The Bull in Full

On the death of Osama bin Laden

It is May 2, 2011, the day that the world woke up to the death of Osama bin Laden.  This is not strictly accurate, as the news broke late last night. (I fell asleep waiting for the press conference to start, and for the NY Times story to quit timing out because of traffic.)  But this is the day we come to terms with what this means.

Unsurprisingly, spontaneous celebrations broke out around the country.  Also unsurprisingly, a great many people winced at the celebration of the extrajudicial ending of a human life.  I'm fully torn between these -- I want badly to celebrate the end of a decade of the world gone mad in reaction and counter-reaction to this man's actions, but from the very first instant I read the news, I felt a deep discomfort with that.  This entry is me trying to write my way out of that.  It is disjointed -- I have cut and paste paragraphs multiple times trying to get it to flow -- but I suppose that's what happens with blogging.

My first post on Facebook, the now seemingly universal repository for first reactions (at least for those of us who refuse to Tweet), referenced that I would rather he'd been captured and put to some sort of trial.  And yet, to what end?  We hear that he refused to surrender, to what extent that can be trusted, and was instead shot in the head. (I've also heard that the SEALs were ordered to kill, not capture).  Is this surprising?  Can we ever believe that this man would have surrendered to American forces in any circumstances?  Would he have ever accepted the judgment of any court, Western, International, or Islamic?  And what court would have had jurisdiction?  Even if bin Laden were to have accepted it, the US has steadfastly refused to submit to the International Criminal Court, for fear that our own war criminals might fall beneath its eye.  The worry with other terror suspects has always been that trials would merely serve as venues of propaganda for the accused, and surely that must be the worry here.  I confess that from a standpoint of personal vengence, having him rot the rest of his life in a Supermax prison would have been preferable to a death in battle that will inevitably become a symbol martyrdom for some of his crazed followers, those that are not disheartened by the fall of the symbolic leader of al Qaeda.  And still, I maintain that submitting him to the cold, hard verdict of a deliberative system of justice would have, more than any double-tap to the skull, proven the power and enduring superiority of the Western system of justice to his globalized, perpetual jihad.

The loss of his death is not somehow in our cruelty, or in its injustice, but in bin Laden's ability to drag us, as a country publicly into the ugly reality of human issues contested at the point of a gun.  In the litany of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, extraordinary renditions, waterboarding, stress positions, Bradley Manning, and so many other offenses, putting a bullet in the brain of Osama bin Laden cannot but fall to the bottom of injustices.

Andrew Sullivan, in his irrepressible dramatism, has declared this a victory of good over evil.  I disagree.  This is not "good" vs. "evil," not only in the sense that as a Christian I must at some level forgive bin Laden, but because being Reformed, I cannot believe that we are "good."  I believe that we were the better party in this, and am glad at the result, but in the end, we are all fallen, and we are all forgiven.

Someone on Facebook quoted from Proverbs today, and I think it's quite fitting:

¹⁷ Do not rejoice when your enemies fall,
   and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble,
¹⁸ or else the Lord will see it and be displeased,
   and turn away his anger from them.

Osama bin Laden made his own decision to embrace the life of warrior.  He set himself in opposition to not just the people of, but the idea of the USA.  He refused any avenue that we might consider civilized, declared unequivocally his fight was by "Jihad and the rifle alone," (as per the New York Times obituary) and lived that to his last day.  If we quail at his death in a firefight in Abbottabad, it should not be for his sake.  As Gabriel Garcia Marquez said, for men like bin Laden, this is a natural death.  What saddens me is that there was maybe once a chance, maybe it was 9 years ago if it existed at all, to bring bin Laden to the US in chains, try him, and toss him into a Supermax prison where he would die of something like liver failure, a death from which no honor or martyrdom could be derived, to respond to his international reign of terror, violence, and mass murder with cold steel and dispassionate justice. 

