Think it Through

In June, I telephoned an old New Jersey friend – a Republican lawyer from Totowa who has been active in Passaic county politics for decades and whose views I respect – to ask his views about the governor’s race between incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine and Republican challenger Chris Christie.

At the time, Christie was ahead by over 10 points in the New Jersey polls.  I asked my friend of 33 years, “What do you think will happen in the governor’s race in November?”  He answered without hesitation, “Corzine should win because the Republican base has been shrinking in this state, and the party has not done much to broaden the base.  In many places in New Jersey, the Republican Party does not exist.  The Republican label has become toxic in this state.”

My friend’s political sense is confirmed by recent national surveys, and speaks to the burden that all Republicans will face in the 2010 elections.  The latest ABC News – Washington Post poll indicates Republican identification is down to 20% nationally, the lowest in over three decades.  In the northeast, Republican I.D. is 13%.

These numbers suggest that the summer of tea parties, testy town hall meetings, threats of death panels in the health care bills, the rantings of Beck and Limbaugh, and the efforts of NBC-TV’s Today Show to revive Newt Gingrich’s political career have all had zero positive benefit to Republicans.

If Christie wins on Tuesday he will enjoy the sweet taste of knowing he defeated two foes:  the ever-unpopular Jon Corzine and the increasingly unpopular national Republican Party.  If Christie loses, he has himself – and his national party label – to blame.

The most recent Rutgers Eagleton poll shows that in New Jersey, Republican identification stands at 22% among the population.  This means when Chris Christie walks into a supermarket or a restaurant, or stands at an office park to campaign, the first 10 people he is likely to encounter will include four independents, four Democrats, and two members of his own party.  It is a wonder he did not just pack it in.

Christie’s burden of Republican identification in Jersey towns like Bloomfield, Edison, and Mt. Laurel could be repeated for Republican candidates across the country in 2010 in places like Shaker Heights, Ohio, to Brown County, Wisconsin, to Riverside and San Bernardino in California.

It may be time for the Republicans to admit there is no future in claiming that the president is not a citizen or that congressmen are trying to kill grandma, or that the Catholic bishops should decide what health care women can obtain.  Instead, Republicans might try to get beyond 20% identity by offering reasonable alternatives rather than killing President Obama’s proposals for America.

Not everyone agrees with the president, but most want him to succeed.  Associating themselves with those who hurl exaggerated attacks at the president has only succeeded in making the Republican Party, in the words of a wise Republican, “toxic.”

Note:  Our firm, Belden Russonello & Stewart, is working for the New Jersey Education Association, which has endorsed Corzine.

Ted Kennedy is gone but he is still helping Barack Obama. The person who Kennedy tutored and entrusted with the job of chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the 70’s and early 80’s has taken the first meaningful step to bring about a correction in the way Wall Street compensates its executives.

Kenneth Feinberg, the administration’s pay czar has ordered companies who have received taxpayer bailout money to cut the pay to their highest executives.

Feinberg is the first person in the Administration to take action that responds to the bitterness felt by Americans toward government enabling Wall Street executives to reap millions of dollars in pay after they have caused the ruination of the economy. This resentment could possibly deepen as the recession hangs on and the dollars and cents concerns of voters dominate the 2010 elections – more so than Afghanistan or health care.

When Feinberg says the government will “order” reductions in pay to executives of bailed out companies, it represents the first time anyone associated with the Obama administration has used such a verb. In New York a few days ago, President Obama’s message to Wall Street was: “I would ask that you join us” in reforming Wall Street practices. Last Sunday on the ABC news show This Week the President’s closest political advisor David Axelrod, when asked about the Wall Street bonuses, said: “we have, as I said, limited sway other than moral suasion with some of these – a lot of these institutions.”

Feinberg is someone who is more adept at using the law to achieve a specific goal than relying on an “ask:” or an appeal to one’s sense of morality. He has a reputation as a tough negotiator who knows Wall Street but is not a person of Wall Street.

