politics, PPC on March 18th, 2013
On Friday’s Grassroots Radio, the discussion of Rep. Mike McLachlan’s (D-Durango) deceptive advertising of his own gun control positions turned to the national agenda being rammed down Colorado’s throat. I pointed out that while other states with Democrat majorities and governors – Illinois and Washington came to mind – had rejected similar proposals, Colorado had seemingly been singled out for lobbying by Mayor Bloomberg and Vice President Biden. Bloomberg has been open about his desire to influence other states’ policies, but traditionally, federal officeholders don’t meddle in state politics. Even Diana DeGette and Ed Perlmutter confined their post-Aurora comments to proposed federal legislation, not what Colorado ought or ought not do.
So something was up. Tomorrow’s New York Times tells us what: “If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere.” This was the article that Hick was waiting for, before announcing his intent to sign these bills on Wednesday.
It has been clear from the beginning that Obama plans to use gun control, not merely as a diversion from governing, but as a battering-ram issue to achieve his major 2nd-term objective: regaining the House of Representatives for the Democrats. To do that, he believes he must isolate the Republican House as being an obstruction to common-sense, practical gun control measures that most of the country agrees on. To do that, he must persuade enough Senate Democrats – especially Western Democrats – to back proposals that they really, really don’t want to even vote on, much less support.
Colorado becomes the key to providing them cover. The proposals – poorly-written, full of absurd outcomes – will have to be portrayed as practical compromises. The debate on the national level will mirror the deceptive line taken here: confusing sales with temporary transfers, or even loans to friends; outlawing magazines of more than 15 rounds, but forgetting to mention that inheriting such a magazine from a deceased parent is a criminal act, a felony, even. Colorado’s reputation as a western, freedom-loving state works in their favor.
This was a repeat of the entire Obamacare political drama, here at the state level. The Democrats in favor barely felt the need to argue for them on the floor, largely because when they did, they embarrassed themselves with references to pens as defensive weapons, whistles as substitutes for protection, and condescending to rape victims. State senators either abandoned, fled, or chastised their own town halls when the issue came up. Democratic leadership openly asked its members to ignore the public. The controversial bills passed without a single Republican vote, but over bipartisan opposition.
But the “If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere,” line of publicity conceals what really happened.
Ultimately, it makes the recalls of Sen. Hudak and Rep. McLachlan – along with whatever other vulnerable Dems can be included – even more important. Those recalls, like the recalls in Wisconsin, take on a national significance and urgency, not merely because of the issues involved, but because of the political implications at the national level. The promise of protection, of resources and money, to vulnerable Dems who backed him on this legislation, is the application of national resources to state races, just as the Blueprint was the application of state resources to local races. It is the Blueprint raised to a national scale. If Obama is able to implement that, then he will indeed have locked in substantial political changes that can change the society for the worse, for the long run.
On the other hand, if those promises can be shown to be empty – before the House of Representatives comes up for election, or has to vote on the national bills – then the entire narrative is turned on its head. Not only does Obama look like an unreliable friend, but the power of the issue dissipates. (That’s one reason why an initiative is more useful in the event that we fail to take back both the legislature and the governor’s mansion: only fiscal issues can be on the ballot in odd-numbered years.)
Hickenlooper, in 2012, specifically avoided charging voters up over this issue. Even in 2010, he didn’t really mention it at all. Colorado has not had a vigorous debate on these bills or these issues. This was not something done by us. It was something done to us.
It’s our move, Colorado.
Hick Nick Chicks’ Boomsticks
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, PPC on March 18th, 2013
Governor John Hickenlooper (D) has announced that on Wednesday, he will sign the gun control bills passed by the Colorado legislature last week. These include the magazine ban and the background checks, even for temporary transfers between individuals who know each other. A number of women legislators today protested the disparate impact that this law will have on women’s self-defense.
