U.S. Army Spc. Jamus Grandstrom of Reading, Pa., and Spc. Daniel Collazo of Newport, Va., Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 10th Mountain Division, run communications equipment from a sandbag bunker in the Daymirdad District Center, Wardak province, Afghanistan, Jan. 9, 2011. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Sean P. Casey
U.S. Border Patrol agents monitor the U.S.-Mexico border on in December 2010 near Nogales, Arizona.CNN) -- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Friday canceled the controversial virtual fence along the U.S. border with Mexico, citing technical problems, cost overruns and schedule delays since its inception in 2005.
The Secure Border Initiative-network, a high-tech surveillance system to reduce border smuggling, so far has cost taxpayers almost $1 billion for two regions in Arizona, covering 53 miles overall on the 2,000-mile border, according to a Homeland Security report.
Napolitano announced "a new path forward for security technology" along the border that is tailored to the needs of each region and provides "faster deployment of technology, better coverage and a more effective balance between cost and capability," she said in a prepared statement.
"There is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution to meet our border technology needs," Napolitano said about her decision to end the problem-plagued virtual fence.
Her new plan would use mobile surveillance systems, drones, thermal imaging devices and tower-based remote video surveillance, she said.
"Where appropriate, this plan will also incorporate already existing elements of the former SBInet program that have proven successful, such as stationary radar and infrared and optical sensor towers," Napolitano said.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, lauded the decision.
"The secretary's decision to terminate SBInet ends a long-troubled program that spent far too much of the taxpayers' money for the results it delivered," Lieberman said in a written statement. "From the start, SBInet's one-size-fits-all approach was unrealistic. The department's decision to use technology based on the particular security needs of each segment of the border is a far wiser approach, and I hope it will be more cost effective."
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Mississippi, ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said the virtual fence "has been a grave and expensive disappointment since its inception."
Thompson said he is glad that homeland security officials are "finally listening to what we have been saying for years -- that the sheer size and variations of our borders show us a one-stop solution has never been best," he said in a prepared statement. "I applaud them for taking this critical step toward using a more tailored technologically based approach to securing our nation's borders."
Napolitano said "unprecedented" manpower, infrastructure and resources along the border will complement her new border security plan.
The U.S. Border Patrol is better staffed than at any time in its 86-year history, having nearly doubled the number of agents from approximately 10,000 in 2004 to more than 20,500 in 2010, according to a homeland security report.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has increased the number of federal agents deployed to the Southwest border, with a quarter of its personnel currently in the region.
President Obama has also deployed 1,200 National Guardsmen to the border.
In fiscal years 2009 and 2010, federal agents seized more than $282 million in illegal currency, more than 7 million pounds of drugs, and more than 6,800 weapons along the border -- increases of more than $73 million, more than 1 million pounds of drugs and more than 1,500 weapons compared with 2007-2008.
Also, the Border Patrol's nationwide apprehensions of undocumented immigrants decreased from nearly 724,000 in 2008 to about 463,000 in 2010, a 36 percent reduction, indicating that fewer people are attempting to illegally cross the border, a homeland security report said.
The National Oil Spill Commission on Tuesday released a voluminous report on the causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and its implications for the future of offshore drilling in the United States. The report, a doorstop of more than 300 pages, contains a long list of advice for the oil industry and federal regulators about how to avert a future catastrophe. But many of the commission's recommendations require action from Congress—and given the current political climate, those changes might be hard to make for at least the next two years.
"The industry fought measures in Congress and previous administrations to tighten safety standards and prevent regulations," said Richard Charter, senior policy adviser for the marine program at Defenders of Wildlife. "If industry continues its past practice of foot-dragging and a recalcitrant attitude about actually implementing safer drilling practices, then what we will be left with is a big pile of paper and no action."
The commissionreleased an advance copy[1]of one chapter of the report last week that outlined the risks that rig operator BP, owner Transocean, and cement-provider Halliburton took that likely caused or contributed to the explosion. In the rest of the report, while allocating the blame for the Deepwater spill largely to the three companies involved, the commission made it clear that it believes systemic failures across the industry underlie the tragedy. The authors note that Transocean and Halliburton are two of the largest offshore drilling contractors, working with a number of other major industry players beyond BP.
