Metro Éireann Newspaper's The Bigger Picture column

Already Down To The Final Four

2012-01-25T10:50:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture

Published on February 1st 2012 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

And then there were four. First Herman Cain was driven from the race for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination by a litany of adultery and sexual harassment allegations before the first votes were even cast in Iowa. Then Michelle Bachman followed suit after her dismal showing in the Iowa caucuses. But after the results from the second primary contest in New Hampshire were announced, Bachman and Cain were soon joined on the political campaign sidelines by Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman.
Huntsman was the first to go even though he finished a respectable third with almost 17% of the votes in the New Hampshire primary. But with less than 1% of the vote a week earlier in Iowa, Huntsman had been counting on a second place finish in New Hampshire to breathe some life back into his presidential campaign. So given his poor prospects with the much more conservative voters in South Carolina’s third Republican contest, Huntsman decided to call it quits rather than continue a futile campaign for the Republican nomination.
As I have noted in my previous columns, Huntsman never really had a chance of winning the Republican nomination in 2012 largely because he was also the only Republican candidate who resonated with moderate Republican and independent voters like me. But the Republican Party of today is dominated by anti-abortion, anti-immigration, anti-government and anti-tax social conservatives and Tea Party extremists. As a result, any Republican candidate who demonstrates willingness to compromise with Democrats or President Obama is vilified by right wing activists who also condemn the very idea of political compromise.
When he announced his withdrawal from the 2012 Republican Presidential contest, Huntsman also noted the chilling effect that the extremely negative political views of these Republican activists were having, not only on the Republican Party but also on the American people. Huntsman’s withdrawal announcement says, “At its core the Republican Party is a party of ideas, but the current toxic form of our political discourse does not help our cause and is just one of the many reasons the American people has lost trust in their leaders.”
The other big loser in New Hampshire was Texas Governor Rick Perry, who followed up his 10% of the vote and fifth place showing in Iowa with an abysmal sixth place finish and less than 1% of New Hampshire Republicans’ votes. But even though Perry’s withdrawal just two days before the South Carolina primary wasn’t a surprise, his subsequent endorsement of Newt Gingrich for President did help Gingrich win the South Carolina primary by a much larger margin over second place Mitt Romney than most political observers expected.
Gingrich has been surging in recent Republican polls so his resounding 40% to 28% victory over Mitt Romney in South Carolina now sets up what will essentially be a two horse race for the Republican Presidential nomination. The other two candidates, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, don’t have a chance of winning the nomination because they don’t have the campaign financing or a broad enough base of support beyond their core constituencies.
But even though it only took a few weeks and the results from the first two Republican Presidential primaries to cut the Republican field of presidential candidates in half, since Mitt Romney is sinking in the polls I expect it to take at least another couple of months before we see any of the four remaining contenders withdraw from the race. Rick Santorum narrowly won the Iowa caucuses thanks to his support from social conservatives and has no compelling reason to drop out of the race so long as they continue to support him. Ron Paul has an equally supportive base of libertarian voters who have thus far shown no inclination to vote for the other candidates so there is no reason he should quit the race either.
So I will discuss why the pre-election favourite, Mitt Romney, is now in trouble, the other reasons why both Santorum and Paul are likely to remain in the race, and the results of the Florida primary as well as the Nevada and Maine caucuses in my next column.

The First Vote Tallies Are In & Bachman Is Out

2012-01-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture

Published on January 15th 2012 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Now that the results of the Iowa caucuses are in, today I will discuss the results of the Iowa caucuses and their impact on the Republican field and then begin a more in depth analysis of each of the remaining candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination.
One of the first casualties of the Iowa Republican primary was actually an Iowa native Representative Michele Bachman. Ms. Bachman had spent most of her time and campaign money barnstorming the state where she grew up, hoping that the combination of her evangelical Christian and Tea Party bona fides would allow her to finish as one of the top two or three Republican candidates. Instead, her rather dismal sixth place finish with a measly 5% of the vote effectively ended her campaign for 2012 Republican Presidential nomination.
In fact the only active Republican candidate Bachman finished ahead of was former Utah Governor, Jon Huntsman, who barely spent any time or money campaigning in Iowa. However, even though Bachman has now suspended her 2012 Presidential campaign, because she is both photogenic and a favorite of Tea Party and evangelical Christians, I strongly suspect she will try to run for President again in 2016 and or 2020.
As for Governor Huntsman, even though he finished dead last with only 1% of the Republican votes, Huntsman didn’t expect to do well in Iowa and had focused his time and resources on the 10 January New Hampshire primary. Although Huntsman is far and away the best Republican candidate in the field, I simply don’t believe his more moderate positions on issues like the economy, taxes, and climate change to resonate with enough Republican voters to give him any real chance of winning in 2012. However, given Republicans general lack of enthusiasm for the rest of the field of Republican candidates, if Huntsman finishes as one of the top two vote getters in New Hampshire he may indeed still have a chance in 2012.
Besides Bachman, the other two Republican candidates who had to be most disappointed with the Iowa caucus results were former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, who finished fourth with 13% of the vote, and Texas Governor Rick Perry, who finished fifth with only 10% of the vote. Perry in particular had to very disheartened by his poor showing given all the time and money he had spent in Iowa, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him be the next candidate to follow Bachman’s lead and head for the exits.
On the other hand, Newt Gingrich’s fourth place finish wasn’t all that bad considering the fact that he had been targeted by a series of very negative campaign ads paid for by ‘independent’ PACs aligned with Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. I therefore fully expect Gingrich to continue his 2012 Presidential campaign for at least a couple of more months provided he can finish among the top three vote getters in the remaining January primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina or Nevada. But if Gingrich fails to crack the top three by the end of January, then I believe his 2012 Presidential campaign will be doomed.
As for the other Republican candidates, unlike many other political pundits, I wasn’t surprised by the close finish of the top three vote getters because I understand how each of the three appeals to their particular base of voters.
Ron Paul’s third place showing with 21% of the vote is a reflection of his attractiveness to the libertarian wing of the Republican Party. Paul’s libertarian philosophy resonates with Republican libertarians who comprise about 20%-25% of Republican voters.
Former Senator Rick Santorum’s virtual tie for first with the best funded candidate, Mitt Romney, is likewise a reflection of his appeal to evangelical Christians and Tea Party activists. As for Romney, he appeals to more pragmatic Republicans who comprise about a quarter of Republican voters and favor the best organized and well funded candidates. I will discuss Romney as well as the New Hampshire results next month.

2012-01-25T10:32:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture

Published on January 1st 2012 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

I hope all of you have enjoyed the Holidays and that the New Year of 2012 will bring you good health, happiness and the realization of your hopes for the future. But back in the states voters will troop to the Iowa caucuses this week to initiate the process of choosing the Republican Party’s next presidential candidate. So in this week’s column I will provide you with a snapshot of the Republican Party’s remaining presidential candidates and will provide a more in depth analysis of each candidate and their chances of success in my future columns.
I have already discussed the first casualty, former Governor Tim Pawlenty, in a previous column. Of the remaining candidates another three are also former governors, one is a sitting governor, one is a former member of the US House of Representatives and two are sitting members, one is a former US Senator and the other one has never held elected office.
Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, was the first to announce he was running for the 2012 GOP nomination. As governor, Johnson used his veto powers more often than the other 49 American governors combined to build a strong record as a fiscal conservative. Johnson was the founder of one of New Mexico’s largest construction companies before he became governor and although he has no chance of winning, is one of the more interesting candidates because of his socially liberal libertarian positions as a strong critic of the ‘War on Drugs’ and as an advocate for the decriminalization of marijuana.
Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, was the next Republican to announce he was running for President. Gingrich is currently running fourth and has been nothing if not controversial throughout his career with his conservative fiscal and social positions. He converted to Catholicism in 2009, has a PhD in modern European history and along with Ron Paul is considered to be one of the two intellectuals in the field.
U.S. Representative Ron Paul of Texas declared his candidacy on May 13th and is an intellectual who has adopted controversial positions on many issues. Paul was a physician prior to running for Congress and was a strong opponent of the Iraq War. But like Gary Johnson, he is a fiscal conservative and socially liberal libertarian with no chance of winning.
Herman Cain is the former CEO of Godfathers Pizza who announced he was running for President on May 21st of this year. Cain is also a former lobbyist who has a history of sexually harassing women while he was lobbying Congress and is now considering withdrawing from the race because he was exposed as an adulterer. In spite of this, Cain became one of the top four Republicans and a Tea Party favorite because of his strong anti-tax anti-government views. Although he was considered to be a fiscal and social conservative, Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan was also widely derided by economists and the other GOP candidates.
On June 2nd, the former governor of Massachusetts and 2008 Republican presidential aspirant Mitt Romney made his long anticipated entry into the 2012 contest and is also one of the top four candidates. Romney is popular with establishment Republicans, but has been unable to gain traction with social conservatives despite his moves to adopt their positions.
Former Pennsylvania Senator, Rick Santorum announced he would run for the GOP nomination on June 6th. Santorum is a fiscal conservative but is much better known for his very strong pro Iraq War and anti-abortion, anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-evolution and anti-homosexual views. I’m happy to say he also has no chance of winning the nomination.
The former governor of Utah and US Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman entered the race on June 21st and is the only Republican candidate whose views appeal to moderate and independent voters like me. He is a fiscal conservative but is the polar opposite of Tea Party favorites, Perry and Cain, on climate change, evolution, immigration and gay marriage.
Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota declared her candidacy on June 27th and is also one of the favorites of Tea Party activists. She is a fiscal and social conservative whose win in the August 13th Ames Iowa Straw Poll drove Tim Pawlenty out of the 2012 presidential race.
The sitting governor of Texas, Rick Perry, entered the race for president on August 13th and is currently in third place. He is another fiscal and social conservative, who joined the field late because of the dissatisfaction of Tea Party activists with the other candidates.
I will begin a more in depth analysis of each of these candidates and also discuss the results of the Iowa caucuses and their impact on the Republican field in my next column.

Sarah and Non-Candidate Republican Representatives

2012-01-25T10:30:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on December 15th 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Since Republicans will begin voting in their first presidential primaries in January, I will be devoting my future 2012 columns to Republican candidates who are still running for President. But in my final column of 2011 I’m going to discuss the other three Republican presidential hopefuls and their stated as well as their real reasons for declining to run in 2012.
Republican Representative Mike Pence of Indiana was a darling of the anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage Christian right wing who also won a presidential straw poll held at the annual Values Voters Summit in September 2010. But Pence was also the number one Republican presidential choice of the former House Republican leader from Texas, Dick Armey, who is also the leader of Freedom Works one of the right wing billionaire Koch brothers’ favorite Tea Party political action committee campaign fundraising ‘charities.’
But despite the anxious prodding of Dick Armey and the Koch brothers, on January 27th Mike Pence also became the first Republican contender to announce he wouldn’t run for President in 2012. While Pence did not deny his interest in running for President at some point in the future, he said his wife and three young children as well as the state of Indiana needed him more than his country. What he didn’t say was that since Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels couldn’t run for governor again because of term limits, Pence would also have an easier road to the Indiana statehouse than he would have to the US White House.
The other Republican contender from the House of Representatives was Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the architect of the Republican plan to slash America’s budget deficit by cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits without raising taxes or cutting defense spending. But despite his credibility with fiscal conservatives Ryan was also a Catholic who never aroused the passions of Tea Party activists and Christian conservatives.
So on August 22nd I wasn’t surprised Paul Ryan dashed the hopes of many Republican fiscal conservatives by announcing he would not run for President in 2012. But I also believe that another factor neither Pence nor Ryan care to acknowledge, is the fact that no serving member of the US House of Representatives has ever been elected President.
Last, but certainly not least, was Sarah Palin’s announcement on October 5th that she would join the list of Republican governors who had decided not to run for President in 2012. Although I have always believed Sarah Palin lacked the intelligence and emotional stability one needs to be President of the United States, I have never doubted her abilities as a political campaigner. But in the aftermath of McCain’s loss to President Obama, Palin’s over the top responses to complaints by Republican campaign staffers about her actions as a vice presidential candidate showed that she also had a very thin skin. It was at this point that I began to have doubts Palin would ever run for President because a thick skin is a necessary prerequisite for a Presidential candidate due to the intense media scrutiny they endure.
Those doubts were reinforced in July of 2009 when, in the midst of a legislative investigation of her conduct as governor, Palin announced she would not run for re-election as governor and then resigned with a year and a half remaining in her first term as governor. This was followed by her eleven state bus tour promoting her bestselling book, a six figure job as an occasional contributor for Fox News and then a starring role in highly rated cable TV show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska.
But any doubts I still had about Sarah Palin’s presidential aspirations were finally put to rest when it was revealed in June of this year that Sarah Palin had purchased an 8,000 square foot luxury home in Scottsdale Arizona for a tidy $1,700,000. That was when I knew that no matter how long Palin strung out her announcement, she was never going to run for President in 2012. Palin’s brief turn as a vice presidential candidate had transformed her into a national celebrity and while Palin may not be Presidential material, she is also nobody’s fool. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out what Palin did; that a national celebrity can cash in on their fame without ever having to endure the rigors of running for President.

More Faint of Heart Republicans

2012-01-25T10:26:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture

Published on December 1st 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

In my last column I discussed the impact Tea Party activists and Christian ‘values’ voters had on the 2012 presidential campaign aspirations of three Republican governors who were held in high regard by the GOP establishment, but who are also no longer involved in the 2012 Presidential campaign. This week I will pivot to a discussion of the markedly different reasons why two other Republican governors declined to run for President in 2012.
The current Governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, surprised many Republicans when he announced he had decided not to run for the GOP nomination on April 22nd of this year. Although Barbour cited the physical strain of a 63 year old man running for president as well as the family and duties as governor concerns expressed by Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie, Republican insiders claim his real reason was a more pragmatic one. Despite his fund raising prowess and numerous political and business connections, Barbour concluded that he simply couldn’t win the General election because of his racial segregationist past.
Barbour grew up in Yazoo City Mississippi during the 50’s and 60’s. In the wake of the US Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to overturn state laws favoring racially segregated education, a Citizens Council led by William Barbour, Haley Barbour’s father figure uncle, was formed in Yazoo City. So when 53 African-American residents signed an August 1955 petition in favor of desegregating Yazoo City’s local schools, the Citizens Council retaliated by publishing their names and asking whites to stop dealing with them. Over the next four months 51 of the petition signers asked to have their names removed from the petition due to their loss of jobs and business.
But in an August 2010 interview with the Weekly Standard Barbour ignored this fact and claimed that the Citizens Council was an organization of town leaders that facilitated integration in Mississippi because “they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the (violent white racist) Ku Klux Klan would get their ass run out of town.”
Mind you, Haley Barbour had other political liabilities as a lobbyist for business special interest groups in Washington DC and Mississippi’s ranking as the worst of fifty states in a wide range of areas including, economic development, education and healthcare. But even though Barbour had been able to develop persuasive arguments for why those things shouldn’t be held against him, the fact is he was never able to come up with a satisfying response to charges about his segregationist past.
Much more surprising to this political commentator was former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s May 14th announcement that he would also not run for President in 2012. Huckabee is an ordained Baptist minister who had used his Christian ‘values’ credentials to become a favorite of the Republican Party’s anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage Christian social conservatives. Despite John McCain and Mitt Romney’s huge cash advantages, he used their support to win the first Republican primary in Iowa and then ran a surprisingly close second to the eventual winner of the 2008 Republican nomination, John McCain.
Unlike Romney and most of the other Republican presidential candidates, Huckabee, is was very personable candidate who used his quick wit and self-deprecating sense of humor to good advantage with audiences out on the campaign trail as well as on the TV tube. His affability subsequently led to his current jobs as ABC’s replacement for legendary radio commentator Paul Harvey and as the TV host of Fox News weekend show “Huckabee”.
Huckabee was a consistent leader in polls of Republican voters so I was surprised on May 14th when he announced on his TV show that he would not run for President saying “All the factors say go, but my heart says no. But after further reflection I think he was telling the truth, just not the whole truth. Huckabee’s heart wasn’t in it because he has always hated trolling for campaign funds and he preferred drawing a seven figure annual income from a few hours of TV and radio work every week to the rigors of campaigning for President.
I will discuss the real reasons why three other Republican hopefuls decided not to run, including my favorite Republican diva Sarah Palin, in my next and last column of 2011.

Tea Party Christians and Republican Non-Candidates

2012-01-25T10:21:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on November 15th 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

In my last column I discussed the extraordinary influence that right wing evangelical Christians and the anti-tax Tea Party movement currently exert on the Republican Party and its political leaders. Today I will begin discussing the impact these ideologically doctrinaire groups have had and will continue to have on the field of Republican Presidential candidates.
I will begin by first discussing several Republican presidential candidates who either withdrew from the race or decided not to run. The first casualty was Tim Pawlenty, who actually began his campaign for the GOP nomination well before the end of his second term as governor of Minnesota in 2010. Pawlenty had been on John McCain’s short list as a possible vice presidential running mate in 2008, and establishment Republicans had been talking about him as a possible presidential candidate in 2005, even before he even ran for a second term as governor in 2006. So it came as no surprise when Governor Pawlenty also started showing up to speak at Republican Party functions in the early Republican primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina during 2008 and 2009.
Pawlenty continued his meticulous preparations to run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination by announcing in June 2009 that he would not run for a third term as governor and by creating a political action committee (PAC) to raise money for his campaign called Freedom First. He then hired respected Republican presidential campaigners such as Vin Weber, former Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant, and Sara Taylor, the former Director of the Office of Political Affairs for President George W. Bush.
So by the time Pawlenty formally announced he was running for President in May 2011, the only real surprise was that he had waited so long to make it official. But while Pawlenty had the necessary conservative Republican credentials, he could never become a Tea Party favorite because he wasn’t a fiery public speaker and he had a reputation for being able to strike compromises with Minnesota’s Democratic controlled state legislature.
As a result, another candidate from Minnesota was able to use her oratory skills and legislative track record of never compromising with Democrats to capture twice as many votes as Pawlenty from the Tea Party activists and evangelical Christians who dominated the voting in Iowa’s August 13th Republican caucus straw poll. Since Pawlenty had invested a great deal of his time and money in Iowa, he quickly realized that his dismal finish behind Minnesota’s Michelle Bachman also signaled the end of his Presidential campaign hopes.
Although Tim Pawlenty may have become the first formal casualty of the Republican Party’s antagonistic ideological extremists when he ended his presidential bid on August 14th, he is by no means the only one. Several other Republican governors with conservative credentials but a track record of compromising with Democrats or state legislatures controlled by the Democratic Party, wisely decided not to even bother to run for President in 2012.
Second term Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who isn’t eligible to run for governor again in 2012, refused to yield to heavy pressure from establishment Republicans when he announced on May 22nd that he would not run for President. After Daniel’s opted not to run, his first term counterpart from New Jersey, Chris Christie, then came under heavy pressure from long time Republicans to jump into the 2012 presidential race. But with time running short, on October 4th Christie put an end to the speculation by saying “now is not my time.”
While both Daniels and Christie cited their families and duties as governor as reasons why they decided not to run in 2012, GOP insiders have also speculated that both men felt it would be difficult to win the Presidency in 2012 if they forced to stump on a GOP platform that reflected the views of Tea Party activists and Christian evangelicals. Both governors were also well aware that they owed their previous General election successes to their ability to attract more moderate independent voters, rather than just the support of the Tea Partiers and Christian conservatives that currently dominate Republican Party primary politics.
In my next column I will discuss several other Republican governors, as well as their reasons for deciding not to run for the GOP nomination for President in 2012.

The Koch and Tea (Republican) Party

2011-10-30T06:41:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on November 1st 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

On November 6th 2012, exactly fifty three weeks from today, Americans will troop to the polls to cast their ballots in an extremely important Presidential and Congressional General election. While all elections involving the selection of America’s next president are usually considered vital for the future of the United States, in 2012 America truly stands at a crossroads because American voters will not only be choosing who the next President will be, they will also be making a decision about what they want their government to be.
After surveying the field of Republican Presidential candidates and their respective positions on a range of domestic as well as foreign policy issues, it is very apparent that regardless of who eventually emerges as the Republican nominee for President, Americans will still have a clear choice between either voting to elect a backward looking Republican Presidential candidate backed by an assortment of right wing political ideologues, or voting to re-elect a more forward looking Democratic President with a centrist legislative agenda.
But what makes the 2012 election even more significant, is what the American voters’ choices will say about what they believe our government’s role should be in stimulating the economy as well as its role in providing for and protecting the needs of American citizens. That is because the positions of the Republican presidential candidates reflect the narrow interests of Tea Party activists, evangelical Christians and other special interest groups.
The Tea Party minions claim that the solution for America’s economic ills is to eliminate the federal budget deficit by cutting government spending but they also refuse to countenance tax increases of any kind. However, most of the anti-tax Tea Partiers also don’t want to see any cuts in their Social Security and Medicare benefits, which together account for roughly 50% of government spending. Furthermore, a majority of them also don’t want to see any cuts in America’s defense spending which comprises another 25% of the budget.
The fact that no reputable economists agree with the Tea Party activists’ contention that America can eliminate its budget deficit by cutting government spending in other areas and without raising taxes is beside the point. Tea Partiers are wedded to their angry fantasy that federal government spending is the problem and cutting both spending and taxes is the solution. As a result, rather than risk the ire of these anti-tax extremists, all of the Republican presidential candidates have now adopted the Tea Party’s hard line stance and none of them will even agree to a compromise such as $1 in tax increases for every $9 in spending cuts.
But all of the Republican candidates must also appease socially conservative white evangelical Christians, many of whom were hoping Sarah Palin would run for President. Given their equally rigid anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage and anti-immigration positions, it should come as no surprise that many of these so called “Christian Values” voters are also supporters of the rigidly anti-tax, anti-government spending Tea Party movement.
However, something the Tea Party and evangelical Christian movements don’t like to acknowledge is the extent to which they both rely on support and funding from corporate special interest groups to spread their antagonistic and ideologically extreme message. Fox News supports them with in kind donations of media publicity and Rupert Murdoch then reaps profits from advertisers using Fox employees like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to hawk gold and books that are aimed at this segment of the American public.
But the ultimate symbol of right wing hypocrisy is the billionaire Koch brothers funding and sponsorship of groups such as Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works that also train Tea Party activists and provide funding for the Republican candidates they support. These organizations support the Koch brothers’ opposition to an extension of unemployment benefits and federal regulation of the oil, finance, food and drug industries, but then ignore the fact that the Koch brothers’ companies also head the list of America’s biggest corporate beneficiaries of federal tax breaks for the oil and agriculture industries. I will discuss the effect they have had on the field of Republican presidential candidates in my next column.

The latest Nobel Peace Prize recipients

2011-10-07T23:57:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on October 15th 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Now that the Republican Party’s field of presidential candidates finally looks complete, I guess it’s about time for me to begin analyzing these presidential hopefuls’ chances of winning the Republican nomination and then discuss how I think they would fare against President Obama in the November 2012 general election if they were the Republican nominee.
But before I begin discussing the next American Presidential election, I want to use today’s column to discuss the most recent Nobel Peace Prize recipients. So fresh on the heels of my previous columns about the un-liberal democracies that I am worried might emerge in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, I want to acknowledge the Nobel Peace Prizes that were just awarded to Ms. Tawakul Karman, a democracy and human rights activist who has been at the forefront of the Arab Spring protests in Yemen, as well as to Leymah Gbowee, a peace activist who organized women to help bring an end to war in Liberia, and the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first democratically elected woman President of an African nation.
Given the fact that prior to this year 85 men but only 12 women had ever been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I thought it was more than appropriate that 3 more women were finally recognized for their courageous work on behalf of peace, democracy and women’s rights by the Nobel Peace Prize committee. While I do not dispute the worthiness of any of the 85 men previously awarded this honour, I also firmly believe that women should have won a lot more than 15% of the Nobel Peace Prizes awarded since 1901.
Although I am somewhat familiar with Ms. Gbowee’s work organizing women from different ethnic and religious backgrounds to bring an end to Liberia’s civil war and Ms. Sirleaf’s contributions to democratic governance in Liberia, as a fellow journalist I must confess that I am much more familiar with Tawakul Karman’s work. As a young mother of 3 children, Ms. Karman first began advocating for women’s rights and journalistic freedom back in 2003. Ms. Karman then founded Women Journalists Without Chains in 2005 as a part of her effort to obtain greater freedom of expression in Yemen and other countries on the Arabian peninsula.
In fact I actually had the privilege of meeting with Ms. Karman several years ago, in her capacity as the head of Women Journalists Without Chains, and discussing the aims of her organization with her. I must say that I was also extremely impressed by Ms. Karman’s willingness to risk her life in her ongoing efforts to obtain press freedom and greater civil rights for women in Yemen. Please note that long before this year’s Arab Spring uprisings began, Ms. Karman was organizing and leading demonstrations by journalists against censorship as well as protests on behalf of women’s rights and freedoms at the Girl’s College of Sana’a University.
In my previous columns I expressed my concerns about the true intentions of many Islamic political parties and my fear that if they gain power they will impose a ‘tyranny of the majority’ on minority ethnic and religious groups. A hopeful counterpoint to my concerns about these Islamic political parties is the fact that while Ms. Karman is also a member of Yemen’s Islamic Islah Party, she has never hesitated to criticize Islamic religious extremists.
Furthermore, even though Ms. Karman is a socially conservative Muslim woman, she removed her veil at a human rights conference in 2004 and no longer wears one because it was getting in the way of what she wanted to accomplish. Still, Ms. Karman does not advocate that other Muslim women should also remove their veils, only that they should do so if they want to.
So based on what I know about this Nobel Peace Prize recipient, if Islamic political parties decide to embrace the values of women like Tawakul Karman, then maybe my fears about a ‘tyranny of the majority’ taking hold in Arab democracies will prove to be unfounded.

The Tyranny of the Majority

2011-10-07T23:56:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on October 1st 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

I closed my last column by expressing my concern is that with no judicial institutions to protect the rights of minorities, the flowers of freedom that have bloomed in countries like Egypt and Tunisia during the ‘Arab Spring’ will be trampled by the ‘tyranny of the majority’. But I am also concerned that many of us in the Western news media who have grown up in liberal democratic societies do not fully appreciate the important role that strong electoral and judicial institutions play in protecting the rights of minorities from the ‘tyranny of the majority’.
So today I will discuss some of the more specific concerns that both I and many other citizens living in the nations of North Africa and Middle East have about what might happen in their countries if and or when protesters succeed in toppling their authoritarian regimes. But I want to begin by first noting that India is the only nation with a significant Muslim population that also has a long history of liberal democracy experience. Furthermore, according to Freedom Watch, Indonesia and Mali (I would also include Malaysia) are the only majority Muslim countries that currently enjoy the political freedoms we associate with liberal democracies.
However, even though liberal democratic political governance is a rarity in majority Muslim nations, I disagree with those Islamosceptics who argue that Islam is somehow incompatible with the citizen equality principles of liberal democracy. The arguments I hear most often in America and Europe are that most Muslims either harbor a desire to live in a society based on the Sharīʿah religious law of Islam or wish to be governed by a religious political authority al-Qaeda refers to as the ‘grand caliphate’ that will enforce Sharīʿah.
I have no doubt that the pseudo-religious political extremists in al-Qaeda and Hizb ut-Tahrir (the Party of Liberation), as well as many of the less extreme Muslims who support the Muslim Brotherhood, have a desire to be governed according to Islamic law. But I also know there are Jewish extremists who wish their societies were governed by the Halakha laws of the Torah and Christian extremists who believe Biblical laws should hold sway. In other words every religion has at least some adherents who believe their holy texts should be taken literally rather than interpreted within the context of the time when they were originally written.
No. I argue that the majority of modern Muslims are actually no different than the majority of modern Christians and Jews in that they believe their democratic societies’ civil and criminal laws should be drafted by their elected officials in accord with their national constitutions instead of the ancient texts of their respective religious faiths. In fact, if our modern laws were actually based on these ancient religious texts, then those of us who curse God or any children who curse their parents would all be condemned to death for these criminal ‘offences’.
This is why, in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’ upheavals that have already toppled the authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and threaten to do so in Syria, I believe most middle class Muslims in these nations share my concerns about the ethnic, political and societal instability that will result from attempting to establish liberal democracies in nations that do not have the institutional foundations or experience needed for effective democratic governance.
Middle class Muslims are afraid because they know Islamist groups will probably win the first democratic elections since they are better organized than the secular young activists who led and promoted the ‘Arab Spring’ protests. But despite assurances from Islamist groups that they will draft constitutions that promote an open-minded and peaceful version of Islam that does not discriminate against ethnic and religious minority groups, many Muslims seriously doubt this.
Middle class Muslims are afraid because they have seen the sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq after Hussein was toppled and the burning of Coptic Churches after Mubarak was driven from power in Egypt by Salafists who espouse the intolerant Wahhabist version of Islam. I hope I’m wrong, but based on what has happened thus far, I simply don’t believe that the kind of democracies that will emerge in the Arab world in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’ will bear much resemblance to the liberal democracy that the ‘Arab Spring’ protesters were hoping for.

Are the Arab Spring nations ready for democracy

2011-10-07T23:54:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on September 15th 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

While I was watching the first nationally televised Republican Presidential debate involving all of the major Republican contenders (except for Sarah Palin?), I couldn’t help but wonder how this quadrennial American election ritual would play out if it was also conducted in all other nations around the world. But while I could envision similar exercises of democracy occurring in Europe, I had much more difficulty imagining civil democratic debates like this happening in the so called ‘Arab Spring’ nations of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.
The nations mentioned as part of the ‘Arab Spring’ come to mind because most of the activists involved in protests that toppled the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and most recently (with the help of NATO) the Gaddafi regime in Libya, seem to believe that democracy will solve their nations’ problems. So since I have also been discussing America’s partisan democratic political paralysis in my most recent columns, I thought it would be appropriate to spend some time discussing both the promise and the pitfalls of democratic political governance.
Make no mistake, I have been and always will be a staunch advocate of liberal political democracy, a political governance system where all citizens not only have the right to vote in free and fair elections, but also have equal rights in all other areas of daily life. I also count myself as fortunate to have been born and raised in a nation that was the world’s pioneer in developing the concept of liberal democracy and promoting the use of it in other countries.
But having said that, I must also say that I believe liberal democracy really only works in nations that have also established the strong judicial and electoral institutions that are required for liberal democracy to be an effective political governance system for all of those nations’ citizens. These institutions ensure that decisions made by the majority in liberal democracy political systems do not place the interests of the majority of citizens above the interests of dissenting individuals, thus effectively oppressing citizens who happen to be in the minority.
The renowned French historian and political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville discussed this very scenario in his book, On Democracy in America. In a chapter entitled, “The Tyranny of the Majority”, Tocqueville observed that the separation of powers defined in the American Constitution was designed to limit the power of the majority within America’s government while the individual citizen rights cited in the American Bill of Rights placed legal limits on the decisions made by citizen majorities in order to prevent them from oppressing minorities.
While the democratically elected American Congress operates under the same democratic principle of ‘majority rule’ that parliamentary democracies do, thanks to the separation of powers the separately elected American President still has the power to prevent legislation approved by a majority of members of Congress from becoming law. As a result, the political party with a majority in Congress cannot pass new laws or change existing ones without the consent of the President. The majority political party can more easily pass laws when the President is a member of the same party, but in practice the President is quite often a member of the minority party.
However, there have also been times in America’s history when both Congress and the President have approved of laws or refused to change laws that infringed on the rights of individuals or groups that were a part of the electoral minority. In these instances, laws that had the support of the majority of citizens were challenged by those in the minority and subsequently rejected by judges who were members of America’s independently appointed judicial system.
But America isn’t unique in having a politically independent judiciary that protects the rights of minorities since this is a defining characteristic of many parliamentary democracies. My concern is that with no judicial institutions to protect the rights of minorities, the flowers of freedom that bloomed during the ‘Arab Spring’ will be trampled by the ‘tyranny of the majority’.

What do Americans want their government to do

2011-10-07T23:44:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on September 1st 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

I closed my last column by observing that Congressional Republicans are putting their selfish personal political interests ahead of their country by pandering to no-compromise Tea Party activists in order to get re-elected. However, Republicans in Congress are not the only ones pandering to narrow minded, right wing interest groups in a bid to win elections. Almost all of the Republican Presidential candidates are also tripping over each other in an effort to appease Tea Party members as well as Christian fundamentalists. So what does this mean going forward?
In the more distant future, the impact is positive because it means the 2012 Republican Presidential candidate will in all likelihood endorse public policies and ideological positions that appeal to the extremist elements that currently control the Republican Party. However, as a consequence, American voters will also have a clear choice between either voting for a backward looking Republican Presidential candidate with a right wing political agenda or voting to re-elect a Democratic President with a much more forward looking and centrist legislative program.
Unfortunately the near term effect is decidedly negative because it means the partisan political paralysis in Washington DC, which almost lead to a historic default on America’s debt, will continue for at least another 18 months. With a national election looming, Republican candidates, whether they are running for Congress or for President, will be loathe to compromise with their Democratic counterparts on legislation that will address America’s anemic economic recovery and stubbornly high unemployment or the country’s bloated federal budget deficit.
Furthermore, even after the 2012 elections, any real action on these issues will still be contingent on the results of those elections. I believe Standard & Poor’s cut America’s AAA debt rating because its analysts agree with me that Republicans will not be able to win both the 2012 Presidential election and the 60 seats in the Senate they need so they will no longer have to compromise with Democrats after 2012. Given the fact that Republicans are unlikely to compromise regardless of the 2012 election results, a political solution for America’s debt problems also appears to be unlikely for at least one or two more election cycles.
Granted, as a part of the ‘deal’ Congressional Republicans and Democrats made with President Obama in order to avoid a bond default, a Congressional ‘Supercommittee’ will be created this month to decide by November 23 how America will cut more than $1.2 trillion of its debt. But given the Republican Party’s unwillingness to compromise, I seriously doubt that the 6 Republican and 6 Democratic members of this ‘Supercommittee’ will ever be able to agree on $1.2 trillion in budget cuts. Furthermore, even if they do reach an agreement by 23 November, both the Democratic controlled Senate and the Republican led House of Representatives will debate the ‘Supercommittee’s recommendations until Christmas or well into the New Year.
But the ‘Supercommittee’s’ budget cuts really only address the federal budget deficit over the next decade. In the meantime, Congress still has to approve the budget for the upcoming 2012 fiscal year which begins in October. Since Congress didn’t approve the 2011 budget until April of this year due to Republican intransigence, it is likely we will see more partisan political wrangling and the possibility of another government shutdown just in time for Christmas.
If the ‘Supercommittee’ is unable to agree on $1.2 trillion in budget cuts or if Congress does not approve the cuts it recommends, this will trigger automatic budget cuts for all US domestic programs as well as for the Defense Department. But as Standard & Poor’s noted, they downgraded America’s AAA debt rating because these cuts don’t demonstrate any significant progress by America’s dysfunctional Republican Party towards balancing America’s books.
So it will be up to America’s voters to decide what our government’s role in stimulating the economy and protecting the needs of its citizens should be when the cast their votes in 2012. I remain cautiously optimistic that they will choose more wisely than they did in 2010.

