Op-Ed Contributor: Tipping the Scales in Housing Court

IT'S easy to tell who's going to win in eviction court. On one side of the room sit the tenants: men in work uniforms, mothers with children in secondhand coats, confused and crowded together on hard benches. On the other side, often in a set-aside space, are not the landlords but their lawyers: dark suits doing crossword puzzles and joking with the bailiff as they casually wait for their cases to be called.

Millions of Americans face eviction every year. But legal aid to the poor, steadily starved since the Reagan years, has been decimated during the recession. The result? In many housing courts around the country, 90 percent of landlords are represented by attorneys and 90 percent of tenants are not. This imbalance of power is as unfair as the solution is clear.

When tenants have lawyers, their chances of keeping their homes increase dramatically. Establishing publicly funded legal services for low-income families in housing court is a cost-effective social policy that would prevent homelessness and uphold our ideals of fundamental fairness.

Poor people cannot afford lawyers, and in nearly all civil cases they don't have a right to one. In the 1963 landmark case Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court unanimously established the right to counsel for indigent defendants in criminal cases on the grounds that a fair trial was virtually impossible without a lawyer. Eighteen years later, the court heard the case of Abby Gail Lassiter, a poor black woman from North Carolina who appeared without counsel at a civil trial that resulted in her parental rights being erased. This time, a divided Supreme Court ruled that the right to appointed counsel was reserved for indigent litigants only when the loss of physical liberty was at stake.

Incarceration is a misery, but the outcomes of civil cases, as Ms. Lassiter learned, can be devastating, with stubbornly resilient consequences. Consider eviction's fallout. Families forced from their homes often lose their possessions, too: furniture and clothes piled on the sidewalk or auctioned off by moving companies. Evicted families experience long stretches of homelessness, with kids bouncing between shelters or abandoned houses.

Sociological research affirms what anyone who teaches poor children knows: that residential instability is the enemy of school success. Evicted families end up in bad housing in bad neighborhoods because most landlords turn them away. Months and even years after being evicted, people experience more material hardship and higher levels of depression than peers who avoided eviction. Psychologists have identified eviction as a risk factor for suicide.

Our legal system extends the right to a state-appointed attorney to someone facing months or years of prison but not to someone facing months or years of homelessness. In recent years, the poor have watched their incomes flat-line or drop, while housing costs have soared and federal spending on low-income housing assistance has plummeted. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, only one in four families who qualify for housing assistance get it. The rest devote huge chunks of their income — sometimes 80 or 90 percent — to rent. For these families, missing a rent payment is less the result of irresponsibility than of inevitability.

I've spent the last several years studying eviction. I lived for more than a year in some of Milwaukee's poorest neighborhoods, shadowing evicted families and their landlords. Along the way, I saw hardworking landlords let some tenants slide when they missed payments or reluctantly evict families who had fallen behind. But I also saw landlords carry out retaliatory evictions against tenants who had reported housing problems, and watched some lie in court about what tenants had paid them. I met one landlord who hired heavies from outside the neighborhood to evict families and another who liked to remove the doors of tenants who hadn't paid up.

Providing lawyers to tenants facing eviction would help curb these abuses and prevent families from being wrongly evicted. And it works. A recent randomized experiment in Quincy, Mass., involving 129 participants showed that two-thirds of tenants offered full representation avoided eviction, compared with one-third who were offered limited assistance like instructional clinics.

Yes, some victories came from raising technical objections, but many others came in cases that were not open and shut but would have been treated that way had tenants been forced to represent themselves.

Are some tenants freeloaders? Sure. But what about when a tenant withholds rent because the toilet hasn't worked in three weeks? Or when a landlord serves you after noticing that you're pregnant? The determining factor in many eviction proceedings — including those involving people who lose their jobs or fall ill — isn't the merits of the case but whether tenants have someone on their side who understands the law.

The right to counsel in civil matters has been established around the world — not just in France and Sweden but also in Azerbaijan, India, Zambia and many other countries we like to think of as less progressive than we are.

And the price tag — a bundle, right? Not really. A program that ran from 2005 to 2008 in the South Bronx provided more than 1,300 families legal assistance and prevented eviction in 86 percent of cases. It cost around $450,000, but saved New York City more than $700,000 in estimated shelter costs.

The key point is that when we direct aid upstream in the form of a few hours of legal services we can lower costs downstream. We all pay when the state reacts to the many consequences of eviction by distributing public assistance, subsidizing health care or providing a lawyer to someone who hustled in the drug or sex trade to survive life on the street.

But this policy's worth should not be determined by the amount of money it saves. There are moral costs we incur as a society when our citizens are denied equal protection under the law and wrongfully thrown from their homes by court order. Countless families are living perilously close to eviction and homelessness. The least we can do is give them a fighting chance to stay put.

Matthew Desmond, an assistant professor of sociology and social studies at Harvard, is writing a book on eviction and urban poverty.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Letter: Don’t Build on the Beach

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

To the Editor:

Re "We Need to Retreat From the Beach," by Orrin H. Pilkey (Op-Ed, Nov. 15):

My father, who retired in 1975, was chief of the North Atlantic Division of the Army Corps of Engineers. More than 40 years ago, he said to me that nobody should be allowed to own land on the coastline.

He thought that the beaches should be accessible to everyone and that it was dangerous to build by the water.

LINDA SCHECHET TUCKER
Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., Nov. 15, 2012

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Ed Contributor: The No. 10 Dashboard and Cybernetics

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

THIS spring, Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, chastised David Cameron, Britain's prime minister, for spending too much time on his iPad. "One of his senior advisers says the P.M. spends 'a crazy, scary amount of time playing Fruit Ninja,' " Mr. Nelson wrote in The Daily Telegraph. Such is Mr. Cameron's devotion that he ordered the creation of an iPad app that would allow him to monitor the British economy.

According to the Web site of the Cabinet Office, the application is now complete. Called the No. 10 Dashboard, after the prime minister's residence, it gives "the prime minister, other ministers, and senior Whitehall officials an at-a-glance overview of everything that's happening in government and elsewhere" — stock prices, housing and jobs data, information on the performance of government departments, as well as the "political context": polls, commentary and indications of the national mood from sources like Twitter. The prime minister liked having "quotable facts about what was going on," said Alice Newton, one of the app's developers.

The site included an example of the kind of data the app offers — a graph of Britain's stuttering gross domestic product — something you'd expect Mr. Cameron to be able to see whenever he closes his eyes, let alone on his iPad.

The No. 10 Dashboard could be the White House Dashboard; Mr. Cameron plans to show the app to President Obama at the Group of 8 summit meeting.

The whole story is bathed in the white heat of 21st-century digital technology. "Ours is the first generation of digital natives coming through to work in government," Ms. Newton said. But there's nothing new about it. If Mr. Obama follows in Mr. Cameron's footsteps, he should know that he's also on the trail of another leader — the ill-fated socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende.

What's the connection between men so widely separated by ideology, geography and time? After assuming power in 1970, Allende's administration was faced with economic paralysis, inequality and civil strife. The usual socialist prescription of nationalization of industry was applied, but Allende also looked to an unexpected quarter: the relatively new and niche science of cybernetics. Cybernetics is the study of control and communication in large, complex systems, be they organisms, machines or organizations. It spans management theory, information technology, psychology, biology and sociology. The Chilean government approached a British cybernetician named Stafford Beer and asked him to build a cybernetic hub for the management of the country's economy — something that had never been attempted before, or since.

A recent history, "Cybernetic Revolutionaries," by Eden Medina, gives the subsequent project, Cybersyn, the serious attention it deserves. The system, once up and running, would have channeled data from Chile's nationalized industries into an operations room in Santiago, where Allende's ministers would have made informed decisions in chairs with control panels built into the armrests. Photos of this room still retain a veneer of giddy futurity. White surfaces, pared-down interfaces, rounded corners — a dash of Apple in the mix.

Ms. Medina contends that rather than a tool of technocratic centralization, Cybersyn was democratic in design and intent. Workers would have access to the heart of government and could inform decision makers. The aim was transparency and economic and social homeostasis, a natural equilibrium. Mr. Beer called the system the "Liberty Machine." But Allende's regime, overthrown by a C.I.A.-backed military coup in 1973, didn't last long enough to see Cybersyn operate.

The No. 10 Dashboard taps into the same desire to master available information — a desire that has only grown as the amount of information in circulation has increased. Where Cybersyn needed dedicated national infrastructure and rooms full of equipment, the app runs on a hand-held device. And yet, the dashboard is actually less sophisticated.

It is not truly cybernetic because it lacks a mechanism to translate all that data into action. It can display information; it cannot consult and control. Less a driver's dashboard, it is more a window out of which a passenger can observe the national scenery speeding past. Government might be given the illusion of hand-held, one-stop manageability, but no actual managing is going on.

