Did good employees, really create a favorable impression of government? A response to Megan McArdle

Today the excellent columnist Megan McArdle blogged a theory about why Americans were more willing to trust government in the decades immediately following the New Deal, but became distrustful towards government afterwards. Her theory is that many high quality employees were pushed into government work by a comparative lack of good private sector jobs. When the economy improved, it was impractical for long-term government employees to quit, but, so the theory goes, their successors were less worthy.

This actually might explain why people were so much more willing to trust government in the 1950s and 1960s than they are now: that was the era when government really was staffed with the "best and the brightest" at senior levels. The subsequent brain drain into the private sector decreased the quality of services and planning, which in turn made people hostile to the idea of more services and planning.

I very much respect McArdle's analysis, but in this case, I think that Megan's theory may well be flawed in that it implies that the broadly favorable public impressions of government present immediately following the great depression, and the broadly unfavorable impressions of government from the 1960s onward are actually variations from the same norm of "America."

I would say that to the contrary, the impressions of the government in both cases are actually impressions based on the overall SIZE of the government and regulations in the life cycle of the population in each era. In effect these two divergent appraisals of government reflect "normal" attitudes, in two very different, but characteristic systems.

Before the New Deal, the US government was comparatively small, and the reduced size of government overall was actually characteristic of the English speaking nations as a whole. Even the British Empire in India or Sudan used a small number of governmental officials, and as such, had a small amount of bureaucracy in comparison to many governments in continental Europe, or their colonies.

When the government is small, it is fairly easy to see how it is serving a useful purpose.

By contrast, when the government is large, it is likely to be seen as much less as pure and true "public service".

Megan's theory would tend to suggest that if the government is only staffed with good enough people, the public will tend to have a good impression of it.

I would say that to the contrary, most of the reason that the government is disliked is not because anything about it is identifiably corrupt or incorrect, but is rather that the government is large, in people's way, and government officials are unfriendly compared to many of the people encountered in other professions, where the need to recruit new customers encourages a pleasant demeanor.

I would suggest that both the history of literature and economics backs up my theory.

Modern economics which tries to restrict the role of government absolutely as much as possible, is commonly called the "Austrian school." Many of its luminaries emigrated, or fled Austria to the United States with the rise of Hitler. In the United States, these theories did not immediately receive a friendly reception, but then, the US at the time was accustomed to a small government, while anyone who grew up and was educated in Austria was accustomed to a very large government indeed. "Classical" economics from a British standpoint never was as minimalistic about the theoretical role of government, but then there was historically, less government to react against.

The anti-government young adults that began to appear in the 1960's and 1970's were the first to have actually spent a lifetime under the "good government" of the New Deal, and the good government employees of Megan's example.

When we look at the history of literature, it is certainly true that books like the classic "Catch 22" began to appear in the 1960's, rather than in WW2, when the book was set, but this is not necessarily because nobody could have, or did write books of the sort before. Rather, it was in the 1960's when people had enough experience with the behaviors of bureaucracy that such a book began to seem broadly relevant to the public.

If we look elsewhere however, there are examples of books with a similar spirit appearing and being celebrated earlier. "The Good Soldier Svejk" by Jaroslav Hasek was published in 1923, and like the Austrian school of economics, The Good Soldier Svejk came out of the Austrian empire, post WW1. This book has had enormous cultural impact in the Czech world, and was recognized as being broadly culturally relevant. Not only did this book predate "Catch 22" but in fact, it inspired it. Thus in both economics and literature, we have American cultural developments reacting against government, being inspired by reactions to the Austro-Hungarian empire, which predated the US experience of expansive and meddlesome government.

I would expand on this theory to say that I suspect that the EXPECTATIONS around government did not just change in a way that affected the population, but the expectations that spring up around an expansive government very likely affected the expectations and behavior of government workers themselves.

To put it one way, it is more inspiring to be Batman, than to be the clerk that logs prisoner's possessions, or a parole officer. This example sounds exaggerated, but in fact, if you use another cultural example, the Andy Griffith Show, it is easier to see how government service now occupies a less clearly essential social role than in the past. Andy Griffith, the small town Sheriff in the show, might not have been Batman, but despite engaging in petty tasks like the clerk or parole officer, his role was more socially elevated, and more obviously essential.

We're not in Mayberry any more...

Having "good" employees certainly means having employees who are dutiful in minor or unpleasant tasks as well as inspiring ones, but inspiration still certainly matters, and many employees who are now considered to be "top notch" or who are intelligent, are not likely to be inspired by labor in the bowels of a modern government bureaucracy.

As a final point, but one which likely has great import for the future of bureaucratic government and capitalism alike, one of the factors which probably pushed motivated and intelligent people into the government back in the Great Depression, and likely will today in the "Great Recession" was the notion that capitalism had effectively failed. This notion, turns the self-evident evils of government bureaucracy, into "necessary evils", things that people do not like, but which they accept.