Republicans Put Re-election Ahead of Their Country

2011-08-06T20:19:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on August 15th 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

In my last column I accused Republicans of ‘kicking the can down the road’ by using a bit of legislative sleight of hand to allow an increase in America’s debt ceiling without agreeing to a plan to address the deficit.
While I applaud the fact that cooler heads within the Republican ranks were able to come up with a way to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a bond default, I nonetheless condemn Republicans for their failure to embrace a plan to take action on the ballooning federal budget deficit in conjunction with raising America’s debt ceiling. By failing to act responsibly to address the budget deficit Republicans in the US House of Representatives have shown that their real priority is getting re-elected rather than doing what is best for their country.
On the other hand, in the US Senate a coalition of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats put partisan politics aside and drafted a very pragmatic agreement which used a combination of tax increases and spending cuts to cut the current 14 trillion dollar deficit by more than 4 trillion dollars over the next decade. The Senators used the recommendations of President Obama’s bi-partisan deficit reduction panel as a blueprint for developing their own plan to address the nation’s budget deficit while protecting America’s social welfare programs.
In contrast to the uncompromising ‘no tax increases’ stance of House Republicans, Republican Senators agreed with their Democratic Party counterparts that an increase in taxes was an essential part of any practical plan to cut the nation’s deficit. However, the Senate Republicans did not endorse President Obama’s proposal to let the Bush tax cuts for wealthier Americans making over $250,000 per year expire in 2013. Instead they proposed to raise over one trillion dollars in new tax revenues by drastically changing the US tax code.
The US Senate plan proposes to raise tax revenues by eliminating almost all of the current tax deductions and subsidies and then lowering tax rates for all levels of household income. In turn, middle class and lower income households would see their taxes reduced or remain the same while wealthier Americans would see their taxes rise even though their tax rate was lowered because they are the primary beneficiaries of the current tax deductions.
The Senate plan also addresses the deficiencies in the America’s entitlement programs which are the biggest contributor to the budget deficit. The Senators would shore up America’s retiree healthcare program by using means tests and other cost saving measures to cut Medicare costs and would change the way cost of living increases are computed, increase contributions and raise the retirement age in order to ensure that the Social Security program remains self supporting for the next 75 years. The plan would also cut spending by eliminating agricultural and ethanol subsidies and by trimming the budgets of all federal agencies including the budget of the Republican Party’s most sacred cow; the US Defense Department.
Both the Senate and President Obama’s proposals to reduce America’s budget deficit rightly spread the pain of spending cuts and tax increases across all segments of American society. But both plans also lean heavily on spending cuts rather than tax increases to close the budget gap with roughly 85% of the measures reducing expenditures and only 15% raising taxes. As such one would think Republicans would be happy to accept such a tax friendly compromise.
So why do House Republicans refuse to compromise and accept some small tax increases as part of a deal to cut the budget deficit and raise the debt ceiling? Do they really think Republicans will win both the 2012 Presidential election and the 60 seats in the Senate they need so they will no longer have to compromise with Democrats after 2012? No. Congressional Republicans are putting their selfish personal political interests ahead of their country by pandering to no-compromise Tea Party activists in order to get re-elected.

Legislative Sleight of Hand

2011-08-06T20:15:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on August 1st 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

In my last column I discussed some of the misconceptions Tea Party activists and the ‘debtors’ have regarding raising America’s debt ceiling. But what dismays me even more is the fact that the Republican Majority leader, Eric Cantor, and the Republicans in Congress who are catering to these anti-tax right wing voters, refuse to challenge the ‘debtors’ utterly false notions.
The US Chamber of Commerce, a frequent foe of many of President Obama’s legislative proposals, as well as many American CEOs have spent much of the past year holding numerous educational meetings with members of Congress who are opposed to raising the debt ceiling. In these meetings they have repeatedly warned lawmakers of the adverse impact a US Treasury bond ‘default’ will have on America’s deficit as well as both the American and global economy.
More specifically, they have warned Congress that failing to raise America’s debt ceiling will not only lead to an increase in the interest America pays on its future bonds, but that these increased interest payments will also add to America’s budget deficit rather than reduce it. They have also warned legislators that an increase in the interest rate for US Treasury bonds, also known as ‘T-bills’, will do serious damage to America’s still fragile economic recovery.
This is due to the fact that the interest rates consumers pay for auto and home loans as well as their credit cards is tied to the interest rate paid on T-bills. Furthermore, the ripple effect of an increase in T-bill interest rates also extends to the interest rates businesses pay on the bank loans they use to finance their businesses as well as the corporate bonds they issue to finance expansions of their business operations. These higher interest rates have a chilling effect on the American economy because they leave consumers and businesses with less money to spend.
Economists from across the political spectrum have warned that a Treasury bond default will probably push the American and global economy back into a recession since the resulting higher interest rates act like a tax increase. Higher interest charges amount to a tax increase for American consumers and businesses with outstanding loans because they reduce the amount of money available to purchase goods and services as well as the money available to pay wages.
While the rise of developing economies in China and India has reduced the world’s reliance on the American economy as the sole engine of global economic growth, the fact remains that the American economy is still the world’s largest economy. America is not only China and India’s largest trading partner; it is also the largest or second largest destination for exports from the EU and Japan as well as many other developed and developing countries. As such, when America sneezes (economically), the rest of the world still catches a nasty cold.
Despite the pleas of economists and business executives to Republicans in the House of Representatives that they stop playing Russian Roulette with the American and global economy by refusing to raise America’s debt ceiling, lawmakers like Eric Cantor persist in doing so. They also know full well that more than 60% of America’s current debt bill is due to budget deficits Republicans ran up during better economic times to finance things like tax cuts for wealthier Americans, a prescription drug benefit for American retirees and the Iraq war.
Fortunately for holders of American bonds, less ideological Republicans have crafted a compromise measure to avoid a bond ‘default’. Thanks to a bit of legislative sleight of hand, Republicans in Congress will appease their Tea Party activists by voting against an increase in the debt ceiling. This will make President Obama solely responsible for increasing America’s debt ceiling when he vetoes their bill. Unfortunately, this bit of legislative trickery also means Republicans have decided to kick the can down the road when it comes to dealing with America’s budget deficit.

The Debt Ceiling "Debate"?

2011-08-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on July 15th 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

The big debate currently underway here in the states is over raising the United States debt ceiling. Unfortunately, many Americans including some members of Congress don’t really understand what raising the debt ceiling is all about. So today I will attempt to explain what it really means and the ramifications for the American and global economy if Congress doesn’t take action to raise it by August 2nd.
Many Tea Party activists and Republican conservatives in Congress are under the mistaken belief that raising the US debt ceiling is like getting an increase of your credit card’s credit limit. Since the American federal government is already deeply in debt, they don’t want an increase in the debt ceiling because they are under the mistaken belief that they can hold the line at America’s current 14 trillion dollar level of debt. But these right wing ‘debtors’ have in fact replaced ‘birthers’ as the latest wave of conservative demagoguery that has no basis in fact.
What many Americans don’t understand is that the US Treasury sells American bonds worldwide and that these bonds mature at intervals ranging from one to twenty years. When the bonds do eventually mature the US government pays off the bondholders, many of whom are American citizens, and issues new bonds to sell to investors. By refusing to raise the debt ceiling Congress would in effect say the US Treasury department can no longer issue and sell new bonds to pay off the bonds issued 10 years ago when Republicans also controlled the White House. In other words the Republican Congress would be repudiating the debts it ran up in 2001
The ‘debtors’ are also under the mistaken belief that if America doesn’t pay off bondholders when their bonds mature that this won’t have any impact on them or the American economy. Since America has never defaulted on any of its sovereign debt during its two hundred plus years history, the ‘debtors’ say President Obama’s predictions of severe consequences for America’s economic recovery are wrong even though they can’t find a single economist or business CEO who agrees with them. In other words, the ‘debtors’ and their supporters in Congress are just like their ‘birther’ cousins in that they don’t like to be confused with facts.
Although the ‘debtors’ and their allies in Congress are correct in their belief that America has never defaulted on its debts, there was an incident back in 1979 that gives us some idea of what will happen if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling and we do default on August 2nd.
Back in 1979 America actually went into what was called a ‘technical default’ when the government simply failed to pay off about 120 million dollars worth of US Treasury Bonds. This brief ‘technical default’ wasn’t because the debt ceiling needed to be raised or because of disagreements between Republicans and Democrats over the federal budget. It happened because of some computer system failures at the US Treasury Department that resulted in thousands of bondholders not receiving their checks until a few days after the computer snafu was discovered.
But even though this was a ‘technical default’ due to computer system failures rather than political discord, America still paid a heavy price for this default. For the next six months following this brief 120 million dollar ‘technical default’, the interest rate America was obligated to pay on new bonds it issued was a full ½ percent higher than the interest rate it paid on bonds issued in the six months before the default.
Now ½ percent additional interest may not seem like a lot, but when your debt is at 14 trillion dollars, that works out to about 4 billion dollars more per day in interest. In other words, if the ‘debtors’ get their way, America will only get deeper into debt.

What does the future hold for Israel and Palestine

2011-08-06T20:04:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on July 1st 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Today I want to turn my focus away from President O’Bama and his recent trip to Europe and discuss the world’s longest running conflict, the ongoing disagreement between Israelis and Palestinians over the future of Israel and Palestine.
Middle East adviser, Aaron Miller says that “In an existential conflict driven by memory, identity, religion and national trauma, the Israeli and Palestinian capacities to absorb and inflict pain are limitless.” The Islamic world has become a breeding ground for terrorists because Muslim sympathies for the plight of Palestinians, fuels the popular anti-American sentiments which drives recruits to al-Qaeda and its affiliated terrorist organizations.
On one side you have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who represents a brand of Zionism that portrays Jews as eternal victims and uses this as an excuse to brook no sympathy for Palestinians who lived in parts of present day Israel for centuries.
So when President O’Bama publicly stated his support for using the pre-1967 Arab-Israeli War boundaries as the starting point for negotiations over the boundaries for a Palestinian homeland, Netanyahu quickly jumped on his high horse and proceeded to lecture President O’Bama about why Israel needed more defensible borders than it had prior to 1967. Although many political observers thought Netanyahu’s lecturing was both unseemly and uncalled for, many Republican and Democratic politicians in Congress also chided President O’Bama for his remarks and gave Netanyahu a score of standing ovations when he gave a speech in Congress.
Politicians in Congress responded in this way because the lobbying influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is still very strong on Capitol Hill. But I think they are sadly mistaken if they believe kowtowing to AIPAC will win them any votes. While AIPAC has lurched to the right in defense of whatever Netanyahu proposes, American Jews under the age of 55 do not cast their votes based on America’s support for Israel. More than 75% of them vote Democratic and will continue to do so because they don’t agree with the Tea Party conservatives who currently dominate Republican Party politics.
On the other hand, representing the right wing of Palestinian politics we have a Hamas regime ostensibly concerned with establishing a homeland for Palestinians, when in fact what they really want is to establish an authoritarian regime along the lines of the one that currently rules Iran. The evidence of Hamas’ true intentions is already on display in Gaza where its internal security forces have been given free rein to bend dissident Palestinians to its will. For example when Palestinians protested that the taxes imposed by Hamas were adding to the burden of citizens most affected by the Israeli blockade they were rounded up and hauled off to jail.
So it is clear to this observer that Netanyahu and his right wing Israeli supporters as well as Hamas and its right wing Palestinian supporters actually have vested political interests in prolonging the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rather than settling it. Why? Because the ongoing Middle East conflict is used by both sides as a way to maintain their political power. While there is a middle ground here, both sides have shown that they will do whatever they can to crush anyone who advocates peaceful coexistence.
Juliano Mer-Khamis is a case in point. He was the Jewish son of Arna Mer-Khamis, a Zionist pioneer who later became a Palestinian rights activist. Juliano had rebuilt his mother’s performing arts workshop for Palestinian children in the West Bank town of Jenin, which the Israeli government bulldozed because they were using acting classes to teach Palestinian teens how to become more confident. Since Hamas also had no use for self confident Palestinians, a Hamas gunman permanently silenced Juliano by shooting him five times, thus ridding both sides of a mutual irritant. So much for the middle ground. If the Israeli government can’t silence you, Hamas will do the job for them.

America's 'free riding' European NATO allies

2011-06-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on June 15th 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

In my previous column about President O’Bama’s visit to Ireland, I mentioned that the primary purpose of President Obama’s other stops in the UK, France and Poland during his trip to Europe, was to reassure his European neighbours that America’s longstanding alliance with Europe was still very important to him. So today I’m going to discuss why America is also questioning Europe’s commitment to that same longstanding alliance.
Since Defense Secretary Robert Gates is retiring at the end of this month, he used his final trip to meet with his NATO counterparts in Brussels to take some of America’s European NATO allies to the proverbial ‘woodshed.’ Secretary Gates made his public remarks following two days of intense and even more critical private meetings with NATO representatives.
Secretary Gates used the recent NATO airstrikes on Libya to drive home his point that America’s European allies are not doing their fair share by noting that less half the NATO allies are engaged in Libya and less than a third are involved in the airstrikes. This is in spite of the fact that NATO ministers voted unanimously to launch air strikes to protect Libyan civilians from Khadafi. As a result, Gates said “The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country; yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference.”
Make no mistake, Secretary Gates remarks were not just another airing of private grievances by a soon to be retired American government official. His comments were a very accurate reflection of President O’Bama’s feelings as well as those of members of Congress from both parties and American voters, because President O’Bama and Congress are under increasing pressure to cut defense spending as part of a larger plan to rein in America’s budget deficits.
Secretary Gates noted that while America’s defense spending had doubled during the past decade, European defense spending had fallen by 15%. Secretary Gates then warned NATO that the American people and US Congress have a “dwindling appetite and patience for continuing to spend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.”
Since the purpose of his final trip was to discuss America’s plans to begin withdrawing American troops as well as NATO forces from Afghanistan, Secretary Gates also complimented Germany, France, Canada and the UK for increasing their troop commitments in line with America’s increase of military forces as part President O’Bama’s 2009 troop ‘surge.’ But Gates also noted that many NATO members rely on the US to provide helicopters to evacuate their wounded, yet place restrictions on where their forces can be deployed and if they can be used in combat despite pleas from America and other NATO allies for them to become more involved.
Nor is America alone in its thinking that many NATO allies are not carrying their own weight. NATO ministers from Canada, France and the UK also expressed their support for Secretary Gates critiques of NATO allies for not doing their part as members of the alliance during the two days of private consultations that preceded Secretary Gates public remarks. Many NATO allies like having the security blanket that being a member of NATO provides, but they are simply ‘free riders’ because they are unwilling to pay their share of the costs of membership.
Unfortunately for America, I don’t think the Secretary Gates blunt assessments will have much effect. Too many of our NATO allies have become complacent about defense issues ever since the ‘Iron Curtain’ was lifted. So as long as they do not feel any eminent security threats, I think they will continue to enjoy their ‘free ride’ at the expense of nations like France, Canada, the UK and America.

President O'Bama visits his ancestral home-Ireland

2011-06-13T08:46:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on June 1st 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Having already explained why I believe President Obama will win re-election in 2012 in my previous column, today I will discuss my impressions about his visit to Ireland last Monday.
To begin with I want to note that President Obama’s only public appearances on his weeklong European visit were the two he made in Ireland; his visit to his ancestral home in Moneygall and his public speech later that day at College Green in Dublin. Furthermore, the primary purpose of President Obama’s other stops in the UK, France and Poland, was to reassure his European neighbours that America’s longstanding alliance with Europe was still very important to him. But in the case of Ireland, President Obama and other Americans’ obvious affection for the ‘old sod’ made such reassurances totally unnecessary.
No, instead of seeking to reassure Ireland that it was still important to America, the real purpose of President Obama’s visit to the ‘Emerald Isle’ was to remind the Irish people of how important they are, not just to America, but to the rest of the world as well. He duly noted the fact that he is one of the more than forty million Americans with “blood links” to Ireland, thanks to over 150 years of Irish emigration to America, by joking to his audience that, “I’ve come home to find the apostrophe we lost somewhere along the way.”
But then President O’Bama (the Irish spelling of his name) went on to acknowledge Ireland’s broader contributions in the areas of food security, human rights and UN peacekeeping missions, by reminding everyone just how much Ireland also “punches above its weight” in the much larger global arena. I thought this was an excellent remark, because I think some Irish citizens may have forgotten this during the last three years of mind numbing economic recession.
President O’Bama’s speech on College Green included a message of hope for the future and solidarity with America. Just like you or I might tell an old friend going through tough times that we’re confident things will get better, President O’Bama told the Dublin crowd that “Ireland is a little country that inspires the biggest things. Your best days are still ahead.”
Then in an acknowledgement of America’s solidarity with Ireland and the Irish people, President O’Bama told the audience “Our greatest triumphs, in America and Ireland alike, are still to come.” He then closed his speech with a refrain that included the Irish translation of his Presidential campaign’s famous slogan, “Is féidir linn, yes we can! Is féidir linn, yes we can!”
Frankly, I was not at all surprised by President O’Bama’s rousing and inspiring speech to the assembled multitude on College Green. The President’s oratorical and rhetorical talents are both well known and well documented. I have also been fortunate enough to have been present for a few of his best speeches, some of which were very inspirational, while others, such as his 2009 Presidential Inaugural Address, were much more sobering.
But as an American who has also been a keen observer of President O’Bama’s demeanor and behavior in a variety of triumphant as well trying moments, I was struck by how relaxed and at home the President seemed to be throughout his entire visit. I observed some of this in person at College Green and witnessed the other moments courtesy of the wall to wall television coverage the President’s day long visit received.
Maybe I’m totally wrong about this and I was only seeing a great acting performance in front of the ever present TV cameras by President O’Bama. Regardless, I still had a very palpable sense that the President was in fact very relaxed and at ease while he was here in Ireland, more so in fact, than at any other time I have seen him since he became President.
Even before he was elected President, I never saw President O’Bama wade into a crowd of onlookers shaking hands and hoisting babies with the same kind of sheer joy and abandonment that I saw him display on the streets of Moneygall. Furthermore, although I have seen President O’Bama order and drink a beer before, I have never seen the President order another round and make a point of paying for it. Was that simply a reflection of the taste of a Guinness or of a man who felt at home even though he was among strangers?
But President O’Bama also appeared to be just as relaxed and among ‘old friends’ when I observed his behavior following his speech at College Green. He didn’t just spend the obligatory time shaking hands and posing for pictures with the guests on the stage behind him. He then went down to the crowd and shook hands with as many people as he could there as well. Indeed, time seems to stand still when you are truly at home and with your friends.

Why President Obama will win re-election in 2012

2011-04-25T12:34:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on May 15th 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Even though the 2012 US Presidential and Congressional elections are still 18 months away, Republicans actually began their 2012 political campaigns just after the 112th Congress was sworn into office on January 3rd of this year.
First, on the heels of their November mid-term election victories, the leader of Republicans in the US Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell said “that our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term in office.” Congressional Republicans then proceeded to propose and pass a series of bills to cut spending and enact their social conservative agenda instead of measures designed to reduce unemployment and spur the American economy.
Even though none of their spending bills had any hope of being passed by the US Senate, Republicans continued to reject attempts by President Obama to enact a federal budget for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year that would eliminate a smaller amount of federal spending. The end result was a series of small spending cut measures that did nothing to reduce unemployment, but instead threatened to shut down the federal government and damage America’s fragile economic recovery in the process.
Although President Obama truly desired to work with Republicans in crafting bi-partisan solutions to America’s economic and budget deficit problems, he is also a realist when it comes to politics. So after Republicans spent the first three months of their term rejecting attempts at bi-partisan compromise, President Obama decided that since Republicans only cared about defeating him in 2012, he would announce he was seeking re-election 19 months before Election Day.
But despite his many attempts to strike a compromise with Republicans, many Americans nonetheless blame President Obama, at least in part, for the gridlock that currently envelops Washington DC, instead of just the Republicans who refuse to compromise with the President. This is a reflection of the fact that many Americans don’t really understand the constraints our Constitution places on their President’s power. The President can veto laws that he doesn’t support, but is also powerless to force Congress to pass the laws America needs to address its problems.
So if President Obama is to succeed in his quest to win re-election in 2012, one of the most important tasks for the President and his campaign team is to educate American voters about the difficulty of running a country when his opponents’ top priority is preventing him from doing so. Many Americans, including myself, have long believed that a divided government leads to more bi-partisan and effective laws and policies. But this belief is also based on our assumption that politicians on both sides will be willing to strike a compromise.
However one of the main disadvantages of a divided government is the inability of the government to function effectively if politicians on one side determine they have more to gain politically by not compromising with their political opponents. Since the Tea Party movement doesn’t believe in making compromises, Republicans, who were elected to Congress in 2010 thanks to their support, believe they have more to gain by opposing President Obama than they do by compromising with him for the sake of our country.
But in addition to painting his Republican opponents in Congress as obstructionists more interested in advancing their Tea Party supporters right wing political agenda, the President’s other task is to compare and contrast his more ‘compassionate’ vision of America with the Republican and Tea Party movement’s more selfish and self serving vision of America. The President wisely began painting this picture of his vision versus that of his Republican opponents soon after he announced he was running for re-election last month.
Since the winner of American Presidential elections is decided by the votes of moderate, independent or swing voters rather than the more liberal and conservative voters who form the core of the Democratic and Republican parties, it is important that the President spend as much time as he can between now and the 2012 election painting the Republican Party as one that is dominated by hard line conservatives. By doing this it is more likely than not that the swing voters President Obama will need to win re-election will view whoever the Republicans nominate to run against him as an extension of the party’s right wing base.
Because the President will not have any viable Democratic opponents to run against in the 2012 Democratic primaries, he will also be able to conserve his campaign funds for the General Election. On the other hand President Obama’s Republican opponent will not only have to spend a lot of money waging a campaign to win the Republican Party’s nomination, but will also have to go on the record in favour of political positions that appeal to the Tea Party movement, but are a turnoff to many of America’s more moderate independent voters.
If President Obama succeeds in portraying Republicans in Congress as obstructionists and their candidate for President as beholden to the right wing views of the Republican base, then it won’t matter who his Republican Presidential opponent is because President Obama will win the independent voters as well as the national popular vote.
But the more important electoral calculus is winning at least 270 electoral votes. If President Obama succeeds in winning the same 28 states he won in 2008, then he will finish with 359 electoral votes. 17 of these are solidly Democratic states that guarantee him 229 votes and President Obama won another 7 states with 53 electoral votes by large margins ranging from 6% to 14%. Since these states are unlikely to swing back to a Republican, even if his Republican opponent is able to win all the big swing states like Florida, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina that Obama carried in 2008, President Obama still wins the electoral vote by a margin of 282 to 256.
So although a lot can change in 18 months, this is why I predict President Obama will win re-election in 2012.

Why won't these 'children' just compromise?

2011-04-25T12:32:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on May 1st 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

In order to understand why the US Congress and President Obama are finding it so difficult to reach a bi-partisan consensus on how to address America’s budget deficit problems, one first needs to understand the political parties’ respective voter constituencies.
Because most Republicans in Congress represent districts and states that are in predominately suburban or rural areas of the United States, a majority of their constituents also tend to be older members of America’s white ethnic majority. Many of these citizens are also retired and rely on government funded entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, as well as supplemental income from private employer pensions and healthcare plans, to provide for their pension and healthcare needs. So for these voters, America’s current high level of unemployment isn’t the problem; maintaining their current lifestyles is.
Although unemployment also tends to be lower than the national average in these suburban or rural districts and states, this is not the case in all areas of the country. In a number of Midwestern states such as Michigan, Ohio and Indiana the loss of higher paying manufacturing jobs has led to higher levels of unemployment. These job losses have in turn had ripple effects on the retail, restaurant and service businesses that once catered to the needs of these workers, leading to even more job losses in these local economic sectors.
But most of the jobs that have been lost in the manufacturing and service sectors of the economies in these districts and states also did not require a college education. As a result, many of the unemployed people living there lack the education needed to acquire better paying jobs in America’s more service oriented economy. Many of them are also either unwilling to move to other areas of the country for a job or unable to do so because they can’t sell their homes in America’s still depressed housing market. So confronted with either going back to school to get a university degree or accepting a lower paying job in the service sector, these workers react by becoming angry and frustrated with America’s political leaders.
Although white Americans still make up a majority of American voters and hold a diminished but still privileged position in American society when they are compared as a group with other ethnic minorities, their grasp on electoral and economic power has been eroding for quite some time. But rather than accept this as an inevitable consequence of life in a vibrant multicultural society, many older and less educated whites are looking for someone and or something to blame. Seeking to take advantage of their discontent, Republicans in turn blame Democrats since younger, better educated whites and members of America’s minority ethnic groups also tend to vote for Democrats like President Obama.
But even though the balance of power in Congress, as well as the US Presidency, has been shifting between the Democratic and Republican political parties for years, members of both parties have historically compromised with their political opponents in order to pass important legislation. So why can’t the current Congress muster the bi-partisan support that has always been used in past to pass important legislation like our nation’s annual budgets?
The answer lies in the way most state’s Congressional districts have been gerrymandered every ten years by the Republican or Democratic parties that are in power in those states. When US Congressional districts are redesigned, the new districts are designed to favor the incumbent legislators of their party. Since the conservative Republicans or liberal Democrats elected from these districts no longer have to worry about swing voters, they are also less inclined to compromise and pass the bi-partisan legislation that America needs.
But the gridlock in Congress also makes President Obama look like an ineffective leader. So next week I will discuss how President Obama can overcome the legislative gridlock induced by Congressional Republicans and win re-election in 2012.

Now is not the time to cut federal spending

2011-04-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on April 15th 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

As I mentioned in previous columns, the Republican Party seems to be enamored of the German austerity diet as a cure for America’s budget obesity. So today I want to explore some more prudent methods than the German austerity diet or starting another world war that economists believe will trim America’s bloated budget deficit without hurting its economy.
Led by an incoming class of 87 new members, most of who campaigned on a promise to their Tea Party supporters that they would cut federal spending, House Republicans continue to claim that their proposed budget cuts will actually help the economy. They also argue that the Obama and Bush administrations’ economic stimulus measures and bank bailouts didn’t work because the US unemployment rate soared to almost ten percent, well above the eight percent mark these measures were supposed to cap unemployment at.
The problem with these Republican arguments is that virtually no economists agree with them. An independent analysis of the Republican spending cuts conducted by Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, who was also an economic advisor to Republican Presidential candidate John McCain in the 2008 election campaign, predicts that they will reduce America’s economic growth by .5% this year and .2% next year. Another analysis by economists at Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs forecasts that the effect will be even worse, reducing US economic growth by 2% and producing 700,000 fewer jobs this year.
Furthermore, economists around the country almost universally agree that America’s economic recession would have been far worse and the unemployment rate much higher had it not been for the government’s bank bailouts and other economic stimulus measures.
But Republicans dismiss these reports as well as the analysis of the effects of their spending cuts on early education programs like Head Start and Pell Grants for students pursuing university degrees provided by economists at the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Not surprisingly however, Republicans have also failed to come up with any independent economic analysis of their budget proposals that supports their claims that these spending cuts will help the economy and spur the creation of jobs in the private sector.
Republicans in Congress, as well as the slew of potential Republican presidential candidates currently trying to drum up support for their 2012 political campaigns, also bash Obama for the growth of jobs in the federal government and the public sector as a whole. They contend that 200,000 people have been added to the reducing federal payroll since Obama became President and that cutting these jobs will bring down unemployment by fostering the creation of more private sector jobs.
But these claims don’t jive with the facts. Since President Obama took office in January 2009, the federal government has actually only added 58, 000 jobs and most of these were jobs in Homeland Security and Defence, two departments that Republicans don’t want to cut back. Furthermore, during those same two years more than 400,000 public sector jobs have been cut by state and local governments, raising unemployment by .35%.
As an economic conservative I am acutely aware of the long term consequences of failing to rein in America’s ballooning federal budget deficit. A full economic recovery in America will not come close to accomplishing this task, which will still require a painful combination of both tax increases and spending cuts.
But given the still fragile state of America’s economic recovery, I believe the Republican Party’s proposals to cut federal spending immediately will be just as counterproductive as President Roosevelt’s austerity measures were back in 1937, and Germany and the UK’s austerity measures are today.
Though less emotionally satisfying, the more prudent economic course of action than an austerity diet is to wait until the economy is creating enough jobs to bring down unemployment before implementing the combination of tax increases and spending cuts required to bring our budget deficit under control. Now isn’t the time to cut spending.

Is an austerity diet the answer?

2011-04-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on April 1st 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

When Senate Republicans in last year’s Congress refused to allow a vote on President Obama’s 2011 federal government budget they essentially set the stage for the political theatrics currently on display in Washington DC. They were hoping that their party would gain control of the US House of Representatives in the mid-term elections and increase their leverage on President Obama. But despite their success in achieving this objective, at least three of those same Senate Republicans subsequently voted against the ridiculous spending bill their Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives sent them last month.
So given the fact that they can’t get the support of other Republicans in the Senate for their budget cutting proposals, what explains the irresponsible political behavior of House Republicans in continuing to push for spending cuts that have no hope of becoming law? I believe the political stew Republicans have been dining on the past two years is the culprit.
For starters, many Congressional Republicans have convinced themselves that the latest government budget fad diet called ‘German austerity’ is the answer for our national government’s ‘obesity’. Then to make it more palatable to Republicans who doubt the wisdom of this fad diet, Tea Party activists have liberally sprinkled it with their homegrown flavorings of fear that Republicans who don’t adhere to this diet will lose their seats in the next Congress. The final ingredient in this stew is the rather tasty prospect of even more power for Republicans in Congress if they succeed in beating Obama at the polls in 2012.
As a lifelong Republican and economic conservative, I can understand why so many Republicans think the German austerity diet sounds so appealing. But even though the idea of balancing our national government’s budget holds great emotional appeal for me, I believe the rationale for doing so must also be based on realistic economic principles; not emotions.
To that end, I will now discuss some of the fallacies that I believe underlie the myth that the German austerity diet is the best way to cure the economic ills which currently bedevil America as well as most of the world’s other more developed nations.
This myth had its roots in the economic recovery Germany experienced during the first half of last year. Commentators here in Europe and much of the rest of the world cited this as evidence that the more modest economic stimulus measures Germany had implemented in 2009 were the answer to the economic malaise that still gripped America and most other countries in Europe.
But ever since Germany’s growth slowed sharply in the second half of last year those same commentators have been noticeably silent. The cold hard economic facts are that once Germany’s modest economic stimulus measures had run their course, the German economy stagnated. As a result, Germany’s economic output is still well below the level it achieved before the 2008 financial meltdown and the onset of the 2009 global economic recession.
But the current economic situation in the UK, another country that adopted the German austerity diet, is even worse than that in Germany. The UK is actually now on the brink of experiencing the dreaded ‘double dip’ recession, thanks in large part to the Tory government’s tax increases that will soon be exacerbated by even larger spending cuts.
Furthermore, the history of post recession austerity measures underscores the fallacy of trying to move quickly to balance a government’s books. In his first presidential election Franklin Roosevelt repeatedly called for a balanced federal budget so, following his re-election, President Roosevelt moved to balance the government’s budget in 1937. This lead to another economic recession in an economy that was still weak from the Great Depression and what actually ended up saving the US economy was the industrial growth caused by World War II.
But in my next column I’ll discuss some more prudent economic alternatives than another world war.

The perils of divided government

2011-04-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on March 15th 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Two weeks ago, America’s divided national government averted a federal government shutdown when Congressional Republicans and Democrats reached agreement on some relatively minor spending cuts to the President’s 2011 budget. But the reality of this compromise was that politicians in both parties simply agreed to kick the can down the road for two weeks, thus setting the stage for another confrontation at the end of this week.
Now if you think the notion of funding your national government two weeks at a time sounds rather ridiculous, you would be correct. It is ridiculous! However, given the decidedly poisonous political atmosphere that currently pervades our nation’s capitol, it wouldn’t really come as much of a surprise to see this bi-monthly political brinksmanship continue until the end of this spring. That’s because some Republicans in Congress, despite all of their tough talk about reining in government spending, are afraid of how voters might react if the government shuts down because the President refuses to go along with their spending cuts.
The Speaker of the House, John Boehner, is a veteran Republican lawmaker who remembers what happened the last time a newly elected Republican majority in Congress tried to cram its budget cuts down the throat of a Democratic President. In 1995, and at the behest of putative 2012 Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, Republicans refused to compromise with President Bill Clinton on the federal budget. This led to non-essential government workers being furloughed and the suspension of non-essential services from November 14 through November 19, 1995 and December 16, 1995 to January 6, 1996.
Like their present day Republican counterparts, the Gingrich Republicans had wrested control of Congress from the Democrats in the 1994 mid-term elections and were determined to force President Clinton to accept their cuts in government spending. The Gingrich led Congressional Republicans also initially avoided a government shutdown by agreeing to a series of continuing resolutions to fund the US Government’s spending, essentially kicking the can down the road just like present day Republicans are.
However, in order to continue operating the federal government when it is running a budget deficit, Congress also needs to periodically increase the cap or ceiling on the total amount of US Government debt that the US Treasury is authorized to issue. Gingrich believed that if he and his Republican colleagues refused to raise the US debt ceiling, President Clinton would then be forced to cave in to their demands for spending cuts.

But President Clinton proved himself to be an adept poker player by calling the Gingrich Republicans’ bluff of refusing to raise the debt ceiling, thus causing the federal government shut down. Republicans tried to blame President Clinton for the consequences, which included over 200,000 passport applications that were not processed, the closure of 368 national parks and a halt to the cleanup of toxic waste disposal sites around the country.
But despite 2012 Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s continuing claims to have won this standoff, most Republicans grudgingly acknowledge that President Clinton won this poker game because Republicans eventually ended the budget and debt ceiling stand off on Clinton’s terms rather than on their terms. As a consequence, voters also blamed Gingrich and Congressional Republicans for a pointless cessation of government services and re-elected President Clinton by a resounding margin in the subsequent 1996 national elections.
But the current Republican majority in Congress includes 87 newly elected members who have no memory of what happened to Republicans sixteen years ago and who have also promised their Tea Party supporters that they will not compromise with President Obama. So although the Tea Party types are currently willing to go along with their wiser Republican counterparts in kicking the can down the road to avoid a government shutdown, they are also girding for a confrontation in June when the federal debt ceiling will have to be raised. I’ll discuss their fallacious reasoning next week.

