Father Sirico’s gift-giving tips

The Rev. Robert Sirico is not your ordinary parish priest. He is not only the pastor of St. Mary Catholic Church in Kalamazoo, Mich., he’s the co-founder and president of The Acton Institute, a market-friendly think tank devoted to promoting “a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.”

Father Sirico, a frequent contributor to the country’s top op-ed pages and regular commentator on TV, has made it his extra-spiritual calling to educate future religious leaders about the principles – and moral virtues—of a free-market economy. I talked to him by phone Tuesday from his church in Kalamazoo about Christmas, gift giving and the health of Christianity.

Q: Why has Christianity been so successful for 2,000 years?

A: I think we have to understand that Christianity inherits a lot of its presupposition from Judaism, so we have to begin by linking Christianity to Judaism, which parenthetically is why Christianity has no place for anti-Semitism in it. I think that Christian and Jewish anthropology accounts for having laid the foundation for the building of societies that are free and virtuous. This understanding of who the human person is – in a transcendent dignity but a physical reality, a real-world embrace of contingency, of historical circumstance, indeed the emergence of economics—comes from this anthropological understanding. If I was to point to one thing, that would be the one thing that accounts for the success of Christianity and the building of Western Civilization.

Q: What or where are Christianity’s most important challenges today?

A: Today the greatest challenge of Christianity, both here in the United States and most acutely in Europe, is the challenge of secularism; the attempt to live off the legacy of Christianity without reference to its roots. What secularism does—and its moral companion, moral relativism—is attempt to have structures and appearance and success predicated on a Judeo-Christian ethic but without reference to the obligations and even the dogmatic formulations that are attendant and explicate those roots.

Q: Looking around the world, do you see Christianity gaining or losing its moral authority in our day-to-day lives, especially in politics and culture?

A: I think this is the struggle in the United States right now. In some sense, pockets of Christianity have lost a sense of moral authority. We’ve seen this in the mainline churches and to some extent in the more progressive elements of the Catholic Church… where these religious officials have substituted a confident proclamation of the traditions of the faith with a kind of politically correct and sociologically based agenda. So you see in the various statements of the religious headquarters a preoccupation with political, social issues – a kind of displacing of the theological paradigm, which is centered on God, on revelation, and in the case of Christianity, of Jesus Christ, with a sociological or psychological paradigm.

But the elements of Christianity that are growing are the traditional elements within Catholicism, in large part as the result of the encouragement of the model they received from Pope John Paul the Great and now Benedict the 16th and within evangelical Christianity, which has become rather sophisticated. It is not the kind of shad-belly, snake-handling, uneducated-preacher type any more. You have highly accomplished, intellectually sophisticated representatives of evangelic Christians.

Then on top of that, I think that the most interesting, exciting and vibrant dialogue that is occurring right within religious communities right now is occurring between evangelicals and traditional Roman Catholics ... that is, Catholics who really believe in the teaching authority of the church.

Q: Does Christianity have anything to fear from Islam?

A: Let me say that this encounter with Islam, for Catholicism, is not a new thing. Catholicism has encountered Islam in its various phases and various traditions over the centuries.... The important thing that I think was underscored by the Regensburg speech in Germany by Pope Benedict is that we must come to an understanding that religion must utilize reason in order to create the opportunity for conversation. If we simply resort to violence in settling our religious disagreements, then very soon there is bloodshed and things that would undermine the basis of civil order.

This is a warning not just directed to the more extreme elements of Islam. The speech by Benedict was really a warning to the West, which is rejecting reason along with Christianity. You find that many philosophers, especially those of the deconstructionist model, no longer believe that the human mind, and hence reason, has the capacity to apprehend truth—that there is no truth. This is associated with moral relativism.

So the threat comes not just from fundamentalist Islam, jihadist Islam, but also from highly secularized elements of European and American culture. I would like to think that the more moderate elements of Islam, who are repulsed by the hedonism and the secularism they see, might be willing to find some common cause with traditional Christians in promoting a society that can remain virtuous and retain a religious reference point.

Q: Christianity and Islam – didn’t they coexist rather peacefully at some point?

A: There was a period of several hundred years where they did. In the strict reading of the Koran, Christians would have to pay a tax for being Christians. But being people of “the Book,” they wouldn’t necessarily be executed. They were certainly seen in the book – in the Koran – as second-class citizens. The question is whether Islam can formulate, or reformulate, an understanding of themselves that has a sense of tolerance and makes the distinction between the power and authority of the religion and the legitimate secular authority. Christianity did this predicated on Jesus’ words “Render unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” Islam apparently has greater difficulty in doing that. In one sense, Islam is awaiting its Augustine, it’s awaiting its Aquinas, to help formulate and develop these distinctions. That really is the debate: Can Islam develop? The more-jihadists say no, the text is written and is fixed and there is no exegesis. There is no development the way you had in Christianity. Therefore there is no distinction between power – which is coercive and external, namely government or legal – and authority, which is internal and moral – which would be the church’s role. Both power and authority are forms of constraint, but one is coercive and the other is based on persuasion.

Q: Christians complain about the commercialization of Christmas. Secularists complain about the cold-hearted immorality of the marketplace. Is capitalism a natural enemy of Christianity, or vice versa?

A: I don’t think capitalism is a natural enemy of Christianity. Capitalism is really an inadequate word; it only describes one dimension of what is really human freedom and choice in the economic sphere. Choice is morally neutral. It’s the chooser who can be moral or immoral, not the ability to make the choice. You have to have the ability to make the choice in order to choose. I think it is a mistake for religious leaders to condemn the free economy based on some of the results. What they may want to do is condemn the choices that people make and the lack of moral formation that they have.

But the notion of gift-giving as being sinful at Christmas is absurd. Where do we get gift-giving from? The Magi. They brought the gifts to Jesus. But I think it is very easy to lose focus on the core meaning of the season, which is human relationships. A part of that is economic, but not the whole of it.

Q: You recently wrote a column about how the act of gift-giving relies heavily on an economic system that allows free exchanges between individuals. Can you explain?

A: You can’t be generous with which you don’t first have – with which you have not first produced and possessed. So there is this moral dimension to it. The real danger is when you lose focus and the mere act is an end in itself, or the mere giving, or the mere buying, is an act in itself. This diminishes the understanding of who human beings are.

Q: Does that mean that it’s the end and not the means that matters? Usually it’s the other way around.

A: I think it’s both a means and the end. You have to be headed in the right direction – the end. You need to choose the appropriate means for that and I think market activity is an appropriate means to a right end. But economics as such does not have a moral reference point. By itself, economics tells us nothing about what is good and bad. It will only tell us what is in supply and what is scarce. In order to bring the moral reference point, you have to have human beings who are formed with a moral sensitivity.

Q: What’s the best Christmas gift anyone can give another person?

A: I think themselves. By that I mean love, relationship. Sometimes that will take the form of a material expression…. The best gift is the gift of self, because in giving oneself, one is giving everything else. After all, this is what follows the model of Christ himself. In his condescension to come to Earth to be with us, he gives himself. There was a cute little takeoff of the Hallmark slogan years ago that Christians used – “God cared enough to give the very best.” I don’t mean to be just poetic in saying it, but I think the best gift we can give people is ourselves.

Rebuilding the GOP House

Hardly anyone beyond the D.C. Beltway has ever heard of the Republican Study Committee. But the group of more than 100 congressmen—who are essentially the conservative conscience of the House of Representatives—has an important (and increasingly tough) double mission: educating their less principled Republican siblings and trying to translate the conservative tenets of limited government, individual empowerment, a strong national defense and traditional values into legislation.

Needless to say, with the Bush administration spending like crazy and Democrats about to assume control of the House and Senate, there’s lots of work ahead for newly elected study committee chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas, a House member elected from the Dallas area in 2002.

Hensarling, 49, is a dedicated advocate for economic growth, job creation and tax relief who has distinguished himself by publicly challenging the White House and his party leadership on their bloated budgets and wanton spending. I talked to the former businessman and aide to Sen. Phil Gramm by phone Wednesday from his home near Dallas.

Q: Are you part of a dying breed of Republican conservatives or are you in the vanguard of a new Republican Revolution?

A: Boy, I wish I knew the answer to that. I’ve long since discovered I cannot be a congressman unless I’m an optimist. In the four years I’ve served as a member of the House, although the number of Republicans in the House has decreased, I think the number of conservatives in our Republican conference has increased. So I’m cautiously optimistic that maybe there is some silver lining in this big gray cloud, and that is that the Republican Party can once again show the American people that we are committed to our core values and that we know how to translate those values into legislative proposals that are meaningful to them and their hopes and dreams and aspirations for their families.

Q: What kind of Republican are you?
A: Let me put it this way: Until I went to Washington, I didn’t know how conservative I was. I am passionate about my commitment to limited government and freedom. I simply know that you can not have unlimited opportunity and unlimited government. Although today I view the terrorist threat from this radical strain of Islam to be the greatest threat to my country and my family, I frankly view the second greatest threat as a federal government that has grown too large, too intrusive, too powerful and too expensive. Since I’ve got into the daddy business 4½ years ago, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the next generation. And we know if we don’t reform the big three entitlement programs, the next generation is going to face a rather nasty fiscal fork in the road. The bottom line is, for all intents and purposes, there will be no federal government in one generation except Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security or we’re going to have to double taxes. I find both of those untenable.