But it wasn’t always thus. This was Hick in the immediate aftermath of the Aurora shootings here in Colorado:
Crowley: When you look at what transpired here – a man with no criminal background, not even any contact with police, a speeding ticket, I think was the only thing found there – when you look, and if you are not familiar with the interior West or the Midwest, obviously lots of rural places here on the East Coast, and don’t totally understand the gun culture, when you look at what this young man was able to acquire over three or four months: an assault weapon, a shotgun, a 9mm Glock, another 9mm, all of these tear gas things, and 6000 rounds of ammo from the internet, people stand back and look at that and say, “Shouldn’t some bell have gone off somewhere,” and you’re looking and saying, “Somebody’s collecting an arsenal.” And yet there was no way to connect all those things. Should there be?
Hickenlooper: Well, I mean I’m not sure there’s any way in a free society, to be able to do that kind of – he was buying things in different places. Certainly, you can try, and I’m sure we will try, to create some checks and balances on these things. But this is a case of evil, of somebody who was an aberration of nature, and, you know, if it wasn’t one weapon, it would have been another. He was diabolical. If you look at what he had in his apartment and what his intentions were. I mean, even now, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It’s terrifying, just the thought that he could spend so much time planning such evil.
Crowley: And do you see any law anywhere that might have stopped a man with no record, in a society that protects the 2nd Amendment, that might have prevented this?
Hickenlooper: Well, we are certainly looking and that, and trying to say, “How do you prevent this?” I mean, the Virginia Tech shootings, we’ve been looking at the shootings all across the country, and say, “How do we preserve our freedoms, right, and all those things that define this country, and yet try to prevent this from happening again?” Let me tell you, there’s no easy answer.
Crowley: What I hear from you is that you would be open to someone who wanted to suggest a gun law, or something that might prevent this sort of thing, but that at the moment, you can’t imagine what that would be.
Hickenlooper: Yeah, it’s just – I’m happy to look at anything, but again, it’s – this person, if there were no assault weapons available, if there were no this or no that, this guy’s gonna find something right? He’s gonna know how to create a bomb. I mean, who knows where his mind would have gone, clearly a very intelligent individual, however twisted. You know, I don’t know – that’s the problem, I mean this is really – this is a human issue in some profound way that this level of disturbed individual that we can’t recognize it, that the people around him obviously had no idea that this was something that he was capable of.
(Emphasis added.)
As I mentioned in December, when he suddenly changed his tune, these were not the words of a man who wanted to sound as though he were looking to impose new controls. Virtually all of the objections he raises to Crowley’s implications about new gun laws are the very same objections raised by Republicans and a few Democrats during the legislative debates.
The opening for pursuing this agenda now clearly comes from the Aurora and Newtown shootings, in short, the very events that Hickenlooper says earlier in the interview shouldn’t be determining our way of life. In the Denver Post at the time, he said that he “wanted to have at least a couple of months off after the shooting in Aurora to let people process and grieve and get a little space.”
The net result, in fact, was that gun control was barely discussed at the state level during the election, and here in Colorado was treated almost exclusively as a federal issue, as Reps. Perlmutter and DeGette staked out strong positions in favor of reviving the so-called Assault Weapons Ban and even stricter measures. This suited Hick just fine, since any suggestion that he was seriously looking at the sort of laws passed last week might have complicated the Dems’ narrative about te Republican “War on Women” and civil unions.
With the election behind him, and with some pressure from Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns (of which Hickenlooper was Colorado’s sole member in 2010), and a little arm-twisting from Vice President Joe Biden, Hick feels free to go ahead an implement changes he had rhetorically taken off the table only months before.
Copied from the following post: It’s a National Political Strategy
On Friday’s Grassroots Radio, the discussion of Rep. Mike McLachlan’s (D-Durango) deceptive advertising of his own gun control positions turned to the national agenda being rammed down Colorado’s throat. I pointed out that while other states with Democrat majorities and governors – Illinois and Washington came to mind – had rejected similar proposals, Colorado had seemingly been singled out for lobbying by Mayor Bloomberg and Vice President Biden. Bloomberg has been open about his desire to influence other states’ policies, but traditionally, federal officeholders don’t meddle in state politics. Even Diana DeGette and Ed Perlmutter confined their post-Aurora comments to proposed federal legislation, not what Colorado ought or ought not do.
