For Better Days

Bill Kristol attacks the complacency of the "new normal":

By the way, the new normal is bipartisan. It’s of course true that the administration in power during this period of national decline has a particular interest in selling the concept of a new normal. It’s true that the idea fits uncommonly well with the fatalism that, beneath the airy talk of hope and change, lies at the heart of modern liberalism. But Republican elites aren’t immune to the charms of the new normal, which excuses subpar performance in so many areas.

So it’s apparently the new normal for GOP leaders in Congress to be more interested in exempting themselves from Obamacare than in laying the groundwork for repealing it, and thereby exempting all Americans. It’s apparently the new normal for GOP elites to spend all their time, money, and effort trying to quickly muscle through a poorly crafted immigration bill—which once passed will have irreversible effects—than trying to do anything significant for American workers or against crony capitalism. It’s apparently the new normal for GOP leaders, at once terrified and contemptuous of their own base, equally intimidated by donors and voters but uninterested in treating either group as grownups, to think they too can simply shelter in place, under the awning of the new normal. (One might add that, when it comes to the leaders of both parties colluding to preserve power and perquisites, the new normal bears a striking resemblance to the old normal.)

Still a City upon a Hill

In National Review, I have an essay up looking at the meaning of the Boston Marathon as a terrorist target:

Boylston is empty.
It is Sunday, and Boylston Street — the avenue of the Boston Public Library, Copley Square, the Prudential Tower, and the Old South Church — is, nearly a week after the terrorist attack of Patriots’ Day, empty. One of the central arteries of the great New England metropolis — usually crowded with vitality and ambition and the hectic beat of urban life — is bare, with the exception of a few police officers and FBI agents. In a grim reminder of the toll of terror, a few signs celebrating the Boston Marathon remain in that empty space. A crime scene, that stretch of Boylston has also become a time capsule.
There is a hole in the city. There is a hole in too many families and too many hearts.
John Winthrop, a leader of those Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, proclaimed in 1630 that the new commonwealth would be a “City upon a Hill” to serve as an exemplar of success or failure to people around the world. Well, nearly 400 years after Winthrop’s sermon, the city of Boston serves yet again as an example: of what terror would destroy and of the means of resisting terror.  

Read the rest here.

It's the Workers

Ramesh Ponnuru turns his attention to the dangers that a "guest-worker" program could pose to the United States's civil fabric:

The guest-worker program is where they go wrong. For the Republican politicians who have in the past been its main supporters, this provision is like a dessert with no calories: Businesses get the benefit of the temporary workers’ labor and they get to make some money, but the rest of us don’t have to make room for immigrants in our society, and Republicans don’t have to worry how they will vote.
That’s exactly what’s wrong with the idea. One of the worst things about illegal immigration is that it creates a class of people who contribute their labor to this country but aren’t full participants in it and lack the rights and responsibilities of everyone else. A guest-worker program doesn’t solve this problem. It formalizes it. 

The guest-worker component is a key and under-discussed aspect of the Gang of 8 bill.  If the GOP is going to restore itself as a party of upward mobility and middle-class uplift, a guest-worker program could pose a significant political problem.

Coordination Between CATO, ATR, and Others

Breitbart unearths some emails showing some coordination between CATO, Americans for Tax Reform, and others to counter skepticism about the Gang of Eight immigration bill after last week's events in Boston.

Obamacare and Immigration

Jed Graham raises an interesting point about the immigration bill, arguing that it may incentivize the employment of recently legalized immigrants:

Under the immigration reform bill, some employers would have an incentive of up to $3,000 per year to hire a newly legalized immigrant over a U.S. citizen.
In avoiding one controversy — the cost of providing millions of newly legalized immigrants with ObamaCare subsidies — the Senate "Gang of Eight" may have risked walking into another.
The bipartisan legislation released Wednesday dictates that those granted provisional legal immigrant status would be treated the same as those "not lawfully present" are treated under the 2010 health law.
That means they would neither be eligible for ObamaCare tax credits nor required to pay an individual tax penalty for failing to obtain qualifying health coverage. It also means some employers would face no penalty for failing to provide such workers affordable health coverage.