The 2011 State of the Union Address

2011-04-25T12:24:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on March 1st 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Last week I closed my column by stating that even though President Obama offered Republicans in Congress another olive branch in his State of the Union address, I believe America is facing 2 years of political gridlock instead of the political compromises Obama acknowledges are required to address America’s budget deficit and unemployment problems.
During his State of the Union Address President Obama offered an olive branch saying, “Now is the time for both sides and both houses of Congress -- Democrats and Republicans -- to forge a principled compromise that gets the job done. If we make the hard choices now to rein in our deficits, we can make the investments we need to win the future.”
Unfortunately for America, the Republican majority that controls the US House of Representatives has demonstrated by their actions that they have no intention of striking any compromises. In the aftermath of the President’s request to “forge a principled compromise” Republicans responded with a clenched fist by voting to repeal the healthcare reform law. Since the repeal law had no chance of being approved by the Senate this was simply a slap in the President’s face as well as a brazen example of political grandstanding by Republicans.
Mind you, there are still some Republicans in Congress who are willing to try and work with the President to address our nation’s problems. Republicans in the Senate like Richard Lugar of Indiana, Olympia Snow of Maine and Orin Hatch of Utah. There are also some in the House of Representatives, but they dare not show their faces for fear of being challenged and defeated in their 2012 bids for re-election by Tea Party activists who will brook no compromise. Therein lies the problem; politicians who are afraid to compromise.
But as I have noted in previous columns, politics is all about the art of forging compromises. So what does it say about the state of politics in America if the legislative political leaders of one of the two main political parties are either unwilling or are too afraid to strike a compromise with their political opponents? This is a recipe for disaster known as ‘political gridlock’ and there are only two things that can loosen its grip on the US Congress; a national crisis like a foreign nation attacking America or another national election.
Since I don’t foresee such a national crisis happening anytime in the near future, it will therefore be up to America’s citizens to break up this political logjam with the votes they cast in the 2012 elections for the US Congress and for President. In other words, let the 2012 US national election campaign begin!
If you think twenty one months prior to Election Day is a tad early to begin a national election campaign, then you would be correct in this assessment. But this has become the reality of politics in America’s increasingly polarized political landscape. Truth be known, the Republicans’ battle plans for the next twenty one months were actually drawn up in the days immediately following the mid-term national elections.
Based on their November 2010 electoral successes, the Republican Congressional leaders’ political strategy was to compromise with the Democratic majority, in order to pass a few important pieces of legislation during in the lame duck session of Congress, and then revert back to being the ‘Party of No’ in January once they took the reins as the majority party in the US House of Representatives. Since most of the newly elected members of the Republican Congressional majority were members of the Tea Party movement, Republican leaders in Congress also knew compromise wasn’t in the cards for these legislators.
As a result, the 2011-2012 Congressional majority version of the ‘Party of No’ is only slightly different from its 2009-2010 minority predecessor. The minority version could vote against any and all of President Obama’s legislative proposals to address America’s economic and social woes secure in the knowledge that an economic disaster would still be averted because these proposals would eventually pass. The new Republican majority version will instead be content to pass bills like the one to repeal Obama’s healthcare reforms, but also secure in the knowledge the Senate will reject them.
Even though no reputable economists on either side of the political spectrum support this notion, Republicans in Congress continue to complain loudly that President Obama’s actions to rescue the American economy haven’t helped and have in fact made things worse. They disingenuously blame Obama’s economic rescue legislation for America’s high level of unemployment and ballooning budget deficit rather than the ruinous fiscal and regulatory policies of previous Republican presidential administrations and Congressional majorities.
So the Republican strategy while they control the House of Representatives for the next two years has now become crystal clear. It is to do precisely what President Obama asked them not to do in his State of the Union address when he pleaded; “Instead of re-fighting the battles of the last two years, let’s fix what needs fixing and move forward.”
The first Republican salvo in re-fighting past battles, was their bill to repeal Obama’ healthcare reform law. But even though America still remains evenly divided on this legislation, a healthy majority of those who are or were opposed to it also do not want to see it repealed, just amended. But Republicans aren’t interested in amending the healthcare law because they are afraid of the Tea Party movement that has taken over their party.
Historically, Americans have taken a liking to divided government because they believe it forces politicians on both sides to move to compromise. Obama also alluded to this in his speech when he said, “We will move forward together, or not at all, because the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.” Unfortunately, Republicans believe the way to win the 2012 elections is by putting their party and politics ahead of moving forward to address America’s problems. But they do so at our nation’s peril.

Reflections on President Obama's 1st 2 years

2011-04-25T12:22:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on February 15th 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Before I discuss my impressions regarding President Obama’s most recent 2011 State of the Union address, I think it would be instructive to reflect on the President’s performance during his first 2 years in office. I hope that by doing so my opinions, about both the tone and content of the President’s speech to Congress and America’s citizens; will be placed in their proper context.
It is important to note that when President Obama initially took office on January 20th 2009, America was in the throes of its worst economic crisis since the 1930’s Great Depression. Home prices were plunging and mortgage foreclosures rising in conjunction with deep cuts in consumer and business spending and ballooning unemployment rolls. Furthermore, President Obama had also inherited two foreign wars which the previous President and his Republican colleagues in Congress had chosen to finance with ever increasing amounts of deficit spending.
America was also grappling healthcare costs that were increasing rapidly, leaving some small businesses and middle class Americans unable to continue to fund their private healthcare insurance plans at a time when many Americans were also losing their jobs. Those ever increasing US medical bills were also driving up the costs of providing medical care for retired Americans, but instead of addressing this issue, the supposedly fiscally responsible Republicans simply added more fuel to the exploding federal budget deficit by providing a politically popular Medicare prescription drug benefit to retirees that was financed by still more deficit spending.
So Obama began his Presidency confronting a deepening economic recession with the added burden of a ballooning federal budget deficit that was exacerbated by years of Republican economic mismanagement. But most Congressional Republicans, still smarting from the shellacking they had taken in the 2008 General Election, were in no mood to try to work with President Obama to address America’s economic malaise, preferring instead to oppose whatever legislation President Obama and the Democratic Congress proposed to address the problem.
Fortunately for America and the nation’s economy, a few Congressional Republicans decided to put the needs of their country ahead of their political party’s agenda and decided to support the President’s bank bailout and economic stimulus measures, including an extension of unemployment benefits for the millions of Americans who had lost their jobs early on in the recession. Ironically for me as a lifelong Republican, the majority of the Republicans who opposed these economic measures justified their opposition by claiming President Obama’s economic stimulus would worsen America’s gaping federal budget deficit. As such, their opposition was also a very glaring example of ‘the kettle calling the pot black.’
While we will never know if the contentions of these Republicans that Obama’s economic stimulus measures did more harm than good to America’s economy, the vast majority of economists, regardless of their political party affiliations, shudder to think what would have happened in America and in the global economy had Republicans succeeded in blocking President Obama and Congressional Democrats economic stimulus measures. Suffice to say that most economists believe that if they had, America would still be mired in an economic recession.
Aside from his success in avoiding a more serious economic downturn than the one America has already experienced, President Obama’s other most notable accomplishment during his first two years in office was the landmark healthcare legislation he and Congressional Democrats succeeded in passing. While this was the right thing to do for the millions of lower and middle income Americans who couldn’t afford private healthcare insurance, it also probably wasn’t the most politically savvy issue for President Obama to take up while America was still in the throes of a serious economic recession. Many Americans were obviously more concerned about fixing the economy than providing healthcare to those who couldn’t afford it.
On the other hand, throughout its’ political history, the United States Congress has only passed landmark social legislation, such as Social Security, Medicare and the Civil Rights Law, when one political party has a substantial representation advantage over its political opponents. Given the fact that the Democrats in Congress only had this type of political advantage during President Obama’s initial two years as President, it might have taken another generation to muster the political support required to address this problem. I could be wrong, but I believe the President was correct in dealing with the healthcare problem while the window to do so existed.
But the President and some of his Democratic allies in Congress subsequently paid a heavy political price in the 2010 midterm elections for doing the right thing for their country. Democrats not only lost control of the US House of Representatives, but they also lost the numerical advantage they needed in the US Senate to thwart Republican opposition to President Obama’s legislative agenda in the next two years of his first term as President. Be that as it may, the President and his Democratic allies in Congress were still able to use their remaining days in power to pass additional legislation prior to the Republican takeover of the US House in 2011.
However many Democrats in Congress were upset with President Obama over his willingness to compromise with Republicans and agree to a 2 year extension of all of the Bush era tax cuts, including those that applied to the wealthiest Americans. Rather than confronting Republicans over a tax increase for wealthy Americans, President Obama wisely decided to postpone the battle over the tax increase until after the 2012 elections. But by doing so President Obama was able to provide additional stimulus to the American economy and also win enough Republican support to get Senate approval of the nuclear arms reduction START treaty, a 13 month extension of unemployment benefits and the repeal of America’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ ban of out of the closet homosexuals serving in the US armed forces.
Hoping to achieve additional compromises in 2011, Obama offered Republicans another olive branch in his State of the Union address. I’ll discuss their response next week.

Say hello to political gridlock

2011-04-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on February 1st 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Last week the 112th session of the United States Congress began with more than 60 new Republican members and a new Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, wielding the gavel at the proceedings. What will be even more interesting to me though, is watching how animated the new Speaker’s responses are while he listens to President Obama’s nationally televised 2011 State of the Union address to Congress next week.
Will Boehner be wearing his usual sour face while the President is talking? Will we see him squirming in his seat when the President says something he disagrees with? Will he applaud the President or sit on his hands during the president’s speech? I honestly don’t know how Boehner will react, but what I do know is Boehner will be to the President’s left and behind him for the first time in his political career, a deliciously ironic metaphor and visual juxtaposition.
I could be wrong, and for the sake of my country I truly hope I am, but I really don’t expect the 112th session of Congress will accomplish anything of note. That is of course unless one considers legislative gridlock to be an accomplishment. On the other hand gridlock is precisely the outcome the demagogues of radio and TV, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are hoping for because it will give them and their Tea Party minions more to complain about.
The Republican Party and its leaders in the US House of Representatives, Speaker John Boehner, Eric Cantor and my own Representative, Jeb Hensarling, could conceivably use their legislative majority to address the federal budget deficit. They could start by taking a stand for free trade and eliminating the $20 billion in agricultural subsidies the federal government provides large ‘corporate’ farms each year. Fellow Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has also suggested raising the retirement age and reforming Medicare as the most prudent way to reign in America’s soaring entitlement costs, which are the largest contributors to the budget deficit.
House Republicans could also work on simplifying America’s tax code, by lowering tax rates and eliminating a heretofore ‘sacred cow’, the home mortgage interest deduction. They could also help business owners and their investors by replacing the corporate income tax with a more appropriate and easier to enforce business consumption tax. Furthermore, President Obama and a number of Democrats in Congress have already expressed a willingness to work with Republicans to implement a number of the proposed reforms I have just mentioned.
However, unfortunately for our country, Republican leaders don’t appear to share the President and Congressional Democrats willingness to negotiate on these or any other issues. A case in point is the Bush era income tax cuts which were scheduled to expire this year. Despite the fact that politicians on both sides of the aisle agree that the tax cuts for middle class tax payers should be made permanent, Republicans insisted that the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 % of Americans be made permanent too even though this increases the budget deficit.
Given Republicans; intransigence, President Obama instead agreed to a 2 year extension of all the Bush tax cuts in return for 13 months of unemployment benefits. But President Obama also questioned Republican’s commitment to reducing the budget deficit noting; “At a time when we are going to ask folks across the board to make such difficult sacrifices, I don't see how we can afford to borrow an additional $700 billion from other countries to make all the Bush tax cuts permanent, even for the wealthiest 2% of Americans.”
But Republican leader Eric Cantor’s response to President Obama reveals that the Republican perspective on compromise is a one way street saying; “I really want to see that we can come together and agree upon the notion that Washington doesn't need more revenues right now. And to sit here and say we're just going to go about halfway, or we're going to send a signal that it's going to be uncertain for job creators and investors to put capital to work, that's exactly what we don't need right now.” In other words, Cantor’s position on the tax cut compromise was that Democrats and President Obama had to agree to all of the Republicans’ demands. Hmm..That sounds like quite a compromise!
Mind you, I understand that in an ideal world political leaders wouldn’t need to negotiate or compromise with their political opponents. Indeed military dictators and the autocrats in control of single party states have the luxury of being able to do just that. But political leaders in a democracy can only get away with this if they enjoy an overwhelming majority in their nation’s legislature or parliament. Republicans are in control of the House of Representatives, but their opponents control the Senate and the Presidency, far from an overwhelming majority.
Sadly for America, the Republicans’ opposition to compromise on extending the tax cuts to include America’s wealthiest citizens is a harbinger of what their positions will most likely be on other issues of national importance like reducing the budget deficit. It also lends support to the contentions of many Democrats, independents and even some Republicans such as yours truly, that tackling America’s problems is not the top priority of Congressional Republicans or many other Republican leaders around the country.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has already noted what Republican’s priority is when, in the wake of his party’s midterm election victories, he told members of the news media that Republicans' top priority going forward should be ensuring that President Obama is not reelected in 2012.
I still expect President Obama to proffer an olive branch to Congressional Republicans during the course of his State of the Union Address. But given the ‘it’s our way or no way’ attitude expressed by Republican politicians, I expect the President’s open palm to be met with a clinched fist. So say hello to political gridlock and goodbye to solutions for America’s problems for the next two years.

Flaws in Tea Party members' thinking

2011-04-25T12:18:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on January 15th 2011 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

The New Year is supposed to usher in hope that the worst of the economic troubles that have battered America, Ireland and many other countries in Europe are behind us. But in my discussions with friends who are ‘independent’ voters, they repeatedly expressed the hope that President Obama would really try to work with the Republicans in Congress to address unemployment and the budget deficit during this New Year.
So what I believe American citizens need more than anything else as we enter the second decade of the 21st century; is political ‘leadership’. In America, the Democratic Party has a political leader, President Obama, but the Republican Party doesn’t. What the Republican Party does have is a lot of ‘pretenders’ and ‘contenders’ for the Republican nomination for President in the 2012 elections.
The list is as long as my arm and includes; old hands like Haley Barbour, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney; some less familiar ones like Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, Tom Pawlenty and John Thune; and some new ones like Scott Brown, Chris Christie and the newest Tea Party favourites; Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. Finally there is also the ‘Ghost of Elections Past’ aka former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose apparition floats above the party like an angry dark storm cloud. But at some point in the next year and a half, one of these people is likely to emerge as the new political leader of the Republican Party carrying the 2012 Presidential sobriquet.
In the meantime, by embracing the Tea Party movement, Republican politicians in Washington have elected to continue to follow another leaderless group, which in turn embraces the rhetoric of demagogues like Beck, Limbaugh and Palin. These demagogues talk a lot about politics and what is wrong with Obama, the Democrats in Congress and the federal government but what they do not discuss are any real ideas for how to address these problems. They rarely make any references to George Bush, preferring to wax nostalgically about how great a President Ronald Reagan was. What they don’t talk about however, is the fact that although President Reagan used populist rhetoric to get elected, he governed with the ideas of intellectuals like Milton Friedman and George Gilder.
Instead of discussing how Republicans can use their political power to apply conservative ideas to our problems, the demagogic leaders of the Tea party movement use their populist rhetoric to inflame their followers’ emotions and play on their fears in an attempt to neutralize political power instead of using it for the greater public good.
The problem with democracy is that it is very messy. You have to muddle around and make compromises with others who share different and in some cases polar opposite beliefs. Dictators don't have to worry about the beliefs of other citizens much less making compromises with those who don't agree with them. But effective democratic politics is all about the art of making compromises with one's opponents. At the present time though, the Republicans who hew to the Tea Party line cannot or will not make compromises. Compromise is against their 'principles'. Therefore, one cannot help but assume that Tea Partiers would actually prefer a dictatorship to democracy, provided the dictator is someone who shares their beliefs.
Members of the Tea Party worship at the altar of the US Constitution and deify America’s founding fathers such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. But when historical documents become sacred scriptures and the authors of those documents are then worshipped like Gods, Truth becomes the victim.
The Tea Party’s followers revel in reading the US Constitution at their meetings, reverently treating the words as the received knowledge. They would have others believe that they not only understand what the words mean, but that they also understand what the authors intentions were. But their interpretation is actually a false mythology that they have created precisely because they don’t understand why the authors developed the US Constitution.
They believe the founding fathers wrote the US Constitution to protect the rights of states from the 'tyranny of a strong national government'. But the historical record paints an entirely different picture. I happen to agree with the Tea Partiers that America’s founding fathers were ahead of their time as political intellectuals. But they were also the wealthy ‘American elites’ of their day and the Constitution of 1787 was designed to strengthen the federal government and weaken the powers accorded to states by the 1777 Articles of Confederation. If their motivation was to protect the rights of states as the Tea Partiers apparently believe, then they never would have written a new constitution and instead just left the Articles of Confederation in place.
But the founding fathers were motivated to develop this new Constitution in part by their fears of the 'tyranny of the democratic majority' that would trample the rights of democratic minorities. They were also worried that without a new Constitution to restrict their powers, some states might actually allow women and slaves the right to vote and even to own property.
So despite what they and their demagogues like Glenn Beck say, Tea Partiers aren’t fighting to take back their government, because they have no real ideas about how they might go about making it better. They are simply a libertarian mob that only wants their political leaders to protect their God given right to do whatever they please. But the authors of the Constitution were ahead of their time as political intellectuals, in that they saw the Tea Party movement coming more than 200 years ago and took steps to prevent it and similar movements from dictating how American citizens would be governed.
Ironically, the Tea Party movement celebrates the work of America's 18th century intellectual elites while they simultaneously condemn America's 21st century intellectual elites. What members of the Tea Party movement don’t realize is they’re actually celebrating a constitution designed to prevent them from ever gaining control over America's government.

No more Republican compromises?

2011-04-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on December 15th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

The lesson Republicans need to take away from their resounding midterm election victory over Congressional Democrats is that the independent voters, who swung the election in their favour, expect them to work with the President and Democrats to address America’s fiscal and economic problems. But Republican political leaders also tightly embraced the Tea Party movement in the process of winning those midterm elections; thus leaving themselves with very little room to maneuver in striking compromises with the President and Democrats in Congress.
In other words, what the Tea Party has given; the Tea Party can also take away! So I believe over the course of the next two years, Republicans in Congress are going to find it extremely difficult if not impossible to work with President Obama and the Democratic majority in the Senate, precisely because ‘compromise’ is a dirty 10 letter word for members of the Tea Party movement. Members of the Tea Party movement believe that compromise is a sign of weakness and the demagogues who lead them have so thoroughly vilified President Obama and the Democrats, that compromise will be viewed as tantamount to ‘making a deal with the devil.’
But the reality of politics in a true democracy is that it is all about the art of compromise. Dictators and governments in single party states don’t have to concern themselves with making compromises because those who oppose them not only don’t have a voice in the decisions they make, they also don’t have the legal right to challenge or reverse government policies. Democracies on the other hand are somewhat messier when it comes to policy making. Because their legislatures are designed to represent the conflicting views of many different segments of their societies, the ruling party usually lacks the votes to pass their proposals intact.
This is especially true in the United States where laws can be approved by a simple majority vote in the US House of Representatives, but then must also be approved by a larger 3/5ths majority vote in the US Senate. If the proposed new laws can surmount these hurdles then they must also win the approval of the US President before they can be implemented. But if the US President decides to veto a new law, it must then go back to the House of Represenatitives and be approved by at least a 2/3rds majority vote instead of a simple majority vote before it can become the ‘law of the land.’ The requirements for a ‘super majority’ of votes in the Senate to get a bill to the President for his approval, and an even larger ‘super majority’ of votes in the House if the President doesn’t like a law, is one of the unique features of American democracy.
While there have been times during America’s history when either the Democratic or Republican Party controlled both the House and the Senate as well as the Presidency, this kind of political dominance by a single political party has become increasingly rare during the last fifty years. But another complication is that unlike most other democracies, elected politicians in America are more attuned to the interests of their local voters and the special interest groups that fund their political campaigns, than they are to the dictates of their respective political parties.
Herein lies the another unique feature of American democratic politics; voters in each state and Congressional district decide who will stand for election as their Republican or Democratic Party candidate, not the national, state and local party leaders. Furthermore, in many states Democratic and or Republican primaries are not even restricted to party members, but are open to all voters, be they Republicans, Democrats or Independents. Therefore, believe it or not, in some states Republicans can actually vote for the Democratic Party candidate and vice versa
So given the fact that political candidates must also fund their campaigns to win their party’s nomination without any money from the party itself, and if they succeed then provide the majority of the funds they need to win the general election, is it any wonder that they are more loyal to their local constituencies than they are to their national political party? Truth be known, the only real leverage the Republican and Democratic parties have on their candidates is deciding how much or little additional funding to give them for the general election, and if they get elected, the only remaining leverage they have is deciding the congressional committees to put them on.
The inevitable consequence of weak party loyalty in America is difficulty keeping your elected party members in line when crucial votes are needed to pass legislation. As a result, the art of compromise usually begins with negotiations between members of the same political party. After this process has played out, the party leaders then try to negotiate with members of the opposing party that they believe can be persuaded to join them in passing this legislation. While members of the Tea Party movement disapprove of the ‘back room deals’ that are made during these negotiations, they are an integral and important part of democratic political governance.
Lacking any true national leader following John McCain’s defeat in the 2008 Presidential elections, the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and Republican House minority leader, John Boehner, became the Republican Party’s de facto leaders in Washington DC. Given the continuing economic malaise in America, party leaders correctly calculated that the remaining Republican Party members in Congress had more to gain by locking arms and opposing everything President Obama and the Democrats proposed to address America’s domestic problems.
They succeeded in preventing Democrats from passing additional legislation designed to stimulate the economy and reduce joblessness, but also avoided being blamed for their role in slowing America’s economic recovery. So given the short term success of this strategy and the Tea Party movement’s opposition to compromise, I just don’t see any compelling reason for Republicans to compromise with Obama between now and the 2012 Presidential election.

Money still doesn't guarantee electoral success

2011-04-25T11:57:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on December 1st 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

In my last column I discussed the lessons President Obama and the Democratic Party need to take away from their disastrous showing in the 2010 midterm elections. But the Republican Party appears to be in even more danger of misreading the results of the most recent national elections than President Obama and his fellow Democrats.
Thanks to a 2009 US Supreme Court decision that invalidated a law designed to control political campaign spending by anonymous individuals and corporations, conservative groups outspent their liberal counterparts by better than a 2 to 1 margin in the 2010 midterm elections. The ultra conservative billionaire Koch brothers led the conservative assault through their Americans for Prosperity political group, pushing the spending by non-candidate conservative groups up from a record $19.6 million in the 2006 midterm elections to an astounding $187 million in 2010. So is it any wonder Republican candidates were big winners this year? Hardly!
But Republicans and their far right allies like the Koch brothers masquerading as Americans for Prosperity, need to remain cognizant of the fact that, despite the enormous advantage money provides political candidates, it won’t necessarily win an election for them. For example; the former US Ambassador to Ireland Thomas Foley, who was made Ambassador as a reward for his political donations to George W. Bush’s Presidential campaigns, poured more than $10 million of his junk bond fortune into his campaign for Governor of Connecticut and outspent his Democratic opponent by more than a two to one margin. Well guess what? He lost!
So if outspending your opponent by a two to one margin won’t get you elected in a midterm election environment that favours your out-of-power Republican Party, then surely you will get elected if you outspend them by an overwhelming six to one margin, right? If you think so then you may want to ask Meg Whitman how she feels after contributing over $141 million of her eBay riches to her effort to become Governor of California, only to lose by a million votes to a Democrat who spent a grand total of only $25 million. Or ask Carly Fiorina how she feels after giving over $6.5 million of the golden parachute she received from Hewlett-Packard to her Republican Senate campaign, and still coming up on the short end by over 700,000 votes.
The lesson here for Republicans is that while wealthy Republicans may look very attractive as potential political candidates, the substance of what they propose to do if they get elected matters more than their ability to blanket a state with radio and TV advertisements. Republicans also shouldn’t assume that the huge fundraising advantage they enjoyed in the midterm elections will carry over into the 2012 elections when the US Presidency will also be at stake. Liberal advocacy groups are likely to come much closer to matching the outlays of their conservative counterparts because of the greater risk that they could lose control of both the Senate and the Presidency in 2012. Furthermore, President Obama has already shown that he is more than capable of raising as much or more money than his opponent. Just ask John McCain.
But the biggest risk for Republicans going forward is misreading the results of the 2010 midterm elections and interpreting them as an endorsement of the Republican Party and the obstructionist legislative tactics it has been using in Congress for the past two years. Republicans have made this mistake before such as in 1994 following their takeover of the US House of Representatives thanks to their sweeping midterm election wins during Clinton’s first term.
However, it would appear that the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, has already determined that this is exactly what America’s voters meant. At his first post-election news conference he told the press; “We're determined to stop the agenda Americans have rejected and to turn the ship around.” Incoming Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner likewise claimed, “It's a mandate for Washington to reduce the size of government and continue our fight for a smaller, less costly and more accountable government.”
I have no doubt that voters were sending a message to President Obama and the Democratic Party to slow down and focus on rebuilding the economy rather than on healthcare reforms and new environmental legislation. But that’s not the same thing as endorsing a continuation of Republican Congressional opposition to compromising with their Democratic counterparts on legislation designed to address America’s numerous problems.
In fact, a series of exit polls showed that the independent voters, who swung this year’s midterm elections to Republicans, actually don’t have a very high opinion of Republicans. 57 percent of independent voters said they viewed Republicans unfavorably and 58 percent said they viewed Democrats unfavorably. That doesn’t sound like much of an endorsement to me.
Maybe I’m totally wrong about this, but now that the Republicans are in control of the House of Representatives, I think voters are going to expect them to work with President Obama and the Democrats in Congress on a number of pieces of important legislation that are currently stalled in Congress. Chief among these is Obama’s promise to renew the Bush era tax cuts for middle class workers, but not for those bring home more than $250,000 a year. But Republicans have balked at this and want all of the tax cuts, including those that benefitted the wealthiest Americans renewed. If Republicans continue to refuse to compromise on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, then I would expect President Obama will let the cuts expire and tell voters they can blame Republicans for their higher tax bills.
Even though independent voters expect them to work with Democrats, by embracing the Tea Party movement, Republicans in Congress have also left themselves with very little room to maneuver when it comes to striking compromises with the President and Democrats in Congress. Since independent voters are the key to winning elections, I will discuss the implications of the Tea Party embrace in my next column.

Midterm Election Results in Perspective

2010-11-13T09:32:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on November 15th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

In my last column published on the eve of America’s 2010 mid-term elections I predicted that; “while I don’t see much chance for Republicans to regain control of the Senate, I think it is likely they will achieve the net gain of 39 seats they will need to take control of the US House of Representatives. So barring an unexpectedly large turnout of voters on Election Day, I foresee America reverting once again to divided government. If this indeed happens, then that raises the question of; “What will Americans expect from the ‘Party of No’, once they are back in power?”
Given the fact that my predictions proved to be accurate, I will spend my remaining columns before the New Year trying to address this query. But before I attempt to answer my own question, I would first like to place the election results in their proper perspective. Did President Obama and the Democratic Party take a hiding on 2 November? Yes. In fact, the Republican Party made up most of its losses in Congress from both the 2006 and 2008 elections in just this one single mid-term election. No question Obama and the Democrats took a beating.
But it would also be unwise for President Obama and either the Republican or Democratic Party to read too much into the sound thrashing voters delivered to Democrats in Congress and in many state Governors’ races. Why? Because if you drill down below the surface of what appears to have been a landslide victory for Congressional Republicans, you will find ample evidence which indicates this election was not the resounding voter mandate to oppose President Obama that Republican leaders in Congress and elsewhere are claiming it was.
To begin with, almost one third fewer American voters went to the polls in this year’s midterm elections than those who did so in the 2008 Presidential elections. Overall voter turnout dropped off a veritable cliff falling from 61.6 percent in November 2008, to a dismal 41.5 percent in November 2010. In other words, instead of these elections being decided by close to two thirds of America’s voters, they were decided by just over two fifths of eligible voters.
Another telling statistic was the demographic make-up of the voters in the 2010 elections compared to those who voted in the 2008 elections. Whereas white voters, who generally tend to be a bit older and more conservative than minority voters, comprised only 74 percent of overall voters in 2008, they made up 78 percent of the electorate in 2010. Furthermore, the turnout of voters under 30, who cast 66 percent of their votes for President Obama and his Democratic Party allies in 2008, dropped from a high of 52 percent in 2008 to a dismal 20 percent in the most recent elections. So given the fact that the Republicans’ base of older white voters showed up at the polls and the Democratic Party’s base of minority and younger voters did not, is it really a surprise that the results turned out so bad for President Obama and the Democrats? No.
The danger for both Republicans and Democrats is that both camps have a long history of misreading the results of midterm elections, usually with disastrous consequences for their candidates. The lesson for President Obama and his Democratic Party allies in Congress is not to panic. President Reagan and the Republican Party suffered a similar setback in the midterm elections of 1982 and Reagan responded by winning reelection in 1984 with one of the biggest electoral landslides in American political history.
President Obama’s Democratic allies in Congress should also take note of what happened to Democrats who waffled in their support of President Obama’s legislative agenda and or voted against his economic stimulus or healthcare proposals. To be sure, 32 Democrats who voted for Obama’s healthcare package were indeed defeated by Republicans in their bids for reelection. But many of them were also running in districts that had voted for John McCain in the 2008 elections, so given the low Democratic voter turnout and the anti-incumbent tide the Republicans were riding the chances are good they would have lost their seats regardless.
The more telling statistic is the fact that of the 34 Democrats who did vote against the President’s healthcare legislation, exactly half of them also went down to Republican challengers. Many of these Democratic incumbents figured that opposing the President on this issue would ensure their continued survival in Congress. In other words, holding on to their personal political power was more important than serving the interests of their party and their country. As for the other 4 Democrats who also voted against the healthcare plan but chose to retire instead of running for reelection, 3 of their open seats were also won by Republicans.
Other Democrats, like Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, who waffled in their support of President Obama’s economic and healthcare agenda did no better in their reelection bids than the Democrats who had opposed Obama in Congress. Lincoln figured the best way for her to win a fourth term in the Senate was to flip flop her votes for and against President Obama’s legislation thereby proving her independence to more conservative white voters. But she angered Democratic voters in the process which led to a nasty primary fight with the states popular Lieutenant Governor. She won that battle but lost the war as Arkansas voters handily reelected their Democratic Governor while simultaneously kicking their Democratic Senator to the curb.
The lesson for President Obama and Democrats is that while they need to show willingness to compromise with their Republican opponents, they should not ignore their principles or betray their convictions in the process. They were elected to serve the greater public good, not their own personal interests such as retaining their political power. As for my fellow (I use this term loosely) Republicans, I will discuss the lessons they should take away from the midterm election results in my next column.

Midterm Election Predictions for The Party of No.

2010-11-13T09:29:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on November 1st 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

With America’s mid-term elections looming on Tuesday I will now attempt to gaze into my crystal ball and make some predictions ahead of this trip to the polls. Given the historically low overall turnout of voters in mid-term elections, these predictions will also prove to be the ultimate test of my political prognostications skills.
I will begin with a discussion of some of the most important races for seats in the US Senate where the Democratic Party briefly held the twenty seat majority required by arcane Senate rules to overcome filibusters and pass legislation. I will begin with the Senate races in the ‘swing’ states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania whose electoral votes often determine the outcome of Presidential elections.
In Florida, little known Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek trails Tea Party favourite Marco Rubio, who is the Republican nominee, as well as Governor Charlie Crist, a moderate Republican who is running as an Independent candidate. This is a Republican seat and although Rubio has succeeded in winning most of the support of Florida Republicans, most Independents and many Democrats are supporting Crist. I believe Charlie Crist will win this race if more Democrats decide to vote against Rubio and cast their votes for Crist instead of wasting them by voting for Kendrick Meek, who has no realistic chance of winning. If not, then Rubio will keep this seat in the Republican column with less than 45% of the votes cast.
In Ohio, another Republican seat must also be defended and because this state continues to suffer more than others from high levels of unemployment, Republican candidate Rob Portman stands to gain from voter dissatisfaction with the slow pace of economic recovery in their region. Many American’s have notoriously short memories and have likewise become addicted to the idea of quick fixes, so Portman is using this to his advantage by telling voters that Obama and the Democrats have failed to turn the economy around. Democratic candidate Lee Fisher has tried to remind Ohio voters that Portman was President Bush’s trade czar and budget director but has been unable to make much headway against the tide of sentiment that blames Obama rather than Bush for the economic malaise.
Pennsylvania is a neighboring state where the Republican Senate seat became a Democratic one when longtime moderate Republican Senator Arlen Specter switched parties rather than attempt to swim against the Tea Party tide sweeping the Republican Party. But Pennsylvania Democrats ignored the pleas of President Obama and opted to give their party’s Senate nomination to lifelong Democrat Joe Sestak instead of incumbent Arlen Specter. This was a classic case of Democrats ‘cutting off their nose to spite their face’ because despite their distaste for former Republican Specter, at least he had a good chance of retaining this Senate seat, while Sestak had no chance of defeating Republican candidate Pat Toomey.
But for Republicans to regain control of the US Senate they must not only retain or regain the aforementioned traditionally Republican Senate seats, they must also win some traditionally Democratic seats. Republicans initially appeared to have some pretty good prospects of doing just that given the tendency of Americans to vote against the party of the President in mid-term elections. But the Tea Party movement’s desire for ideologically pure conservative Republican candidates resulted in the defeat of the moderate Republican nominees who had a chance of winning Democratic Senate seats in Delaware, New York, Nevada and Colorado.
The most glaring example of Republicans following the lead of Democrats and ‘cutting off their noses to spite their faces’, occurred in Delaware where Tea Party activists succeeded in getting Christine O’Donnell nominated instead of Republican Congressman Mike Castle. The moderate Castle would have won Vice President Joe Biden’s former Senate seat in a walk but he wasn’t ideologically pure enough for Republican members of the Tea Party movement. As a result I expect Democratic nominee Chris Coons to easily win this seat and keep it in the hands of Democrats.
In New York, conservatives eschewed nominating the Republican State Convention candidate, Bruce Blakeman as well as the other establishment Republican candidate, David Malpass, and instead cast their Republican primary votes for Joe DioGuardi, an anti-tax gadfly. Among other things, DioGuardi has gained notoriety for burning the Serbian flag in front of the Serbian Embassy and for getting $5000 a month to serve as a consultant and member of the board of directors for Medical Capital Holdings, a Ponzi scheme that federal officials claim bilked investors of more than $1.7 billion. As a result, Kristen Gillibrand will easily retain her Democratic Senate seat.
Like Delaware, Nevada is another case where Tea Party activists succeeded in winning the battle for the Republican Senate seat on behalf of their favourite, Sharon Angle, which in turn will result in Republicans losing the war for Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Senate seat. Tea Party activists opted to support Angle despite the fact that most state polls showed that former Republican state legislator Sue Lowden would likely defeat Harry Reid in November and that Angle probably couldn’t.
In Colorado, Tea Party activists likewise got their man, Ken Buck, nominated instead of the well respected Republican Lieutenant Governor, Jane Norton. Norton had an excellent chance of winning this seat that had once been held by Republican senator Ken Salazar before he accepted a job as President Obama’s Secretary of the Interior. Now it appears increasingly likely this will remain a Democratic Senate seat.
But while I don’t see much chance for Republicans to regain control of the Senate, I think it is likely they will achieve the net gain of 39 seats they will need to take control of the US House of Representatives. So barring an unexpectedly large turnout of voters on Election Day, I foresee America reverting once again to divided government. If this indeed happens, then that raises the question of; “What will Americans expect from the ‘Party of No’, once they are back in power?”