So something was up. Tomorrow’s New York Times tells us what: “If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere.” This was the article that Hick was waiting for, before announcing his intent to sign these bills on Wednesday.
It has been clear from the beginning that Obama plans to use gun control, not merely as a diversion from governing, but as a battering-ram issue to achieve his major 2nd-term objective: regaining the House of Representatives for the Democrats. To do that, he believes he must isolate the Republican House as being an obstruction to common-sense, practical gun control measures that most of the country agrees on. To do that, he must persuade enough Senate Democrats – especially Western Democrats – to back proposals that they really, really don’t want to even vote on, much less support.
Colorado becomes the key to providing them cover. The proposals – poorly-written, full of absurd outcomes – will have to be portrayed as practical compromises. The debate on the national level will mirror the deceptive line taken here: confusing sales with temporary transfers, or even loans to friends; outlawing magazines of more than 15 rounds, but forgetting to mention that inheriting such a magazine from a deceased parent is a criminal act, a felony, even. Colorado’s reputation as a western, freedom-loving state works in their favor.
This was a repeat of the entire Obamacare political drama, here at the state level. The Democrats in favor barely felt the need to argue for them on the floor, largely because when they did, they embarrassed themselves with references to pens as defensive weapons, whistles as substitutes for protection, and condescending to rape victims. State senators either abandoned, fled, or chastised their own town halls when the issue came up. Democratic leadership openly asked its members to ignore the public. The controversial bills passed without a single Republican vote, but over bipartisan opposition.
But the “If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere,” line of publicity conceals what really happened.
Ultimately, it makes the recalls of Sen. Hudak and Rep. McLachlan – along with whatever other vulnerable Dems can be included – even more important. Those recalls, like the recalls in Wisconsin, take on a national significance and urgency, not merely because of the issues involved, but because of the political implications at the national level. The promise of protection, of resources and money, to vulnerable Dems who backed him on this legislation, is the application of national resources to state races, just as the Blueprint was the application of state resources to local races. It is the Blueprint raised to a national scale. If Obama is able to implement that, then he will indeed have locked in substantial political changes that can change the society for the worse, for the long run.
On the other hand, if those promises can be shown to be empty – before the House of Representatives comes up for election, or has to vote on the national bills – then the entire narrative is turned on its head. Not only does Obama look like an unreliable friend, but the power of the issue dissipates. (That’s one reason why an initiative is more useful in the event that we fail to take back both the legislature and the governor’s mansion: only fiscal issues can be on the ballot in odd-numbered years.)
Hickenlooper, in 2012, specifically avoided charging voters up over this issue. Even in 2010, he didn’t really mention it at all. Colorado has not had a vigorous debate on these bills or these issues. This was not something done by us. It was something done to us.
It’s our move, Colorado.
Alert! Georgia More Conservative Than Massachusetts!
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on March 18th, 2013
Larry Sabato is one of the sharpest political analysts working today. Even 25 years ago, when I was at Virginia, he was a rising star. Now, he is a star. His Crystal Ball blog is a must-read for electoral analysis. Which is why it’s so surprising that he’d publish an article that uses so thin a justification to show the necessity of the Voting Rights Act’s Section 5 reviews.
Today, 50 years after the Voting Rights Act was established, a number of southern states and Alaska and Arizona have their election practices closely scrutinized by the US Justice Department. Essentially this means that redistricting plans, changes to non-partisan voting, etc., need to be passed on by Justice, in order to show that they don’t discriminate against minorities.
Alan Abramowitz, of Emory University in Atlanta, purports to show that such measures are still necessary because whites in Section 5 states vote Republican at higher rates that whites elsewhere. Seriously, that’s his argument. Blacks and other minorities vote Democrat is similar proportions in Section 5 states as elsewhere.
