I loves me some James Fallows and am looking forward to reading his big piece on how our government no longer works this afternoon.
Any other stuff I should be reading today?
Update. The piece Fallows wrote about the planning, or lack thereof, of the Iraq war is still available online here. It’s the best single article I’ve ever read about the Bush administration (just edging out some of Ron Suskind’s pieces and the Barton Gellman et al. stuff in WaPo).
Update update. I just finished the Fallows piece. The one sentence summary:
That is the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke.
More broadly, what he sees as the most vital and self-renewing part of the United States are immigration and our university system.
“We scream about our problems, but as long as we have the immigrants, and the universities, we’ll be fine,” James McGregor, an American businessman and author who has lived in China for years, told me.
To be frank with you, this is not something I am so optimistic about. I don’t have the data to back this up, so I won’t belabor the point, but it’s always struck me that the huge number of visas going to immigrants in science and technology has the effect of depressing wages in these areas and is part of the reason that America underproduces science and engineering majors. I don’t know what the way around this, but I think it’s naive to think that the current system — in which we cherry-pick the best and the brightest of Asia’s science and technology minds — is sustainable.
Linkmeister
I just read the whole thing. Unless I took the wrong message completely, he’s kinda-sorta cautiously optimistic, with trepidation.
He’s certainly got the same feeling I do about a new Con-Con; it would be the worst (non-shooting) food fight in the history of the country and would probably turn off more people than it excited.
NickM
This is a great blog tracking and analyzing legislation closely, from a left/liberal POV. I never see it linked or mentioned anywhere, but it is worth a read.
It is not my blog, BTW.
http://amento.typepad.com/thieves/
scudbucket
The hated Taibbi has a good post on WH finance policy, finance reform, and how red/blue reductive politics sustains the continuing looting of the middle class by Wall Street bankers.
Nick
@scudbucket: Oh good, surely another fun challenge for fact checkers.
DougJ
Oh good, surely another fun challenge for fact checkers.
IMHO, Taibbi should never have been pushing that $24 trillion liability thing. It makes it hard for me to trust what he’s saying.
NobodySpecial
I got nothing. At least, nothing serious.
Funny, now? I got funny. Quite offtopic, though.
I might add, he’d probably still be better at the job than Tom Ridge.
Corner Stone
@scudbucket: But does he use the word “fuck” or call someone a “ninny”?
Because that just won’t do.
Mike Kay
Taibbi = hunter s thompson wannabe, complete with LSD use.
I’m not joking, he went on Stephen Colbert and proudly talked about his LSD use.
Mike E
The Lazlo Letters by Don Novello!
SpotWeld
Any other stuff I should be reading today?
Worst case you can always go see Avatar again…
Mike Kay
DougJ said,
But plans and studies are for harvard lawyers, not for real men like Tweety and Broder.
Batocchio
Fallows’ book Blind Into Baghdad contains that essay and five others. It’s very good. Overall, I’d say the two most important books to read to understand the Bush administration are Angler by Barton Gellman and The Dark Side by Jane Mayer (excerpts are available online). Suskind’s work is also very valuable. If you’re particularly interested in the torture/human rights issues, there are some others I’d add, including Torture Team by Phillipe Sands.
For Iraq specifically, The Assassin’s Gate is also good, as is the doc No End in Sight. Frontline did several great episodes on the Bush administration, but The Dark Side, Cheney’s Law and The Lost Year in Iraq are probably the best. Their two-parter Bush’s War compiles much of their previous work. I imagine most people can find the links pretty easily, but I can pass them on if not…
Too many pundits and politicians are casually endorsing torture and ignoring actual events, evidence and reports. Like the attempt to re-write recent economic history, it’s extremely dangerous. In general, it’s essential to remember (or learn) what the Bushies actually did and the results, and not let that history be disappeared.
Off to finish Fallows…
stibbert
now reading those Fallows articles, thanks for linking to them.
i can’t recall exactly, didn’t an Army general refer to Feith as “the stupidest fuckhead on the planet” ?
Chat Noir
DougJ, don’t know if you saw Bob Herbert yesterday. His columns are always worth a read.
Sigh…
Elisabeth
Completely OT but the Holocaust Museum shooter has died.
jl
On Fallows decline (or not) of the US piece:
I read the Fallows piece quickly, so may have missed something. But I thought his critique of US government missed some very important points.
The most important missed points were the capture of government by corporate influence, and the race for by money by politicians running for office, especially by incumbents.
Fallows says that government institutions are more static than rest of society, but he only mentions superficial structures, such as two party system. I doubt that the way these institutions function has been static. An example would be the way the filibuster has evolved and how the Senate has evolved into requiring a supermajority to do most legislation and into requiring a unanimity to get many appointments through. I think these changes in how the institutions function come from changes in the incentives, and from perceived needs for individuals in the institutions. And I think those changed incentives revolve around money, and how corporate influence affects how people get the money they think they need, or want.
I may have missed some brief references to these problems. But if I missed them, they must have been very briefly mentioned, while I think they are a major part of the story.
