Does anyone know the answers to these questions??

Since the Emir of Dubai is Bill Clintons employer, is he responsible for paying for Hillarys's healthcare??

Can Walmart have its employees work as 'unpaid volunteers' like Hillary can do we her employees?

Does Hillary pay for the healthcare of her campaign employees?

Corporate and State Influence on Military Spending.

The defense budget is profoundly skewed by corporations like Haliburton and Blackwater along with Congressmen who benefit from local programs. How would a candidate realistically address this intractable problem?

This question,related to #7, deserves its own focus.

I would add public education. Numerous questions, including: undoing the damage of NCLB while keeping its better goals, and funding it; addressing the achievement gap; the tension between local control and the state-by-state (and suburb vs. urban and rural) funding and achivement inequities; teacher quality and remuneration; special education; funding for universal pre-K, and also community college and subsidies for state colleges and universities. I could think of more. Done right, this could be, like health care, a budget buster unless we have different and somewhat more taxation combined with a massive reduction in war spending--both of which I would support if it got us health care and good public education as a nation. I know it's a cliche, but make us a little more like some European countries.

TRADE.

This isn't even on the lists. The presumption of the neoliberal consensus is that strong.

We had a candidate who was specifically and directly anti-NAFTA, but it got no play. Now we have two candidates who are most likely simple neoliberals, but who haven't been pushed on the issue. And why push? Everyone knows that "free trade" is for the good of all.

Since obviously I think that we can more-or-less have our cake and eat it too on #5 (single payer -- and only single payer -- saves enough through reduced overhead and rationalization/planning), that I am going to comment on #3.

No Huckabee sucked on this too. Freeing violent felons (rapists, murderers) because the talk Jesus and have friends who hate Clinton is not a good Criminal Justic policy. But we do have a problem Prison Industrial Complex, locking up non-violent mostly minority drug offenders, and using prison construction as a rural white job employment (and contractor payoff) program.

More $$$ for schools, housing and jobs... less for prisons and decrease/eliminate terms for non-violent/drug offenses.

Given that Huckamuck released a rapist from prison on the harebrained idea that he'd been "framed" by the Clintons...and said rapist raped and killed two more women before being caught...he really does not need to talk about who we put in prison. Just saying.

a) Can we have a discussion about race that's about the complexity of the subject rather than how it makes white people feel?

b) Can we have an honest discussion about the limits of faith in the public sphere?

c) Can we talk honestly about how much Americans understand or not the civic process in their own country rather than having that understanding assumed? This is an education/ignorance of the political process question. What should we expect people to realistically understand in a complex society?

d) Can we admit that the American dream is on life support headed towards DOA?

e) Can we admit the limits of what any President or leader can do? I mean none of them walk on water- can they admit to that and admit to what their weaknesses are?

f) Can we fully recognize how risk has shifted in this society (related to the American dream question)?

Those are my top issues philosophically. Of course, there is the sexuality issues, but that relates more broadly to the limits of using faith in the public arena.

#1: As I argued here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/2/91724/5276/581/393000

I favor progressive income tax (maybe 5 gradations up to 50%; but keep it low below whatever the median is) + Inheritance tax.

Get rid of all deductions and credits.

Keep planning and filing simple. Steal the simplify and make fair -- can do it on one page, with one page of instructions and tax-table -- from the flat taxers (but without the regressive flat part).

Multinational institution building- What sort of role will such institutions play your foreign policy? Which institutions to you foresee taking major roles in the next decade? What sort of new institutions would you build? How would you reform existing ones? In general, what sort of international order do you envision? How important is national sovereignty?

How about all the myriad criminal investigations and charges to be brought against Bush and his gang, to say nothing of war crimes.

Taxation: Do they think our current levels are sufficient?

Not too surprising that spending was not mentioned in these oh-so-thoughtful questions.

This is a quite specific and personal item, but:

* Privitization of the military.

