Stories by Pejman Yousefzadeh
Posted at 11:16pm on Jul. 8, 2008 Upset About The World Food Crisis?
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
Be sure to thank governments around the world for bringing it about. Those who place an excessive reliance on the heavy hand of the State to solve various policy problems ought to be made aware of this massive transnational governmental failure. Perhaps it will give those people pause before they advocate yet another expansion of governmental power.
I can dream, can't I?
Posted in Policy | The Food Price/Inflation Crisis — Comments (3)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:12pm on Jul. 8, 2008 Rethinking War Powers
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
The 1973 War Powers Act has been the object of much political and legal derision--especially given the widespread belief that the Act is unconstitutional as written. The political derision stems from the fact that Presidents have not invoked the Act and Congresses have done nothing to call for the Act's enforcement.
This state of affairs has prompted the creation of a bipartisan commission--the National War Powers Commission--tasked with the assignment to replace the War Powers Act with something that would be more workable. The Commission is chaired by former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher. This Commission is not a creation of Congress the way the Iraq Study Group was, but rather a creation of the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs (note the language on the homepage stating that "[t]he Miller Center impaneled the National War Powers Commission in February 2007."). Secretaries Baker and Christopher co-wrote an editorial that appeared in today's New York Times and which spells out how a new legislative design would function in governing the exercise of war powers by both Congress and the President:
Our proposed statute would provide that the president must consult with Congress before ordering a "significant armed conflict" -- defined as combat operations that last or are expected to last more than a week. To provide more clarity than the 1973 War Powers Resolution, our statute also defines what types of hostilities would not be considered significant armed conflicts -- for example, training exercises, covert operations or missions to protect and rescue Americans abroad. If secrecy or other circumstances precluded prior consultation, then consultation -- not just notification -- would need to be undertaken within three days.
To guarantee that the president consults with a cross section of Congress, the act would create a joint Congressional committee made up of the leaders of the House and the Senate as well as the chairmen and ranking members of key committees. These are the members of Congress with whom the president would need to personally consult. Almost as important, the act would establish a permanent, bipartisan staff with access to all relevant intelligence and national-security information.
Congress would have obligations, too. Unless it declared war or otherwise expressly authorized a conflict, it would have to vote within 30 days on a resolution of approval. If the resolution of approval was defeated in either House, any member of Congress could propose a resolution of disapproval. Such a resolution would have the force of law, however, only if it were passed by both houses and signed by the president or the president's veto were overridden. If the resolution of disapproval did not survive the president's veto, Congress could express its opposition by, for example, using its internal rules to block future spending on the conflict.
Read on . . .
Posted in Law | War Powers — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:04pm on Jul. 8, 2008 Cynical Observation Of The Day
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
It really would be interesting to see just how fervently Henry Waxman would be pushing his latest pet cause if Barack Obama got elected President and wanted to give a Democratic version of Karl Rove some prime West Wing office space. My guess is that Waxman would somehow, suddenly find different projects with which to occupy his time.
Politics is an inherent part of governing. I am sorry that this upsets Waxman, but he will be about as successful in taking politics out of governing as he would be in taking the wet out of water.
Posted in Policy | Politics And Government Are Interrelated — Comments (0)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:57pm on Jul. 8, 2008 "Reality-Based" Budgeting
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
The Los Angeles Times has taken a look at the Obama fiscal plan and finds it wanting:
"I don't think it all adds up," Isabel Sawhill, an official in President Clinton's Office of Management and Budget, said of Obama's spending plans.
"There will definitely need to be a recalibration of these proposals once someone is in office," said Sawhill, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The fiscal situation just isn't going to permit doing what Sen. Obama or anyone else would like."
[. . .]
Obama's staff thinks that ending the Iraq war would free up money -- at least $90 billion a year -- that could be redirected to the new government programs. But it is unclear when that would occur. Obama has not given a clear date by which the Iraq war might end. On Thursday, he said he remained committed to withdrawing combat troops in 16 months. At a debate in September, he would not commit to pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2013.