The impression left from a brief read is that the US is let down by our static government, and in some vague and unspecified way, almost as an aside in a few paragraphs about Carter, and conservative boilerplate from John Adams, that somehow the people are to blame and that democracies commit suicide, respectively. A person like Fallows should be able to get much better out of John Adams for this piece, what he quoted is very conventional boilerplate. Adams agreed with Jefferson on the corrosive influence of aristocracies, moneyed interests and financial capital. Seems like if Adams and Jefferson agreed on something, it would be worth pointing out, but instead he picks up conventional second-rate Adams ranting and boilerplate.
Not as good as Taibbi, who I think has a better grasp of the causal structure that lead to our current mess, even if Taibbi is rightfully criticized for getting some significant details and personalities mixed up in his reporting. The Fallows piece can easily be cited and recycled by some corrupt corporate crony ‘New Dem’ hack to make more misguided arguments. I was very disappointed by that aspect of the piece.
Chat Noir
@stibbert: It was Tommy Franks.
Edit: I think he said something like Feith was “the stupidest fucking person in the world.”
DougJ
@Chat Noir
Yes, it was a good piece.
Notorious P.A.T.
That is a good article by Fallows, but he sure doesn’t offer much in the way of prescription. “Muddle along” I could have come up with myself.
DougJ
Overall, I’d say the two most important books to read to understand the Bush administration are Angler by Barton Gellman and The Dark Side by Jane Mayer (excerpts are available online).
I read a long excerpt from Angler and thought it was excellent. Also extremely revealing.
What made the Fallows piece I linked to so eye-opening for me was that it showed how much intelligent, expert opinion about Iraq was ignored. I see that as what dooms all national Republican governmental activities, even those that are well-meaning — Republicans don’t listen to people who know what they are talking about.
Notorious P.A.T.
With their fact resumes.
Notorious P.A.T.
@stibbert:
I love this quote, so I want people to use it perfectly: Doug Feith was called “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the Earth” .
AB
That Fallows piece is great. I’m actually trying to apply for a “science and engineering” job abroad, and not having any luck, lol.
Lyle4
I don’t know if it’s sustainable, but I can tell you that South Asians are still willing to bloody each other up for some H1-B1 action.
ajr22
Two koala bears humping behind Andy Roddick is getting more news coverage than the story about the double agent that killed 8 CIA members. This cant be life.
stibbert
@Chat Noir: thanks for giving me the true quote, and the source. at least my brain retained the general tenor of Franks’ description!
Cat Lady
Facts have a liberal bias, doncha know.
stibbert
@Notorious P.A.T.: bookmarked! mille grazie!
Comrade Dread
Yeah, we’d have rabid, insane, hyperbolic fights over amendments pro and against abortion and gay marriage with nonstop media coverage, blog wars, and pundits racing to say the dumbest thing of the day, all the while the highways, bridges and sewer works continue to crumble around us with nary a reporter paying attention.
I would only agree to a Constitutional convention if you gave all the Congressmen and delegates canes and televised the subsequent beatings.
schrodinger's cat
The beltway media is useless. Was it always like this or has the advent of cable and the 24 hour news-cycle made it worse?
MBunge
Batocchio
@NobodySpecial:
Awesome! Thanks.
Bill Arnold
On balance I’d rather be competing with immigrant scientists and technologists who are seeking work at American pay scales, rather than scientists and technologists working/seeking work at developing country pay scales. Agreed that cherry picking isn’t sustainable though.
Lyle4
@schrodinger’s cat: Someone asks this like once a day on BJ. I think we all know the answer.
arguingwithsignposts
The gutting of the universities will likely continue apace. U of IL just announced furloughs because the state won’t pay them the money they’re budgeted to receive.
Both big Cali systems have been whittled away under the governator. The loss of public funding has led to more capture of the unis by private interests.
Students continue to pay more and more for degrees that may or may not get them quality jobs, and more and more students who have no business being in college are going because they’re told that’s the way to a high-paying, stable career. And the colleges put up with them because they’re keeping the lights on.
Chat Noir
@stibbert: I always liked that quote. “60 Minutes” did a piece on Feith a few years back and it wasn’t flattering.
Tim I
The brainiac mathematicians from Asia is only part of the story in terms of immigrant vigor. Enormous numbers of hard-working people from all over the world come here because we are still seen as the land of opportunity. Many work long, hard hours to give their kids a chance at a life that wouldn’t be possible in their home countries. As always, those kids provide a great deal of intellectual and entrepreneurial vigor which fuels our economy and society.
Comrade Mary
@NobodySpecial: Nice!
Hey, do you know who drew the “Got him!” crotch-shot panel right below the part you quoted? I’d swear it was Rob Liefeld, except that the foot is competently drawn. On the other hand, there’s only one showing, so it could be him.
Moses
My wife is a research professor. Having listened to talk about recruiting issues over the past decade, it’s is very clear that it is becoming increasingly difficult to poach top-flight Asian students. Some are more difficult than others, too. The top Japanese students don’t come to the US like they did in the past. Rather, they stay home or go to Europe which is much kinder to them…
DougJ
Enormous numbers of hard-working people from all over the world come here because we are still seen as the land of opportunity.
Yes, I agree.