The app could thus be an apt metaphor for politicians reduced to spectators by the surges and shocks of the globalized world. Mr. Cameron should remember that there's at least one other instance of government-by-app: the team that worked on restructuring Greece's debt used iPads too, equipped with an app purpose-built for the job.

However that turns out, we can at least say this: in terms of distractions, these apps are marginally more useful than Fruit Ninja.

Will Wiles is the author of the novel "Care of Wooden Floors."

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Ed Columnist: Let’s Talk About X

In 1986, Democrats and Republicans came together and enacted a tax reform measure that closed loopholes and lowered tax rates. That was a great achievement. The '86 act has shaped thinking ever since. Now when people talk about tax reform, they instinctively say, "Let's do another '86-style act." When they debate tax ideas, they inevitably fixate on the two levers that were central back then: closing loopholes and changing top marginal rates.

Josh Haner/The New York Times

David Brooks

David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns.

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

The problem is that it's not 1986 anymore. We have a different set of problems. The two levers highlighted in that earlier reform are not powerful enough to help us address the issues we face today. The 1986 paradigm has become an intellectual straightjacket, foreclosing considerations of the things we actually have to do.

Unlike in 1986, the baby boomers are now in full retirement mode. The aging population means more government spending, even if we get entitlement programs moderately under control. It also means slower growth. The United States grew at about 3.2 percent a year for the five decades after World War II. It is projected to grow at only 2.2 percent over the next few decades.

We need a tax reform that will raise revenue and significantly boost growth. The 1986 model is poorly designed to do both those things.

Let's say we closed loopholes or capped itemized deductions at $50,000, as many of the current proposals would do. That would raise, at most, about $760 billion over 10 years. And it would produce much less than that if we started carving out exceptions for the charitable deduction, as we should. That revenue wouldn't be close to covering the trillions in new debt.

Let's say we raised the top tax rates back to where they were under President Bill Clinton. That wouldn't come close to raising sufficient revenue either. It might raise $82 billion a year, according to the Joint Tax Committee. That's small potatoes compared with what's needed.

Let's say we closed the loopholes and raised rates all at once. That might theoretically produce enough revenue, if you hit the middle class, but it would decimate growth.

Even the 1986 reform, which closed loopholes and lowered rates, didn't do much to increase growth. Even after the reform was passed, people were paying the same amount in taxes, so they faced the same basic incentives.

If you closed loopholes and raised rates, as we'd have to do this time around, then you would make the incentives worse. Raising top tax rates may not be as cataclysmic for the economy as some have argued, but this is still one of the most growth-killing ways to raise revenue.

In other words, if we're going to simultaneously address our two most pressing needs — raising revenue and boosting growth — we're going to have to break free from the 1986 paradigm.

That means asking the basic question: What is the single biggest problem with the tax code? It's not the complexity, bad as that is. The biggest problem is that it rewards consumption and punishes savings and investment.

You can't fundamentally address that problem within the 1986 paradigm. You can address it only through a consumption tax. This idea is off the table right now, but reality will inevitably drive us toward it. We have to have a consumption tax if we want to both grow the economy and reduce debt.

But isn't a consumption tax regressive since poor people spend a bigger share of their incomes than rich people? The late David F. Bradford of Princeton University effectively solved that problem with his so-called X Tax, which has recently been championed by Alan D. Viard of the American Enterprise Institute and others. Under the X Tax, you wouldn't pay the consumption tax at the cash register. Businesses would be taxed on their cash flow, taking an immediate deduction for investments rather than depreciating them over time. Households would pay tax at progressive rates on their wages but would not pay tax on income from savings.

The X Tax effectively taxes the money you spend right now and rewards savings and investment. The government could raise a chunk of revenue this way and significantly boost growth with little or no change in how tax burdens are distributed between rich and poor. Most economists vastly prefer consumption taxes to income taxes.

The other complaint is that a consumption tax is politically impossible to get passed. There are, indeed, political difficulties. But there would be huge political difficulties if we try to do another 1986-style act next year. Every special interest will fight every loophole closing. And after all that, the country would get very little benefit in return. The political barriers to an X Tax are no greater, and we would actually address our problems.

It's time to break out of the 1986 paradigm. It's time to explore consumption taxes. Let's think about X.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Ed Columnist: Class Wars of 2012

On Election Day, The Boston Globe reported, Logan International Airport in Boston was running short of parking spaces. Not for cars — for private jets. Big donors were flooding into the city to attend Mitt Romney's victory party.

They were, it turned out, misinformed about political reality. But the disappointed plutocrats weren't wrong about who was on their side. This was very much an election pitting the interests of the very rich against those of the middle class and the poor.

And the Obama campaign won largely by disregarding the warnings of squeamish "centrists" and embracing that reality, stressing the class-war aspect of the confrontation. This ensured not only that President Obama won by huge margins among lower-income voters, but that those voters turned out in large numbers, sealing his victory.

The important thing to understand now is that while the election is over, the class war isn't. The same people who bet big on Mr. Romney, and lost, are now trying to win by stealth — in the name of fiscal responsibility — the ground they failed to gain in an open election.

Before I get there, a word about the actual vote. Obviously, narrow economic self-interest doesn't explain everything about how individuals, or even broad demographic groups, cast their ballots. Asian-Americans are a relatively affluent group, yet they went for President Obama by 3 to 1. Whites in Mississippi, on the other hand, aren't especially well off, yet Mr. Obama received only 10 percent of their votes.

These anomalies, however, weren't enough to change the overall pattern. Meanwhile, Democrats seem to have neutralized the traditional G.O.P. advantage on social issues, so that the election really was a referendum on economic policy. And what voters said, clearly, was no to tax cuts for the rich, no to benefit cuts for the middle class and the poor. So what's a top-down class warrior to do?

The answer, as I have already suggested, is to rely on stealth — to smuggle in plutocrat-friendly policies under the pretense that they're just sensible responses to the budget deficit.

Consider, as a prime example, the push to raise the retirement age, the age of eligibility for Medicare, or both. This is only reasonable, we're told — after all, life expectancy has risen, so shouldn't we all retire later? In reality, however, it would be a hugely regressive policy change, imposing severe burdens on lower- and middle-income Americans while barely affecting the wealthy. Why? First of all, the increase in life expectancy is concentrated among the affluent; why should janitors have to retire later because lawyers are living longer? Second, both Social Security and Medicare are much more important, relative to income, to less-affluent Americans, so delaying their availability would be a far more severe hit to ordinary families than to the top 1 percent.

Or take a subtler example, the insistence that any revenue increases should come from limiting deductions rather than from higher tax rates. The key thing to realize here is that the math just doesn't work; there is, in fact, no way limits on deductions can raise as much revenue from the wealthy as you can get simply by letting the relevant parts of the Bush-era tax cuts expire. So any proposal to avoid a rate increase is, whatever its proponents may say, a proposal that we let the 1 percent off the hook and shift the burden, one way or another, to the middle class or the poor.

The point is that the class war is still on, this time with an added dose of deception. And this, in turn, means that you need to look very closely at any proposals coming from the usual suspects, even — or rather especially — if the proposal is being represented as a bipartisan, common-sense solution. In particular, whenever some deficit-scold group talks about "shared sacrifice," you need to ask, sacrifice relative to what?

As regular readers may know, I'm not a fan of the Bowles-Simpson report on deficit reduction that laid out a poorly designed plan that for some reason has achieved near-sacred status among the Beltway elite. Still, at least you can say this for Bowles-Simpson: When it talked about shared sacrifice, it started from a "baseline" that already assumed the end of the high-end Bush tax cuts. At this point, however, just about all the deficit scolds seem to want us to count the expiration of those cuts — which were sold on false pretenses, and were never affordable — as some kind of big giveback by the rich. It isn't.

So keep your eyes open as the fiscal game of chicken continues. It's an uncomfortable but real truth that we are not all in this together; America's top-down class warriors lost big in the election, but now they're trying to use the pretense of concern about the deficit to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Let's not let them pull it off.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Letter: Terrorist or Journalist?

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

David Carr raises serious questions about the definition of journalism in today's world ("Using War as Cover to Target Journalists," The Media Equation column, Nov. 26), but he wrongly depicts Al-Quds Educational Radio and Al-Aqsa TV as legitimate media outlets. They are intricately linked with Islamic Jihad and Hamas and have encouraged and lauded acts of terror against Israeli civilians for the past decade.

The real question raised by Mr. Carr's column is whether a station that is ideologically motivated and subsidized by a terrorist organization deserves the same treatment as CNN or The New York Times. Moreover, should a Hamas commander who painted the words "TV" on his car be considered a journalist?