Will The Tea Party Help or Hurt Republicans?

2010-11-13T09:25:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on October 15th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

In my most recent column I said that I had serious doubts enough Republican candidates for Congressional seats would succeed in broadening their appeal to independent voters for the Republican Party to regain its old position of power in Congress. While many political pundits in America, particularly those who are supportive of the uber-conservative Tea Party movement, have no such doubts, I believe there are simply too many things that must fall their way for Republicans to win control of the next US Congress.
To begin with, in order to take control of the all important US Senate, the Republican Party must successfully defend all of its own Senate seats and win at least 10 seats now held by Democrats. Now if the Democratic Senate seats that were most at risk were all in the more conservative Southern states or more sparsely populated Western states, then a net gain of 10 Senate seats might just have been possible.
But the very same Tea Party movement that the Republican Party has been so quick to embrace, has also succeeded in getting a number of ultra-conservative Republican candidates nominated in Democratic leaning Northeastern states such as New York, Connecticut and Delaware. But had the more moderate Republican candidates in these states won the Republican nomination to contest these Democratic Party Senate seats, then I believe a net gain of 10 Senate seats would have been within the Republican Party’s grasp.
However, absent a tectonic shift in voter sentiments in these normally Democratic leaning states, I simply don’t see the darlings of the Tea Party winning there on Election Day. Furthermore, I’m also not so sure the Tea Party candidates, that won the Republican Party’s nomination in Western states like Nevada and Colorado, are capable of wining back Democratic Senate seats in those normally Republican leaning states either. Nor is retaining control of Republican held US Senate seats in the states of Alaska, Kentucky, Florida and New Hampshire a given come Election Day.
One of the keys to Republican Party success on Election Day that I cited in my previous column is the ability of their candidates to win the support of the Republicans they vanquished in their party primaries earlier this year. Well in Alaska the Republican loser, Lisa Murkowski, is running against the Republican winner who was supported by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, Joe Miller, as a write-in candidate. In Florida, Republican Governor Charlie Crist is running as an Independent against another Republican nominee who was a Palin and Tea Party favorite. Furthermore, Republicans are also locked in close contests to retain control of other Republican held Senates seats in Kentucky and New Hampshire.
So even if the Republican Senate candidates are able to mount aggressive get-out-the-vote campaigns involving their Tea Party supporters and or are blessed with bad weather in their respective states on Election Day, which historically holds down Democratic voter turn out, I still don’t see them also overcoming many of these internal splits between moderate Republican voters and ultra- conservative Tea Party movement supporters. I also question how successful Republican candidates backed by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement will be attracting support from independent voters.
Granted, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party activists have energized older predominately white and more conservative voters throughout America and garnered support for the more conservative Republican candidates they favor. But while this was a benefit in Republican primaries, it is at best a mixed blessing for Republican candidates in the General Election.
For one thing, while Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement are viewed favorably by a majority of Republican voters, such is not the case with Democratic or Independent voters. But since the American electorate is split with roughly a third of voters supporting the Republican Party and another third the Democratic Party, it is the other third of Independent voters who hold the key to winning most General Election battles.
Independent voters may not share the overwhelmingly negative views of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement that Democratic voters have, but they are nonetheless decidedly negative towards both Palin and the Tea Party movement. Recent polls show that although 52% of Independent voters have no opinion about the Tea Party movement, just over 30% have a negative view while only 18% regard the Tea Party movement favorably.
As for the Tea Party movement’s favorite national (i.e. Presidential) candidate, Sarah Palin fares even worse among both Democratic and Independent voters. While the overwhelmingly negative views of Democrats are hardly surprising, Sarah Palin’s decidedly negative polling among independent voters is an ominous sign for both the Republican Party and the Republican candidates Sarah Palin has endorsed and supported. Over 50% of American voters and almost 40% of Independent voters have negative views about Sarah Palin and over 66% of American voters rather cynically believe she is more interested in staying in the public’s eye than in helping elect the Republican candidates she has endorsed
To regain control of Congress, Republicans must also defend their own seats in the US House of Representatives and realize a net gain of 39 seats currently held by Democrats. This is another tall order for the Republican Party, but also one that is more achievable than winning control of the US Senate since 55 of the Democrats must defend their House seats in districts that voted for John McCain in the 2008 Presidential election. Another favorable omen for Republicans in US House races is the fact that the political party that controls the US Presidency historically loses at least 20-25 seats in the House in mid-term elections.
But just as the Tea Party endorsements helped many Republican House candidates win the Republican nomination, so too will these endorsements hinder their attempts to appeal to more centrist independent voters on Election Day. So in my next column I will make some predictions about the Election Day outcomes and Republican prospects for taking control of both the US House and Senate.

What Republicans Must Do To Win Big In November

2010-11-13T09:12:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on October 1st 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Back in the states the party primaries have concluded so Democratic and Republican candidates for state and federal offices are now entering the home stretch of their respective bids to win election in November. At the federal level Democrats are facing a ‘perfect storm’ of historically negative trends which has led most political observers in America to predict huge gains in the US Congress for the opposition Republican Party. The only real question is; Will Republicans successfully ride this ‘perfect storm’s’ political wave back into power?
Although most of the political analysts I respect are now predicting that Republicans will regain control of the US House of Representatives and a number of them are also predicting Republicans will win the Senate too, I’m still not so sure. Maybe this is simply wishful thinking on my part, but I believe when the dust finally settles on November 3rd, the Democratic Party will have lost a number of Congressional seats, but will still retain their majority party status in both houses of Congress, if only by a slim margin.
Make no mistake, the convergence of several historically negative voting trends augers a crushing defeat for the Democratic Party at the polls this November. But for the Republican Party to turn their mid-term election gains into a controlling position in the next Congress will require an unlikely convergence of several other factors. First and foremost, Republicans need overall voter turnout to below 39% of all eligible voters (which is likely), and the corresponding turnout of their older, conservative white voters to be above 60%.
In other words, Republicans must ensure they have a higher than normal turnout of their voters in order to overcome the fact that their base of support is the only segment of the voters that is declining as a percentage of America’s voting age population. But making sure you get your supporters to the polls on Election Day also requires a strong nation-wide organizational plan that accounts for uncontrollable variables like cold and rainy weather.
Prior to the most recent national elections in 2008, the RNC (Republican National Committee) in Washington DC had always excelled at developing very detailed get-out-the-vote plans for all of its candidates in every American state. However, for the last 18 months the RNC has been wracked by internal dissent over the actions of its controversial Chairman, Michael Steele. This turmoil at headquarters has been a huge distraction for the RNC, causing many Republican candidates to independently develop their own get-out-the-vote plans.
Another factor which can work against Republican candidates and weaken turn out of their voters is the bloody primary battles fought between establishment Republican candidates and more right wing conservatives who had the support of members of the Tea Party movement. In some cases the Tea Party candidate won the Republican primary battle while in others the more moderate establishment Republicans did. But regardless of which candidate won, an inevitable consequence of such internecine conflicts is bruised feelings on the part of those who ended up on the losing side of these intra-party battles. So persuading the loser’s supporters to vote for the victors is often the key to winning the general election.
Bereft of a single national political leader, the Republican Party also needs a unified national message or theme for its candidates that will resonate with a majority of American voters, particularly those running for Congress. But for the last 18 months, Congressional Republicans unbending opposition to all of President Obama’s proposed policies has allowed Democrats to largely succeed in portraying the Republican Party as ‘the party of no’. Since this message of rigid opposition resonates with the conservative base of the Republican Party, its candidates continued to reinforce this theme during the summer primary season.
But Republican candidates for Congress are no longer jostling with other Republicans for the support of Republican voters; they are now in the midst of running against Democrats in a general election campaign. So with the exception of a few states like Utah, where winning the Republican nomination is tantamount to winning the general election, Republicans candidates must now broaden their appeal in an effort to win the support of independent voters if they want to succeed on 2 November.
That’s because only a third of eligible voters are reliably Republican voters with a slightly larger percentage consistently voting for Democrats. So at the end of the day, success on Election Day for most Democratic and Republican candidates is dependent on garnering a majority of the votes of independents who make up the other third of the American electorate. But independent voters hew to fairly moderate political positions on most issues by and large. As a general rule they are not keen on either very conservative or very liberal political stances, which means the winners of the intra-party primary battles must ‘run to the middle’.
So the traditional general election strategy of most Democratic and Republican candidates has been to moderate or ‘paper over’ political positions that appeal to their liberal or conservative base during the general election campaign in an effort to win the support of independent voters. The Democratic candidates are well positioned to do so again this year. But because of the intra-party strife between establishment Republicans and Tea Party activists many of the Republican winners had to adopt more extreme conservative positions than they might otherwise in an effort to secure their party’s nomination. Now if they want to ‘run to the middle’ they must also weigh the risk of losing the support of Tea Party activists.
Republican Party candidates who; secure the support of their primary opponents’ voters, run aggressive get-out-the-vote campaigns, develop consistent messages about what they will do to address America’s problems rather than ‘just saying no’ to Democratic proposals, and who moderate their more extreme positions to appeal to independent voters, will do well in November. But I continue to have serious doubts enough of them will for the Republican Party to regain power in Congress.

A Perfect Political Storm for Republicans

2010-11-13T09:08:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on September 15th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In my last column I expressed my belief that the Tea Party movement is just another one of those alternative Americans have to exhaust before they decide to do the right thing. However, based on the history of similar quasi-political movements in America, this process will probably take at least at least one or possibly two election cycles to run its course. With mid-term elections looming in November, this is not good news for President Obama and a Democratic Party hoping to retain control of the US Senate and House of Representatives.
Unfortunately for the President and his Democratic supporters in Congress, there are also several other historical trends that augur significant losses in the upcoming elections. First, voter turnout in non-Presidential election years tends to fall by about one third from 55-60% of eligible voters in Presidential election years, to around 36-38% in mid-term elections. This isn’t good for Democrats because the percentages of older, rural white voters who tend to favor Republican candidates’ remains constant in both Presidential and mid-term elections, while the number of younger, urban minority voters falls significantly in mid-term elections.
Another worrisome trend for Democrats is that, with the exception of the post 9/11 2002 mid-term elections, the political party that holds the office of US President always loses seats in Congress. The reason why President Bush was able to buck this historic trend in the 2002 mid-term elections was because Karl Rove and company were able to whip up patriotic support for the President and Republicans in Congress by playing up the threats to American national security posed by Saddam Hussein as well as al Qaeda inspired Islamic terrorism.
The other historic trend working against President Obama and Democrats in Congress is the tendency of voters in America to blame the party in power for whatever economic problems are bedeviling their country and or the region of it they reside in. I might add that this is also a voting trend consistently seen in other wealthy countries’ democratic elections. This type of voter reaction also reflects the fact that most voters don’t really grasp the long term economic implications of their government’s complex economic and fiscal policies.
With respect to the tendency of many voters to blame the party in power for their nation’s economic problems, this kind of reaction is quite often appropriate, especially when that political party has been in power for several election cycles. Conversely however, it is also not a fitting response when a political party has only held the reins of power for less than a couple of years. This is especially true when a political party’s ascent to power coincides with an economic downturn caused largely by the ruinous fiscal policies of its predecessor.
The truth about America’s current economic malaise is that while it took hold during President Bush’s last year in office, it was precipitated by the budgetary, regulatory and tax policies President Bush and a Republican led Congress enacted between 2002 and 2006. Furthermore, you won’t find any reputable economists in America who will agree with the contentions of most Congressional Republicans that President Obama’s economic stimulus measures’ impact on America’s budget deficits has hurt the nation’s economy. What most economists, be they political liberals or conservatives, will say however, is that without those stimulus measures the recession would have been much worse and the recovery much slower.
The painful reality many Americans refuse to acknowledge is that it took years of fiscal and regulatory mismanagement by Republicans, as well as some Democrats, to create the conditions that led to the financial crisis on Wall Street and the subsequent economic meltdown. But America’s greedy bankers and deficit spending politicians were by no means the only culprits. Many American voters also bought into the notion that they could go out and ‘charge’ the good life to their credit cards instead of working and saving to attain it.
But following years of easy credit, which allowed many Americans to drunkenly spend someone else’s money for the homes and other luxuries of life they desired without having to work and save to get them, those Americans who did are now feeling the pain of a rather nasty hangover. Unfortunately for the Democratic Party and its standard bearer, President Obama, ever since the end of World War II many American voters have also become addicted to the ‘quick fix’ for their problems. So the prospect that it will take some years for America to dig itself out of its financial hole is patently unacceptable to them.
Many of these same American voters also believe that they can avoid taking responsibility for their troubles by blaming someone else like ‘them’ as the culprit. ‘Them’ can be illegal immigrants who steal jobs from American citizens, greedy Wall Street bankers, the federal government that unreasonably taxes their income and regulates their business practices or people of color who don’t look or speak like white American citizens do.
The fragmented leadership of the Republican Party has decided to cast their lot with this older and overwhelmingly white segment of the American population because they believe these voters will provide Republicans with the quickest and easiest route back to the position of political power they had in Washington DC until four years ago.
It’s quick because these voters have been gravitating to the Republican Party for years and thus provide its candidates with a very reliable base of Election Day support. It’s easy because these voters are so angry and afraid that Republicans don’t have to worry about offering them realistic solutions for America’s problems, which might cause those voters to stop and think about the implications of the policies Republicans want to implement. In other words, they’ll vote for Republicans without thinking about the consequences. Given the historic trends I’ve discussed, it would appear that Democrats are confronting a ‘perfect storm’ of political discontent. But can Republicans ride this political wave back to power? I’ll discuss this in my next column.

Americans Will Always Do The Right Thing But...

2010-11-13T09:06:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on September 1st 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In addition to the concerns I expressed in previous columns about the Tea Partiers lack of viable solutions, anti-immigrant prejudice and thinly disguised racial biases, I am also concerned because the Tea Partiers’ distrust of government institutions and their unwarranted confidence in their own abilities are characteristics typical of many other Americans. So today I will discuss some of the dangerous assumptions embodied by these classic American psychological traits.
This year’s Tea Party movement bears more than a passing resemblance to both its 19th century forerunner, the Know-Nothings and its 20th century predecessor, the Dixiecrats. Like those earlier movements virtually all of its members are either employed or retired, white, middle class, a bit older as well as less likely to have ever been unemployed than the average American.
The other important characteristic of the Tea Partiers is that, much like their Know-Nothing and Dixiecrat forbearers, they are motivated by their anger and fear that they are losing ground to ‘them.’ To the Know-Nothings ‘them’ were immigrant Catholics, for the Dixiecrats ‘them’ were people of color and for the Tea Partiers ‘them’ are those who support the policies of President Obama, the non-white son of a black African immigrant and a white American liberal.
In the aftermath of the liberal activism that characterized the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s, most of the electoral energy in American politics over the last 3 decades since then has emanated from the populist right instead of the liberal left. The anti-abortion movement began to take shape in the latter part of the 1970’s as did the Howard Jarvis’s anti-property tax and Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority Christian crusaders. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1982, followed by the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 and George Bush’s elections in 2000 and 2004 effectively turned right wing populism into mainstream politics.
But in the wake of a needless and ruinous war in Iraq, record government spending and budget deficits followed by a financial meltdown on Wall Street, right wing populism lost the support of many independent voters and finally ran out of steam. This provided an opening for a new and different type of politician named Barack Obama, who promised Americans he would shake up the political establishment and change the way things were done in Washington DC. As a result, many of independent voters who had once supported Reagan and Bush voted for Obama because they were disgusted with Bush and Republicans in Congress who supported his policies.
Like the Know-Nothings and the Dixiecrats, supporters of the Tea Party movement also claim to be independent of and equally disgusted with the political establishment of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Indeed when those 19th and 20th century Tea Party ancestor movements splintered, equal numbers of their supporters either joined the Democratic or the Republican parties. But in a July 2nd Gallup poll, 8 out of 10 Tea Partiers identified themselves as conservative Republicans. This suggests “that the Tea Party movement is more a rebranding of core Republicanism than a new or distinct entity on the American political scene.”
But a common thread running through the past thirty years of right wing electoral victories was a distrust of big-government and a desire on the part of many Americans to rely more on themselves and less on government to solve many of America’s problems. These sentiments were a consequence of the failure of the Great Society programs of the 1960’s to reduce crime by eradicating the poverty that was often seen as the root cause of many of America’s social ills. So the fear of big-government expressed by Tea Party supporters isn’t a new or recent fear any more than their unspoken fear of ‘them’ Hispanic immigrants and blacks.
What concerns me about this latest Tea Party movement is that with the exception of the Know-Nothings and the Dixiecrats, previous populist movements in America have used their populist rhetoric in an effort to seize political power so that they could exercise it for their common benefit. The 19th century anti-slavery abolitionist and 20th century women’s suffrage, civil rights and anti-war movements were all notable examples of such populist movements.
Even Ronald Reagan’s right wing anti-big government populist rhetoric was based on the policy ideas of intellectuals like economist Milton Friedman, business and technology guru George Gilder and libertarian political scientist Charles Murray so the policies Reagan implemented when he became President were based largely on ‘real’ ideas and concepts. But although the supporters of the Tea Party movement speak with fondness and reverence about President Reagan, they are noticeably devoid of any ideas about what to do if they seize power.
Unlike Reagan, today’s primarily Republican Tea Party conservatives prefer the populist rhetoric of anti-intellectuals like Sarah Palin and cynical conservative talk show pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, all of whom are experts at exploiting and manipulating the non-intellectual supporters of the Tea Party movement. Theirs is a new and virulent strain of populism based on the same American libertarian bias as previous movements, but one that is much more childish and selfish. It appeals to individuals who are convinced that they could achieve the material success they desire but the government is preventing them from doing so. They don’t have a constructive political agenda, so their only recourse is to disparage ‘them’ in an attempt to preserve what they believe is their God given right to do whatever they please.
Before America’s entry into World War II, Winston Churchill addressed concerns that England’s situation looked bleak without the help of America by saying he wasn’t worried and that he knew America would eventually enter the war on England’s side because:“Americans will always do the right thing ……. after they have exhausted all the alternatives.” My hope is that Churchill’s observation is still true and that the Tea Party movement is just another one of those alternatives Americans have to exhaust before they decide to do the right thing.

Is the Tea Party Movement A New Political Phenomenon?

2010-11-13T09:04:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on August 15th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In my last column I said I was concerned that the Tea Party segment of American voters, who have no real ideas or solutions to offer, will nonetheless have a major influence on the outcomes of several crucial federal elections. I am concerned because the Tea Party movement is reminiscent of other short lived, fear based political movements in America’s history which have had a thankfully brief but nonetheless negative impact on American society.
America’s Founding Fathers, who the Tea Partiers so revere, struggled mightily over many months to develop an American Constitution that struck a balance between American citizens’ native distrust of governmental authority and the young nation’s urgent need for a governance system that unified its far flung citizens and provided order under a system of laws. The founding fathers hated the monarchial system of kings which then dominated the world, but they were equally afraid of the excesses of mob rule and the inherent desire of states and cities to do as they pleased regardless of how their actions might affect other states and cities in America.
Thomas Jefferson was a founding father who was an opponent of industrialization, an advocate of states’ rights and the leader of those who distrusted a strong central government. Alexander Hamilton was the leader of the political coalition that advocated for more trade and commerce as well as a strong national government. So America’s founding fathers drafted a compromise Constitution that attempted to restrict the authority of the new national government while simultaneously restricting different aspects of the independence of the new nation’s individual states because of the often divergent interests of those states and their citizens.
But from the outset it was apparent during the ensuing state debates about ratifying the American Constitution that despite his endorsement of the new Constitution, many of Jefferson’s supporters still viewed the proposed new federal government as a conspiracy of the bankers and urban elites living in the northeastern states to subvert the will of other free Americans. But Jefferson and his ally, James Madison, were able to use their vision of America as a growing continental nation to successfully persuade a majority of their supporters to support it anyway.
What I find ironic is the fact that most of the ‘true conservatives’ who support the Tea Party movement also support the unfettered economic growth and development of America’s military industrial complex and that most of them don’t like Thomas Jefferson because of Jefferson’s strong support for the separation of government and religion. So despite their avowed reverence for the ideals of America’s founding fathers, the members of the Tea Party movement I talked to apparently don’t have a clue about what America’s founding fathers actually believed.
Therein we find the first clue as to the actual roots of the current Tea Party movement; not the Boston Tea Party patriots, who lit the first flames of America’s Revolutionary War in 1773, but rather the Know-Nothing movement which began in New York in 1843, seventy years after the Boston Tea Party. The Know-Nothing movement was the first American political movement whose supporters were, much like today’s Tea Partiers, primarily motivated by fear.
The Know-Nothing movement was a political reaction to the successive waves of poor German, Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants who came to America to live in urban tenements beginning in the 1830’s, as well as the prejudicial religious fears of many Protestant Americans. Between 1830 and 1850, more than 2.5 million immigrants moved to America and close to a million of these were poor Irish Catholic immigrants escaping the mid-1840’s potato famine.
When economic times got tough in the latter part of the 1840’s and early 1850’s, the mostly Protestant middle class workers living in the Northeast and Midwest sections of America reacted in horror to this influx of poor and mainly Catholic immigrants. The Know Nothing movement eventually became a national political party called the American Party and by 1855 43 of its members had been elected to Congress. The Know-Nothings’ main political aim was to bring a halt to immigration from foreign lands and to restrict American citizenship to native born Americans and naturalization to Protestant men over 21 who were of British descent.
However many of the supporters of the Know Nothings were not content to only use peaceful means to bring about the changes in America’s immigration policy they wanted. Their use of intimidation tactics to prevent Catholics from voting culminated in anti-Catholic riots in Louisville Kentucky during an August 1855 election for Kentucky’s governor that killed 22 Catholic voters, injured scores of others and resulted in widespread property losses. But by 1860 the Know-Nothing movement had fallen apart due to a fractious split over the issue of slavery.
Then a hundred years later another fear based political movement arose to take up the Know-Nothing’s mantle. However, instead of immigrant Catholic religious fear, this successor political movement’s fear was based on race. When the Democratic Party voted to include a civil-rights plank in its 1948 Presidential election platform, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond formed the States' Rights Democratic Party (“Dixiecrats”) and won the 1948 Presidential electoral votes of the states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama.
Twenty years later George Wallace formed the American Independent Party to take advantage of American’s racial fears by using the same theme of ‘states rights’ when he ran for President in 1968. Wallace broadened his appeal to American racial fears by winning 13.5% of the vote and the electoral votes of Arkansas and the four states won by Thurmond in 1948.
Another forty years has passed since George Wallace made his appeal to America’s racial fears by using states rights as a politically correct disguise for it. While most Tea Partiers will adamantly deny they are racially biased, their anti-Obama and anti-immigrant rhetoric harkens back to the anti-federal populism and politics of fear used by the aforementioned political movements. I will discuss my remaining Tea Party concerns in my next column.

Spending the 4th of July with Tea Party Members

2010-11-13T09:01:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on August 1st 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Having spent the 4th of July Independence Day weekend back in the states taking the political pulse of my fellow Americans, in today’s column I want to begin discussing my views about the American Tea Party movement. Some of you have no doubt heard about the Tea Party given the American news media’s fascination with this phenomenon, but for those of you who haven’t, I think it’s important to understand both what the Tea Party is and what it is not.
I refer to the Tea Party as a movement because it is not an organized political party in the sense that the Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and Green Parties are. The American Tea Party does not appear next to political candidates’ names on any local, state or federal election ballots, nor does it have any means of ‘officially’ endorsing political candidates. The Tea Party also does not have a concrete platform of political ideas, offices or paid staff, nor does it exist as a political organization or entity that can be regulated by state and federal election commissions. In other words, the American Tea Party actually does not exist in any sort of tangible sense.
So if the Tea Party doesn’t actually exist, how is it that in a recent Gallup poll three out of ten Americans described themselves as Tea Party supporters? The answer is that the American Tea Party is essentially a figment of these Americans’ imagination. The American Tea Party is really a state of mind more than it is a political movement, because political movements have a concrete set of objectives and a plan for how to achieve them via the ballot box.
Real political movements also have a set of ideas about government policies that they believe their political leaders will implement if they are successful in getting their candidates elected to political office. For example they might want to replace the current graduated income tax scheme with a flat tax on income or a national sales tax. Or they might want to implement a carbon tax in order to spur the development of alternative energy or reduce their dependence on imported oil and natural gas. In other words they have ideas about how to fix our problems.
By contrast the American Tea Party movement has no real plan for governing or addressing America’s problems. What the supporters of the Tea Party movement have instead is an abiding faith in America’s founding fathers, men who have also been dead for more than 200 years. Their devotion to these men borders on religious and in many ways their rallies and demonstrations remind me of the traveling religious revivals that are part of my southern US heritage. They regard themselves as ‘true’ American patriots and many of them attend Tea Party demonstrations dressed like Benjamin Franklin or George Washington, swathed in American flags or are dressed in Revolutionary War costumes and carrying musket rifles.
But contrary to the ‘Tea Partiers’ belief that our nation’s founding fathers represent the last word in wise and statesmanlike political governance, I and most political historians believe that the founding fathers did not see themselves in this light. I believe they wanted and expected future generations of the American people to go much further than they did and use the wisdom gained through our own governance experiences to continue to modify our political governance structures in order to cope with changes in American society and the rest of the world.
I attended a Tea Party rally in order to find out what kind of solutions the ‘Tea Partiers’ were proposing and or what ideas they had for addressing America’s problems. What I heard from them instead was deep seated frustration with our nation’s government and anger towards virtually every institution of government. For instance, Tea Party supporters are not only against America’s progressive income tax system, but they are also against virtually all other forms of taxation as well. But when I asked them how they would propose that governments pay for things like building and maintaining roads and schools, they didn’t seem to have any answers.
They described President Obama’s health care reforms as “government tyranny” or ‘socialism’ and said that the federal government needed to stay out of the heath care business. But when I noted that many of them were receiving government funded health care through Medicare, their response was to complain that the federal government was taking over everything and we needed to have less government. In other words, they still had no answers.
Another favourite complaint of the ‘Tea Partiers’ is the huge budget deficits the federal government is currently running up. When I noted that the biggest contributor to the federal budget deficit was Social Security and Medicare entitlement spending, most of them either disputed this fact or claimed that we could balance the budget by cutting all sorts of other unnecessary federal programs. But when I then mentioned the possibility of cutting Medicare or Social Security benefits as part of a larger scheme to rein in the federal deficit, their reaction was one of vehement opposition.
Regardless, even though they don’t appear to have any real ideas about how to address America’s problems, the ‘Tea Partiers’ are still much more engaged in this year’s mid-term elections than my other friends and acquaintances be they Republicans, Democrats or Independents. So I left the Tea Party rally with a deep sense of unease as regards what the future holds for our nation’s ability to deal with many of its problems. My concern is that this Tea Party segment of American voters, who have no real ideas or solutions to offer will nonetheless have a major influence on the outcomes of several crucial federal elections. However, the Tea Partiers distrust of government institutions and an oft times unwarranted self confidence are characteristics typical of many other Americans. So I will discuss the dangerous assumptions embodied by these two classic American psychological traits in more detail next week.

Volcano Ash Cloud Claims General McChrystal as its First Victim

2010-11-13T08:52:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on July 15th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I’m going to discuss President Obama’s recent decision to relieve his top military commander, General Stanley McChrystal, of his command. But before I place the McChrystal story in its proper context, it is incumbent on me that I first pay tribute to a highly respected Washington DC journalist, Helen Thomas, who also just lost her job.
Over the last month I have written a series of columns which were sharply critical of the current Israeli government’s policies towards Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and in particular, Gaza. As a Hearst News Service columnist, Helen Thomas was also a well known critic of Israeli policies such as the Jewish settlements in the occupied West bank, which she likened to Israeli “colonies.” And as an American of Lebanese descent she also criticized America’s normally slavish and unquestioned support for a Jewish state “that oppresses a helpless people with its military power and daily humiliation.”
But Helen Thomas was best known to me, and most other Americans, as the most senior member of the White House press corps who always occupied the center seat on the front row of the White House Press Briefing-Conference Room. She was also usually the first member of the press corps to be called upon to ask a question by each of the 10 US Presidents she covered whenever they held a nationally televised press conference.
Helen Thomas was also a pioneer for women journalists everywhere when she was first assigned to cover President John F. Kennedy. Prior to Helen’s first White House assignment women journalists had previously only been used to cover the President’s wife and the fashions she wore or her activities as First Lady. In other words, pure fluff!
However, despite her long and respected career as a White House political correspondent, Helen Thomas ultimately fell victim to the same ‘gotcha’ journalism that has caused problems for many celebrities and politicians in recent years. In an unguarded moment, Helen let fly with a caustic comment about Israel, which put her in the middle of a cause célèbre after the video of her comments was posted on the web hours later. So instead of covering a White House story, Helen Thomas found out that she was the story.
Fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, thanks to the brave new world of web based publishing, public figures in America and many other nations around world no longer have the luxury of unguarded moments when they can feel free to express their true feelings or personal opinions. Although Helen Thomas never actually thought of herself as a public figure or as a celebrity, she found out the hard way that you can’t appear on national television asking the US President questions without becoming one.
Helen Thomas had always been a tough and relentless questioner of both Democratic and Republican Presidents throughout her storied sixty year career at the heart of the American political scene. That’s right. I said sixty years. And therein lies the rub for me as regards her losing her job. She is almost ninety years old for Pete’s sake.
Granted, in expressing her own personal frustration with Israeli policies towards the Palestinian people, her choice of words was definitely inappropriate. Still I have to ask why can’t we just acknowledge that Helen Thomas simply had a “senior moment” and then move on? I mean haven’t we all said something out of anger or frustration at some time in our lives that we later regretted or wish we hadn’t? I know I have.
This leads me to the second subject of this week’s column; General Stanly McChrystal’s departure as America’s top military commander in Iraq and Afghanistan. By now many of you, as well as most Americans, are already aware that President Obama was forced to relieve General McChrystal of his military command following the publication of disparaging remarks made by McChrystal and his staff about other members of the Obama administration, including Vice President Joe Biden.
In at least one sense, General McChrystal is also probably the highest level victim to date of the Icelandic volcano ash cloud that halted European air travel back in April. I can understand why you might find this statement hard to believe, so I ask you to delay making any judgments about it until after I have placed the McChrystal story in what I believe is a more proper perspective.
Like Helen Thomas, McChrystal was forced to resign from his job because of the manner in which he expressed his frustration, although in this case it was with the actions of other members of the Obama administration. But the withering comments published in Rolling Stone magazine, which were attributed to General McChrystal and his staff, were also not made during the course of a traditional interview between a journalist and the person they are profiling or writing an article about. As such, at least some members of McChrystal’s staff have complained that they though their remarks were “off the record’, which is a fairly common journalistic practice when sensitive issues are being discussed.
But experienced politicians and government officials who frequently talk with journalists and other members of the press also know that they must preface comments they don’t want publicly attributed to them with the words “This is off the record”. Because General McChrystal and his hand picked staff don’t fit the profile of government officials who frequently commiserate with members of the press, I am therefore inclined to believe that they didn’t realize the stuff they were saying would ever be published.
In fact the Rolling Stone article was actually based on a series of drunken interviews conducted primarily in a Parisian Irish Pub called Kitty O’Shea’s. So why were they in Paris for two weeks? McChrystal had gone to Paris to deliver a NATO speech and meet his wife on their 33rd anniversary. Then he and his staff had to remain there when the volcano ash grounded all flights in Europe.

