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(04/28/10 3:37am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Chuck Holdeman said he came to IU after leaving the Navy in 1963, got married and settled down in Bloomington. He was at the Tax Day Tea Party protest at Showers Plaza this year.Standing in front of City Hall and clutching the second issue of the Indiana Standard, a conservative newspaper put together by IU students, Holdeman said he didn’t usually attend political events. He said he thought most of the other Tea Party protestors are just good, down-to-earth Americans.“A lot of these people are just fed up with everything,” Holdeman said.What everything includes depends on whom you ask.Shelby Sego lives in Bloomington and goes to Ivy Tech Community College. She was talking with another Bloomington resident, Danny McConnell, who rested the pole of a large American flag in his pocket.Both said they were worried about health care.The rally started with a few speeches on the City Hall steps, including one by IU junior Sam Spaiser, the president of Young Americans for Liberty at IU. “It’s time we bring the era of big government to an end,” Spaiser said. People cheered, but they also cheered when he talked about abolishing the Federal Reserve and, surprisingly, when he talked about bringing the troops home. Many liberals complain the movement is based on ignorance or bigotry. This is unfair. Most of the protesters were friendly and affable. Last year’s Tax Day Tea Party featured a woman in a pig suit who claimed President Barack Obama thought America was a Muslim nation. But it also included a gay woman who said she was inspired to get the government out of her life by the movie “Milk.”Most Tea Party protestors claim to be nonpartisan, but the movement will send many more votes to Republicans than Democrats.That is one reason the Republican Party is likely to do well in 2010. But, again, many liberal fears of disaster are exaggerated. The GOP’s good fortunes are being driven by many moderate voters. In power, they will often have to be pragmatic. But it is less clear how much the Republican Party deserves a victory. The forces trying to pull the party in a more conservative direction have, so far, offered too few solutions to the major issues on which Democrats are at least trying to act. The next campaignTodd Young is a Bloomington attorney running to be the Republican candidate for Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, which includes Bloomington and most of Southern Indiana.Justin Kingsolver, president of the IU College Republicans, said he was driving Young between campaign stops one night last spring and looked away from the road for a second.He said when he looked up there was a deer in the middle of the road, and he had to quickly swerve around it. “‘You know, Justin, I was in the Marine Corps, and I never saw a maneuver like that,’” Kingsolver said he recalls Young saying. Such stories are common from students who pour hundreds of hours into political campaigns. Kingsolver said his group has tried to conduct two to three phone banks a week. Young’s campaign office is downtown, not far from where the Obama campaign office was. The IU College Republicans’ call-out meeting for this semester was held less than a week after Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in Massachusetts for the GOP. Senate and House candidates and plenty of curious students were packed into Kelley School of Business 100, where the group holds most of its meetings. There was also a lot of pizza. “I see a lot of new faces, and that’s awesome,” Kingsolver said. “I don’t know if that’s because you are all excited that 2010 is going to be the next Republican Revolution; I think it will be.” Young was at the meeting and had a few bad things to say about the fiscal responsibility of the last GOP-controlled Congress, an obvious jab at his opponent for the Republican-nomination, former Rep. Mike Sodrel.Sodrel grew up in New Albany, Ind., and is known for his success with a family trucking company. If he wins the Republican primary, this will be his fifth run for this seat.He was also at the call-out meeting, and Young challenged him to a series of weekly debates. Kingsolver saw them debate in North Vernon, Ind., a few weeks ago. He said Sodrel showed his experience, while Young was mostly negative. Both complain about the stimulus, cap-and-trade and health care reform. At the call-out meeting, Sodrel said cutting payroll taxes was the best way to stimulate the economy, and Young said Democrats should focus more on tort reform and letting people buy health insurance across state lines. These are not bad ideas, but they aren’t sufficient. And when it comes to attacking cap-and-trade, neither has outlined an alternative that would meaningfully fight global warming.The primary is May 4, and either will have to make a stronger case before November.Taking the heat“IU College Republicans obviously gets a lot of heat because we are the only Republicans in the People’s Republic of Bloomington,” Kingsolver said at the call-out meeting.Talking about it later, he said he doesn’t really think most people here are socialists, but he did say he thinks the odds are stacked high against conservatives. It’s not a hard case to make — Obama won 66 percent of the vote in Monroe County.But in the same election, Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who was deservedly reelected, trailed his Democratic challenger by less than two thousand votes here. People can be convinced.This semester saw the fruition of a major effort by IU conservatives to get their ideas out. Danny Orthwein, a senior at IU, likes to joke that the Indiana Standard is internationally read because the web site has gotten hits from India and a few other countries. In all seriousness, he says he figures they are just random searches or bots. The first issue of the Indiana Standard, which runs with the banner “Yes, there are conservatives in Bloomington...,” came out this January. Its headlines included “‘End the Fed’ Campaign Gains Momentum” and “A Study in Government-Run Health Care.”Before that issue could be published, Orthwein said students had to get the paper incorporated and find private donors. Orthwein said he was an original member of the board that controls the Standard, which includes three students and two community members. The editorial staff, he said, is all students. According to Orthwein, the paper is printed by a company in northern Illinois, and the first issue was mailed to him in six boxes. He said most of the first two issues have been distributed through the paper’s members.The first hard-copy of the Indiana Standard ended up in his hands about a year after he said serious discussions to create the paper started.“It’s like winning an election, that thrill of success,” Orthwein said. The Indiana Standard isn’t affiliated with the IU College Republicans or Young Americans for Liberty at IU, though many of its writers associate with these organizations. Orthwein, who attends many IU College Republicans meetings, said he just considers himself a freedom-loving individual. The diversity of views among those at IU who consider themselves conservative is pretty wide, despite some of the stereotypes that do exist on this campus. The libertarian group, Young Americans for Liberty at IU, really is liberal about social issues. At a gathering last Wednesday, they watched “Brothers” as an anti-war event.Former president of IU College Republicans Chelsea Kane said gay couples should have the same rights as straight couples and that she didn’t care what anyone called it. Kingsolver said he wished economic issues received more focus than social ones. He said within his group, far from having lock-step opinions, there is a great deal of disagreement over immigration and the validity of global warming. This doesn’t mean a more socially tolerant, pro-immigration and willing to compromise on cap-and-trade GOP is just around the corner.But it does mean students on this campus should be more open-minded about what the Republican Party could be and about their own roles in seeing it change. This time, no revolutionKingsolver said he remembers his girlfriend holding the phone against a TV so he could hear Sen. John McCain’s concession speech. He admits that, after all the chalking, rallying, tabling and debating, he cried when he heard his candidate lost. 2010 will probably be a better a year. In Indiana, Republicans have a chance to pick up a Senate seat and a couple of House seats. But that doesn’t mean 2010 will be a Republican revolution. FiveThirtyEight.com, a nonpartisan polling aggregation web site, ranks the Senate seats most likely to change parties and found that, of the 10 most likely to flip, eight of those would flip in favor of Republicans. But Republicans will need to pick up 10 seats for a majority in the upper chamber.The House will be easier to take, but as new Republicans come from places like the Northeast, they will have to be more moderate to please their constituents.There is no strong leader like Newt Gingrich to craft Republican impulses into a coherent agenda. Many libertarians and members of the Tea Party will be disappointed either way. Most members of the IU College Republicans will probably just do whatever they can to give Republicans a chance of taking this congressional district and to keep their conservative ideas alive on campus. Kingsolver often ends each meeting with a quote, usually from figures like Margaret Thatcher, Teddy Roosevelt or Winston Churchill. A few weeks ago, Kingsolver concluded a meeting simply with this advice: “Go out and be conservative.E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu
(04/21/10 12:29am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After leaving the Navy in 1963, Chuck Holdeman said, he came to IU, got married and settled down in Bloomington. He was at the Tax Day Tea Party protest at Showers Plaza on Thursday.Standing in front of City Hall, Holdeman said he didn’t usually attend political events. But he did say he kept up with national issues and was a fan of Sean Hannity.He made a comment about being too old to learn Chinese but noted China had a lot to lose by trying to use the American debt it owns as leverage.“There are always two sides of the coin. I try not to be too extreme about things,” Holdeman said.He said that, on the whole, most of the Tea Party protestors are just good, down-to-earth Americans. He thinks a lot of people are just fed up with everything.What “everything” includes depends on who you ask. Most people at the rally mentioned high taxes and ballooning debt. They said they were worried about health care reform and bailouts.Tax Day set off some of the first Tea Party protests last year, and the Bloomington protest drew hundreds. This year’s drew far less, and it is still unclear what impact this movement will have.The protesters are not the dangerous loons most critics imagine them to be. But their message is far from coherent — and significantly reducing the size of government will be a painful process.The rally started off with a few speeches on the City Hall steps, including one by IU junior Sam Spaiser, the president of Young Americans for Liberty at IU. He warned against politicians co-opting the Tea Party movement.After the speeches, the protestors marched to the Monroe County Courthouse led by a man carrying giant yellow flag depicting a snake and bearing the slogan, “Don’t tread on me.” A younger girl had a sign that read “Foolish spending is ruining my future,” and one sign had pictures of a donkey and an elephant, both crossed out. “America, America” was playing from the speakers of a parked motorcycle.Most of the protesters were friendly and affable.Shelby Sego lives in Bloomington and goes to Ivy Tech.“I just wanted to express that we need lower taxes,” Sego said.She talked about health care and how she doubts many people will get the benefits they are promised. She said she identifies as conservative but can see the need for programs like Medicare if they are cleaned up.Republicans haven’t shown much of a willingness to tackle entitlement programs with looming fiscal problems, like Social Security, from which many of the older protestors are collecting benefits. But the GOP will probably benefit from the movement.The rally was across the street from the office of Rep. Baron Hill, a Democrat who represents Bloomington and much of southern Indiana. One sign read “He was called a blue dog but now he is (U.S. Speaker of the House) Nancy Pelosi’s lap dog” and had a picture of Hill’s head on a poodle.Another sign simply had the word “Vote” with “2010” written around it.E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu
(04/14/10 12:18am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>No one is really happy with the state of finance.Liberals who were optimistic that the economic crisis would move the country in a more progressive direction, and Tea Party activists who fear the state is going too far, both seem to agree that bailing out America’s biggest financial institutions was a mistake.The left hated the bailouts because they thought it let rich bankers get off easily while the American people suffered.The right saw it as a reward for failure that will encourage firms to make the same mistakes again.Everyone in between hates the bailouts, too.In truth, injecting key financial firms with government cash was necessary and was rightfully supported by former Republican President George W. Bush and current Democratic President Barack Obama.But it is true that the current bailouts create incentives for big banks to fail again and that it is unfair for such large institutions to receive such generous support from taxpayers without giving anything in return.Numerous huge financial firms cannot all be allowed to fail at once, so in order to avoid a repeat of the “too big to fail” mess, we need updated financial rules.After a huge (and improbable) health care victory, this should be Obama’s focus.Deregulation gets a lot of blame for the current financial crisis.Some aspects of this trend — like bringing down the wall between commercial and investment banks during the years of President Bill Clinton — might have made the crisis worse.But blame for this recession lies with a lot of institutions that weren’t banks and whose behavior wasn’t really regulated at all.Simply bringing back the old rules won’t stop another crisis like this one.There are similar myths in conservative circles.Some argue that this crisis was primarily caused by bad regulation — namely the Community Reinvestment Act — which encouraged banks to make loans to those who could not afford them.Two government-sponsored entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, bought a lot of these bad loans, but so did private financial firms.Financial reform legislation has made it through the House of Representatives and the Senate Banking Committee. In both cases, the bills got no Republican votes.Conservative objections mostly relate to a proposed new consumer protection agency — a new organization that would have the authority to write and enforce rules protecting consumers from bank practices deemed abusive.Whatever happens to that controversial organization, it is important that Congress pass financial reform that regulates all financial organizations and puts in place stricter requirements on how much reserves they need to maintain.Fortunately, the Senate version of the bill would do just that. It would set up a special group of regulators that would ensure any important financial company is regulated by the Federal Reserve and would set up a process for liquidating troubled firms.Creating tougher reserve requirements is especially important because regulation tends to be lax in boom times.We need some tough new rules that can be followed consistently. E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu
(03/30/10 10:51pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A few months ago, the IU College Democrats held a meeting the day after then-State Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., defeated Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election for U.S. Senate.They discussed with disappointment the election of a senator who took away the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority. At the IU College Republicans’ callout meeting, Brown was taken as a sign that another Republican revolution was on the horizon and that Democratic plans for health care reform were on their last leg.The mood at the College Republicans meeting the Monday after the House of Representatives sent the Senate version of the health care bill to President Obama’s desk was comparable to the frustration and disillusionment liberals often felt when George W. Bush was in the White House.There was a sense that history was going rapidly off-course and that someone needed to do something about it.But history marches on. Republicans might run against this reform, but even if they sweep the 2010 midterm elections, it’s unlikely the new health care legislation will ever see a blanket repeal.Obama has signed a bill that will redefine health care in America. It does a reasonably good job of expanding access to insurance, achieving something close to universal coverage, but the bill does a poor job of controlling costs. The real legacy of health care reform will be decided by how future politicians deal with that deficiency.The move to universal coverage comes with significant costs. Billions will be spent on subsidies and an expansion of Medicaid. Those subsides also create a powerful disincentive among the poorest to increase their incomes.But with the price comes an assurance of minimum standards of care for everyone, and most other developed countries, some more successfully than others, have shown that a trade-off between higher taxes and more equality in health care can be quite reasonable.Conservatives often make their arguments against expanding coverage by exaggerating the costs of doing so, but if expanding coverage is going to be a goal, then we have to pay for it.Nevertheless, we could be getting a better deal if health care reform had lived up to its potential to control costs. Some Democrats balk at the claim that this bill doesn’t go far enough. The bill includes an excise tax on more expensive health care plans that will help reduce overconsumption and there is the promise of future Medicare cuts.The plan also includes an independent payment-advisory board on Medicare spending. Given the size of Medicare, any successful efforts to make Medicare spending more efficient would likely spread across the insurance industry.These are good first steps, but they are not enough. The excise tax and Medicare cuts are unpopular promises that might be constantly deferred into the future — in part because Republicans seem even less likely than Democrats to take the right stand on them.The payment-advisory board faces limits on the recommendations it can make, and it will ultimately fall to Congress to follow up on them.This legislation seems to wrap up action on the health care for the time being, but the issue will be back again soon. E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu
(03/09/10 11:45pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Texas Gov. Rick Perry won re-election in 2006 with just 39 percent of the vote in a four-way field but defeated Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, handily in the Republican gubernatorial primary last week.Hutchison is a fairly popular senator, but Perry based his strategy on courting the kind of conservative anger that has been behind the tea party movement. His anti-Washington rhetoric saw its peak when Perry made an erroneous statement about secession.The forces within the Republican Party who are upset with Washington and skeptical of GOP moderates are probably happy about the primary results. But they also have cause for anger.Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., whose recent election stalled Democratic attempts at health-care reform, joined a handful of other Republicans in supporting a recent Democratic jobs bill.Many conservatives were furious. Brown’s Facebook group was trashed.“Hey Judas, how many pieces of gold did you receive?” one angry commenter said.Even Brown’s daughter’s Facebook got trashed. This isn’t the last time conservatives will be disappointed by a candidate they help elect. Elections in 2010 will see the rise of plenty of ideological tea partiers, but it will also bring plenty of new moderate Republicans to Washington. Republicans have done a fairly decent job of voting in lock-step against much of President Barack Obama’s agenda.Pressure from the GOP’s conservative base has played a big role, and it has made many moderate Republicans move to the right. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., supported a cap-and-trade plan to fight global warming when he was running for president but has now thrown out all sorts of unconvincing excuses to not support the current Democratic version.But in cases in which moderate Republicans didn’t change, they lost their seats.Other Republicans who joined Brown to support the jobs bill were George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine. These Republicans have long had a reputation as swing voters, but they lost key allies in 2008. Former Republican Sens. Gordon Smith of Oregon and Norm Coleman of Minnesota lost reelection bids. Coleman’s loss gave Democrats their 60th seat.Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., has a good chance of winning a senate seat in Obama’s home state. He won his primary fight with plenty of opposition from conservatives.Rep. Michael N. Castle has a good chance of taking a Delaware senate seat and joining Brown as one of the few Republicans from the northeast. Castle has already proved to be one of the most liberal Republicans in the House of Representatives.Florida Gov. Charlie Crist might lose a Republican primary to compete for that state’s Senate seat — Crist supported Obama’s stimulus plan — but his more conservative challenger probably wouldn’t do as well in the general election.But 2010 will probably see the rise of a new bloc of Republican swing votes and serve as a reminder that Republicans have been so radical because they have so few seats.E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu
(03/03/10 1:36am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Claims that the Republican Party and conservatism were dead look lousy in hindsight.After President Barack Obama was elected and Democrats increased their congressional majorities, pundits were tripping over themselves to write the GOP’s obituary.At a time when Obama had won all the key states and brought plenty of new ones like Indiana into play, these pundits sounded convincing.They made some good arguments — especially related to demographics. Democrats had a large advantage among young voters and Hispanics, and the country seemed to be moving to the left on social issues.A Republican recovery seemed impossible in the near future.But a Republican resurgence seems underway. The GOP can mostly thank older voters. Conservative activists might find themselves less grateful.Even as groups like the Tea Party movement battle to purify the GOP into an ideological rigid party of small government, the key role older voters are playing in Republican fortunes means the party will probably stand for small government only in superficial ways.Democrats don’t do as well with most demographics compared to last year.The young still favor Democrats but by significantly less. During the 2008 election young voters favored Democrats 62 percent to 30 percent. The gap has shrunk with 54 percent affiliated with Democrats and 40 percent going for Republicans.The shift among older voters has been more dramatic. The 2006 midterm elections marked the beginning of a string of Democratic victories. Voters older than 65 went for Democrats in that election 49 percent to 41 percent.A recent Pew survey predicted they would swing for Republicans 48 percent to 39 percent in this year’s elections. This will have a huge effect on GOP policy. It already has.Some Republican lawmakers, like Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., have tried to chart a course toward fiscal sustainability that acknowledges cuts Medicare will have to have. But keeping Medicare benefits high has been a rallying cry for Republicans against the Democratic health care bill.Medicare and Social Security are two of the biggest chunks of the federal budget, and both are going to grow much faster than the revenue coming in to support them.But how likely are Republicans to advocate raising the retirement age when it would harm their key constituency?Republicans can oppose all the earmarks they want — it would be a welcome change from the last time they controlled Congress — but that won’t be enough to lower the increasing costs of entitlements.Moves like those of Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., who delayed a bill to extend unemployment benefits and funding of transportation projects because of concern about the deficit, smack of politics.Events, like the Conservative Political Action Conference, which are supposed to be gatherings of more principled conservatives, seem even more political.For all the back patting at these, no one really talked about solutions that would cause anyone, least of all seniors, real pain.If conservatives are serious about shrinking government, they should keep a better eye on who the Republican party is becoming beholden to. E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu
(02/24/10 1:20am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Nobody likes Sen. Evan Bayh.Sure, he has had millions of votes from Hoosiers to serve as their governor and senator, both for two terms.But none of the partisans like him.Republicans hate him because he took a seat that, in a red state like Indiana, they think was rightfully theirs. He would tell Hoosiers he was a fiscal conservative and then, they say, he would vote in Washington as a lock-step Democrat.Bayh was the most successful Indiana Democrat in decades. But liberals, especially lately, have had nothing but bad things to say about him.For many of the liberal students on this campus, Bayh is the Democrat who betrayed his party on tough issues such as cap-and-trade and health care reform.The criticism coming at Bayh from the right and the left could suggest he was actually a great senator, ignoring the special interests on both sides of the political spectrum to be a genuine moderate most voters supported. That is how he has portrayed himself, by claiming partisan gridlock sparked his retirement and proposing reforms to how the Senate operates. The truth is, Bayh was the worst kind of moderate.Rather than thinking about issues in a truly independent way, he seemed to simply stake positions right between the two parties, adjusting in sync with public opinion.In his nearly 12 years in the Senate, he never led on a single major issue.Congress needs moderates, but principled ones. Sen. John McCain is a good example. He doesn’t just adopt muddled positions in the middle. He took the lead on issues like immigration reform and torture when he disagreed with his party.Bayh was uncomfortable with his party on the deficit and health care reform but was never eager to get pinned down with his own ideas. On health care Bayh was a hold-out, but he said little about controversial issues like the public option as the bill was being negotiated. On the deficit, Bayh mostly just complained about spending. He voted against an omnibus spending bill, which was mostly symbolic, and supported a bipartisan committee to recommend deficit cutting policies.But why couldn’t he propose some policies himself?Probably because he knows getting serious about the deficit will inevitably involve a combination of raising taxes and cutting Social Security and Medicaid benefits, both deeply unpopular policies. His proposal to reform the Senate by lowering the amount of votes necessary to overcome a filibuster from 55 to 60 isn’t a bad idea, and he will deserve credit if he really spends his last few months in the Senate fighting for it.But Bayh has been in the Senate for 11 years. Why did he wait until now to finally start dealing with the filibuster? He has also said members of Congress of different parties should have lunch together and interact more socially, which probably won’t accomplish anything.Bayh is right about Congress being to too partisan. But the real solution is for senators and representatives to stake out more bold positions, instead of hedging on every issue.E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu
(02/17/10 2:26am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“We cannot trade irresponsible Democrat leaders for Republican leaders we don’t have complete confidence in,” said Todd Young, a Bloomington attorney running for Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, at the IU College Republicans callout meeting.It was a jab at former Rep. Mike Sodrel who is running against Young in the Republican primary. This is Sodrel’s fifth chance to challenge Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., for the seat whose district covers Bloomington and much of southern Indiana. Young called the Republican-controlled Congress in which Sodrel served the most fiscally irresponsible, second only to the current one. But Young didn’t offer specifics about how he would have done better, just the usual talk about outrageous earmarks and bloated budgets.That is probably because spending growth was driven by popular initiatives including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the expansion of prescription drug benefits for seniors, and the waging of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans were happy to get a tax cut even while they accepted these expansions of the state. It is easy to pick on political leaders for our long-term fiscal problems, but the American people are hardly innocent. They have consistently elected politicians who promise low taxes and plenty of benefits.Most Republicans hoping for a win in 2010 seem happy to play along yet again. Americans certainly do care about the deficit, but they also seem to think most of what the government spends is wasted.In fact, most money is spent on tangible benefits for people who will fight to keep the money flowing. The two programs that dominate the federal budget, Social Security and Medicare, end up redistributing large amounts of wealth to the middle class.Both programs face serious problems. Demographic shifts and increases in life expectancy mean Social Security will have fewer workers paying to support more seniors enjoying decade-long retirements. Medicare faces the same demographic pressures on top of rising health care costs.Neither party has done much to solve these problems. President Barack Obama is dodging fiscal issues with a spending freeze exempting most of the budget. Democratic health care bills would do little to control costs.Republicans, who are hoping to win on the issue of fiscal responsibility, haven’t offered much better.They took a stand against the stimulus but proposed their own version loaded with tax cuts priced at hundreds of billions of dollars.Besides, the current deficit is the wrong focus. Much of it results from declining revenues. Few economists, whether they think spending or tax cuts will better spur recovery, argue against running deficits in a recession. Some Republicans have tried to tackle the sustainability of current programs. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has proposed replacing Medicare with vouchers for private insurance.Indexed to inflation, these vouchers would grow more slowly than health care costs and would incentivize seniors to be more conscious of their health care spending.This might not be the best solution, but it does acknowledge the tough choices ahead. Voters will need to acknowledge those choices too.E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu
(02/10/10 12:01am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The IU Central Heating Plant is an imposingly large, smoke-belching eyesore dominating the view between the Kelley School of Business and the northwest residence halls. But it does its job cheaply. The plant is an obvious target of Coal Free IU, a student group founded last semester as part of a national campaign by the environmental group Sierra Club.The students from Coal Free IU scouring the campus for signatures are reminiscent of the students who fought for the IU Task Force on Campus Sustainability which eventually led to the IU Office of Sustainability.In Bloomington, these signs make it seem like we are closer to finding a way of balancing the risks of global warming with the costs of action or convincing people that the risks are real.However, if you look to Washington, you will see our leaders are failing at both. The carbon cap-and-trade bill that made it through the House of Representatives was loaded with bribes for special interests, and the number of Americans who believe global warming is a serious threat is declining.For now, President Barack Obama is trying to salvage health-care reform and focus (in a move more about politics than policy) on job creation.He needs to get to global warming eventually. When he does, he must play an active role championing a bill that taxes carbon (directly or implicitly) and redistributes revenue to the American people. This is an alternative to filling a bad bill with pork while relying on bogus arguments about jobs and national security.Getting a good climate change bill through Congress will not be easy.E-mails showing unacceptable behavior by leading climate scientists and a mistake by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the decline of Himalayan glaciers have not helped at a time when, last year, Gallup showed a record-high 41 percent of Americans think evidence for global warming is exaggerated.Add to people’s skepticism the claim by many congressional Republicans that the mechanism for lowering emissions – in current climate change bills, capping carbon emissions and giving out permits – is an energy tax in disguise.In reality, this is how the policy is supposed to work. By issuing emission permits and allowing companies to trade them, the government would be putting a price on carbon and, if it auctions the permits, would be collecting revenue from our emission of greenhouse gases.Revenue from permits could be redistributed to the American people to soften the blow of the carbon price. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is pushing a version of cap and trade that would do just. She calls it “cap and dividend.”Depending on how revenue is distributed, most Americans could end up better off. Unfortunately, the House bill gives out most of the permits free to favored industries.Obama needs to get more involved and tell Congress it has to do better.E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu
(02/02/10 11:46pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Last spring, during a debate between his organization and the IU College Democrats, current IU College Republicans chairman Justin Kingsolver said increasing federal debt was “not just irresponsible” but also “immoral.Since then, the debate over health care reform and expansion of the Tea Party protests into a broader movement have led to more claims of moral certainty on economic issues from conservatives.Republican prospects are looking good for the 2010 midterm elections, but the party’s conservative base acts like the only trade-off Americans face is one between freedom and tyranny when it comes to the size of government. This perspective offers few solutions to any real problems.This is not to say that fears of big government aroused by the recession are completely illegitimate. Government debt is blowing up right before entitlement programs are set to gobble up more and more of the budget. That same debt can worry markets and make credit tighter for everyone at a time when employment is hovering around 10 percent.Bailouts to save the auto and financial industry and a large stimulus bill might leave the government with a much bigger footprint even after the crisis is over.But most of the conservative gripes over the deficit and the Democratic health care proposals misrepresent the real trade-off Americans face when it comes to government intervention in the economy.Tightening the government’s belt during a recession involves raising taxes or cutting spending, which makes the economy weaker, which undercuts tax revenue and leads to the need for the tigntening of even more belts.Indeed, Republicans proposed their own stimulus bill focused on tax cuts that would have added hundreds of billions to the same deficit they are complaining about.Subsidizing the health insurance of the poor and regulating insurance companies to make health care more accessible can make the economy less efficient, but it would also make it much more equitable.Reforming how Medicare pays out benefits could help control the health care costs that will cause problems with entitlements, but conservatives freaked when such proposals were discussed.The Tea Party movement, however real its proponents’ concerns might be, has played a big role in distorting the debate about government.Richard Behney, a plumber from Fishers, Ind., who is running in the Republican primary in hopes of unseating Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and who helped organize the Tea Party movement in Indiana, did little more than spout nonsensical platitudes about choosing between freedom and slavery when he spoke at the IU College Republicans call-out meeting last week. Fortunately, many young conservatives seemed dissatisfied with Behney and thought the other candidates who spoke were much better.There are plenty of people in the Republican Party who understand the real challenge is making government spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare sustainable and that solving problems like climate change and health care could require more action by the state.There just isn’t any guarantee that Republicans will govern like that if they win in 2010.E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu
(01/27/10 12:37am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There is a big risk that Democrats will write off last week’s special election in Massachusetts without allowing it to challenge any of their beliefs about what Americans want or what President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders should do.At a meeting of the IU College Democrats last Wednesday the consensus was that Republicans took the seat once held by Sen. Ted Kennedy because the Democratic candidate, Martha Coakley, blew it.“It was a vote between a guy who did porn and a lady who couldn’t spell Massachusetts correctly on her ads,” one member said during a discussion about the election. Other excuses tossed around on the left are that a tough job market made it impossible for Democrats or that the party wasn’t populist enough in its attacks on Wall Street.The evidence tells a different story.Obama’s support among independents is falling, and more voters are calling themselves conservative. A majority of Americans disapprove of the Democrats’ health care proposals, while a poll shows more Americans are agreeing that “government is doing too many things better left to business and individuals.” Not all of this backlash against Democrats is fair, but it can’t be ignored. Democrats need to move aggressively to the center and make whatever concessions necessary to get enough Republicans on board.Many liberals feel they have already made plenty of compromises, like cutting a government-run health insurance option out of the Senate health care bill, only to get nothing in return.It is true that, with 59 senators and a sizable majority in the House of Representatives, Democrats still have some ways to get what they want regardless of public opinion and without partisan support. It is also true that politicians are sometimes showing leadership, not arrogance, when they support unpopular policies.That was the case when President George W. Bush and congressional Republicans and Democrats agreed to bail out key players in the financial industry, and it was true when Obama, despite mounting fatigue with the war and opposition within his own party, agreed to send more troops to Afghanistan.But those examples deal with emergency responses at critical moments. Fighting climate change, changing the perverse incentives that plague American health care and updating financial regulations require reforms that will last more than a few election cycles.There is precedent for getting moderate reforms through a partisan Congress. President Bill Clinton passed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and other smaller health care changes after his more ambitious reform package failed and Republicans retook Congress.Republicans might end up balking at any new compromises. Too many in the GOP are content to pretend there is a no-cost way to give everyone health insurance or a painless way to fight climate change.But Obama and Democrats need to do their best to reach out with much more effort this time.Hopefully there will be some conservatives willing to accept their offer.
(01/20/10 4:30am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>If you take the messages in “Avatar,” James Cameron’s latest big-budget sci-fi epic, seriously, it is easy to be critical of the film from many ideological directions.Ross Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times, complained about the movie’s message of pantheism and the tendency of Hollywood to equate God with nature.David Brooks, another columnist from the same paper, gave a more liberal critique of the film. He called the film a rehash of the “white messiah fable” in which young white adventurers end up leading noble savages against the corruption of modern civilization.The main protagonist in “Avatar,” a crippled marine named Jake Sully, controls an alien body to get information on the indigenous people holding up a human mining operation. Once the aliens – tall blue humanoids known as the Na’vi – let Sully into their group, he becomes the most powerful Na’vi warrior in generations. This happens faster than Tom Cruise becomes the Last Samurai.I don’t know how many people going to see “Avatar” really care about Cameron’s message. The hundreds of millions the film has already made at the box office probably have more to do with the movie’s special effects, which really are impressive.But the fact that people are flocking to see the movie in droves, that “Avatar” picked up the best drama award at the Golden Globes (along with a directing nod for Cameron), and that sequels are in the works, suggests that people weren’t put off by the message.That’s too bad.It means we will get more derivative, and thus boring, movies.But it also suggests that some people buy into the shallow pessimism about human nature that the movie is really selling.The world of “Avatar” presents its audiences with a classic false choice. You can choose the technology and excessive overconsumption of modern society and get a human race forced to strip mine on an alien moon to save Earth. Or, you can abandon technology and seek some sort of communion with nature like the Na’vi.Humans have never lived in such extremes.Indigenous people haven’t lived the lives of the romantic caricatures seen on film. They have hardly been humble environmental stewards and have readily embraced innovations and technologies from the outside when it suited them.And why shouldn’t technology and modern society be embraced? Both have helped people live longer and given us more choices about how we live our lives.Modern society is much more sustainable than pessimists might have you think. Population growth seems to be leveling off and rich populations seem to place plenty of value in their environments – reforestation is the norm in the United States.That doesn’t mean we don’t face real environmental problems like global warming, but history suggests we have the resources, namely human ingenuity, to avoid cataclysm while keeping our rising standards of living.But “Avatar” is stuck idealizing a past that never existed instead of trying to deal with real problems in modern society.E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu
(12/09/09 1:32am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Asked about memorable moments from the last election, Kaitlin Addison, co-coordinator of IU Students for President Obama, shared two stories.When she was canvassing lower income housing in Bloomington, an older woman taking care of a crying baby answered the door of a small home and asked Addison to step inside. Addison said the house was littered with trash bags, and the older woman was living with her daughter and her daughter’s children. The family claimed to be “huge Republicans.”After what she said felt like a 45-minute discussion, the family told Addison they were turning for now-President Barack Obama.“I know a lot of people who have stories like that, but that was my awesome moment,” Addison said.Later in the campaign, even when canvassers were pretty confident they knew which houses leaned Democrat, she tried a house that clearly had people in it. Addison said she could see the people in the house and hear them talking, but no one came to the door.Then the garage door of the house opened up just enough to unleash a giant dog on Addison and the other volunteer she was with.That election ended with Obama becoming the first Democrat to win Indiana in four decades with the highest percentage of the popular vote since President George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988.But now, Democrats have recently lost gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, and Obama’s approval rating has slipped. Student volunteers looking to canvass in support of Obama on issues like health care reform might be more likely to get the dog than a fulfilling conversation.After a string of electoral victories, student Democrats face a lot of challenges, from attracting supporters to keeping Democrats in office honest. It is a lot easier to elect a president than to support one.The pendulum always swings backAt the beginning of the fall 2007 semester, Rep. Baron Hill, D-9th District, which includes Bloomington, spoke at the call-out meeting for the IU College Democrats. This was right after the 2006 midterm elections that had given Democrats a majority in both chambers of Congress and Hill his own seat in the House of Representatives back.Soon after, a heated presidential primary helped liberal activists build up their organization. Candidates Obama and Hillary Clinton both made trips to campus along with other major political figures such as former President Bill Clinton. Obama even stopped by the Women’s Little 500 race.The festive atmosphere continued during the 2008 elections. Obama’s campaign headquarters constantly bustled. Student volunteers tabled everywhere to boost turnout and get students registered to vote. Addison even joked about the energy Obama voters showed on campus when talking about community service projects IU Students for Barack Obama recently put on.