I know that Obama has done some work in the Senate on this, but I'd be interested to hear what Clinton has to say on this.

IMO the biggest issue in this country is the War on Drugs.

How about what our role shoul dbe in potential and current genocidal issues?

Wanted to clarify on the item above - Obama has done work in the Senate to add accountability for both the contractors and subcontractors with Private Military Contractors.

Didn't want you all to think he was pro-PMC...

These are important, relevant questions to ask. But I cringe when I hear them. It brings up a paradox: Ideally, I would want my candidate to be forthcoming in answering these questions and approaching the problems with a realistic and practical viewpoint. But in the real world, any politician who answers these questions is simply asking to be beaten over the head with their answers (no matter what they may be).

So questions like these are basically just traps, set for honest, forthright policymakers so that they can hurt themselves.

You really have two different lists here. Matt's list and your #1 and #5, are, as you said "politically tricky" issues that the next president will have to deal with. Your #2, 3 and 4 are not politically tricky, and the president won't have to deal with them. They are institutionalized parts of our government and society, and have been for most of the last century.

Matt is wonky liberal, so he wants politicians to tell him what they'll do about these tricky issues so he can write about it or decide who to vote for. But the military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex aren't "issues" in the same way, they are institutions that need to be eliminated (along the lines institutionalized segregation), and neither Barrack Obama nor Hillary Clinton are going to have or spend the necessary political capital to do that. As you point out, they won't even talk about them.

I have one: gun control. There's been some discussion of it, but given that a new shooting appears in the news almost every day, I think we should press the candidates on the matter. Obama's comment on gun control legislation was "I don't think we can get that done." That's not satisfactory. Clinton has been similarly uninspiring on this point.

Unfortunately, the military-industrial complex is something we can't eliminate.

If you accept the idea that we need to defend ourselves, and that we will continue to need to do that in the forseeable future, then there will have to be money spent on defense, and hence, military contractors and defense industries.

If you don't accept that we need to defend ourselves, you're not going to be elected to be commander-in-chief.

So we have to muddle through somehow, reducing their influence. Now there's a winner of a campaign platform...

"

Momma said wonk you out

« OBAMA AND VIRGINIA. | Main | CLASSY COULTER. »
THE UNMENTIONABLES.

Matt has A Very Important blog post on issues that haven't been well-discussed during the presidential campaign, but are quite important for the next president. He has a good starting list: Deficit reduction, the direction of the Fed, jurisprudence, root causes of terror, and a handful of others. These issues, of course, aren't being talked about because they're politically tricky, and they lack sufficiently powerful constituencies. But that's no reason for us to not mention them. So I'd add:

Taxation: Do they think our current levels are sufficient? Putting aside political questions, what sort of taxation should America have? Is the current cocktail of payroll, income, and capital gains taxes the right way to do this? Are there alternative systems we might want to try?

Unipolarity: Do they agree that preserving America's dominant status should be an explicit tenet of American foreign policy? Do they think Paul Woflowitz was right to say "the United States to perpetuate its military supremacy and prevent the emergence of any rival superpower?"

Prison Culture: Obama has spoken a bit about inequities in the justice system, but, to be honest, the best statements on this have come from Huckabee, who says we lock up a lot of people we're mad at, rather than afraid of. Do they agree with our system of retribution-based justice? Or would they prefer a more rehabilitative approach? And how would they pursue that?

Military Spending: Do we really need to be spending this much? If so, why? Would a 10 percent shift in resources towards soft power and humanitarian uplift not do more to increase our international prestige and security?

Health Spending: Seriously, how do we cut it? Tamp down on services? Cut reimbursement rates? Vastly expand individual financial vulnerability? Smart cost sharing? What's your end game to keep our budget from exploding?

I'll add more as I think of them. Suggest your own in comments, and I'll publish the best ones on the front page.

Posted by Ezra Klein on February 8, 2008 3:44 PM | Permalink

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COMMENTS (19)

Does anyone know the answers to these questions??