However, it has been settled, not in the court I would desire, but in the manner bin Laden himself demanded -- the contest of the gun.  I will not make an argument for the purity and unimpeachability of the USA.  But it was bin Laden, not we, who chose this fight and this venue.  He stood himself up as the greatest enemy of the US and the West, and rejoiced when we agreed.   He refused any settlement of the contest other than the battles of blood and death.  In this fight which engulfed much of the world, he pitched an endless war between himself and the USA, and in that contest, I back the US without hesitation.  It has now come to the only settlement of the conflict he would accept, and the US has won.  And that is, yes, worth quite a celebration.  Not, as the writer of Proverbs warns us against, at the fall of our enemy, but for our own survival in the conflict.

Manzi, Hayek, and climate change

Since Andrew Sullivan came around to opposing the Iraq war and supported Obama, and I can't in any good faith refer to him as a rhetorical opponent in current ideological divisions, Jim Manzi has become my favorite conservative to read and wrestle my disagreements with.  I even had an oblique chance at dialog last year when Sully published a few of my e-mails on climate change, and Manzi responded.  He has consistently been one of those at a considerable ideological distance from me who I enjoy reading thoroughly.

I've appreciated Manzi's rigorous analysis on climate change, and was looking forward to a long form, updated perspective on climate change and carbon regulation as he was guest blogging this week.  Which is why I'm extremely disappointed in today's note on the social cost of carbon as he guest blogs at Sully's place.  This essay, to put it frankly, is an unholy mess.

Manzi is assuredly more versed in Hayek than I am, but my understanding of the basic warning is that more government planning of the economy leads to a decrease in individual liberty, which has a concomitant deleterious impact on productive economies due to the inflexibilities of a rigid state program.  If this is a fair summary, then I find Manzi's argument that carbon regulation is somehow akin to this in any but the most broadly ideological forms extremely underdetermined.

The meat of the post, I would say, offers what I would call a roundly convincing argument that meaningful quantitative analysis of the economic impacts of carbon regulation approaches impossibility, or as Manzi puts it, 'There is no analytical basis on which we can really “put a price on carbon”.'  I might add that he has equally demonstrated that there is no analytical basis on which we can really put a price on the costs of carbon emissions. 

I don't think this is a malicious or intentionally misleading error.  My understanding of Manzi's analytical personality is that his primary impulse is to try to tackle complex issues with highly sophisticated quantitative analytical methods, and shake out strong and useful conclusions.  From what I have read of him, he is remarkably good at it.  However, as the saying goes, when one spends all day using a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail, and in this case, I think Manzi is using his quantitative skills to pound a screw.

For one thing, Manzi brushes the entirity of "social cost of carbon" into the potential decline in world economic product (a loss of approximately 3%).  This not only excludes costs which I would deem "social" such as habitat and species loss, land degradation, and changes in local climate, but also aggregates the risk into a global pool, which is assuredly too crude a measure to make a meaningful judgment.  To take the extreme case, what if the 3% loss were entirely distributed in 6% of the world's population losing half their economic productivity?   The 3% measure looks small on paper, but in this instance 180 million people (over half the population of the US) just had their livelihoods utterly destroyed, to the point that they are now refugees.  While this extreme concentration of risk is certainly fiction, it is patently clear to both the casual reader and the sophisticated analyst that the costs of climate change will not be equally distributed.  The risks to the majority of the 160 million in Bangladesh should be enough to invalidate such crude aggregation of costs.

For another, in his association of all British driving taxes with "anthropogenic global warming (AGW)," he elides the myriad other costs of driving, including public health, land use, public land preservation, safety and enforcement, etc.  Yes, once again these costs are difficult to quantify.  This, however, does not mean they do not exist.

After dozens of paragraphs of analytical spinning, Manzi reaches the third to last, and engages in a breathtaking series of theoretical leaps.  Costs are impossible to quantify, therefore "It becomes pure power politics," and therefore is a state imposition of economic costs without quantitative justification, and is therefore akin to total state planning of the economy.  Excuse me, but WHAT?!? 