Mr. Carr is quick to incriminate the Israel Defense Forces for targeting journalists, but he does not mention that terrorists are actively exploiting journalists as shields.

Mr. Carr is worried about freedom of the press and rightly so. However, when terrorist organizations exploit reporters, either by posing as them or by hiding behind them, they are the immediate threat to freedom of the press.

Such terrorists, who hold cameras and notebooks in their hands, are no different from their colleagues who fire rockets aimed at Israeli cities and cannot enjoy the rights and protection afforded to legitimate journalists.

(Lt. Col.)

AVITAL LEIBOVICH
Jerusalem, Nov. 27, 2012

The writer is head spokeswoman to foreign media for the Israel Defense Forces.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Ed Contributor: Law School Is Worth the Money

I'M a law dean, and I'm proud. And I think it's time to stop the nonsense. After two years of almost relentless attacks on law schools, a bit of perspective would be nice.

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

For at least two years, the popular press, bloggers and a few sensationalist law professors have turned American law schools into the new investment banks. We entice bright young students into our academic clutches. Succubus-like, when we've taken what we want from them, we return them to the mean and barren streets to fend for themselves.

The hysteria has masked some important realities and created an environment in which some of the brightest potential lawyers are, largely irrationally, forgoing the possibility of a rich, rewarding and, yes, profitable, career.

The starting point is the job market. It's bad. It's bad in many industries. "Bad," in law, means that most students will have trouble finding a first job, especially at law firms. But a little historical perspective will reveal that the law job market has been bad — very bad — before. To take the most recent low before this era, in 1998, 55 percent of law graduates started in law firms. In 2011, that number was 50 percent. A 9 percent decline from a previous low during the worst economic conditions in decades hardly seems catastrophic. And this statistic ignores the other jobs lawyers do.

Even so, the focus on first jobs is misplaced. We educate students for a career likely to span 40 to 50 years. The world is guaranteed to change in unpredictable ways, but that reality doesn't keep us from planning our lives. Moreover, the career for which we educate students, done through the medium of the law, is a career in leadership and creative problem solving. Many graduates will find that their legal educations give them the skills to find rich and rewarding lives in business, politics, government, finance, the nonprofit sector, the arts, education and more.

What else will these thousands of students who have been discouraged from attending law school do? Where will they find a more fulfilling career? They're not all going to be doctors or investment bankers, nor should they. Looking purely at the economics, in 2011, the median starting salary for practicing lawyers was $61,500; the mean salary for all practicing lawyers was $130,490, compared with $176,550 for corporate chief executives, $189,210 for internists and $79,300 for architects. This average includes many lawyers who graduated into really bad job markets. And the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reports projected growth in lawyers' jobs from 2010 to 2020 at 10 percent, "about as fast as the average for all occupations."

It's true, and a problem, that tuition has increased. One report shows that tuition at private schools increased about 160 percent from 1985 to 2011. Private medical school tuition increased only 63 percent during that period. But, in 1985, medical school already cost four times more than law school. And starting salaries for law graduates have increased by 125 percent over that period.

Debt, too, is a problem. The average student at a private law school graduates with $125,000 in debt. But the average lawyer's annual salary exceeds that number. You'd consider a home mortgage at that ratio to be pretty sweet.

Investment in tuition is for a lifelong career, not a first job. There are many ways to realize a satisfactory return on this investment. Even practicing law appears to have paid off over the long term.

The graying of baby-boom lawyers creates opportunities. As more senior lawyers retire, jobs will open, even in the unlikely case that the law business doesn't expand with an improving economy. More opportunity will open to women and minorities, too. As with any industry in transition, changes in the delivery of legal services create opportunities as well as challenges. Creative, innovative and entrepreneurial lawyers will find ways to capitalize on this.

The overwrought atmosphere has created irrationalities that prevent talented students from realizing their ambitions. Last spring we accepted an excellent student with a generous financial-aid package that left her with the need to borrow only $5,000 a year. She told us that she thought it would be "irresponsible" to borrow the money. She didn't attend any law school. I think that was extremely shortsighted, but this prevailing attitude discourages bright students from attending law school.

We could do things better, and every law school with which I'm familiar is looking to address its problems. In the meantime, the one-sided analysis is inflicting significant damage, not only on law schools but also on a society that may well soon find itself bereft of its best and brightest lawyers.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Editorial: Harassment in the Workplace

The Supreme Court this week heard the case of Maetta Vance, who, for many years, worked for the catering department of Ball State University, often as the only African-American in its dining services. In 2005, Saundra Davis, who is white, was given authority to direct the work of Ms. Vance, among others.

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

Ms. Vance sued Ball State for racial harassment and intimidation, claiming that Ms. Davis made her life miserable, using racial epithets and threatening her physically. The harassment, she said, did not end when she formally complained to the department's general manager.

Under the Civil Rights Act's Title VII, employers like Ball State are liable for discrimination that creates a hostile work environment, though the standard for liability depends on the harasser's status. An employer is responsible for a supervisor's harassment, but when the harasser is a co-worker, the employer is liable only if the victim proves that the employer was negligent in failing to stop the harassment.

In this case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the university was not liable because Ms. Davis was not Ms. Vance's supervisor because she lacked "the power to hire, fire, demote, promote, transfer or discipline," even though she directed Ms. Vance's work. The Supreme Court should overturn the appeals court's narrow, unfair definition of a supervisor. The justices should send the case back to the trial court to gather a full factual record and apply the legal standard that an employee who controls another employee's work qualifies as a supervisor.

Ball State University argues that Ms. Vance should lose this lawsuit because she cannot show Ms. Davis was her supervisor under either standard. But even it rejects the Seventh Circuit's pinched definition of a supervisor as "someone with power to directly affect the terms and conditions of the plaintiff's employment," which is followed by the First and Eighth Circuits. Three other federal circuits, however, apply the broader definition for supervisor, as an employee who controls the work of another worker, regardless of the job description.

During oral argument, Justice Elena Kagan gave an example of a professor who subjects a secretary "to living hell, complete hostile work environment on the basis of sex, all right? But the professor has absolutely no authority to fire the secretary," who can be fired only by the head of secretarial services. "I just don't even understand the Seventh Circuit test," Justice Kagan said. Under the unfairly restrictive test, the professor would not qualify as the secretary's supervisor so the university could not be held liable for that abusive conduct.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Letter: Inmates and the Storm

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

To the Editor:

Re "Jailed and Jailers Pitched In Help After Storm" (front page, Nov. 22):

I was saddened that jail officials failed to make incarcerated people available for interviews about the role they played in helping victims of Hurricane Sandy.

In a country where those who've spent time behind bars are stereotyped, demonized and branded for the rest of their lives, it is important that we hear their unfiltered voices, gain glimpses of their hearts and experience their humanity. After all, the overwhelming majority will return home.

How we as a society view them will go a long way in determining whether they are given opportunities to succeed or are relegated to the revolving door of recidivism.

SHEILA RULE
New York, Nov. 26, 2012

The writer, a former reporter and editor at The New York Times, is executive director of the Think Outside the Cell Foundation.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Letter: The Seabirds of La Jolla

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

Re "California Cove Blessed With Nature's Beauty Reels From Its Stench" (news article, Nov. 25):

Some perspective may be in order regarding the smelly quandary on the cliffs of La Jolla. This nuisance caused by seabirds doesn't bode well for fine dining in the area, I'm sure. But the cormorants, gulls and other species that have prompted groans and pinched noses face declining coastal habitat, continual oil spill hazards, toxic algal blooms, plastic pollution, discarded fishing tackle and wanton cruelty by humans.

A bird with fish hooks embedded in its mouth is a miserable sight to behold (and also a common one).

While I certainly hope that the community is spared regulatory limbo and finds a solution that works for both business and wildlife, I can't help but wish that the public's awareness of what these birds go through to survive were as "heightened" as the odor wafting off the bluffs.

ANDREW HARMON
Vice Chmn., International Bird Rescue
New York, Nov. 25, 2012

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Opinionator: Hunger in Plain Sight

There are hungry people out there, actually; they're just largely invisible to the rest of us, or they look so much like us that it's hard to tell. The Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program, better known as SNAP and even better known as food stamps, currently has around 46 million participants, a record high. That's one in eight Americans — 10 people in your subway car, one or two on every line at Walmart.

We wouldn't wish that on anyone, but as it stands, the number should be higher[1]: many people are unaware that they're eligible for SNAP, and thus the participation rate is probably around three-quarters of what it should be.

