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Libya On My Mind

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In early 2007, on two separate trips, I taught entrepreneurial business planning to an executive training program in Libya. The course was organized by Monitor Group, which I had worked for in the early 1990s, and was now consulting to the government on economic planning and "capacity building." In all, I got to know about 300 trainees rather well, over more than a month of days and classes.

This was a very narrow slice of Libyan society, 30-and-40-somethings who started small engineering companies attached to the oil industry, store owners, people in tourism, some low-ranking government ministers, the scions of families who had owned businesses before The Leader took power in 1969--older and younger, men and women (some in head scarves, some not). Call it Tripoli's bourgeois intelligentsia-in-the-making.

Our trainees were exceptionally hospitable and grateful people, even for an Arab country. Their children and grandchildren would kiss you, a perfect stranger, as if you were an uncle. They were hungry for the moral oxygen coming from European businesses and tourists. They were wondering if The Leader's son, Seif-Al-Islam, who had hired Monitor, and who was studying political philosophy at LSE, would really prove liberal, really eventually come to power, really open the country to the West.

The Son told one of my colleagues that he would never agree to hold a position in government he was not elected to. His recent television speeches in defense of his father's rule, delivered in a Gucci suit, before and after The Leader's soldiers and mercenaries began killing protesters in cold blood, leave one wondering if The Son's notion of election really needed to be nuanced by an LSE degree.

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The Top 10 Names for the "Pro-Life," Pro-Cancer, Pro-UTI, Anti-Planned Parenthood Amendment

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Nothing says "sanctity of life" better than cervical cancer, breast cancer, and HIV! That's why on February 18th, so-called "pro-life" members of the House of Representatives, voted 240 to 185 to defund Planned Parenthood, a premier women's healthcare provider for nearly a century, serving 3 million women a year in its 800 centers across the country. The leader of the crusade, Representative Mike Pence (R Indiana), prides himself on being "a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order," promising during his campaign, " to deliver ... legislation that will prevent abortion providers like Planned Parenthood from receiving a single dime from the federal government." The fact that abortion is legal aside, 97% of Planned Parenthood's services are NOT abortions, but rather cancer screening and prevention, STD testing and treatment, contraception and general women's health care, ranging from high blood pressure to urinary tract infections. But Pence apparently, didn't get the whole Jesus healing the sick thing-the lepers, the blind, the deaf, the mute, the blood-disease afflicted, the dropsy-sufferers, the hand-withered, etc. (which in all fairness you miss if you blink while reading the bible, since Jesus's healing appears only 22 times and only in the Book of Matthew... and Luke... and Mark... and John). But Pence has decided to throw out the unaborted baby out with the healing bath water.The resolution still has to pass the Senate. In order to get the Vote Yes to Life and No to Health! campaign going in the Senate, here are our top 10 names for the amendment.

  1. The Anti-Pap-Test Amendment: Planned Parenthood provides nearly one million Pap tests each year.
  2. The Pro-HPV Bill: Pap tests screen for HPV (Human papillomavirus), a disease which at least 50%of sexually active men and women get at some point in their lives. Approximately 20 million Americans currently have HPV and another 6 million people become newly infected each year. But this amendment means that even more people would contract the virus and the genital warts it causes!
  3. The Pro Life, Pro-Cervical Cancer Bill: Pap tests also screen for, help prevent and lower rates of cervical cancer, which, though highly preventable and treatable, is one of the top 5 killers of women.
  4. The Anti-Mammogram Bill: Planned Parenthood also provides 830,000breast exams and mammograms each year.
  5. The Pro-Life, Pro Breast Cancer Bill: These exams screen for breast cancer, which approximately 200,000 women will be diagnosed with and 40,000 women will die from this year. But if this bill passes, we will be able to get those numbers up even higher! As fewer women have access to these life and breast-saving exams, more women will lose their breasts and lives to cancer!
  6. The Pro-HIV Amendment: Planned Parenthood provides nearly four million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. If the Pro-STD Amendment passes, imagine how many more people will not only have untreated STDs, but will unknowingly spread them to other people! With HIV, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes and more, the possibilities are infinite!
  7. The Pro-Unplanned Pregnancy Bill: Planned Parenthood services help prevent more than 612,000 unintended pregnancies each year. But if the Pro-Unwanted Pregnancy Bill passes, there could be 612,000 more unplanned or unwanted pregnancies and countless more women without access to contraceptives, resources and education
  8. The Anti-Fertility Bill: Just as Planned Parenthood helps women avoid unplanned pregnancies, it helps those who want to be pregnant get pregnant with male and female infertility tests, resources and information. But if the Anti-Fertility Bill passes, who knows how many hopeful would-be parents will be hopeless and child-less!
  9. The anti-general Healthcare Bill: Planned Parenthood also provides general health care, such as anemia testing, cholesterol screening, diabetes screening, physical exams, flu vaccines, help with quitting smoking, high blood pressure screening, tetanus vaccines, and thyroid screening. This Amendment would increase rates of disease and even death for countless women! In all fairness, at least the Republicans are consistent in their anti-health care stance.
  10. The pro-UTI Bill: Planned Parenthood tests and treats UTIs or Urinary Tract Infections, which 1 of 5 women have at least once, and consist of burning pain during urination, an urge to urinate when your bladder is nearly empty, feeling like you need to urinate all the time, difficulty controlling when you urinate, lower abdominal pain or back pain, and blood and/or pus in your urine! This amendment would mean more pain and more pus! What could be better?