Blockades Rarely If Ever Succeed

2010-11-13T08:49:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on July 1st 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Last week I closed my column by noting the inanity of attempting to censor information that some people consider religiously offensive. By cutting off access to facebook for the two and a half million Pakistani facebook users because of a religiously offensive caricature page, the Pakistan government and its citizens also missed seeing that a facebook page called “Against Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” had drawn 106,300 fans versus only 105,000 for the caricature page.
But the governments of Muslim nations have by no means cornered the market when it comes to idiotic actions made in the name of ‘defending’ their citizens against supposedly ‘hostile’ actions by non-governmental groups. A case in point is the Israeli government’s decision to intercept and board the six naval vessels that were a part of a multi-national aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip. Whether the pro-Palestinian activists and or the Israeli commandos were responsible for the subsequent violence on the Turkish pleasure ship Mavi Marmara, which left nine activists dead and many other Israeli commandos and Palestinian activists wounded, is beside the point. The Israelis never should have stopped the aid flotilla.
In fact, the Israeli policy of blockading Gaza has been an abject failure because it has only served to entrench Hamas as the governing authority in Gaza rather than undermine popular support for Hamas. When Israel first undertook this blockade of Gaza, it did so in an internationally supported attempt to weaken the democratically elected Hamas regime by isolating Gaza and its Palestinian residents from the rest of the world. As such, Israel was not alone in its belief that such sanctions would work because the United States and many European countries also provided tacit government support for Israel’s blockade.
But while the Israeli’s and their western allies have been wrong about the effect the blockade would have on Hamas, the Israelis were right regarding their fears about Hamas in Gaza. Prior to the 2005 Palestinian elections in Gaza, the Israelis had been justifiably concerned that democratic elections would benefit Hamas rather than the more moderate Palestinian Fatah organization. But the neo-conservatives President Bush had put in charge of his administration’s foreign policy strategies following the 9/11 al Qaeda attacks on New York City and Washington DC were staunch proponents of democratic elections in Gaza.
President Bush’s foreign policy mavens dismissed Israel’s objections because they believed that democracy was the answer to America and the western world’s problems with Islamic countries. These international relations neophytes foolishly thought they could use democratic elections to remake first Iraq and then Gaza into American versions of democratic Muslim states whose citizens would then naturally eschew Islamic extremism in favor of the benefits of American led pro-western economic development. When the subsequent 2005 democratic elections were won by Hamas thus proving the neo-conservatives wrong, their response was to punish them and force the citizens of Gaza to see the error of their ways by withholding the American economic development aid the citizens of Gaza so badly needed.
But instead of undermining popular support for Hamas, the blockade has only served to harm the Palestinian residents of Gaza, many of whom were once supporters of Hamas’ Palestinian opponent, Fatah. The economic deprivation, which was initially felt by virtually all Gaza residents in the initial years of the Israeli blockade, has now largely disappeared thanks to the myriad webs of tunnels dug by Hamas’ engineers under Gaza’s border with Egypt. The larger harm for Gaza residents has been the relentless subornation of political debates and the systematic annihilation of any political dissent aimed at the Hamas regime.
The Israeli blockade has instead actually proven to be quite a fortuitous boon for the Hamas militants and I believe it is the main reason why Hamas has been able to tighten its grip on society throughout Gaza. Hamas made a number of mistakes after they took control of Gaza following the 2005 elections and a subsequent bloody civil war with the Palestinian Fatah organization, which lost its mandate to govern Gaza in the 2005 elections.
The Hamas militants initially responded to the western backed Israeli blockade by ratcheting up its cross border missile attacks on innocent Israeli citizens culminating in a devastating Israeli war of reprisal in 2009. But the destruction wrought by this ruinous 2009 conflict led to a change in strategy by Hamas. Hamas had fired almost 1800 rockets at Israel in 2008 but following the January 2009 war with Israel Hamas not only stopped hurling projectiles at Israel, it also forced other Palestinian militants to do likewise. So far in 2010 only 34 rockets have been fired at Israel and none of them were from Hamas militants.
Hamas has in effect become a defender of Israel and has instead turned its focus on consolidating its hold on Gaza society. The Israeli blockade has shielded Hamas from outside scrutiny and given its internal security forces free rein to bend dissident Palestinians to its will. Hamas has reinstituted the death penalty and has also bulldozed the homes of Gaza residents who built homes on land that had once been Jewish settlements. When leftist Palestinians protested that the taxes imposed by Hamas were adding to the burden of citizens most affected by the blockade they were rounded up and hauled off to jail.
By keeping its borders with Gaza closed, Israel doesn’t permit people in Gaza to travel to other countries and bring back ideas that would serve as a counterweight to Hamas’ absolutist political control. Nor is the blockade working to prevent economic development. Hamas is using its network of tunnels to create an economy it then takes a big share of the profits from in order to finance its regime. So the economic blockade doesn’t undermine Hamas but instead reinforces Hamas’s control over Gaza and the Palestinians who are unfortunate enough to be trapped there.
Ending the Gaza blockade won’t force Hamas from power, but it just might prevent Hamas from transforming Gaza into another authoritarian state.

The Roots of Religious Intolerance

2010-11-13T08:43:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on June 17th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Last week I noted that I was dismayed by the fact that many mainstream religious leaders within the Abrahamic faiths are also noticeably reticent about emphasizing these religions’ many similarities. So today I want to discuss why these religious leaders don’t emphasize these similarities and the role I think this plays in recent controversies about women wearing burqas and Muslim anger over a draw Mohammed day posting on facebook.
As regards the reason why I believe most mainstream Christian priests or ministers, Jewish rabbis and Muslim mullahs don’t emphasize the many similarities between the Abrahamic faiths, I think the answer is fear. They are all afraid that if they did so, the reason for their existence as leaders of the numerous separate religious institutions that comprise the Abrahamic faiths will slowly fade away.
All religious faiths are essentially man made institutions and systems of spiritual beliefs that were designed by humans to provide spiritual guidance and places of worship for other humans. They are all inspired by different human interpretations of what God wants or expects from humanity, but in and of themselves they are not heavenly creations.
So despite what the human founders and current human leaders of the worlds various different religions might wish us and their devoted followers to believe, I don’t think the few differences that distinguish our different religious faiths really matters that much in the grand scheme of things. In fact the reason why I do believe most religions probably are divinely inspired is based on my sense that they all share a common set of moral values and beliefs.
In other words it is the diversity in religious customs, traditions and specific aspects of different religious beliefs that lead me to conclude that they are merely a reflection of their human origins and the differences that have always existed in human interpretations of causes and effects in the world around them. But the fact that the core beliefs are virtually identical among these different religions is what leads me to believe that this aspect of all the worlds’ major religions probably was inspired by God.
So what do I mean by divinely inspired core religious beliefs as opposed to religious beliefs that are simply reflections of human interpretations of what God wants or expects us to do? Well I believe that I can sum up the divinely inspired religious beliefs in a single sentence. In your words, and even more importantly through your actions, show other human beings the same love, tolerance, patience and kindness you would wish them to show you.
Allow me to be more specific about what exactly this means. Since I don’t like it when others judge or condemn me for my actions or behaviour, even when I know these are not appropriate, doesn’t it stand to reason that I should also avoid doing this to others? Since I am desirous of love and affection from others without expectations that I must do something for them to get this, shouldn’t I also be willing to offer mine to them with no strings attached? If I wish someone would be kind to me or patient with me when I am struggling to deal with or learn something shouldn’t I try to treat others I see in the same circumstances likewise?
As for a few examples of what I mean by different human interpretations of what God expects from us, consider these. Is the Catholic Church’s prohibition on married priests a human religious interpretation or divinely inspired? Is the Christian belief that only those who are baptized will be able to go to heaven a human religious interpretation? Are the Jewish and Muslim dietary proscriptions against eating pork divinely inspired, or are they simply human religious interpretations of what God desires that date to the time of Abraham?
By now I’m sure you have probably guessed how I would respond to these questions so I will now attempt to discuss the role that these differences in religious beliefs based on human interpretations have played and will continue to play in recent controversies about wearing burqas in public and posting drawings of Mohammed on facebook.
While I am sympathetic to the reasons why the French government, as well as other European governments, are seeking to ban Muslim women from wearing burqas in public, they are wrong to propose doing so. Granted, despite what some extremist mullahs would have Muslims believe, there is no suggestion that Muslim women should be required to wear burqas anywhere in the Qur’an, and yes some women are forced to do so by their rigid and overbearing husbands. But there are also Christian religious sects that believe women should never cut their hair or wear pants so what should we do about them? Force them to go to the beauty salon at least once a year? As for women who are married to abusive husbands, the Muslim faith probably has the same proportion of these that every other religious faith has.
I believe these European proposals to ban the wearing of burqas are just as wrong as the Taliban regime’s insistence that women must do so. Both of these mandates are based on anachronistic beliefs that don’t relieve the tensions over differences in religious beliefs based on human interpretations that exist in different cultures, but rather serve to exacerbate them.
I am likewise sympathetic to the anger Muslims feel when unthinking members of non-Muslim societies promote things like offensive drawings of the prophet Mohammed. The guy who created this facebook page claimed he was standing up for the right to freedom of expression. By insulting Muslims who had never done anything to endanger it? I don’t buy his justification, but I also think the Pakistani government and many Muslims overreacted by cutting off access to facebook. As a result, they missed seeing that a facebook page called “Against Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” had 106,300 fans versus only 105,000 for the caricature page. Indeed, censorship cuts both ways.

Religious Intolerance

2010-11-13T08:41:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on June 10th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
I closed last week’s column by asking a question. How can we expect others that are intolerant of the actions or views of those they disagree with, to somehow become less so if we react in an angry or intolerant manner towards them?
In my opinion such behaviour only results in reinforcing their misguided beliefs that they are right and or that their views are morally superior to my own. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but it has been my experience that the only effective response to intolerance is to act in a more tolerant manner towards those who are condemning your own views. Instead of answering their attacks with your own criticism, I think a much better approach is to ask them to please help you understand why they feel this way by explaining their reasoning. Mind you, using this type of response is not an admission that they are right or that we are wrong. It merely provides an opening for those critical of us to explain their reasons why.
I’m not suggesting that we should always do this, because in some instances we are dealing with people who either don’t want to discuss their reasons, or who have adopted positions that are so radically different there isn’t really any point in discussing them. When I am confronted with these kinds of circumstances, I simply say that I don’t agree and then I either try to change the subject or just walk away.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that within every organized religion, as well as all in most other areas of the wider society we live in, there is a minority of people who find it impossible to reconcile their own beliefs with those of others that are different than their own. Getting angry or arguing with them is a useless exercise that only serves to reinforce their twisted and narrow minded ideas about right and wrong. Such people deserve our pity rather than our scorn because in many instances, they are not wholly to blame for thinking this way.
For reasons that the majority of us find difficult to understand, some individuals, regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds or family upbringing, are simply unable to process and sort through the complexities of all the different opinions and information life exposes us to. This makes them pre-disposed to adopt rigid ideas of right and wrong, which are easier for them to understand as well as to equate with the concepts of good and evil.
Many religious extremists have also been brainwashed or otherwise indoctrinated with these rigid and simplistic beliefs by other members of their respective communities who they have come to trust and rely on for spiritual guidance. As a consequence, other people, who may have slightly different religious beliefs, are viewed by their fragile psyches as an evil threat to their physical existence as well as their hopes for eventual spiritual redemption. It is therefore impossible for them to acknowledge that such abnormal religious beliefs might actually be acceptable in the eyes of the God they believe in. In turn, because of the imminent threat such deviant and evil ideas pose to their very existence, this serves as their justification for anti-social behaviour such as indiscriminate murders of those who don’t share their beliefs.
Every religious faith has its share of radical religious leaders and their minions who are slavishly devoted to their twisted spiritual views. Within the world’s largest religious persuasion, the Abrahamic faiths that I am most familiar with of Christianity, Judaism and Islam all have their own unique but equally extreme religious factions. But there are also many similarities and very few differences in what the so-called spiritual leaders of these hard-line religious factions preach to their followers.
These quasi-spiritual religious guides pluck isolated passages from the Christian Bible (i.e. ‘an eye for an eye’), the Jewish Torah (i.e. God hates those who hate the people of Israel) and the Islamic Qur’an (i.e. ‘Strike terror into God's enemies, and your enemies’) to justify violence towards other people whom they say are sinners, enemies or perpetrators of evil.
They promulgate a message of hate because their objective isn’t a spiritual one, but rather their own unholy desire for power over the thinking and actions of their fellow human beings. But in order to acquire this power, these religious hate mongers must first subvert the overall message that runs through all of these religious texts, one that extols the virtues of kindness, love, patience and tolerance towards others; be they believers or non-believers.
But the Abrahamic faiths also share many other religious views such as their belief in a single God and the fact that all three religions trace their religious beliefs to God’s prophet, Abraham. Furthermore, all three faiths consider Jerusalem to be one of God’s holy cities and share religious customs such as fasting, the necessity for rituals of penance for one’s sins, prayers as well as worship on a holy day of the week, (Sunday, Saturday or Friday) and at certain times of the year (Christmas, Passover and Ramadan).
However, discussion of the numerous similarities between the Abrahamic religions is avoided by religious extremists because doing so would make it either difficult or impossible to arouse the passions of hatred extremist pseudo-religious leaders need and use to control and direct their followers. By instead focusing on the relatively few differences that actually do exist between these religions, these power hungry religious leaders are thus able to prey on the human desire to feel superior to others who are different from them.
But what dismays me even more is the fact that other religious leaders within the Abrahamic faiths who do not share such blood thirsty desires for power over their flocks, are also noticeably reticent about emphasizing these religious similarities. So next week I will discuss why they don’t as well as the role different religious beliefs based on human interpretations have played in recent burqa and facebook controversies.

Intolerant Behavior

2010-11-13T08:39:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on June 3rd 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
I ended last week’s column by saying that the essential truth about why many native citizens blame immigrants for their economic troubles, is because they don’t want to face the truth about their own failure to upgrade their skills in order to remain employable. But there is another equally troubling reason why native citizens seek to blame immigrants for their country’s economic or social ills that I want discuss today. It is their lack of tolerance for others who don’t dress, speak or think like they do.
Unfortunately for our respective national and global societies, the issue of intolerance of others who don’t act, look or worship the same way we do, isn’t confined to native citizens’ who are critical of immigrants from other countries; it applies to all of us! Granted, some of us are much more tolerant than others, but the bottom line is; all of have been intolerant of others at some point in our lives; it is part of the human condition.
Be honest now. Who among us doesn’t like to feel at least a little bit superior to someone else from time to time? I’ll admit that I do. Mind you, I’m not exactly proud to admit it. But if I’m going to be honest, at least with myself, then I have to acknowledge I’m guilty of this from time to time. But because I have admitted that I like feeling this way, and also know this is a character failing, not an attribute, I use my awareness of this flaw to try and make sure that at least my behaviour towards others doesn’t betray such attitudes.
In other words, it is one thing to feel you are smarter or better looking than someone else, but quite another to actually act as if you are. Tolerance and intolerance are models of your behaviour towards others rather than your actual feelings about them. For example, even though I have very strong feelings that I am right about issues like the death penalty, which I strongly oppose, I refuse to morally condemn those who argue in favour of it.
Instead of arguing with them and pointing out why I believe this is an ‘immoral’ type of retribution, I seek to understand why they support the use of this form of punishment by engaging them in a conversation about the reasons why they favour its use. Then, during the course of listening to the reasons why they favour death sentences, I try to focus our conversation on the similarities in our concerns about crime and how to deter it, rather than our differences over what constitutes more or less ‘moral’ forms of punishment for it.
Through this process of constructive engagement, we inevitably discover that we share many more similarities in our concerns about crimes like murder and the need for society to punish and deter it, than our differences over punishing such offenses. By refusing to debate the moral superiority of my position, our discussion about the death penalty can then be focused on evidence about capital punishment’s effectiveness and the fact that innocent people are sometimes convicted of crimes that someone else committed. It has been my experience that this is the only means by which someone might then change their mind or at least acknowledge that maybe my reasons for opposing the death penalty are valid.
Gossip is another example of what I mean when I say all of us are guilty of intolerant behaviour on occasion. Who among us can say we have not engaged in gossip about other people from time to time? When we discuss someone else during our conversations with friends and work colleagues, and say things about them that we wouldn’t say if they were present, we are gossiping. Nor does it matter whether we are actively agreeing with what is being said or merely listening to it; we are still engaging in gossip because by listening and not defending the person being discussed, we are acknowledging the truth about what is said.
Gossiping is our human way of acting out our feelings that we are somehow superior to others in terms of how we would and would not behave or act in certain situations. It is a model of intolerant behaviour that we use to criticize the actions or behaviour of others and is in effect; a polite form of murder through the use of character assassination. I’m not proud of it, but I can admit that I have been guilty of such intolerant behaviour at times. Can you?
By being honest with myself about the fact that I like engaging in gossip, even though I know this isn’t a demonstration of tolerant behaviour, I have been able to use this awareness in a conscious attempt to correct my use of this intolerant behaviour. While I have not always succeeded, more often than not I have been able to do so by either pointing out more positive qualities of the person being discussed, or by changing the topic of the conversation. But when this doesn’t work, I usually excuse myself and walk away from the conversation.
Does this mean I’m now morally superior or somehow better than those who continue to engage in this more polite form of murder? No! It simply means that I am working to become the kind of person I wish to be, by trying not to engage in displays of intolerant behaviour as frequently as I know I have in the past. I’m not morally superior nor will I ever be morally perfect. But that doesn’t prevent me from improving my tolerance of the behaviours or feelings of moral superiority held by those who I disagree with.
How can we expect others that are intolerant of the actions or views of those they disagree with, to somehow become less so if we react in an angry or intolerant manner towards them? I will discuss this in the context of religious intolerance next week.

Myths About Illegal Immigrants

2010-11-13T08:37:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on May 27th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
To conclude my discussion about why citizens in America and other countries need more legal or even illegal immigrants, I will discuss the four most common American myths about immigration and to what extent these myths also apply to other developed countries.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word “myth” in several different contexts, so the definition of within the context of this discussion is “Common American popular beliefs or stories about ‘immigrants’ that are either half truths or fictions.” The dictionary’s reference to ‘half truths’ is appropriate because some myths are not ‘fictions.’ There is actually an element of truth in them.
The most common myth about immigration in America and Europe is that immigrants take jobs away from American and other countries’ native citizens. This would be a half ‘truth’ because while there is an element of truth to it, the actual numbers of jobs that immigrants take that could be filled by American citizens or native citizens in other developed countries is quite small. Furthermore, virtually all economists also estimate that for every job an immigrant takes, a new one is created.
This is because immigrants generally take either highly skilled jobs like computer engineering or medical staff where there is a shortage of native workers, or very low skill jobs such as cleaning staff which native workers refuse to apply for. So for the most part, immigrants take jobs that complement rather than compete with the types of jobs held by native workers. In this way, immigrants add to the number of workers paying taxes that in turn fund the pension payments to native pensioners.
Furthermore, immigrants who have either highly skilled jobs or low pay, low skill jobs are usually the last to be hired and the first workers to be fired when business turns bad like it did in the Great Recession of 2009. This allows business owners to more easily expand and contract their business based on the health of the economy thus protecting the jobs of more senior native citizen workers. Unemployment statistics show that immigrants suffer much higher rates of unemployment during economic downturns than native workers experience.
The second most common myth is that immigrant workers push down the wages paid by employers to native citizen workers. This is another half truth that ignores the overall positive impact of immigrants on native citizen wages. While it is true that American citizens who only have a second level education have experienced a decline in pay for the low skills jobs they are qualified for due to competition from immigrant workers, the actual decline is only between 1 and 2%.
Furthermore this decline really only applies to wages paid for hard, back breaking work, like jobs in meat packing plants, collecting garbage or replacing roofs under a hot sun, that most native citizens decline to do. Native citizens who only have a second level diploma, but are employed in trades requiring more skills and training, such as plumbers, electricians or mechanics, have seen no effect on their incomes from immigrant competition. Third level university graduates have also seen no reduction in wages due to immigrant competition for more highly skilled jobs.
But looking at the bigger picture, economists’ estimate that for each job an immigrant takes, at least one additional job is created. This is due to the fact that immigrants stimulate overall economic growth because not only do they buy more products as consumers, but also because many of them create new jobs acting either as investors in native citizen businesses or as entrepreneurs creating new businesses and jobs. This is why economists claim that for the majority of American workers, their current pay is actually slightly higher than it would be without immigration.
The third myth isn’t just a half truth however; it is a total fiction. This myth claims that immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants, take advantage of America and other developed nations’ social welfare systems that are meant to provide child support, food, health care and education for native citizens. In the case of illegal immigrants the myth is they don’t pay taxes, so native citizens are footing the costs of providing these services to illegal immigrants and their families.
While less than 5% of illegal immigrants in America do collect food stamp benefits to feed their families and educate their children in America’s public schools, they also pay the same taxes that native citizens pay to support these services. They pay sales taxes (or VAT) on the goods or services they purchase and they pay rent, which landlords in turn use to pay their own property taxes.
In the United States most illegal immigrants also have federal, state and local income taxes as well as Social Security and Medicare payments deducted from their wages with no hope of ever getting an income tax refund or claiming welfare benefits, because they have to provide fake social security numbers to their employers since they will not be hired without them. The US federal government alone collects over $10 billion a year in taxes it has no valid social security number to credit them to.
The fourth myth is also a fiction. It claims that America is over-run with illegal immigrants and because they don’t integrate with the broader population, they are responsible for increases in property and violent crimes.
However, in 1890 immigrants made up 15% of America’s population versus only 13% today. Furthermore, back then natives were also claiming that Irish and Italian immigrants did not integrate into society and were responsible for increases in crime, just as they claim Mexican immigrants are today.
The truth about these myths is that native citizens and politicians that pander to them use them to blame immigrants for their problems, instead of being honest about the real problem. The essential truth is these native citizens never took the time or made an effort to upgrade their skills in order to remain employable in a constantly changing and more technologically advanced world.

The Truth About Illegal Immigrants

2010-11-13T08:35:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on May 20th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Last week in my discussion about why the developed countries of the world actually need more immigrants, even if our current levels of unemployment are uncomfortably high, I mentioned that one reason was because all of these nation’s pension systems were designed based on the assumption that their working age populations would increase at the same rate as their retiree population.
But there are some other assumptions that are also built into the design of those pension systems that are going to have to be dealt with sooner rather than later.
When the American and European pension systems were originally set up more than sixty years ago, the average life expectancy in the world’s developed countries was around 68 years of age. So deductions from worker’s wages to fund these pension schemes were based on the assumption that pension payments to workers would last for an average of 3 to 6 years if they retired between the ages of 62 and 65.
But as of 2010, advances in healthcare and medical treatments have now extended the average life expectancy in those same developed countries to an average age of 80. So that means the government funded pension schemes are now providing pension payments for an average of twelve more years than their pension schemes were designed to. Assuming a reduction in current and future pension payments is not an option, there are only three prudent courses of action under these circumstances:
1) A 250%-300% increase in deductions from every worker’s wages to fund an average of 12 additional years of pension payments.
2) Increase the retirement age for workers by the same number of years that their life expectancy has risen so they can’t retire until they are 74 to 77.
3) A combination of increased wage deductions and retirement ages.
But politicians in America and Europe are usually not too keen about telling their constituents “Oh, by the way, you’re going to have to work a few more years before you can retire and or we are going to have to double or triple the amount we take from your wages to fund your pension scheme.” So rather than tell voters the truth about their pension schemes, they look for a way to avoid dealing with the issue.
They can get away with putting off facing the problem and taking potentially risky political actions to fix it, so long as the working age population is increasing at a rate that is commensurate with the number of workers who are retiring, Of course this also means that when the day finally arrives when they have to make unpleasant adjustments like cutting benefits, raising wage deductions and retirement ages, these are much more painful and difficult for those constituents to accept. Think Greece!
The German political option means politicians have to be more honest with their constituents and start making smaller adjustments much earlier in the process. Nonetheless, the demographic pressures of a declining working age population and increasing numbers of pensioners will result in significant pension scheme changes. These include reducing future pension benefits by an average of 7-10% and increasing workers’ contributions by a similar amount as well as raising the retirement age to 67.
On the other hand, the American social security system has already increased workers’ contributions by 5% and begun to raise the retirement age to 67 (and will continue to gradually increase it to at least 70, 72 or maybe 75). But because America has a higher fertility rate, thanks to its legal and illegal immigrants, it doesn’t have to use reductions in current or future benefits to address its funding problem because its working age population continues to keep pace with increases in its retirement rolls.
Make no mistake, I am not suggesting that throwing open your doors to legal and illegal immigrants is the solution to the developed world’s underfunded pension schemes. The core of the problem, after all, is the combination of fewer native citizen workers paying taxes due to low fertility rates, and the fact that more pensioners are being paid more in benefits from those taxes because they are also living longer.
What I am suggesting is that if developed countries allow more immigration from less developed countries; they can avoid cutting benefits to future retirees and mitigate some of the pain associated with increasing workers’ contributions to their pension schemes, and reducing their take home pay in the process, as well as increases in the age when workers can retire with full benefits. Even though America has higher levels of both legal and illegal immigration than its European and Asian (Australia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore) counterparts, it has still not been able to avoid raising workers’ contributions as well as their future retirement age.
Nor is the issue of underfunded pension schemes exclusively the province of the world’s more developed countries. Why? Because we live in an increasingly interconnected globalized world where no country or region is immune to the problems experienced in other parts of the world. One of the lessons learned from the recent ‘Great Recession’ is that although it was caused by the financial excesses of the developed countries, developing countries like Brazil and China also suffered during the downturn because they rely on the developed world to buy most of their exports.
Granted, the emerging economies in the developing world did not suffer as deep or as long of a recession as America and Europe have, but they still need the developed countries as customers for much of their output. If the developed countries don’t fix their pension scheme problems soon, then the inevitable cuts in benefits to pensioners and higher taxes for workers will translate into less money for both groups of citizens to spend on consumer products imported from the developing world.
So if immigration helps America address its pension problems, why are some Americans so upset about illegal immigration? I will discuss the most common myths about immigration next week.
To keep the global economy on track, people in the United States and the rest of the developed world need to work longer before retiring, pay higher taxes and expect less from government. And the cheap imports lining the shelves of mega-chains such as Wal-Mart and Target? They need to be more expensive.

We Need Immigrants

2010-11-13T08:33:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on May 13th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to discuss what is for many, a very emotional issue; Illegal Immigrants!
This is a matter that has been receiving a great deal of media attention in the states lately, due to a new law that was just passed in the great state of Arizona, but I also know it is a touchy subject for some people here in Ireland as well as much of western Europe. So although the facts and figures I will be using in this column are based on my own research of this topic in America, they are nonetheless applicable to legal immigrants as well as to other developed countries such as Ireland, where it is an equally emotional subject within certain segments of the general population.
America is a nation of immigrants. Virtually every single person you meet in the states is either an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants. In 2008, 1,046,539 of our legal immigrants became U.S. citizens, a record number. Out of a total 2010 population of approximately 310 million people, an estimated 40 million, about 13%, are either legal or illegal immigrants and of that total, an estimated 12 million are in America illegally, roughly 30%. So how does that affect legal US citizens?
Well for starters, even though legal and illegal immigrants make up 13% of our population, they account for almost 16% of our nation’s workforce. So given my country’s current 10% unemployment rate, it would seem one could easily argue that they are obviously taking jobs away from American citizens, right? Or if we could just rid ourselves of those 12 million illegal immigrants, we wouldn’t have an unemployment problem, right? Wrong!
They reason why immigrants are over-represented as a percentage of America’s workforce is because our population of native-born American citizens is aging! The truth is, legal and illegal immigrants, along with their children, are responsible for 58 percent of America’s population growth over the past 30 years.
Fertility and birth rates for the native citizen populations in America and all of the wealthier developed countries of the world have been declining for the past thirty years. In every country they are below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple and in many countries the population has already begun to fall as a result. Therefore, our low U.S. citizen fertility rates coupled with retiring baby boomers, means the only likely source of growth in America’s ‘prime age’ workforce of 25 to 55 year olds for the foreseeable future. Legal or illegal; we need them!
We need them primarily because we need working age immigrants to pay taxes to the government so it can pay for the Social Security benefits record numbers of retiring baby boomers will soon be drawing. If you are already retired you need them too because without their taxes, your benefits will be cut! If you are under the illusion that all of those deductions from your pay checks were being deposited in a government bank account that you will draw down after you retire, think again!
That money has already been used to pay benefits in return for a government bond, a glorified government IOU. Social welfare systems in the US and Europe were all designed this way. The money they take in each year is then paid out to current pensioners based on the assumption that as the population grows; the size of the tax paying workforce will grow too. This provides the government the additional money they will need to provide pensions for an increasing number of pensioners.
So what happens if the working age population doesn’t grow? Well regardless of whether it stays level or begins to decline, the government faces some hard choices! Assuming that cutting the amount it pays current and future pensioners is not an option, if the number of pensioners increases but the size of the workforce remains the same, or if the number of pensioners stays the same but the size of the working age population declines, then the government can no longer balance its books.
In this situation the government has only three choices. The first one I call Greece! The government borrows the money by selling bonds, which are just fancy government IOUs, with a promise to pay the money back later, but at a higher rate of interest because it has a poor record of balancing its books. The government assumes that it will be able to afford this costly option thanks to some future surplus of tax revenues. This surplus is generated by raising retirement ages to decrease the amount it pays out in benefits, increasing workforce taxes or some combination of the two.
The second choice I call Germany. The government also borrows the money by issuing bonds; with a promise to pay the money back later with less interest. The government assumes that it will be able to afford this less costly interest rate option because it has a good record of balancing its books and will also need a smaller future surplus of tax revenues to do so. The smaller surplus it needs is generated by raising the retirement age so that it can lower or keep the total number of pensioners the same and by maintaining or slightly increasing taxes.
The third choice I call America. Here the government also borrows the money by issuing bonds; with a promise to pay the money back later with less interest. The smaller surplus of tax revenues it needs to balance the books is generated by raising the retirement age so that it can slow down the increase in its number of pensioners, and by increasing the size of its tax paying workforce by adding more immigrants.
But all developed countries need more immigrants because there are other assumptions that the world’s pension systems are based on. When these assumptions are also off the mark, the problem of financing pensions doesn’t get better; it gets worse! I will discuss them in detail next week.

America's Addiction to Cheap Oil

2010-11-13T08:31:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on May 6th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Just as the roots of the current wave of al Qaeda’s anti-American terrorism lie in the Islamic world's frustration with America’s support of Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, the roots of the current environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico lie in America’s addiction to cheap energy from burning fossil fuels.
Coupled with the recent coal mine explosion that claimed the lives of 29 coal miners, one would think that these kinds of tragic disasters would motivate America to clean up its act and face up to its self destructive addiction to coal and oil. But now President Obama’s historic environmental protection bill is actually in danger because this oil spill underscores the environmental dangers associated with offshore drilling.
I know this assessment seems counter-intuitive, but the reason why the first climate change legislation to ever be passed by the US Congress is now on life support is because one of the key elements of this bill was an agreement to allow new off-shore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean, from New Jersey to Florida, in the Arctic Ocean along the northern coast of Alaska and in the eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico and only 125 miles from the tourist beaches of northern and western Florida.
Environmental organizations and their Democratic legislative supporters in Congress had reluctantly agreed to this concession in an effort to win some limited support for their broader climate change legislation from Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham. Furthermore, conservationists have been trying to get this bill, which will cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions to a level that is 17 percent below its 2005 levels by 2020, passed by Congress for more than a decade without success.
The problem now though, isn’t with the bill’s Republican opponents. In the wake of this rapidly spreading oil spill, South Carolina’s Republican Senator Lindsey Graham continued to express his support for the climate change bill, saying that “We’ve had problems with car design, but you don’t stop driving.” Graham then noted that “The Challenger accident was heart-breaking, but we went back to space.”
No the problem with finalizing the passage of this legislation is now with some of President Obama’s own Democrats in Congress. Several Democrats in Congress, including 3 Democratic Senators from New Jersey and Florida have said they will now vote against the climate change bill if offshore drilling is still included. Given the fact that Senate Republicans are adamant that they won’t allow a bill to be passed without the offshore drilling provisions, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida who previously supported the bill now says, “I think that’s dead on arrival.”
Though I usually find ironic twists of fate such as this somewhat humorous, there is nothing particularly funny about this one. America’s best chance in years to do something to address climate change and its addiction to oil, is now foundering on the oil soaked shoals of its Gulf of Mexico coast. As for who is to blame for this ongoing environmental catastrophe, BP may be the oil company that is most responsible for this disaster, but BP also had plenty of willing accomplices.
America’s consumers are right there at the top of this list because of their propensity for screaming bloody murder whenever the price of the cheap energy that fuels their cars, heats their homes and supports their energy wasting lifestyles spikes. Right behind them are self serving Republican politicians as well as a few Democrats who hypocritically fuel this anger while they are simultaneously catering to the fossil fuel industries’ desire for more drilling or mining rights and less regulation.
The US government agencies that are supposed to safeguard America’s vital environmental and occupational safety interests through regulation of the coal and oil extraction industries are culprits as well. The methane gas explosion that claimed the lives of 29 miners at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia last month was at least partially due to lax regulation by the US Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Massey Energy is the fifth largest coal mining company in America, but it also has a long running and very poor safety record. Two years ago it pleaded guilty to safety violations that caused the death of 2 miners and paid the largest settlement in the history of the US coal industry. Furthermore, in 2008 Massey was also fined a record $20 million by the US Environmental Protection Agency for violations of US Clean Water regulations. But Massey Energy’s safety record didn’t improve as a result of these sanctions; it got worse as the Big Branch Mine alone was cited for over 200 violations during the first 3 months of this year, but was never shut down.
The US Interior Department was the government agency in charge of regulating offshore drilling and ensuring that the oil industry had safeguards in place that would prevent environmental disasters like the current one from ever happening. In response to questions from Congress about plans for offshore drilling explosions, the Interior Department sent a letter that stated “oil companies have ‘reliable backup systems’ in the event of a rig blowout.” Well they sure got that one right didn’t they?
This had become an issue in Congress because the oil industry in the US was trying to avoid the $500 thousand per offshore drilling rig cost of installing the ‘acoustic switches’ Norway and Brazil required on offshore drilling rigs. These acoustic switches are designed to shut off the flow of oil in the event of a drilling rig explosion that doesn’t activate the oil well’s blow out preventer. In 2003 the Interior Department gave in to the oil industry and dropped the issue of requiring them to install acoustic switches.
But by the time BP and the US government tallies the cost of cleaning up this oil spill, I’ll bet that half a million dollars for an acoustic switch will look mighty cheap by comparison. I’ll discuss Arizona’s new immigration law next week.

The World's Greatest Threat?