Food stamps allow you to shop more or less normally, but on an extremely tight budget, around $130 a month. It's tough to feed a family on food stamps (and even tougher without them), and that's where food banks — a network of nonprofit, nongovernment agencies, centrally located clearing houses for donated or purchased food that is sent to local affiliated agencies or "pantries" — come in. Food banks may cover an entire state or part of one: the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, for example, serves 53 counties and provides enough food to feed 48,000 square miles and feeds 90,000 people a week — in a state with fewer than four million people.

Like many other food banks, Oklahoma's, says executive director Rodney Bivens, has made a commitment to serve every single person in need in its area; put that together with that state's geography, and it might give you pause. Similarly, God's Love We Deliver (not technically a food bank), which provides over a million cooked meals a year to sick people in the five boroughs and the Newark area, has seen its numbers nearly double in the last six years because, as Karen Pearl, the president and C.E.O. told me, "We are never going to have a waiting list and are never going to turn people away."

And because poverty is growing.

Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs brought the poverty level down to 11 percent from 20 percent in less than 10 years. Ronald Reagan began the process of dismantling that minimal safety net, and as a result the current poverty level is close to 16 percent, and food stamps are not fully doing their job. "There was a time in this country," says Maryland Food Bank president and C.E.O. Deborah Flateman, "when food stamps had practically eliminated hunger; then the big cuts happened, and we've been trying to recover ever since."

Food banks are changing. I visited the Rhode Island Community Food Bank last year and was surprised to see not rows and rows of mac 'n' cheese and Frosted Flakes but fresh produce, rice and beans, even meat. That's because until recently, manufacturers' mistakes — the misprinted label, the too-soon sell-by date — went to food banks; now there are fewer mistakes, and "seconds" are usually sold to "dollar" stores rather than donated.

In addition, the cutbacks to The Emergency Food Assistance Program (Tefap), a Department of Agriculture program that delivers purchased food to states for free distribution — usually through food banks — have been hit hard; in Oklahoma, for example, the food bank lost around six million pounds of donated food from Tefap this year, representing something like 70 percent. (At the same time, Bivens notes, apples went from $14 to $24 a case.)

These developments cause hardships, but opportunities too: every food bank I spoke with is providing its clients with more fresh produce and real food than before. (And less junk: Andrew Schiff, who runs the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, convinced his board years ago that they did not need to give people free soda. "We provide meals," he told me, and "soda and chips does not constitute a meal.")

Food banks closest to where food is grown in quantity are in the best shape to obtain produce. The San Francisco and Marin Food Banks, according to executive director Paul Ash, get "10 or 15 truckloads of produce a week out of growing areas like California's Central Valley," some of which it shares with food banks as far away as upstate New York. Nor is this solely a West Coast phenomenon: the Maryland Food Bank, says Flateman, went from working with two farms two years ago to 51 this year.

This all sounds great: providing people in need with real food is clearly preferable to providing them with junk. But, as Ash says, only one out of two people who are eligible for SNAP in his state are on the program, and "the only thing that can really touch that problem would be improving SNAP, because there aren't enough warehouses in San Francisco for organizations like ours to take up that slack." Ideally, SNAP would work so well that food banks became superfluous.

Furthermore, as great as fresh produce is, the reality is that most people need more than onions, carrots, apples and oranges. And so it's dried goods like rice and beans and concentrated protein like animal products that cost food banks real money. And there are other issues: you don't have to know how to cook to "prepare" cold cereal, or even boxed mac 'n' cheese. But "people don't know how to prepare rice and beans anymore," says Bivens, who along with others I spoke to is doing two things: increasingly preparing cooked, shelf-stable food to give to people and offering cooking lessons.

SNAP participants and food bank visitors are sometimes homeless people but they're also our neighbors, our employees, our co-workers, our fellow bus riders, the family in the car next to ours, the cashier at the supermarket; more and more, they're our parents, because Social Security is another program that isn't cutting it.

The need is everywhere. Whether you look at this from a moral perspective (love thy neighbor, remember?) or a practical one, it's clear that SNAP and food banks deserve better funding, not worse.

It seems absurd to have to say it, but no one in this country should go hungry.

---

1. Of course as everyone following this knows, it's cuts that are on the agenda, not expansion. Cuts, which could mean that 500,000 households could lose $90 a month and nearly 2 million people could lose food stamps altogether, are not only cruel but counterproductive.

Back to Article

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Ed Contributor: The Rise in Exhumations

THIS week, the pale stone tomb in Ramallah that houses the remains of the former Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat was pried open. Researchers plan to test samples of Arafat's skeleton for signs of poison, after suspicious concentrations of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 were found on his clothes and toothbrush during an investigation this summer. Arafat's final illness has been a source of speculation since his death in 2004; while medical records show his immediate cause of death was a stroke, many Palestinians believe he was murdered by Israel.

Arafat joins a macabre parade of recently exhumed famous figures. Just this month, Danish researchers announced that tests on the bones of the astronomer Tycho Brahe (exhumed in Prague in 2010) showed he probably perished of natural causes and not, as some had suggested, after being poisoned by his assistant, Johannes Kepler. Also in 2010, Simón Bolívar, Bobby Fischer and Nicolae Ceausescu were exhumed. Christopher Columbus was exhumed in 2003, Jesse James in 1995, Lee Harvey Oswald in 1981 — the list goes on.

Advances in DNA testing, biochemical analysis and other scientific techniques have unlocked the secrets of the dead from their blood, hair, teeth and bones in ways they never could have imagined. We can now use exhumations to lay to rest persistent rumors about the locations and contents of famous graves, and clear people like poor Kepler of murder charges. Exhumations can also tell us about the ailments of famous figures: fragments of Beethoven's skull, left over from a 19th-century exhumation, have suggested that his poor health may have been the result of lead poisoning, and tests on Cosimo Medici's bones showed he suffered from arthritis — not gout, as many historians had believed.

But when does scientific imperative shade into idle curiosity — and who gets to decide? Surprisingly, there's little widely agreed-upon policy to guide us through this ethical quandary, and disputes have mostly been a matter for local courts. The regulations that protect living patients from scientific inquiry — designed to safeguard privacy and informed consent — generally disappear where the long dead are concerned. And yet, just because the dead feel no pain doesn't mean they can't be harmed.

In 2010, the Department of the Interior turned down a request to exhume the explorer Meriwether Lewis from federal land in Tennessee. A forensic scientist wanted to test the hypothesis that Lewis committed suicide after struggling with alcoholism, depression and syphilis. But if evidence of these conditions had been found, would the explorer — now a minor national hero — have wanted that information made public?

And what about the wishes of descendants? Arafat's case is more clear-cut than most, because his next of kin are alive and supportive of the exhumation. What happens when the family tree has gone sprawling? During the Medici exhumations in 2004, at least one descendant objected to the proceedings, but other branches of the family dismissed his concerns. In another intriguing case, an appellate court denied permission to exhume John Wilkes Booth, in part because it argued that the relatives who sought the exhumation should not override the wishes of Booth's next of kin, who had chosen his resting place more than a century before, and presumably wanted him to stay there. After that much time, are the living really part of the same family — or even culture — as the dead?

The Italian researcher Franco Rollo, who has worked on the mummified remains of the 5,000-year-old "Ötzi the iceman," has argued that ethical considerations are minimal if remains are "old enough to belong to an historical and social epoch that is felt sufficiently different and far from the present one by most people." Some disagree. The bioethicist Soren Holm believes that ethical concerns do apply to long dead people, especially identifiable ones: "In a certain sense these people still have a life. We still talk about them. There are pieces of research that could affect their reputation."

In my opinion, exhumations can be a valuable research tool. The dead are dead, after all, while the living are still learning. But not all exhumations produce results of equal value, and we need more debate about when such digs are worthwhile. If conclusive proof of poisoning can be found from Arafat's exhumation (a big if), the jackhammers might be justified.

But consider the request, motivated by a plan to analyze whether the Mona Lisa might be a disguised self-portrait, to disinter Leonardo da Vinci from his resting place in the Loire Valley. While it's an intriguing question, is the answer really worth disturbing Leonardo's grave? If we decide we don't care, are we prepared for the idea that no one will care what happens to our own remains?

Some ethicists and legal scholars hope to create better frameworks for answering these questions, perhaps through the creation of "biohistorical review boards" that could analyze requests for exhumations and other analyses of the dead, much like the review boards that now weigh applications for studies involving living human subjects. Such boards might also consider whether future technologies could yield better results from exhumation — preventing people like Arafat from being dug up again every time there's a scientific breakthrough.

For individuals — those with a legacy to protect, or secrets to hide — it might be time to consider a new section in the will. Or we could take a page out of Shakespeare's book: his grave in Holy Trinity Church, in Stratford-upon-Avon, is engraved with the following curse:

Good friend for Jesus sake forbear

To dig the dust enclosed here!