Gang of 8 Immigration Bill: Bigger Government?

Over at NRO, I explore two aspects of the Gang of 8 immigration bill: how it could affect far more than 11 illegal immigrants, and how it could open the door to a massive new government agency.

Amnesty Incentives?

Mickey Kaus notes an interesting tweet from Senator Marco Rubio's press secretary, Alex Conant:

Rubio press aide Alex Conant tweets that

Without temporary worker program to fill US demand for low-skill labor, people will find way to come illegally despite new fence

Really? Hasn’t Rubio been busy telling us that his plan would secure the border? Now his flack tells us people “will find a way to come illegally” despite it? Doesn’t this mean that those who can’t get into the guest worker program (maybe because it’s full, or because they don’t qualify) will be able to “find a way” in as well–so the elaborately negotiated limits on the number of guestworkers will be routinely violated and, in practice, meaningless? Doesn’t it also mean that those who are drawn by the prospect of the next amnesty (because, you know, ”we can’t deport them all!” and “Latino voters”) will “find a way”in too?

But Conant isn't the only one suggesting that future border enforcement might be less than effective.  Senator Rubio himself says it, this post from Hot Air notes:

“A lot of it is going to hinge on the viability of a guest worker program. There are elements in organized labor that don’t want one. I think, really, that’s going to become the critical issue in this debate … whether we can create a viable guest worker program that protects American workers, but also ensures that in the future [if] we need foreign labor for limited periods of time, we’re able to access that in a legal way. Because if we don’t have a program like that in place, we’re going to have 10 million illegal immigrants here in a decade again.”

This statement obviously contradicts the line taken by the New York Times and others that we needn't worry about an amnesty encouraging further illegal immigration because there are few people left abroad who would want to immigrate illegally.

Terror in Boston

As the evidence piles up, it seems increasingly clear that the explosions that interrupted the Boston Marathon today were acts of terrorism.  A large number of the specific facts regarding this tragedy remain unclear.

What should remain clear, though, is the endurance of a resolve of a free people.

Not Just Legalization

The Los Angeles Times notes that the "Gang of 8" proposal could significantly increase the rate of legal immigration:

The U.S. admits about 1 million legal immigrants per year, more than any other country. That number could jump by more than 50% over the next decade under the terms of the immigration reform bill that a bipartisan group of senators expects to unveil as early as Tuesday. The impact would be felt nationwide, but areas that already have large immigrant communities would probably see much of the increase.
The immigration package includes at least four major provisions that would increase the number of legal immigrants, according to people familiar with it. Some of the parts could generate as much controversy as the provisions dealing with those who enter the country illegally or overstay their visas, according to those with long experience of the politics of immigration....
Opponents such as Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who has long opposed measures to increase immigration levels, say new workers would depress wages and crowd out Americans looking for work during a time of persistently high unemployment.
"The masters of the universe in glass towers and suites, they may not be impacted by this, but millions of struggling American families will," Sessions said in an interview Friday. "We do need to be sure we aren't exacerbating unemployment and wage erosion in America."
The surge would come in several ways: The bill aims to eliminate the current backlog of roughly 4 million people waiting to be reunited with family members in the U.S. The 11 million now in the country without legal authorization would be eligible for citizenship only after that backlog was resolved. Reunification efforts would require boosting the number of visas issued each year. To keep the additional inflow under control, the bill would stop allowing adult siblings of immigrants to qualify, but children and parents would continue to be eligible.
In addition to family unification, which allows people into the country permanently, the bill also aims to increase temporary visas for both high-wage and low-wage workers. The number of visas for high-tech workers could nearly double to more than 120,000 per year. At the other end of the wage scale, a new visa system would allow businesses to bring in workers for jobs including janitors, housekeepers and meatpackers. The numbers would start small, but as the unemployment rate declined, it could reach 200,000 a year by the end of the decade. And growers could bring a total of about 330,000 new farmworkers into the country during the decade. At least some of those low-wage temporary workers eventually would be allowed to seek permanent residency.