The context for the short quote I excerpted on immigration and universities linked immigration with universities, focusing specifically on immigrants who come to American universities.
Riggsveda
Part of the reason we produce so few science majors is that our half-assed electorate is scared down to their plebian shoes of anything that smacks of smarts, so we produce laugingstocks like the Texas and Kansas Boards of Education that want to shove creation myth down kids’ throats and call it “science”. For “leaders” we’ve got jackasses like Inhofe hollering down the hallowed corridors against established scientific evidence, and the masses who elected him calling “You go, girl!” after him. We’ve got accredited meteorologists like Joe Bastardi stumping against climate change everytime they post another video on NotSoAccuWeather. Please. Most of us would be perfectly happy living in a pre-Newtonian world, as long as we can open-carry.
Lyle4
@ajr22: TRIPLE agent!
Tropical Fats
At the bottom of all our problems is that we are (collectively) stupid, uninterested, and easily distracted. And that is why we will solve none of the real problems we face and will go spiraling down the Great Toilet of History.
I wish I could spare a moment to be concerned about the machinations of the Senate, peak oil, climate change, the beyond-useless corporate media, or anything else, but you’ll have to excuse me. “Dancing With The Stars” is on.
DougJ
Part of the reason we produce so few science majors is that our half-assed electorate is scared down to their plebian shoes of anything that smacks of smarts, so we produce laugingstocks like the Texas and Kansas Boards of Education that want to shove creation myth down kids’ throats and call it “science”.
Sure, but those same Texas voters help finance one of the nation’s greatest universities, UT Austin. I have a hard time wrapping my head around how Texas can do so well with elite universities (A&M isn’t bad, either, and UNT is okay as well) and so badly with things like the state board of education.
Karmakin
Well, it’s a fundamental issue that goes down to the core of how we view labor in our society. Both the left and the right, by and large are guilty in this, and as such, nothing ever seems to get done because the core problem simply marches on.
People assume that wages are set due to value of the worker, when that is rarely the case. While of course, there’s a certain level where it makes no sense to hire somebody because they cost more than they are worth, to think that we are anywhere near that point is foolish. (If we were, minimum wage increases would destroy the economy. Which they don’t.)
Wages are set due to a competitive market for jobs, where workers over time bid wages down, against inflation. It’s gotten so bad over the last 10 years or so that it’s not even keeping up with that. More people in sciences or engineering, really won’t do very much but depress the wages, over time for those in that field. It doesn’t matter if they are internal or external. It’s a social good thing for sure. But it’s not the fix for the struggling middle class.
What’s needed is a real full employment policy, to force a situation where there’s a balance between workers bidding for jobs, and for employers bidding for workers, among ALL class levels. That’s the only fix. If it means that we have to readjust our economy and society for a 30 hour work week, so be it.
It’ll never happen.
But that’s the problem, and that’s the solution.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@schrodinger’s cat:
My recollection of it is that it used to be a transcribing machine, copying down the government press releases and the opinions of the officials.
Now it’s the opposite, a gaggle of braying jackasses hee-hawing at everything, whether the source material is serious and worthy of attention, or just absurd bullshit. The braying sounds the same regardless.
Which was worse, the stenographer-press, or the jackass-press?
Neither, I think. I think what’s important is that people have more and more access to information sources that don’t depend on the press at all any more. We swim in information. We just need to learn how to tell the shit from the shinola.
Alex S.
I am confident that, in the long run, things will turn around. Just one completely cultural example: 2009 was a fantastic year for science-fiction movies: Star Trek, Avatar, Moon, District 9, even Transformers II. Things like these do show the desire to move ahead. The Bush years were about a fantasy movies longing for a distant, better past: The Lord of the Rings movies, Eragon, Harry Potter, finally the Twilight books and in some twisted way, the Star Wars PREQUELS. (if you’d only watch the prequels, you’d regard the series as a description of decline – just like the Lord of the Rings saga is about a decline from a divine magic past to a profane present (without elves).
I also find it funny that The Simpsons started to suck once George Bush came into office and South Park surpassed it. I’ve even heard the word “South Park Republicans”. The Simpsons were too nice for the last decade.
I don’t know….I think that the culture will change. And there are a lot of signs everywhere. The polity will follow.
Brian J
Well, like you, I don’t have any data to back up my guesses, but I’d say that you are wrong, but not entirely. In the same way that immigrants coming here might depress wages for blue collar workers, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing happens to white collar workers. But is it a big effect, or is it just a small effect? My guess is on the latter.
Of course, that’s only talking about people competing for the same job. What about immigrants who come here and start businesses?
Anyway, here’s what I take away from all of this: we have a lot of problems, but we also have a lot of solutions. In a lot of ways, I think the solution lies in not finding what works and what doesn’t, but in either summoning the political will to do what is necessary and/or figuring out a way to break through the special interests that are blocking reform. It’s not as if with every problem we’re dealing with some sort of fatal disease that nobody knows anything about. Even in something as complex and challenging as health care, it looks like we are getting better and better at finding solutions to the problems. This doesn’t mean that we are close to solving all of our problems, only that there is a lot of hope that things can be done.