Blest be the man that spares these stones,

And curst be he that moves my bones.

Bess Lovejoy is the author of the forthcoming book "Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses."

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Ed Columnist: My Secretary of State

President Obama is assembling his new national security team, with Senator John Kerry possibly heading for the Pentagon and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice the perceived front-runner to become secretary of state. Kerry is an excellent choice for defense. I don't know Rice at all, so I have no opinion on her fitness for the job, but I think the contrived flap over her Libya comments certainly shouldn't disqualify her. That said, my own nominee for secretary of state would be the current education secretary, Arne Duncan.

Josh Haner/The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

Yes, yes, I know. Duncan is not seeking the job and is not the least bit likely to be appointed. But I'm nominating him because I think this is an important time to ask the question of not just who should be secretary of state, but what should the secretary of state be in the 21st century?

Let's start with the obvious. A big part of the job is negotiating. Well, anyone who has negotiated with the Chicago Teachers Union, as Duncan did when he was superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools before going to Washington, would find negotiating with the Russians and Chinese a day at the beach. A big part of being secretary of education (and secretary of state) is getting allies and adversaries to agree on things they normally wouldn't — and making them think that it was all their idea. Trust me, if you can cut such deals with Randi Weingarten, who is president of the American Federation of Teachers, you can do them with Vladimir Putin and Bibi Netanyahu.

A big part of the job of secretary of state is also finding common ground between multiple constituencies: Congress, foreign countries, big business, the White House, the Pentagon and the diplomats. The same is true for a school superintendent, but the constituencies between which they have to forge common ground are so much more intimidating: They're called "parents," "teachers," "students" and "school boards."

There is a deeper point here: The biggest issue in the world today is growth, and, in this information age, improving educational outcomes for more young people is now the most important lever for increasing economic growth and narrowing income inequality. In other words, education is now the key to sustainable power. To have a secretary of state who is one of the world's leading authorities on education, well, everyone would want to talk to him. For instance, it would be very helpful to have a secretary of state who can start a negotiating session with Hamas leaders (if we ever talk with them) by asking: "Do you know how far behind your kids are?" That might actually work better than: "Why don't you recognize Israel?"

"The biggest issue in the world today is growth, and the world is divided into two groups — those who get it and those who don't," said Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert. "If you're dealing with the Middle East, it might actually be helpful to have someone who can tell some of the parties why they are going in the wrong direction and how their problems are not what they think they are, nor are their solutions."

Indeed, Islam is one of the world's great monotheistic faiths, but it is not the answer to Arab development today. Math is the answer. Education is the answer. Getting the Middle East to focus on that would do more to further our interests and their prosperity than anything else. As we are seeing in Egypt, suddenly creating a mass democracy without improving mass education is highly unstable.

At the same time, as our foreign budget shrinks, more and more of it will have to be converted from traditional grants to "Races to the Top," which Duncan's Education Department pioneered in U.S. school reform. We will have to tell needy countries that whoever comes up with the best ideas for educating their young women and girls or incentivizing start-ups or strengthening their rule of law will get our scarce foreign aid dollars. That race is the future of foreign aid.

Finally, there's a reason that since the end of the cold war our secretaries of state have racked up more miles than they've made history. Before 1995, the job involved ending or avoiding superpower conflicts and signing big arms control treaties. Those were the stuff of heroic diplomacy. Fortunately, today there are fewer big wars to end, and the big treaties now focus more on trade and the environment than nukes — and they're very hard to achieve. Also, today's secretary of state has to deal with so many more failed or failing states. Secretary Hillary Clinton practically had to forge the Syrian opposition groups into a coherent collective, as a necessary precursor to persuading them to do the right things. Today, to make history as a secretary of state, you have to make the countries to deal with first.

In short, we're still indispensable, but the problems are much more intractable. Our allies are not what they used to be and neither are our enemies, who are less superpowers and more superempowered angry men and women. A lot of countries will need to go back to the blackboard, back to the basics of human capacity building, before they can partner with us on anything. So while we're not likely to shift our secretary of education to secretary of state, let's at least understand why it is not such a preposterous idea.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Ed Columnist: Make Up Turned Break Up

Are the Republican senators unreasonable? Or is the secretary of state-manqué undiplomatic? Did the senators sandbag Susan Rice? Or did Rice further inflame a tense situation? Is it a case of shooting the messenger and playing politics? Or is national security dangerously infected with politics?

It seems as if it would have been simple enough for Rice to quickly admit that the administration talking points she used on the Sept. 16 Sunday shows about the slaughter in Benghazi were misleading. But she went silent. She has no wartime consigliere and, aside from the president's angry postelection defense of Rice, the White House — perhaps relieved that she was taking the heat rather than the president — wasn't running a strong damage control operation that clarified matters.

Still, on last Sunday's talk shows, John McCain and Lindsey Graham softened their tone a bit. "She's not the problem," McCain said. "The problem is the president of the United States," for failing to swiftly tell Americans what his intelligence agencies had confirmed: that Benghazi was a terrorist attack involving Al Qaeda affiliates.

When Rice asked to come to the Hill to meet with some of her Republican critics, it seemed détente was nigh. But somehow the hour-and-a-half powwow caused an escalation, with McCain, Graham and Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire emerging to say they had more reservations than before. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who's scheduled to meet with Rice on Wednesday, suggested that she would be better suited to run the Democratic National Committee than State. If Rice can't soothe the egos of some cranky G.O.P. pols, how would she negotiate with China?

Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the soft-spoken ranking member on the homeland security committee, hasn't been part of this shrill debate. Though they had met only once or twice, Collins agreed to introduce Rice to the Foreign Relations Committee in 2009 when Rice was nominated as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Rice's grandparents immigrated from Jamaica to Portland, Maine.

"I don't bear any animus to her at all," the senator said. "In fact, to the contrary."

But she said she is "troubled" by Rice's role. "If I wanted to be secretary of state," Collins observed, "I would not go on television and perform what was essentially a political role."

Collins drew up a list of questions to ask Rice at their one-on-one hourlong meeting slated for Wednesday. She wants Rice to explain how she could promote a story "with such certitude" about a spontaneous demonstration over the anti-Muslim video that was so at odds with the classified information to which the ambassador had access. (It was also at odds with common sense, given that there were Al Qaeda sympathizers among the rebel army members that overthrew Muammar el-Qaddafi with help from the U.S. — an intervention advocated by Rice — and Islamic extremist training camps in the Benghazi area.)

The F.B.I. interviewed survivors of the attack in Germany and, according to some senators, had done most of the interviews of those on site by Sept. 15, the day before Rice went on TV, and established that there was no protest. Collins wants to learn if the F.B.I. had failed to communicate that, or if they had communicated it and Rice went ahead anyway?

When Rice heard the president of the Libyan National Congress tell Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation," right before her appearance, that 50 people had been arrested who were either foreign or affiliated with or sympathized with Al Qaeda, why did she push back with the video story? "Why wouldn't she think what the Libyan president said mattered?" Collins wondered.

Why did Rice say on ABC News's "This Week," that "two of the four Americans who were killed were there providing security"? Rice was referring to the two ex-Navy SEAL team members who were C.I.A. security officers working on a base about a mile away. "They weren't there to protect Ambassador Stevens," Collins said. "That wasn't their job."

Rice also said that "we had a substantial security presence with our personnel" — which was clearly not the case. Collins wants to know Rice's basis for saying on ABC that the attacks were "a direct result of a heinous and offensive video." And why did she say "a small number of people" came to the consulate to protest, when that phrase is not in her talking points? Collins is curious why Rice is not angrier, if, as she insists, she was repeating what she was told. "I'd be furious at the White House and F.B.I. and intelligence community for destroying my credibility," the senator said.

Collins said that before she would support Rice for secretary of state, she needs to ascertain what was really going on. "Did they think admitting that it was an Al Qaeda attack would destroy the narrative of Libya being a big success story?" Collins asked. As one of the administration champions of intervening in Libya, Rice was surely rooting for that success story herself.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Editorial: The Pace of Leaving Afghanistan

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

A "steady pace" should mean withdrawing all combat forces on a schedule dictated only by the security of the troops. That should start now and should not take more than a year. We strongly supported the war in Afghanistan following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but after more than a decade of fighting and a cost upward of $500 billion it is time for a safe and orderly departure. If there was ever a serious chance of building a stable and prosperous Afghanistan, it was lost when President George W. Bush abandoned that challenge to pursue his pointless war in Iraq.

It's unclear how Mr. Obama defines "steady pace." He said that his senior commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, would provide him with a formal recommendation on the pace of withdrawals after the November election. But the White House has still not asked General Allen for his assessment, nor has the Pentagon begun considering specific troop levels for 2013 and into 2014.