Q: Why did Republicans lose Congress?

A: Nobody can deny the power of the Iraqi conflict in that election. But it is not the only reason. Frankly, a very significant reason is that too many Americans came to the conclusion that the Republican Party lost its commitment to limited government, to accountability, to a balanced budget, to less spending. So that is where there is a huge battle. If you look at the polls, and I’ve looked a number of polls, particularly in swing districts, the Republican brand has been damaged. Fiscal responsibility is one of our core values. Nobody expects the Democrats to be fiscally responsible. But if we’re not fiscally responsible, I don’t know how we ever get back into the majority.

Q: Did the Republicans deserve to be thumped?

A: I would put it to you this way. If I was a teacher, I might have given the Republicans a “B-minus,” but I’d certainly give the Democrats an “F.” Having said that, people expected us to get an “A” grade on fiscal responsibility and we didn’t do it. The “Bridge to Nowhere” (in Alaska) happened on our watch. The increase on No Child Left Behind happened on our watch. The Medicare prescription drug benefit happened on our watch. The Democrats had an even more expensive prescription drug benefit program under Medicare that you rarely heard about. As a member of the budget committee, I know that almost without exception every amendment offered by the Democrats spends more money. But again, nobody expects them to be a fiscally responsible party, but they do expect (it of) us. ... the American voters rightly held our party responsible.

Q: How will you measure your success as chairman of the Republican Study Committee?

A: Right now, I am speaking to a lot of smart people I know in the conservative movement and really trying to find out the best way to organize the Republican Study Committee in the minority. It will be a different animal with different emphases. To some extent, our ultimate purpose is the same. But we know we can not advance the Republican movement until the Republican Party once again regains the majority—not simply for the sake of having the majority, but for using the majority to further our conservative cause. We have to engage in more advocacy within our Republican conference. We have to help drive how the conference presents its legislative alternatives and how it frames its vision. The people did not lose faith with our principles. They lost faith with our ability and our commitment to our own principles.

Q: Do you have a sense that Republicans might be better at being out of power and on defense – at least better at upholding and defending and adhering to their core principles?

A: I think (losing Congress) was a cold slap on a cold face on a very cold morning that will hopefully wake up the conservative movement within the Republican conference within the House. Many of us have been talking for quite some time that the people are disappointed, particularly on spending. In my district—which may not be a microcosm of America, but to some extent it’s at least a microcosm of Texas—although people were very concerned about the Iraq war, they didn’t talk all that much about it. What they really talked about was that we’re not convinced that you guys will control the border or will not control spending. That’s pretty much what I’ve heard for the last two years.

I try to be an optimist, so I’m hopeful that as one door was slammed in our face, maybe another one will open and give us an opportunity to recommit ourselves to our core principles and our core values. Otherwise, if we don’t regain the House in ’08, we might be a minority a very, very long time. I hope my other colleagues come to that conclusion.

Time Magazine's man in Cairo

Scott MacLeod of Beaver County has been Time magazine’s Cairo bureau chief for the last 11 years. During 21 years of covering that region he has personally interviewed nearly every Middle Eastern leader and thug you can name, from Yasser Arafat and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Jordanian Queen Rania al Abdullah, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Osama bin Laden.

MacLeod, a 1976 Pitt grad, lives with his wife, Susan Hack, and daughter, Sophie, in Cairo. But I caught up with him by telephone Wednesday in Tehran, where he was making his 15th visit to Iran.

Q: What are you doing in Iran and what do you expect to find there?

A: Well, Iran has long been one of the most important countries in the Middle East and therefore it’s one of the most important stories that Time covers. And visas are not always easy for American journalists, so when you get one, you want to come here and take advantage of it. We’re interested in writing about all the issues, from Iran’s nuclear ambitions to its role in Iraq to its relations with organizations like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Iran is in the middle of a lot of things Americans are interested in, so it’s always a good story to be here. It’s a semi-open society. There are always plenty of people to talk to. The politics are very lively here and there’s never a dull moment.

Q: Will you be interviewing your old pal President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

A: Well, I would love to (laughs). But that’s easier said than done. Fortunately, Time has a high profile in the world because it’s a brand name in American journalism. We generally have access in the Middle East to the higher echelons… . It’s an interesting thing, actually, because it shows that the Iranian regime is very interested in communicating to the U.S. government and American elites and decision-makers. They do want to have some kind of a dialogue. People in both governments have been calling for negotiations and discussions and I have no doubt that there will be some in the future.

Q: Can the Iranian leaders be trusted to deal in good faith with the United States?

A: Probably a lot of Iranians are asking that question of their own policy-makers who want to talk to the U.S. When it comes to countries like Iran, or when we had enemies like the Soviet Union, it comes down to each country’s national interests rather than personalities or individuals. Personalities are important. But I think if a dialogue gets going, it’s going to be on the basis that Iran knows that it has interests that it can achieve by talking to the U.S. and vice versa. There’s going to be distrust on both sides and neither side is going to give the other everything it wants. But I think if the discussions get moving they will be relatively successful.

Both sides have studied this very, very carefully and if the thing gets on track, it will be on the basis of a lot of understandings that both sides can live with. We’re not there yet. Maybe in the eyes of Washington these are still open questions. But my opinion is that while Iran is very theatrical in its revolutionary-style rhetoric, if you look at the Iranians’ actions over the last 15 to 20 years, they have been relatively conservative and careful. It’s not the radical revolutionary regime that its own rhetoric would have you think and what American political rhetoric would have you think.

For example, in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq, the Iranians have meddled; they’ve interfered, but certainly no less so than the United States government has. We heard James Baker in releasing the Baker-Hamilton report actually refer to Iranian cooperation and assistance in a positive way in Afghanistan. So clearly the Iranis are looking out for their interests; whether those interests are compatible with American interests is another question. But foreign relations are always a matter of balancing interests. Nobody ever gets 100 percent of what they are looking for.

Q: In Time you said Middle East leaders you’ve talked to say the whole region is in monumentally worse condition now than it was six years ago when President Bush took office. What are the important examples?

A: Well, as far as Americans are concerned, Iraq is the most obvious case. Very few people would have had anything good to say about Saddam Hussein before he was overthrown. But ... most people would agree that Iraqis and the Middle East are not better off from our having invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam. As desirable as it would have been to get rid of Saddam, the consequences of how you got rid of him and what was left behind had to be taken in account.

What we’re seeing now is that this foreign policy project of regime change in Iraq has created tremendous crisis for Iraq and the whole region. It’s not just the war in Iraq, but a war that could bring the whole region into a regional war. This is pretty serious stuff. We didn’t have this on the agenda six years ago. We really upset the apple cart with the invasion of Iraq.

Another important misstep on the part of the Bush administration is to have ignored the Palestinian problem. In a nutshell, when Bush came to office, the first Bush administration had invested an enormous amount of American diplomatic capital in promoting peace between the Israel and the Arab states. But after George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon came to power on almost identical dates, we have seen disengagement in the peace process by the United States government. This has left this problem drift.

Q: What do leaders in the Middle East want the U.S. to do?

A: That’s a good question. What the Arab regimes or leaders want to do is not necessarily what all the Arabs want the U.S. to do. First of all, most Arab regimes want to stay in power. They are not looking to vote themselves out of office. They do accept the principles of reform and democratization, but under their terms, under a process that they can control. That’s the ultimate thing the Arab leaders want. What they want from the U.S. is for it to calm the tensions in the region. To them, first and foremost, that means solving the Palestinian-Israeli problem. One of the reasons that is first is that they see it as doable. This may be simplistic and not quite correct, but they see it simply as a matter that America should pressure Israel to withdraw from Arab lands and the states have agreed that once Israel does that they will sign a peace agreement with Israel.

The No. 2 demand is that they fully realize the role of the United States as the sole superpower in the world. They like to be friends with that superpower. It gives them some status and legitimacy with the people and it gives them a security blanket—especially the Gulf States like Kuwait, Bahrain.They help the U.S. They allow us to have bases in their countries, some of them. They enjoy the American security umbrella. They seek the American security umbrella but like the umbrella to be one that is relatively passive and visible.

They were not in favor of invading Iraq and stirring up a hornet’s nest there. They think that is actually undermining their security. But having done that, with regard to Iraq they do not want the U.S. to pull out immediately. Some of their rhetoric may say that, but what they really want is the U.S. to do whatever it can—including remaining in Iraq—until the Iraq situation is relatively stabilized.

Q: How bad is it in Iraq and is it really a civil war?

A: It’s really a pretty bad situation. I think I have to agree with what Kofi Annan said the other day: We’ve seen civil wars in places like Lebanon and what we are seeing in Iraq is worse.The hesitancy of calling it a civil war was, in part, because you didn’t have identifiable representatives of different groups, whether they are political or sectarian, basically in open-armed conflict with rival groups for control of the nation. That would be the typical definition of a civil war. But what you have increasingly is sectarian warfare, possibly being directed or assisted by formal political organizations or rogue organizations, but you had fairly widespread killings of Sunnis by Shiites and Shiites by Sunnis over control of Iraq. There has been an element of al-Qaida and terrorist provocation and violence, which also led people to shy away from the “civil war” term. But gradually over the last year we have had increasing numbers of incidents that could be described as ethic cleaning, attacks on religious institutions and leaders. So I wouldn’t call it an all-out civil war. That would come once the formal political groups openly declare that and are transparently fighting for territory and for control. But there is a kind of simmering civil war that has been going on.