Since the Emir of Dubai is Bill Clintons employer, is he responsible for paying for Hillarys's healthcare??

Can Walmart have its employees work as 'unpaid volunteers' like Hillary can do we her employees?

Does Hillary pay for the healthcare of her campaign employees?

Posted by: Anonymous | February 8, 2008 4:11 PM

Corporate and State Influence on Military Spending.

The defense budget is profoundly skewed by corporations like Haliburton and Blackwater along with Congressmen who benefit from local programs. How would a candidate realistically address this intractable problem?

This question,related to #7, deserves its own focus.

Posted by: Paja | February 8, 2008 4:19 PM

I would add public education. Numerous questions, including: undoing the damage of NCLB while keeping its better goals, and funding it; addressing the achievement gap; the tension between local control and the state-by-state (and suburb vs. urban and rural) funding and achivement inequities; teacher quality and remuneration; special education; funding for universal pre-K, and also community college and subsidies for state colleges and universities. I could think of more. Done right, this could be, like health care, a budget buster unless we have different and somewhat more taxation combined with a massive reduction in war spending--both of which I would support if it got us health care and good public education as a nation. I know it's a cliche, but make us a little more like some European countries.

Posted by: anonymous | February 8, 2008 4:22 PM

TRADE.

This isn't even on the lists. The presumption of the neoliberal consensus is that strong.

We had a candidate who was specifically and directly anti-NAFTA, but it got no play. Now we have two candidates who are most likely simple neoliberals, but who haven't been pushed on the issue. And why push? Everyone knows that "free trade" is for the good of all.

Posted by: DivGuy | February 8, 2008 4:24 PM

Since obviously I think that we can more-or-less have our cake and eat it too on #5 (single payer -- and only single payer -- saves enough through reduced overhead and rationalization/planning), that I am going to comment on #3.

No Huckabee sucked on this too. Freeing violent felons (rapists, murderers) because the talk Jesus and have friends who hate Clinton is not a good Criminal Justic policy. But we do have a problem Prison Industrial Complex, locking up non-violent mostly minority drug offenders, and using prison construction as a rural white job employment (and contractor payoff) program.

More $$$ for schools, housing and jobs... less for prisons and decrease/eliminate terms for non-violent/drug offenses.

Posted by: Dr.SteveB | February 8, 2008 4:31 PM

Given that Huckamuck released a rapist from prison on the harebrained idea that he'd been "framed" by the Clintons...and said rapist raped and killed two more women before being caught...he really does not need to talk about who we put in prison. Just saying.

Posted by: emjaybee | February 8, 2008 4:32 PM

a) Can we have a discussion about race that's about the complexity of the subject rather than how it makes white people feel?

b) Can we have an honest discussion about the limits of faith in the public sphere?

c) Can we talk honestly about how much Americans understand or not the civic process in their own country rather than having that understanding assumed? This is an education/ignorance of the political process question. What should we expect people to realistically understand in a complex society?

d) Can we admit that the American dream is on life support headed towards DOA?

e) Can we admit the limits of what any President or leader can do? I mean none of them walk on water- can they admit to that and admit to what their weaknesses are?

f) Can we fully recognize how risk has shifted in this society (related to the American dream question)?

Those are my top issues philosophically. Of course, there is the sexuality issues, but that relates more broadly to the limits of using faith in the public arena.

Posted by: akaison | February 8, 2008 4:38 PM

#1: As I argued here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/2/91724/5276/581/393000

I favor progressive income tax (maybe 5 gradations up to 50%; but keep it low below whatever the median is) + Inheritance tax.

Get rid of all deductions and credits.

Keep planning and filing simple. Steal the simplify and make fair -- can do it on one page, with one page of instructions and tax-table -- from the flat taxers (but without the regressive flat part).

Posted by: Anonymous | February 8, 2008 4:40 PM

Multinational institution building- What sort of role will such institutions play your foreign policy? Which institutions to you foresee taking major roles in the next decade? What sort of new institutions would you build? How would you reform existing ones? In general, what sort of international order do you envision? How important is national sovereignty?

