Military Industrial Complex, and a complex story of corruption

That may, or may not, be behind the resignation of CIA Chief Porter Goss.

The earlier part of the story is the conviction of congressman Randy "Duke Cunninghamn for taking bribes from defense contractors

Cunningham resigned from Congress after pleading guilty last November to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from four co-conspirators, including Wilkes and Wade. The former lawmaker was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison. Wade pleaded guilty to his part in the scheme in February and is cooperating with investigators. Wilkes has not been charged.

Reported today:

But another former official theorized that Goss' departure could be connected to persistent rumors that CIA officials and prominent lawmakers-past and present-could be implicated in a ring of contracting and bribery scandals tied to former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif. Unsubstantiated reports have suggested that the FBI's probe of Cunningham would extend to current and former members of the congressional defense and intelligence committees.

Bribery not enough to pique your interest? how about prostitution?

In late April, the story above reported, Prostitution Alleged In Cunningham Case Investigators Focus on Limo Company.

Economic Policy Making, continued

We talked about the goal of stabel gorwth: too much gorwth can lead to market collapse, whether for beanie babies, Tickle Me Elmo, PS2 or housing. So the Fed pays close attention to inflation: boy, does the fed hate inflation.

While Voters might think economic growth in the form of higher wages is good, economists fear it --"what if this contributes to inflation".

Case in point: Friday's Washington Post: In Demand and in Command : The Job Market's Latest Seesaw Pays Off for Applicants

While the headline sounds good, consider this:

The data speak to one of the big questions looming over the economy. If the tight labor market leads to wage growth at roughly the same pace as the nation's output rises, it would be welcome news for workers who have seen scant raises in recent years, would support consumer spending and help continue the economic expansion. But if wages grow too fast, it would create inflation, leading the Federal Reserve to try to put the brakes on the economy in a potentially painful manner by raising interest rates aggressively, slowing the economy.

Yes, economists worry about you having too much money.

Economic Policy Making

There is a wonderful story in today's New York Times about the politics of the Gas Tax Rebate: $100 Rebate: Rise and Fall of G.O.P. Idea. In language of chapter 14, how did the agenda get set? how was the policy formulated? why not adopted?

Agenda Setting:

Senate Republicans were frantic. Returning from a two-week recess that had been dominated by a spike in gasoline prices — and heading into a midterm election looking increasingly good for Democrats — they began scrambling for ways to calm angry voters.

Remember Wedge-islation:

Senate Republicans, fearing they would be forced into the uncomfortable position of voting against the Democratic amendments, began pushing Mr. Frist to come up with an alternative

In a nutshell:

The rise and fall of the Republican $100 rebate offers a window on how Washington sometimes works in a slapdash way, featuring in this case Congressional aides who misread the political climate and lawmakers desperate to hang onto their jobs. It is a story, as well, of how concepts and plans can be reduced to sound bites that make them seem absurd.

Foreign and Defense Policy

We mentioned several newstories in class on Wednesday: diplomacy over Sudan, diplomacy over Iran, and the role of free trade. And in defense policy, the story about our desire to build a laser to zap satellites of other countries.

The NY Tikes also reports Taliban Threat Is Said to Grow in Afghan South -- while the US is withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, to be replaced by NATO peacekeepers:

The fact that American troops are pulling out of southern Afghanistan in the coming months, and handing matters over to NATO peacekeepers, who have repeatedly stated that they are not going to fight terrorists, has given a lift to the insurgents, and increased the fears of Afghans.

The article makes clear this is a crucial moment in the life of the Afghan government:

The arrival of large numbers of Taliban in the villages, flush with money and weapons, has dealt a blow to public confidence in the Afghan government, already undermined by lack of tangible progress and frustration with corrupt and ineffective leaders.... [One] resident, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said the Taliban['s]... brazenness and the failure of the United States-led coalition to deter them is turning public opinion about the effectiveness of the government.

Starve the Beast

when we discussed tax policy, I introduced the concept of "Starve the Beast."

Remember the basic budget problem: we like our government programs, but we do not like taxes. For conservatives, the calculus is different: they do not like our government programs (think Reagan Dime); they also do not like taxes. But since Americans punish politicians who propose cutting programs, how to shrink government?