As indicated earlier, the annoyances and evils of big government were noticed in Austria and noticed by Czechs very early, but this did not mean that the bureaucracy was ever eliminated.

Libertarians can easily make a case for the benefits of the free market on average, but just as employees can turn down potentially increased benefits in the commercial labor market, for increased certainty in government employment, so the public can choose increased security in the size and scope of government. Unless the average person can believe that they can control their own personal economic risks adequately in the private sector, they will impose regulations and other aspects of the public sector on everyone else.

Why people should be ALLOWED to act like corporations, and why libertarians should not try to stop them.

Megan McArdle has returned to the subject of recourse, the ability to sue for debt after the security is returned, in mortgages.

"mortgages were issued under a tacit understanding that people do try very hard to pay their mortgages, even when it's hard.

And changing those mores would be expensive--not for banks, but for homeowners."

This portion of her article forms a question that should be possible to test economically, and if not, then it raises real questions about the viability and desirability of economically rationalized governmental policy.

Economists normally say that economic failures, as in the case of the Soviet Union, have a rational basis, more scientific in nature than a simple matter of misbehavior, or "sin". If social mores can truly overwhelm large economic incentives for decades at a time, then this throws a lot of economics, and the Western governmental policy built on economic ideas into question. If non-recourse mortgages are likely to actually produce notably worse mortgage terms, then there should be clear evidence of that between the US states which have recourse mortgages, and those which do not.

The history of the US would also seem to cast some doubt on the idea that social mores are so strong that they preclude sharp practice in contracts and deals. The "Yankee peddler" and horse trader were famed for their cunning back in the colonial period, just as the used car dealer is today, and it is not only professional sharp practice which has a long and well established history. The very earliest US government housing program, created with the Homestead Act saw ordinary Americans pushing the limits of legality not only to the limit, but often past it, with straw buyers and other dishonest tactics being commonly used to allow people to claim extra land.

So if economic incentives should produce differences in mortgage terms to the disadvantage of the inhabitants of non-recourse states, and if such differences are not in fact apparent, then why not? I think that several factors are likely to be decisive.

1.

As a practical matter, banks cannot generally go about making home mortgage loans where the loan is commonly for a sum notably larger than the value of the property. If the bank can't get most of their money back between previous payments and foreclosure, then this means either a catastrophic loss of value due to an overwhelming economic depression, or that the banks were inflating a real estate bubble, in contradiction of sensible business practice.

2.

Individual mortgage holders are not in fact likely to be able to benefit by allowing the bank to foreclose on their property. It isn't that difficult to see why this would be the case given the notable black mark on one's credit history, and given the fact that the payments that one makes on a normal mortgage cover not only interest, but capital, and these payments cannot be reclaimed in foreclosure. Tack on transaction costs, and it is obvious that this is not a good means of exploiting a bank under normal circumstances.

3.

Onerous documentation requirements on home mortgages do not make practical sense for one of the big reasons that business income taxes are not as economically efficient as personal income taxes. A commentator that McArdle quotes lists some of this sort of documentation.

The borrower had to give the lender a statement of cash flow and net worth every quarter?
The property value had to be above a minimum loan-to-value ratio?
The borrower had to maintain an income at some multiple of the monthly loan payment?
The borrower had to maintain a minimum net worth?
The borrower could not make significant changes to the property without lender consent?
Everything had to be personally guaranteed?

The simple fact of the matter is that businesses, and their income, losses and expenses are generally much more complicated than household incomes and budgets, and the economics of a business are likely to vary a lot more than the economics of a household.

Now having stated why I do not think that recourse mortgages are economically necessary, there is the question of where a libertarian, or to be frank even a simple capitalist should stand on the matter. There are two big reasons that I think that people who are libertarian, or who simply believe in capitalism should support non-recourse mortgages.

1.

It is not in the best interests of banks, much less the economy, for banks to be supporting real estate booms premised on false valuations. This doesn't really change whether or not mortgages are recourse, or non-recourse.

Just as things which are bad for an individual in the long run can seem tempting however, the policies which can harm an institution like a bank can seem tempting for a time. Recourse mortgages help to obscure the need for banks to ensure that mortgages are based on sound valuation. A loan officer could imagine that the actual value of a property is not really important, because the buyer can be chased down. This is not likely to be a sound practice, and it is unlikely to pay off, but the temptation is enhanced.

2.

Recourse mortgages are in practical terms, a much less market-based mechanism for loans in the housing market. Most housing foreclosures are not going to be driven by the calculating real-estate speculation of people trying to game the market.

For the majority of foreclosures, where the house buyer cannot afford to pay, making the buyer pay off the entire debt to the best of their ability is likely to involve fairly elaborate calculations of the buyer's ability to pay, by a government official. Just how much debt a person can afford to repay is not a strictly scientific calculation, and the arbitrary aspect of such calculations, encourages additional government intervention in the market, and additional government intervention in incomes.

3.