Gerrymandering is as old as the country itself, used to give one party a locked-in electoral advantage in legislative seats or Congressional seats. (While some may claim that the Senate or Electoral College are unfair, the one thing they can’t be is gerrymandered, since state boundaries are immutable.) The majority – or the party controlling the redistricting process – will seek to pack as many of the opposing party as possible into a few high-margin districts, while creating as many lower-margin, but still safe seats for itself. I’ll let you win that one seat 90-10 until the end of time, if I can create two districts weighted my way 60-40.
Long ago, we decided that while redistricting would have to remain an inherently political process, there was no excuse for its being a racial one. Thus Section 5. It would simply not be acceptable to pack minorities into legislative ghettos. (That minorities routinely win races in white districts, while whites rarely win in minority districts, is a paradox beyond the scope of this post, but certainly another indicator that Section 5’s days have past.)
However, it simply stands to reason that if minorities vote more heavily Democrat relative to the state as a whole, gerrymandering that is based on solely on partisan voting will disproportionately affect minorities within that state. Abramowitz’s argument that Section 5 Republicans have an incentive to pack minorities into districts is true, but it’s equally true if they’re doing so only to maintain a partisan advantage.
But state-to-state, one might just as easily say that in more liberal states, whites are disproportionately disenfranchised, since they are more likely to vote Republican, and more likely to be in a partisan minority statewide. It would be beyond absurd to use that fact as an excuse for the Justice Department to protect Republican voters in those states. Neither, should the voting tendencies of minorities be used as an excuse to protect Democratic voters in Section 5 states.
Incidentally, Abramowitz’s division of the country into Section 5 states and non-Section 5 states makes legal sense, but not analytical sense. The non-Section 5 part of the country is hardly monolithic; Illinois looks little, if anything, like Kansas, but we are not treated to a discussion of whether or not minorities in those states suffer disproportionately from what is assumed to be purely partisan gerrymandering.
You wouldn’t think the revelation that Georgians are more conservative than New Yorkers would be news to a political science professor at Emory, in Atlanta. It may not be, but his argument amounts to punishing southern whites not for being racist, but for voting Republican. Presumably, if they voted as Democrat as whites in the rest of the country, Abramowitz would see no need to continue Section 5. He is silent on what he would recommend were minorities to begin to vote more Republican.
Which bring us to the worst, most perverse incentives of Section 5: for the Democrats to continue to pursue the race-conscious policies that have characterized their party since before the Civil War. For if we buy into Abramowitz’s logic, as long as they vote overwhelmingly Democrat, they’ll be gerrymandered unfairly. The Democrats thus consciously help to perpetuate the very problem they claim requires a legal remedy, even though there’s no longer any evidence that it requires a remedy at all.
Conferences
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Basketball on March 17th, 2013
Last night was the last Big East Tournament Championship.
Louisville, which I still can’t think of as a Big East school, won the title for the 3rd time in the last 5 years, defeating a real Big East school, Syracuse. After this year, about half the conference will have fled for the ACC, others will head to the Big 10. Some will remain as sort of a rump conference, nicknamed the “Catholic 7.” But it’s really the end of the conference.
One of the game announcers defied the conventions of his job and offered actual insight: conferences used to be regional associations of like-minded schools, usually of similar size, but not always. So the SEC, the ACC, the Big East, the Big 10, and the Pac 8/10/12 all had personalities. So did the smaller conferences. Now, with all the shuffling to get TV money, they’re really just division of the NCAA. There’s little regional about them (Maryland, enjoy that trip to Lincoln). Syracuse looks nothing like Clemson, except for orange, and the longstanding rivalries have been diminished by not playing home games every year.
I’m not a conference luddite. Adding Georgia Tech made sense for the ACC, and it always seemed like an ACC school. Southern, reasonable size, good academics.
But I freely admit I’m a college sports reactionary. I like the idea of conferences as being incubators for meaningful rivalries. I like the conference tournaments to mean something. In 1976, for example, Virginia won the ACC, and in the field of 32, the conference got two slots: U.Va. and UNC. The Big got two teams: Indiana and Michigan, and they ended up meeting in the Championship. Now, for better or worse, Duke or UNC loses the ACC final, and we’re told it won’t even cost them a No. 1 seed. The conference tournaments are basically reduced to a second-chance lottery for the teams on the bubble, or even those on the outside looking in. In 1976, UNC got in anyway, but Maryland, the #2 seed, probably got bounced by losing the Virginia.