PsyOps, Afghanistan, and Al Franken

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With all the controversy stirred by Michael Hastings' Rolling Stone article about the role of Army psychological operations units in hosting congressmembers (i.e. trying to manipulate them) I noticed Sen. Al Franken among the "targets." This prompts me to recount relate an episode from the 2008 senate race.

During the campaign, the constant refrain on Iraq from then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman was that he took his cues from the commanders on the ground. In June 2008, Al decided to call Coleman out for getting backwards the vital question of who's actually in charge. In a conference call covered by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's politics blog, Franken pointed out that

in our country ... the generals on the ground execute policy to the best of their considerable ability.

The ultimate deciders for questions of the nation's wars are, of course, the people's elected leaders. Civics book stuff, basically. I'm sure Al is hardly alone in grasping the difference between, on the one hand, respect for the military advice of service members and appreciation for their dedication, and on the other, the sober responsibility for deciding what missions they will be given. This just seemed like a good moment to revisit the underlying principles of policy making.

The Republican Shakedown

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You can't fight something with nothing. But as long as Democrats refuse to talk about the almost unprecedented buildup of income, wealth, and power at the top - and the refusal of the super-rich to pay their fair share of the nation's bills - Republicans will convince people it's all about government and unions.

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Did General Caldwell Point his Psy-Ops Team at POTUS?

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Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings is a consistent home run hitter. First, he profiled the culture of disdain that General Stanley McChrystal and his command staff had for their civilian leadership partners -- ending McChrystal's storied military career.

Now, Hastings has something right out of bad fiction. Lt. General William Caldwell, who is reportedly one of President Obama's favorites, actually hatched and deployed a plan to use psy-ops against US Senators and Congressmen. Unbelievable, and illegal.

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A New Principle of International Law: The Internet Is a Common Medium

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The Internet should have no borders. So did Secretary of State Clinton in effect declare in a major speech on February 15. This is the most dramatic and far-reaching linkage of information technology and statecraft in history. It is an extension, and a fulfillment, of the original vision of the Internet as a force for eradicating poverty and spreading democracy.

Since the salad days of the Clinton Administration, when as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission I witnessed the commercial big bang of the Internet, the power of this seamless, global common medium has steadily grown. Now in the Tahrir Square Revolution and the other uprisings across the Middle East, the Internet has revealed itself as a powerful platform for the expression of fundamental rights. To paraphrase Chou en-lai's answer to a question about the significance of the French Revolution, it is too soon to say exactly how the Internet will further democracy Egypt or any country. But it is certain that the United States is strongly suggesting that Egypt and any other autocratic country should use the Internet to help their people find a way to democracy.

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Washington Wrecks the Economy: More Evidence

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We now have even more evidence that inept policies from Washington are causing enormous suffering across the country. It is not quite the line that the right-wingers are pushing. The new evidence is that the stimulus worked and was in fact more effective than had been predicted.

The new evidence comes in the form of a study by two Dartmouth professors, James Feyrer and Bruce Sacerdote. Past estimates of the impact of the stimulus on jobs and the economy relied on simply plugging the tax breaks and spending into standard macro models and reporting the predicted effect. In this sense, the impact of the stimulus was actually built into the model. However this new study directly measures the impact of stimulus spending on employment across states, comparing the number of jobs created to the amount of spending.

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The Coming Shutdowns and Showdowns: What's Really at Stake

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Wisconsin is in a showdown. Washington is headed for a government shutdown.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker won't budge. He insists on delivering a knockout blow to public unions in his state (except for those, like the police, who supported his election).

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Bill Maher's Latest Hate Eruption

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Bill Maher just can't help himself. He hates Muslims and he will use every opportunity he has to express his feelings. Lucky for him, he has HBO. (Video at this site).

In this latest case, he is talking about Muslim misogyny. His point is that he cannot celebrate democratic revolutions in Muslim countries because Muslims are misogynists.

I won't bother rebutting Maher's points because his guests pretty much tear him to shreds. What interests me is watching the hate just erupt from his guy. It's so clearly genuine, which, I think, distinguishes Maher from one or two of the prominent right-wing bigots who seem to be faking it for ratings.