By starving the beast: defund government, through tax cuts, so we get it to the size it can be drowned in a bathtub' (paraphrasing power broker Grover Norquist: see Hacker and Pierson, xxx)

Conservative economist William Niskanen reports that this does not work:

Again looking at 1981 to 2005, Niskanen then asked at what level taxes neither increase nor decrease spending. The answer: about 19 percent of the GDP. In other words, taxation above that level shrinks government, and taxation below it makes government grow. Thanks to the Bush tax cuts, revenues have been well below 19 percent since 2002 (17.8 percent last year). Perhaps not surprisingly, government spending has risen under Bush.

Tax cuts work in symbolic politics, but they alone they do not add up to sound economic policy.

Health Care in US

We started this section of the course talking about our varied health care plans. One argument against single payer system commonly offered is that the care is worse. I presented a study that challenges that -- we spend 50% more of GDP, have problems with access and errors.

Today's Washington Post reports a Journal of the American Medical Association study with the headline, Study Shows Americans Sicker Than English

Middle-aged, white Americans are much sicker than their counterparts in England, startling new research shows, despite U.S. health care spending per person that's more than double what England spends.

A higher rate of Americans tested positive for diabetes and heart disease than the English. Americans also self-reported more diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, lung disease and cancer.

The gap between the countries holds true for educated and uneducated, rich and poor.

"At every point in the social hierarchy there is more illness in the United States than in England and the differences are really dramatic," said study co-author Dr. Michael Marmot, an epidemiologist at University College London in England.

The study, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, adds context to the already-known fact that the United States spends more on health care than any other industrialized nation, yet trails in rankings of life expectancy.

The United States spends about $5,200 per person on health care while England spends about half that in adjusted dollars.

"Everybody should be discussing it: Why isn't the richest country in the world the healthiest country in the world?" Marmot said.

There may be dimensions along which we can call our system the best, but some of the more obvious ones seem to not be borne out.

Congress members and Pork

Anice article in USA Today on why efforts to eliminate earmarking, or pork, are not much short of futile:

Lawmakers deal with voter anger over 'pork'
Posted 5/2/2006 4:53 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — Strange things are happening in Congress.

The playground bully in the Senate — the Appropriations Committee — actually took a loss last week at the hands of senators determined to strip so-called pork barrel projects from a bill that's supposed to be devoted to the war in Iraq and hurricane relief.

And the House this week will vote on requiring members to attach their names to "earmarks" — those hometown projects slipped into spending bills. The idea is that the sunshine of public scrutiny will mean fewer wasteful, silly sounding projects like $500,000 for a teapot museum in Sparta, S.C.

Lawmakers say voters are getting sick of all this pork; there's even a recent poll that says reforming earmarks is the most important issue facing Congress. Could it be that politicians are losing their appetite for the other white meat?

Hardly.

The House Appropriations Committee reports it has received 21,863 project requests from lawmakers. That's about 50 each for 435 members and a few non-voting delegates. Still, it's progress. Last year, the panel got 34,687 requests.

What role for business? for government?

What role should government play in society?
A question that is central to politics in the US: our individual answers suggest something about our ideologies.

While we associate conservatisvism with free market economics, I have claimed in class that business people do not want a freely competitive market: they like regulations that benefit them.

1. The Missouri General Assembly has voted to require that you buy ethanol if you buy gasoline in Missouri. The Senator that represents our distric, John Cauthorn, is a major supporter of the bill, and also a corn farmer.

Sponsoring Sen. John Cauthorn, R-Mexico, said it would be an economic boon. "We're forcing them to leave their energy dollars in the state of Missouri," he said.

The most vocal opposition came from a small group of Republicans who said such a mandate conflicted with free-market principles.

Sen. Luann Ridgeway, R-Smithville, said the government has no business making choices for consumers, who can now buy ethanol-blended gasoline if they want.

2. Should government help you with the pain of high gas prices?

Sharp Reaction to G.O.P. Plan on Gas Rebate
WASHINGTON, April 30 — The Senate Republican plan to mail $100 checks to voters to ease the burden of high gasoline prices is eliciting more scorn than gratitude from the very people it was intended to help.
(April 30, 2006)

Aides for several Republican senators reported a surge of calls and e-mail messages from constituents ridiculing the rebate as a paltry and transparent effort to pander to voters before the midterm elections in November.