Bostondreams
Offtopic, sort of, but Ta-Nehsi Coates has a post up gushing about his commenters and thanking them for making him look good at The Atlantic. if you are not reading him, I highly encourage it!
Chat Noir
@arguingwithsignposts:
Except for the major sports programs. My brother told me that Michigan State, my alma mater, gave basketball coach Tom Izzo an absurdly high bonus because he decided not to go elsewhere after his contract expired. And the football coaching staff all got raises even though the team is incredibly mediocre.
Priorities, don’tcha know.
Also, more Smudge, plz.
BombIranForChrist
America has a long streak of anti-intellectualism. We take great pride in being dumb.
Fortunately, we have survived as a country because we have (at least) one characteristic that is more powerful than our will to idiocy. And that characteristic is greed.
So take heart. We may be a dumb country, but we’re also a greedy country, and that will end up saving us. Or, at least, saving those in the West and Northeast. The South is fucked.
cmorenc
Our government no longer works because one of the two major parties (the GOP) has as its core the belief that that government doesn’t work, and their mission is to try to make it as near-impossible as they can for anything the government does to succeed. Too many members of other major party (the Dems) have adopted as their goal trying to steal the role of patron of the big business community away from the GOP, thereby locking in big-business support for their staying in office as talkers of progressive reform, but walkers who will only change things around the edges rather than truly threaten existing ways of doing biddness and profit.
Batocchio
@DougJ:
DougJ, I agree. I think Blind Into Baghdad and No End in Sight are both very good for showing people prone to reflexive hippie-punching exactly how inept the Bush administration was. It wasn’t just ideology – in terms of basic management and governing, the entire operation was horribly run. I can think of at least one conservative who came to that conclusion from No End in Sight who would not accept the same truths from those damn liberals.
Cheney reportedly liked Angler – at least there’s a photo of him reading it – probably because it shows him as a master operator. (Also, arguably the most evil American ever to be elected to higher office, but tomato, tomatoh. Addington may be worse, but he was never elected. Neither man has ever been very keen on the whole democracy thing.)
Jason
@NobodySpecial: Chris Sims is stop-eating funny. Nice catch
Are we underperforming in degrees granted per engineering program? When I was teaching at Case the program seemed pretty healthy.
Phoebe
“Any other stuff I should be reading today?”
Yeah. Andrew Sullivan is kind of on fire today.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/sick-of-the-israelis-and-the-palestinians.html#more
and other stuff.
The one about Mike Allen was spot on.
The Grand Panjandrum
@DougJ: Fallows book, “Blind Into Baghdad” (and the piece you link to was the impetus for the book) is truly great.
DougJ: How many foreign students get research and teaching assistantships in your department? I suspect that like most Math Dept’s around the country the number is quite high. I am personally opposed to giving any of these assistantships to foreign students if they are funded by taxpayer dollars. What say you?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
The H1-B Visa Program, aka The Indentured Servant program, has done exactly that for wages in IT.
I’ve got a friend who’s a pointy haired, mid-level manager at Microsoft. He’s possibly more librul than I am….except when it comes to this. He’d have you believe that there’s nobody in this country who has the programming skills to work for M$, thus, they suck in everybody they can under H1-B.
He conviently overlooks the high unemployment rate among IT pros because M$ would hafta pay them, yunno, a living wage.
I also see this in IT contracting here in Club Fed. The Bushies outsourced everything. The contractors then proceed to “let go” existing workers so that they can, you guessed it, hire under the H1-B program, pay far less wages but, you guessed it, don’t cut the cost of the contract to Club Fed. That adds more profit to their margins.
Fucking assholes all.
Mr Furious
@scudbucket: I actually think that is one of Taibbi’s best columns. Thanks for the link.
DougJ
DougJ: How many foreign students get research and teaching assistantships in your department?
The percentage isn’t that high in my department. I actually don’t know the figure for the whole department — for whatever reason, all of my own students are American (I think the reason is that I work, roughly, in algebra and foreign students seem more likely to end up in analysis).
There already is some money from the government that is ear-marked for American citizen graduate students. I don’t know what the balance should be. I think there should be some favoritism for Americans but I would be very against something that set up real barriers for people from other other countries.
Matt
As an engineer doing a postdoc at a top university in the US, I can say that there really aren’t that many jobs out there. If companies are really hiring from overseas, it’s not because there aren’t a lot of people get degrees in math/science/engineering in the US.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
The question is can we find other places to cherry pick talent from if the flow from Asia dries up. Asia isn’t the first place to suffer a brain drain to the US, and may not be the last. One of the rarely acknowledged elements of US predominance post-1945 was the huge influx of educated Europeans who fled to the US from war and genocide on their home continent. Our predominance in science was greatly helped when we effectively harvested the previous 50 years worth of European educational infrastructure and spending, for our benefit.
It is amazing how quickly things changed in the late 1940s – reading science biography (e.g. Crick and Watson) it is striking how important Europe was before WW2 compared with the US, and how quickly the balance shifted.
The Grand Panjandrum
@DougJ: Why shouldn’t all taxpayer dollars be earmarked for US students? Do we have a shortage of math PHD’s in this country? Wouldn’t that money be better spent elsewhere?