Q: The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report came out today. What do you think?

A: I think the recommendations are excellent. I haven’t gone through it with a fine-tooth comb but the basic points that they make are all overdue, all make sense and some of them, if they had been done before the war, might have made the regime change effort in Iraq a smoother process. I was quite struck by how smart and how much foresight the commission had. It was an idea for a comprehensive way to deal with the Iraq problem—not just a military issue but bringing in politics and regional politics. I thought it was smartly done.

With regard to the recommendations on Iraq and the military presence there, unfortunately, the American and coalition presence there have helped to create a perception among certain parties in Iraq that the U.S. is an occupation army to be resisted—as all occupation armies should be, because they are not welcome in the country. American troops, unfortunately, fall into a position of being objects of resistance and attack, and as long as they stay there they will continue to be attacked not only by terrorists who come in from outside Iraq but also by Sunnis whose interests are being undermined by the overthrow of Saddam and by the American military presence there. They want to fight the Americans until they leave and they apparently have the resources to do that. And we have apparently not got the resources to defeat this insurgency by military means.

I think it is a good idea to stay in the country for a certain limited period, stabilize it to get all the parties in Iraq into a political process that can be successful and not abandon Iraq. We really owe the Iraqi people, having upset their apple cart; we owe it to them to not just abandon them at their biggest moment of need as their country descends into civil war.We need to be sure that we are not fueling that civil war by being a party to that civil war. So moving to bases and being supportive of the Iraqi security forces and training them would be about the maximum that we could hope for in terms of a military success in Iraq.

Q: Is it too late for the recommendations to be implemented?

A: With regard to the troop redeployment, we don’t have much choice. We’ve got to do something and staying much longer in the formation we are in now is only going to make the situation worse.

I was struck by the urgency by which Baker was making these recommendations to Bush. Time is running out. We could see a very dangerous spiral for the worse in the not-too-distant future, but it’s not too late yet. It’s definitely not too late to take the (diplomacy) regional to help stabilize Iraq, because whether Iraq descends into further chaos or not, we’re still going to have the Iraq problem to address and that will have to be addressed in a regional content with regional cooperation. Those recommendations also need to be urgently taken up, but it will never be too late to elicit Iran’s cooperation and Syria’s cooperation.

It’s got a little bit lost in the midst of the Iraq crisis, but the Palestinian-Israeli crisis is at a very, very dangerous point of possibly no return and no prospect for ever having a peaceful settlement. And that will mean possibly decades of continued tension between Israelis and Palestinians that will affect the whole region. It’s urgent that the Bush administration as well as Europe and other interested parties really address the Palestinian-Israeli issue and calm tensions over there and show the good faith of the international community to make the Middle East a better place. That good will it engenders will pay off in winning the cooperation of Iran and Syria.

Q: Is the war in Iraq going to be one of the worst strategic blunders in U.S. foreign policy history, as President Carter, Pat Buchanan and others have said?

A: Clearly, from my point of view and observations over the years, the Bush administration took it upon itself to undertake some very bold polices to reshape the Middle East. (It) had high hopes for these policies. Not only have these hopes not materialized but their worst nightmares have materialized.

Only history will tell if it is one of the worst blunders, or the worst. And never say never. If the damage control is handled well, if some of these recommendations could be put into place and if you get the Israeli- Palestinian peace talks back on track, you could pull Iran into a more constructive role in the region. I’m being very optimistic here; it’s not a prediction, it’s hypothetic optimism, but you could see the dawn of a new understanding in the Middle East that would considerably reduce tensions among all the states.

The way things have been going for the last six years—and it’s not all Osama bin Laden’s fault—the tensions have been getting worse and the chances for more and more conflicts have been growing. We’ve seen a quite a lot of conflict, not only in Iraq but in Lebanon, in Gaza, in the West Bank, and then there’s all this talk about another American attack on Iran over the nuclear issue. We’ve really reached a point in the Middle East of hyper-tension. If it was working, if by some description this was all working out for the better, we could say, “Well, it was a tough road, but it was worth it at the end.” But I don’t think anyone sees this as going in any good direction. It’s only going in a worse direction—and a very dangerous direction.

Q: Five years from now what will Iraq look like?

A: If experience is anything to go by, it’s likely that Iraq will go through some form of civil war before getting to the next stage. I’m not necessary completely pessimistic about Iraq’s future. There are a number of factors that augur well for an eventual kind of conciliation and progress in Iraq. One is that it’s a pretty rich country, so that could give the various parties reason to fight for the oil of the country. But they are all going to be a lot richer and the people are going to be a lot more prosperous if they don’t fight, if they don’t spend their money on weapons.

Number two, I think there’s recognition that no one party can rule the whole country. The Shiites are never going to be able to control the Sunni areas and no one is going to be able to control the Kurdish areas. So there’s a recognition that they all kind of have to live together and that except for Baghdad, they all kind of have their own territories.

Q: Not a partition?

A: People talk about partition but I don’t see that as necessarily what Iraqis would end up going for in the end. You have a pretty vicious war in Lebanon, but for the most part it was a fight over the shares of the power, rather than to break up the country or for one party to grab all the power. I think that’s similar to what you are seeing in Iraq. While Iraqi is not as strong as Egyptian or Israeli nationalism is, there is such a thing as Iraqi nationalism. I think a substantial number of Iraqis would be happy to owe allegiance to the central state.

And then much is made of the Iraqi Shiites being either the pawns or puppets of Iran, but one thing that has to be remembered is that Iraqi Shiites are Arabs and Iranian Shiites are non-Arabs for the most part. In other words, Iran is basically a Persian nation and Iraq is basically an Arab nation with the Kurdish non-Arab population kind of being an enclave. So it doesn’t follow that Shiite population of Iraq, or even the Shiite leadership of Iraq, will march much to Iran’s tune. So you have a lot of factors that support the idea of keeping Iraq as one country and of settling the differences between Iraqis. Probably we shouldn’t be that surprised with the fall of a very vicious dictatorship that kept the country glued together by fear and force—we should be surprised that things unraveled to a great extent after that glue was removed.

It’s going to take some time for Iraqis to sit around the table and discuss what kind of government they want, what kind of state they want. I know they have been doing this, but it’s been under the gaze of the United State military presence. They’re going to have to do this on their own and have to answer to each other, rather than to a foreign military power that’s a presence in their country. I think with the support of the region—if there could be a consensus between Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey about the future of Iraq—it could definitely help to persuade the Iraqis that they have a lot to gain from working together to keep their country together.

Back to Socialism in Central Europe

Central Europe’s four-pack of liberated former Soviet colonies—Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic—have been drifting away from free markets and democracy and back toward socialism and authoritarianism.

According to Marian L. Tupy, a policy analyst with the Cato Institute, Central Europe’s liberal political parties (i.e., free market parties) have been losing out at the polls to populist parties that combine left-wing economics with right-wing social attitudes. I talked to Tupy, who has an article about the rise of illiberalism in Central Europe in the January Reason magazine, by telephone Tuesday from his offices in Washington.

Q: Generally, how have Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic done economically, politically and socially since the end of communism?

A: I have no doubt that the current social and economic situation in Central Europe is better than it was in the dying days of communism. Standard of living judged by income per capita adjusted for inflation and purchasing power parity is at historical highs. Longevity is up. School enrollment is up. The people of Central Europe enjoy more material goods, and, of course, they are free. So both from an economic and a political perspective, it seems to me that the past 17 years have been pretty successful.

Q: How do you define these new populist parties?

A: Populist parties in Central Europe tend to promise a lot of things which ultimately are contradictory and which they cannot possibly deliver within the limits of a modern, free-market liberal democracy and also a capitalist economy. They may promise greater job protection and at the same time they may promise lower unemployment. They may promise greater welfare payments and at the same time lower budget deficits.

What is interesting about the populist parties is that ... they are the opposite of liberals. Liberals, in the classical sense of the word, emphasize the need for economic as well as social autonomy of the individual. In other words, the individual should be able to make independent decisions in his personal life and also be able to—autonomously and free of government intervention—participate in the economic life. Populists have really combined illiberal elements—or the opposite of both. They emphasis religious conservatism and nationalism and at the same time they emphasize socialist economic thinking.

Q: What is causing the popularity of these illiberal populist parties?

A: People in the public opinion surveys still continue to believe generally that free markets and democracy are the best ways to go forward. Some of the most dramatic reforms that have been undertaken by reformist regimes in Central Europe continue to enjoy public support. In Slovakia, which had the most radical reformist government in recent years in Central Europe, some of the free market reforms such as the flat tax and privatization of the pension system continue to enjoy public support. My hypothesis is that the rise of the populist parties has to do with the discrediting of the political elites in these countries and public revulsion at the behavior of those political elites and established political parties.

Q: And you say it is corruption that is causing this revulsion?

A: Yes. The main part of it has to do with corruption. I went to Central Europe and I talked to people at the time of the Slovak elections, for example. The Slovak election was obviously pretty crucial, because here was this profoundly reformist government seeking re-election. But the people did not say, “We think the reforms are crazy and we would like more state intervention.” What they said was, “We do not believe in our political elites. We believe our political elites are corrupt and we want somebody to clean the Augean Stables.”