As the press secretary for the House Judiciary Committee at the same time that Feinberg was running Kennedy’s Senate Judiciary Committee, I noticed that staffers on the committees would call him Senator Feinberg behind his back – sometimes jealously, but always with an acknowledgement of some truth to the label.

Ted Kennedy, being secure and smart, promoted this because it made him a more effective senator. Since Kennedy trusted Feinberg’s skills and integrity the Senator could be several places at once and get more done.

Today, over 30 years later, Obama is indicating the same type of confidence in Feinberg. The announcements this week by the pay czar represent just the beginning of reforms on executive pay. Perhaps most importantly, they start to move away from the idea that Wall Street will – or even should – be moved by moral suasion. Stephen Labaton reports for the New York Times that the federal government asked the insurance industry to repay $45 million dollars in bonuses, and so far only $19 million has been paid back. I am surprised that it is as high as $19 million. You cannot blame Wall Streeters for being greedy — they are in the business of making money. That is what they do. It is up to the government to keep them honest through tough regulation and oversight.

Much more is needed than Feinberg’s first step. In June I posted an idea that would apply a direct correction to Wall Street bonuses. Under my proposal, corporations that pay their top executives bonuses while the companies are losing money would be required to pay the federal government a tax worth ten times the bonus. It is a conservative idea, to incentivize sound business practices. It might have made a number of corporations think twice before handing out bonuses last year. For example, AIG gave $38 million to top executives while it was losing $99 billion, and Citigroup handed out $60 million in bonuses while it was losing $18 billion.

After months of hearing Larry Summers and Tim Geithner make excuses for the government’s failure to force reforms on executive pay, Ken Feinberg is a breath of fresh air. We can only hope that he takes an increasing role in the Treasury Department’s dealings with Wall Street, to the point where the Summers and Geithner acolytes begin to refer to him as Secretary Feinberg.

With little debate and even less reasoning the Senate Finance Committee recently included in its health care legislation 50 million dollars for teaching abstinence only sex education classes in schools.  These programs teach students to avoid having sex as the only way to avoid pregnancy and stay healthy.

By definition, these programs are not reality-based and, therefore, have proven to be ineffective.  They deny the existence of condoms, birth control pills, and other proven ways to stay healthy and avoid pregnancy.  They are ineffective because many young people will have sex even if you warn them about the dangers, and not educating them about the number of options available to have safe sex unnecessarily places their health at risk.

You might call these “ignorance only” programs because their objective is to keep young people ignorant of the facts of sex and prevention of medical conditions that could harm them.

In 1996, Congress mandated that the federal government conduct a nationwide study over many years of the effectiveness of abstinence only programs in schools.  Mathematica Policy Research Inc, conducted the study from 1997 to 2007, and found that abstinence only classes for middle school students had no impact on their sexual activity in middle school or later in high school.

The public recognizes what the abstinence only amendment sponsor Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah fails to see – that young people need to hear all the facts about their bodies, their sexuality, medical threats, and how to prevent illness. In a Belden Russonello & Stewart survey, conducted nationwide in 2008, 71% of adults in the country disagreed that “public high school sex education programs should only teach abstinence, not other ways of preventing pregnancy and disease;” a majority of 51% disagreed strongly.

The Mathematica study and the public opinion data show that the Congress in Washington should not be subjecting our children to a program that does not work.

I have a suggestion for Senator Hatch, other Republicans, and some blue dog Democrats who feel the need to record a “yes” vote for “abstinence only” to satisfy the extreme groups in their states that want to impose their brand of morality on the rest of us.

My proposal could benefit individual Senators and cost the federal government a lot less money:  For $50,000 instead of $50 million we can start an “abstinence only” class in the senate to help Senators not to succumb to temptations of the flesh.

Although its impact on the senators will likely be the same as on early teenagers, it may mollify some voters in the belief that a senate program on abstinence only could have prevented Republican Senators John Ensign of Nevada and David Vitter of Louisiana from falling into scandals of sexual impropriety, and maybe with the right kind of instruction, Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho would still be in the United States Senate.

If we must have an abstinence only program in the health care bill to satisfy a constituency, then I would rather experiment with the egos of United States senators than with the health and lives of our children.