"The Deepwater Horizon disaster did not have to happen," said commission co-chairman and former Florida Sen. Bob Graham (D) on Tuesday. "It was both preventable and foreseeable…That it did happen is the result of a shared failure that was years in the making."
The commission laid out a number of changes that Congress would need to make to prevent a repeat disaster: raising the cap on liability (which ensures that companies that spill only have to cover up to $75 million in damages in the event of a disaster), extending the window of time granted to regulators to evaluate permit applications for new drilling from 30 to 60 days, and creating a new office in the Department of Interior charged specifically with overseeing safety in offshore drilling. The commission also recommended better compensation for regulators (an incentive to keep them working in government rather than industry) and a dramatic increase in funding for the Department of Interior agency that oversees drilling.
The commission did not offer a new figure for the liability cap, which wasset under the Oil Pollution Act[2]in 1990 and has not been increased since then. There were several proposals before Congress last year following the spill, including one that would eliminate the cap entirely and force companies to be on the hook for all the costs incurred in a spill, though the change, along with a larger spill-response bill passed by the House, was never approved in the Senate.
With Republicans now in control of the House, few expect that any package of spill response measures will be considered this year—let alone one as aggressive as the measures the lower chamber approved last year. Nevertheless, Graham was optimistic about the likelihood of proposals actually going somewhere in a Republican-controlled House. "I believe that this issue and the searing impact that the Deepwater Horizon has had on the conscience of America is such that it will override an ideological preference for less government, less government intrusion," he said.
His co-chairman (and former Environmental Protection Agency administrator under George H.W. Bush), William Reilly, also said he thought Congress would heed the advice. "It's very hard to predict Congress," he said, "but in the conversations I've had, we have had a respectful hearing." The co-chairmen will appear before several House and Senate committees later this month to discuss the proposals. "We're going to make a lot of noise," Reilly said.
But the early signs from the new Congress aren't too promising. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), the new chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, hasoutlined plans[3]to increase domestic drilling. Hisstatement in response[4]to the commission report, while acknowledging that some of the proposals "deserve real consideration," struck a similar chord against any measures that could rein in drillers. "Congress needs to ensure that offshore energy production meets the highest safety standards, but as gasoline prices continue to rise we cannot allow ourselves to become increasingly dependent on hostile foreign nations for our energy needs," he said.
The industry certainly provided no cheering section for the report. The American Petroleum Institute, which last weeklaid out its 2011 mission[5]to make it easier for oil companies to drill in the US, released a statement Tuesday claiming that the industry has already undertaken "numerous steps to further improve safety." The oil industry's largest trade group argues that more regulations aren't necessary: "API is deeply concerned that the commission's report casts doubt on an entire industry based on its study of a single incident." American Solutions for Winning the Future, Newt Gingrich's pro-drilling 527 committee, dismissed the report as"anti-energy blather"[6].
The defensive stance from oil interests, says oil industry veteran Bob Cavnar, can be blamed at least in part on the fact that the commission itself lacked anyone from the industry; instead it is made up largely of academics and environmentalists. "The major changes to offshore drilling require congressional action," said Cavnar, whose bookDisaster on the Horizonassessed the causes of the blowout on the rig. "With a Republican Congress, the chances of those changes being made are zero unless the industry pushes it, and because the industry rejects the report, that's not going to happen."
While many in the environmental community welcomed the commission's advice, they noted that even those proposals are still not enough to bring the risks of an accident down to zero. Many groups still want see offshore drilling stopped altogether.
"I think the recommendations are pretty tepid given the severity of the crisis," said Jackie Savitz, director of pollution campaigns at the advocacy group Oceana. But, she admitted, "Even the small things they're suggesting, I think it's going to be hard to convince Congress to make those changes."
Here are a few interesting news stories I never got around to writing about this week that are worth a read:
A day after issuing alandmark decisionon mountaintop removal coal mining, the EPA official in charge of water issues, Peter Silva,announced his departure, Politico reports.