Q: What kind of corruption are we talking about—that former communist leaders are living off the state’s former assets, trading privileges for money?

A: I think both. The communists certainly did very well out of the transition from the communist system to the free market. But there is a more general problem with the political elites and the political establishment in Central Europe, which is to say that people continue to seek public office, be it at a national level or a local level, in order to make money.

Q: What’s the cure for this kind of corruption? Is it just a matter of time until they become more mature democracies?

A: Certainly, corruption amongst public officials is helped by a number of factors. One is the relative weakness of civil society. Unlike in the United States, where we have a vast variety of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and public pressure groups whose vested interest and entire raison d’etre is to track political corruption and fight it, these sort of political organizations have not yet had time to emerge in Central Europe and those that have emerged have not yet attained the kind of strength that might be the case in the United States.

Public oversight – oversight that you might expect from courts and parliaments – is still relatively weak, in part because courts continue to suffer from high rates of corruption, and parliament accountability continues to be low because it is the parliamentarians themselves who are often on the take.

Thirdly, you’ve got the mentality of the people. In other words you have vast sways of society that were brought up under communism where theft and lying were not just tolerated, they were a prerequisite for survival in a communist society. And obviously these attitudes persist in today’s era and all that will have to be changed.

Now. Is that enough? In my view, that is not enough. The populist parties in Slovakia and Poland have promised to combat corruption by basically just placing greater controls on the behavior of public officials and placing the right people in the right positions. I don’t think this is enough. In my view, in a society where you have this cultural baggage from the days of communism, where you have underdeveloped civil society and an underdeveloped system of checks and balances, what you need to do is minimize or to limit the scope of the state and spending. So it’s not enough to hope that people will change, or that if you have more controls, those controls will address the problem of corruption.

You need to suck the air out of corruption by doing two things: One, to limit the scope of the state; and two, by limiting the amount of spending by the state. As I pointed out in my paper, I believe on average Central European governments spend about 44 percent of GDP per year, which is an incredibly high number. So obviously public spending has to decline.

Q: How does that compare with the United States?

A: The federal government spends about 20 percent of GDP in the United States…. Plus, of course, you have to add to that state government spending…. In Central Europe, in the case of Hungary, the central government spends 50 percent of GDP. So that gives you a comparison. Spending is obviously very high. Unlike the United States, you don’t have a vibrant civil society, a culture of non-corruption, etc., etc. On top of that there is the problem of the scope of the state—the areas that the state interferes in. In the United States, the regulatory environment, for example, is much less burdensome. In Central Europe, the number of regulations that the bureaucrats administer is much larger and consequently there is more scope for corruption.

Q: What country is the most backward or the least liberal of the four?

A: I’d have to go with Poland. Poland doesn’t have the highest spending in the region—that’s Hungary. But Poland’s economy is the most highly regulated. Once you combine the spending effect with the overregulation of the economy with the scope of bureaucratic action, Poland is the worst country out of those four.

Q: The best?

A: I’d probably have to go with a country outside of Central Europe—Estonia. When it comes to regulatory environment, Hungary is doing the best in Central Europe and then when it comes to state spending, Slovakia is doing the best. If I wanted to give the Central Europeans an example to follow, I’d have to go with Estonia.

Q: Why Estonia?

A: First of all, Estonian economic performance has been superior to any other country from the former Soviet Bloc. Estonian income per capita grew at a much faster pace than in Central Europe. From 1995 to 2004, Estonian income per capita grew by 96 percent, which is absolutely extraordinary. Also, the Corruption Perception Index, the measure of corruption in Estonia, is the lowest out of all post-communist countries.

Is it a perfect country? Definitely not. But it is doing better than any other post-communist country in terms of corruption. And why is that? The argument I make in my study is because Estonia has actually made the greatest progress when it comes to limiting the power of the bureaucrats and also in limiting government spending. Estonian spending is on a par with Slovakia but its regulatory involvement is less.

In other words, there are fewer bureaucrats spending less money than anywhere else in post-communist countries—which, of course, limits corruption.

Q: Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic about these former communist colonies?

A: I’m very optimistic in the medium to long term. The underlying problem of Central Europe is corruption.

Because the populist parties in Central Europe do not believe in the free market, do not believe in the value of limited government, they are going to maintain and perhaps even exacerbate the problems of corruption. They are not going to stop spending. They are not going to limit the size of government. And as a consequence, in the next few years we are going to see the kind of corruption scandals we have seen before blow up in the face of the populists as well.

It’s already happening in Poland. The Law and Justice Party, which came to power promising to tackle corruption, is now deeply embroiled in corruption scandals. In Slovakia, 100 days into the new government, we have already seen the resignation of one state secretary for suspicion of corruption. So the undoing of the populists in the medium term is going to be the same problem they have been accusing their predecessors of, which is corruption. As these populist parties become discredited, the liberal parties, that obviously I believe have the answers to the remaining social and economic problems of Central Europe, are going to be given another chance. Then it will be their task to make sure that when they tackle the problem of corruption, they are unimpeachable when it comes to government.

The Beast on the East River

Posted Saturday, Dec. 2, 2006 -------- These days nobody but rock stars, actors and grade school kids still seem to love, trust or have much confidence in the United Nations. And Nathan Tabor, a conservative columnist, political activist and founder of the Web site TheConservativeVoice.com, can tell you more than a few good reasons why. The title of his new book, “The Beast on the East River: The U.N. Threat to America’s Sovereignty and Security,” gives away his major theme. I talked to him by telephone on Tuesday from his home near Winston-Salem, N.C.:

Q: First we should get the nice stuff out of the way: What’s the best thing the United Nations does for the United States and the world?

A: Very little. But of course the plans to eradicate world poverty, world hunger, stopping the spread of AIDS and stopping the genocide that’s taking place in Third-World countries are all good objectives to have in place.

Q: Are any of these lofty goals being met?

A: In my opinion, no, because you have the oil-for-food scandal. You have reports of molestation and rape in Congo, Somalia and other places. And on the world peacekeeping efforts in Darfur, they are begging and pleading with the United Nations to come in and help and basically getting nowhere.

Q: Everyone is supposed to love the U.N. We’re still taught that it’s a wonderful global association of governments that’s designed to bring the benefits of international law, international security, economic development and social equality to the whole world. Does it really?

A: In 1945, the U.N. was ratified as this world organization to help protect the sovereignty of nations, but at the same time be able to bring people to the table to discuss the issues. But, over the last 30 years, it has turned into an organization that wants full taxing authority, wants full court authority and wants full military authority. They’ve gone from protecting the sovereignty of nations to wanting to undermine, erode and basically take over.

Q: We’ve heard all these criticisms about the U.N. -- about the bureaucracy, the corruption, the anti-Semitism, about its tenderhearted attitude toward terrorists and the creeps who run hellholes like China or Sudan. But what is its worst sin?

A: I would say the worst sin of the United Nations is its education program. It was set up by Sir John Huxley, a Marxist sympathizer who stated that there were no universal moral absolutes. This is a verbatim quote: “As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education and world-mindedness can produce only rather precarious results. As we have pointed out, it is frequently the family that infects the child with extreme nationalism.”

Q: Is the U.N. succeeding in this devious mission?

A: I would say overall in the United States, yes. Pick up your child’s history book or social studies book and look: Are they teaching the Constitution? Are they teaching the Bill of Rights? Are they teaching about the Founding Fathers? Or are they teaching that Thomas Jefferson was a deist? That the Constitution is not a living document; that it only served its purpose 200 years ago and we all need to be looking at becoming part of this global community.

Ronald Reagan got us out of UNESCO. George W. Bush put us back into it because he said it had reformed its “millennium development goals.” The eighth purpose in the millennium development goals is to advance a global partnership for development. “No Child Left Behind” was a U.N. program adopted by Ted Kennedy and put into place by George W. Bush. That was a liberal Democrat plan and Bush adapted it and pushed it through.

It’s teaching this stuff about being part of a global community -- which sounds good on paper: “Oh, everybody love everybody and everybody get along and everybody be peaceful.” I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is not teaching the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Q: If you found yourself sitting next to a member of The New York Times editorial page on a plane, how would you prove to that person that the United Nations was, as you say in your book, set up “to deliberately usurp national sovereignty”?

A: One of the most shocking and interesting examples out there is the military. I would say to The New York Times editor, “Look, in 1995, then-President Bill Clinton signed Presidential Directives 13 and 25. At the time they were secret documents, but now it is all public history in the Library of Congress. These directives essentially put loopholes all through the Constitution to allow U.S. soldiers to be under the control of U.N. generals. Article II, Section 2, of the United States Constitution says the president, the commander in chief, is to be over all the Army and Navy. Until you amend the Constitution, what Bill Clinton did -- and which is currently still in place -- is both illegal and unconstitutional."

Another example that would be shocking is world heritage sites. The Statue of Liberty, Yellowstone National Park, the Great Smoky Mountains, the Liberty Bell, Mt. Vernon are all under control of the United Nations.

Q: We hear about this all the time on the right-wing talk shows -- that the U.N. is taking over the national parks. How would you prove that to someone?