“We are not always just really pushy political junkies,” Addison said.Election Day saw turnout among IU voters up 287 percent from 2004, and when the results came in students yelled wildly down Kirkwood Avenue.Obama’s actual Presidency has been less dramatic, and student enthusiasm has predictably suffered.Addison and Laura Carlson, the other co-coordinator for IU Students for Barack Obama, talked about how they wanted their group to have a policy side and a service side. The policy side looks like the students at the Indiana Memorial Union Commons Literature Desk trying to get students to support Obama’s health care reform proposals.The service side was supposed to be for people who supported Obama more broadly and wanted to take the energy from the campaign and give to the community by volunteering with organizations such as Hoosier Hills Food Bank.But Addison admits most of the members of IU Students for Barack Obama this semester are through-and-through liberals, and the meeting last Wednesday, admittedly at a busy time of the semester, didn’t attract many members.She isn’t exactly sure what happened to the sort of students who might have voted for Obama while also voting for Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels in the last election.Some probably don’t show up because it’s not an election year. Others who projected their own expectations into some of Obama’s more vague campaign promises are probably disillusioned.Many no doubt found they had real policy differences with the President.Next semester, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Hill will both start gearing up their re-election campaigns.To do well again in 2010, Democrats need those voters who don’t always vote straight ticket.Big tent challengesThe IU College Democrats meet in the Maple Room of the IMU every Wednesday.AnnElyse Gibbons, an IU senior who initially came to Bloomington to be on the rowing team but got hooked on politics after an internship with Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan, just finished a semester as the group’s president.She said the group tries to foster and encourage debate by providing feedback about student opinion to politicians like Bayh. Gibbons said the group’s relationship with Hill is especially close and candid.Keeping the group open to different ideas is important but difficult as Obama makes decisions that could annoy both the middle and his base. Balancing openness to different ideas with support for good policy is even harder.How successful anyone finds the group depends on his or her political views. The IU College Democrats will inevitably lean left.At one meeting the group talked about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy that prevents openly gay men and women from serving in the military.The arguments for excluding the openly gay didn’t deserve to be taken very seriously, and the discussion often turned sarcastic. One member pointed out that if “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is justified on the basis that gay people in the military would be sexually distracting, then lesbians should be allowed to serve openly with straight men.Expanding gay rights is an issue on which Obama needs to put more pressure, and young people are in a strong position to apply it.On health care, however, young liberals should acknowledge that the President largely failed to live up to his promise of a bipartisan approach. It was disappointing to see such enthusiastic support for the public option from the group at a health care debate between the IU College Republicans and Democrats.The plan to have the federal government sell its own insurance plans would do little to lower costs compared to other competition enhancing policies. Its inclusion in reform bills drives Republicans and some Democrats mad for little reason.It was also disappointing to see Jim Lowe, a senior field representative with the AFL-CIO, come to a meeting to argue that reform must not tax benefits and should make employers more responsible for their employees’ health care coverage. Both are lousy ideas that are more about the special interest of unions than improving health care.Fortunately, Scott Williamson, the administrative vice president of the IU College Democrats, defended during the debate a tax on more expensive insurance plans as a way to cut costs. Global warming is another serious problem on which students generally support action. But young liberals should be more worried about bribes for farmers and energy companies being stuffed into cap-and-trade legislation than sustainability at IU.Trust in hard times“It’s a weird feeling,” Gibbons said when asked about Obama’s failure to act on some issues important to her. “I trust this man’s judgment ... I finally trust our President.”Her sentiment was echoed at the IU Students for Barack Obama meeting.Many young liberals are disappointed Obama hasn’t done more for gay rights or his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. But most seem to trust that he is doing the best he can.Voters are less trusting and tend to show a lot of skepticism toward incumbents during rough times. When Hill gave a town hall meeting at Bloomington High School North, he encountered a lot of discontent from the right even in this liberal college town.Student volunteers played a big role in electing Obama, the better candidate, and Obama has in turn helped improve the economy by supporting a needed stimulus and continuing to shore up battered banks.If liberal students want to make the rest of his presidency as successful, they will have to campaign for Obama without being able to blame Republicans for the country’s problems. They will also have to put more pressure on the President for whom they have worked hard.Even then, there are few guarantees. The road to economic recovery is long.If unemployment stays high, there might be little liberal students can do to temper voter anger in 2010 and 2012.
(12/03/09 2:48am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There are many reasons we should keep fighting in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama tried to make that case in his West Point address Tuesday, but I am not sure if he succeeded. He unveiled that he was deploying 30,000 more troops: the right choice. But he packaged that escalation with a withdrawal timeline, making his commitment less clear.Many critics of a surge see the war as an inconvenience. Besides being inconsistent with the softer foreign policy many liberals hoped for from Obama, many on the left fear a greater military commitment will suck away the Democrat’s energy to act on domestic issues. The naysayers are disappointingly eager to make excuses for a quick withdrawal; they are greatly mistaken. Afghanistan is a difficult mess, but not an unsolvable one. Refocusing America and NATO’s efforts with more troops and a better strategy can give this war a better ending and make the world a much safer and freer place, especially for the people of Afghanistan.The case for sticking with Afghanistan is complex but clear. The country could be used as a base for future terrorism. Al-Qaeda no longer has as much of a presence in the country, but that could change quickly when western troops leave. And even if it is unlikely that another attack like 9/11 will be planned in Afghanistan, the withdrawal of western forces before the country is secure will make it easier for extremists to attack neighboring countries like Pakistan. The threat regional conflicts pose to global security are harder to quantify to voters than attacks like the ones in New York, but they are just as real.Finally, leaving Afghanistan in good condition is integral to the fate of the Afghan people. The gains in security and human rights from when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan are small, but significant. Too many critics urge a quick withdrawal without really confronting the terrible amounts of human suffering in Afghanistan that is likely to result. America cannot remake every problematic country, but we are already in Afghanistan and have on opportunity to make many lives better before we leave.Most of the arguments against the troop surge Obama is moving forward with rely on the assumption that we can do little to really change the political fabric of Afghanistan (or any other country) and that even the best intentions will eventually backfire. Some of this stems from the unfortunate tendency of many to try and relive the Vietnam anti-war movement. But much criticism is grounded in the reality that the people of Afghanistan need to do more to change their own country.The current constitution is barely working. The country needs more competent bureaucrats and less corruption.But no reforms will have a chance without the troops needed for security. Finishing the fight in Afghanistan will be hard, but President Obama (at least until we see how serious he is about his timeline) is willing to accept the need for action.He needs more Americans to do the same.