Anew studyfrom a pair of Canadian climate researchers finds that dramatic climate changes may still be in store for the next 1,000 years even if humanity does take drastic actions to cut emissions. The good news is that they still think cutting emissions could reduce those impacts.
America 2050released a new studyon high-speed rail corridors in the United States that have the potential to attract the most ridership. The winners: New York-Washington, DC; Chicago-Milwaukee; Los Angeles-San Diego; Tampa (via Orlando) to Miami; Dallas-Houston; Atlanta-Birmingham; Portland-Seattle; and Denver-Pueblo.
TheNew York Timesreports that, thanks to a provision signed into the military authorization law last week, the Pentagon willhave to buy American solar panels—a move that the Chinese government isn't going to be too happy about.
Spencer Ackermanreports for Danger Roomabout how Afghanistan's "green Marines" have cut fuel consumption for generators by nearly 90 percent by using solar panels.
The student journalists at the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative at Northwestern University launched abig package of stories this weekon the implications of climate change.
The Food and Drug Administrationrecalled a candy barnamed "Toxic Waste Nuclear Sludge" on Friday, citing potentially unsafe levels of lead. Apparently the name itself was not enough to put people off of eating the
Meanwhile, it could take Washington state 105 years to close the gap between black and white students in fourth grade reading, according to a 40-state report by theCenter on Education Policycited Tuesday byEducation Week. On Tuesday,Education Weekalso posted a report by theUS Government Accountability Office: Family job loss, foreclosure, and homelessness may be why 13 percent of American students transfer schools four or more times. Worse, the same transfer students frequently have lower standardized reading and math test scores and higher dropout rates. According to the GAO report, these students are also disproportionately poor and African-American.
Why are Black and Latino kids in Texas performing one to two grade levels higher than their peers in California?Washington Postcolumnist Kevin Huffmanargues that California has a systems problem; schools and social safety nets are behind the success in Texas.
In North Carolina, a tea party-backed, largely Republican school boardhas voted to abolish school integration policies,WaPoreports.Daily Koshas the details on the school board's new superintendent, Brig. General Anthony Tata—a former FOX news commentator whose Facebook "likes" include Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. In an effort to stopthe reassignment of thousands of black and Latino students, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has filed a civil rights complaint.
Speaking of institutional problems, this week Tom Horne, Arizona's newly elected attorney general, officially declared that Mexican-American studies programs violate state law,The New York Timesreports. Other ethnic studies courses remain untouched.
Also this week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced that he wants to eliminate tenure for public school teachers and install a system of five-year teacher contracts instead. Districts can then renew these contracts based on merit, reports theWall Street Journal. Now also clamoring to join the anti-teacher tenure camp:Idaho,Ohio, and New York.
On Sunday,60 Minutes broadcast the news that there were 140 errors in a fourth grade history book used in Virginia public schools. One example is the assertion that a number of African-Americans fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. ReadThe Atlantic’sTa-Nehisi Coatesfor a primer on why that's false.
And speaking of slavery, would you teach Mark Twain'sHuck Finnin a high school level American Literature class? This weekI sat down with a black English teacher at Mission Highwho explained why the racial epithet alone wouldn't keep the book out of his classroom.
The repeal vote on the floor of the House isn't even close to the most important thing happening to the health-care law right now. For that, you'd need to look across town, to where the Institute of Medicine isdiscussinghow the secretary of Health and Human Services should define the term "essential health benefits."
This is the judgment that underlies the whole project. If you're an individual and you have coverage that meets essential health benefits, you don't need to worry about the individual mandate. If you're a mid-sized company and you offer coverage that meets the definition, you're similarly in the clear. But if you don't have coverage that's good enough, you either need to buy it, or upgrade what you've got. Everything the insurers offer in the exchanges has to be as good as or better than whatever counts as essential health benefits. Everything that mid-sized employers offer has to meet the standard, too. The question is, what's the standard?