A: I would direct them, hopefully, to buy my book. But if not, go to Google and search “world heritage sites.” This was a treaty in 1972. It was UNESCO’s Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Culture and National Heritage. This was ratified by the United States. Currently, there are 812 properties in 137 nations. This is what it says on its Web site: “World heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located.”

Q: There’s nothing that has been implemented? No U.N. blue helmets at Yellowstone?

A: No, not yet. But if you go to Yellowstone there are plaques that say this is a world heritage site designated by the United Nations. But there is an example of this. In 1995, then-President Bill Clinton got the U.N. to declare the Yellowstone Park a “world heritage site in danger.” That gave them the so-called “international obligation” to close down a proposed gold mine about to begin operation on private property three miles away -- the Crown Butte Mines. They closed those mines. They were never allowed to start operations on that.

Q: How well is the United States doing at resisting or thwarting this U.N. power grab?

A: Right now I would say it is kind of 50-50. Bush puts us back into the global education agenda but he takes us out of the international criminal court, which Bill Clinton put us into. The international criminal court is part of this organization that is getting ready to bring Donald Rumsfeld up on war crime charges in Germany. This vast police organization is going to have this unbelievable authority with no distinction between who or what it wants to prosecute. Bush has been good at fighting the U.N.’s agenda to try to get gun registrations across the United States. He’s been good at fighting the Law of the Sea Treaty. John Bolton has been the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. But now with the Democrats taking over control of Congress, it’s almost assured that John Bolton is not going to be ambassador come January.

Q: So what should we do with the United Nations beast?

A: I was just on the Glenn Beck radio program this morning, and he had the idea that we should put everyone in a boat and ship them back. I think we should hook a tug boat up to Turtle Bay, to the building, and just pull it.

In all seriousness, I think we need to elect officials who believe in the sovereignty of the United States, who believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The second thing is that people just need to become educated on what’s taking place in the U.N. and what its true agenda is.

Posted Sunday, Nov. 26, 2006 -------- Milton Friedman, arguably the best known and most influential free-market economist in the world for the last 40 years, died in the San Francisco area Thursday at age 94. Friedman, who lived for years in the liberal epicenter of House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi’s downtown San Francisco congressional district, advised presidents, prime ministers and helped foreign countries set up market economies. But more important to the everyday American, he was a major popularizer of the moral and practical benefits of freedom and capitalism. A principled enemy of socialism, monopolies and big government, a friend of competition and choice, he argued early, hard and persuasively for such things as a voluntary army, educational vouchers and an end to the prohibition of drugs. He won the 1976 Nobel prize for his work in monetary economics and two books he wrote with his wife Rose, "Capitalism and Freedom" (1962) and "Free to Choose" (1980) are must-reads for anyone who cares to understand the link between economic freedom and individual and political liberty. On March 26, 2001 -- as the dot-com crash continued, the country’s economy was slowing and President Bush was planning a major tax cut -- I talked to Friedman by telephone from his home in San Francisco:

Q: The stock market is in a slump, the economy is slowing down. Should we be jumping out of windows yet?

A: Not yet, not ever. There's no reason to suppose there's going to be a depression or major recession. We may have a mild recession. The economy is basically a strong economy and it'll rebound.

Q: If President Bush called you and asked for your advice on how to fix the economy, and promised to do one thing you told him to do, what would it be?

A: Sit tight. The federal government cannot do very much. There are lots of things it does, there are lots of changes that I would like to see in the government. But there is no single change that would have any significant effect on the course of the current cyclical movement.

Q: So sit tight in the sense that tax cuts won't make any difference?

A: Don't do anything special to try to stimulate the economy. Let the economy go.

Q: And it'll right itself?

A: Right.

Q: As far as Social Security reform, Mr. Bush has been pretty brave to raise the idea of at least a partial privatization of Social Security. Is this a good move?

A: Yes, it seems to me it is the right direction. I am in favor of the complete privatization of Social Security.

Q: When you talk about "complete," you mean "utterly complete"?

A: Absolutely. I don't understand why the government should tell me how much money I should save for the future, but not tell me how much of my money I can spend for food. And I believe that the current Social Security system is in certain ways fundamentally unjust.

Take the most obvious example, in the current hysteria about AIDS: Here's a young man, a man of 35 or 40 who has AIDS and is told that he has got five or 10 years to live at the most. And the government comes along and says, "You've got to put aside 13 percent or something like that of your income to save for your old age." That seems to me to be cruel and unjust.

Q: You've been an economist all you working life, but you've also sort of been a preacher. You're always calling for more freedom, more choices for Americans. If you had your way, what would your perfect American society look like?

A: (Freidman laughs.)

Q: You get to be the dictator for the moment.

A: No, I don't want to be the dictator. But the ideal society I would have would be one in which the government would primarily be decentralized -- state and local, rather than federal.

You'd be back, more or less, to that which prevailed before the Great Depression, when government spending -- federal, state and local -- was about 10 percent of national income. Federal spending was about a quarter or a third of that and state and local spending was about two-thirds to three-quarters. That would be about the right proportion.

The federal government's main responsibility would be primarily protecting the nation against foreign enemies and having a legal system to preserve the basic rights of individuals. Most local problems would be handled by state and local governments.

Q: Freedom is a pretty important concept to you.

A: Yes it is.

Q: In theory, American's have more of it than anyone.

A: They have a good deal of freedom, and certainly compared to almost any other country, we rank very well. However, there's the tyranny of the status quo. People don't recognize what their situation actually is.

In the United States today, the average individual, whoever he is, works from Jan. 1 to the middle of June or late June to provide funds that the government controls.

That is to say, government at one level or another, federal state or local -- directly through spending and taxes and indirectly through rules, regulations and mandates -- controls half the national income and can determine how that is spent.

We're 50 percent socialist. Now, is that half freedom or half slavery? Neither of those statements would be wrong: we're partly free and we're partly enslaved.

Q: Is it only a question of money -- of income?

A: No. Of course not. But the funds that the government controls and spends affect what you can do or can not do. The laws and mandates that are imposed upon you are government laws. Go to any business and see how much of their time they have to spend with OSHA ... with all the other alphabetical agencies, with the IRS.

It's far more than money. It's what you can do with your life. For example, you can not become a physician unless you get the approval of the government. You must get a license from the government -- that's a government control. So the government decides who may or may not be in medicine, who may or may not be a plumber, who may or may not be a barber -- all along the line. The government decides what you can do with your property.

To give you another example that I have been particularly interested in: Why should government run the schools of the country? There's no more reason for government to run the schools then there is for government to produce the automobile. And the schools are low quality on the average, just as automobiles would be of low quality if government produced them.

Q: You could probably talk for the rest of the day about what is wrong with public education. But what is most wrong about it today and how will choice fix that?

A: Well, there's no doubt what's most wrong about public education, and that is that it's a monopoly. The customer has no say. Schools are financed by the government but they're actually run by the teachers unions and education bureaucracy. And the schools pick the students, the students don't pick the schools, in general. What you need is competition.

Q: I'm sure you're familiar with the home-school movement, which has arisen over the last 10 years as form of competition to schools.

A: It is. And the fact that it is a form of competition shows how bad our schools are. Can you think of any other sophisticated product in which the home-made product is superior to the factory-made product?

Q: You have seen many incredible changes and advancements in your lifetime. What has been the most heartening in the last 10 or 12 years?

A: The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the communist system has undoubtedly been the most heartening fact.

Q: That is a metaphor for those ideas that they represented as well.

A: Absolutely, you've had this intellectual argument going on between collectivism and individualism, communism or socialism on the one hand and private enterprise and free markets on the other. The collapse of the Soviet Union has put an end to that. There's nobody any longer who argues effectively for collectivism.

Q: You've been a fierce advocate of legalizing drugs. Why is that?

A: Because I think the basic prohibition of drugs is fundamentally immoral. The strongest argument: How can we justify destroying Colombia, causing thousands of deaths in Colombia, because we can not enforce our own laws? If we could enforce our laws against the use of drugs, there'd be no market for them.

In every way you look at it, it is an immoral law. It causes a loss in our freedom. The forfeiture law, which enables the drug police to expropriate property without due process of law, to enter a house without an adequate search warrant.

Those have all been destroying our fundamental freedoms. The police have been corrupted, the public has been corrupted. It's a fundamentally immoral law. Again, if the government can tell me what I may put in my mouth, what's to prevent it from telling me what I can put in my head?

Q: You're on the list of anybody who draws up the list of the most influential Americans of the 20th century. You're on it. What is it that you have done, in your own mind, what will be your greatest legacy?

A: I really think that's for somebody else to say.

Tales of Mass Transit Boondogglery

Posted Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2006 --------- Wendell Cox’s fancy title is international public policy consultant. But for anyone who needs facts, figures or strong opinions about public and private transit issues, Cox is the great go-to guru of transportation. His enemies will say he hates public transit. But Cox, who has worked with scores of state, local and national governments to build and improve transit systems, is a real radical. He actually believes that big-city mass transportation monopolies should and can be run efficiently and rationally. Cox, whose Web site Demographia.com groans with geographic and demographic data from around the world, was at his office near St. Louis when I recently called him to ask him how he’d fix the Port Authority of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh, which is a typical example of the bloated, mismanaged government mass transit systems in major U.S. cities whose costs are rising each year but are carrying fewer passengers.