To put this as simply as I can, there is a vast universe between "inability to sufficiently quantify" and "a different theoretical justification [for socialism]."  What Manzi is experiencing is not the unearthing of socialist motives, but the limits of the quantitative revolution of the 20th century.  There was a time, as strict Enlightenment rationalism and to a lesser extent, positivism reached their zenith, that we supposed that all complex issues could be solved with sufficient quantitative analysis.  Difficult questions such as the costs of action or inaction on climate change demonstrate this as well as anything, but the lesson to take here is not that we have no analytical tools at all and retreat to pristine ideological tropes.  (In this, I think Manzi is unintentionally making what I might call the Bachmann move -- it's impossible to quantify, and it involves government action, therefore it is the first step towards tyranny.)  Rather, it should be a clarion call to dust off analytical methods tossed aside during much of the quantitative revolution, such as informal logic, deep description, dialectics, rigorous observation, ethics, and comparative studies.  (One can even retain critical rationalism, just without getting lost in numbers.) 

There are others attempting to do their best to apply broader principles to understanding the impacts of climate change.  Manzi's argument over the past 18 months has been to repeatedly emphasize that the correct response to this question is to quantify the costs and the benefits.  He now illustrates that those costs and benefits are impossible to quantify, and therefore takes it as Q.E.D. that we must retreat to extremely abstract arguments (as in, this kind of smells vaguely like Hayek).  This might be forgivable if Manzi put any effort whatsoever into a rigorous consideration of the situation, along the lines of what Hayek actually did in his critique of government planners.  Instead, he makes this jump in a few brief sentences which rely entirely on vague notions.  Unfortunately, I have to say I found this neither convincing nor even challenging.  Instead, it seems to mark for me the end of Manzi's meaningful contribution to the debate, which is really too bad.

Friday's deep thought

I regret that security considerations in the present day logistically prevent me from throwing a pie at Michelle Bachmann.

Jim Webb proposes prison reform commission

This is fantastic news:

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., wants a "top-to-bottom review" by Congress of the nation's criminal-justice system with an eye toward reducing the growing prison population.

With the support of the White House and some Senate Republicans, Webb is proposing a blue-ribbon commission spend 1½ years looking at law-and-order issues.

Webb's office says the panel should take a sweeping look at the way the nation controls crime, metes out punishment and returns felons to society.

A background document says of the commission: "Its task will be to propose concrete, wide-ranging reforms to responsibly reduce the overall incarceration rate; improve federal and local responses to international and domestic gang violence; restructure our approach to drug policy; improve the treatment of mental illness; improve prison administration, and establish a system for reintegrating ex-offenders."

Naturally, this is just one of those "blue ribbon commissions" and won't do anything on its own, but at least the conversation is starting at high levels. 

Mass transit and rail funding survive stimulus cuts

I'm breathing a sigh of relief today.  As the details of the conference stimulus package start to trickle out, it's looking like both rail and transit pieces of the stimulus made it through conference with at least some significant amount of money attached, as Elana Schor at TPM reports:

The House's original stimulus bill, as we've reported for several weeks, gave mass transit the short end of the stick in favor of $30 billion for highways with no requirement that repairs be prioritized over new road-building.

But according to a confidential summary of the final stimulus deal that we've just been passed (view it here), mass transit got some more attention in the end. Amtrak and high-speed rail programs got $9.3 billion, an increase of about $6 billion from the Senate's version of the stimulus.

Still, environmentally sustainable transportation didn't completely win the day. A $5.5 billion transit-modernizing grant program eagerly anticipated by environmental advocates, which senators at first wanted to open up to highways, was removed entirely from the final stimulus deal. 

Congress did agree on $8.4 billion for general public transportation grants, however. Vice President Biden (D-Amtrak), if you had any role in this: thanks.