Some budget experts say even a speedy end to the war would not give Obama much money for new programs.
"You cannot justify a longer-term commitment to a program based on a one-time saving on the war in Iraq," said Stuart Butler, who studies domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank.
In addition, replenishing the military and rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan are certain to become expensive priorities once the fighting stops, said Alice Rivlin, who directed the Office of Management and Budget for several years under Clinton.
"Savings from the Iraq war will not be all that great," she said.
Other new sources of revenue in Obama's plan include about $80 billion a year from closing tax loopholes and $100 billion from a variety of cuts in spending and revised government procurement rules.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center examined Obama's plans to eliminate tax loopholes and said it could not confirm the projected savings.
"If you look at official revenue estimates, the numbers come out to be less than half of what they say they're going to raise," said Len Burman, director of the center and a former Treasury official in the Clinton administration, referring to Obama's campaign staff.
It's good and reassuring to see that there exists critical coverage of the Obama fiscal plan, but that coverage needs to expand to more media outlets and the Obama campaign needs to respond to critics who point out that the numbers for Obama's fiscal plan simply do not add up. Thus far, they have done a poor job of defending their intellectual product, even if there has been relatively little in the news concerning the many deficiencies in the Obama fiscal plan.
Posted in Barack Obama | Economy | Fiscal Policy — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:55pm on Jul. 8, 2008 Disconnect
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
This Washington Post editorial applauds Barack Obama for "adjusting" his Iraq policy.
Of course, Obama himself claims that there has been no shift whatsoever in his Iraq policy, which means that he and the Washington Post need to sit down and figure out just what on Earth the story actually is. Thus far, about the only thing that we can say is that Obama has actually done nothing to alleviate the concerns of centrist and center-right voters, while at the same time appearing to go out of his way to stick a thumb in the eye of his liberal base.
Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Flip-Flopping | Iraq — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:51pm on Jul. 8, 2008 A Politi-ku For Pelosi And Reid
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
We haven't talked much
'Bout the Legislative Branch.
It polls worse than Bush.
Posted in Bad Poll Ratings | Congress | The Democratic Congress — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:05pm on Jul. 6, 2008 The Netroots Are Angry
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
So sayeth this story. Key passage:
Nowhere is criticism of the presumptive Democratic nominee more intense than on the Internet, the cyberspace world where the Obama campaign has received hundreds of millions of dollars from more than 1.7 million donors and whose bloggers have been among his biggest fans.
"There is a line between 'moving to the center' and stabbing your allies in the back out of fear of being criticized. And, of late, he's been doing a lot of unnecessary stabbing, betraying his claims of being a new kind of politician," said Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos, the top site of the liberal netroots community.
"Not that I ever bought it, but Obama is now clearly not looking much different than every other Democratic politician who has ever turned his or her back on the base in order to prove centrist bona fides," he said.
Once again, there is nothing "centrist" about Obama, a fact that is especially obvious when one takes the time to examine the statements he made during the primary and caucus season and when one takes a look at his voting record. Centrists should not be taken in by these supposed "moves to the center." But if the netroots is displeased by the fact that it is the latest group to have been thrown under the bus by the Obama campaign, well, I can't say that I blame them.
Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Flip-Flopping | The Audacity Of Enraging The Netroots — Comments (91)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:59pm on Jul. 6, 2008 Deeply Encouraging News From Iraq . . . And Some Of The Reaction
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
First, let's go to the "deeply encouraging news part":
American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.
After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda's dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant "last stand" in the northern city of Mosul.
A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.
Operation Lion's Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans' 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the Al-Qaeda leader, and the capture of more than 1,000 suspects.
The group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen yesterday, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians.
[. . .]
Major-General Mark Hertling, American commander in the north, said: "I think we're at the irreversible point."
Read on . . .