A New Serf Class?

It seems as though big business, purported "labor" groups, and ethnic lobbyists have pulled together a compromise on the agricultural part of the Gang of 8's immigration "reform" proposal, as Reuters reports.  However, the details of this legislation could have big implications for big government.

Here's what Reuters has to say about how farm workers who are currently illegal immigrants could gain legal status under this proposal:

Farm workers in the country illegally who agree to work in agriculture for an additional five to seven years would become eligible for a "green card" allowing permanent U.S. residence, according to two officials. The workers hold legal status, dubbed a "blue card" by negotiators, during the interim.
The new guest worker program would include a system for setting pay scales and initially would have a high ceiling for the number of visas that could be granted. After five years, the cap could be adjusted by the Agriculture Department. There would be a mechanism for meeting emergency needs for workers.

This kind of farm-worker amnesty could give growers great power over workers.  After all, continued employment in agriculture would be the only way for these amnestied immigrants to secure a path to citizenship, so they will be dependent upon agricultural employers.  This proposal would in some ways lock agricultural workers into a kind of caste, where they are only permitted to work into a certain industry.  This system could lead to considerable number of abuses at the workplace.  Moreover, this agricultural proposal would be a considerable experiment in centralized government planning.  Government would set pay scales and even change worker allocations as central planners see fit.  This is government interfering in the market in a radical way.

The Hill notes a further interesting detail: these legalized farm workers would potentially be able to bring their family members over soon (emphasis added).

“Under the proposed new immigration process, farm workers would be able to work in the fields without fear of getting deported immediately and will be able to reunite with their families in a relatively short period of time. The bill would give professional farm workers presently in the U.S., who have been contributing to our country, temporary legal status and the right to earn a green card in the future by continuing to work in agriculture,” said UFW President Arturo Rodriguez.

So would these amnestied farm workers be able to bring their families over with them before they become citizens?  What counts as family members for the purpose of this act?  A spouse and minor children?  Or siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and so forth?  So this legislative component might not only affect illegal farm workers (and Reuters estimates there could be as many as 900,000 of them), but numerous family members for each worker.  This part of the immigration "reform" proposal alone could set a few million on the path to citizenship, and it could further penalize would-be immigrants who have waited in their home countries for permission to immigrate to the US legally.

Obviously, the legislative language is still in process, but these details will need to be further explained.  The American people deserve to know whether government will be taking over the agricultural sector and how many people will be granted legal status through the Gang of 8's attempt at "comprehensive immigration reform."

Who Knew What When

As USA Today reports, the release of a heretofore confidential memo raises new questions about how much the educational administration of former DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee knew about an epidemic of cheating on standardized tests within the school system:

DCPS officials have said they take all cheating allegations seriously, but it's not immediately clear how they responded to Sanford's warnings. Only one educator lost his job because of cheating, according to DCPS. Meanwhile, Rhee fired more than 600 teachers for low test scores — 241 of them in one day in 2010.
The cheating issue first came to light in 2011, after USA TODAY reported that, between 2008 and 2010, 103 schools had test-erasure rates that surpassed districtwide erasure-rate averages at least once.
Erasures are detected by the same electronic scanners used to score tests. When a teacher or student erases a bubble sheet, this leaves behind a light smudge. Computers tally the smudges as well as the new answers.
The USA TODAY investigation found that, as far back as 2008, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), D.C.'s equivalent of a state education department, asked for an erasure analysis. Among the 96 schools flagged for wrong-to-right erasures were eight of the 10 campuses where Rhee handed out so-called TEAM awards "to recognize, reward and retain high-performing educators and support staff." In all, Rhee bestowed more than $1.5 million in bonuses based on increases in 2007 and 2008 test scores.

 These numbers suggest far more teachers were punished for low test scores than were punished for cheating.