Mike E
@cmorenc:
FTW, but needs f-words. Also.
Notorious P.A.T.
@Comrade Mary:
Thank you for linking that. I love that article.
Another reason (so I hear) why so few Americans pursue useful degrees in science is because they all want to be hedge fund managers and chase instant fortunes on Wall Street. Reason #243079 why we need to crush the too-big-to-fail financial services firms.
DougJ
Why shouldn’t all taxpayer dollars be earmarked for US students?
I think that might really screw up the state universities, where any position can be seen as partially taxpayer-funded.
Johnny B
Fallows has a fairly bleak assessment on our ability to change our trajectory. While I tend to agree with his scepticism, I see one possible reason for optimism.
It seems to me that as the nation slips further and further behind other western nations in all meaningful categories (economics, health, education, environment), the federal government’s failure to address the nation’s problems will lead to a desire to find solutions elsewhere. At that point, secession could become the next great political movement in this nation–on both the left and the right.
It is quite possible that we may live long enough to see our nation break apart into separate autonomous nations, just like the Soviet Union, as the chasm grows between what the American people desire and what government is willing (or able) to provide.
In 1776, thirteen colonies joined forces in an effort to create a more free country (at least for the privileged few). I won’t be surprised that in the 21st century, the fifty states peacefully dissolve into five or six new nations in a similar effort to further the aims of liberty.
I have no doubt that corporate America, particularly those who have grown fat at the trough of the military budget, would be most emphatic against secession.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@cmorenc:
Those folks are (I think) the target audience of this passage in Fallows’ article (the GOPers are beyond reach at this point):
In other words: Blue Dogs – lead, follow or get out of the way!
Lyle4
@Johnny B: Wait, that’s supposed to be optimistic? Oh dear.
RSR
I haven’t had time to read the article yet, but I’ll note that just the other day my wife–a middle school ESL teacher–said we should stop offereing so many student visas. She mostly refered to children from wealthy families who come here to get a college degree then leave again.
I’m personally not against someone availing themselves of both our education system and our hospitality, but I think there should be some give back to earn that visa. I don’t know if there are any such requirements now, but some sort of service requirement–military, under-performing schools, health clinics, etc–might be leveraged into the equation.
BR
As a broken record I’m brought back to the two biggest problems – climate change and oil depletion – that our government is so very unprepared for.
If we struggle for a year to get a mediocre health care bill passed, what happens when the real big-money interests – the oil companies, energy companies – are threatened?
Safe to say that the real changes we need to make – 80% reduction of emissions by 2020 – is unlikely. Even the most ambitious Dem proposals only aim for 18% or so by 2020.
Phoebe
And I second everyone who liked the Taibbi thing.
Walker
Two more observations about Universities:
(a) The students are no longer staying in the US after graduation. More and more often they are going home afterwards.
(b) A lot less of them are coming over. It has gotten noticeably more difficult for my department to recruit graduate students from India in the past five years.
Violet
@DougJ:
Because when it comes to higher education, what Texans really care about is football. That’s where the money is. The education stuff can slip in under the radar.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Johnny B:
I agree. The world was a hostile place for democracy in Lincoln’s day, so the geopolitical logic of keeping the US together come what may made some sense in 1861. This is a different century and then some. It may very well be that the time has come for a divorce between parts of the country whose differences are irreconcilable. If France, Germany and Russia can live together on the same continent after everything they’ve been thru, then the United Blue States of America and the United Red States of America can manage, I think.
schrodinger's cat
@Walker:
That’s because the path to becoming an immigrant is extremely difficult, there are strict country quotas and if you are from India or China, the waiting period can be in years even after your initial petition is approved.
Walker
@DougJ:
There is a lot earmarked for them. Just about every major fellowship that a student can apply for (as opposed to being listed on the professor’s grant) is US centric. NSF, DOD, etc.
General Winfield Stuck
It’s the streamlined chapter of conservative economic philosophy we are currently suffering from, tucked in between the deregulation and exploitation of third world cheap labor market chapters.
We are creating specialized robots in human form for cogs in the big money machine controlled by our plutocrat overlords.
Science, math, engineering etc etc// Who cares about all that anti- jeebus literary stuff and (cough) humanities taught by apostate devil worshiping commie elite college libtard arts perfessors. You can’t build a bigger bomb or investment bank with a Soshulism Degree, And other countries seem to be following our lead in chasing wealth above all else. All the emotional and spiritual needs can easily be taught in Sunday School at Aunt Millie Whiteheads Memorial Pentecostal Church of Jeebus Beavers.
And we are getting dumber in the ways that count for becoming better human beings requisite for our future survival. A race to the binary code bottom in service to the Gawds of Profit.
Mike in NC
I spent a fair amount of time walking the halls of the Pentagon in ’04-05, and it seemed almost everybody had a horror story about the antics of Rumsfeld and his henchmen.
SpotWeld
I don’t know what the way around this
Stop letting corporations set the immigration quotas to fill short term labor needs, and let universities set them to fill teaching/research needs.