Posted in Barack Obama | Iraq | John McCain | The Surge | War — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 6:31pm on Jul. 5, 2008 The Bloom Is Off The Rose
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
So reports Jonathan Last in considering the state of the Obama campaign:
In the wake of last week's Supreme Court ruling overturning Washington's handgun ban, for instance, the Obama campaign disavowed a 2007 statement it had made about the constitutionality of gun laws as "inartful."
After claiming in May that he would debate John McCain "anytime, any place," Obama declined to participate in a series of 10 town hall-style meetings, which the McCain campaign proposed.
Early in the month, it became clear that the head of Obama's VP search committee, Jim Johnson, was compromised by his ties to the subprime lender Countrywide. Obama called the story "overblown and irrelevant." Two days later Johnson was cashiered.
Of course that's all just campaign mechanics. But Obama has been reversing himself on policy, too.
In October, the Obama campaign promised that the senator would support a filibuster of any FISA bill that would grant retroactive immunity for telecom companies who helped the government with wiretapping. Last week, Obama announced that he would not filibuster the new FISA bill (which contains wiretapping immunity), and that instead he planned to vote for it.
At a dinner of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, Obama promised that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." Later, an Obama adviser clarified that Obama did not mean that Jerusalem should be literally "not divided."
Here's the campaign's confusing explanation: "So [Obama] used a word to represent what he did not want to see again, and then realized afterwards that that word is a code word in the Middle East." It remains unclear what situation Obama sees as preferable for Israel's capital.
There is a lot more in the article. Of course, Last writes for the Weekly Standard so there will be more than a few people who dismiss his critiques as being ideologically driven. But the flip-flops are being noted in ideologically friendly fora as well--like this one--and they threaten to undermine Obama's status as a new kind of politician selling a new kind of politics. It should be noted, of course, that Obama's attempts to shift to the center do exceedingly little to assuage the concerns of centrists and right-of-center voters who are aware of Obama's voting record and his rhetoric during the primary and caucus season--both of which are at variance with his new and conveniently found "centrism." Meanwhile, efforts to shift to the center are increasingly outraging and infuriating Obama's base, a fact that is especially obvious in the reaction of Obama's base to his decision to support FISA reforms. The Obama campaign is paying lip service at best to centrists, moderates and right-of-center voters and alienating its own base; a neat trick and a wholly unexpected one given that until recently, the campaign was operating on all cylinders and carrying out its duties in competent fashion.
Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Flip-Flopping — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 6:28pm on Jul. 5, 2008 "CIBD"
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
The acronym spells out the specifics of Robert Mugabe's plan to remain in power in the aftermath of the first round of Presidential voting in Zimbabwe:
President Robert Mugabe summoned his top security officials to a government training center near his rural home in central Zimbabwe on the afternoon of March 30. In a voice barely audible at first, he informed the leaders of the state security apparatus that had enforced his rule for 28 years that he had lost the presidential vote held the previous day.
Then Mugabe told the gathering he planned to give up power in a televised speech to the nation the next day, according to the written notes of one participant that were corroborated by two other people with direct knowledge of the meeting.
But Zimbabwe's military chief, Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, responded that the choice was not Mugabe's alone to make. According to two firsthand accounts of the meeting, Chiwenga told Mugabe his military would take control of the country to keep him in office or the president could contest a runoff election, directed in the field by senior army officers supervising a military-style campaign against the opposition.
Mugabe, the only leader this country has known since its break from white rule nearly three decades ago, agreed to remain in the race and rely on the army to ensure his victory. During an April 8 military planning meeting, according to written notes and the accounts of participants, the plan was given a code name: CIBD. The acronym, which proved apt in the fevered campaign that unfolded over the following weeks, stood for: Coercion. Intimidation. Beating. Displacement.
The story makes for shocking and appalling reading. Go through it . . . if you have the stomach. Perhaps not to anyone's surprise, it is reported that when the CIBD campaign began showing its bloody and politically desirable--from Mugabe's perspective--results, Mugabe started laughing and joking with his associates again.
And why not? Sadists enjoy inflicting pain and torture, after all.