Tag: news

Yesterday, Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring’s office
filed an important notice in a lawsuit challenging the state’s
constitutional ban on gay marriage recognition. His office is

reversing course under its new leadership. Herring has decided
that the ban is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution and “will not defend the constitutionality of those
laws, will argue for their being declared unconstitutional, and
will work to ensure both sides of the law are responsibly and
vigorously briefed and argued before the courts to facilitate a
decision on the merits, consistent with the rule of law.” He added
that his office will still enforce the ban during the challenge, so
gay Virginians should not go rushing off to their county clerks’
office just yet.

Herring, a Democrat, acknowledged that he originally voted for
this amendment himself when it was passed in 2006, but said in a
press conference that he was wrong. Watch his comments below:

Herring noted Virginia’s history of defending racial segregation
in schools, laws against mixed-race marriages and expressed the
desire to, for once, “be on the right side of history,” a phrase
that always used to baffle me but that I’ve now come to realize is
just simply code for “The polls have shifted and I don’t see them
shifting back anytime soon.”

Anyway, according to The Washington Post, some
Republican lawmakers are looking around for a way to
defend the law without Herring’s support. Herring is also
accused of hypocrisy for criticizing former Republican Attorney
General Ken Cuccinelli as using the office for his own type of
activism. Indeed, the
petition submitted by Herring’s office even uses Cuccinelli’s
refusal to defend a constitutional challenge to a law last year as
a precedent for Herring’s decision. Any attorney general candidate
claiming to want to reduce the politicization or activism of the
office should be laughed at in any event.

Meanwhile, also keep an eye on Indiana. Lawmakers there are
trying to buck the current trend toward recognizing gay marriages.
They are trying to put an
amendment to the state’s constitution before voters in November
that would not only block recognition but also similar arrangements
like civil unions.

The viability of the Affordable Care
Act—Obamacare—is premised on getting young, healthy people to pay
way too much for their health care in order to subsidize coverage
for older, sicker people. Unfortunately for the scheme, young,
healthy people have turned out to be less gullible than
anticipated. They’re enrolling in underwhelming numbers after
discovering that it’s
cheaper to pay a penalty than to get milked by the government.
The likely result is financial woes for health insurers tasked with
making Obamacare’s impossible numbers work—which has led to a
credit downgrade by Moody’s.

According to a Moody’s
press release:

Uncertainty over the demographics of those enrolling in
individual products through the exchanges is a key factor in
Moody’s outlook change, says the rating agency. Enrollment
statistics show that only 24% of enrollees so far are aged 18-34, a
critical group in ensuring that lower claim costs subsidize the
higher claim costs of less healthy, older individuals. This is well
short of the original 40% target based on the proportion of
eligible people in this cohort, says Moody’s.

The ratings agency also cited regulatory uncertainty and tax
issues among the reasons it “changed the outlook for US health
insurers to negative from stable.” The overall effect is a vote of
no confidence in the economic sustainability of the Affordable Care
Act, and in the industry which once thought it hit the jackpot with
a law that ordered Americans to buy its products, but now discovers
(as so many have before) that government is an unreliable business
partner.

Earlier this week, the conservative American Action Forum
released a
report which found “that after accounting for subsidies and
cost-sharing, 6 out of 7 uninsured, young adult households will
find it financially advantageous to forego health coverage, and
instead pay the mandate penalty and cover their own health care
costs. As the penalty increases, that number will drop from 86
percent in 2014 to 71 percent in 2015 and 62 percent in 2016,
before ticking back up to 66 percent in 2019.”

Economic incentives. So politically inconvenient.

The viability of the Affordable Care
Act—Obamacare—is premised on getting young, healthy people to pay
way too much for their health care in order to subsidize coverage
for older, sicker people. Unfortunately for the scheme, young,
healthy people have turned out to be less gullible than
anticipated. They’re enrolling in underwhelming numbers after
discovering that it’s
cheaper to pay a penalty than to get milked by the government.
The likely result is financial woes for health insurers tasked with
making Obamacare’s impossible numbers work—which has led to a
credit downgrade by Moody’s.

