Government shut down

Government Shutdown Looms as Congress Fails to Reach Budget Compromise
With the federal government on the verge of shutting down at midnight on Friday, budget negotiations intensified between President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in the hopes of reaching an agreement on a substantial reduction in spending for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year. The three leaders have held a series of meetings this week in the Oval Office with increasing urgency as the deadline draws ever nearer.

House Republicans, lead by their tea party contingent, seek $61 billion in cuts to the FY11 budget, a figure that is substantial in its own right but whose impact would be significantly magnified because the 2011 fiscal year is half over (effectively doubling the impact). The White House and Senate Democrats have reportedly countered with an offer of $33 billion in cuts. Already, Congress and the White House have cut $10 billion in FY11 as part of the series of temporary funding extensions known as continuing resolutions (CR) that kept the government operating while work continued on a final budget plan. Among those earlier reductions that have gone into effect are $891 million in cuts to education programs that completely eliminated funding for Striving Readers ($250 million), Even Start ($66 million), and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards ($10 million) among other programs.

Indeed, House Republicans passed another one-week CR late this week in the event negotiations fail. But the price for the one-week extension is $12 billion in additional cuts to federal spending, including $391 million from education programs such as Education Technology State Grants ($100 million) and Teaching American History ($119 million). Such a CR has little chance of being approved by the Senate or president.

Complicating a final deal is the insistence of House Republicans that several policy changes be included in any funding compromise, notably eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood and language prohibiting the EPA from enforcing certain Clean Air and Clean Water Act rules.

Federal agencies and Washington, D.C., began bracing for the possibility of a shutdown. Beginning Saturday, national parks, the Smithsonian museums, and National Zoo would close. Tax returns and refunds would slow to a halt. On the other hand, mail and social security checks would continue to be delivered. Essential personnel would remain on the job, such as those working in law enforcement, defense, air traffic control, and homeland security, but the vast majority of the 800,000 federal workers would be furloughed and prohibited from working—even on a voluntary basis—during the shutdown.

Reading Obama

Duane Campbell

            The book Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition, may well offer some significant insights into the political viewpoints of President Obama.   In addition, it is a prolonged essay concerning how the author sees the political philosophy of pragmatism and a history of how pragmatism has served in the U.S.

            I found the book delightful in a number of ways.  I particularly enjoyed Prof. Kloppenberg’s descriptions of the development of pragmatism as a political philosophy.    The book is as much an essay on pragmatism as it is a description of the Obama philosophy.  That is, the author is promoting intellectual pragmatism as a preferred philosophy and using the Obama experience as device to describe concrete implementation issues of pragmatism and the ascendance of pragmatism as a philosophy.

There are several interesting issues.  Can a scholar describe well the political philosophy of an important leader by reading books by the President and reading the transcripts of his speeches?   Is it far too early to be describing the philosophy of Barack Obama after only two years in office?

The  book describes the detailed and interesting debates on philosophy, pragmatism,  the role of  Dewey,  John Rawles,  Kuhn, and others, critical legal theory, communitarianism,  and the several major intellectual debates that were vigorous while Obama was at Harvard, and some of the debates today.  Kloppenberg does not  the examine a closely related question. An implied thesis of Reading Obama is that the intellectual fervor shaped Barack Obama, and now that he is President, these intellectual debates guide and influence public policy. 

            Certainly Barack Obama, as described by Kloppenberg, is a significant intellectual.  I am not satisfied with the device of describing a viewpoint held by one or another of Obama’s professors at Harvard and then asserting that Barack Obama learned and adopted this particular position., or the summary of a position taken by a professor in the Harvard Law Review while Obama was editor and assuming that Obama adopted this particular nuanced position.   This seems to me over interpretation. 

            Prof. Kloppenberg recognizes this problem.  He says, “ I want to emphasize that I am not trying to establish a necessary connection between philosophical pragmatism and Obama’s politics.”

            We know from Reading Obama that Kloppenberg has great respect for the faculty of the Harvard Law School and the faculty at Occidental College.  He assumes that when a professor teaches an idea the students adopt that idea.   This could, I assume be investigated.  A researcher could look at the distinct ideas taught by some of the leading scholars at Harvard and then look to see if these ideas are clearly taught or professed when Barack Obama was an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago.  The simple assertion of a connection   is insufficient evidence for me.   Having taught at both an elite university and a second tier public state university for over 35 years,  I am less certain that  the intellectual dialogues  at the elite universities determine, shape, describe, or even matter in the daily life of  the great majority of people in the U.S.

            To be more  confident of the source of decisions   I would need to know- for example- what are the philosophies of Barack Obama’s major economic advisors Larry Summers, Laura Tyson, Tim Geithner.  If they have diverse philosophies and diverse financial interests in decisions, how do we know that Obama is being a pragmatist or is he taking advice from experts in a field?  And, I would like to know the philosophies of major allies such as Richard Trumka and major opponents such as Senator Mitch McConnell. 

 Robert Kuttner, in A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama’s Promise, Wall Streets Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future, provides detailed evidence of the perspectives and economic vested interests of the major policy advisors in the Obama Administration.   Looking at both the financial vested interests of this group and their organizational ties provides a much better informed position on how the Obama Administration came to support Wall Street both in the bail outs and in preventing real regulatory reform.   Economic self interest and institutional self serving, such as the individual history of Larry Summers, may better explain  the policy decisions than does references to pragmatism and the views of some of Obama’s law professors.