Investigative journalist John Merrow has more details about the limits of Rhee's administration.

Financial Federalism

Over at National Review, I outline a case for "financial federalism," an approach to financial reform prioritizing market competition and a diffusion of interests:

Conservatives have an opportunity here to argue on behalf of a financial federalism that would attempt to ward off the dangers of asset concentration, revise limits on leverage for a variety of institutions, and draw clearer lines between various banking activities. Just as the political doctrine of federalism entails a broad distribution of government power (in federal, state, and local entities), financial federalism would put in place a financial system in which systemic risk is lessened through a broad distribution of capital and a variety of capital flows. Financial federalism would undo the distortions of Too Big to Fail. There are various economic, policy, and political reasons for Republicans to move toward market-oriented financial reform.

Read the rest here.

Is the AFL-CIO Still about Labor?

National Journal reminds us that "business" and "labor" have supposedly agreed to some kind of guest-worker plan that would be part of the Gang of 8 immigration proposal.  The AFL-CIO, now headed by Richard Trumka, has endorsed a guest-worker program.  NJ also reminds us that the employment picture isn't looking very good.  At 7.8%, the unemployment rate is higher than it had been at any point in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.  And millions have left the work-force.  And wages are stagnating.  So a guest-worker program would be implemented under less than auspicious economic conditions.

One might be forgiven for wondering what Big Labor would exactly get out of a guest-worker program.  The AFL-CIO might want to give the White House a win on a major issue, but would such a program be in the interests of actual workers?

Let's look at what John Sweeney, the former head of the AFL-CIO, had to say about guest workers:

"Guest worker programs are a bad idea and harm all workers....They cast workers into a perennial second-class status, and unfairly put their fates into their employers' hands."

"The compromise legislation has two fatal flaws: a guest worker program that would institutionalize and expand a second-class workforce easily exploited by employers and an unjust, inhumane and unworkable three-tier system of treatment for immigrants who are in this country.
"The original guest worker operation--the post-war Bracero program--was shamed out of existence in 1964 because of egregious employer abuse, cheating, racial oppression and more."

"[A guest-worker program] will assure a steady flow of cheap labor from essentially indentured workers too afraid of being deported to protest substandard wages, chiseled benefits and unsafe working conditions. Such a system will create a disenfranchised underclass of workers. That is not only morally indefensible, it is economically nonsensical. We've had plenty of bad experiences with such shortsighted answers to a complicated problem."

 Mickey Kaus notes that labor activist Cesar Chavez was not exactly a big fan of "guest workers" or illegal labor, either.

So whose side is Big Labor actually on, here?  The workers' or the White House's?

Society and Virtue

Matt Lewis continues to reflect on some of the broader conceptual stakes of the "culture war":

Of course, there has always been a tension between virtue and liberty. But at some point, America ceased emphasizing community values and began valuing extreme individualism. More and more, Americans — including many conservatives — now believe that individuals should do whatever they want so long as it isn't hurting anybody else.
But the cultural conservative says that there is a "tragedy of the commons" problem with this — that the "if it feels right, do it" mentality will eventually hurt society collectively.
And while social conservatives attempt to argue this point on purely secular grounds, the truth is that it makes little sense without God. As Dr. Benjamin Wiker writes in his new book, Worshipping The State, "For liberalism to make sense, we would have to live in a world without ends — to put it in technical philosophical terms, in a non-teleological universe (telos means "goal" or "end in Greek), where, since there are no ends written into nature (including human nature) by God, we are free to create them ourselves."
Absent a higher purpose, laws are arbitrary. Never was this spelled out more clearly than in the Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed Roe v. Wade: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
In a moral relativist world, aborting an unborn child becomes "giving a mother the right to pursue happiness." Making divorce easy becomes "unburdening individuals to pursue happiness."
Almost every hot-button issue we wrestle with can fundamentally be traced to the struggle between what traditional conservatives deem to be virtue (based on tradition and Judeo-Christian teaching) and the desire to satisfy the individual's desire for extreme freedom.