Maher is not faking. He's a hater. Ugly stuff.

Common Ground with Republicans: Nix NSF Funding for Economics

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One of the items on cut list for House Republicans is the National Science Foundation (NSF). They want to cut $150 million, or 2.2 percent, from its 2010 budget for the current fiscal year.

This should be a place where progressives can find common ground with Republicans. Virtually no economists could see the $8 trillion housing bubble whose collapse wrecked the economy. Recognizing the bubble required nothing more than knowledge of the basic arithmetic that most of us learned in the third grade. There was no excuse for someone who does economics for a living to have failed to see the bubble and recognize its danger.

This is a profession that is hopelessly corrupt and incapable of change. In fact, in the wake of the economic disaster brought about by incompetent economists the Fed paid for a study that concluded:

"The state-of-the-art tools of economic science were not capable of predicting with any degree of certainty the collapse of U.S. house prices that started in 2006."

The NSF spent $99 million funding economics and related research last year. Let the Wall Street banks pay for this tripe. Progressives should join hands with the Tea Party folks and zero out the NSF funding for economics. (We should go after the Fed's funding for economic research also.)

The Republican Strategy

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The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class - pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don't believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.

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Eva Peron Wins: The Pretension of a "Savings Lottery"

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Peter Orszag, now a new vice-chairman of global banking at Citigroup and former US Office of Management and Budget under Barack Obama, has written a provocative and (with all due respect Peter) wrong-headed Financial Times oped proposing that the way to promote savings among America's low-income workers is to attach the prospect of winning millions to them scurrying away a few dollars here and there -- sort of a lottery ticket that goes into their savings rather than into state coffers to help subsidize education or to the profits of the local milk and cigarette stand.

At the New America Foundation, I have colleagues who are most likely the world's leading experts on generating savings among the underclass, or "banking the unbanked" as New America's Reid Cramer or Ray Boshara would say. But suggesting that America's savings problem be solved by establishing an Eva Peron style lottery incentivizing those with little to save doesn't understand the dynamics at play in the American economy today.

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Obama Says U.S. Will Veto UN Resolution Condemning Settlements

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The Obama administration is clearly desperate to avoid vetoing the United Nations Security Council Resolution condemning illegal Israel settlements. And it's not hard to see why.

Given the turbulence in the Middle East, and the universal and strong opposition in the Arab and Muslim world to U.S. shilly-shallying on settlements, the last thing the administration wants to do is veto a resolution condemning them. That is especially true with this resolution, sponsored by 122 nations, and which embodies long-stated U.S. policies.

But the administration has rejected that course.

The reason is obvious. AIPAC would go ballistic, along with its House and Senate (mostly House) cutouts. Then the calls would start coming in from AIPAC-connected donors who would warn that they will not support the President's re-election if he does not veto. And Prime Minister Netanyahu would do to President Obama what he did to former President Clinton - work with the Republicans (his favorite is former Speaker Newt Gingrich) to bring Obama down.

What's an administration to do? It doesn't want to veto but it is afraid not to.

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Productivity Paradox

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U.S. GDP in March of 2008 was $14.546 Trillion and non farm employment was 137.841 million. Today, non-farm employment is 130.229 million and total GDP is $15.010 Trillion. So essentially we have $500 billion more output from almost 8 million fewer workers. For years analysts scoffed that the Digital Revolution wasn't really delivering the giant productivity gains the utopians had promised. But it occurs to me that the financial crisis of 2008 caused firms to make some very hard decisions to cut back the marginally productive workers in areas like sales, marketing and administration. What they obviously found was that one star salesman with the right digital tools could do the work of two average performers. As the New York Times noted last fall, this drastic downsizing was usually in the ranks of older workers.

Of the 14.9 million unemployed, more than 2.2 million are 55 or older. Nearly half of them have been unemployed six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate in the group -- 7.3 percent -- is at a record, more than double what it was at the beginning of the latest recession.

This is why I'm not sure that those 8 million lost jobs will ever come back. The President can jawbone America's CEO's all he wants about hiring more workers, but that won't make them restore a bunch of marginally productive 50-year-olds to their payrolls. They would rather hire young tech savvy kids at entry level salaries, if they hire at all. This dilemma raises two questions that need to be answered. First, with no jobs but increasing health care costs, should we revisit the idea of lowering Medicare eligibility to 55? Second, how can we create a public-private initiative to put these 50 year olds to work in mentoring and training our younger generation?

Why We Should Raise Taxes on the Super-Rich and Lower Them on the Middle Class

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My proposal to raise the marginal tax to 70 percent on incomes over $15 million, to 60 percent on incomes between $5 million and $15 million, and to 50 percent on incomes between $500,000 and $5 million, has generated considerable debate. Some progressives think it's pie-in-the-sky. Here, for example, is Andrew Leonard, a staff writer for Salon:

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