Michael R. Gordon of The Times reported this week that military commanders are pressing to keep most of the remaining 66,000 troops in Afghanistan until the end of the 2013 fighting season in the fall and then withdrawing them in the year after that. But this slow withdrawal would do nothing to ensure that the Taliban does not regain territory or that Afghanistan's politics stabilize. And any hope of ridding the government of corruption seems less and less likely. What is certain is that the longer troops remain in the battlefield, the more that deaths and injuries will be sustained.

The White House is already beginning to deal with another important decision: whether to leave a residual force after 2014 when the Afghan Army and police forces have full responsibility for the country's security. American and NATO military planners are drawing up the broad outlines of such a deployment. One option calls for about 10,000 Americans and several thousand non-American NATO troops, including a counterterrorism force of about 1,000 and other units to advise Afghan security forces.

White House officials say Mr. Obama will consider options for the residual force soon, because that will affect negotiations already under way between Washington and Kabul on specific terms of their future security relationship. So far, President Obama has failed to make a case to the American people for a residual force of any size.

The negotiations, which could take months, should not be an excuse to drag out a decision on the pace of withdrawing the remaining combat troops. More than 2,000 American military personnel have died in this war, and many thousands more have been maimed. There is no reason to delay the troops' return home by another year.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Editorial: The Crisis in Egypt

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

If true — and the details were not entirely clear — Mr. Morsi's shift would be a pragmatic face-saving measure. The real test is whether it can satisfy his critics, who have filled the streets in protest. They have grown tired of the constant turmoil, economic collapse and decline in government services since Hosni Mubarak was ousted, and they remain distrustful of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party that sponsored Mr. Morsi.

Mr. Morsi's ill-advised decree reinforced suspicions that he is more like the autocrat he replaced than the democrat many Egyptians long for, and has only exacerbated the country's divisions.

The decree issued on Thursday, just as Mr. Morsi was being applauded for helping negotiate the Gaza cease-fire, was stunning in its breadth. It took several steps that could have popular appeal, like removing an unpopular Mubarak-era prosecutor general and paving the way for the retrial of Mr. Mubarak and other officials. But, at its core, it would exempt all of Mr. Morsi's actions from review by the courts and establish what 23 Egyptian human rights groups in a statement called a "new dictatorship."

Mr. Morsi and government officials said he needed the new powers to protect the process of writing the country's Constitution and insisted the decree would last only until the Constitution took effect. The claim that the measure was temporary offered no reassurance because Mr. Mubarak's emergency law remained on the books for 30 years.

But the other concern is not so easily dismissed. Several months ago, the Mubarak-appointed courts dissolved the democratically elected, Islamist-led lower house of Parliament and the first constitution-drafting committee. There were rumors that the courts were about to dissolve the elected constitutional assembly and the upper house of Parliament. If that had happened, the popular will would have been stymied again and it would have been impossible to build the state institutions needed to carry Egypt forward.

Nevertheless, even Mr. Morsi's allies couldn't buy the argument that he should sideline the courts in this way. His justice minister argued publicly for him to back down and three other senior advisers resigned. On Monday, the White House urged Egyptians to resolve their differences peacefully, while the State Department advocated a constitutional process that "does not overly concentrate power in one set of hands."

Mr. Morsi deserves some credit for the Gaza deal, but the United States should not hesitate to speak out when he tramples on democratic principles at home. As the president of an aspiring democracy, Mr. Morsi is trying to balance competing forces, including hard-liners in his own party, Mubarak regime holdovers and secular and liberal opposition activists.

He needs to make space in the constitutional assembly for more of his opponents and work to negotiate political solutions on behalf of all Egyptians. His dictatorial edict has set back that cause.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Ed Columnist: Obama’s New Cabinet

Is that really whom President Obama named on Monday to be the new chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission? A woman who has been at the S.E.C. for the last four years? And, to boot, someone practically joined at the hip with her predecessor, Mary Schapiro? Say it ain't so, Mr. President.

No doubt, Commissioner Walter is a fine public servant. What she is not, however, is a fresh face with new ideas. And isn't that half the point of second-term appointments? They give a president a chance to name cabinet or agency directors who can breathe new life into their departments. Second-term appointments are presidential do-overs.

Take, for instance, Timothy Geithner, the soon-to-be-departing Treasury secretary. All things considered, Geithner wasn't a bad secretary. In no small part because of him, America's banks are far better capitalized — and hence safer — than their European counterparts. But you always had the sense that his heart lay more with the bankers he was overseeing than the homeowners who needed help.

That is why our nominee to replace Geithner is his bête noire, Sheila Bair. As the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a job she held until July 2011, she fought against bank bailouts while pushing for mortgage modifications. Her new book, "Bull By the Horns," is mostly her inside account of the financial crisis. But she also offers a series of sensible policy suggestions. Wouldn't you like a Treasury secretary who believes that interest on debt should not be tax deductible — whether for large financial institutions or home mortgages? I sure would.

Let's move next to the State Department, where an exhausted Hillary Clinton is ready to step down. She has been, without question, Obama's finest appointment. She was also his riskiest. The current favorite for the job, Susan Rice, the United Nations ambassador, is a safe choice, but she doesn't have the breadth that the job requires. Who does? How about Bill Clinton? Seriously.

The president's worst cabinet appointment, on the other hand, has been Eric Holder Jr. at the Department of Justice. Under him, the department got prosecutorial scalps by going after the small fry while letting big guys like Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide, off the hook. Holder has also been tone-deaf in dealing with the Republicans in Congress. Our nominee is a man with a reputation for cleaning up messes: Ken Feinberg, a lawyer who now specializes in victim compensation programs. A former special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, he knows the territory. A master negotiator, he knows how to bridge divides. And his sense of fair play is exactly what this Justice Department most needs.

Department of Defense? David Petraeus. After disclosing an affair with Paula Broadwell and resigning as C.I.A. chief, Petraeus is currently doing his stint in purgatory. The Defense Department in Obama's second term is going to need someone who can cut its budget without hurting its mission — and who can reform the most entrenched bureaucracy in Washington. The military brass will run bureaucratic circles around any defense secretary who doesn't know their tricks. Petraeus can stand up to them.

The current secretary of energy, Steven Chu, is a scientist. A far better choice is a committed environmentalist who also understands the importance of making intelligent energy choices. We know just such a man: Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund. Unlike most environmental groups, the defense fund supports using hydraulic fracturing — fracking — to drill for natural gas. He is on record as saying that there are enormous climate benefits to using natural gas — so long as methane leakage can be minimized. At the Energy Department, Krupp would be in a position to help make sure that happens.

With rumors that Arne Duncan may step down as secretary of Education, we nominate Randi Weingarten to replace him. Risky? You bet. But as the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Weingarten has long claimed to support education reform, so long as it is done with the nation's teachers instead of at their expense. Making Weingarten the next education secretary would give her the chance to put her money where her mouth is.

Which brings us back to the S.E.C. In The Times's account of Walter's promotion, it said that the White House might well offer up a new nominee in the future. We know the right man for the job: Sean Berkowitz. Berkowitz, who, in full disclosure, is a friend, led the Enron task force and prosecuted Enron's top two executives, Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay. So he knows how to nail the bad guys, which has been a problem for the current S.E.C.

Since 2007, he has been the global chairman of litigation for Latham & Watkins, one of the nation's largest law firms. Oh, and one other thing, Mr. President.

He's from Chicago.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Ed Columnist: How People Change

Nick Crews was, by his own admission, a middling father. He enjoyed cuddling with his three kids, but he was frequently away on naval deployments and didn't stay in touch with them once they went off to boarding school.

Over the years, Crews has watched his children (the oldest is now 40) make a series of terrible decisions. "I bought into the fashionable philosophy of not interfering; letting the children find themselves," he told Cristina Odone of The Telegraph of London.

Finally, in February, Crews decided he'd had enough. He sent his offspring an e-mail message, which is now known in Britain as the Crews Missile.

"Dear All Three," he wrote. "With last evening's crop of whinges and tidings of more rotten news for which you seem to treat your mother like a cess-pit, I feel it is time to come off my perch.

"It is obvious that none of you has the faintest notion of the bitter disappointment each of you has in your own way dished out to us. We are seeing the miserable death throes of the fourth of your collective marriages at the same time we see the advent of a fifth."

Crews continued: "I wonder if you realise how we feel — we have nothing to say which reflects any credit on you or us. Fulfilling careers based on your educations would have helped — but as yet none of you is what I would confidently term properly self-supporting."

Then he turned to his grandchildren. "So we witness the introduction to this life of six beautiful children — soon to be seven — none of whose parents have had the maturity and sound judgment to make a reasonable fist at making essential threshold decisions. ...