(11/19/09 2:37am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I have known Justin P. Hill, the former chairman of the IU College Republicans, since I was a freshman. He is a self-identified conservative. As he has moved from being a columnist at this newspaper to being chairman of IU Students for John McCain and eventually to the top of the student wing of the GOP on this campus, I have never heard anyone accuse him of not living up to that claim. When the IU College Republicans held their elections for new officers last Monday, Hill told members that he left with a lot of memories and praised the group for being “unabashedly conservative.” He did more than urge them to stay that way.“I challenge this group to the goal of making Indiana University a premier institution for political development and engagement of conservative Republican citizens,” he said. Ever since Republicans were trounced in 2008 there has been talk of a crisis in the conservative movement. Many liberals and moderates dream that unelectable Republicans will be forced to re-align their views. They point to events like the recent election to represent New York’s 23rd Congressional District, where an awkward confrontation between a third party conservative and the moderate Republican nominee led to a Democratic victory in what should be a safe Republican seat, as evidence for their claims.In the short-run, this is looking like a fantasy. With a lousy economy Republicans don’t need to confront their base to start winning elections. There are few signs at IU or on the national stage that Republicans will be seriously revaluating their policy positions. Here in Bloomington, the IU College Republicans have screened a film downplaying, the evidence for global warming and during a health care debate between them and the IU College Democrats one member repeated the baseless claim that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy wouldn’t have been able to get the health care he needed under the Democrats reform plan.Yet, even as most Republican legislators treated debates over health care and global warming as opportunities to sink President Barack Obama, the party won two gubernatorial elections by focusing on jobs. Some IU College Republican members are more moderate on social issues.Chelsea Kane, former chairwoman of the IU College Republicans, said she thought gay couples should have completely equal rights when it comes to their relationships and that she doesn’t care what their unions are called. But if the Republican Party has big changes ahead of it (and demographic pressures still suggest it does), I don’t see any sign of those changes here.Justin Kingsolver, the new chairman of the IU College Republicans, and the other new officers, have a lot of freedom in determining the organization’s future. I would love to see the group be more critical of ideas tossed around in the conservative movement. But, without real incentives to change, the Republican Party seems content not to.
(11/11/09 4:03am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The first question Rep. Baron Hill, D-9th District, received at his Bloomington town hall meeting last September came from a man who claimed America was a country where parents have to recycle bottles to pay for their children’s health care.He said he wanted to know if a health care reform bill would bring medical costs down.Hill, who had just voted to pass a reform bill out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, touted his commitment to curbing costs and told the story of a jewelry store owner in Salem, Ind., who feared he would have to drop his family’s health care coverage if costs kept rising. But he didn’t really answer the question.“What’s in the bill is complicated, so I don’t want to go into all the details,” Hill said.The debate on health care has been dominated by partisan prejudices and paranoia, but Democrats have tried to side step this discontent in a lousy way – by passing a health care bill quickly with too little concern for particulars.This meant a health care bill was never going to be perfect. But in the area of cost control, the bill Hill helped vote out of the House of Representatives late last Saturday doesn’t even approach being adequate.Health care reform should have two main goals: expanding coverage and keeping costs down. These two goals are interconnected for obvious reasons. Lowering the cost of health care increases access on its own while making it cheaper for the government to subsidize those who still can’t afford coverage.In terms of expanding coverage, the House bill does a decent job. It would extend coverage to nearly all Americans by mandating the purchase of insurance, forcing insurance providers to compete in a health insurance exchange where they will have to cover preexisting conditions, expanding Medicaid and offering subsidies for poorer Americans.This is expensive, but coupled with meaningful cost controls it would be worth the price.Liberals often claim a public government insurance option, like the one included in the House bill, will lower costs. But this misconstrues the battle as a public vs. private debate. The government already pays for about half of Americans’ health care through programs like Medicare and Medicaid.Costs in this country have risen anyway because doctors are paid on a fee- for-service basis. This means they get paid to prescribe expensive treatments regardless of necessity.The lack of cost controls calls the financing of the House bill into question. Besides a tax increase on the rich, the bill relies on savings that will be disappointing.The Senate may yet steer health care reform in a better direction; the Senate Finance Committee passed a bill that included a tax on the most expensive, overly exorbitant insurance plans. But if it doesn’t, a hard choice will have to be made.Expanding health coverage is a noble goal, and it is possible that doing so now will force lawmakers to deal with costs in the future.But that is quite a gamble.
(11/10/09 4:05am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Before the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the $787 billion stimulus package) was passed, President Obama’s economics team issued a report on what it thought would happen to the economy with and without this stimulus. The recovery plan was supposed to lower the peak unemployment from about 9 to 8 percent. Unemployment just passed 10 percent.Even though the recession may be technically over – the government just reported the economy had grown for the first time in nearly a year – unemployment is high and is likely to remain high for a long time.This has produced pressure for a second stimulus. Given the political climate, Congress will probably do little more than extend unemployment benefits, increase social security payouts or provide more aid to states for Medicaid. The will to pass even small programs to aid recovery will probably wane more given time. This is because of doubts about the original stimulus. Some of these doubts are unfair. It is clear that the recovery plan did not bring unemployment down as much as the Obama administration claimed it would. But this appears to be because the administration was wrong about how deeply this recession would affect unemployment. The Republican alternatives in Congress, mostly just collections of tax cuts, would not have set unemployment on a drastically different course than it is on now. And those plans would have added less, but still a great deal, to the deficit than Obama’s plan.Fair or not, doubts about more stimulus packages are real, and if Obama wants to push another recovery measure past Republicans and moderate Democrats, he should propose a permanent reduction in the payroll tax. The idea comes from Greg Mankiw, a Harvard professor and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President George W. Bush. The payroll tax is what workers see deducted from every paycheck. The tax is highly regressive, falling hardest on low-income workers. It is essentially a tax on hiring and providing labor.While temporary tax cuts do little to increase consumer spending – people just save the temporary extra cash – a permanent payroll tax would probably lead to a real increase in employment.There are many ways revenue from the tax cut could eventually be recouped to avoid a long-term budget impact. Mankiw recommended raising the gasoline tax, which would in turn encourage people to use gas more efficiently. He called his plan the “create-jobs, save-the-environment, reduce-traffic-congestion, budget-neutral tax shift.”He proposed the plan when the original stimulus was being debated, but it could easily be used now. It is a shame such a good idea isn’t even being considered by lawmakers.