Recourse mortgages have the potential to create situations where a person is in substantial debt for something which they do not have. If the bank takes away a person's house, but a person is in debt for years or decades to pay for the house that they do not possess, this situation is, in the main, going to be regarded as being unfair by most of the public. The simple dynamic of paying for something that the bank has taken away is so simple a narrative that even when the home buyer behaved irresponsibly, the story will arouse sympathy with the buyer, and anger at the banking system and capitalism in general. A libertarian ideology is advocating minimal government intervention, and to succeed, such government intervention as takes place must seem as simple and as fair as possible.

A look at the counter-capitalist ideologies of today, and going back through the 20'th century is going to show that the great question has always been, do we rely on economics and non-governmental action to obtain what people need, or do we rely on values, mores, and the government. Economists have held that the market and voluntary transactions can fill more holes than many ideologies would claim. The question is, whether the same is true for mortgages, or are mores and detailed and elaborate government enforcement actions needed to hold down mortgage rates. Do you believe in the market?

Regarding Foreclosure Options

Megan McArdle has been commenting on foreclosure and she has made some excellent points, like "the perils of jingle mail", which is to say that returning a house does not, in many states, remove your obligation to pay for it.


With her article"Foreclosure Options" however, she turns to the desirability and ethics of recourse (a mortgage holder can sue you for debt after foreclosing on your property) versus non-recourse mortgages, and comes down heavily on the side of recourse mortgages, particularly in a moral sense.

But another question occurred to me. "Let's turn it around," I asked. "What if the bank decided that it wanted to exercise the same sort of option?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if the bank foreclosed on your house, even though you made the payments, because it figured it could make more money taking the house and selling it?" (Not a likely scenario, I know, but a useful thought experiment.)

I could tell from his face that he didn't think this would be fair. But assuming that the bank can get away with it, why would it be wrong for them to do this? (We were discussing morality, not practicality) If you get to decide when they get the house, and when they get the payments, why is it unfair when they exercise the same option?

There is an outstanding reason that giving a mortgage borrower an "option" to cease payment, and forfeit only the security of the real estate is NOT like giving the bank the option of foreclosing to aquire increased real estate value. When a mortgage borrower stops payment, they lose not only the property, but also all the accumulated equity they have acquired. The bank does not give any money back. The value of accumulated equity lost should be sufficient to compensate banks for their loss of "options" inside a mortgage contract.

The simple morality of mortgage loans aside, there are also sound macro-economic reasons to advocate no-recourse mortgage loans. Real estate bubbles are likely to have a significant and negative effect on the economy at large, affecting even people and businesses who act responsibly. Banks are unlikely to encounter large numbers of people giving up their mortgage equity unless there is a severe devaluation in the real estate market, and a bubble is the most likely cause of this. No-recourse mortgages provide an incentive for banks to discourage, rather than encourage notable real estate bubbles and misvaluations.

This incentive is important even though it is not likely that it will eliminate large market corrections on a multi-generational timescale, like the present economic downturn.


The majority of real estate bubbles and misvaluations take place on a local scale, and will take place at any point in the overall economic cycle. At this very time, there are still a few areas of the country like portions of North Dakota where bubbles are present, or are a risk. These many little bubbles will cumulatively inflict significant economic damage on a national economy over time, unless, and to the extent that they are suppressed. Banks are inevitably better equipped to appraise real estate and evaluate value than most members of the public, and non-recourse mortgages encourage banks to convey this information, or at a minimum, act on their own pricing information to forstall real estate bubbles built on borrowed money, rather than hide this information.

Wikileaks document dump: not a triumph for anti-war forces, and not likely to result in War Crimes prosecutions

The giant Wikileaks document-dump has taken place, and all of the usual political elements are in place to regard this as a victory for anti-war, and international law proponents. Superficially, this is true, insofar as US national military forces are dismayed by the release, and insofar as the detailed reports of war are off-putting to many people.

Blunt assessment. Wikileaks release does not legally threaten any significant war-crimes issue for the US, or for any significant number of US soldiers. Moreover, these leaks are more likely to support more war-making than not. Why?

There are two potential US war crimes listed in this article.

1.

Insurgents try to surrender to helicopter gunship, and are gunned down. Unnattractive, and one can easily envision how technological advancement would create additional ethical problems, but US Army lawyer is correct. Individual soldiers cannot surrender to attack aircraft.

The easiest means of understanding this is to use the reciprocity principle. Can attack aircraft or a bomber surrender to an anti-aircraft battery? Not really, and in the same way, ground forces cannot practically surrender to aerial units, except possibly, when large military units engage in mass surrender.

This becomes all the more clear when one considers that aerial assault normally engages forces which are surrounded by their compatriots. Even if one were to imagine that helicopters could drop down to pick up the prisoners (something which is not in fact true, because helicopters will normally have either a configuration, or a load of friendly forces which prevent this) the surrounding enemy forces would attack the aircraft when it slows and enters a vulnerable takeoff and landing phase.