2010-11-13T08:30:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on April 29th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
As I have written in previous columns, I believe settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essential if the United States wants to dry up support for al Qaeda’s pseudo-religious political terrorism within Muslim communities around the world. But there is another equally important reason to do so; Iran’s relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons that it can use to threaten Israel and expand Iran’s influence over the political regimes in other Muslim countries in the Middle East.
Although there are some who still wish to believe Iran is not actually trying to develop a nuclear weapon and is merely angling to use the threat of doing so to keep its enemies off balance, more evidence has recently emerged which should put to rest any remaining doubts about Iran’s true nuclear weapons intentions. Equally disturbing is the fact that Pakistan’s top military and intelligence officials, America’s erstwhile allies in the battle against al Qaeda inspired terrorism, were the ones responsible for first getting Iran’s nuclear weapons program off the ground.
The father of Pakistan’s nukes, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has now provided official documents as well as a first person account of Iran’s repeated attempts since the late 1980s to first buy a nuclear bomb from Pakistan and failing that, to purchase the technology they needed to build their own nuclear weapon. Pakistan’s motivation for selling nuclear weapons and or the technology to make them to Iran was money, while Iran’s motivation was a nuclear weapon it could use in its ongoing conflict with Iraq.
After eight years of war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Pakistan needed money because of the strains supporting millions of Afghan refugees were having on Pakistan’s economy and national budget. So early in 1987 Gen. Zia ul Haq, the Pakistani president until 1988, and the Pakistani Army’s Chief of Staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg, made a deal with one of the founders and leaders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Ali Shamkhani, to supply nuclear weapons and or the technology to make them in return for $10 billion in assistance dedicated to Pakistan’s defense budget.
Although Pakistan did not test any nuclear bombs until 1998, American and British intelligence officials claim that Pakistan actually built its first nuclear weapon in 1986. Although Pakistan still refuses to comment on these claims, Iran has already told International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors that it was a Pakistani “network” that provided Iran with the specifications and equipment it needed to build uranium enrichment centrifuges and then shape enriched uranium for use in a bomb.
Khan says that Pakistan’s ISI intelligence officials justified their cooperation with Iran to him by saying that due to their religious and ideological affinities, both countries wanted to thwart the ambitions of Western governments in their region and that Pakistan desperately needed the financial assistance Iran was offering in return for Pakistan’s help in developing nuclear weapons.
ISI documents also show that General Beg was “in favour of very close cooperation with Iran in the nuclear field in lieu of financial assistance promised to him toward Pakistan's defense budget.” A former Pakistani intelligence officer says General Beg saw selling some of their nuclear weapons and technology to Iran as the solution to the Pakistan military’s ongoing budget problems and that Beg told the Iranians, “You have the money, we have the technology.”
But when Iran’s Ali Shamkhani returned to Pakistan in 1988 to retrieve the three nuclear bombs General Beg had promised Iran, he discovered that this was one promise Pakistan was no longer willing to honour. In the interim General Zia ul Haq had been replaced as Pakistan’s leader by Benazir Bhutto, and the new Chairman of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff committee was Admiral Iftikhar Ahmed Sirohey.
Shamkhani became angry when Admiral Sirohey told him they would discuss how Pakistan might assist Iran’s nuclear weapons program after they discussed other matters first. Khan writes that Shamkhani continued to press for 3 nuclear bombs by telling Sirohey that “first General Zia and then General Beg had promised assistance and nuclear weapons and he (Shamkhani) had specifically come to collect the same.”
When Admiral Sirohey declined to provide the three nuclear weapons to Shamkhani, Khan says General Beg then pressed Prime Minister Bhutto and her top military aide “to honour Beg’s commitment.” In response to this pressure, Khan says he was then told by Bhutto’s military aide to get the components for two of Pakistan’s old first generation of P-1 uranium enrichment centrifuges “and pack them into boxes with 2 sets of drawings,” so they could be sent to Iran through an intermediary.
Today the IR-1 centrifuges Iran is currently using to enrich uranium are virtual replicas of the P-1 designs Kahn provided them back in 1989. But Pakistan’s secret assistance to Iran’s nuclear weapons program didn’t stop there. The covert Pakistan “network” continued to provide assistance to Iran including the names and addresses of companies that supply Pakistan with bomb parts and centrifuge components.
Even though Pakistan hasn’t provided any further assistance to Iran’s nuclear weapons development program for the past five years, the damage has already been done. The IAEA says Iran has already admitted that the new IR-2 centrifuges they plan to install in their new underground facilities in Qum are based on designs for Pakistan’s more advanced P-2 centrifuge that were secretly given to Iran in 2004.
But even if one chooses to ignore Iran’s clandestine nuclear dealings, Kahn’s “insider” story totally contradicts Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s recent claim that “we won't do that (build nuclear weapons) because we don't believe in having them.” I and many other observers are now convinced that the closer Iran gets to acquiring enough enriched uranium to shape a nuclear bomb; the closer the world gets to a deadly confrontation over Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Why?
Because history tells me even though the US and Europe wants to avoid a military confrontation with Iran, Israel won’t hesitate to act militarily before Iran has enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon.

Whose Security is More Important?

2010-11-13T08:27:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on April 22nd 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Last week I noted that I believe the best way to pressure Israel to begin serious negotiations to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians is to condition America’s financial support on a halt to building new settlements. But I also question whether or not President Obama is both willing and able to transform America’s angry demands that Israel halt settlement building, into actions that will coerce Israel to stop this damaging (for peace prospects) policy.
Although I would obviously prefer quick and decisive action, I also know this is highly unlikely with the 2010 mid-term elections looming less than seven months away. Unfortunately for the Palestinian peace process, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also counting on this fact of American electoral politics to forestall any unpleasant consequences for at least seven months and possibly much longer should Republicans make big gains in the upcoming elections.
However, this doesn’t mean Netanyahu is off the hook until after America’s November mid-term elections. President Obama may not be as popular in Israel as he is in the rest of the world, but the Israeli government also knows that Obama will be President for at least two and quite likely six more years after the November elections. Therefore, some improvement in relations between the two countries remains a priority for Israel lest the Jewish state run the risk of seeing the current spat between two marital partners turn into a messy divorce.
As I noted last week, Israel is not economically self-sufficient and continues to rely heavily on US foreign assistance and loan guarantees to keep its economy afloat. The longer term concern of the current Israeli government is that the last time there was a dust up over Israeli settlement building in the early 1990s; the then Republican Bush administration withheld those loan guarantees for a time, thereby putting a considerable strain on Israel’s economy. Netanyahu knows that if America did this once before, it could just as easily do so again.
Netanyahu’s dilemma is that he needs to begin to rebuild the trust that once existed between America and Israel or face a possible financial squeeze in the first quarter of the New Year (2011) when Israel traditionally gets all of its American foreign aid at one time. Because it is Israel’s main financier, any delays by the United States in providing this assistance and or withholding loan guarantees will be felt within a matter of months.
But the Democratic Obama administration simply doesn’t trust Netanyahu to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians.
For their part, the Palestinians also don’t trust the current Netanyahu led Israeli government to negotiate seriously either. In a recent interview the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat noted this saying that “We have a trust level below zero between the two sides.” Erekat wants the United States to take a direct role in the negotiations because he believes that any attempt at direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is doomed from the start.
Some US-Israel foreign policy analysts think this latest settlement dispute will put enough pressure on Netanyahu that he will modify his stance on settlement building and make enough concessions to warrant more substantive negotiations with the Palestinians. While I agree that Netanyahu is definitely feeling some pressure to do something to appease Israel’s biggest ally, I also think it will take more than just public remonstrations to move Netanyahu to make any serious concessions because of internal political pressure from his coalition partners.
Netanyahu’s right wing Likud party won a very narrow victory over its centrist Kadima party opposition in the last elections, so he was only able to form a government by enlisting the support of Israel’s most extreme right wing parties. Those right wing extremists have no interest in negotiating a peace agreement with the Palestinians and are at the forefront of pushing for even more settlements than the limited numbers the Israeli government has already permitted,
But Netanyahu also faces resistance from within his own Likud party as well. Likud’s deputy speaker of Parliament, Danny Danon, also supports more settlement building and says that Secretary of State Clinton’s “meddling in internal Israeli decisions regarding the development of our capital, Jerusalem, is uninvited and unhelpful.” So according to Israel’s right wingers, even though America keeps Israel afloat financially, American meddling on settlement building is the problem, not Israeli intransigence? Yeah right!
But what Mr. Danon and other right wing politicians in Israel have yet to realize is that American public opinion has slowly started to come around to the view that has long been held by the vast majority of both Republican and Democratic foreign policy experts; settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essential if the United States wants to dry up support for al Qaeda’s pseudo-religious political terrorism within Muslim communities around the world.
Make no mistake, the lobbying influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is still very strong on Capitol Hill, but it is no longer the powerful force it once was. The American news media has also begun to publish more stories that cast Israel in a less favorable light because Americans are finally starting to realize that this Israeli-Palestinian conflict might actually be fueling anti-American sentiment and support for al Qaeda in the wider Muslim community around the world.
When, not if, a majority of Americans finally come to the conclusion that our unstinting support for Israel is putting our nation at risk in terms of further al Qaeda inspired terrorist attacks, then American politicians, regardless of their political party affiliation, will begin to support applying more pressure on Israel to negotiate in good faith with the Palestinians. I could be wrong, but I have a very real sense that this will happen much sooner than Mr. Netanyahu and his right wing supporters expect, rather than later. While America has a huge financial and emotional investment in the state of Israel, it has a much bigger emotional and financial investment in its own security.

America's Economic Strings with Israel

2010-11-13T08:24:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on April 15th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
I closed last week’s column by saying that America’s diplomatic support for Israel pales in comparison to America’s monetary support of Israel. So today I will describe how extensive this monetary support has been and what it is projected to be for the next ten years. I am highlighting this aspect of American support for Israel because I hope President Obama will use these financial strings to encourage Israel to change its behavior.
In the 60 years between 1949 and 2009 the United States provided more than $106 billion (or just under $2 billion a year) in economic and military assistance to Israel. Furthermore, the current long range 10 year Congressional budget forecast estimates America will continue to give Israel more than $3 billion annually for at least the next 10 years and probably well beyond that. But since Israel is a developed country with higher per capita income levels than many EU member states, would Israel really be that susceptible to US financial pressure? Well, read on.
A 2005 briefing report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service for the U.S. Congress says; “Israel is not economically self-sufficient, and relies on foreign assistance and borrowing to maintain its economy. Since 1985, the United States has provided $3 billion in grants annually to Israel. Since 1976, Israel has been the largest annual recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, and is the largest cumulative recipient since World War II. In addition to U.S. assistance, it is estimated that Israel receives about $1 billion annually through U.S. philanthropy, an equal amount through short and long- term commercial loans, and around $1 billion a year in Israel Bonds proceeds.” That’s a total of $6 billion a year!
This briefing for Congress also notes some of the other monetary benefits America provides Israel, which are difficult to quantify but are nonetheless financially lucrative for the Israeli government. The report notes that “U.S. aid to Israel has some unique aspects, such as loans with repayment waived, or a pledge to provide Israel with economic assistance equal to the amount Israel owes the United States for previous loans. Israel also receives special benefits that may not be available to other countries, such as the use of U.S. military assistance for research and development in the United States, the use of U.S. military assistance for military purchases in Israel, or receiving all its assistance in the first 30 days of the fiscal year rather than in 3 or 4 installments as other countries do.”
Sounds like some very unique special benefits if you ask me. Loans that I don’t have to repay? I can always get new loans from you equal to what I owe you? Wow! Wouldn’t you like to get loans terms like this from your bank? I know I sure would.
Furthermore, although America’s annual economic aid has been declining in recent years; America’s military aid to Israel has been growing faster than the economic aid has fallen. The net effect is that money Israel would have spent on its military needs has been offset by American military aid, allowing Israel to spend those unspent military funds on other things.
Now maybe I’m wrong to think this way, but given Israel’s historic and ongoing dependence on American economic and military financial aid, I think this is an area where President Obama could bring pressure to bear on Israel. But even if I am right about this the question remains whether President Obama would be willing to do this and if so whether the US Congress would support Obama if he decided to put restrictions on Israel’s financial aid.
These are open questions because Israel has two wealthy and politically well connected lobbying organizations that work to advance Israeli interests in the US. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) directly lobbies the US Congress, while the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations lobbies both the President and Congress on behalf of Jews living in the US, Israel and the rest of the world. But both of these groups are also under increasing pressure from some of their members to put an end to their slavish support of whatever Israel’s positions are until Israel demonstrates an urgency to reach a peace agreement.
Recognizing that there are practical limits to US economic, military and political power, President Obama abandoned the previous administration’s unilateral military approach in favour of a multilateral diplomatic approach to countering al Qaeda inspired Islamic terrorism as soon as he took office. But President Obama also knew that repairing America’s image in the Muslim world require quiet diplomacy and patience judging the progress of his geo-political initiatives.
Chief among these was a new diplomatic push to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Obama put George Mitchell in charge of the Middle East peace negotiations because of Mitchell’s previous success dealing with pseudo-religious political conflict in Northern Ireland. Obama knew that getting both sides to agree to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be very difficult because as former US Middle East adviser, Aaron Miller says “In an existential conflict driven by memory, identity, religion and national trauma, the Israeli and Palestinian capacities to absorb and inflict pain are limitless.” But Miller also notes the other reason why it is so important that this conflict be resolved writing that, “In a post-9/11 era, the cause of Palestine drives recruits to al-Qaeda and helps generate lethal levels of anti-Americanism.”
That’s why I believe it is essential for President Obama to find a way to pressure Israel to stop building settlements as a first step to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if he wants to dry up the source of anti-American terrorism; the Islamic world's frustration with US support of Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. I believe the best way to pressure Israel is to condition America’s financial support on a halt to building new settlements. This would also answer my question; Is Obama both willing and able to transform America’s angry words into actions?

Spring is Here But a Chill Is In the Air

2010-11-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on April 8th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Spring may have officially arrived here in Ireland as well as back in the states but as far as America’s relationship with Israel is concerned, it appears that the cold winds of winter have just begun to blow in thanks to Israel’s decision to move ahead with the construction of a new 1,600 unit ultra-orthodox Jewish “settlement” in the Palestinian enclave of East Jerusalem.
The timing of Israel’s announcement could not have been any more embarrassing for the United States since it was made right in the middle of Vic President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel, a trip that had been intended to try and mend relations with Israel that have been frayed almost from the moment President Obama took office more than a year ago. As such, the Obama administration rightly took the announcement as a slap in the face even though the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed he didn’t know the announcement was coming.
Vice President Biden angrily denounced the decision while he was in Israel and the U.S. State Department quickly followed up with an unusually frank description of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s subsequent hour long phone conversation with the Israeli Prime Minister. During this call, which was described in decidedly un-diplomatic terms by the U.S. State Department, Secretary Clinton rebuked the Israeli Prime Minister for the decision to build more settlements in East Jerusalem saying it was a violation of an understanding the US had that Israel would not build any more settlements on disputed Palestinian territory for at least ten months.
Secretary Clinton then reportedly demanded that Israel take unspecified steps that would demonstrate it was seriously interested in trying to negotiate a Middle East peace agreement because “the United States considered the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel's approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president's trip.”
The U.S. State Department noted that “The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel's security. She made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate, not just through words but through specific actions, that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process.’
Secretary Clinton had discussed her phone call with President Obama and the language she would use beforehand to ensure that it accurately reflected the President’s feelings. Vice President Biden then followed up Clinton’s phone call to the Prime Minister with a call of his own and Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was summoned to a meeting with Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg in an effort to ensure that Israel’s leaders got a clear and unambiguous message that the United States was extremely displeased by Israel’s actions.
Relations between the United States and Israel are now at the lowest point that I can ever recall. At the very least, relations between these two long-time allies are as bad as they were twenty years ago when the first President Bush expressed his anger and frustration with Israel’s determination to build additional new Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. But even though other American Presidents have also expressed their displeasure with Israeli leaders for actions that the US believes are detrimental to settling Israel’s dispute with the Palestinians, no previous American President has ever followed up their angry words with actions.
So the question I am asking myself is; “Will President Obama become the first American President to demonstrate his displeasure with Israel through his actions and not just his words?” Although I have a very real sense that President Obama will actually take more concrete steps than any previous American President has to show Israel that he really does mean business, I must reluctantly admit that 60 years of American-Israeli history also tells me he probably won’t.
Ever since the end of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1949, America has steadfastly stood by Israel and acted as a guarantor of Israel’s national security. On the diplomatic front the United States has repeatedly vetoed or blocked any UN Security Council resolutions that condemned Israeli military incursions into Lebanon and the Gaza Strip or Israel’s refusal to give up most of that territory that it captured and has occupied since the 1967 Six Day War as well as any resolutions calling for economic or military sanctions against Israel. As a result, the UN General Assembly has passed 5 separate resolutions saying that Israel’s strategic relationship with the United States encourages Israel to pursue aggressive and expansionist policies and practices.
But America’s long history of blanket (or maybe I should say ‘blank check’) diplomatic support of anything Israel chooses to do extends far beyond the halls of the United Nations. When Ireland first proposed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty back in 1961, Israel was already working on developing a nuclear weapon while the United States quietly looked the other way. Then in 1969, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told President Nixon that he suspected Israel of stealing at least some of its nuclear material from the US in1965.
Thus it came as no real surprise when Israel became not only the only American military ally but also the only developed country in the world that refused to sign it in 1970. Although Israel has never acknowledged this, the fact that it does possess nuclear weapons is one of the worst kept secrets on the world. However I should note that Israel has also reportedly pledged that if the United States will guarantee its security, it will never be the first country to use them. This explains why the US acted so quickly to resupply Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
But America’s moral and diplomatic support for Israel pales in comparison to America’s monetary support of Israel. I will discuss this aspect of American support as well as the steps I hope President Obama will take to address Israel’s continuing refusal to halt the building of new ‘Jewish’ settlements in next week’s column.

My Thoughts about Pseudo Religious Muslim Extremists

2010-11-13T08:15:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on April 1st 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Last week I said that although I agreed with President Obama that trying terrorism suspects in civilian courts would be a symbol of America’s commitment to the rule of law, doing this just isn’t possible as long as so many Americans remain fearful. But should they be?
The recent arrests of seven Muslims here in Ireland, including one American woman who was living with the suspected ringleader, Ali Charaf Damache, in a plot to kill Swedish artist Lars Vilks is a case in point. In the absence of very many ‘western’ deaths at the hands of al Qaeda inspired terrorists over the past 5 years, the news media focus has now shifted to the threat posed by home grown terrorists who have blond hair, blue eyes and fair skin and Muslims who have been living in America and Europe for a number of years. But do they really pose a threat?
Truth be known, the chances that any American will die at the hands of pseudo-religious al Qaeda inspired political extremists is at best infinitesimal and the same holds true for Muslim and non-Muslim people living in other ‘western’ EU countries. I say this because al Qaeda has actually killed fewer than 300 Americans and Europeans over the past eight years since the 9/11 attacks. Furthermore, given the fact that the vast majority of those fatalities occurred in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005, there have actually been almost no deaths in the past 5 years.
Mind you I’m not saying that even one of those deaths was acceptable. But with a combined population of over 850,000,000 people (including Canada) spread over 29 countries and two continents, the odds of you or I being killed in an al Qaeda inspired terrorist attack are about 1 in 22 million. In other words, we have a much better chance of winning the Irish lottery (about 1 in 8 million) than we do of being killed or injured by Islamic terrorists.
The fact of the matter is, almost 100% of al Qaeda’s victims since the 9/11 attacks have actually been innocent Muslim civilians living in predominately Muslim countries like Pakistan and Indonesia or the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones. This fact alone should put the lie to these pseudo-religious political extremists’ claims of being ‘defenders’ of Islam. How can you claim to be defending your ‘faith’ if all you actually do is kill innocent members of that same faith?
Unfortunately, while rarely a day passes without some news media story about various different Muslim extremist threats to the security of people living in the ‘western’ world of North America and Europe, one rarely if ever sees a story that points out how extremely remote the chances are that you and I will ever be harmed by Muslim extremists. Why is that I wonder?
While I could be wrong about this, I suspect there are four main culprits who are responsible for this; the news media, self serving politicians, the Muslim community and ourselves. I think the news media is at least partially to blame because they focus almost all of their attention on stories about things like lapses in security measures or the threat posed by home grown Islamic extremists, rather than on the reality of al Qaeda inspired terrorism; that these pseudo-religious political extremists rarely succeed in killing westerners and that they mainly kill other Muslims. Why? Maybe because ‘bad’ news sells better than ‘good’ news does.
The role played by self-serving politicians is very similar to that of the news media. They demonize terrorists and stoke the fears of voters about the threat of terrorism because this draws attention to them. They know that a fearful public is both easier to manipulate and more inclined to support and or vote for politicians who appear to be ‘tough’ on terrorism. But a fearful public is also much less disposed to understanding that people with Muslim names or people who are dressed in a traditional Islamic manner are not necessarily sympathetic to Islamic terrorists.
Within the Muslim community, where is their outrage at the fact that these pseudo-religious political terrorists have hijacked their religion and are using it to justify killing innocent Muslim civilians? Why haven’t more members of the Muslim community in the West and in Muslim countries condemned this blasphemy? While some Muslim clerics have publicly condemned al Qaeda’s misuse of the Muslim faith to justify their political aims, I don’t believe the wider Muslim community has done as much as it could to denounce this.
As for ourselves, I blame us because we just seem to accept this. We don’t question the news media’s focus on bad news that stokes our fears instead of on good news that reassures us that such fears are vastly overblown. We don’t demand that the news media accurately portray the reality of the threat of pseudo-religious terrorism in a more balanced manner.
We are also to blame because we don’t condemn politicians who demonize terrorists in an effort to get us to vote for them. Nor do we express disapproval of politicians who stoke our fears about immigrants taking our jobs or availing themselves of our country’s social welfare benefits. Instead, we reinforce these politicians’ manipulative behavior by voting for them.
To effectively reduce the threat of terrorism we should work more closely with the Muslim community to reassure non-Muslims by drawing more attention to the fact that their chances of being killed by Islamic extremists are actually very remote. Doing so would also serve as a reminder to al Qaeda sympathizers that, despite their proclamations of success, al Qaeda has become progressively more impotent rather than stronger since the 9/11 attacks. We should also try to encourage the Muslim community to remind Muslims that most of al Qaeda’s victims are actually innocent Muslims that al Qaeda claims to be waging a jihad on behalf of.
I just wonder whether we and the news media are willing to try this approach?

Civilian or Military Courts for Terrorist Suspects?

2010-11-13T08:14:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on March 25th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Last week I closed my column by mentioning that I believe the Obama administration is in the process of walking back from an idealistic but impractical decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to try the 9/11 terror suspects in US civilian courts rather than the military courts.
Given the previous Republican administration’s cavalier disregard for the constitutional privacy rights of American citizens as well as the human rights of those our government deemed to be enemies of America, I fully understand and support President Obama’s desire to adopt a more principled legal stance in dealing with the threat of terrorism as well as suspected terrorists. Like President Obama I believe that the threat to innocent human lives posed by pseudo-religious political terrorism is not an excuse for America or any other government to eschew its principles and the rule of law in the measures it adopts to combat terrorism.
But there are a substantial number of Americans who have been frightened by cynical and self serving politicians into believing that the only way to prevent future terrorist attacks is by ignoring our time honored legal principles and constitutional safeguards. These people are too afraid to take the time to consider what a slippery slope our country will be on should we allow our political leaders to justify the use of immoral and illegal methods of torture like ‘water boarding’ as well as indiscriminate wire tapping of phones in the name of fighting terrorism.
But historians, psychologists and political leaders, be they authoritarian or democratically elected, have long been aware that a fearful public is much easier to manipulate and thus inclined to support and or vote for political leaders who appear to be ‘tough’ on terrorism and suggest the use of legally and morally questionable solutions that also quench the public’s thirst for revenge. So like it or not, President Bush wasn’t the first politician to use the politics of fear to get himself re-elected as President and he most definitely won’t be the last one to successfully do so.
So it was against this backdrop of a fear that Rahm Emanuel first met with Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain in December of 2008 to discuss how best to reverse the Bush administrations fear based anti-terrorism policies after Obama took office in January. This meeting made perfect sense because a majority of those who had supported the Republican Party in the 2008 election were also voters who had bought into the Bush administration’s arguments that their questionable policies had protected Americans from further terrorist attacks.

Early on in his discussions with Senator’s McCain and Graham, Emanuel recognized that fulfilling President Obama’s pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facilities would also require addressing several other politically sensitive national security issues. The biggest concerns included where to move the remaining Guantanamo terror suspects and a decision about whether they should have their trials in US military or civilian courts.
Senators McCain and Graham didn’t have a problem with President Obama signing an Executive order forbidding the use of water boarding torture methods to extract information from terror suspects. But these Republican Senators also told Emanuel that they could not justify the closing of Guantanamo Bay to their fearful Republicans supporters unless Obama agreed to hold the trials of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his cohorts in military courts.
Emanuel also concluded that President Obama would need some Republican support to get Congressional approval of the money the government would need to buy, reinforce and operate an underutilized maximum security prison in Illinois to house terror suspects before their trials and to imprison those who were later convicted. As a result, Rahm Emanuel advised President Obama, that civilian trials for the Guantanamo terror suspects would be a politically untenable move that most Republicans and many congressional Democrats would not support.
But after Attorney General Eric Holder presented his arguments in favor of civilian trials that were rooted in principle rather than political reality, President Obama’s senior White House political advisor, David Axelrod, then weighed in against Rahm Emanuel’s more politically astute judgment and in favor of Holder’s more principled stance. While I can understand why the President then decided that letting the Justice Department take the lead was the right and most principled thing to do, the most effective political leaders will always tend to err on the side of what is politically possible rather than taking a more principled stand that isn’t politically viable.
Just a Emanuel warned, bipartisan criticism of Attorney General Holder’s decision that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other 9/11 conspirators would be tried in a civilian court in Manhattan has been growing ever since it was first announced last year. New York City residents and Democratic political leaders have complained about the $200 million dollar cost of security for the trials as well as the disruptions it would cause to businesses and residents in Manhattan. Furthermore, the US Congress won’t approve the money Obama needs to buy and operate the prison in Illinois so the closure of Guantanamo Bay has also been delayed as a consequence.
So by the time you read this, President Obama’s advisers will have recommended that the Obama administration reverse Attorney General Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in US civilian courts and instead prosecute them in military courts. But whether it has been announced yet or not, this is a done deal. Why? Because Senator Graham has already said that if Obama will agree to use military tribunals to try terrorists accused of attacking the US, he will work to secure the funding and legal authority Obama needs to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and replace it with a new facility in Illinois.
I understand why President Obama and liberal Democrats believed trying terrorism suspects in civilian courts would be a symbol of America’s commitment to the rule of law. But doing this just isn’t possible as long as so many Americans remain fearful.

Reconciliation?

2010-11-13T08:12:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on March 18th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been discussing the still conciliatory but much more assertive demeanor President Obama has recently displayed in his public dealings with both Democrats and Republicans in our nation’s often dysfunctional and always fractious Congress. While I applaud this approach and believe it will yield positive results for both the President and the American people, the first national referendum reflecting the sentiments of American voters on the President’s economic and healthcare reforms will be this November’s mid-term elections.
Given the fact that many of the positive impacts of the President’s policies to revive the economy and reform healthcare will take several years before most voters can see them, it hardly seems fair to judge the success or failure of Obama’s economic and healthcare proposals at this juncture of his first term in office. But fair or not, Obama has taken on the task of convincing American voters they should be more patient by countering Republicans’ outlandish claims with an intelligent discussion of the substance of his economic and healthcare reform legislation.
‘Reconciliation’ is a legislative tool created by the Congress in 1974 that allows the US Senate to pass legislation that affects the federal budget deficit with a simple majority of votes; the same way that all bills are passed in the US House of Representatives. With reconciliation, a majority of 51 votes in the US Senate is all that is needed to pass a bill rather than the 60 vote ‘super majority’ that is normally required to stop a filibuster so Senators can vote on a bill. But its use is strictly limited to politically difficult and unpopular bills that reduce the federal deficit.
Republicans are claiming that if Democrats in the Senate “ram through” the President’s healthcare bill using the reconciliation process, the Republican Party will have another winning issue to use against Democrats in the November mid-term elections. While they could be right about, this I suspect that won’t be the case for several reasons.
First if this was such a ‘winning issue’ with voters, then why are Republicans planning to thwart the reconciliation process in the Senate? The use of parliamentary delay tactics seems very hypocritical if Republicans really believe that the Democrats use of reconciliation process to push through President Obama’s healthcare reforms is a winning political issue for them.
Of course being hypocrites is a role that Republicans in Congress are very familiar with since they were the political party that pushed through America’s last significant piece of healthcare legislation, the Medicare prescription drug benefit plan. Republicans also seem to have forgotten that this unfunded healthcare entitlement and their off budget financing of the Iraq war were the main contributors to the billion dollar annual budget deficits that President Obama inherited when he took office and has been forced to increase to deal with the economic crisis.
Furthermore, the fact that Republicans seem to have forgotten that they used the same ‘reconciliation’ process to pass President Bush’s budget busting tax cuts, underscores the danger for them in counting on this issue to help them in November. President Obama recognizes that many American voters also have notoriously short attention spans so he is betting that once his healthcare reforms have passed, most voters will cease to see this as an election issue. This helps to explains why Obama showed such a firm resolve, in his response to Republican complaints about using ‘reconciliation’ to pass his reforms, by telling them “that’s what elections are for.”
But I also think President Obama would have been much more successful and would have engendered much less public opposition to his legislative agenda if he had heeded the advice of his White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, sooner rather than later. Make no mistake, when it comes to understanding what American voters want and expect from their political leaders, Obama’s senior White House political advisor and former campaign chief, David Axelrod, is one of, if not the best in the business. But success in getting elected President and success in getting your policies through Congress as President are two very different things.
As good as Axelrod is at understanding the mind of the American voter, Emanuel is at understanding the legislative minds of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. A former Congressman himself, Emanuel is intimately acquainted with the kind of legislative give and take required to bridge the often competing interests of the President and the US Congress. But after Obama’s early success getting his economic stimulus package approved by Congress with weak Republican support, he then veered away from the more pragmatic approach to dealing with healthcare reform, unemployment and trials for terror suspects suggested by Emanuel.
In the early months of his first term, President Obama listened to Rahm Emanuel’s advice and succeeded in getting some modest bipartisan support for new laws mandating equal-pay, credit card protections for consumers and expanded health care benefits for children. Emanuel also took the lead in crafting the compromises that were required to get enough Republican support to ensure the passage of Obama’s economic stimulus package in Congress. Republican Senator Olympia Snowe acknowledged Emanuel’s role in gaining her support by removing $100 billion in spending from the economic stimulus bill saying that Emanuel, “understood it operationally and legislatively, what needed to be accomplished, and was very straightforward.”
But it was the President’s subsequent decision to ignore Emanuel’s advice to take the lead in pushing a smaller less expensive healthcare reform bill that led to the development of the more expansive and expensive healthcare reform legislation by Congressional Democrats. Not surprisingly the current Senate healthcare bill that will go through reconciliation is precisely the kind of smaller and less expensive healthcare proposal that Emanuel originally suggested.
The Obama administration is also walking back from an idealistic decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to try the 9/11 terror suspects in civilian courts rather than the military courts that Emanuel suggested. I’ll discuss this issue next week.

Aftermath of the Health Care Summit

2010-11-13T08:09:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on March 11th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In last week’s column I discussed the political theatre I watched at President Obama’s nationally televised “healthcare summit” just before my return to Ireland. President Obama closed this seven hour meeting with a warning to Republicans that he would move forward without them if they continued to refuse to compromise saying; “if we can’t (compromise), then I think we've got to go ahead and make some decisions, and then that's what elections are for.”
At long last, this was the President Obama I had been hoping for and patiently waiting to see emerge from his White House ‘cocoon’ for most of the past year. Indeed this was the same apparition of a true American leader I had seen on many occasions during the early months of his Presidency when he was pushing ‘his’ economic stimulus package through Congress. But when springtime arrived and it was time to build on his early legislative success, Obama inexplicably decided to allow Congressional Democrats to take the lead in developing the President’s healthcare and environmental protection legislation with predictably disastrous consequences.
The Democratic Party encompasses a much broader spectrum of voters on political issues and operates under a much bigger ‘tent’ than their more narrowly focused Republican opponents. As such, gaining across the board agreement on major legislative reforms among Democratic lawmakers is akin to ‘herding cats (or maybe I should say ‘fat cats’). In other words, it’s virtually impossible to persuade Democrats in Congress to vote as a bloc absent a strong leader who is willing to either massage the egos or twist the arms of its more independent minded ‘fat cats.’
Since a majority of Democratic lawmakers hale from states and Congressional districts with larger and more urban constituencies of liberal American voters, they also have don’t have to worry about losing their seats because they voted in favor of legislation that most Republicans as well as many independent voters don’t support. Because they win re-election easily, these liberal Democrats’ power and influence grows thanks to the Congressional ‘seniority system and as a result, the Democratic House and Senate leaders tend to be liberals rather than moderates.
Unfortunately, some of the more liberal Democrats in Congress also tend to forget that the only reason their party has a majority in both houses of Congress is because it also includes lawmakers from rural or suburban areas of the country with large constituencies of centrist and independent voters. Some of these more moderate “Blue Dog” Democratic legislators were elected to Congress by narrow margins over Republican opponents and or from states and districts that voted for President Obama’s Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.
Not surprisingly these more moderate Democratic members of Congress often find it difficult to justify voting for some of their liberal Democratic counterparts’ more radical legislative proposals. Even if they personally agree with some aspects of these proposals, they are also cognizant of the fact that a majority of their constituents may not support them. As a result they are often put in the position of either going against the wishes of their Congressional leaders or ignoring the desires of their constituents and endangering their re-election prospects.
President Obama is a liberal Democrat but one who had previously shown sensitivity to the dilemma faced by the more moderate Democratic and Republican members of Congress by purposely crafting less radical legislative proposals that these legislators could support without incurring the ire of voters. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is a former Congressman who, like his boss, is a liberal who always worked to forge centrist compromises on legislation that moderate Democrats and Republicans would find it easier to support.
So given the fact that he only got meager Republican support for his economic stimulus legislation, I was shocked President Obama then ignored Rahm Emanuel’s advice on health-care reform and trying terror suspects in civilian courts. The rather predictable result has been no Republican support and the erosion of moderate Democrats support for both of these proposals. It is therefore gratifying for me to see the President now inserting himself back into the political debate and wresting control of these issues away from the more liberal members of his party.
Starting with his unscripted political debate with House Republicans last month followed by his bipartisan ‘healthcare summit’, President Obama has once again taken up the challenge of forcing liberal Democratic leaders to incorporate Republican suggestions into their healthcare reform package. While I don’t expect this will be enough to persuade any moderate Republicans to risk the ire of their more conservative leaders by voting for it; I think it will pass because this will provide the political cover some ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats need to allow them to vote for it.
But by debating the issues on television with his Republican opponents and incorporating their proposals into ‘his’ healthcare reform package, Obama has also positioned himself as a leader who is willing to compromise even though his Republican opponents are not. It remains to be seen if American voters will buy into the idea that their President and his Democratic allies in Congress are the ones doing the compromising and the Republicans are acting as obstructionists.
Great political leaders are usually conciliatory in terms deal with their political opponents, but they also are not afraid to draw the line in the stand when their efforts at compromise are rejected. Obama has correctly realized that Republicans are now betting that they have more to gain politically by opposing him than compromising with him. So after waiting two weeks for some sign of compromise, Obama announced he would use the same reconciliation tactics Republicans used for tax cuts when Bush was President to pass his healthcare reforms. By adopting this approach, President Obama has signaled he will not allow solutions for America’s problems to be held hostage by partisan political posturing.
Will this new ‘walk softly but carry a big stick’ approach work? Well, as the President himself said “that’s what elections are for.”