PeakVT
Muddling through works if the challenges don’t have deadlines. A race to beat your opponent (the Soviet Union) is different from a race to beat the clock (global warming).
schrodinger's cat
@SpotWeld: There are no quotas for H-1Bs if they work in non-profit research institutions and universities.
Johnny B
@ Lyle4: Of course, it’s not optimistic if you assume that all fifty states must stay together, thick or thin, no matter how dysfunctional our nation becomes. I don’t subscribe to such strong union tendencies.
It’s the 21st century. Nations break up all the time, many peacefully. If our nation broke apart into more regionally cohesive units, a great deal of good could come from that event.
First, it would spell the end of the American empire and the end of the imperial President. Second, it would also spell the end of corporate America’s ability to dictate policy throughout the entire country. (I have no doubt that the special interest most antagonistic to secession would be corporate America.) Third, it would allow a great deal more political innovation in this continent than our current federal system allows.
So yes, I see secession optimistically.
Stooleo
Alex S @ 47
I was having a conversation with a buddy about, how I felt, that the American zeitgeist was incredibly negative at the moment. I then I rattled off all the post apocalyptic that have come out recently: Legion, The Book of Eli, Daybreakers and 2012. I think I’m just projecting my negative attitude.
frankdawg81
As a technology worker I think you have a bit of a mistake there. American’s avoid Technical degrees because they are hard & don’t earn the respect they once did.
When I was a kid a parent would be very proud to have a son or daughter (well, lets be honest I’m old enough when it would have still been just son) that was going to be an engineer. Now the money & prestige is in an MBA so why take all that hard math stuff?
Also the job I am doing at this very moment is babysitting resources in India who are supposed to be doing a technical job for an American Company. Thanks to the Internet there’s no need for visas!
Lyle4
@Stooleo: Waterworld came out 15 years ago and somehow we all survived.
Pangloss
The United States can track its decline to Proposition 13 and the anti-Gubmint, No New Taxes political movement that it spawned. Not a coincidence that Reagan was elected out of California a mere two years after passage of Prop 13, and that California secondary schools have gone from #1 in the nation to #34. The state now ranks 49th in the number of citizens with a high school education.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1904938,00.html
Funkhauser
May I recommend the James Galbraith piece?
http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/HE/TA09EconomistGalbraith.pdf
Chris
Part of the dynamic that has enabled the United States to reach the level of ‘Hyperpower’ or ‘Superpower’ has been the consistent influx of immigrants over the past two hundred + years.
Johnny B
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Not surprisingly, I agree with your assessment. I would say that I don’t see secession as just a blue-red phenomonen, although I agree that there will be regions that are more blue and those that will be more red if this occurred.
But, I’m not sure I know what path the South would take if it couldn’t blame all its problems on liberals in Washington, D.C.
But more importantly, I’m prepared to let the South give it a try as long as they’re willing to let my region of the country to go its own way as well.
mwj
You should read the comments on Michael Yon’s facebook page.
Mike E
@Lyle4:
Methinks “The Postman” can now be viewed as “instructional”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Johnny B:
The result could very well be half a dozen or so mid-sized nations. California alone would be one of the largest states on the planet. Splitting in two is just the starting point for this conversation.
And judging from the historical experience 1861-1865, I think it is fair to guess that folks in the South will continue to blame their problems on the central govt (the state legislatures of the CSA were notoriously uncooperative with the govt in Richmond while it lasted), but they can blame the damn hippie communist fascists in Atlanta or Dallas for a change.
Austin, TX will be like post 1945 Berlin, with a wall and a Checkpoint Jesus. And an airlift to bring in arugula and lattes.
Remember November
Our balance of trade in both durable and human goods is way off. We import talent, and export reality TV.
Stooleo
Lyle4
Dont forget The Postman.
danimal
@DougJ:
I’m a bit more optimistic about our educational system than most.
I think that, at their core, most Republicans know that many of their pet policies are full of crap. They don’t really want to gut higher education, they just want to humble liberals. They want the symbolic wins and symbolic stands for traditional values. When the creationists actually take over state and local school boards and make substantive changes, there is usually strong pushback from “main st. republicans” who normally want their moderation to be unnoticed. Watch the Texas textbook manipulators, who are constantly trying to push the limits without destroying their credibility with the centrists and independents. Their statements are political at their core, and they will adjust their message depending on their political capital level.
Mike E
@Stooleo:
You owe me a Coke!
Comrade Dread
And I’d still be stuck with the crappy government in Sacramento where partisan idiots have no incentive to cooperate to solve problems, are complete sell outs to special interest groups, and generally (when they can get taxes passed) pass the most regressive taxes available, while the citizenry passes bond measure after bond measure to funnel money to the interest group who can put together the best ad campaign full of fake pathos.
Not that I’m bitter…
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Comrade Dread:
But doesn’t that balance change when 1/3 of the population of the Inland Empire and San Diego County pulls up stakes and emigrates to Jesus-stan and are replaced by the reverse flow of refugees from places like Austin, TX? The unmixing process would be like the partition of India and Pakistan with better production values. Cable TV producers will have orgasms.
danimal
@Comrade Dread: Amen, brother (or sister).
Although the Golden Bear Republic wouldn’t be sending scads of money to the Red States of America any more, so at least we would have that going for us.