According to a Moody’s
press release:

Uncertainty over the demographics of those enrolling in
individual products through the exchanges is a key factor in
Moody’s outlook change, says the rating agency. Enrollment
statistics show that only 24% of enrollees so far are aged 18-34, a
critical group in ensuring that lower claim costs subsidize the
higher claim costs of less healthy, older individuals. This is well
short of the original 40% target based on the proportion of
eligible people in this cohort, says Moody’s.

The ratings agency also cited regulatory uncertainty and tax
issues among the reasons it “changed the outlook for US health
insurers to negative from stable.” The overall effect is a vote of
no confidence in the economic sustainability of the Affordable Care
Act, and in the industry which once thought it hit the jackpot with
a law that ordered Americans to buy its products, but now discovers
(as so many have before) that government is an unreliable business
partner.

Earlier this week, the conservative American Action Forum
released a
report which found “that after accounting for subsidies and
cost-sharing, 6 out of 7 uninsured, young adult households will
find it financially advantageous to forego health coverage, and
instead pay the mandate penalty and cover their own health care
costs. As the penalty increases, that number will drop from 86
percent in 2014 to 71 percent in 2015 and 62 percent in 2016,
before ticking back up to 66 percent in 2019.”

Economic incentives. So politically inconvenient.

Freedom House’s
annual report came out this week, and it’s pretty glum. Here’s
how the organization’s announcement of its findings begins:

The state of freedom declined for the eighth
consecutive year in 2013, according to Freedom in the World
2014, Freedom House’s annual country-by-country report on
global political rights and civil liberties.

Particularly notable were developments in Egypt, which endured
across-the-board reversals in its democratic institutions following
a military coup. There were also serious setbacks to democratic
rights in other large, politically influential countries, including
Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Venezuela, and
Indonesia.

The report itself notes that “the overall level of regression
was not severe,” with 40 countries getting freer and 54 getting
more authoritarian. Freedom House’s list of which countries are
“free,” “partly free,” or “not free” hasn’t changed much: The
number of countries in the “free” category declined by two, and the
numbers in the other categories went up by one apiece. The number
of electoral democracies actually increased by four. So while
there’s plenty of bad news here, the situation isn’t as dire as
that lede suggests.

The political scientist Jay Ulfelder, former director of the
Political Instability Task Force, makes an important
point:

Freedom House looks at the data from a different
angle than I do, calling out the fact that the number of declines
in scores on its Political Rights or Civil Liberties indices
outstripped the number of gains for the eighth year in a row. This
is factually true, but I think it’s also important to note that
many of those declines are occurring in countries in the former
Soviet Union and the Middle East that we already regard as
authoritarian. In other words, this eight-year trend is not
primarily the result of more and more democracies slipping into
authoritarianism; instead, it’s more that many existing autocracies
keep tightening the screws.

I don’t think it’s accidental that this eight-year trend has
coincided with two waves of popular uprisings in the very regions
where those erosions are most pronounced—the so-called Color
Revolutions and Arab Awakening. A lot of that slippage has come
from autocrats made anxious by democratic ferment in their own and
neighboring societies. If we notice that correlation and allow
ourselves to think longer term, I think there’s actually cause to
be optimistic that these erosions will not hold
indefinitely, at least not across the board.

One more comment. While the report’s country-by-country data are
useful as usual, I think its introductory essay offers a misleading
idea of what’s needed for freedom to grow. Its author complains not
just about the decline of civil liberties and political rights in
various parts of the globe, but about a “crisis of confidence” in
the U.S.:

The democratic world was experiencing a period of
self-absorption much like today’s when Freedom House launched
Freedom in the World during the 1970s. Once it had
overcome its crisis of confidence, America helped propel a historic
surge of democratization in parts of the world where
self-government was almost unknown. A similar era of change could
be in the offing, and some democracies — including a number in
Europe — have done their best to play a constructive role. But if
there is no reassertion of American leadership, we could well find
ourselves at some future time deploring lost opportunities rather
than celebrating a major breakthrough for freedom.