            Of course , as the author argues, we all learn from our predecessors.  After all, this book is about pragmatism which is a philosophy which many have learned from our predecessors  William James and John Dewey, among others.

            Kloppenberg reports on major intellectual issues that were current as Barack Obama was a graduate student, an editor,and then President  of the Harvard Law Review.  The  significant intellectual history of U.S. letters  in a leading law school provided in  the book is valuable in its own right. However, the connection to the intellectual history and Obama’s own philosophical positions is only tenuous and suggestive  not proven.  Further, the connection of these theories to actual behavior as a President is even more indirect.  There may be direct connections, but it would require self reflection or other direct evidence to demonstrate such  connections.

             In current major issues such as the extension of the Bush era tax cuts for millionaires  it is not clear that Obama’s intellectual pragmatism is at work or is the political analysis of the power of his opposition producing these results.  Which, of course, is what pragmatism would instruct, that you need to consider the political terrain and positions of your adversaries.

           

Yesterday at BMW: Nails, Lightning, Cards and Banks

Yesterday at Bob McCarty Writes, I offered the following posts:

• Tim Hawkins Nails Parody of Government

• Cartoonist Captures Lightning Storm on iPhone

• President Barack Obama Needs a Birthday Czar

• Bank CEO: 1,000 Banks Will Fail in Two Years

Click here to connect with yesterday's posts on one page.

Legislation seeks to take back the CSU

Capitol bid to rein in CSU execs
Legislation would add oversight of the state university system

Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, March 1, 2007
State lawmakers have introduced legislation calling for more governmental oversight of the California State University system, which has come under criticism after reports that some of its top executives were receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra compensation without public disclosure.

The oversight plan, which includes adding two legislators or their appointees to the CSU Board of Trustees and requires that executive contracts be approved in public session, comes in response to The Chronicle's reports on special compensation packages for current and former executives of the nation's largest university system.

"This is an effort to earn back the public's trust," said state Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge (Los Angeles County), during a news conference Wednesday at the Capitol in Sacramento. "The general public must have trust in the institutions of higher learning where we put our children."

Portantino, the bill's author, cited the newspaper's two-day series in July as the genesis of his legislation. The stories revealed that as much as $4 million in special perks and extra compensation has been paid to departing CSU officials during the past decade without public disclosure by the chancellor or Board of Trustees.

Beneficiaries included those who remain on the payroll while taking jobs elsewhere and others who receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting contracts from the CSU after their retirement. For example, former executives Peter P. Smith of CSU Monterey Bay and CSU Executive Vice Chancellor David Spence took paid transitional leaves in 2005, a perk that enabled them to receive most of their six-figure salaries for a year after they left office and took six-figure jobs elsewhere.

The legislation, introduced last week as The California State University Reform, Trust and Responsibility Act, would authorize the appointment of two state legislators or their designees to the CSU Board of Trustees. The additional two members would be appointed by the state Senate and Assembly.

Clara Potes-Fellow, a CSU spokeswoman, said the university system has not yet taken a position on the bill.

Portantino, who chairs the Assembly Higher Education Committee, said the bill would restore confidence in the CSU by "giving the Legislature a voice on the Board of Trustees, open up future meetings on executive compensation and eliminate any suggestion of impropriety ..."

It would also give the governor and lieutenant governor -- who hold ex officio positions on the 25-member board -- seats on the board. Each could designate someone to attend CSU meetings on their behalf.

The bill calls for the trustees to approve all executive contracts in public session and reveal all benefits, not just salaries and housing. It also requires CSU executives who are paid for professorships to actually teach classes, and that their compensation could not exceed the amount a full-time professor in the CSU system would be paid for similar teaching duties.

"The priorities are upside down when a handful of top executives are receiving record raises at the same time that faculty are struggling to negotiate fair contracts and students are being hit with tuition increases," said Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, a co-author of the bill. Brownley, who chairs the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education, served 12 years on a school board.

State Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, the majority leader and a CSU professor on leave, called the legislation a "very direct and clear message to the chancellor of this university ... the students, and the citizens who share their outrage. Quality education begins in the classroom, not the upper echelons of the ivory tower. The days of trustees operating in the dark of night, giving away additional perks to executives, are over. This is a sunshine bill."

Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill last month that also aims to compel CSU trustees to meet in public when discussing and deciding executive compensation issues.

Susan Meisenhelder, a CSU professor and statewide political action chairwoman of the California Faculty Association, said the university system's faculty union supports the bill because it will make it more difficult for CSU executives "to further pad their compensation."

She cited a provision of the bill that would require the California Post-Secondary Education Commission to track certain data and report regularly on state funds going toward instruction compared to administration in the CSU system. She said the faculty union has tracked some of these dollars and found that in recent years the percentage of state funds used to pay for CSU instruction has declined while the percentage for CSU administration has increased.

"This is a bill about good government. It's not a partisan bill," Portantino said.

E-mail Jim Doyle at jdoyle@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2007/03/01/BAGO7ODAAF1.DTL