Not since the Medal of Freedom ceremonies in 2004, when President George W. Bush praised General Tommy Franks for his failure in school – “You weren’t the brightest bulb in the socket…ain’t this a great country?” – has a high government official sent such a powerfully wrong message to America’s school children as Education Secretary Arne Duncan did this week.

He chose to open a multi-city tour to sell his education program by showcasing Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton. Duncan proudly proclaimed that, although these two celebrities disagree on most issues, they did agree on Duncan’s plan to turn some public schools  over to for-profit companies, close the ones that perform badly, and emphasize student test scores for grading teachers.  These are serious issues, which is why when many of us heard about the Gingrich-Sharpton show we said, “He cannot be serious?”

Sharpton and Gingrich share many values:  Their ideology – face time.  Their strategy – outrage.  Their code of ethics – personal attacks and a disregard for truth.  Like stand-up comics that have their own followings, they may play to different crowds on different nights, but they are the same act.

Sharpton came to national attention by urging a teenager named Tawana Brawley to lie about a rape charge, and became a nightly figure on New York TV news because of his baiting of the police.  Sharpton, whose statements ruined many lives in the glare of the media, was convicted of lying to a grand jury but admits nothing.

About the same time that New York City was discovering Al Sharpton, Newt Gingrich decided that he would lead the House Republicans back into power through the doorway marked character assassination.  Every day, for about a year, Gingrich would viscously attack the ethics of the Speaker of the House, Rep. Jim Wright of Texas, because Wright had written a book that he pressured lobbyists and foundations that received federal funds to purchase. Gingrich’s attacks on Wright were just the beginning.  For more than a decade he kept up a steady drumbeat attacking the motives and character of Democrats.

His tactics worked: Wright resigned, the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 1994, and they made Gingrich their leader. Predictably, Gingrich went too far.  His own ethical problems, involving improper funds going to political foundations he set up in Georgia (Jim Wright must have smiled), and his political missteps of shutting down the government because of his dislike for President Clinton and of insisting on Clinton’s impeachment for having an affair (Gingrich later admitted to having affairs when he was married), eventually led to his departure from Congress.

If Duncan feels he needs celebrities from both parties to sell his education plan – a conservative Republican and liberal Democrat – what does it say about his plan that the only two people he can enlist are those with the ethical backgrounds of Gingrich and Sharpton? Their public lives have exemplified the opposite of the values of responsibility, fairness, of respecting the views of people who are different from you, and working for the common good.

We know Duncan is a friend of President Obama, but we do not know how serious he is as an educator. This week’s display of poor judgment places some doubt on his seriousness.

At least President Bush’s remarks about Tommy Franks were spontaneous.  Duncan actually thought about and planned his act of foolishness.

With all of the attention given to the Pew poll’s recent finding that support for abortion has declined, one key point gets lost: the question of whether the country should “keep abortion legal” does little to explain the views of a majority of Americans.  According to Pew’s survey, over eight in ten Americans do not want to outlaw abortion; for most of them, circumstances are what matters.

When Pew released its numbers this week asserting that support has dropped for abortion because 47% of the public now says abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while  45% says it should be illegal in all or most cases (down from 54-40 a year ago), it reinforced the misperception that abortion opinions are two dimensional. At BRS, we learned a while ago that opinions on abortion are not bipolar – yes/no – but rather on a continuum, based on how restrictive people want to be.

We developed a four-part question that reflects this continuum, and we found that, given the choice, more Americans took a middle position that would place some restrictions on – but not outlaw – abortion.

Our new poll of Catholics nationwide, released yesterday and conducted for Catholics for Choice, uses an almost identical question highlighting those in the middle:  21% of Catholics told us they believe abortion should be legal in all cases, 27% said legal in most cases, 37% said legal in just a few cases, and 14 % said they believed abortion should never be legal.