At this point it's sounding like around $18 billion for rail and transit combined, which is still only a little over half of what went to highways, but that's way, way better than what I was afraid was going to happen. 

If you want mass transit in the Triangle, call Hagan and Burr now

I'd love to write more about this, but time is short, and the time to act is now.

The stimulus package moving its way through Washington is, to be fair, a bit of an ugly monster.  However, there's a lot of good programs in it, many of which are unfortunately the ones that are on the chopping block right now.  Energy efficiency upgrades for government buildings, which one would think would fall into the duh-obvious category for good stimulus, are among those at risk of cuts.  However, what's worse is mass transit funding is at risk too, while both Houses of Congress seem intent on stuffing more and more highway funding into it.

I hate to say I told you so, but a year ago when Bush's stimulus bill was making it's way through Congress, I spilled a bunch of electronic ink on this subject.  Sadly, in one of those, "damn, I wish I'd been wrong" moments, sure enough, huge amounts of new tax breaks did absolutely nothing to stimulate the economy, and just set the stage for the economic collapse of 2008.  With massive government funds getting shipped overseas, the public treasury turned upside down by Bush's tax cuts, and major backlogs in infrastructure left wanting by the crony capitalism of the previous administration, it was no surprise that simply dumping more tax cuts into the economy was about as effective as pushing on a string.

What we needed then, just as now, was infrastructure investment as stimulus.  Early on in the process, it sounded like what this was what the stimulus bill was going to be about.  However, the rotting corpse of the Reagan/Goldwater orthodoxy (which Reagan himself might have even blanched at today) brought out the bellicose GOP and the nervous Nellies from the Democrats, and of course we had to have some largely useless tax cuts in the bill. 

Regardless, while there is a fair amount of infrastructure spending in the bill, what those in Washington seem to be failing at realizing is that, as per Shellenberger and Nordhaus, this is exactly the time we need to be thinking about how to restructure our economy to be less dependent on fossil fuels and more ready to make cuts in our carbon emissions.  Government spending has an enormous effect on shaping the economy, and despite the stammerings from policy mouthpieces of the Right's political machine, nobody in the GOP is doing anything to lessen that impact.  Massive federal spending on highways simply continues to push our economy towards a single passenger vehicle-focused transportation system, when either the absence of federal spending, or less disastrously, greater balance in transportation dollars, would allow for a correction towards less polluting forms of transportation.

The bill from the House originally had $30 billion in road projects and just $10 billion for all mass transit and rail projects.  Thankfully Rep. Oberstar from Minnesota lead a revolt that got a little over $3 billion added in funding.  It's hard to keep everything straight in the swirl of information coming out of Capitol Hill today, but it sounds like the GOP is trying to strip out some of that mass transit funding as part of the "centrist" compromise.  From the reports of the STAC committe, to complete the biggest transit dreams of the Triangle, including passenger rail improvements, local bus expansion, para-transit, and some form of regional rail, whether heavy or light, we'd need about $1 billion in federal dollars to match a combined $1 billion from state and local sources.  (I'll also note that for most highway projects, the Feds pay about %80 of the tab -- yet another way in which highway funding is ridiculously skewed and unproductive.)  Given that we have at least 3/4 complete plans sitting around right now, we'd very likely be excellent candidates to receive this money, which would not only provide jobs in planning and construction of the system, but would likely trigger a building boom near the planned stations, we've got a vested interest in keeping that money in the bill.  But if the hand-wringers among the Democrats and the pro-highway wing of the GOP (including our friends at the John Locke Foundation) get their way, what chance do you think that money has in coming out in the next few years.

An excellent diary at Daily Kos made a fantastic point.  Obama's best campaign slogan, by my lights, was, "We are the ones we've been waiting for," with a close second being, "I'm not asking you to believe in my power to change government, I'm asking you to believe in yours."  If you want transit in the Triangle, now is the time to call.  Here are the office numbers.  The lines are understandably a bit busy, so keep trying:

Kay Hagan
202-224-6342

Richard Burr
202-224-3154

Because rail and transit are STILL stimulus where we need it.