Even for enemy soldiers on the front lines, surrender would require advancing accross no-mans land to meet the enemy. It is unlikely that the soldiers who wanted to surrender would be able to do so on many occasions, because their military compatriots beside and behind them would not allow this. As a practical matter, attack aircraft perform more as munitions than as merciful soldiers in war.

2.

Hundreds of civilians killed at US military checkpoints. Use of completely lethal force, without any particular restraint meets the proportionate use of force standards required in international law because of the use of suicide bombing attack vehicles by Iraqi resistance elements.

Beyond any question of accidental running of military checkpoints by Iraqis, it is highly believable that Iraqi civilians would in fact attempt to run military checkpoints because of the large number of criminals who set up checkpoints for the purposes of theft, and often kidnapping. Thus, while trigger happy action by US forces is likely enough, nothing about gunning down a civilian family stands out as a likely abuse on the basis of the existance of such casualties.

------

I would further note that the Wikileaks documents indicate that Iranian forces supported insurgents, trained forces which kidnapped/prisoner-snatched US military personell, and provided chemical weapons for terrorist use.

This information is very likely to be at least partially untrue, and even in the case that it was not, would fall under the heading of covert actions by states, which should be expected, and which would better be ignored on a small scale, than dealt with openly.

With the open release of these reports, the most significant effect will be the strengthening of the hands of those supporting a war with Iran.

It is in fact, not unlikely that the person or persons who leaked this information, in fact did so as a way of boosting US Iranian tensions. Indeed it is quite possible that a foreign intelligence service was involved in this leak, with most of the nations in the Mideast, and several Lebanese and Iraqi factions being likely candidates for such action. Many of these nations have the necessary capabilities due to proximity of US forces, technical skill, or the presence of large numbers of expatriates, or ethnic compatriots in the US military (particularly important to Lebanese factions).

I do not say that Wikileaks is necessarily a great force for evil because of this, but the release of these reports is not a great triumph for the anti-war movement considering just what was released, and considering the timing of the release, after such point as withdrawal from Iraq has become a moot point from a political standpoint in the US.



This is an excellent example of how government leaks can be more a matter of law-breaking, or civil-disobedience, than a matter of simple government openness.

Is the Bibi Aisha Time Magazine cover story a fake?

A question. Does the injured woman in the top two pictures, look like the one in the bottom picture?

The woman in the top two pictures was recently mutilated at the time the picture was taken, and was suffering additionally from a severe beating (which you can see in the bruising on her feet in). The one below appears to have healed wounds. So why is this important?

The woman in the first two pictures, named Nazia, was mutilated by her husband, a man named Mumtaz, in southern Zabul province of Afghanistan

at the age of 17 in the year 2007. This crime was appropriately perceived as a heinous one, by the local population, and local women held a demonstration calling for the immediate arrest of the mutilating criminal, who had highlighted the vile nature of his act by mutilating his wife on the first day of Eid al-Adha. This is one of the major Islamic holidays, lasting for three days. A reasonable social comparison would be if a man in the US were to chop off his wife's ears and nose on Christmas, a holiday that traditionally lasted 12 days, as you might recall from the holiday carol (the one with a "Partridge in a Pear Tree"). Such a crime being committed on such a special day would seem particularly horrific in the US or Afghanistan.

This holiday crime had a political angle however. The criminal's brother was a policeman working for the US-backed Afghan government.

Switch to the present. The second woman, if she is in fact, a second woman, is supposedly named Bibi Aisha, is purportedly 18 or 19 in 2010, depending on whether you accept the New York Times or CNN account, and according to a rash

of recent news articles, most notably a cover story for Time Magazine, was also mutilated by her husband, but in this version of the story, there is a different political angle. The husband,

all ten of his brothers, and his father are reportedly, members of the Taliban, the scene of the crime has shifted to Oruzgan province,

and the crime took place just last year. Also in THIS version of the story, the mutilation is not the solitary outrageous crime of an abusive husband, who performed the mutilation, and beat his wife severely, according to the report, breaking a number of bones and smashing her teeth. Rather, in this second case, or perhaps, second version of the story, the brutal mutilation was done according to the orders of a Taliban judge.

So what is going on? Are these in fact two different women, or is there just one woman? If you look at the two pictures, they look very much like the same person separated only by the passage of a couple of years, a suntan, and the facial swelling visible in the first pictures induced by a brutal beating and her mutilation. Not only is there an extreme similarity of features (particularly when you account for the swelling around her mouth, where her vile husband smashed her teeth), but you can also see that the mutilations are very, very similar. In the case of the ear mutilations in particular, what are the chances that two brutal husbands will produce so similar results when they decide to hack off their wife's ears, and this just happening to two entirely different women with similar/identical features? Indeed the similarity in ear shape is very suggestive of identity in and of itself, because human ears vary in shape to the point that they are often used to confirm the identity of people in photographs in criminal cases. In very few such cases is part of the ear actually missing.