Q: You’ve just been named head of the Port Authority of Allegheny County. Your pay is only $250,000 a year but you have absolute power to do anything you want to do. What do you do?

A: Start competitively contracting the service. Now granted, if this happened and I were there, believe me, the afternoon I made such an announcement I would be out on my ear. I’m serious. You cannot believe how strong both the public transit unions and the bureaucrats are. It’s not just the unions. I understand the unions and their interest in preserving their empire. But the fact is, the public transit bureaucrats are just as bad as the unions.

But there’s no reason why we can’t contract out everything Port Authority does—buses and light rail. Right now, for example, in Stockholm the entire system, including the subway, is contracted out. In London, the entire bus system -- 6,000 buses—is contracted out.

What we would do is basically offer the existing employees separation allowances and that kind of thing and convert the Port Authority system to a competitively run system. Port Authority would continue to determine the fares, to determine where the routes go, etc., as is being done very successfully in Denver, Stockholm, London, Adelaide, Perth and around the world. So this is not privatization per se. What it is is using the competitive market to provide virtually the same services that are being provided today.

Q: How much could be saved?

A: My guess in the case of Pittsburgh, knowing something about the Port Authority’s cost structure, is that you would be looking at savings in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 percent. The payback period would be less than three years. Then you could take that money and either put it into something else or you could expand public transit service.

Of course, no transit manager is interested in that. I’m serious. The whole bent of the transit industry in Europe and the United States is to maximize cost. They do not want to minimize cost; they want to maximize cost. They are not interested in saving money at all. That’s why anyone who talks about a bigger role for public transit in the future doesn’t have the slightest idea what he is talking about.

Q: Basically, the Port Authority is the same size in terms of employees, number of buses and light-rail vehicles as it was in 1982. Plus its budget is bigger in inflation-adjusted dollars than it was then but it carries about 30 percent fewer riders today. Is that good?

A: That’s pretty good. I’ll tell you, it’s hard to find performance that good in the transit industry.

Q: You’re being sarcastic, right?

A: I’m being absolutely facetious. This is what the monopoly structure of public transit in the United States and Western Europe and Canada produces. There is no incentive to save.

Q: Are Port Authority’s peers in other cities equally afflicted?

A: There are a few semi-success stories around. Denver, for example, which now contracts out 50 percent of its service based upon my legislation which passed in 1989 and has since been expanded, has actually increased its ridership rather substantially and they’ve reduced their costs. They’ve also wasted a trainload of money on light rail, which has changed nothing. There are systems in Los Angeles that I was involved in establishing, where we basically took sections of the main transit operator’s structure and created new small transit districts. In the first year we did that we had savings of 60 percent and ridership has gone up substantially because they’ve taken the money and expanded service.

Q: In the Wendell Cox-run universe, what would a perfect public transit system look like?

A: You’ve got to competitively contract it. Now some people call that privatization, but it’s like if the City of Pittsburgh were to contract out the garbage service. The service still remains public. The City of Pittsburgh is still in charge. It tells the garbage companies what to do. The point is, with respect to public transit, the Port Authority should be nothing more than a marketing operation. It should market the service. It should determine where the routes go. And it should determine budgets. You do not need probably 100 people to do the essential public functions of the Port Authority—which is of course why this will never happen, because the purpose of public transit is to serve the employees of the transit system, not the community, which gets us back to why the whole idea that public transit has anything to offer to the community more than it is doing today is absolutely bogus.

Q: You don’t hate public transit, right?

A: Precisely. As a matter of fact it was my motion in 1980 that created the funding source for the Los Angeles rail system. There are two problems with mass transit: One is that it is all about downtown. The latest data I’ve seen on downtown Pittsburgh from the Census Bureau is that somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 35 percent of Downtown work trips get there on public transit. On the other hand, if you go outside Downtown, you’re probably going to find it less than 5 percent. This is the case virtually everywhere around the world. If you go to Paris, you’ll find 70 or 80 percent of the work trips to the downtown to the core being by public transit and out in the suburbs you’re going to find 15 percent.

So public transit is about downtown. In fact, I’ve done about 30 presentations mainly in Australia and New Zealand in the last month and one of the things I do is basically tell people it is time to stop the exaggerations and the platitudes. The fact is there isn’t a thing you can do to reduce traffic congestion anywhere in the community with public transit. The first reason is, you’re not going to get more people to downtown Pittsburgh on public transit; and secondly, anybody who rides public transit to work outside downtown Pittsburgh does so only because they do not have a car.

Q: We just published the salary figures of the Port Authority and there were nearly 100 bus drivers making over $80,000 a year with overtime.

A: Well, I bet if you look at the paratransit in Pittsburgh, the Access system—which by the way may be the best paratransit system in the country and is fully contracted out—I’ll bet there isn’t a driver who makes more than $35,000 a year. The idea that bus drivers are making $80,000 is an absolute outrage and proves that the purpose of public transit is simply to move money to certain interest groups.

Q: Have you heard about our North Shore Connector project, the $425 million-and-counting twin-tunnel under the Allegheny River for a light-rail extension from Gateway Center to the North Shore?

A: What they should do with that $425 million is do a study and figure out what is the least expensive way to reduce the travel delay in Allegheny County. It’s doubtless with some sort of a road project. You could probably do 10 to 20 times as much good with a road project as you can with this tunnel project. Spending $425 million for a 1.2 mile light-rail extension is an absolute outrage. ...

By the way, to give you an idea, these people have absolutely no shame. Where I’ve just been last week—Delhi, India—has built a metro light-rail system. The subsidy per annual passenger is 50 percent higher than the gross domestic product of the nation. That shows you how shameless it gets. And the transit people are there claiming they’re getting a 30 percent return on investment. We’re talking about stuff that should be sending people to jail. It’s just absolutely outrageous.

What’s going to happen in the long run is cities are going to find themselves with congestion getting worse and worse because they are not dealing with the problem. The problem is that traffic congestion gets worse. There is nothing you can do to reduce traffic congestion except provide more road capacity.

Posted Tuesday Nov. 7, 2006 -------- In 2004 Joe Trippi became famous for his pioneering use of the Internet to raise more than $50 million for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s bid for the Democrats’ presidential nomination. Using blogs and Internet social networks, Trippi created a grass-roots movement of small-donor contributors that raised more money than any Democrat presidential campaign in history.

Trippi is a veteran Democrat campaign operative who has worked on the campaigns of Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale and Dick Gephardt, as well as state and local candidates. He documented his Internet innovations in the book, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything.” I talked to him Thursday, Nov. 2 by telephone from his home in Witman, Md.

Q: Has John Kerry pulled the Republicans’ bacon out of the fire?

A: No, I don’t think so. I think the Kerry statement will have more to do with the blame game after the elections if the Democrats don’t win a few of the targeted races. I think before his statement the entire party establishment planned on blaming Howard Dean for any seats that were lost but now they’ll blame Kerry for it. That’s about the only thing that’s going to change.

Q: If you were working for the Republicans right now, what would you do or could you do to prevent or mitigate their losses next week? Is it too late?

A: No. I don’t think there’s anything they can do in the House. I think the House is gone and we’re just fighting over how big—and it’s going to be big—their losses are going to be. The Senate is a different story. There are probably three or four seats of theirs that are gone and three or four that are going to be decided by a couple points or less. You could lose the Senate or hold it by a fairly substantial margin. ...

Clearly you do everything you can do—whether it’s more television, getting the president in there and increasing turnout. The problem Republicans have got is that it is not clear that Bush actually helps when he goes into a state. He may actually be hurting incumbents. It’s much more likely that this is going to be a referendum on George Bush and the Republican majority than anything John Kerry said in the last few days

Q: Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania is famous for winning and he’s been down before. Do you think he has a prayer?

A: No, I don’t. If Rick Santorum wins that means Republicans are going to win all those seats. Given the desire for real change and the fact that Santorum just seems to be stuck in the polls at about 40 percent and not able to move above that, it’d be a minor miracle for him to win.

Q: Can the famed Karl Rove get-out-the-vote-machine be a factor?

A: I don’t think so. It may make a difference in one or two of the races but you’ve got to be really close to have turnout be a factor. It’s got to be a one- or two-point race. In the case of Rick Santorum, there’s no way the vaunted Rove turnout machine helps him. I don’t think he can get it close enough for it to help him.

Q: Everyone seems to agree that the Republicans are being hurt most by Iraq. But which voters are the ones who are being lost—Republicans, independents, Democrats?

A: The big thing that’s happening in this election is that independent voters who in the past two elections have tended to act—in terms of their voting behavior—more like Republicans than Democrats suddenly have shifted hard to voting Democratic….

Some Republicans believe the Iraq war is not worth the cost and blood and resources and feel that if the Iraqis don’t want to stand up for themselves we should get out of there, and the Bush administration is failing to deal with reality. They are starting to lose Republican support as well. That’s what’s starting to hurt Santorum. He’s losing not just independents but also some of the Republican base is defecting.

Q: Specifically how did you use the Internet to “revolutionize” how political campaigns are run?

A: Television is an isolating medium that takes people out of the process—it’s one way. What the Internet’s doing is making people matter again; making it possible for people to connect with each other for the common good or common purpose. That’s what we did in the Dean campaign. You’re seeing it in a lot of campaigns this year on both sides of the aisle. Getting more people to participate in the process is good for democracy, regardless of who wins. I think it’s better that the American people actually participate instead of just viewing the negative ads on television. You are seeing both parties reach out and use the connective ability of the Internet and other technologies to get people to actually participate and become involved in the process. Again, I think that is good regardless of what party they’re in.