Posted by: Jack | February 8, 2008 4:40 PM

How about all the myriad criminal investigations and charges to be brought against Bush and his gang, to say nothing of war crimes.

Posted by: Paul Joy | February 8, 2008 4:41 PM

Taxation: Do they think our current levels are sufficient?

Not too surprising that spending was not mentioned in these oh-so-thoughtful questions.

Posted by: El Viajero | February 8, 2008 4:49 PM

This is a quite specific and personal item, but:

* Privitization of the military.

I know that Obama has done some work in the Senate on this, but I'd be interested to hear what Clinton has to say on this.

Posted by: Rob | February 8, 2008 4:57 PM

IMO the biggest issue in this country is the War on Drugs.

Posted by: Floccina | February 8, 2008 4:58 PM

How about what our role shoul dbe in potential and current genocidal issues?

Posted by: Eric | February 8, 2008 4:59 PM

Wanted to clarify on the item above - Obama has done work in the Senate to add accountability for both the contractors and subcontractors with Private Military Contractors.

Didn't want you all to think he was pro-PMC...

Posted by: Rob | February 8, 2008 5:02 PM

These are important, relevant questions to ask. But I cringe when I hear them. It brings up a paradox: Ideally, I would want my candidate to be forthcoming in answering these questions and approaching the problems with a realistic and practical viewpoint. But in the real world, any politician who answers these questions is simply asking to be beaten over the head with their answers (no matter what they may be).

So questions like these are basically just traps, set for honest, forthright policymakers so that they can hurt themselves.

Posted by: Andrew G | February 8, 2008 5:21 PM

You really have two different lists here. Matt's list and your #1 and #5, are, as you said "politically tricky" issues that the next president will have to deal with. Your #2, 3 and 4 are not politically tricky, and the president won't have to deal with them. They are institutionalized parts of our government and society, and have been for most of the last century.

Matt is wonky liberal, so he wants politicians to tell him what they'll do about these tricky issues so he can write about it or decide who to vote for. But the military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex aren't "issues" in the same way, they are institutions that need to be eliminated (along the lines institutionalized segregation), and neither Barrack Obama nor Hillary Clinton are going to have or spend the necessary political capital to do that. As you point out, they won't even talk about them.

Posted by: Sam L | February 8, 2008 6:01 PM

I have one: gun control. There's been some discussion of it, but given that a new shooting appears in the news almost every day, I think we should press the candidates on the matter. Obama's comment on gun control legislation was "I don't think we can get that done." That's not satisfactory. Clinton has been similarly uninspiring on this point.

Posted by: Alex | February 8, 2008 6:05 PM

Unfortunately, the military-industrial complex is something we can't eliminate.

If you accept the idea that we need to defend ourselves, and that we will continue to need to do that in the forseeable future, then there will have to be money spent on defense, and hence, military contractors and defense industries.

If you don't accept that we need to defend ourselves, you're not going to be elected to be commander-in-chief."

And the best false choices award goes to ...

Control health spending? (1) Eliminate pre-existing conditions in all health insurance, a process which absorbs tremendous waste in (a) finding them in the first place, and (b) fighting about them at claim time; (2) eliminate coordination of benefits from overlapping policies, another huge source of delay and finger-pointing, another huge time-waster; (3) assure payment promptly of at least everything above X to health providers -- i.e., use social insurance to guarantee them against unlimited exposure to non-payment -- in order to (a) reduce the waste of 18% per year monthly accumulations on bills that may or may not ever get paid, but that add to amounts to delinquency amounts; (b) reduce the need for collection agencies and demands for payment on bills that were in fact paid three years ago; (c) reduce or eliminate the double-counting delinquency risk built into healthcare pricing on top of the 18% finance charges; (d) reduce the costly and PR-damaging denial of care by hospitals that will at least know their costs are limited and manageable; (e) cause a huge reduction in the cost of private insurance with at least national umbrella coverage that puts a ceiling on cost exposure and, with minimal rules to permit easy comparison shopping and competition. (Cut out the middleman of re-insurance, just make it a straight hand-off when the threshold is reached.)