If a conference chose not to pick its champion by having a tournament, that was their call. For decades, the Big 10 and the Pac 8/10/12 didn’t have conference tournaments. Growing up with the ACC, I thought that was weird, but ok, it was also their business.
Conferences also had distinctive styles of play, distinctive personalities. The Big East was a tough, physical conference of big centers and tall front-courts. For a while, they went to 6 fouls per player, and it probably ended up hurting them in the tournaments. The ACC was about guard play and ball-handling. They started the 3-point line experiment. The hated Four Corners (keep-away, really, but it did still require serious ball-handling skills to pull off), could only have come out the ACC, and eventually led to the college shot clock. The Pac-8/10/12 was UCLA, and then not much else for a long time.
Twenty years ago, when the independents started fleeing for cover – Florida State to the ACC, Penn State to the Big 10, Notre Dame to NBC, it should have been clear that something was afoot. What was afoot was that, with the protection of a conference and its TV contracts, teams wouldn’t feel a need to schedule these teams, and lose to them for, well, nothing. Eventually, the same logic extended to conferences. When the “mid-majors” started getting better, the “power conferences” wouldn’t schedule them any more, since that easy payday was starting to look riskier to national title hopes. All those extra NCAA bids which were supposed to go to the #3, #4, #5 power conference teams suddenly started going to the #2 and #3 teams from the mid-majors.
Rather than accept the more level playing field, the power conference solved their problem by luring away the best of the top mid-major teams and expanding. Football was driving the bus on the major conference re-alignment, like sending Utah and Colorado to the Pac-8/10/12, but don’t think Big East basketball didn’t see the advantages of getting Marquette safely under its wing.
So now, in world that supposedly celebrates diversity, conferences, teams, and tournaments will all look more the same than ever.
Rep. McLachlan Hopes His Constituents Don’t Have Internet
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, PPC on March 14th, 2013
I’m not sure what other explanation there is for this remarkable statement in today’s Durango Herald. Commenting on his eventual vote for HB-1224, the magazine limit that would essentially ban all magazines, McLachlan had this to say to his constituents:
Fields originally wanted the limit set at 10 bullets, but McLachlan successfully amended it in February to raise the limit to 15. He later said he wanted to see a 30-round limit.
McLachlan voted again Wednesday for the 15-round limit and told the Herald he decided to support the bill after no Republicans stepped forward to help him raise the limit to 30.
He asked gun lobbyists to get Senate Republicans to try to raise the limit, but they were more interested in killing the bill than improving it, he said.
“The reason we’ve ended up where we are today is, in part, their fault because they never tried to put a 30-round limit forward,” McLachlan said.
Not so fast. HB-1224 was assigned to the House Judiciary Committee, on which McLachlan sits. The record shows that he introduced Amendment L006, which raised the limit from 10 to 15 rounds, as he says. But there was a proposed amendment to the amendment, which would have raised it from 15 rounds to 31 rounds. That amendment to L006 failed on a 7-4 strict party-line vote, with McLachlan voting against. Eventually, L006 did pass, raising the limit to 15 rounds.
If McLachlan wanted a 30-round limit, that was his chance, and he turned it down. It was also ample evidence that a 30-round limit had little-to-no support among Democrats. He could only hope to blame Senate Republicans, in the expectation that his constituents would be unaware that he had voted to kill just such an amendment, if he believed that his constituents weren’t listening online to the debate, or couldn’t look up his votes in committee.
McLachlan is facing a potential recall over this vote. He only won election in a fairly Republican district by 900 votes in a strong Democratic year here in Colorado. And it’s far from clear that repeating the defensive, condescending tactics of so many Obamacare-burdened Democrats in 2010 will serve him any better than it did them.
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