Political Posturing on National Television

2010-11-13T08:07:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on March 4th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Last month I wrote a column about President Obama’s solo trip to the “Lion’s Den” of his Republican opponents to engage them in an unscripted political debate the likes of which I have never seen before on national television. Well last week I got a chance to witness a similar nationally televised political debate involving President Obama and his Republican opponents just before I boarded my 5:20 pm flight back to Dublin via London’s Heathrow airport.
The occasion this time was a “healthcare summit” but this meeting was held on the President’s own White House turf instead of hotel conference room rented for the occasion by Congressional Republicans. As such the Republican lawmakers in attendance this time were the President’s invited “guests” and were forced to share some of their televised speaking time with a number of Congressional Democrats who the President had also invited to this meeting.
But unlike President Obama’s one man show last month, the healthcare summit meeting I witnessed was also much more formal and scripted political debate. As a consequence, many of the questions posed to the President by both Republicans and Democrats were actually just elaborate talking points carefully crafted by lawmakers to support their respective positions in the healthcare debate rather than real questions that attempted to find common ground with their political opponents. No wonder this meeting also ended up running an hour longer than expected.
I was disappointed by all of their political posturing, but I really can’t say I was surprised by it given the fact that the members of Congress in attendance had also known for two weeks that they would be posing their questions on national television. While a few Republicans and Democrats did offer some eloquent words in support of the President’s position that they had a responsibility to the American voters to work together to fix our nation’s troubled healthcare system, the reality was that most law makers showed little or no inclination to compromise.
There were also a few spontaneous outbursts as well as some rather heated exchanges between the President and some of his Republican adversaries that highlighted just how divided and partisan the US Congress has become over the past year. But as the moderator of this exchange of views and questions between Republicans and Democrats, President Obama repeatedly scolded members of both parties when they lapsed into election campaign speeches. In fact several times it appeared that the President was the only real “adult” in the room.
John McCain was a case in point when he rose to speak and immediately began needling the President for not keeping his campaign promise to allow all of the healthcare bill negotiations to be televised by C-Span. But when McCain continued along this track by then excoriating the President for allowing the Democrats to engage in “unsavory back room deals” to get their healthcare bill passed in the US Senate, the President decided enough was enough. Obama cut McCain off in mid-sentence telling him “We’re not campaigning anymore. The election is over.”
Although I am an unabashed Obama supporter, I am also an American Republican who yearns for a return to the more civil and less partisan Congressional politics that characterized the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations in the last 20 years of the 20th century. I also know I am not alone in wishing for some semblance of political compromise on the important issues facing our nation because poll after poll shows that a large majority of American voters are also thoroughly disgusted with the kind of partisan politics they see on display in the US Congress.
Unfortunately many of those same Americans also blame the problems in Washington on members of Congress from other states. As for their own Senate and House members, most of these disgruntled voters believe they are doing a good job instead of being part of the problem. Therein lays the rub. How do you encourage lawmakers to cross party lines and work together on bi-partisan solutions if you reward those who don’t or won’t compromise by re-electing them?
I’m sorry but if disenchanted American voters ever want to see compromises forged that will address our nations many problems they are going to have to start the ball rolling and punish lawmakers from both parties who refuse to compromise by voting them out of office. They will also have to elect or re-elect those legislators who promise or have demonstrated a willingness to anger other members of the party by working on bi-partisan legislation.
President Obama may be the political leader of the world’s most powerful country but the truth is his own power as the US President to address the problems facing America are limited by what Congress agrees to do as regards his proposals. The issues the President is trying to address are complicated so much of his time was spent explaining to the viewing audience what his healthcare proposals actually were as opposed to what his opponents were saying they meant. He chided the Republicans in particular by sarcastically remarking that they were using “good poll-tested language” to describe his healthcare proposals as “government-run health care.”
But cognizant of his role as the moderator rather than the Democratic opponent of Congressional Republicans, Obama also repeatedly pointed to the specific areas of his healthcare proposals that many Republicans agreed with. Obama made a point of complimenting Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma for many of his healthcare suggestions and noted that although his healthcare proposal also included some of these he was open to including more.
Still at the end of the day the Republicans as a whole appeared to be no more willing to compromise after the seven hour session than they were beforehand. After a year of debate they came in demanding to start over from scratch and left demanding the same. So Obama closed the meeting by warning Republicans that he would move forward without them if they continued to refuse to compromise.

Da Big Easy and Louisiana Politicians

2010-11-13T08:05:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on February 25th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Ahhh New Orleans, The Crescent City, The Big Easy, the birthplace of American jazz and the home of the world famous Mardi Gras Carnival celebrations. Mardi Gras is the French translation for “Fat Tuesday”, the final day of the “Nawlins” winter social season before Ash Wednesday arrives marking the beginning of the season of Lent. But despite the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina and her sister, Hurricane Rita, just four and a half years ago, the “City That Care Forgot” still throws a street party that no American city or any other city in the world (except possibly Rio de Janeiro) can match.
I drove into New Orleans just before Fat Tuesday’s final parade by way of the 24 mile long Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the world’s longest bridge which also spans America’s second largest saltwater lake. I was struck by the smell of the lake’s brackish sea air long before I caught sight of the shrimp boats moored alongside aged wooden docks amid patches of cypress trees with tendrils of moss hanging from their branches.
Thanks to its multicultural and multilingual heritage, characteristic Creole cuisine, distinctive French architecture and extraordinary jazz music, New Orleans remains one of if not America’s most unique cities. Although the French Quarter avoided much of the Hurricane Katrina flood damage suffered by the rest of the city thanks to its location on higher ground, one doesn’t have to travel far to see the areas of New Orleans that were not so lucky. One need only cross the bridge that connects the city with the 9th Ward of East New Orleans to see streets still lined with demolished and partially collapsed homes.
While outgoing Mayor Ray Nagin is by no means the only government official responsible for the slow pace of clean-up and rebuilding in the city’s most devastated poorer neighbourhoods, most of the city’s residents will be happy to see him go. Mitch Landrieu, the son of Louisiana’s US Senator Mary Landrieu, has promised to put an end to the political infighting that has stymied rebuilding efforts and characterized Nagin’s second term as mayor, so he is expected to easily win the upcoming mayoral election.
Unfortunately, both New Orleans and the state of Louisiana have a long history of political corruption unrivaled by that of any other city or state in America. What makes them unique is the fact that their voters, unlike voters in other US cities and states, often vote to re-elect these corrupt politicians even after they have been exposed or convicted for their wrong doings. The first and probably the most honorable of Louisiana’s many rouges was the pirate Jean Lafitte who distributed part of the booty he stole from French and Spanish ships to the local folks so they would allow him to attack these ships with impunity from the mini-kingdom he established deep in the Louisiana bayous.
Then prior to World War II Louisiana’s most notorious politician , a populist Democratic Governor named Huey “Kingfisher” Long, built roads, bridges, hospitals and schools by raising taxes on oil companies and the rich. So what could be wrong with this? Well in conjunction with these “good deeds” Huey Long also created a secret police force, put them and all other all state employees under his direct control and then had “contributions” to his political campaign treasury deducted from their paychecks. He once bragged at a Louisiana State University faculty dinner that “I steal money. But a lot of what I stole has spilled over in no-toll bridges, hospitals, and to build this university.”
Much more recently there was Edwin Edwards, a charming but notorious womanizer who was elected Governor four times between 1972 and 1996. During that same span Edwards was the target of more than a dozen federal and state criminal corruption investigations but was acquitted at every trial. After his last not guilty verdict he distributed “Elect the Crook” bumper stickers during his successful bid for another term as Governor. After Edwards won that election he said the only way he could ever lose an election in Louisiana was by being “found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.”
But Edwards luck finally ran out in 2000 when he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for extorting money from casino boat operators in return for state gambling permits. This in turn leads in to my discussion of the recent down fall of another famous Cajun politician, former Congressman Billy Tauzin. Billy was well known for saying that: “Half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment” but Billy was also better than other Louisiana politicians at avoiding being caught stealing.
So after 20 years in Congress, Billy Tauzin decided it was time to cash in on his political power so in 2003 he paid more than $1 million for a 1,500-acre ranch in South Texas. Since he couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage on a Congressional salary, he invited business executives and lobbyists who needed his Congressional support to cover his mortgage by becoming “dues” paying members of his new “Cajun Creek” hunting club.
But Billy didn’t stop there. He then used his position as a Republican leader to push an unfunded Medicare Drug Plan, which prohibited the government from negotiating lower drug prices with drug companies, through the House of Representatives. Then Tauzin promptly resigned from Congress so he could become the $2 million a year head of Pharma, the drug industry’s lobbying group. A slick move considering he also got to keep the money he had in his re-election campaign treasury and his Congressional retirement pension.
So I had to smile when I arrived in the states and was greeted with the news that Billy Tauzin had just been forced out of the Pharma job and into an earlier than planned retirement on his federal pension. It’s also good to know that there is some truth in the old saying that “What goes around comes around.”

Scatter Shooting about Mothe Nature and the Tea Party Movement

2010-11-13T07:55:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on February 18th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
I’m back in the states again for a couple of weeks, so today I’m going to do a bit of “scatter shooting” and discuss several somewhat loosely related political issues, all but one of which involve women.
Since I’m sitting here in my brother’s office gazing out the window at a foot of snow, I guess I’ll begin with “Mother Nature”. While this is by no means the first time I’ve ever seen this much snow here in the states, what makes this particular sight so jarring is the fact that my brother lives in Dallas Texas, a place where any amount of snow is extremely rare. In fact, while Dallas doesn’t get any snow at all some years, during those winters when it does snow, Dallas usually only gets 1-2 inches of the white stuff. But this winter Mother Nature decided she was going to give us Southerners a taste of what our northern neighbors get every winter.
When I was here back in December I awoke to the sight of snow falling on the morning after I arrived and subsequently witnessed the first “White Christmas” Dallas has ever experienced. But the 3 inches of flakes we got for Christmas pales in comparison to the foot of snow Dallas received on 11 February, once again coming on the day after I got in from Dublin. But much like folks in Ireland, the residents of Dallas also find it difficult to cope with snow accumulations in excess of 1-2 centimeters. In other words, when it comes to snow, folks in Dallas are just as big of wimps as people in Dublin are.
On second thought, maybe I should be a bit kinder to those wimps in Dallas and Dublin since Dallas’s most recent snowfall actually broke the all-time record of 7 ½ inches for the most snow to fall in Dallas in a single day. I’m also fairly certain the January snows in Dublin would have set a record too but as far as I can tell Dublin doesn’t even maintain such records since snow is even rarer in Dublin than it is in Dallas. It would be safe to say that this winter has been much colder and frostier than normal for much of the southern United States and the British Isles. So what caused this to happen?
Meteorologists have cited a combination of two phenomena, the El Nino weather patterns caused by warmer than normal Pacific Ocean waters interacting with a high pressure system in the Northern Hemisphere called the North Atlantic Oscillation. But here in the US, the climate change “deniers” have seized on this frigid weather as evidence that scientist’ predictions about man-made global warming are “all wet” since a colder winter with more snow runs counter to their concept of a “warming world.” But our unusually snowy winter actually provides support for climate scientists because they have predicted that global warming will increase the amount of water vapor in the earth’s atmosphere, causing heavier rains or snowfalls to occur in the Northern Hemisphere.
But I am much less disturbed by what Mother Nature has been up to lately than I am by the recent actions of two other women politicians here in the states. Sarah Palin recently gave a speech at the inaugural “Tea Party” convention of ant-tax and anti-government activists in which she assailed President Obama and his policies. After her speech Palin said;“The Republican Party would be really smart to start trying to absorb as much of the Tea Party movement as possible. This is a beautiful movement because it is shaping the way politics are conducted. You’ve got both party machines running scared.”
What I find very disturbing about Palin is that she also lent support to the many “birthers” in attendance, who claim Obama is not an American citizen, when she told a conservative radio talk show audience that it is "rightfully" an issue with the American public, and that it is "fair game" for politicians to question Obama's citizenship. What does it say about the state of American politics, not to mention the Republican Party, that one of its leading political figures won’t disavow such extremist conspiracy theories?
Unfortunately for America and the Republican Party however, Sarah Palin isn’t the only female Republican politician lending support to our country’s various different conspiracy theorists. Here in Texas one of the women running in the Republican Party’s Governor’s race, Debbie Medina, was asked by conservative talk show pundit, Glenn Beck for her opinion about the “9/11 truthers’. The “9/11 truthers” are right wing American conservative extremists who believe that the US government was secretly involved in the 9/11 al Qaeda attacts in New York and Washington DC.
Beck asked Medina point blank; “Do you believe the government was any way involved with the bringing down of the World Trade Centers on 9/11? I was flabbergasted when I heard Medina respond that; “I don't, I don't have all of the evidence there, Glenn. So I don't, I'm not in a place, I have not been out publicly questioning that. I think some very good questions have been raised in that regard. There are some very good arguments, and I think the American people have not seen all of the evidence there. So I've not taken a position on that.” To think that this woman, thanks largely to the backing of many of those involved in the Tea Party movement, may actually win the Republican nomination for governor is almost more than I can bear.
Well I think I’ve said all I want to about women for now. As you read this I will be in New Orleans celebrating Mardi Gras while I’m attending a convention for International Relations scholars. So my next week I will discuss the recent downfall of one of Louisiana’s most powerful former Congressmen, Billy Tauzin as well as my impressions about New Orleans post- Hurricane Katrina.

Shades of the UK Parliament

2010-11-13T07:53:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on February 11th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
During his State of the Union address, President Obama challenged the Republicans in Congress to stop opposing every proposal he made to address America’s problems and start taking some responsibility for governing the country by supporting those proposals that were essential to running the federal government. The next day President Obama got his response.
First the US Senate took a vote on extending the federal debt ceiling, a normally routine vote that is required annually to ensure that America doesn’t default on its sovereign debt. Every single Republican in the US Senate voted no. This was despite the fact that during the eight years that President Bush was in office they had routinely voted in favor of this annual measure.
Then the Senate took a vote on a bill that requires the US Congress to “pay as you go” by not passing any new legislation that isn’t paid for by cutting expenses elsewhere in the national budget. Once again every single Republican Senator voted no even though in the past they had voted in favor of other unfunded Bush proposals like the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
Finally, a large number of Republican Senators spent the rest of the day rattling global financial markets by voicing their opposition to President Obama’s nomination of Ben Bernanke for a second term as the Chairman of the world’s largest central bank, the US Federal Reserve. Some of them justified their opposition by saying they didn’t think Bernanke would be politically independent since Obama was the one nominating him. Frankly, it’s beyond me how they could oppose such an obviously bi-partisan nomination with a straight face given the fact that all but one of these 18 Republicans who later voted against Bernanke had actually voted for him four years earlier when former President George Bush first nominated Bernanke for the post.
Only two days earlier these same Republican Senators had also voted en-masse to oppose a proposal to establish a bi-partisan commission to develop a plan to reduce the national debt. What was noteworthy about this particular vote was the fact that not a single one of the seven Republican Senators who had originally co-sponsored this legislation stood up and voted for it when the time came. In other words, the Republicans in Congress who justify their obstruction of President Obama’s healthcare reforms and other proposals because of the soaring national debt turned around and refused to avail themselves of a bi-partisan plan to reduce that debt.

So President Obama responded to these recalcitrant Senate Republicans by delivering another somewhat shorter speech to a smaller audience that had also been in attendance for his State of the Union address some 36 hours earlier. However the significance of this particular speech was that there were absolutely no other Democrats or Obama supporters in the room.
President Obama instead chose to enter the Republican Caucus “lion’s den”, where Republican members of the US House of Representatives gather annually to plot their legislative political strategy for the upcoming year, alone. Although former President Bush and other US Presidents had previously addressed these gatherings too, those sessions had always been closed to the press. But the night before his meeting with them, President Obama asked that his address to the Republican Caucus as well as the question and answer session that was to follow be open to both television cameras and members of the news media for the first time.
Republicans were surprised that a Democratic President would want an appearance like this in front of an obviously hostile crowd televised, but figuring they had nothing to lose in doing so, acceded to President Obama’s request. Purely by chance, I happened to go online to check the results of a CBS TV voter poll just as the President was beginning his speech to the Republican Caucus in Baltimore. Here was a Democratic President facing the slings and arrows of his most vocal political opponents with only his wit and wisdom to defend himself. A week later I must confess that I’m still amazed by what I was fortunate enough to witness that day.
In all my years of involvement in politics I have never seen such an unscripted political debate take place on national television. The President opened this 90 minute political dialog with a short speech that challenged Republicans to try to work with him for the good of the country instead of opposing him at every turn in order to enhance their re-election prospects.
Following his relatively short opening speech, President Obama then responded to a series of questions posed to him by various Congressional Republicans. What ensued was a remarkably civil but intense political debate about specific public policy issues between a sitting US President and his political opponents that rarely ever happens in the carefully choreographed world of American political television. For his part the President rejected the “socialist” labels Republicans had placed on him and his policies while Republicans likewise rejected the “obstructionists” labels given them by many Democrats.
President Obama has a natural and commanding stage presence that makes him the center of the attention of everyone present in the room including the TV cameras which were focused almost exclusively on him throughout the broadcast. Some of his Republican questioners like Representative Jeb Hensarling also stumbled by asking very long and windy questions which President Obama aptly characterized as simple political posturing instead of real questions. On the other hand President Obama’s pointed responses to every question were expressed with the self assured confidence of a person who was in command of the facts. So on both style and substance, I thought Obama came out ahead.
I thought the proceedings resembled a prime minister responding to questions from opposition members that I’ve see on TV here in Ireland. Although I know I’m not alone in hoping that there will be more exchanges like this in the future between the President and opposition party members in Congress, I also wouldn’t bet on it.

The State of Dis Union Address

2010-11-13T07:50:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on February 4th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to discuss the State of America and, more specifically, the reaction of myself and others to President Obama’s first State of the Union Address.
Although the President’s State of the Union address to Congress and the American people is an annual January ritual, President Obama’s speech last Wednesday evening came at a particularly critical moment in American politics. Only one year into his first four year term as America’s 44th President, Obama was and still is grappling with a whole host of foreign and domestic problems that previous administrations were either unable or unwilling to address.
The Iraq War was initiated by a Republican President and backed by a Republican controlled Congress that financed it by using off budget supplemental appropriations. Unfortunately for President Obama and Congressional Democrats, the Bush administration’s Iraq War gambit wasn’t the only fiscally foolish move made by members of the Republican Party while they held the reins of power.
Shortly after taking control of Congress and the Presidency at the turn of this century, Republicans also implemented a huge tax cut that turned a 200 billion dollar a year federal budget surplus into a trillion dollar plus annual budget deficit. Then to make matters worse, these same Republicans added a new prescription drug benefit to an already woefully underfunded Medicare health insurance plan. But like the Iraq war, Republican political leaders in Washington didn’t provide any financing for it.
It should therefore come as no surprise (to anyone familiar with budgets) that the consequences of cutting taxes but not government spending coupled with financing the Iraq war and new healthcare entitlements with no additional government revenues, is seriously depleted government coffers and trillion dollar budget deficits. Unfortunately for President Obama and Democrats in Congress, many Americans have now become justifiably alarmed about these trillion dollar budget deficits, but seem to associate them with the current Congress rather than previous Republican administrations which ushered them in during better economic times.
To his credit President Obama used his first State of the Union address as an opportunity to remind the American people, as well as those Republicans who oppose any and all attempts by President Obama to address America’s problems, that he inherited America’s current 1.35 trillion dollar deficit from his predecessor. Although President Obama’s economic stimulus measures will increase the size of future budget deficits, the vast majority of economists believe these expenditures are justified in order to avoid a prolonged economic recession lasting several more years.
In fact most economists both inside the United States and around the world will readily acknowledge the need for large government deficits during times of economic recession. However, they will also decry the misuse of deficit spending to finance large tax cuts, offensive wars and new entitlement programs during better economic times such as the Republicans did during the past decade. But because voters in America and elsewhere have notoriously short memories at times, I think it’s also a good idea to constantly remind them of how they got to where they are now.
So I have to admit that I found myself stifling a laugh when I heard some Republicans were grumbling about President Obama blaming some of the nation’s current problems on the previous Republican administration during his speech. Of course they don’t like hearing that kind of stuff because they want voters to forget their role in creating or not addressing these problems before the next election. But I think the adage “The Truth Hurts” is what really applies to my Republican friends.
President Obama is one of the best speech makers I have ever heard and he did not disappoint with his first State of the Union address. He delivered the speech in a very relaxed and confident manner that was quite folksy but also very determined. I also thought the President’s State of the Union address had one dominant message but that it was aimed at two distinctly different audiences.
The dominant message was that President Obama shared the American voter’s economic pain as well as their frustration with Wall Street and Washington politics. He also used humor at various times throughout his speech to help him emphasize a particular point. On one occasion he noted that he hated the financial bailout as much as most other Americans saying that the bank bailout “was about as popular as a root canal.” He also acknowledged that he should have done a better job communicating with the American public about his healthcare reforms by saying “by now it should be fairly obvious that I didn’t take on health care because it was good politics.”
So in both tone and tenor, throughout most of his address President Obama was speaking to his primary audience; American voters sitting at home in their living rooms watching him on TV. But he wasn’t trying to appeal to all Americans, but rather to middle class Americans, particularly those who are Independent voters. The confident but genial and conciliatory tone of voice, his folksy charm and use of self deprecating humor is a style of delivery that appeals to these kinds of Americans.
But President Obama also had a message of warning for his other audience; the Democrats and Republican members of Congress sitting in the House chamber. He began by scolding his own party for not showing enough backbone in support for healthcare reform saying; “I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills,”
He also warned Republicans about the folly of their tactics saying; “if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, a supermajority, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership.” Next week I will discuss President Obama’s subsequent debate with his Republican adversaries.

Lost and Found in Copenhagen

2010-11-13T07:48:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on January 28th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
When I closed last week’s column about my experiences at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen by saying I “still couldn’t avoid having to pass through a gauntlet of demonstrators” when I arrived at the Bella Center each morning, I hope I didn’t leave you with the wrong impression. Contrary to the notion some people may have gotten from televised news reports, the vast majority of the climate change activists and demonstrators that I saw were peaceful and very well behaved.
To be sure there were some trouble-makers present as well, but most of them were not affiliated with any legitimate environmental group. For the most part the demonstrators who were causing the most problems and attempting to incite others to join in, were actually members of anarchist groups like the Anarchist Black Cross groups from the UK and the Black Blocs. They were easy to spot though, since they were dressed from head to toe in black with many of them wearing masks to cover their faces. They would throw cobblestones and bottles at the police to try to provoke a violent reaction, but once they left the area things always turned peaceful again.
While I also witnessed some members of Greenpeace, Climate Justice Action and Friends of the Earth arrested, it was for trying to block entry to the conference rather than for acts of violence. I thought the Danish police were fairly restrained in dealing with demonstrators but they were also a very no-nonsense bunch. No matter how peaceful you were, if you didn’t move when they told you to, you were going to be arrested and taken to jail. Still I suspect the cold wind and snow that blew into Copenhagen during the middle of the week probably did more to put a damper on further demonstrations than the hefty police presence in and around the Bella Center.
I actually had a rather surprising run-in with some members of Danish law enforcement when I first arrived in the city while I was walking to my hotel. While the confrontation was very disconcerting at the time, after reflecting on it a bit later I came to the conclusion that it was probably a good thing it happened.
The confrontation happened after I was accosted by a young man who asked me if I spoke English while I was walking to my hotel from the Central Train station, pulling my wheeled luggage behind me. When I said yes, he asked me to follow him down a side street and translate what the sign on a building there said. I walked a few paces down the street, looked at it, and then told him the name of the restaurant that was under the sign. Then he asked me to go closer to it and read the menu for him.
I refused this time but as I turned to go back to the main thoroughfare, two Danish police officers grabbed me and demanded to see my passport and then to see how much money was in my wallet. They were so brusque and demanding that it sent me into a state of shock. So I rather sheepishly showed them my passport and before I even realized what was happening, I had also allowed one of them to rifle through the different types of currency I was carrying in my wallet. After the policeman put the money back in my wallet and returned it, he told me to go immediately to my hotel.
Well needless to say, I didn’t need to be told again. So I quickly hot-footed it back to the main thoroughfare called Vesterbrogade Street, where my hotel was, while the police continued to question the guy who had initially asked me to help him. It wasn’t until I got to my hotel a few minutes later that what had just happened to me began to sink in. I quickly recounted my cash while I was checking in and then breathed a sigh of relief when I realized that the policeman hadn’t pocketed any of it.
I guess I’ll never know for sure, but I now suspect that those policeman might have spared me from having my pocket picked, or maybe something worse, by the guy who had asked me for help and or one of his cohorts lurking nearby. And while I hope that I am never again confronted so rudely by the police in the manner I was that night in Copenhagen, I must still confess that if it makes the streets safer for me, so be it!
It wasn’t until my last night in Copenhagen that I found myself in need of the Danish police and I must say they did not disappoint me. It was freezing cold while I was leaving the Bella Center that evening when I suddenly slipped in the snow and my college class ring slipped off my finger. As I rummaged on my knees in the snow drift where I thought the ring had landed, a policeman came over and offered his assistance and that of one of the German shepherd dogs manning the entry gate. Then after 20 minutes of fruitless searching, when I had all but given up, he came over and placed it in my hand. I was and still am ever so grateful to that policeman.
So despite my rather rough welcome to Copenhagen by the Danish authorities, I shudder to think what might have happened had they not been there. And regardless of what you may have heard or read about the way the Danish police and security forces handled those who were demonstrating outside the Climate Change Conference, this journalist has nothing but praise for how these men and women conducted themselves under often trying circumstances. In fact, I plan to return to Copenhagen, when the weather is a bit warmer, to sample some of the sights, like the Tivoli Gardens, that I only got a glimpse of while I was there.

My experiences in Copenhagen at UNFCCC

2010-01-16T17:21:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on January 21st 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In this week’s column I will try to describe my experiences and what it was like to attend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the company of over 100 world leaders in Copenhagen last month.
After an uneventful two and a half hour flight from Dublin I touched down at Copenhagen’s Roskilde Airport around 3:30 in the afternoon. My first impressions about Copenhagen were very favorable because not only were the airport’s gate areas clean, modern and well lit, but then when I got to Danish Customs, lo and behold there were NO queues to be found anywhere! Then when I walked into the baggage claim area, believe it or not, my bag was already waiting for me on the carousel!
Although there were free buses labeled COP 15 available to take travelers to the Bella Center, site of the climate change conference, and on to the hotels in the city as well, I opted to take the train and purchased a return ticket for 70 Kroner (roughly €8). Much like the airport, the S-train was clean, comfortable, smooth and right on time! I was also delighted that the trip between the airport and Copenhagen’s Central Station only took about 15 minutes including a brief stop at the Bella Center en route.
But during the course of my 5 minute walk from the train station to my hotel I couldn’t escape the feeling that something just didn’t seem right. So later that evening I decided to wander around the city to see if I could put my finger on what it was that seemed so strange to me about the city of Copenhagen. After about 20 minutes of walking around looking at the sights in the center of the city, I spotted a local restaurant that looked inviting so I decided that I would continue my search for an answer over a dinner of corned beef, roasted onions and mashed potatoes. Grand idea!
Because sure enough, as I sat waiting for my dessert of chocolate fondant and fresh fruit, a cyclist rode up, parked her bike and came inside. And that’s when I realized what it was about Copenhagen that just didn’t compute with me; she didn’t lock her bike before she came into the restaurant! In fact neither this woman nor any of the other hundreds of cyclists I saw in Copenhagen that week had bike locks.
I must confess that I am still amazed that no one in Copenhagen, or Denmark for that matter, feels they have any need to safeguard their primary mode of transportation. That’s right; I said their PRIMARY mode of transportation since actual traffic counts show that 37% of Copenhagen residents use bicycles to go to school or work and almost 60% claim that it is their primary mode of transport. This also explains the other thing that didn’t seem quite right to me: the almost total lack of automobile traffic congestion in the middle of a city of over 500,000 people.
To put that 37% bike commuter number in perspective, consider the fact that while another 5% walk and 33% use public transport (buses and trains) to get around the city, only 25% actually drive their cars to school and or work each day. In fact most Copenhagen residents who own cars only use them if they plan to be out very late or on the weekends to travel to and from more rural areas of the country.
Another thing that was missing in Copenhagen was the “tourist buses” that seem to be everywhere in Dublin from spring until autumn. But it’s not because Copenhagen doesn’t get as many tourists as Dublin does. It’s due to the fact that during Copenhagen’s tourist season, between April and September, the city provides visitors with free bicycles to get around on at 110 city bike parks. What a concept!
Last but not least, Copenhagen has made its city center very bike friendly in a number of interesting ways. To begin with, the bike lanes are as nearly as wide as the car traffic lanes and are separated from auto traffic by a small raised curb. Sidewalks are in turn separated from the bike lanes by another small raised curb with rows of 2 by 2 wheel racks to allow cyclists to park bikes on the street side of the sidewalks.
As for why Copenhagen cyclists don’t lock their bikes or even own bike locks, I was told that because there are so many bikes in Copenhagen, the chance of theft is extremely low. As a consequence, most people simply don’t think it’s worth either the time it takes to lock a bike or the money it costs to buy a good bike lock. Regardless, I must say that it was nice to be able to take a deep breath of fresh air while I was walking around the city without choking on automotive exhaust fumes.
But while my experiences getting to and from Copenhagen an around the city center were grand, I can’t say the same for my experiences at the site of the climate change conference, the Bella Center. The conference facilities were actually quite nice and there was plenty of food and drink available for participants, much of it provided for free by various business, NGO and quasi-governmental interest groups. But the problem for many attendees was the effort that was required to get into the Bella Center so you could make use of facilities provided there.
Much of the chaos and hours long queues to go through security screening each morning were due to the fact that the UN accredited over 45,000 people to attend COP 15, but the Bella Centre only had capacity for about 15,000 people. I avoided this trap by waiting until 11am each morning to grab one of the free COP 15 buses but still couldn’t avoid having to pass through a gauntlet of demonstrators, an experience I’ll discuss in more detail next week.

More about the UNFCCC

2010-01-16T17:20:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on January 7th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
For my first column of this New Year of 2010, I will pick up where I left off at the end of 2009 and continue my discussion about the goings on at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen last month.
I closed my last column by questioning the efficacy of Bolivian President Evo Morales political grandstanding while he was in front of the global news media at the UNFCCC. But make no mistake; Mr. Morales wasn’t the only political leader using the UNFCCC’s world stage for finger pointing and or to promote their political views instead of working towards the resolution of a difficult environmental issue.
At the end of his 20 minute diatribe against the United States, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela actually got a standing ovation from around a third of the conference delegates after his closing statement that; “Our revolution seeks to help all people. Socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell. Let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.”
But what was noticeably absent from Hugo Chavez’s remarks was any mention of what Venezuela was planning to do to reduce its own carbon emissions which have grown by 42% in the last five years alone, from 37,076 metric tons in 2004 to just over 52, 529 metric tons is 2008. In fact, during the last five years Venezuela has overtaken Argentina as Latin America’s biggest polluter and second largest source of carbon emissions after Brazil (although most of Brazil’s CO2 emissions are due to deforestation).
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is banned from international travel and was only able to attend the climate change conference because it was being held under the auspices of the United Nations, flailed away at his western critics too saying that; “When these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it’s we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere who gasp and sink and eventually die.”
But of course Mr. Mugabe also failed to mention that Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, Morgan Tvsangirai, declined to join Mr. Mugabe’s entourage of over 60 people because of the recent “revelations of a bloated Zimbabwe government foreign travel budget.” But Mr. Mugabe probably felt he deserved a trip abroad with an entourage worthy of royalty because he has succeeded in cutting Zimbabwe’s carbon emissions by 25% since 2000 (by impoverishing over 80% of those Zimbabweans who haven’t died from the highest AIDS infection rate in the world). Yes Mugabe is truly a star isn’t he?
But U.S. and European political leaders weren’t the only victims of such political grandstanding. After Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said he also believed that any climate change agreement would have to be independently monitored because “Verification is essential”, he too was attacked by other political leaders in attendance.
Lumumba Di-Aping, a Sudanese diplomat, accused Mr. Rudd of advocating weak responses to climate change and likened Mr. Rudd’s comments to those made by climate change skeptics. India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh went even further, saying Australia wanted to tear up the Kyoto Protocol and replace it with a single new treaty and accusing Mr. Rudd of being “the Ayatollah of the single track.”
But is it possible that Lumumba Di-Aping doesn’t like the idea of having Sudan’s carbon emissions monitored because then Sudan wouldn’t be able to continue getting away with almost doubling its CO2 emissions (from 1509 metric tons in 2000 to 3000 metric tons in 2005)? Surely not! And surely Jairam Ramesh remarks about Rudd acting like an “Ayatollah” weren’t a reflection of the fact that India’s carbon emissions are growing faster than those of any other country in the world save China? Of course not!
Maybe I’m wrong but I have yet to see a difficult problem resolved because of finger pointing and political posturing by government leaders. So I was disappointed but hardly surprised that the UNFCCC negotiations appeared to be on the verge of collapse prior to President Obama’s arrival on the scene Friday. But instead of attacking those who were opposed to having their nation’s CO2 emissions monitored, Mr. Obama sought to work through these differences by focusing on the need for compromise by all parties.
The resulting climate change agreement that Obama engineered with China, Brazil, India and South Africa left many of the convention’s participants decidedly unsatisfied. But then again, that is the nature of a political compromise. The dictionary defines a compromise as “A settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions.” In other words, no one leaves the negotiating table entirely pleased with the terms of the final agreement. I’m not exactly pleased with the agreement either, but I’m also happy that I don’t have to contemplate where the world would be without one.
Here is my take on what the 11th hour climate change deal President Obama brokered does and doesn’t do to address climate change.
It does say that both developed and developing countries will make a list of their respective targets for reducing carbon emissions and provides for international monitoring of their progress. It also provides for the development of a mechanism to distribute money provided by rich countries to poor countries that need help adapting to the ill effects of climate change such as droughts, floods and rising sea-levels.
It doesn't represent a new climate change treaty that will take the place of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which mandates strict cuts in carbon emissions by developed countries but not by faster growing developing nations like China and India. It also doesn't set targets for reducing CO2 emissions by 2050.or a date when a new climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol must be finalized.
Indeed, the world’s nations are still a long way from addressing the problem of climate change, but at least we’re finally moving in the right direction instead of continuing to point fingers at each other.