If you've readSection 1302of the legislation -- and you have, right? -- it'd be easy to think that benefits had been defined. And they have -- sort of. The legislation mentions nine specific categories of care that have to be included (pediatric, hospital, etc.), and specifies different levels of comprehensiveness (as defined by the percentage of annual health-care costs the policy is expected to cover) that the exchanges will offer. But those elements give shape to the discussion over essential health benefits, they don't conclude it. The same paragraph that ticks off those categories also instructs that "the Secretary shall define the essential health benefits."
The question is how specific you want to go in trying to protect people from insurance products designed to fail them at moment of maximum need and expense. As Sara Rosenbaum, Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Health Services at George Washington University, says, "insurers have all kinds of ways to discriminate against people who have serious health conditions once they're covered by watering down their benefits." The fact that insurers can't turn you away for preexisting conditions doesn't mean they can't design clever plans that make it harder for you to get coverage if you develop a serious condition. "An example is a woman with multiple sclerosis who needs certain therapies to keep her functioning," continues Rosenbaum, "but is told she won’t be covered because she won't 'improve.’ " The legislation doesn't necessarily disallow that now. Should the regulations?
The problem is that as you get more specific with the regulations, you cut off space for innovation in insurance design, make policies pricier, and write more existing insurance products out of compliance. And as Jon Gruber, a health economist at MIT, argued before the panel, Section 1302 "is already a much broader mandate than was ever in place in U.S." Maybe that's enough.
It's a hard question, but I side with the "less-is-more" crowd -- at least for now. Regulations can be toughened and tightened at a later date by either this Secretary of Health and Human Services or one of her successors. But make them too tough or too tight at the start and you'll cause a lot of needless disruption and perhaps disallow some products that would've worked out unexpectedly well. The good thing about giving regulators a lot of power and discretion going forward is that they don't have to use too much of it now.
As The Times’s Dalia Sussmannoted on Tuesday, Americans have generally become more protective of gun ownership rights in recent years.
There are some exceptions to the rule — for instance, according to theGeneral Social Survey, conducted intermittently since 1972, the percentage of Americans who think permits should be required before a gun can be obtained has gradually risen (to 79 percent in 2008 from 72 percent in 1972). Background checks for gun owners are overwhelmingly popular, attracting the support of as many as 90 percent of Americans. And while most Americans say they do not want gun control regulations to become stricter, even fewer — about 10 percent — think they should be made more lax.
Still, the overall pattern is reasonably clear. According to Gallup surveys, for instance, the number of Americans favoring a ban on handguns has been on a long-term decline and is now about 30 percent, down almost 10 percentage points from a decade earlier:
What’s interesting is that this has occurred despite gun ownership becoming less common. When the General Social Survey was first conducted in 1973, about half (49 percent) of Americans reported having a firearm in their households. But the fraction was down to 36 percent by 2008:
It’s interesting to ask why, exactly, this has happened. Someone looking at the trends a couple of decades ago might very easily have guessed that support for gun control would tend to increase as the population gradually became more urban, since gun ownership is much less common in cities.
Could changes in the rate of violent crime have something to do with it? Perhaps, but it is hard to track any sort of one-to-one relationship between crime rates and public opinion on guns. The rate of violent crime increased steadily in the United States for most of the past half-century, peaking in 1991, before embarking upon a relatively steep decline. But support for gun rights generally increased both as the crime rate was rising and then after it began to fall.
Partisan politics, of course, might also have played a role. I reviewed theofficial party platformsfor both Democrats and Republicans since 1960, in order to see what positions they have generally taken in the past on gun control.
The respective positions of the parties have shifted over time. In1968, Republicans took a moderate position on guns as part of Richard Nixon’s emphasis on law and order. Their platform favored “enactment of legislation to control indiscriminate availability of firearms” while “safeguarding the right of responsible citizens to collect, own and use firearms for legitimate purposes,” and recommended a balance between federal and state responsibilities.
By1992, however, Republican language was less equivocal, and claimed that liberals were weak on guns, just as they were on national defense:
We note that those who seek to disarm citizens in their homes are the same liberals who tried to disarm our Nation during the Cold War and are today seeking to cut our national defense below safe levels.