Mark S.
Hmm, are we doomed because of our Senate? A year ago, I would have thought that was preposterous, but now I’m open to the suggestion.
Someone could write an interesting book about the similarities of the relationship between Britain and the US in the nineteenth century and the US and China in this century.
Mayken
@Comrade Dread: Yeah, if we secede we’re going to have to have a Constitutional Convention to start all over again. Because the current model just ain’t working. And I’m with danimal, would be nice not to be paying red-state welfare anymore!
Johnny B
@Comrade Dread:
If you’re living in California, I understand that secession may not seem like a viable option right now. But if this country split up in four to seven new nations, I truly believe that the end result would be a net positive. Why? Because some states or collection of states can and would better govern their people than Washington, D.C.
First, they will have an interest to do so because they will have no one else to blame. Second, they won’t be able to waste a third of their tax receipts on military hardware, overseas adventures, and foreign bases. Third, they will have the pressure that if they fail to do a decent job that their people will leave for better locales–the nearby nations to the north, south, east, and/or west.
Quite frankly, for western nations, it is not unusual to have countries fund and provide social benefits for their people. What’s unusual are nations (or should I say “nation”) that insist on fighting against social programs even at the cost of their long term economic interests. It is the U.S. that is in the minority on this score, not Europe.
If secession occurred, I suspect two or three would adopt more progressive social programs such as those found in Canada and Europe. The other nations would ultimately follow suit or face the wrath of their citizens.
goblue72
The government has a hard time working because one-half of its political participants have morphed into a party dedicated to the complete destruction of government itself. Its kind of hard to make things work well when half your team is fighting as hard as hell to wreck everything.
After the crazy nutjob half is accounted for, you have another 25% dedicated to making the machine of government work just well enought for them to skim off as much graft to themselves and their cronies as possible.
Which probably leaves you on the order of 25% or less of the participants in the system actually wanting to see government work WELL.
Its not that we are completely doomed; its that we are out-numbered and out-flanked.
Xenos
@RSR: I am on the other end of this issue. I will likely be moving to a non-anglophone European country, and I have the choice of four different countries. We will be moving to the one that has a well-developed system for bringing new students, teaching them the language, and integrating them into the school system. So there is a significant advantage for a country that is willing to accommodate new language learners in the school system.
Xenos
@Mayken: The funny thing is that Texas is now paying red-state welfare, and they are really, really pissed off about it.
BR
@Johnny B:
Honestly, I’m hoping California embarks on a mission to become independent in everything but name: Jerry Brown needs to run on a 10-year energy independence crash program for CA.
econlibVA
The Fallows article is fantastic – it really is. The Founding Fathers really didn’t think it through when they came up with the Constitution. The Senate is a really serious problem in that it rewards states that shrink relative to the rest of the country with more representation per voter. Also, small state Senators are easier for corporations to buy off because they have fewer constituents to fund their campaigns – corporate money in general is a larger fraction of campaign $$$ for small state senators. So, senators have an incentive to support bad policies that enrich corporations over average Americans. Many small state senators are just plain awful.
Almost as bad (and this is something that Fallows doesn’t mention in his article), US politics have stopped being about issues at all. Instead, it is a power struggle between ethnic and religious coalitions. That’s why GOPers don’t seem to make any sense. When all you want is for White Christians to regain power, and you can’t just come out and say that, nothing else you say is going to make a damn bit of sense at all.
Ethnic and religious power struggles are bad for countries because at least one side of the fight (in this case, the GOP) is willing to do things to make everyone worse off if they think it will eventually lead to them gaining power. That’s what we’re seeing now with rampant and unprecedented GOP obstruction.
Now, the United States has had such struggles in the past, most strongly between Protestant natives and Catholic immigrants (Fallows does mention this). But, the combination of ethnic/religious struggle and an increasingly dysfunctional Senate make it more difficult for our government to function.
Zuzu's Petals
Another Fallows piece that is well worth reading, even after five years:
Bush’s Lost Year
Heartbreaking assessment of all the opportunities lost because of the decision to invade Iraq.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@econlibVA:
Kevin Phillips has documented this in detail in his books. He claims the roughly binary character of US politics is based on distinct cultural blocs (which are a mix of ethnic, sectarian and regional factors) which can be traced all the way back to 17th Cen. Great Britain. US Politics during most of the 20th Cen was complicated because lines of ideology on the prevailing issues of the moment cut across the grain of our cultural divisions, and the two major political parties were in the process of swapping their regional bases. That meant that ideas and policy mattered more in determining who voted for whom. Today our ideological blocs and cultural blocs are more closely aligned with each other, which should mean we won’t have as many elections where there is a dramatic swing in the balance of power from one side to the other.
DougJ
May I recommend the James Galbraith piece?
It’s very interesting.
mclaren
America has been cherry-picking the best minds from the rest of the world for at least 150 years. That part is way sustainable. When the dictators were lining up Jews and Hungarians and gypsys and Armenians and shooting ’em or sending ’em to concentration camps in Europe, America got the king monster cherry-picking deluxe bonus of all time in the 1930s. It’s been going on a long long time with no sign of stopping.