Copenhagen Climate Change Conference

2010-01-16T17:17:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on December 24th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to begin discussing my perspectives on Climate Change in conjunction with my experiences at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen.
Four months ago I wrote a series of columns about climate change and discussed my rather low expectations about what the likely outcomes would be from the two weeks of meetings and negotiation that just concluded. But given my low expectations going in to Copenhagen, I actually left feeling more optimistic about the prospects for real action on climate change and with a sense that things were finally moving in the right direction.
However, I also know my take on the climate change negotiations I witnessed is not one shared by many of the participants at the UNFCCC or by the vast majority of members of the news media that were present at the Bella Centre. So to explain my somewhat contrary reasoning I will begin by recounting something I said in my August column about the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.
In that column I stated my belief that “there is also one group of countries that is more important than all of the other countries in the world. I call them Chimerzilia. Chimerzilia is the G5 of carbon emitters. Without their agreement to do more, and I mean a whole lot more, to reduce their countries’ carbon emissions there will be little, if any, reduction in global warming and the resultant climate change we will all experience. Chimerzilia represents an amalgam of the names of the five countries (China, America, Brazil, Indonesia and India) that are part of the world’s 7 largest carbon emitters and they are collectively responsible for more than 50% of global carbon emissions. Although the EU and Russia are also big carbon emitters and are responsible for more than 20% of global carbon emissions between them, the future depends on the G5 aka Chimerzilia.”
Well on Friday, at the 11th hour of the UN Climate Change Conference, a climate change agreement involving South Africa and the Chimerzilia G5 was announced that averted a complete collapse of the UN Climate Change summit meeting. Mind you, I don’t think it is a deal that will avert climate change and the adverse consequences that will attend it. But it does represent the first real steps forward addressing this issue by the world’s G5 of carbon emissions and the biggest source of carbon emissions in Africa.
The 11th hour deal provides for a system that will independently monitor progress by countries towards their respective carbon emission targets, a significant compromise on an issue that China had been adamantly opposed to. It also provides hundreds of billions of dollars from developed countries for those countries seen as being most vulnerable to the ill effects of climate change. Finally, it sets a goal of holding the average temperature rise to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, which will require both developing and developed countries to cut carbon emissions over the next 40 years.
But this agreement was also an unsatisfactory outcome for a 2 year negotiating process designed to produce a comprehensive and enforceable international treaty to reduce the carbon emissions that cause climate change.
Most European leaders expressed support for the deal and praised President Obama for the role he played in the final negotiations, acknowledging that Obama had been able to resolve the dispute with China over independent monitoring of emissions that had eluded them for 2 weeks. But they were also wearing very long faces because the final accord was far less than they wanted and was reached without their involvement.
While many of the political leaders of nations in the G77 group of 130 developing countries were also pleased to see an agreement finally emerge, a number of them were also angry and bitter about the political compromises that were struck as well as the way in which the agreement was negotiated, effectively leaving them outside the negotiations just like the environmental activists sitting in the chill winter air outside the Bella Center.
I had a chance to interview one of those G77 leaders on Thursday afternoon, about 18 hours before Obama arrived to try and save the day. While I have a great deal of sympathy for the people of Bolivia who are already suffering from the effects of climate change, I also thought their President, Evo Morales, was guilty of political grandstanding with many of the responses he gave to my questions and those of two other journalists.
When I asked him about UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s comment about the lack of progress in Copenhagen; “We do not have another year to deliberate. (Mother) Nature does not negotiate.” President Morales responded that “Our objective is to save humanity and not just half of humanity. We are here to save Mother Earth.” Indeed, this response from Mr. Morales accurately reflected a sentiment held by a number of other G77 political leaders, who want an agreement that limits the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures instead of 2 degrees.
Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping of Sudan who led a walkout by many of the G77 members on Monday, says the developed nations’ offer of $10 billion in “quick-start” financing to help poor countries deal with climate change was wholly inadequate. I agree with him that this offer is crap and I understand why many poor countries are digging in their heels and saying that no-deal would be better than a bad climate change agreement.
But instead of expanding on these somewhat valid arguments against the proposed climate agreement, President Morales instead chose to rail against what he sees as the cause of climate change saying that “The real cause of climate change is the capitalist system. If we want to save the earth then we must end that economic model.” Now I ask you, what are the chances the other political leaders in Copenhagen will actually entertain this kind of suggestion? Slim and None!

President Obama's Decision on Afghanistan Was the Right Moral Decision

2009-12-20T06:37:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on December 17th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Last week I began discussing why I believe President Obama’s decision to use another “surge” of American troops in Afghanistan was the most moral decision he could have made under the circumstances. The primary reason I cited was my belief, shared by President Obama, that America had a moral obligation to try to bring enough order and stability to Afghanistan, so that we could leave there with some hope that its citizens will be able to maintain this on their own after we are gone. But there are other reasons too.
I would ask those on the left who are critical of President Obama’s decision to send more American troops into Afghanistan instead of withdrawing them, to seriously consider what would most likely happen if America simply pulled out of the country. Do they honestly think the Taliban insurgency would collapse? I could be wrong but I doubt that very many of those who oppose Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan have taken into account what will likely happen if the Taliban insurgency was to continue after an American pullout. So allow me to paint a picture of the two possible scenarios that could unfold if America pulled out of Afghanistan next year.
In an ideal world it is possible that an American withdrawal will leave the Taliban without a foreign enemy that it can use to motivate its fighters and or encourage more Afghanis to join its ranks. Under this scenario the Taliban wouldn’t be able to muster the resources they need to engineer a complete takeover of the country and or their Afghani opponents would be able control significant portions of the country. Possible? Yes. But likely? Hardly. That’s because, unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world.
I would therefore contend that the most likely effect of an American withdrawal would be an ensuing takeover of the entire country. Given their past history of providing quasi-governmental support for al Qaeda terrorists, it is also more likely than not that the Taliban will do so again, especially since al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in the Pakistan frontier regions are now engaged in a heated conflict with Pakistani government troops.
As such, another Taliban takeover of Afghanistan will likely lead to the re-establishment of a base of operation for al Qaeda from which it can plan and train for more terror attacks against innocent civilians in the US as well as other nations around the world. Spain, the UK, Kenya, Indonesia. Do any of those names ring a bell?
Furthermore, with a secure base of operations in Afghanistan, al Qaeda terrorists will also be in a position to launch attacks against its Muslim neighbors in the region such as Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and China too for that matter. While it is indeed possible that the Taliban will try to discourage these kinds of cross border attacks by its al Qaeda allies, no evidence currently exists that suggests they are likely to do so. However, based on the Taliban’s current support for al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Pakistan, the only hard evidence we have to date tells us we can expect more rather fewer attacks on the regimes that control countries on Afghanistan’s borders.
Why should this concern my friends on the left here in Europe and in America? After all, these countries are thousands of miles away from our homes in America and Europe so any instability in this region of the world is unlikely to ever affect us or our way of life. The problem with this line of thinking is that it fails to properly consider the risk of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the pseudo-religious al Qaeda terrorists.
I would contend that anyone who believes that al Qaeda wouldn’t try to gain control of some of these nuclear weapons or that al Qaeda wouldn’t actually use them if it succeeded in acquiring them, is also ignoring the Taliban and al Qaeda leaders’ track record of recruiting and training suicide bombers to kill innocent mostly Muslim civilians indiscriminately. They have no regard for human life so why would they let the thought of killing a few million Muslims stand in the way of using nuclear weapons?
While some of my friends on the left may not wish to acknowledge the reality of the very real threat posed to millions of innocent people by these pseudo-religious Muslim terrorists, the vast majority of political leaders around the world agree that this threat is very real. That is also the reason why you don’t see or hear any of them criticizing Obama’s decision to devote more resources to the conflict in Afghanistan.
But there is one more reason I want to cite which gives the greatest support to my argument that Obama’s decision represents the most moral choice that he could make under the circumstances. It is also something none of my friends on the left appear to have ever considered. It is the fact that most Afghani civilians don’t want America to leave and allow their country to fall back into the clutches of the Taliban.
Unlike most of my leftist friends, I have actually discussed this issue with native Afghan men and women. They are disgusted by the inefficiency and corruption that characterizes the current government in Kabul but they have a much greater fear of what will happen to their friends and family if the Taliban ever regain power. They reminded me that they had lived under Taliban rule once before and that they didn’t know a single person back in Afghanistan who wanted to ever live that way again.
One woman also asked me to consider the fate that awaits women should the Taliban ever come to power again. Having done so, I would now ask my friends on the left to also take a moment to talk to some Afghan women about Obama’s decision before they begin trying to organize protests against it.
Next week I’ll discuss Climate Change!

The Troop Surge in Afghanistan

2009-12-20T06:35:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on December 10th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Last week I criticized President Obama and his administration for the way they mis-handled his healthcare reform, and to a lesser extent his climate change proposals, by allowing liberal Democratic Congressional leaders to take the lead in developing them.
But this week I want to applaud the President for both his handling of the evaluation process and his decisions about what America should do in Afghanistan. Mind you, I have absolutely no idea if the strategy Obama is moving to implement in Afghanistan will either succeed or fail. What I can say however, is that based on what I know about both his reasoning and the process he went through to arrive at his decision, I think he has made the best and most moral decision possible under the circumstances.
Trust me; I can already hear the angry protests from my leftist or left leaning friends here in Ireland and back in the states. “How can you dare to say that deciding to send more American soldiers into Afghanistan was in any way a moral decision?” In fact after hearing me express this opinion yesterday, one of my mates here in Dublin told me he won’t even listen to my reasons much less consider or discuss them with me.
OK so even though I will listen to, consider and discuss his opinions and or reasoning for disagreeing, he has made it very plain that he has no intention of doing likewise. Hmmmm. What’s wrong with this picture? No matter. For those of you who care to read on I will attempt to expand on and explain my reasons for believing President Obama’s decision was the most moral one he could have made given the circumstances.
To begin with I think one has to put the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in the proper perspective. As far as I am concerned the invasion of Iraq was both wrong and immoral because it placed both American military and Iraqi civilian lives at risk even though Iraq was in no way a security threat to the United States or its neighbors. The only moral underpinning cited by the Bush administration in support of their decision to invade Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was a ruthless and murderous dictator.
OK I’ll buy that. But if that is a valid reason to invade another nation half way around the world, then what about Kim Jong il in North Korea or Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe or the dictators in control of Sudan and at least half a dozen other countries? In the case of North Korea we knew for a fact that they had nuclear weapons and missiles capable of delivering them, while we had only unsubstantiated (and false) speculation regarding Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapon intentions and capabilities. That was the primary reason why both I as a Republican and Barack Obama as a Democrat opposed the decision to Invade Iraq from the very start of the Iraq War.
Since a substantial majority of Americans have now come to the same conclusion about the Iraq War, from a purely political standpoint, the easiest decision for Obama to make regarding Iraq would be to pull out completely and simply blame George Bush for whatever happens after America has completed its withdrawal from Iraq. But as I wrote in several previous columns over the last 3 years, although I was adamantly opposed to the Iraq war, I also believed just as strongly that it would be immoral to pull out of Iraq without first making an attempt to stabablise the country and reduce the violence there.
Like it or not, we can’t go back to the way things were in Iraq prior to the American invasion or change the foolish decision President Bush made to invade it. President Obama also rightly recognized that although the Bush administration had been wrong to invade Iraq and had made a bloody mess of the country in the process, America still had a moral obligation to try to clean it the mess we made before we withdrew.
Afghanistan is not Iraq however and the circumstances that precipitated our decision to invade that country were markedly different as well. Afghanistan and its Taliban regime were a security threat to the United States and other nations because they were providing safe havens for al Qaeda terrorists to train those bent on killing innocent civilians in the United States and other countries. The Taliban were and still are just as ruthless and murderous as Saddam Hussein in terms of how they treat Afghani civilians but that was not the reason why America invaded Afghanistan, nor should it have been.
How quickly we forget. Both Barack Obama and the leaders of many other countries around the world fully supported the decision to invade Afghanistan because it was a safe harbor for al Qaeda terrorists and their leader, Osama bin Laden. Many Islamic nations also supported the decision to overthrow the Taliban regime as well.
Unfortunately, following the successful overthrow of the Taliban regime, President Bush turned his attention away from Afghanistan to Iraq instead of devoting the resources needed to rebuild that country’s infrastructure and institutions, thus bringing some semblance of order and stability to Afghanistan and its war weary people.
Once again however, President Obama can’t undo the mistakes made by his predecessor which opened the door that allowed the Taliban to rebuild their armed strength in Afghanistan. Unlike President Bush, Barack Obama and most other Americans have no illusions about “winning” the war in Afghanistan. But we do have a moral obligation to try to bring enough order and stability to the country that we can leave there with some hope that the citizens of Afghanistan will be able to maintain this on their own after we are gone.
This is why I believe President Obama’s decision to use another “surge” of American troops in Afghanistan was the most moral decision he could have made under the circumstances. But there are other reasons too……..

What the President and Democrats SHOULD have learned from Mid-Term Elections

2009-12-20T06:33:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on December 3rd in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In last week’s column I faulted President Obama for his handling of two of his three most important domestic policy issues; healthcare reform and climate change legislation. I believe the President blundered by allowing Congressional Democrats to take the lead in developing these bills, thus providing his Republicans opponents with plenty of ammunition for them to use in an attempt to torpedo these initiatives.
While I am a strong supporter of the President and his domestic policy agenda, unlike many of Obama’s other supporters, I also won’t hesitate to take President Obama to task when I believe he has erred. But before I expand on my critique of how the President mishandled his healthcare and climate change proposals, lets put them into context by first examining how he succeeded in achieving his number one legislative priority shortly after he took office; arresting the free fall in the American economy.
President Obama correctly perceived that stopping the economic hemorrhaging caused by the financial wounds various segments of the economy had suffered was his most important job as our nation’s 44th President. To that end Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, took the lead in crafting an economic stimulus package rather than leaving it to Democratic leaders in the US House of Representatives and Senate.
The Obama administration proposed a combination of increased federal spending, which was criticized by Democratic liberals as being too small and by Republican conservatives for being wasteful, and tax cuts that were criticized by liberals as unnecessary and by conservatives for being less than what was needed. But at this early stage in America’s economic recovery process it appears that President Obama and his economic advisors got the economic stimulus package that they proposed just right.
I should also note this isn’t just my opinion either. At the same time US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was being raked over the coals by a few Democrats as well as the Republican members of the Joint Economic Committee at a hearing on Capitol Hill, a very different consensus of opinion about Obama’s stimulus package was emerging from a group of respected non-partisan economic analysts.
Before the hearing a Democratic representative unhappy about America’s high unemployment rate was asked by a TV interviwer if Geithner should be allowed to remain as Treasury Secretary and responded with an emphatic “No!” Then during the Joint Economic Committee meeting the next day, one House Republican told Geithner he had “failed” while another Republican on the committee said President Obama should have never given Geithner the Treasury job to begin with.
Maybe I’m crazy to think this way, but I just have a lot more faith in what a group of knowledgeable economists have to say about the Obama administration’s economic recovery legislation than I do in the opinions of politicians from either political party about the success or failure of these policies.
In response to Congressional complaints that the huge economic stimulus package wasn’t working, Nigel Gault , the chief economist at IHS Global Insight was quoted as saying; “I don’t think it’s right to look at it by saying, ‘Well, the economy is still doing extremely badly, therefore the stimulus didn’t work.’ I’m afraid the answer is, yes, we did badly but we would have done even worse without the stimulus.”
Mr. Gault’s opinion is shared by Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moodys Economy.com, who was quoted as stating that; “In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P. would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent. And there are a little over 1.1 million more jobs out there as of October than would have been out there without the stimulus.”
But in contrast to the Obama administration’s development of the apparently successful economic stimulus legislation, when it came to healthcare reforms and climate change legislation, the President let Congressional Democrats develop these proposals on their own with very little input or guidance from the White House. As a consequence, 5 different House and Senate committees drafted their own separate versions of healthcare reform proposals that addressed the desires of their generally more liberal constituents.
The end result was an incoherent jumble of healthcare reform proposals that gave anti-Obama Republican conservatives all the ammunition they needed to put conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans on the defensive. What were they thinking? That they could still win enough support from these legislators to pass these bills without putting them at risk of losing their upcoming swing state or district re-election battles in 2010? Obviously these more liberal Democratic Congressional leaders weren’t thinking!
Crafting healthcare legislation that addresses the concerns of liberal Democratic constituencies is not a strategy that will work unless Democrats have an overwhelming majority in both Houses of Congress. Well guess what? They don’t and their chances of achieving such a majority in 2010 have never been dimmer. What the more liberal Democrats don’t seem to understand is that getting healthcare reforms passed in the Senate is dependent on selling the idea to the 85% of Americans who currently have healthcare insurance, not the 45 million Americans who don’t.
One of the few liberal Democrats who understood this kind of political calculus was the now deceased “Lion of the Senate”, Ted Kennedy. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Ted would have let any bills out of committee until he had developed a package of reforms that he could persuade a smattering of conservative Democratic and moderate Republican legislators to vote for. The bill would have been criticized by liberals for not going far enough to address the needs of the uninsured and by anti-Obama conservatives for going too far, but it would have passed and become law.
Ted Kennedy’s stance on reform legislation was to get the most significant reforms in place then come back in a couple of years and make it better. Thankfully, President Obama finally appears to be ready to adopt this approach to healthcare reform. Now what does Obama do about Afghanistan?

What President Obama MAY have learned

2009-12-20T06:31:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on November 26th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Happy Thanksgiving Day (in America)! Last week I noted that the number lesson Republicans could learn from this month’s mid-term elections was that the surest path to electoral victory was to run in favor of things like economic development rather than against proposals such as President Obama’s reforms of America’s healthcare and energy policies.
Avoiding debates about controversial social issues like abortion or gay marriage and instead focusing on job creation was a strategy that worked for Republican gubernatorial candidates’ Bob McDonnell in Virginia and Chris Christie in New Jersey. On the other hand, national Republican’s support for Doug Hoffman’s attacks on President Obama’s policies and moderate Republican candidates who don’t agree with the Party’s social conservatives, led to the loss of a staunchly Republican New York legislative seat in Congress.
Fortunately for the Democratic Party’s future election prospects, many Republicans, especially those who are members of the social conservative class, have failed, or simply refuse, to see the bigger picture (sorry, no pun intended). While there are some Republicans at both the national and state levels who are very concerned about the Party’s future prospects, nary a one will discuss their concerns on the record for fear of invoking the wrath of right wing TV and radio pundits like Sean Hannity.
The Republican Party also continues to suffer from the lack of any real national leader other than Sarah Palin. Talk show demagogues like Rush Limbaugh love Sarah Palin and continue to extol her virtues as a potential successor to President Obama in 2012. Other Republicans gripe about her but dare not do so publicly for fear of provoking outrage among Palin’s slavishly devoted social conservative followers.
While McDonnell and Christie have both announced that they plan to have centrist administrations, social conservatives are revving up their attacks on more moderate Republicans like Florida Governor Charlie Crist. But if social conservatives do indeed win these intra-party battles with more moderate Republican politicians, they will also lose most of the general election wars their standard bearers will also have to wage.
That being the case, should Democrats really be concerned about their electoral chances in 2010 and beyond? I would suggest that Democrats shouldn’t take too much solace from the civil war Republican social conservatives are waging against their party’s moderates. Doing so only allows President Obama and his fellow Democrats to continue to avoid dealing with their own shortcomings rather than coming to terms with them.
Pinning one’s chances for success on the failures of your competition is hardly what one would call a “winning” strategy in business, politics or any other field of endeavor. A winning strategy takes advantage of mistakes made by one’s opponent, but it doesn’t depend on them slipping up. President Obama and the Democratic Party need to recognize that while the Republican Party’s internecine war may leave some of their candidates bloodied and weakened going into a general election, they could still win it.
I think it is foolish for Republicans to cite the results of 1994’s general election to herald this year’s mid-term election victories as predictive of a Republican drubbing of Democrats in 2010, 2 years into another new Democratic President’s first term. What Republicans fail to acknowledge is that much of their success in 1994 was due to the fact that an unprecedented number of Democratic lawmakers chose not to run for re-election that year. Open seats are always the ones most likely to be won by the other party, yet less than 10 Democrats have announced plans to retire in 2010 versus almost 50 in 1994.
But it is just as reckless for Democrats to use past history to spin the results of the Virginia and New Jersey mid-term elections as being indicative of nothing more than these state’s voters’ contrariness and low voter turnout. Granted, voter turnout was much lower and these states do have a history of electing governors from whichever party doesn’t hold the White House. However accurate these historical analogies may appear to be though, they still can’t obscure the fact that the soft underbelly of the Democratic Party was also exposed in this month’s elections.
Although only a handful of Democratic seats will be up for grabs in 2010 due to legislator retirements, there will still be another 50 Democrats running for re-election in historically Republican leaning Congressional districts. These moderate and conservative Democrats originally won those seats thanks to support from disenchanted Independent voters during the waning years of the Bush administration. As a consequence these Democratic officeholders are particularly concerned about the sentiments of Independent voters in the US and their respective districts. They should be!
Exit polling in both Virginia and New Jersey showed the same worrisome trends for Democrats among those Independent voters who strongly supported Democratic candidates in the 2006 and 2008 general elections. In both Virginia and New Jersey Independents voted for the Republican candidates by almost a 2 to 1 margin and for those who were most concerned about economic issues, the margin was almost 3 to 1. So what explains such a remarkable shift by Independent voters?
While the general public and many Independent voters still have favorable opinions about President Obama, the results of the mid-term elections signal a growing concern, particularly among Independent voters about the mounting federal budget deficit. To their political credit, Republicans have seized on these concerns, using them to try to stymie Congressional Democrats healthcare and climate change legislation by telling voters these bills will push America even deeper into debt.
While Republican claims that President Obama’s policies are pushing up the nation’s budget deficit shamelessly ignore their own budget busting actions while they held the reins of power, President Obama is at least partially to blame for giving Republicans some of the ammunition they are now using against him. I strongly believe President Obama should have never allowed Democratic Congressional leaders to take the lead in crafting such landmark healthcare reform and climate change legislation. I’ll explain why next week.

What Republicans COULD learn from Mid-Term Elections

2009-12-20T06:30:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on November 19th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
If this month’s mid-term elections in the United States were not a barometer of Americans satisfaction or dis-satisfaction with President Obama’s performance in office this past year, are there any insights into American voter sentiments that members of either the Republican or Democratic political parties can draw from them?
While I could be wrong, I think both parties could learn some valuable lessons from the mid-term election results that they could apply when they are developing strategies for next year’s national and state elections.
I will start with the Republican Party which emerged victorious in the only two state governor races that were contested this month. Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele loudly crowed to the news media that the mid-term elections heralded a “Republican renaissance” which was a bit over the top in my estimation. However overblown Steele’s analysis may have been, this was to be expected since any electoral success by Republicans in the mid-term elections was bound to be wildly celebrated by Republicans given the party’s notable lack of success in the past two national elections.
But hyperbole aside, the Republican candidates for governor in New Jersey and Virginia did execute successful campaign strategies that led to a Republican takeover of two governors’ offices currently occupied by Democrats. But the strategies both of these Republicans used to win those elections are ones that the social conservatives who now dominate the Republican Party would be wise to take note of.
Both Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie avoided any discussions or debates about their positions on the social issues that Republican social conservatives hold so dear. Both men instead focused on the need for jobs and economic development coupled with tax reductions as they appealed to moderate and independent voter’s concerns about these “pocketbook” issues. As a result they were able to win a plurality of their states’ independent voters similar in size to the one President Obama and many other Democrats got from these same voters in last years national elections.
The other important thing Republicans need to consider is the fact that a much lower voter turnout in both of those elections also contributed to their candidates’ success. The younger and minority voters who typically favor Democrats were largely absent from the polls on election day which in turn allowed the Republican Party’s older and predominately white voters to cast a larger percentage of the election’s votes than the percentages attributed to Republicans in a national election year. So the bottom line is that the Republicans who won these state elections two weeks ago succeeded because they ran in favor of something, like jobs and economic development, instead of against everything President Obama and national Democrats propose such as healthcare reform.
There were also two special elections in New York and California to fill vacant seats in the US House of Representatives that Republicans have conveniently tried to ignore. That’s because while they were winning two governors elections they were also losing these two elections for the national Congress. While the California contest was in a heavily Democratic district that the Democratic candidate John Garamendi was expected to win, such was not the case in New York’s 23rd Congressional district.
In fact this largely rural New York district had never before elected a Democrat to Congress and the Republican Party had held this seat for more than 125 years. This was one of the most Republican House districts in the country and the last time any other party held this seat it was the Whig party back in the 1850’s.
The District’s Republican Party chiefs selected a moderate Republican, New York State Assemblywoman Dierdre Scozzafava, to run against an attorney and US military veteran, Democrat Bill Owens, to fill this vacant US House position. However, judging by the comments of potential 2012 Republican Presidential candidates Tim Pawlenty and Sarah Palin you would have thought Ms Scozzafava was a die hard liberal Democrat.
When Republican social conservatives objected to the choice of Ms Scozzafava because of her support for abortion rights and gay marriage, this special election quickly morphed into a national cause celeb for right wing media figures like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. They urged their followers to instead support the Conservative Party candidate Bob Hoffman and right wing activists from around the country promptly descended on New York to campaign for Mr. Hoffman. Conservative activists did so because viewed the election as both a referendum on President Barack Obama and a fight over the soul of the Republican Party and or a victory for grassroots conservatism
Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty saw which way the wind was blowing, so to curry favor with conservative activists, they promptly turned their backs on Ms Scozzafava and endorsed Mr. Hoffman too. The ensuing “civil war” that then erupted between Republican moderates and social conservatives finally led Ms Scozzafava to withdraw from the race a week before the election and endorse her Democratic opponent instead.
Police were later summoned to several polling places on Election Day to deal with overzealous electioneering by Hoffman’s social conservative supporters. Hoffman, who was leading in pre-election polls, responded to his defeat by accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election and slashing the tires of a campaign volunteer. The local police chief later said that there had been no tire slashing and that the campaign worker simply “drove over a bottle and cut his tire”.
Yet, in spite of their unexpected loss of a Republican Congressional seat, Republican activists nonetheless claim the election in New York was a “victory for grassroots conservatism”. I’m sorry but I just don’t see how Hoffman losing a Republican seat by running as an anti-Obama social conservative while McDonnell and Christie are winning elections by avoiding this strategy is a “victory for grassroots conservatism”. I must say it never ceases to amaze me that so many Republicans still believe they must appease the Party’s social conservatives in order to get elected. This tactic worked real well for Hoffman didn’t it?

The US Mid-Term Election Results

2009-12-20T06:29:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on November 12th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In this week’s column I will try to analyze the results of America’s off-year elections. Incidentally, the decision to award the Nobel Prize to Obama had absolutely no effect on these elections and President Obama’s performance during his first year in office had virtually no impact either.
The November 2009 general elections are called off-year elections because odd numbered year elections always follow the even numbered year elections for federal and national offices such as Congress and the Presidentcy. They are also mid-term elections for members of the US House of Representatives who must run for Congress every two years. As such, off-year and mid-term elections tend to be exclusively focused on local, city and state political concerns rather than national politics.
Because voter turnout tends to be much greater when national elections are held and because governments save money by combing local and state elections with federal elections, with few exceptions, most states and cities actually conduct their respective political contests in conjunction with the even numbered year’s federal election cycle. So even though most major cities like New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and San Francisco have mayoral and city council elections in off-years, the only states that do so are Virginia, New Jersey, Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky.
Given the lack of national political issues involved in last week’s elections, I must confess that I find it amazing as well as somewhat humorous that so much national and international media attention was focused on the state elections for governor in Virginia and New Jersey. Last time I checked no state governor or city mayor has ever taken part in the national domestic and foreign policy decisions made in Washington DC. So why on earth would anyone in the news media think the results from a couple of state and local elections are an indication about how voters feel about Congress and or President Obama’s performance thus far? Well, even though I don’t see much national impact from them, for what it’s worth here is my take on the results of last week’s American elections.
In Virginia, I suspect there was a least one Democrat, Terry McAuliffe, who was secretly smiling about Republican Bob McDonnell’s thumping of Democrat Craig Deeds in the race for governor. However, Terry McAuliffe wasn’t smiling because the man who defeated him in the Democratic primary, Craig Deeds, had lost the general election but rather because he had warned Deeds and Virginia Democrats that they would lose the governor’s race unless they made jobs and economic development the focus of their campaign. Craig Deeds preferred to focus on a Masters thesis McDonnell had written twenty years ago in which he expressed rather extreme anti-gay and anti-feminist sentiments. Instead, it was the Republican candidate, McDonnell who followed this script and the result was he won the governor’s race going away by a double digit margin.
By focusing on “old” political views that McDonnell said he no longer held, Deeds actually succeeded in reinforcing McDonnell’s support among older white social conservative voters who overwhelmingly supported his candidacy. On the other hand, the suburban white female voters Deeds was trying to alarm with his focus on these “old” social conservative views, by and large seemed to believe McDonnell’s contention that they no longer represented his position. McDonnell ran a very smart “centrist” political campaign that de-emphasized his social conservatism and pushed job creation instead.
Although President Obama did campaign on behalf of Deeds, he and his administration didn’t put a lot of effort into it and had distanced themselves from the contest in the months leading up to it. The bottom line is Craig Deeds ran a poor political campaign against a savvy Republican with a better campaign strategy and tactics. As for a referendum on President Obama, 60% of the voters said the President had no effect on their vote. Another 20% said Obama moved them to vote for McDonnell while another 20% said he pushed them into voting for Deeds, thus effectively canceling each other out.
A similar story played out in New Jersey where the Republican Attorney General, Chris Christie narrowly beat out incumbent Democratic governor, Jon Corzine for this statehouse executive job. Like McDonnell in Virginia, Christie focused on job creation and the need to reduce New Jersey’s high property taxes and avoided all discussion of his positions on social conservative issues. Governor Jon Corzine had also become very unpopular among a majority of New Jersey voters for his poor handling of the state’s budget, economic and tax problems and his effort to reduce property taxes during the summer were regarded as too little too late by many voters.
However, in contrast to Virginia, President Obama did campaign more aggressively on behalf of the embattled Democratic governor of New Jersey than he did for Craig Deeds in Virginia. But voters in New Jersy mirrored their counterparts in Virginia as regards the influence the President ended up having on their decision about who they would vote for with the vast majority saying it had no effect while the ones who said it did effectively cancelled each other out. So was the New Jersey governor’s race an indication of dissatisfaction with President Obama’s performance? I think not.
One thing that did stand out in both states however, was the demographic makeup of the electorate. Voter turnout in Virginia was about half (only 39% of eligible voters) in the governor’s race versus almost 75% in last year’s Presidential contest, while it was down by over a third in New Jersey. Younger voters who turned out in droves last year didn’t cast as many ballots this year and minority groups that accounted for 20% of the vote in last year’s Presidential race cast less than 15% of the votes in the governor’s race.
Although I think it would be foolish to read much into last week’s general election results, I will discuss some conclusions that both Democrats and Republicans can draw from them next week.

Why Did They Give President Obama a Nobel Prize?

2009-12-20T06:27:00.000-08:00

The Bigger Picture
Published on November 5th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Since Tuesday was Election Day back in the states, I will discuss the results and their implications for President Obama’s political agenda next week. I will use today’s column to conclude my discussion about the negative reactions from some commentators in America to President Obama’s selection as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
Last week I said that I basically agreed with the concept that actions speak louder than words. Many of those who expressed disagreement with the Nobel panel’s decision to give this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama have cited the same idea in support of their arguments that it wasn’t proper to give the Nobel Prize to President Obama at this early stage of his Presidency. They feel it would be more appropriate to wait and see what President Obama actually accomplishes as President before handing him such a prestigious international award.
While I have a great deal of respect for many of the political analysts that made these types of comments, I still strongly disagree with them. Granted, my perspective on American politics has been altered by living abroad here in Dublin for the last three years. But I also know that there are many other political commentators back in the states who have never lived abroad who nonetheless share the same sentiments that I do.
As I mentioned last week, the motives of political extremists on the right and left who condemned the selection of President Obama are just as transparent as those of the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists who have now become their newest allies. Sowing seeds of mistrust and hate is an integral part of the message these rigid thinking people want others to believe. So a national and world leader who seeks to inspire ordinary citizens in both the US and the rest of the world with a message of hope and peace undercuts their message and reduces the chances that their skewed vision of the world will prevail.
And in at least a few instances, any accolades given to President Obama simply serve as an opportunity for money-grubbing demagogues like Rush Limbaugh to rally their rigid thinking acolytes to call in and voice their displeasure. What these simpletons don’t realize however is that “Rushbo” and others like him use these calls as proof of the popularity of their shows to radio and TV advertisers. Truth be known, Rush Limbaugh makes a lot more money from advertising sales when there is a Democrat like Clinton (and now Obama) in the White House than when someone named Bush resides there.
But ascertaining the motivations of more thoughtful US political commentators is a much tougher task, especially when they are people you respect and in some cases seek to emulate. While I may be wrong in my assessments of these political analysts’ motives, I truly believe most of the negative reactions that they expressed were quite sincere.
Many of them are just as dismayed by the partisan political gamesmanship they see on display in Washington DC as I am, so stoking partisan flames doesn’t make any sense to me as a motive for them. Nor do any of them have radio and TV shows that would benefit from rousing anti-Obama supporters as a means of demonstrating their shows’ popularity to advertisers. Furthermore, most of them have been generally supportive of President Obama’s economic stimulus, environmental and healthcare reform proposals, so undercutting the President doesn’t make sense in this regard either.
So although I think their motives were genuinely sincere, I also think they were rooted in the fact that they are also products of America’s somewhat unique cultural affinities. Like me, they were all born and raised in an American culture that celebrates and recognizes real achievements more than it does hopeful aspirations or abstract ideas. It’s not that Americans and American culture doesn’t appreciate those with a gift for lofty words and inspiring speeches; it’s just that Americans expect them to be translated into action. If they aren’t, then Americans tend to view them as impractical and rather useless.
But precisely because they, like so many other Americans have been raised to believe that “actions speak louder than words”, I think those political commentators who were critical of the Nobel committee’s decision to award the Peace Prize to President Obama missed a very critical point. The world may no longer be threatened by the possibility that the Cold War could become a nuclear holocaust, but there are still many other potential disasters lurking on the horizon. So the words and vision of America’s President matter because the world is looking to America for solutions to these problems.
President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and their neo-conservative Republican allies used the American public’s anger and revulsion over the 9/11 terrorists attacks to advance their idea that America was powerful enough to replace recalcitrant regimes and transform those countries into a mirror image of America. They demanded concessions from their adversaries as a pre-condition to even talking directly with them. But their bullying tactics didn’t work and President Obama is now trying to salvage what he can from the disastrous economic and military policies his predecessors implemented.
Obama knows that while America may still be the most economically and militarily powerful country in the world; it no longer has the political will or the wallet it needs to bend opponents to its will. Obama also realizes that the process of resolving the worlds many conflicts can’t begin until we first change the rhetoric we are using and stop demonizing those we disagree with. Obama is also secure enough that he can talk to America’s enemies instead of trying to bully them.
The Nobel award is recognition that President Obama’s use of rhetoric is important because he is setting an example for other political leaders around the world. Unlike some US commentators, the Nobel panel also realizes that without a change in political leaders’ rhetoric, the chances of resolving the world’s conflicts are slim and none.