The chances seem even smaller when you look at the age of Nazia, being 17 in December 2007, with the reported age of "Bibi Aisha" being supposedly 18 or 19 in 2010. This is very close to what you would expect if the first victim was given a new name for propaganda purposes, and made a bit younger to build sympathy (needless to say, the woman or women deserve the utmost sympathy whatever their age(s).

I suspect that another clue as to whether or not the Time story about "Bibi Aisha" is in fact a separate case can be found in the story itself, although this theory hinges on some analysis of Taliban application of Islamic law (if I am wrong in this particular analysis, and this can be shown, I will of course remove this part of the analysis, but my being wrong about this does not obviate the question of the identity of "Bibi Aisha", or her attackers).

According to the story, the poor woman was mutilated on the orders of the Taliban, and then left for dead. Having your nose and part of your ears cut off is not especially likely to kill you however, although it is a horrible crime. The Taliban are experienced in warfare, given the history of Afghanistan, and with so many nasty wounds around, they would be unlikely not to know about this. But why would somebody make up a story about her being left for dead, given the extremity of the crime we KNOW was committed against her?

Well in fact, the Taliban are notorious for their enforcement of extreme and archaic punishments for crimes, (or sins). The Taliban would punish a woman who was an adulterer; they would kill her! The Taliban may be brutal, but they are not particularly capricious about whether or not to apply Islamic law however. To punish a woman for adultery under Islamic law requires proof, and in Islamic law this means witnesses. A jealous and abusive husband might well have problems here, especially since making a false, or simply unproven accusation of this sort can carry a significant penalty under Islamic law; up to 80 lashes with a whip. If "Bibi Aisha" did cheat on her husband, and there were a bunch of witnesses, then the Taliban might well have stoned her to death, but the jealous maniac of a husband who would cut his wife's nose off could not expect his paranoia to be satisfied just because of this. For what it is worth, the Taliban, who by no means deny that they punish adultery, deny that she was ever accused in, or punished by, a Taliban religious court.

The problem, the great big problem, is that on one hand the Taliban are a bunch of violent extremists, who eagerly go about enforcing an extreme and restrictive law. On the other hand, the US backed government is not as extreme, but doesn't much enforce the law. or at least does not enforce the law very reliably or fairly.

If the Taliban just enforced reasonable laws, it is doubtful that even the might of the US government could have stopped them from winning in Afghanistan a long while back. On the other hand, particularly with the might of the US government behind them, but mainly because of how extreme the Taliban are, it is doubtful that the Afghan government could have failed to win, also a long while back if they weren't continually setting new records for corruption and abuse.

The US backed Afghan government has a terrible record of not prosecuting men with government connections for violence against women. Nadia Anjuman, for example, was Afghanistan's most famous and popular female poet, known not only in Afghanistan, but in the neighboring nations besides. She was murdered by her politically connected abusive husband, but the US-backed Afghan government only sentenced him to five years in jail.......... and then let him out after one month. Nadia Anjuman was famous and popular, but even she would not receive justice under the Karzai government. With Nadia Anjuman being murdered with impunity by her husband in 2005, Mumtaz, the husband of Nazia might have thought that in 2007 he also could get away with mutilating his wife because his brother was a policeman.

The Anjuman case is a good example of my point about the "rock and a hard place" choice as it is viewed by the Afghan population. The murdered poet Nadia Anjuman had, under the Taliban, been forced to take literature classes in secret, she and other women resorting to the ruse of a sewing school, in order to evade Taliban prohibitions on women's education. To quote Leila Razeqi, the woman who actually set up the secret women's literature classes, "If the Taliban were here they would have punished her husband, and maybe that would be better.” You and I might not agree with this sentiment, but the Karzai government is apparently bad enough that Afghans are likely to.

The cover story in Time however, is telling a somewhat different story. Instead of domestic abuse being a universal problem that shows up worst where the government is the most corrupt, the story becomes more black and white. Everybody knows that the Taliban are cruel, but the cover article tries to tie them to unusual punishment as well, not just cruel punishment. As the political slant in Time Magazine goes, this is "What happens If We Leave Afghanistan". Well "what happens" may be a phony story, but if it is not, then supporting the Karzai government does not come off any better by comparison. Instead of a woman with her nose and ears cut off, we would have......... a younger woman, seemingly a near twin, with her nose and ears cut off, PLUS with her teeth broken, and bones broken. What an improvement.

If you have any sympathy for "Bibi Aisha", there is another horrible possibility, or perhaps probability to consider. She cannot read or write, and according to the New York Times, had never heard of Time Magazine, until she was given a copy of the issue with her name on it. Now if she is in fact, the same woman as Nazia, who was mutilated in 2007, she was mutilated by a man connected to the Karzai government, not the Taliban. Time Magazine "confirmed that she is in a secret location protected by armed guards", armed guards who are on the side of the Karzai government, so this poor woman may still be in the hands of forces that are, so far as she knows, from the same group as the man who mutilated her. Now, according to the New York Times, she "did not remember how she managed to walk away to find help" from the site of her mutilation. What sort of threats might she be getting from her armed "protectors" now to make her tell the "right" story?