These will save quantum amounts more in waste than controls on alleged over-treatment -- expert X says yes, expert Y says no -- over-scheduling of doctor visits by little old ladies, and the like -- i.e., controls that will demand a bureaucracy bigger than the problem itself.

After we get these enormous costs out of the way, we can examine with clearer heads what other unneccessary costs can be wrung out of the system. But do not under-estimate how much a system causing enormous payment delays to the healthcare providers and the huge risk of complete delinquencies messes up everything, including what should be a straightforward decision-making process based solely on best medical practice.

I'd like the hear their positions on:

1) Signing statements and other executive branch power grabs in recent years
2) If the US Supreme Court overruled Roe v Wade, would they let the states decide or would they support Federal legislation or a Constitutional amendment to ensure abortion rights?
3) Holding members of the Bush administration and the military who engaged in war crimes such as torture accountable
4) Keeping or abolishing the 60 votes for cloture requirement in the US Senate
5) Replacing the electoral college with some other system (popular vote with a runoff perhaps)
6) What criteria they will use to select Federal judges especially members of the US Supreme Court and how they feel about amending the Constitution to impose term limits or a requirement to be reappointed periodically for the high court or requiring a 2/3 vote for nomination to the Supreme Court if life tenure is preserved
7) Do they support the death penalty and what if any process changes do they support to ensure no innocent people are executed?

I agree that the War on Drugs needs to be put under the microscope. Right now the issue is viewed purely as a moral/behavioral issue, and the prevailing opinion is "Illegal drugs are bad, so the W on D is good." But this issue links to the prison culture, racism, justice and punishment, education, Constitution, and others. Someone needs to be able to examine this issue methodically without being branded as a pot-head. (Not that I really have a problem with pot-heads...)

Does the presence of oil in Iraq make it a strategic imperative for the U.S. to remain there for the indefinite future? Why or why not?

Do the candidates believe it is a good idea for presidents to have unilateral authority to decide whether the nation goes to war? That is what Hillary Clinton voted for in the Iraq war resolution.

Do the candidates believe it is acceptable for the U.S. to attack nations which have not attacked us? Under what cirumstances? (This is also what Hillary Clinton voted for in the Iraq war resolution.)

Do the candidates believe that the person serving as president is immune from civil legal process while holding office? Why? This is an argument the Clinton Administration made in court, and I wonder if Hillary Clinton agreed with it then, and whether she agrees with it now.

Do the candidates believe that the Secret Service officers should be exempt from testifying about any crimes they witness in the White House? This is also an argument made by the Clinton Administration in court, and I wonder if Hillary Clinton agreed with it then, and if she agrees with it now.

Let me add several more:

1. Vouchers as part of the national healthcare policy. That would cover Obama's "people can't afford a mandate" and Clinton's push for a mandate.

2. Peak Oil. Good doorknob, nobody's discussing this.

3. American exceptionalism and imperialsm-lite as part of foreign policy.

I get so damn annoyed when smart people willingly accept,and even perpetuate, false choices around healthcare reform.

#5 on your list is an excruciating example of this; it's wrong to let it just hang there and mislead readers, so...

The New England Journal of Medicine http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/358/6/549?query=TOC

Market-Based Failure — A Second Opinion on U.S. Health Care Costs

By Robert Kuttner, Feb. 7, 2008

"...Relentless medical inflation has been attributed to many factors — the aging population, the proliferation of new technologies, poor diet and lack of exercise, the tendency of supply (physicians, hospitals, tests, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and novel treatments) to generate its own demand, excessive litigation and defensive medicine, and tax-favored insurance coverage.