Q: Can the Internet create new supporters or get out the vote?

A: It’s being used a lot differently now. People are using it to organize and get out the vote and get people activated. I think you’re going to see a higher participation in an off-year election among younger voters than you’ve seen in any other election in our history. They’re actually participating more now because of the Internet and getting each other to vote.

Campaigns are using those tools effectively. ...There are all kinds of different sites and things that are happening outside of the usual two-party committees. It’s not Rick Santorum and the Republican Senate Campaign Committee versus Bob Casey and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. You now have the Web site ActBlue.com urging people to contribute to Casey and raising $10 million and targeting selected races this year. You’re seeing sort of a decentralization where actual citizens don’t have to rely on the party committees; they can support their own candidates.

Q: So it’s truly a democratization of the political process?

A: Yeah, it really is. That’s what we are seeing. It’s the people at the bottom—and I don’t mean that in an economic sense; I’m talking about ordinary people who now have a way to connect and put their $25 together or their four hours each working in the neighborhood for a common political good. I mean Republican political good or Democratic political good. It doesn’t really matter. I’m really not trying to be partisan in my answer. This really is adding to participation, helping the democracy and democratizing which candidates even win the primaries.

Look at what happened in Connecticut. Joe Lieberman may indeed win his Senate seat, but it wasn’t any of the usual political institutions like the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee that decided it. It wasn’t the normal guys in the back room deciding who was going to get the party’s nomination. Citizens actually banded together and for whatever reasons, good or bad, changed the nomination process and actually nominated Ned Lamont to be the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer. That’s the kind of shift you are going to see occur more in the future.

Q: What will happen in the House and Senate on Tuesday?

A: I think the House is going to be really big—at the upper end of some of the numbers. It could easily be 35 seats won by the Democrats. The Senate is the one that’s tough to predict because it really could go either way.

I could see anything from Democrats only gaining four or five seats to gaining eight seats. That’s possible, but my guess is that Democrats are going to come up a seat or two short in the Senate.

Richard Allen: Trouble on the Korean Peninsula

Richard V. Allen, Ronald Reagan’s chief foreign policy adviser from 1977 to 1980 and President Reagan’s first national security adviser, knows his way around the Korean Peninsula and the government corridors of the Pacific Basin as well as any American. Allen, who has visited Japan, Korea and China hundreds of times over the last 40 years, is a founding member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. Defense Policy Board, a group of outside advisers that helps the Pentagon formulate policy. To get his take on the international brouhaha over North Korea’s apparent detonation of a nuclear weapon, I called Allen Friday in Tokyo, where he was meeting old friends and talking to Japanese leaders.

Q: Are we absolutely sure that North Korea tested a real nuclear weapon?

A: Well, I’m not sure. I think it’s equally likely that it discharged a large conventional explosion deep in the ground as it is that a small, somewhat-fizzled nuclear device was detonated. So take your pick. Whatever you chose to believe this evening is probably valid until otherwise contradicted. The only way to contradict any point of view is to gather samples, and those are generally done atmospherically. There’s nothing on the ground that we have in the way of any intelligence, nor do the South Koreans. So there isn’t the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell that the site will be found, penetrated and sampled, because no one is allowed there and it is a remote portion of NK.

Q: What is North Korea trying to do?

A: North Korea is attempting to extract, blackmail fashion, assistance for its perpetually failed system that is based on utter and complete totalitarianism, down to and including prison camps and death camps for dissidents. It is a failed state in every respect of the word, and it apparently has a maniacal desire to achieve nuclear status because it fears the United States. But all of the foofaraw about North Korea escapes the basic truth because we are so uninformed, generally speaking, in the United States about North Korea.

We fail to recognize as well that the only path to peace on the Korean Peninsula is the path that runs from Pyongyang to Seoul. The path to peace on the Korean Peninsula doesn’t run through Washington.

Q: You mean the peace that was never really settled from the Korean War or this current episode?

A: Well, I don’t see any distinction. Peace on the Korean Peninsula implies just that. We have had 37,000 troops—now about 30,000, fortunately, which is less than we had before—as a tripwire in Korea and we have defended the Republic of Korea—South Korea—for over a half century.

It’s time for them to step up to the plate and for our troops to leave and get out of harm’s way. We can still fulfill all of our objectives and our obligations under the mutual security treaty with the Republic of Korea by using assets that are based off shore.

Q: Withdrawing our troops from South Korea sounds to me like Cato Institute’s policy.

A: Well, Cato is a fine institution, but what it thinks doesn’t matter to me in the slightest. I’ve followed very closely the U.S.-Korean alliance over many years. I’ve participated in structuring it and fulfilling our obligations under it. I’ve spent a lot of time in Korea, especially in the past 30 years, and we now find ourselves confronted with an utterly perfidious South Korean regime that pursues objectives that are diametrically opposed to ours.

Q: “South Korean,” you said?

A: I did say that – S-O-U-T-H. It’s a perfidious South Korean regime that has a number of objectives that are inconsistent with ours. This is causing us great heartburn. One of their objectives, by the way, is to gain control of wartime command of troops. I’ve been thinking that it would be one cold day in hell before we ever put our troops under a South Korean general on the Korean Peninsula. The South Koreans want us out, but they want us in. They want us in because we are a convenient tripwire. Anti-Americanism is rife, particularly among younger people. Whether that’s our failure or someone else’s is to be determined another time. But we’ve done our best by the South Koreans over many, many years. Our military, in my view, has a vested interest in staying in South Korea because it is a good place to get promotions and it’s one of the few places where you face the enemy across a demarcation line—in this case, the 38th Parallel or the DMZ.

But the time has come for us to withdraw. If we’re not wanted, and if the South Koreans want to command American troops in a time of war, and if our occupation of the real estate that they want is annoying to them—all of which are true—then it’s time to go. And still fulfill our obligations, I stress, by using assets deployed in the neighborhood.

Q: What should the U.S. response be to Kim Jong Il’s latest provocation?

A: Well, it’s hard to say. We’ve been subjected to a series of provocations. The North Koreans never had any intention of not detonating a nuclear weapon, or what they say is a nuclear weapon. They never had any intention of not achieving some ballistic missile capability to hypothetically lift weapons... . They have achieved a certain minimal expertise in short-range rockets which could be armed with conventional warheads—they don’t have the ability to detonate nuclear weapons. So we’ve been under a series of provocations all the way from the ax murders of the 1970s, when they sent people out to murder some of our troops in cold blood with axes.

It is a cruel society and an estranged society. The Koreans of the north speak differently from the Koreans of the south now, after this long period of separation and utter isolation. Starvation is used as an instrument of policy, which I consider to be provocative. Human rights are denied. The abysmal, awful prisons are on the scale of the gulags of World War II. So I view the actions of Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Song before him, as a series of nonstop provocations. The hatred of the United States is apparently so deeply rooted among those of the leading clique, the nomenklatura of North Korea, that it can’t be eradicated. Their existence is a provocation.

Q: So this nuclear test is nothing special then?

A: I’m not a slight bit surprised by the detonation of some instrument that may or may not be a nuclear weapon. I never had any doubt they would proceed. They have no intention of keeping any agreement—ever. They do not keep their agreements. They exist by selling weapons, by counterfeiting our money—they’ve even counterfeited our new bills with ink and paper that are the equivalent or better than ours. They sell dope abroad. They sell bogus cigarettes. That’s the way they earn foreign exchange. It’s not a normal state in any sense of the word. It’s not a state that can be negotiated with and then relied upon to keep its agreements if there ever were an agreement.

Q: So what should the U.S. response be to this nuclear test?

A: It should be harsh, in every respect, including but not limited to continuing to press for meaningful sanctions—including the interruption of commerce. The Japanese have banned all ships. We already have in motion a program called the Proliferation Security Initiative—the PSI, to which some 90 nations belong—under which there is broad cooperation to intercept and remove from any North Korean ship weapons of mass destruction that are en route. We’ve already had one success in that regard. We lifted some missiles about 18 months ago out of a North Korean ship going into Yemen.

Our problem is that neither the Russians nor the Chinese are going to cooperate with us, which of course is ridiculous. Nor will the South Koreans. They will not take a hard line. So I think we have to look past the South Koreans and do our best to keep the pressure on China, because China is definitely embarrassed by whatever occurred in this detonation of an instrument. China, however, finds it very convenient to keep North Korea exactly the way it is.

Q: Is China the key to solving this diplomatically?

A: The key is in Pyongyang with the nut-cake that runs the place. And he’s very clever and very persistent. China is useful. If China would simply stop supplying energy and food, that might get some results. The Chinese said they are not going to do that. And as I said, our erstwhile South Korean allies, our once-upon-a-time allies, have no intention of doing anything serious, either. Neither do the Russians.

Q: Is there something that the United States should make sure it does not do?

A: Well, we shouldn’t send troops across the border (laughs).

Q: I guess there are a lot of things we shouldn’t do.