"Bibi Aisha" is being brought to the United States for surgery, so she could be rescued, if in fact she is being held as a propaganda pawn, but this would certainly require that some journalist can get to the truth of the situation. Even if Bibi Aisha and Nazia are in fact different people, we need journalists, bloggers, and everyone who cares to see that women are not mutilated, to work to make sure that the public knows that the problem of violence against women, even the most severe kinds, is certainly not confined to the Taliban.

The REAL reason "Why Obama Can't Move the Health-Care Numbers"

There was an interesting article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal about the reason that Obama is having so much trouble passing a national health care plan. For many people who are left/liberal (term varies depending on where you live in the world) the opinions of so right/conservative a paper are of little value of course, but whatever your political orientation, the similarities in outlook between all the elements of the US political system is so striking. Their conclusion

"The reason President Obama can't move the numbers and build public support is because the fundamentals are stacked against him. Most voters believe the current plan will harm the economy, cost more than projected, raise the cost of care, and lead to higher middle-class taxes."

This is interesting because here we have Rasmussen the commercial pollster, widely acknowledged to be a conservative, and a Clinton pollster both agreeing that the widespread opposition to the Obama health care plan is due mainly to the fact that people are opposed to its budget and public spending implications. The odd thing about this is that it places exactly the same emphasis of what is important in health care that Obama himself did. I think that this is fairly strong evidence that the "spending" over "health care" emphasis nearly defines 'establishment' thinking in the United States.

It is of course, very important to note that, yes, the health care plan is not supported by the public, but I must also say that I think that this analysis is almost entirely wrong. It was scarcely news that many people opposed national health care on cost grounds. What was new with Obama was that the number of such people had declined to a level that was clearly less than half of the public at large.

The assumption seems to be that what has changed to make so much of the public who previously supported national health care change their views, is simply that the financial crisis makes the public regard national health care as being unaffordable.

I am very doubtful of this, because the financial crisis has made ordinary people very worried about their jobs being lost in company cutbacks, and there is plenty of news about employers cutting back on the health insurance that they offer. Either job loss or company economizing would endanger the ordinary person's health care, even if they are satisfied with their health insurance. If the public, a majority of whom were satisfied with their insurance before, wanted national health care before, the financial crisis with associated high unemployment is not going to reduce their desire now.

Rather, I believe that the problem is with the Obama administration's health care plan itself, and particularly the emphasis that both he and his administration put on it. People are concerned that the health care that they receive is not going be reliably thorough and of high quality, mainly due to government rationing.

At this point, the average Democrat finally is distinguished from the establishment at large by rolling their eyes at this concern. The public concern is not just an artifact of Republican propaganda however. Rather, the concern is due to the Obama administration's plans, and even their own comments on them.

Obama himself, when questioned about his plan in the New York Times, used his OWN GRANDMOTHER as an example of potential rationing. His grandmother had broken her hip, and as it happened, also had cancer. While the cancer was clearly a serious threat to her longevity, it was not clear that she was going to die in the next days or weeks, and so the broken bone was repaired. This, according to Obama, was a matter that society, and his panels of experts were going to need to have

"a very difficult democratic conversation" about


this conversation needed to be

"guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists"

and at the end of this process, you, when caring for your Grandmother would need to

"have to have some independent group that can give you guidance".

How does this impact the national health care scheme, why

"that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now."

After Obama said such a thing, anybody who is talking about Republican propaganda is simply not paying attention to the real problem. Many Democrats have made excuses for the worrisome statements of Obama's advising health-car ethicist, but the fact of the matter is that Obama's conversations with this creature led him to question the wisdom of repairing his own grandmother's broken bone because she had a serious, but not immediately lethal illness. Broken bones are very painful, and very few people would be happy with the notion of their beloved Granny being forced to spend her last months or years suffering the agony of an untreated broken bone and trapped in bed because of it. Indeed, being locked into near total inactivity in this way is very likely to trigger one or another health problem in an elderly person, and cause their demise.

This little horror would be quite enough reason to distrust the president's health care scheme, but it also points to something else. Many people like to point to other developed nations around the globe, and say "they have national health care and are okay, so national health care in the US is okay too." Indeed building on this misplaced theme, many people around the globe have taken pleasure in poking fun at Americans who have reservations about the plan.

There is a big difference between the US plan and those throughout the globe however. The US national health care scheme is to my knowledge, the ONLY national health care scheme in the world that was planned at the very beginning to REDUCE the amount of health care services consumed that are the standard of care in that nation.