This was something new; in 1984 and 1988, the Republican Party platform did not mention guns at all (nor did the Democratic Party platform, for that matter). Perhaps the dynamics of the presidential election of 1988, in which bothGeorge H.W. Bushand Michael Dukakis had to combat the perception of “wimpiness” (culminating in the infamous image of Mr. Dukakis awkwardly riding in a tank), inspired Republicans to think that this kind of rhetoric might be effective.
By2004, gun rights held an even more central position in the Republican platform, with nearly 400 words devoted to them. The 2004 platform invoked the Second Amendment much more confidently than in the past, and its support for gun rights was more sweeping, opposing licensing and registration requirements and chiding liberals for what it called “frivolous lawsuits against firearms manufacturers” while promising to “improve opportunities for hunting for Americans with disabilities.”
The Democratic position on gun control has waxed and waned, meanwhile. George McGovern’s platform in1972called for a ban on handguns, explicitly citing the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the attempted assassination of George Wallace during his presidential campaign.
The Democrats’ language became much more cautious in 1976 and 1980 under Jimmy Carter, and gun control wasn’t mentioned at all in their 1984 or 1988 platforms.
Bill Clinton’s platform in1996, however, was quite confident on the issue of gun control, promoting Mr. Clinton’s success in passing an assault weapons ban and calling Republicans out for their foot-dragging on the issue:
Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, and George Bush were able to hold the Brady Bill hostage for the gun lobby until Bill Clinton became President. With his leadership, we made the Brady Bill the law of the land. And because we did, more than 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers have been stopped from buying guns. President Clinton led the fight to ban 19 deadly assault weapons, designed for one purpose only — to kill human beings. We oppose efforts to restrict weapons used for legitimate sporting purposes, and we are proud that not one hunter or sportsman was forced to change guns because of the assault weapons ban. But we know that the military-style guns we banned have no place on America’s streets, and we are proud of the courageous Democrats who defied the gun lobby and sacrificed their seats in Congress to make America safer.
By2004, however, Democrats again seemed to be in retreat on the issue. John Kerry’s platform that year opened by promising to “protect Americans’ Second Amendment right to own firearms” and then advocated only measured steps to limit access to guns, like “closing the gun show loophole.”
Their2008platform was similarly tempered on the issue, with Democrats essentially agreeing to disagree:
We recognize that the right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition, and we will preserve Americans’ Second Amendment right to own and use firearms. We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation, but we know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne.
It is perhaps not surprising, then, that support for gun control measures has declined in recent years, with one of the parties essentially having surrendered on the issue. Somewhere along the line — perhaps between 2000 and 2004, when the rhetoric in their platform changed significantly — Democrats concluded that the issue was a political loser for them and they stopped fighting back.
It may also be that gun control has became less a priority for the Democratic Party’s key stakeholders. On one hand, major cities — where Democratic voters and donors have long been concentrated — became much safer during the decade of the 2000s, and so gun violence would have seemed a less immediate threat to an Upper East Side liberal in 2008 than it would have in 1988.
On the other hand, gun control fits somewhat awkwardly into the constellation of political issues. On issues like gay rights and abortion, Democrats have advocated for a more expansive interpretation of the protections offered by the Constitution, something where stricter controls on gun ownership would arguably conflict. Certainly by 2004, when the Democratic platform conceded the position that the Second Amendment explicitly protected private gun ownership (rather than just “well-regulated militias”), they were placing themselves on somewhat infirm intellectual ground to the extent they might later seek to call for further regulation on guns.
Perhaps Democrats ultimately made the right political calculation. But they might also have made the outcome of the debate over gun control something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, since with exceptionally sharp and cagey groups like the National Rifle Association as their adversaries, the Democrats certainly weren’t going to win any arguments that they were tentative about engaging in
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has already made it abundantly clear that he expects Republicans to demand concessions in return for raising the nation’s debt ceiling, which will have to be done sometime in the coming months. Like aslew of equallyirresponsible Republicans,Paul has issued demandsthat he wants fulfilled in return for his vote to increase the debt limit, essentially holding the credit-worthiness of the United States hostage to his brand of radical fiscal conservatism.