Here is a second opinion. Changing demographics and medical technology pose a cost challenge for every nation's system, but ours is the outlier. The extreme failure of the United States to contain medical costs results primarily from our unique, pervasive commercialization. The dominance of for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical companies, a new wave of investor-owned specialty hospitals, and profit-maximizing behavior even by nonprofit players raise costs and distort resource allocation. Profits, billing, marketing, and the gratuitous costs of private bureaucracies siphon off $400 billion to $500 billion of the $2.1 trillion spent, but the more serious and less appreciated syndrome is the set of perverse incentives produced by commercial dominance of the system..."

click above link to read on; it's great. Makes an airtight case for improved and expanded Medicare-for-all.

What's the role of NATO? Not just the US role, but the role of the whole thing. What's it for?

(My gut feeling is that long-view historians in 50 years time will be talking a lot about what happened to NATO under Bush.)

With the coming collapse of the Army I think now would be a good time to discuss the all volunteer armed forces vs compulsory national service (w/ non-military option)

Won't ever happened and most progressives are against the idea no matter how often they discuss the number of poor and minorities in the enlisted ranks.

WTF??

You first aknowledge the need for military and announce your support for universal conscription and then say there should be a non-military option??

Is this some leftover loathing of the military? Hey, you either need one or you don't...take your pick.

Domestic:
I am always plugging for the need to resetting the power balance the American labor market -- in particular by introducing mandatory sector-wide labor agreements (at least for those labor sectors that want them: supermarket workers and airline employees would kill to get them. All the other domestic issues together don't add up to the importance of getting Americans paid enough again.

International security:
Don't defeat our Islamic enemies, REDUCE them (perhaps to a trickle) by getting our 51st state (Israel) the hell out of Islam's 51st state (the Palestinian homeland). If Israel looks like (at least white) American ducks and walks like a middle class prosperous duck, and talks English like a duck and doesn't just hang around with ducks, but the other half of its ethnic group actually are ducks (!)...
...Arabs understand that if the other half of Israel's ethic group were New Zealanders that Israel wouldn't possess all those shiny new F-16s: and so we end up trading skyscrapers for settlements.

Liberating the Palestinian homeland from American's 51st state (how the rest of the world sees it) is much more consequential for our national security than being forced to watch the Iraq war on television.
********************
Upon reflecting that there was no our way academic (so-called) progressives were ever going to get up to speed on what is really "all-important" domestically or internationally, I had actually resolved not to even look in on Ezra's (best. but still hopeless) blog anymore -- hopeless futility.

But, Thomas Palley Guardian column rekindled my hope this morning for one more try. As another replier (on Economist's View blog) noted Palley "...has managed to fit all the macroeconomic pieces of the last 25 years together..."

Read Thomas Palley's article here (Ezra and Matt and others):
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/thomas_palley/
2008/02/the_debt_delusion.html

1. Guantanamo, military tribunals, habeas corpus, and torture.

I can't believe, with all the debates we've had, that no newsperson has considered these questions of sufficient importance to ask them.

2. Broadband internet access
The U.S. ranks close to 30th in broadband access, and we pay significantly (orders of magnitude) more for significantly (orders of magnitude) slower speeds.

The free market clearly is not working in the U.S. Has either candidate given thought to the need for an Eisenhower-like federal push for 1st world broadband.

Apparently El V is not familiar with conscientious objectors or the fact that you can't actually have all 27 million 18-25 year olds in the armed forces at once. Presently 4 million Americans become eligible for military service every year which is one million more than the combined number of active (1.5M) and reserve (1.5M) personnel combined. You have to have other service options for the approximately 3.5 million 18 year olds who would not be inducted each year.

I served, did you?

You have to have other service options for the approximately 3.5 million 18 year olds who would not be inducted each year.

????

I thought the goal was to expand the military and provide it with quality troops. It appears that is not your goal at all.

I did not serve. However, I do, indeed, understand the need for military and support a large and powerful US military to carry out the will of the civilian government.