There is a lot of puffery and bluster about eliminating unnecessary care, but it is by no means clear that this care is in fact unnecessary. It is true that much associated with health care is run for profit in the US, and this might confuse someone, particularly if they do not live in the US, but the for-profit health care insurance industry in the US, which ends up paying most health care providers, can only make its money by rejecting unnecessary treatments. Since the insurers make that much more money by rejecting necessary treatment, many Americans are denied treatment that they in fact need. In a system of this sort, there is no real 'low hanging fruit' of clearly unnecessary treatment. When it in fact becomes clear that a treatment is unnecessary, the system weeds out that treatment. There are many ineffective treatments to be found in past medical history, and there will doubtless be more in the future, but the question is whether or not the medical system knows (or at least may easily find out), that a lot of treatments now in use are ineffective, but is using those treatments anyway. It is not objectively clear that "yes" is the answer to this question, much less clear that treatments which are known to be ineffective, but which are in use for some reason after all, will see those reasons overcome. What is left to cut where treatment is concerned, is treatments that some people need, and others do not, at least for the time being.


All those people around the world who now have national health care thus actually have something to worry about. As most people know, medical treatments that begin only in the US are likely to arrive in other developed nations eventually, because it would be difficult to justify not providing health care that is more or less up to "international standards". If a US national health care scheme based on REDUCING the level of care provided becomes law however, any budget troll lurking in the dark corners of your nation's Health Ministry, will now have a nice big international precedent that says that YOUR life isn't actually worth that much, and spending the money on your treatment is a waste.

Many people around the world complain that the United States does not place enough value on human life, and on quality of life. A health care plan of this type is not altogether aimed at making America like the most generous or compassionate of nations. Rather this health care plan aims to reduce the standard of care in a way that more than half of Americans are afraid of, and anchor that cheapened standard of care in claims of effectiveness.

The beginning of the end in Afghanistan

The US is now shifting its forces to urban areas in Afghanistan. This is not the end of the beginning, this is the beginning of the end.

By this I do not mean to say that redeploying forces must always be a loss, or is leading to defeat. Neither is true. However, the war in Afghanistan, and indeed the foundation of major conflict in Afghanistan for the past 40 or 50 years, is fundamentally based on a split between the rural population, and the urban population.

So long as this clash of cultures is so large, it is questionable whether Afghanistan could be controlled, as a geographic entity, even if the urban population were a majority. Since the rural population is the majority however, a withdrawal from the rural areas means that the Taliban has captured the crucial territory in Afghanistan.

The US and international forces, like the Soviets before them, have regarded girls schools and movie theaters as being bolts of modernity for a modern state. In fact, ANY cultural modernization, however virtuous, that takes place in urban but not rural areas, is a nail in the coffin of the urban government.

If the Taliban constitutes the 'native' faction in the rural and tribal areas, then the war itself will become in addition to a religious crusade, and a war against foreign occupation, also a tribal war.

The Pashtun tribesmen are THE crucial faction, and if they are united against you, you lose Afghanistan.

The political machinations of the Pentagon being what they are, the generals in charge are asking for more troops, in order to "win". In fact, strictly speaking, they are quite correct that they can win with enough troops. The detail being left out, is that Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar have nothing on these bold fellows, provided sufficient numbers of soldiers are provided.

This is not to say that US commanders are incompetent; neither the Mongols or Alexander the Great had much luck in the region, but US political dialog generally requires that American military officers bark patriotically about victory under all circumstances.

At least so far as most of the US military's brass is concerned, the job of the politicians in charge is to look at the size of the bill, and the price in blood to be paid, and call off the game before the losses add up. There are now more Americans fighting in Afghanistan when you include 'contractors' than there were Soviets at the height of their misadventure. Time to hit the road.

The freaky thing is that this Afghanistan adventure is malfunctioning badly enough so that Joe Biden, of all people, can see the problem and is the LEADING advocate of bailing in the Obama administration. I would like to imagine that the sheer brainpower of Obama and Co. has burned through the BS, but when you read the amazingly negative remarks by the Generals in charge of our safari, it seems more likely that the decision makers are getting "foxhole religion". I suspect that the situation is simply bad enough that Biden's characteristic of blurting out anything in his head has made him an advocate of the obvious.

This is probably the last chance for pulling out without having the war be seen as a complete and utter fiasco. The Pakistanis have made sure to maintain their connections with the Taliban for the primary reason that they aren't willing to risk a government in Afghanistan that isn't an ally. There are plenty of secondary reasons as well, not least being many Pakistani's sympathy with the Taliban. What is going to happen this spring, given the clear downward trajectory of the US occupation, is that the Pakistanis are going to either export their highly troublesome religious fanatics, or start packaging them for shipping.

A lot of people in Washington would probably like to drag out a withdrawal, even if they figure that the war is a turkey, but there isn't any way that the US is going to allowed to slowly 'slip off the edge'. If we don't move quick, the Pakistanis are going to push, hoping that the US will kill off as many annoying Pakistani fanatics in Afghanistan as possible. A lot of the old hands at the PSI had made the calculation that the Taliban was coming back at the BEGINNING of the war, and only an idiot would believe anything different now. The thing is, the NON-religious and secular Pakistani officials are going to tend to support the Taliban at this point by sending their armed fanatics, simply because they hope that the US bases will serve as 'roach motels' (they check in, but never check out) for fanatics. The Arab governments played this game with the Soviets, the Pakistanis have done this with India for generations, and there is no earthly way that we are going to be able to convince Pakistan to stop. In fact, there is a fair chance that the Arabs will start up again, if they are not already.