When we compare our Catholic results with the results from another BRS nationwide poll of Catholics in 2005, we find that the proportion of Catholics who say that abortion should be legal in all or almost all cases has increased by five points (from 16% to 21%) and those on the other end of the spectrum have depleted by about the same proportion (from 21% to 14%).  Those who say abortion should be legal in most cases rose by five points (from 22% to 27%) and those who say abortion should be legal in just a few cases rose from 34% to 37%.  All of these results fall within the margins of error and, therefore, we need to continue to monitor opinions for evidence of trends.

The importance of circumstances when it comes to abortion is reflected in questions we asked Catholics about abortion and health care reform.  We asked, “Do you think health insurance policies – whether they are private or government – should cover abortions under each of the following circumstances?”

• When a pregnancy poses a threat to the life of a woman (84% say yes; 15% say no)
• When a pregnancy is due to rape or incest (76%; 23%)
• When a pregnancy poses long-term health risks for a woman (73%; 25%)
• When test results show a fetus has a severe abnormal condition (66%; 31%)
• Whenever a woman and her doctor decide it is appropriate (50%; 50%)

The debate over abortion continues to be dominated by the absolutists from the conservative side who will not be satisfied until abortion goes away entirely.  We do not hear much from those Americans in the middle. The media pollsters fan the flames of this bipolar politics of abortion.

If pollsters begin to ask questions that look at abortion on a continuum, we could lessen the artificial categorization of public opinion, which allows conservatives to obscure the important point that eight in ten Americans believe abortion should not be outlawed.

Hypocrisy is once again on display in the United States Senate. Creating competition in the health insurance industry is the one goal that Congressional Democrats and Republicans can say they agree upon, even if they disagree about how to bring about this competition.

Senators have been scrambling to create new and ever-more complicated systems – public insurance option, and cooperative exchanges – that only theoretically would infuse the health insurance markets with more competition.

But the truth is that we can lower insurance rates immediately by repealing the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1952, which has allowed insurance companies to operate outside the federal antitrust laws for the past 57 years. So far, the Senate has been unwilling to end the insurance industry’s baseless exemption from the antitrust laws.

A recent statement by Senator Evan Bayh exemplifies the doublespeak that characterizes the Senate pronouncements on the health insurance industry. “Normally in our country we like the free market system to operate and to efficiently allocate resources. Now from time to time to where there is a problem with that if you have something called a natural monopoly, well then the government steps in to regulate that to make sure they don’t gouge consumers and if you have to use the antitrust laws or other steps to make sure that there is robust competition, that people get the choices and the lower costs that they deserve, well you use the law for that purpose. So I think we ought to try, first, aggressive market reforms to give that competition and lower price that the American people want. I think that is what the President was alluding to in his speech. If that does not work, well then there is an appropriate role for government to step in, but that should not be the first choice. That should be only if the free market cannot be reformed sufficiently.”

The clarity of remarks like those of Senator Bayh is one reason many Americans are indeed skeptical that Congress really means what it says about competition. They have good reason to be skeptical.

The antitrust exemption for insurance left it up to each state to regulate insurance carriers. Insurance commissioners and commissions in the states have been notoriously cozy with the insurance industry. The result has given us health insurance monopolies in some states and price agreements among insurance companies in others to keep prices high. Ronald Brownstein recently reported in the National Journal “the American Medical Association reported recently that insurance markets lack robust competition in more than 90% of metropolitan areas; in 16 states one insurer writes at least half the policies.”

I recently asked a Washington lobbyist who spent years on the Senate Banking Committee if anyone over the past two decades ever introduced legislation to repeal the McCarran Act. His answer: “Sure a few senators, but never anyone on the banking committee.” In other words, the senators such as Banking Committee Chairman, Democrat Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who were in a position to change the laws, who could move a bill through the Senate, were too close to the insurance industry to want to upset the status quo.

Won’t someone in the Senate step us and say: Let’s do something simple that will reduce insurance rates immediately. Let’s end the fiction and acknowledge that insurance companies are national businesses (one is even called “nationwide”) that should be subject to the national antitrust laws.

Repealing McCarran-Ferguson would be a simple, effective solution to lower insurance rates.

It would be good for the public but a little unsettling for the senators who speak sanctimoniously of the promise of competition, but are unwilling to act to keep the promise.