"The predictable result has been a decade of deep unhappiness over the fates of our grandchildren. If it wasn't for them, Mum and I would not be too concerned, as each of you consciously, and with eyes wide open, crashes from one cock-up to the next. It makes us weak that so many of these events are copulation-driven, and then helplessly to see these lovely little people being woefully let down by you, their parents."

Crews then finished his e-mail. "I want to hear no more from any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an achievement or a REALISTIC plan for the support and happiness of your children to tell me about."

He signed the e-mail, "I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed. Dad."

That e-mail, released by one of his daughters hoping to get publicity for a book she is translating, has made Crews a hugely popular folk hero in Britain. Many parents are apparently delighted that someone finally had the gumption to give at least one set of overprivileged slackers a well-deserved kick in the pants.

The problem, of course, is that no matter how emotionally satisfying these tirades may be, they don't really work. You can tell people that they are fat and that they shouldn't eat more French fries, but that doesn't mean they will stop. You can make all sorts of New Year's resolutions, earnestly deciding to behave better, but that doesn't mean you will.

People don't behave badly because they lack information about their shortcomings. They behave badly because they've fallen into patterns of destructive behavior from which they're unable to escape.

Human behavior flows from hidden springs and calls for constant and crafty prodding more than blunt hectoring. The way to get someone out of a negative cascade is not with a ferocious e-mail trying to attack their bad behavior. It's to go on offense and try to maximize some alternative good behavior. There's a trove of research suggesting that it's best to tackle negative behaviors obliquely, by redirecting attention toward different, positive ones.

It's foolish to imperiously withdraw and say, come back to me when you have a plan. It's better to pick one area of life at a time (most people don't have the willpower to change their whole lives all at once) and help a person lay down a pre-emptive set of concrete rules and rewards. Pick out a small goal and lay out measurable steps toward it.

It's foolhardy to try to persuade people to see the profound errors of their ways in the hope that mental change will lead to behavioral change. Instead, try to change superficial behavior first and hope that, if they act differently, they'll eventually think differently. Lure people toward success with the promise of admiration instead of trying to punish failure with criticism. Positive rewards are more powerful.

I happen to cover a field — politics — in which people are perpetually bellowing at each other to be better. They're always issuing the political version of the Crews Missile.

It's a lousy leadership model. Don't try to bludgeon bad behavior. Change the underlying context. Change the behavior triggers. Displace bad behavior with different good behavior. Be oblique. Redirect.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Ed Columnist: Is Grover Norquist’s Hold on Congress Finally Over?

I once took a long train ride with Grover Norquist. This wasn't intentional. We found ourselves next to each other on the line to board an Acela from Washington, D.C., to New York, and we fell into a conversation, by which I mean that he did a great deal of talking, in that faintly maniacal way of his, while I presented a captive audience. He continued to talk as we walked along the platform and was still talking as we entered the train, so it was more or less unavoidable that we sit together. Besides which, I was genuinely fascinated, which is a very different adjective from amused.

This happened earlier this year, around the time that pundits galore were weighing in on whom Mitt Romney should choose as a running mate, and Norquist regaled me with the case for Luis Fortuño. You know, the governor of ... Puerto Rico.

It was quite a case, replete with riffs on the importance of the Puerto Rican vote in Florida and references to Fortuño's degrees from top-tier American universities. But the odds of Fortuño's selection were somewhere between zilch and hell-freezing-over, and it occurred to me that Norquist's railway soliloquy wasn't supposed to be a plausible argument, merely an attention-getting one. It had less to do with serious policy or sensible politics than with sheer performance. Norquist in a nutshell.

Someday someone will write a dark history — a farce, really — of how he managed to bring nearly all of the Republican Party to heel, compelling legislator upon legislator to lash themselves to his no-new-taxes pledge. Until then we'll have to content ourselves with his misfortune over the last few days. No sooner had a nation digested its turkey than his goose began to be cooked. The spreading rebellion in the Republican ranks was manifest on the post-Thanksgiving Sunday talk shows.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina dissed Norquist on ABC's "This Week," saying that "when you're $16 trillion in debt, the only pledge we should be making to each other is to avoid becoming Greece." On NBC's "Meet the Press," Representative Peter King of New York also stressed that the country's current fiscal woes trumped vows made in less debt-ridden times, and over on "Fox News Sunday," Senator John McCain signaled a receptiveness to new revenue, another dagger to Norquist's dark heart.

All three Republican lawmakers were echoing previous comments of their own and of a small but significant cluster of colleagues, whose numbers continued to grow on Monday, when Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, appearing on CBS's "This Morning," pronounced himself "not obligated on the pledge." It's as if some spell has at long last been broken, and the formerly bewitched villagers are rising up to defy their evil overlord and insist on the possibility of life and even mirth without a deduction for corporate jets.

I celebrate this not because I think tax increases are some budget panacea. They're not even close. In fact there's a serious risk of focusing too much on them and too little on entitlement reform and other potential savings, and one of the real values of the Republican Party has been its insistence, in theory if not always in practice, on careful attention to expenditures.

But over recent years the party lost much of its credibility in this discussion, by dint of the lavish spending and escalating debt under George W. Bush and because of a sophomoric, gimmicky purity that's incarnate in Norquist, who has done his party real damage. He might as well have been onstage during that infamous Republican debate in August 2011 when all eight candidates for the party's presidential nomination said that they wouldn't accept even one dollar in tax increases for $10 in spending reductions. They had devolved into dummies, and Norquist was their ventriloquist.

There's no place for absolutists and absolutism in a democracy, which is designed for give-and-take, for compromise. That's one of the lessons of "Lincoln," which moviegoers are thronging to and intellectuals are swooning for precisely because it illuminates and validates the intrinsic and purposeful messiness of our system. It exalts flexibility. It venerates pragmatism.

And I hope that Republicans and Democrats alike will keep those principles in mind as we approach the so-called fiscal cliff. Norquist certainly hasn't, but then he bears no responsibility for governing and is concerned less with voters and their welfare than with those of us in the news media, who have been too quick to summon him, rewarding his staged and reliable vividness.

In a recent appearance on a Times webcast, he joked that government did need some funding, for "a military strong enough to keep the Canadians on their side of the border," har-har. And he called taxes "thoroughly icky." Then he winked, as if this were all just fun and games. To him, maybe. But the fun is fading fast.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Ed Contributor: Good Neighbors, Bad Border

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

AT a time when territorial disputes over uninhabited outcrops in the East China Sea have led to smashed cars and skulls in China, a similar, if less dramatic, dispute over two remote rocks in the Gulf of Maine smolders between the United States and Canada.

Machias Seal Island and nearby North Rock are the only pieces of land that the two countries both claim after more than 230 years of vigorous and sometimes violent border-making between them.

Except for the occasional jousting of lobster boats, this boundary dispute floats far below the surface of public or official attention, no doubt reflecting the apparent lack of valuable natural resources and a reluctance to cede territory, no matter how small.

But if we are unlikely to resort to arms anytime soon, the clashes in Asia have shown how seemingly minor border disputes can suddenly stoke regional and nationalistic tensions. Our relaxed attitude toward these remote rocks may well be a mistake.

While the United States and Canada have other maritime boundary disputes along their 5,525-mile border, the world's longest, this is the only one left that involves actual chunks of land.

Machias Seal Island is a 20-acre, treeless lump that sits nearly equidistant from Maine and New Brunswick. It, and the even smaller North Rock, lie in what local lobstermen call the gray zone, a 277-square-mile area of overlapping American and Canadian maritime claims.

The disagreement dates back to the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War. The treaty assigned to the newly independent 13 colonies all islands within 20 leagues — about 70 miles — of the American shore. Since Machias Seal Island sits less than 10 miles from Maine, the American position has been that it is clearly United States soil.

But the treaty also excluded any island that had ever been part of Nova Scotia, and Canadians have pointed to a 17th-century British land grant they say proves the island was indeed part of that province, whose western portion became New Brunswick in the late 18th century.

Perhaps more important to the Canadian case, the British built a lighthouse on Machias Seal Island in 1832, which has been staffed ever since. Even today, two lighthouse keepers are regularly flown to the island by helicopter for 28-day shifts to operate a light — even though, like every other lighthouse in Canada, it is automated.

While abundant legal arguments surround Machias Seal Island, natural resources are far less evident. No oil or natural gas has been discovered in the area, nor has it had any strategic significance since it served as a lookout for German U-boats during World War I.

Tour boats from Maine and New Brunswick carry strictly limited numbers of bird watchers to the island to see nesting Atlantic puffins. And the surrounding waters contain lobsters that, thanks to different regulatory schemes and overlapping claims, have occasionally sparked clashes between Maine and New Brunswick lobstermen, although a bumper lobster crop this summer has slackened demand for gray zone crustaceans.