A Way Forward?

The New York Times hopes that Republican opposition to an immigration amnesty is fading, but Ross Douthat raises doubts about the electoral benefits of a Republican pivot toward amnesty:

The Republican National Committee’s extended autopsy on the G.O.P.’s 2012 defeat, which officially abjures policy recommendations but then goes on to nudge the party toward supporting comprehensive immigration reform and gay marriage, is the highest-profile distillation of what I described last week as the “donorist” view of how the Republican Party needs to change. As Ramesh Ponnuru suggests, this the party elite’s vision of domestic policy reform, reflecting the views of people who are already “more likely to favor same-sex marriage and comprehensive immigration reform on principle,” and who don’t “tend to have any major problems with the Republican economic agenda and do not believe it needs to be rethought in any serious way.” Or to put it another way: If you believe that Mitt Romney’s economic platform and “you built that” rhetoric would be the basis for a durable majority if they weren’t associated with the religious right and anti-immigration sentiment, then this is the vision of Republican reform for you.

Mickey Kaus reminds ambitious politicians that the establishment consensus on amnesty presents a political opportuninty.

The Next Spark?

A potentially very troubling bit of financial news from Cyprus:

ATHENS — In a move that could set off new fears of contagion across the euro zone, anxious depositors drained cash from automated teller machines in Cyprus over the weekend, hours after European officials in Brussels required that part of a new €10 billion bailout be paid for directly from the bank accounts of ordinary savers....
Under an emergency deal reached early Saturday in Brussels, a one-time tax of 9.9 percent is to be levied on Cypriot bank deposits of more than €100,000 effective Tuesday, hitting wealthy depositors — mostly Russians who have put vast sums into Cyprus’s banks in recent years. But even deposits of less than that amount are to be taxed at 6.75 percent, meaning that Cypriot creditors will be confiscating money directly from retirees, workers and regular depositors to pay off the bailout tab.  

As some have noted, this kind of move could lead to a spike of uncertainty and increase the instability of banks across the EU (and elsewhere in the world).

Sustainable Conservatism

In The Weekly Standard, I lay out a case for a "sustainable conservatism," which would combine civic fellowship with targeted reforms:

Even as Washington settles into another battle over the budget, an increasing number of conservative writers (and a few elected officials) are becoming aware of the fact that anti-government platitudes are losing their electoral punch and of the need for conservatism to be about more than the budget. Now is probably not the space to give a laundry list of the names of pundits who have considered conservative reform, but it might be worthwhile to turn to a recent online debate between Hot Air's Ed Morrissey and the Daily Caller's Matt Lewis as revealing two major trends for the future of conservatism---and to look at what a synthesis of these approaches could mean.

Lewis has suggested the value of a return to a "compassionate conservatism," one that would go beyond celebrating selfishness to think of our broader commitments to one another. This interest in rehabilitating compassionate conservatism can be seen more widely on certain parts of the right (Peter Wehner's and Michael Gerson's recent cover story in Commentary, for instance, seems informed by this impulse). Morrissey has proposed instead the value of a "practical conservatism," which would focus on reforming rather than blowing up many of the institutions that have become central to American public life since the New Deal (such as Social Security). This theme also percolates throughout various sectors of the reformist wing of the right. Perhaps I might pose a synthesizing variant of these two: "sustainable conservatism." The goal of such a conservatism would involve nurturing the public and private institutions and tendencies that help sustain a free republic. It seems as though maintaining a free republic demands, among other things, faith in government and the rule of law, a sense of civic participation, a belief in personal freedom, virtue on the part of its citizens (and especially its government officials), and some kind of wisdom or prudence. Sustainable conservatism would seek to foster these tendencies in order to renew the civic compact. 

Read the rest here.