"The conservatives think it is socialist bunk, and the liberals think it is conservative trickery," said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, pointing out that the criticism was coming from across the ideological spectrum.

3. the insurance industry market requires they can be profitable:

Insurers Retreat From Coasts
Katrina Losses May Force More Costs on Taxpayers

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 30, 2006; Page A01

Alarmed at the sharply rising cost of hurricanes and other disasters, home insurers are pulling back from some U.S. coastal markets, warning of gathering financial storm clouds over how the United States pays for the damage of catastrophe.

The development is yet another legacy of Hurricane Katrina, whose mounting toll of destruction along the Gulf Coast has crystallized a growing industry debate about the combined effect of climate trends and population growth in coastal areas. Some believe the two are creating a risk of losses so large that insurers could be pushed to the breaking point, leaving the government and taxpayers holding the tab for the next disaster.
...
They propose establishing a greater role for the federal government in backing up new state catastrophe funds or private insurance firms when losses exceed a certain level, toughening state and local building codes and increasing premiums to accurately price risks. Some also want to potentially pool the high costs of covering perils such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and even floods into regional or national groups to ease consumer cost, and to use some money to help improve first responders and local preparedness.

Note in the second paragraph, that those who have an interest in being accurate about global climate change -- insurance companies that may have to pay -- do not dismiss it as a hoax or as unsound science.

Foreign and Defense Policy

In chapter 15, we see two basic approaches to foreign policy: Moral Idealism and Political Realism. they differ in how we might think, and talk, of interacting with other nations. Should human rights matter to our foreign policy?

Bush praises Azerbaijan's president, despite spotty record

By James Gerstenzang
Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — President Bush praised Azerbaijan's president Friday despite human-rights problems documented by the State Department, and he said the country has a "very important role to play" in meeting global energy needs.

Bush met in the Oval Office with President Ilham Aliev, who succeeded his father 2 ½ years ago in a ballot that the State Department said suffered from "numerous, serious irregularities."

With Aliev sitting in an armchair next to him, Bush held out Azerbaijan as "a modern Muslim country that is able to provide for its citizens, that understands that democracy is the wave of the future."

The meeting demonstrated the difficulty the administration faces as it seeks to maintain U.S. access to oil and gas supplies from countries that may be unstable or unreliable, often because of corruption or human-rights abuses.

Also on the foreign and defense policy front, an article from Thursday's Washington Post on the cost of our Wars.

Projected Iraq War Costs Soar
Total Spending Is Likely to More Than Double, Analysis Finds

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 27, 2006; A16

The cost of the war in Iraq will reach $320 billion after the expected passage next month of an emergency spending bill currently before the Senate, and that total is likely to more than double before the war ends, the Congressional Research Service estimated this week.

The analysis, distributed to some members of Congress on Tuesday night, provides the most official cost estimate yet of a war whose price tag will rise by nearly 17 percent this year. Just last week, independent defense analysts looking only at Defense Department costs put the total at least $7 billion below the CRS figure.

Once the war spending bill is passed, military and diplomatic costs will have reached $101.8 billion this fiscal year, up from $87.3 billion in 2005, $77.3 billion in 2004 and $51 billion in 2003, the year of the invasion, congressional analysts said. Even if a gradual troop withdrawal begins this year, war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to rise by an additional $371 billion during the phaseout, the report said, citing a Congressional Budget Office study. When factoring in costs of the war in Afghanistan, the $811 billion total for both wars would have far exceeded the inflation-adjusted $549 billion cost of the Vietnam War.

Policies we pursue have tradeoffs: human lives, standing int he world, and money. And not pursuing policies have tradeoffs, too.

Multiple Goals

In the final chapter, Foreign and Defense Policy, we see the President is the main actor. Congress still has a role to play. But to understand how they play it requires us to think of other goals beyond "keeping America safe."