Even if it takes a while for the Pakistanis to arrive, some of our most important anti-Taliban measures are going to explode in our laps, if we are still largely in place by the spring. Many advocates of a continued commitment are advocating that the US pour more effort into training Afghans, to take the place of US troops. This is all very well, but it neglects the questionable loyalty of the new recruits. The Taliban is very happy to have American trained soldiers, as this permits them to understand and counter US combat tactics. Consequently, the Taliban will pay a defecting Afghan soldier a salary larger than he would receive fighting for the government. Afghan warfare is fought by the seasons, and it is very likely that Taliban sympathizers are, as I write this, signing up for Afghan government service, knowing that they will be trained during the winter, and will not have to bear arms against their countrymen. US training should improve the future-Taliban's chances of survival, and collecting a salary during training certainly beats spending the winter in a cave! Come spring however, we can expect many new Afghan soldiers to melt away with the snow.

What the US needs to do now, is to bail out, and do so by cutting some sort of deal that gives us a "chaos" excuse for the eventual collapse. If we do it right, the Pakistanis will want to stop or control a lot of their own Taliban in place, rather than export them as hopeful casualties.

Otherwise, the US will scream about "stopping your crazies" and the Pakistanis will, while shaking us down for equipment, comply somewhat in "taking control" but will leave the door to Afghanistan wide open as THE option of choice for avoiding the thrills of a Pakistani jail. This is such an obvious and well known strategy there that even if the US was somehow able to stop both the central government, and the upper levels of the hard-line intelligence apparatus from using it, thousands of low level officials, soldiers and police would use the scheme for careerist motivations;"well MY district is under control", or to cut down on the chances of being shot or blown up.

Incidentally, I would give fair odds that if the war drags out, we are going to end up seeing some significant tensions with China as a side effect, albeit a very classified side effect (actual reasons for tension hidden). Recall that the Chinese are Pakistan's other major ally, and one that the Chinese cannot afford to lose in any geopolitical sense. Anybody in the Pakistani government that the Americans don't like, is a natural recruit for China. The US has accustomed the political culture of Pakistan to the notion of working with a foreign intelligence service in the CIA. This sort of hidden contact with an ally is regarded more as a political maneuver in Pakistan than as treason and it is likely that the Chinese will take advantage of the situation. With Afghanistan and Pakistan so close, they have every reason to support those Pakistanis who are less affiliated with the US, and frankly even if the US becomes alienated from the Pakistanis altogether, the Chinese win.

Now the Chinese don't actually like Muslim radicals, but Muslim radicals are the largest anti-American faction of note in the world today, and so it makes sense to have them on good terms in a very covert sense. This risk is worth taking for the Chinese for three reasons.

First, KGB type tactics seem like a satisfactory means for the Chinese to deal with foreign terrorists or weirdoes. Using spy tactics is generally going to mean that agents will have to have contact with the targeted group, whether they are terrorists or not. Second, the Uighur separatists, who provide the main risk to China associated with increased terrorist or Muslim extremist activity, are basically under control, so their spies can take more risks. Third, the Americans won't turn over the Uighur's that they have captured, and have Uighur supportive media. This means that the best means for the Chinese to grab dissident Uighurs is to deal with the Muslims that they would run to, rather than to turn to the US, which is nominally in a war with terrorism in general.

I don't think that any of this means that the Chinese will actually take serious Muslim radical supporting steps however. The real reason that there is likely to be tension is that the Americans and signals-intelligence heavy nations tend to believe that people mean what they say. If you think about it, a significant proportion of the words being said at any given point anywhere in the world are likely to be sarcastic, or social lies.

If a Chinese intelligence officer is trying to pick up a Pakistani government official who wants to export the local radicals, one of the most obvious means of sucking up is to say that he is right, flattering him, and encouraging him to do what you can tell he wants to do anyway. The Americans pick this up, and flatter themselves with the notion that one, they are being plotted against, and two, the reason that an unwinnable counterinsurgency is being lost is that someone big is "actually" doing it.

I suspect that most high governmental officials anywhere in the world are used to disbelieving a lot of what is said to them, but signals intelligence allows a person to get 'drunk' on secrets and truths. What you pick up spying isn't magically true.

Incidentally, Chinese intelligence officers are likely to take advantage of the eavesdropping as an additional recruiting tool. If the Chinese say, in communications that they know will be intercepted, that particular figures are either working with them, or simply have particular anti-American attitudes, then the US protective reaction towards those Pakistanis becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Tactical gamesmanship of this sort is likely to be seized upon by people looking for a "good" and less humiliating reason for loosing a guerrilla war, and also by the traditionally anti-China faction. Just another potential/likely side-effect when you keep digging your problem deeper. Keep it simple, and bail.