(11/04/09 3:55am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Sitting in on a few IU College Democrats meetings, I have seen plenty of reminders that, since President Obama was elected one year ago today, many things haven’t changed.Campus Democrats are preparing for a debate on health care against the IU College Republicans scheduled for Nov. 11 – months after Obama made his big summer push for reform.Two weeks ago, the group had a lengthy discussion about global warming.The group’s president, senior AnnElyse Gibbons, highlighted an old Paul Krugman column suggesting the conservative pushback against a cap-and-trade legislation was likely to be as fierce as the one against health care.That cap-and-trade legislation, which cleared the floor of the House of Representatives last June, still faces an uncertain future in the Senate.Obama made some big promises, and the man knew how to make a promise. If the students who packed into Assembly Hall two years ago to see Obama before the Indiana presidential primary were really as excited as they looked, I can only imagine how down some liberals are feeling now.Not to mention how conservatives, who have unfairly attacked Obama as a wide-eyed radical, feel about the man.Any sort of judgment about Obama’s presidency so far has to come with the understanding that the machinery of American government is cumbersome and slow. On the most important issue facing our country – stabilizing the economy – this president has done fairly well.The government just announced that our economy grew for the first time in nearly a year, evidence that this recession is probably over.Obama deserves plenty of credit for this turnaround. He stuck with the politically unpopular bank-bailouts started under his predecessor and he helped push through a stimulus about as fast as $787 billion has ever been spent.A recent tariff on Chinese tires was disappointing, but a quick trip across the border to assure Canadians about the North American Free Trade Agreement and pressure from Obama on Democrats to keep the crudest forms of protectionism out of the stimulus helped avoid a slump in world trade.There have been some mistakes.Obama should have put even more pressure on congressional Democrats to prevent the stimulus from turning into the grab bag for personal projects that much of the bill was. Trying to rescue GM and Chrysler has, predictably, led to a situation where political pressure is making it harder for both companies to restructure.Still, Obama has done more to help an economic turnaround than hurt it.Now he will have to take a tougher stand on the many issues he has put off.There was a lengthy discussion about “don’t ask, don’t tell” during the last IU College Democrats meeting. On a white board at the front of the room the numbers of those discharged simply for being openly gay were listed year by year. This continues to happen because of a policy most Americans, even self-identified conservatives, oppose.Obama is off to a good start, but he still has a lot of work to do.
(10/28/09 1:31am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A public option, a “pay or play” provision for employers and no taxes on health benefits.Those were the three keystones Jim Lowe, a senior field representative with the AFL-CIO, laid out for health care reform when he spoke at an IU College Democrats meeting last Wednesday.It was a pretty predictable prescription of policies. The public option – the plan to have the federal government offer health insurance – has become the focus of the health care debate for liberals and conservatives alike. The “pay or play” provision, a plan to make all employers provide health coverage for their workers or pay a fine, and the possibility of taxing certain health benefits are mentioned less often. But given Lowe’s affiliation with the AFL-CIO, it isn’t surprising he highlighted this provision that will likely benefit unions. Forcing employers to provide health insurance for their workers and making sure health benefits from employers remain untaxed preserves a system that has long benefited unions. Unfortunately, it is less clear that maintaining America’s unique practice of tying health insurance to employment helps anyone else. There are many reasons to think that moving people away from employer-provided insurance could help slow rising health care costs. A tax on more expensive health insurance plans introduced in the Senate, a so-called Cadillac tax, would at least make individuals more aware of how expensive their employer provided insurance really is.The decision of the AFL-CIO to oppose such a cost-saving measure, and the choice of many Democrats to go along with them, is a clear example of how America’s rare opportunity for health care reform is being wasted. The reason most Americans get their health coverage from employers has nothing to do with a preconceived policy. World War II wage controls forced many employers to offer fringe benefits like health insurance to compete for workers. Those benefits essentially took the place of wages, but the practice remained after the wage controls were lifted because the benefits were untaxed.Let’s be clear: Most economists agree that contributions employers make toward their workers’ health plans come in place of paid wages. Workers might get some benefit from this setup in that part of their wage is tax-free, but there is no free lunch here. Even union members with some of the most extensive health care plans don’t get as much from this system as they think.The Cadillac tax is actually targeted at insurance companies, but the costs will be passed to the employers providing the expensive plans and eventually to the employees.The tax won’t unravel the employer-based system of health care by any means. And while the tax would fall on the plates of plenty who aren’t rich, there is little evidence that these more expensive plans are providing any real health benefits.Most Democrats in the House of Representatives have come out against the tax anyway.I am still waiting to hear why we should kill another potential cost-saving policy, while passing health care legislation that supposedly pays for itself with such savings.
(10/21/09 2:28am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Not Evil, Just Wrong,” a new film arguing that evidence for man-made global warming is inconclusive and that efforts to curb carbon emissions will necessarily lead to economic catastrophe, premiered at IU last Sunday. The film was shown by the IU College Republicans in Woodburn Hall, and even though it didn’t attract a big crowd – the group’s weekly meetings do much better – the screening was significant. I thought it represented a missed opportunity. College Republicans are in a unique position on any campus. Republicans are having a hard time connecting with young and college-educated voters. Even though a lot of stu- dents on this campus voted for President Barack Obama, it’s doubtful they are all hardcore Democrats.But after the screening of a film that essentially denies that humans cause global warming, many of those students might not feel like they have a choice.The film jumps around, reminding audiences of the short-lived global cooling hysteria and of how efforts to fight the pesticide DDT have hurt the fight against malaria in less-developed countries.In both examples, the film plays loose with the details; but when the filmmakers interview arrogant environmental activists, the smugness and ignorance that those activists show is real. The views echoed by many green extremists in the film that the human population is too large or unsustainable are both silly and discredited.But saying some environmentalists are obnoxious doesn’t disprove the scientific consensus about global warming. Neither does attacking former Vice President Al Gore, an obsession of the film up to the very last frame.Science-wise, “Not Evil, Just Wrong” doesn’t offer much more than a retired Canadian businessman who questioned some of the methodology in reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.The film’s stance on climate change contrasts with the current Republican Party. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., ran for president with his own cap-and-trade program to lower carbon emissions. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he was to partner with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to find a compromise to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C., and Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., introduced legislation imposing a carbon tax.If both parties put climate change legislation on the table, we can better debate the most efficient way to curb our emissions. Inglis has introduced a reasonable alternative to the Democratic cap- and-trade bill but hasn’t gotten anywhere without support from his party.After the film, senior Justin Hill, chairman of the IU College Republicans, told me he didn’t believe humans caused global warming.Hill interned with Rep. Mike Pence, R-6th District, an outspoken opponent of any cap-and-trade legislation, in his congressional office in Washington. They represent one direction the Republican Party could take on this issue.That direction makes some people very excited, but it won’t make Monroe County red anytime soon.