But the lack of hydrocarbons and the current lobster glut make this an ideal time to color in the gray zone.

The United States and Canada settled all their other maritime differences in the Gulf of Maine in 1984 by submitting their claims to the International Court of Justice for arbitration. They could have included the gray zone in that case, but did not. The Canadians had refused an earlier American arbitration proposal by saying their case was so strong that agreeing to arbitration would bring their title into question.

This attitude calls for re-examination. The fact that so little in the way of resources appears to be at stake, far from justifying the status quo, should be the main reason for resolving the issue. And for those concerned about blowback from "giving away" territory, letting the international court decide the case provides the most political cover.

As China and Japan can attest, border disputes do not go away; they fester. And when other factors push them back to the surface — the discovery of valuable resources, an assertion of national pride, a mishap at sea — the stakes can suddenly rise to a point where easy solutions become impossible.

Before that happens, we should put this last land dispute behind us, and earn our reputation for running the longest peaceful border in the world.

Stephen R. Kelly is the associate director of the Center for Canadian Studies at Duke University and a retired American diplomat who served twice in Canada.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Opinionator: More Chips For Tax Reform

Almost lost in the tug of war over whether the top income tax rate should be 35 percent or 39.6 percent is another consequential tax issue: the proper rate for capital gains and dividends.

It was the absurdly low rate on those forms of income — just 15 percent — that yielded Mitt Romney's embarrassingly small tax payments. And that's what also led to Warren E. Buffett's lament that his tax rate was lower than his secretary's.

So as we scurry around looking for new revenue to help address the yawning budget deficit, let's zero in on this special preference.

President Obama has proposed much of the needed adjustment, including eliminating the special treatment of dividends and raising the tax on capital gains to 20 percent for the rich.

Personally, I would go further and raise the capital gains rate to 28 percent, right where it was during the strong recovery of Bill Clinton's first term, and grab hold of a total of $300 billion of new revenues over the next decade.

Inevitably, a chorus of outrage would greet any such increase. Capital investment would be severely impaired! Some of the wealthy might decamp from America! With a new 3.8 percent Medicare tax on unearned income about to take effect, this would exacerbate the disincentives for investment!

Put me down as skeptical about such dire forecasts. During my 30 years on Wall Street, taxes on "unearned income" have bounced up and down with regularity, and I've never detected any change in the appetite for hard work and accumulating wealth on the part of myself or any of my fellow capitalists.

Remember also that corporate leaders have pretty much convinced policy makers of both parties that business taxes should be reformed to allow them to compete more effectively around the globe. Providing this relief makes sense, but since the benefits would flow to shareholders, this is yet another argument for higher taxes on dividends.

Increased revenues, meaning higher taxes, will be a central element of any successful long-term budget plan, and President Obama is right to insist that the wealthy — the slice of America that has come through the recession in by far the best financial health — should provide those funds.

Here's the math: We need at least $4 trillion of long-term deficit reduction, with a substantial portion — on the order of $1.2 trillion — coming from new revenues.

That means other veins belonging to the wealthy will need to be tapped. Raising the tax rates for American households with incomes above $250,000 per year, as President Obama has proposed, would certainly be a productive and welcome step.

But viable alternative measures are available. At a minimum, we need to implement the "Buffett Rule," the concept that Americans making more than $1 million a year should pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. This wouldn't raise a huge amount of money — between $47 billion and $160 billion depending on what else is done to rates — but it would reinforce the responsibility of the wealthy to pay their fair share.

---

---

Another important step toward tax fairness would be to address the indefensibly low 15 percent tax rate on the famous "carried interest," the fee received by private equity and certain hedge fund investors.

As a beneficiary of the carried interest loophole, I've seen firsthand the lack of any difference between the work involved in generating a carried interest and the work done by millions of other professionals who are taxed at the full 35 percent rate.

Another productive area for raising revenue would be limiting deductions available to the wealthy. The highest-income Americans don't need tax-free health insurance, mortgage interest deductions or deferred taxation on retirement funds.

Mitt Romney himself proposed an efficient and effective approach: just limit the total amount of deductions. Even excluding charitable deductions from this limitation — as I would personally advocate — capping deductions at $25,000 would raise large amounts of revenue, an estimated $885 billion over the next 10 years.

While Mr. Romney called for applying the limitation to all Americans, a fairer approach would be to impose it only on the wealthiest.

These types of tax changes would have the ancillary benefit of defusing a specious argument that conservatives love to make: that raising the top rates on ordinary income would hurt small business.

Certainly no small business can claim to be damaged by a higher rate on dividends or capital gains or by the proprietor's losing some tax deductions.

So I'm all for raising rates as President Obama has proposed. But in a divided government, compromise is needed, and happily there are other chips that can be put on the table as we bargain over how to raise the needed revenue from the wealthy.

A version of this article appeared in print on 11/25/2012, on page SR12 of the NewYork edition with the headline: More Chips For Tax Reform.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Op-Ed Columnist: Fighting Fiscal Phantoms

These are difficult times for the deficit scolds who have dominated policy discussion for almost three years. One could almost feel sorry for them, if it weren't for their role in diverting attention from the ongoing problem of inadequate recovery, and thereby helping to perpetuate catastrophically high unemployment.

What has changed? For one thing, the crisis they predicted keeps not happening. Far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have continued to pile in, driving interest rates to historical lows. Beyond that, suddenly the clear and present danger to the American economy isn't that we'll fail to reduce the deficit enough; it is, instead, that we'll reduce the deficit too much. For that's what the "fiscal cliff" — better described as the austerity bomb — is all about: the tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to kick in at the end of this year are precisely not what we want to see happen in a still-depressed economy.

Given these realities, the deficit-scold movement has lost some of its clout. That movement, by the way, is a hydra-headed beast, comprising many organizations that turn out, on inspection, to be financed and run by more or less the same people; dig down into many of these groups' back stories and you will, in particular, find Peter Peterson, the private-equity billionaire, playing a key role.

But the deficit scolds aren't giving up. Now yet another organization, Fix the Debt, is campaigning for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, even while making lower tax rates a "core principle." That last part makes no sense in terms of the group's ostensible mission, but makes perfect sense if you look at the array of big corporations, from Goldman Sachs to the UnitedHealth Group, that are involved in the effort and would benefit from tax cuts. Hey, sacrifice is for the little people.

So should we take this latest push seriously? No — and not just because these people, aside from exhibiting a lot of hypocrisy, have been wrong about everything so far. The truth is that at a fundamental level the crisis story they're trying to sell doesn't make sense.

You've heard the story many times: Supposedly, any day now investors will lose faith in America's ability to come to grips with its budget failures. When they do, there will be a run on Treasury bonds, interest rates will spike, and the U.S. economy will plunge back into recession.

This sounds plausible to many people, because it's roughly speaking what happened to Greece. But we're not Greece, and it's almost impossible to see how this could actually happen to a country in our situation.

For we have our own currency — and almost all of our debt, both private and public, is denominated in dollars. So our government, unlike the Greek government, literally can't run out of money. After all, it can print the stuff. So there's almost no risk that America will default on its debt — I'd say no risk at all if it weren't for the possibility that Republicans would once again try to hold the nation hostage over the debt ceiling.

But if the U.S. government prints money to pay its bills, won't that lead to inflation? No, not if the economy is still depressed.

Now, it's true that investors might start to expect higher inflation some years down the road. They might also push down the value of the dollar. Both of these things, however, would actually help rather than hurt the U.S. economy right now: expected inflation would discourage corporations and families from sitting on cash, while a weaker dollar would make our exports more competitive.

Still, haven't crises like the one envisioned by deficit scolds happened in the past? Actually, no. As far as I can tell, every example supposedly illustrating the dangers of debt involves either a country that, like Greece today, lacked its own currency, or a country that, like Asian economies in the 1990s, had large debts in foreign currencies. Countries with large debts in their own currency, like France after World War I, have sometimes experienced big loss-of-confidence drops in the value of their currency — but nothing like the debt-induced recession we're being told to fear.

So let's step back for a minute, and consider what's going on here. For years, deficit scolds have held Washington in thrall with warnings of an imminent debt crisis, even though investors, who continue to buy U.S. bonds, clearly believe that such a crisis won't happen; economic analysis says that such a crisis can't happen; and the historical record shows no examples bearing any resemblance to our current situation in which such a crisis actually did happen.

If you ask me, it's time for Washington to stop worrying about this phantom menace — and to stop listening to the people who have been peddling this scare story in an attempt to get their way.

13.25 | 0 komentar | Read More