More transit funding in the stimulus package

Elana Schor at TPM has a good note on environmentalists pointing out that way too much money in the stimulus package is going towards highways, potentially large new highway projects, rather than towards rail projects.  While I'd be thrilled if a little of that ended up in the East End Connector, my guess is that most of those highway projects are not quite so oriented towards dense development and are likely loop roads and other sprawl inducing projects.

Given the choice, I'd be much happier of some of that transit money came in and hit the bus system or jumpstarted the TTA's rail plans.  James Oberstar of Minnesota is making quite the fuss over this, and just needs some backup.  I don't know our representatives' positions on this, but a phone call to tell them that you support more transit and less highway funding in the stimulus bill certainly can't hurt.

Websites (with phone numbers on them) of our representatives:

David Price

Richard Burr

Kay Hagan

An Open Letter to Senator-elect Kay Hagan

Dear Senator-Elect Hagan,  (That's a fantastic opening to be able to write!)

While I realize you haven't yet even had a chance to get assigned an office on Capitol Hill, there's one question which you'll likely be faced with even before you take the oath of office, and that's the question of what to do about Senator Lieberman and his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee. 

I realize that the internal politics of the US Senate are complex and tricky, but two factors stand out.  The first, and most obvious, is not just that the Senator campaigned against President-elect Obama, but did so in particularly nasty ways.  He spoke at the Republican National Convention, repeatedly campaigned with Senator McCain, and openly and hostilely questioned President-elect Obama's patriotism, intelligence, and preparedness to be President, calling him "dangerously naive" at one point.  It's one thing to support the other party's nominee, which certainly has precedent in the Senate.  It's quite another to do so in such a quarrelsome and mud-slinging manner, particularly for someone such as Senator Lieberman, who claims to be above such ugliness.

Secondly, and more importantly, however, Senator Lieberman utterly failed to fulfill the duties of the chairmanship.  In his role, it was uniquely his responsibility to investigate the failure of the response to Katrina, the rampant corruption and waste in homeland security contracts, and many other issues that Chairman Henry Waxman, Mr. Lieberman's House counterpart, went after aggressively.  Mr. Lieberman declined to do any investigating of the catastrophic Bush administration from his highly important seat atop one of the most important oversight committees in the Senate. 

There is precedent for this.  When Democratic senators endorsed Barry Goldwater in 1964, they lost their committee seniority, including chairmanships where applicable.  If Mr. Lieberman chooses to caucus with the Democrats, I see no reason to force him out.  However, elections have consequences, as do our actions during them.  Given that Senator Lieberman has in almost all ways left the Democratic party behind, I ask that you support action in the Senate to deny him another term as chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee.

This is not about retribution.  This is about following standard Senate practice and ensuring competence at the Chairs of the Senate's most important committees.

Respectfully yours,
Michael Bacon
Durham, NC

A brief comment on the McCain campaign robocalls

If the robots win, we'll have to listen to techno.

Ralph Stanley (yes THAT Ralph Stanley) records Obama radio ad for Virginia

I'm in a bit of awe at the moment.  With the polls in Virginia showing Obama with a decent lead, this might be the nail in the coffin.  Ralph Stanley has recorded a radio message endorsing Barack Obama.  (TPM has the audio.)

Obama's problem with older white voters in the mountains is partially about race, of course, but I think a bigger problem is the general mistrust of outsiders, and Obama looks like such a stranger people have trouble supporting him.  That said, having RALPH STANLEY, the co-creator (with the late Bill Monroe) of bluegrass, vouching for him has to be worth something.  He'll still lose southwest Virginia by a good margin, I'm sure, but my guess is this makes the margin smaller.