A: I can’t think of anything that stands out that we should not do. We shouldn’t do what the Chinese did to the Russians when they were in a period of tension 25 years or so ago, which was to drop their drawers and moon the Russian soldiers... . I guess you could say what we should not do is ease up the pressure on everyone else to take a stand. This is not a European problem. The Europeans yammer and mouth off about North Korea but they haven’t the faintest idea what goes on there—not the faintest. Can you imagine a Jacques Chirac calling for restraint in North Korea (laughs)? He doesn’t have the faintest idea. I think we’d have to give him a map and color it red to show him which is the bad part.

Q: Should the U.S. meet with North Korea one-on-one?

A: No. I believe everyone who has said that is absolutely dead wrong. We have plenty of opportunity to meet the North Koreans. We can meet them secretly in New York and have in the past. But where we need to meet them is in the framework of the so-called six-party talks.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t attack President Bush for going it alone and then attack him for going at it in a multilateral context. The critics are never satisfied. But what is the most shameful of all—and I landed in Tokyo just as the explosion was occurring—is that it immediately became a political tool (in the United States) on the side of the president’s critics. Some vigorous critics attacked him mercilessly.

To say that the fact that there was an explosion of some kind, nuclear or not, in North Korea was a failure of United States policy? Idiocy. There was no failure of U.S. policy. Was it a failure when France got the bomb in the ‘50s? Was it a failure when China got it? Was it a failure of U.S. policy when Pakistan and India developed a nuclear capability or when Israel developed its own latent capability? Were these all failures? To what extent is the United States responsible for things it can’t control? So, no, we should not be speaking to the North Koreans one-on-one. We can speak to them one-on-one in the context of 12 pairs of eyes looking on.

Q: What would be the ideal ending to this current situation?

A: The ideal ending would be the decision of Kim Jong Il to walk away and seek asylum some place in another dictatorship. The second ideal ending would be regime change. A third ideal ending would be that Korea could be reunited on South Korean terms, as opposed to Kim Jong Il’s insistence that it be united on the terms of North Korea.

Stuart Rothenberg sees big trouble for GOP

Posted 5 pm, Monday, Oct. 9, 2006 -------- With Nov. 7 just four weeks away and the Republican Party looking less and less likely to hold on to its dual control of Congress, it’s a good time to check in with political handicapper Stuart Rothenberg.

Rothenberg edits and publishes “The Rothenberg Political Report” (rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com), a Washington newsletter known for its nonpartisanship that reports on and analyzes congressional and gubernatorial elections, presidential politics and other political developments. I talked to Rothenberg Wednesday, Oct. 4, by telephone when the Mark Foley scandal was still rocking the Beltway:

Q: Will the Foley scandal add significantly to the Republican Party’s troubles this fall?

A: Well, we won’t know until we see some poll numbers on that. But I think it certainly could. Obviously, a Democratic wave was already building. There is a desire for change. The president is not held in high regard. And Congress is not held in high regard.

It at least raises significant questions in my mind whether it will depress some conservative voters or lead to some conservatives staying home or whether it will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and convinces more independents and even some Republicans that there is a need for an across-the-board change. I think it has the potential to add to the Republicans’ considerable pre-existing woes.

Q: Is 2006 looking like it will be a rousing success for Democrats the way 1994 was for Republicans?

A: The short answer is yes. The longer answer is we don’t know how big it’s going to be. We didn’t know how big ‘94 was going to be until it happened. But it’s going to be a very good Democratic year.

Q: Is it that Republicans are weak or that Democrats are stronger?

A: It’s not about the Democrats at all. It’s just about the Republicans. People want change. They are dissatisfied with the performance of their elected officials. They are dissatisfied with the direction of the country. This is not about the Democrats. Voters are not looking for any particular kind of change. The Democrats are not really offering any kind of particular change. Voters just want something different. The last time I looked, we have only two parties. So if one party is unpopular, the other party is the beneficiary.

Q: Is Iraq the Republicans’ biggest problem issue?

A: I think it has been and continues to be the kind of cloud that hangs over the party. Heck, it’s the cloud that hangs over the country. It’s probably the single reason why people feel things are not going well and frankly the single biggest reason they have lost confidence in the president—in what he has told the country, in his policy. The news from Iraq weighs on the public and is the major reason why people are in a pessimistic mood.

Q: Have hard-core Republican voters been turned off by the Bush administration’s liberal sins—big spending and soft on immigration?

A: It’s not clear. There are a lot of Republicans and fiscal conservatives who are disappointed in the administration for not vetoing spending bills and not taking a tougher line on spending and the size of government. Having said that, at least up until recently the president’s numbers among Republicans weren’t bad. Actually, they were bouncing back in terms of attitudes of Republicans about the president. A lot of what you hear is complaining from conservative activists, which doesn’t necessarily reflect widespread grass-roots feeling but is more an effort to get publicity for individuals who may not be in the limelight but want to show that they are still important. I’m not sure that there is a lot of grass-roots conservative or Republican anger at the president. More than anything else, frankly—in terms of Republicans, and this probably also holds for many conservatives—there is more of a feeling of disappointment. They were hoping for a very popular, successful president. They were hoping to achieve more. They wanted to feel good about George Bush. Now some of them may still feel good, but for a lot of them I just feel like it’s not what they had hoped.

Q: Where are Republican incumbents weakest or in most jeopardy?

A: Starting in the House, they are most vulnerable in districts that are basically Democratic or swing districts. That includes a lot in the Northeast—Connecticut and Pennsylvania—but also some individual districts that are very competitive districts. In New Mexico and Florida there are a number of open seats. Not surprisingly, the first group of voters who are defecting to the Democrats are Democratic voters who have voted for Republican candidates, as well as independents who have voted for Republican candidates. We’re not seeing yet large numbers of Republicans in Republican districts who are in huge trouble. There are some aberrant examples and some open seats, but the people who are in trouble mostly are in very competitive or Democrat-leaning districts.

Q: Is the power of incumbency still going to work its magic and trump some of these issues?

A: In some districts it will. But the value of incumbency is somewhat diluted this cycle because people hate Congress. They don’t hate their own congressman as much as they hate the institution, but that was before the Foley stuff hit. There’s some danger of the public’s overall view of Congress infecting some individual member. Is incumbency no longer a factor? No, I wouldn’t say that. If you look at some Republican candidates they have raised some incredible war chests, and that’s in part from incumbency. And many of them have established reputations that are positive. So incumbency is still an asset, but it’s not as much of an asset as it is in most cycles when voters prefer the status quo.

Q: Sen. Rick Santorum (of Pennsylvania) is famous for never losing despite the odds, yet he seems to be everyone’s pick to be overthrown. Does he have any chance to pull off a victory?

A: He hasn’t given any indication so far that he has a chance of pulling it off. The biggest problem for Santorum is that when you look at polls from around the state, he is stuck around 40 percent. Sometimes Casey goes up to 50. Sometimes Casey goes down to 46 -- and the race is portrayed as “closing.” But it’s not because of anything Santorum is doing. It’s not as if voters are suddenly gravitating to Rick Santorum.

In many respects, Santorum is a better candidate than Bob Casey. He’s quicker. He comes across as kind of sharper. But some people think he comes across as too political. There’s an “Aw, shucks” quality to Bobby Casey. Santorum may seem brighter and sharper and quicker. But he also seems like more of a politician. And it’s a bad year to be a Republican in Pennsylvania and it’s a bad year to be part of the party leadership.

Q: Will we see any big surprises Nov. 7?

A: I’m expecting surprises. As a handicapper, I don’t look forward to surprises. I try to avoid surprise. But this is the kind of year where voters are angry and we have these late-breaking events that could change things. As we head toward November, we may start to frantically add seats to the list of races we are watching, because when you get people dissatisfied with the status quo, you get pretty strange results. People you didn’t think were in trouble, like (Chicago Democrat House member) Dan Rostenkowski in 1994, find themselves losing. This is the kind of year that makes me as a handicapper very nervous.

Q: What data should lay people watch or ignore to get a more accurate reading of what’s likely to happen Nov. 7?

A: They should certainly watch not one poll but try to look at half a dozen polls about how the president is doing. Don’t focus on one—you heard one survey, so now you think that’s how the country is. I will never take one survey on face value and assume that it’s right and things have changed. I look for a number of surveys to get a sense where the country is. I look at presidential job approval and I certainly look at whether the country is headed in the right direction or is it headed off track. I look at this question of generic ballot—who are you going to vote for Congress? But you’ve got to remember, these races are race by race. And while this is more of a national referendum than most midterm elections, it’s still going to be fought district by district.

Q: As of Oct. 4, what’s your prediction for the House?

A: Our latest estimate in the newsletter—and this could change based on events, based on poll data I hear about, based on the reaction to Foley or some event I have no idea is going to occur—is that if the current trajectory of the election holds, the Democrats will take 15 to 20 seats in the House, which would be a majority, and 3 to 5 in the Senate, which would fall just short. But I have to tell you, more Senate seats have come into play in the last few weeks.

I think increasingly you have to think that the Senate is in play as well. I think Republicans are going to have to fight to hold both houses of Congress, but one of them right now looks certainly poised to go Democratic and the second one is kind of moving that way.

Bodega Bay Navigator Online / --------- Bill Steigerwald

The syndicated colomnists that appear in the Navigator Online will not be updated after Jan. 1, 2007. They will reappear in March 2007 as part of Premium Content.

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