What’s not sustainable is when the best minds from the rest of world who get cherry-picked to attend our finest unviersities turn around and decide not to live here. That’s not sustainable at all.
America needs to bend over backwards to seduce and entice and inveigle all those foreign-born PhD students to live here. We could start by shutting down the horseshit ICE rules that discourage foreign-born residents who got advanced degrees in the U.S. from staying here unless they have a rock-solid job. For instance, change the rules so that if some foreign-born PhD starts a business in America, they get to stay until hell freezes over, even if the business goes broke. Most startups do, you know. And then we could change the insane rules that can wind up deporting valuable foreign-born PhDs if they lose their jobs and can’t find another within some cockamamey time limit. It’s insane.
If I were in charge of America’s immigration, I’d give every foreign-born university student a free media card. They get into every movie, watch every premium HBO channel, for free. No charge. The U.S. Government would pay for it. Douse these people in American culture, saturate ’em with it.
Instead, after 9/11 every foreign-born student gets treated with suspicion and hostility. At the drop of pin these people get deported. Madness. Absolutely madness. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Any foreign-born resident alien gets an advanced degree in America, that should give ’em an automatic ticket to become a citizen and bring their whole family over here, no questions asked, as long as they commit to live here and become a U.S. citizen.
America should be getting down on its collective knees and kissing the asses of all the foreign-born students who get PhDs in sciences and engineering, ’cause Americans sure as hell ain’t doin’ it. Unless we want to become a nation of dog groomers and xerox clerks we better make this the Numero Uno hospitable country in the world for foreign-born students who want to get advanced degrees. I don’t see why that’s unsustainable — what’s unustainable is educating the best and brightest in the world and then throwing ’em out like used kleenex because our crazy immigration policies were dreamed up by some authoritarian nut job scared of jihadis under his bed.
Notorious P.A.T.
I understand the warm feelings about secession, but I wonder if we really need that. The country is tending our way: white Jesus freaks who believe The South Shall Rise Again are slowly but surely becoming extinct.
This relates to why I have no problem opening the doors wide to non-white non-Jesus freaks who think The South is Bombay or Guatemala.
Darryl
I think this is possible, but there are big potential downsides too. First, what if Jesustan entirely eliminated all environmental regulations? We could be looking at serious pollution issues. Second, if it eliminated OSHA, the minimum wage, quality education, tort liability, etc, it could quickly form a huge number of extremely poor people, who might then sneak across the border to the liberal states for jobs. Jesustan would be a third-world country is short order, and would share a big border with the liberal country.
Cat Lady
@mclaren:
I love this idea. In Boston where I am, the lawyers, the doctors, the financiers are heavily populated with the folks who came here to college and stayed. Smart people enjoy being with other smart people, and I’ve heard many stories of assimilated professionals who talk of their immigrant parents’ world as if it were another century. A culture that prizes accomplishment and education is a powerful force. Boston’s whole appeal is it’s educational and cultural institutions and the environment they foster. The Brahmins have long been overtaken by a succession of successful immigrants, whether it was the Wangs or the
Boses or the D’Alessandros or the Connors. It’s been all for the better. The attraction sure ain’t the weather.
Johnny B
@Darryl: We’ve already seen a steady decline in the breadth and enforcement of all the statutes you mention. If we separated, some regions might gut progressive regulations, but then some would strengthen such regulations.
In the end, the responsibility for creating a social contract would be with the separate regions. They would be responsible for doing so or failing to do so. Our system has far too little accountability, largely due to the scale of our governmental structures.
I also don’t buy this notion that we must stay together to prevent the worst conservative ideas from taking route in conservative regions. We are not going to create a progressive sanctuary in all fifty states. In fact, staying together is more likely to result in the environmental and social destruction you fear across the entire country, rather than limiting it to regions who insist on creating an Ayn Rand paradise.
In the end, I think freedom in the 21st century entails smaller governmental structures more responsible to the American people. I suspect that secession offers the best chance for system wide reform in this part of our continent than any other idea. I also think its likely to occur whether we want it to or not and whether it results in benefits or not.
The divide is now too great. We live in a country where it is perfectly acceptable to advocate the murder of the President or his supporters. Once that occurred, we were no longer “E pluribus unum.”
Panurge
Two observations:
1. Don’t we already have these things called “states”? What if we made it easy for individual states to implement more comprehensive social safety nets? Why don’t they do it now? (Probably because everyone knows deep down that all that “New Federalism” business was a whole lotta gas.)
2. “Jeremiad city” is part of the reason Reagan got elected. Jeremiads can be effective, but they have to offer some hope, too. In the ’70s it was just jeremiad after jeremiad with no sense of finding any kind of way out. Then the hostage crisis came along and it was sold to America as THE FINAL HUMILIATION–to say nothing of the overheating economy of 1980. No wonder Reagan got elected… And four years after that everything comparatively seemed kind of OK–you know, the world wasn’t really falling apart, everybody seemed happy on TV, etc. (Well, at least for a majority, which is good enough for an election, eh?) Meanwhile, the Dems still seemed to be in jeremiad mode. I was just old enough to know something was still wrong, but how else do you explain the Reagan landslide?