Changing the Game

In The Weekly Standard, Matt Continetti explores the GOP's political "double bind," arguing that possible steps the GOP could take for reform could shatter its political coalition.  As he puts it:

Trying to appeal to the coalition of the ascendant and the Reagan coalition simultaneously would give the party a severe case of political schizophrenia. The GOP would bewilder its historic base of support while disappointing newcomers, leading to confusion, disillusionment, apathy, and perhaps (ultimately) dissolution.

The Republicans, like feminists, can’t have it all. They are trapped in the double bind.

Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner, who worked for President George W. Bush, have a cover story in Commentary on how to revive the Republican party. Their proposals are well intentioned, cogent, and in some ways persuasive. When they get into the nitty-gritty of specifics, though, they bump up against the double bind.

For example, Gerson and Wehner propose “ending corporate welfare as we know it”; “supporting the breakup of the big banks”; and “thoroughgoing reform of the federal role in education, focusing on public and private choice.” Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner made similar arguments shortly after the election, when he called for a “new Republican populism” that “can promise to level the field by getting the bureaucrats and politicians out of it” and by cutting regulations and ending bailouts.

Sounds great. But a word of caution: There is little evidence these policies would be any more popular than traditional Republican ones. And one reason there is so little evidence is that there is no serious advocate for these ideas within the ranks of Republican officeholders. Why is there no advocate for these ideas? Because major elements of the Republican party oppose them.

Continetti suggests that one strategy Republicans might turn to in the face of this double bind is the acceptance of the idea of a "conservative welfare state."  This kind of conservatism would accept the legitimacy of the state but then try to reform this state so that it accomplished conservative ends.  This wouldn't necessarily be totally centrally controlled state; Continetti leaves a big space open for federalism.

As he concludes his vision of a conservative welfare state, Continetti writes:

The conservative welfare state of our dreams would be, well, a state. That is, it would be an effective federal government. And it would be a community. Human beings are not faceless monads choosing identities at will from a universal menu of options. Human beings are born into families, faiths, and nations.

The security of all three of these pre-liberal forms of association is important. For families, that means growing incomes while lessening the costs of child-rearing, and giving parents blocking gear against the offenses of a hazardous popular culture. For faiths, that means protecting ministerial exceptions and religious liberty. For the nation, that means borders that are secure, a trade policy that puts the interests of American laborers over the interests of multinational corporations, a sound currency, and a fearsome military.

The emphasis on "community" in Continetti's vision has considerable merit, especially the recognition that we find ourselves members of community and that people are social animals and not just profit-seeking automatons.

Whether one agrees with all the details of Continetti's alternative vision or not, he certainly does make a good case for Republicans changing the policy playing field.

Should High Worker Wages Be a Problem?

David Frum argues that a guest worker program would pose a threat to the economic revitalization of the working and middle classes:

The immigration debate is often premised on the assumption that high wages for American workers are a problem to be overcome. If you'll look again at the Cleveland Fed chart above, you'll notice that the collapse in labor's share of national income coincides with the start of the mass immigration influx after 1970. Since then 40 million people have migrated to the United States, most of them very low-skilled. About one-third that number arrived illegally.

Immigration advocates insist that this huge surge of cheap labor has nothing to do with the persistent decline in wages that began about the same time. If so, that's one hell of a coincidence. With President Obama proposing accelerated flows of immigration in future, American workers should ready themselves for more coincidences ahead.

In Defense of Virtue

Matt Lewis picks up an important---but often ignored---component of the American founding: the importance the Founders placed not on relentless private acquisitiveness but on self-restraint and sacrifice in the name of the public good.  As Lewis puts it:

Our founders believed self-imposed responsibility was essential to the preservation of freedom. An immoral majority will eventually discover that they can vote "themselves largess from the public treasury." But a nation's elite must also be moral — which is to say, not greedy. As Ed Morrissey noted, "Any society with a large class of exploited poor will have no end of social difficulties and instability, the costs of which in a properly ordered system would far exceed the assistance extended." That's the invisible hand at work.

Without private and public responsibility, the enterprise of this republic could founder.  There's a reason why Jefferson spoke of a natural aristocracy of virtue and talent.