Recall the Dubai Ports debacle, that cost President Bush some political capital with conservatives. While it may not matter much who operates the ports, this was an area where a simple narrative -- "Arab ownership" --outweighs rational argument.

One simple way to secure ports is to require the screening of each container entering the US. But repeatedly, efforts to require this are shot down:

Panel defeats comprehensive cargo screening amendment

By Chris Strohm, CongressDaily
cstrohm@nationaljournal.com
Under intense election-year pressure from interest groups, Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday defeated an amendment from Democrats that would have required all U.S.-bound cargo to be inspected at foreign ports.

By an 18-16 vote, Republicans rejected the amendment, sponsored by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., during the committee's markup of the House's leading port security bill. Voting for the amendment were all the panel's Democrats, joined by Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who broke with his party and explained that he believed that Congress needed to establish a firm deadline for scanning cargo abroad.

Like the toungue-in-cheek exam question: it is not that Republicans in Congress hate security. It is that there are competing goals: satisfying a well organized ocnstituency is one. And it is an issue most of us pay little attention to.

Upcoming extra Credit

As suggested by a classmate (e.g., what would you like to suggest?)

There were two things coming up next week that caught my attention.
1. Capstone Presentations in Sociology and Anthropology that are on
the 24 and 26 of next week in the SUB 306

and

2. The Global Issues Colloquium that is being held on 27 in VH 1000.

I thought both would be very interesting the first focusing on
presentations by senior SOAN students on a multitude of subjects including inequalities in health care (which we are talking a little about in the book, and child abuse policies amoung other things. The second event discusses how literature can build bridges with the Middle East and is being given by a professor from Washington University...and as an Education student I thought this would be a very interesting lecture as it would be for any major. These are just a few things I ran across that I thought would be interesting and wondered if would work for extra credit.

Let me know of other worthy events: free and open to all. For the SOAN, attend at least an hour of presentations; please do not walk in, or out, while someone is presenting.

Policymaking: Means and Ends

Recently we defined rationality as means-ends calculation. One defines the goals they they want to achieve, and then figures out the means, or ways, of acieving those goals.

In a representative democracy, one goal is winning elections; since elections are organized around parties, party-building activities are important.

One virtue of the Hacker and Pierson book is its emphasis on party discipline and "power brokers." One vice is that they do not come across as neutral analysts. So sometime it is difficult to evaluate their argument -- we get distracted by their language.

In this final section of the course, I want to emphasize the politics of policy making --

“politics is the struggle over power, or influence within organizations or informal groups that can grant benefits or privileges.” (BSS, 3)

So we want to ask, who stands to benefit from this policy?

Chapter 14 begins with a discussion of the five stages of the policy making process, with an application to Medicare Part D: the Prescription Drug Benefit. Who stands to benefit from it?

1) Seniors, who might have assistance in purchasing drugs.

2) The Republican Party, which gets the support of seniors, who have been helped by this. (see figure 8-4, page 260 of BSS to se the Democrats' advantage on this issue)

3) Insurance Companies

The Wall Street Journal

April 21, 2006

Large Insurers Are Big Winners
In New Medicare Benefit
By SARAH LUECK and VANESSA FUHRMANS
April 21, 2006; Page B1

With the May 15 enrollment deadline for the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit approaching, private insurers and the government are making a last-ditch push to sign people up and declare the venture a success. Already, though, the massive effort has produced clear winners and losers among businesses and seniors.

The early winners include some of the nation's largest health plans, which are peddling the drug coverage. After a rocky start in January, the plans have snagged roughly 15 million new customers and healthy government subsidies. Also buoyed: drug makers, which are reporting increased demand for some products used by seniors, such as drugs for chronic conditions. Many seniors are also giving the benefit good reviews, despite initial confusion about which plan to choose.

In this story you get the end of drug coverage, and importantly, the means of "private market".

See the discussion of Policy Formulation, page 467: Democrats would have been likely to create a bill to provide the coverage through a single payer; Republican's "private" system means government cannot negotiate with business (drug companies) for lower costs.

So keep in mind: its not only the what government chooses to do, but the how (and there is a reason conservatives want to replace FDR with Reagan on the dime). As a voter, you can decide which you like better. As a student of politics, you need to understand the politics of policymaking.