Last night, Paul was asked about his stance on the debt ceiling by Fox News’ Sean Hannity, where he replied that the only way he will vote to increase the debt limit is if Congress adopts “an ironclad rule that we will balance the budget from here on after”:
HANNITY: So it will take what to get your vote to raise the debt ceiling?
PAUL:I think an ironclad rule that we will balance the budget from here on after, and that’s what it’s going to take. Not a rule that they can break. You know, they passed pay-as-you-go, they broke it 700 times in the late nineties and the early part of this century. It has to be a very strict rule, so we have to have different rules that they are forced to obey.
Watch it:
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) — who has some radical ideas about the federal budget himself — has said that failure to raise the debt ceiling is “unworkable.” “Does it have to be raised? Yes,you can’t not raise the debt ceiling,” Ryan said. Leaving aside themyriad disastrous consequencesthat would result if the U.S. failed to raise the debt ceiling — and the fact that the current Congresscan’t tie the hands of a future Congress, as Paul seems to imagine they can — Paul’s demand shows that he’s completely out-of-touch with what the federal budget actually looks like.
After all, to balance the budget “from here on after” once the debt ceiling is raised necessarily implies balancing the budget this year. And to do so without raising any additional revenue would entail a44 percent cut in literally everythingthe government does: everything from Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending to highway funds, the FBI and the Coast Guard. Removing Social Security and defense from the equation thenrequires an 89 percent cutin everything else. Responsible budgetingmeans finding a balancebetween the important and popular functions of government and the revenue necessary to fund them. Any budget plan that actually succeeds in reducing the deficit without pummeling the middle- and lower-class has to include tax increases and must be phased in over time, as the economy gets back to full strength. But Paul would risk the United States defaulting on its debt obligations to implement his irresponsible slash-and-burn vision of the budget.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is meeting with corporate CFO's to discuss corporate tax reform.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is meeting todaywith a group of corporate CFO’sto discuss corporate tax reform, as talk heats up on Capitol Hill ofa wider tax reform effort. The goal, should the administration pursue corporate tax reform, is torework a corporate codethat has a high statutory rate compared to the rest of the industrialized world, but is so riddled with loopholes and giveaways that many corporations pay little to no corporate income tax. The corporate tax code is both inefficient and encourages tax-dodging.The administration has pledged that corporate tax reform, if it occurs, will be revenue-neutral, meaning any reduction in rates must be accompanied by a corresponding elimination of loopholes and other junk, so that the overall amount of corporate tax revenue doesn’t fall. However, as the Washington Post’s Lori Montgomery noted today, revenue-neutral reform makes such action “virtually useless as a method of deficit reduction.”
Indeed, there’s no reason that corporate tax reform be deficit-neutral: it should raise additional revenue! As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted, “large disparities in the treatment of different types of corporate investment create opportunities for reforms that could be revenue neutral —or even raise revenue— while at the same time improving economic efficiency.”
At the moment, the U.S. raises less corporate tax revenuethan most developed countries, due to its inefficient and loophole-riddlen corporate code. According to the Office of Management and Budget, “corporate tax receipts will account forjust 7.2% of federal revenuesin 2010, with large corporations contributing less than one-sixth as much as small business and individual taxpayers to the Federal Treasury.” Fifty years ago, corporate tax receipts were23 percent of federal revenue, and “and individual income tax payments wereless than twicethose of large corporations’ tax payments.”
Of course, Republicans will oppose any effort to increase corporate revenue, even if it means that the corporate tax code has a lower-rate and is easier to navigate. But with the U.S. facing large, structural deficits for years to come, failing to grab the opportunity to raise revenue — while still making the corporate income tax more efficient and aligned toward productive investment (instead of tax preferential activities) — would be irresponsible, and mean that more of the deficit-reduction burden will have come via other tax increases or cuts to important and popular programs. The era in which Exxon and General Electric payno income taxes in the United Statesand Google’s tax ratehovers at 2.4 percentshould end, if those companies want an easier tax code with which to work.