Let’s be clear: The great force that “helped propel” a global
shift from authoritarianism was the end of the Cold War, a change
that certainly had a lot to do with American actions but is rather
different from the sort of “leadership” that Freedom House seems to
be asking for here. The idea that the oppressed of the world need
outsiders to “lead” them to freedom is condescending nonsense, a
point I made the last
time I wrote about the notion that liberty is in retreat around
the globe. That time I was responding to a New
Republic essay by Joshua Kurlantzick:

In theory, the New Republic article is about
the prospects for liberty and democracy abroad. In practice,
roughly half of it is devoted to fretting about the freer
countries’ willingness to go on global crusades. India isn’t doing
as much as it used to do for Burma’s dissidents, Kurlantzick
complains. And the American public is “increasingly isolationist.”
And while the Obama administration has “maintained significant
budget levels for democracy promotion,” it also “eliminated
high-level positions on the National Security Council that, under
Bush, had been devoted to democracy.” And countries that had to
deal with American and Soviet subversion during the Cold War are
“uncomfortable joining any international coalition that could
undermine other nations’ sovereignty.”

As you read all this, some questions may occur to you. Did India’s
support for the Burmese dissidents actually accomplish anything? (I
can’t help noticing that the junta is still in power.) What was the
real-world record of Bush’s drive for democracy abroad, and might
that record have something to do with that revival of American
isolationism? And when countries that served as Cold War
battlefields are wary of inflicting a similar fate on other
nations, isn’t it possible that they have a point?

Generally speaking, movements against dictatorships are more likely to
succeed when they’re rooted in civic action from below instead
of intervention from outside. The U.S. certainly hasn’t acquitted
itself very well in the Arab Spring: It’s been reluctant to cut off
aid to countries like Bahrain even as they crack down harshly on
peaceful protesters, and when it did intervene forcefully—in
Libya—it’s hard to argue convincingly that the big picture
improved. One of the most distressing changes in [the 2010] Freedom
House survey was the demotion of Mexico from “free” to “partly
free,” the result of a wave of violence in which “government
institutions have failed to protect ordinary citizens, journalists,
and elected officials from organized crime.” That violence is a
direct result of the War
on Drugs, and one of the chief reasons Mexico is fighting that
war is pressure from its neighbor to the north. If Washington
really wants to help the spread of freedom around the world,
perhaps it should spend less time budgeting for “democracy
promotion” and more time thinking about where it’s standing in the
way.

Freedom House’s
annual report came out this week, and it’s pretty glum. Here’s
how the organization’s announcement of its findings begins:

The state of freedom declined for the eighth
consecutive year in 2013, according to Freedom in the World
2014, Freedom House’s annual country-by-country report on
global political rights and civil liberties.

Particularly notable were developments in Egypt, which endured
across-the-board reversals in its democratic institutions following
a military coup. There were also serious setbacks to democratic
rights in other large, politically influential countries, including
Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Venezuela, and
Indonesia.

The report itself notes that “the overall level of regression
was not severe,” with 40 countries getting freer and 54 getting
more authoritarian. Freedom House’s list of which countries are
“free,” “partly free,” or “not free” hasn’t changed much: The
number of countries in the “free” category declined by two, and the
numbers in the other categories went up by one apiece. The number
of electoral democracies actually increased by four. So while
there’s plenty of bad news here, the situation isn’t as dire as
that lede suggests.

The political scientist Jay Ulfelder, former director of the
Political Instability Task Force, makes an important
point:

Freedom House looks at the data from a different
angle than I do, calling out the fact that the number of declines
in scores on its Political Rights or Civil Liberties indices
outstripped the number of gains for the eighth year in a row. This
is factually true, but I think it’s also important to note that
many of those declines are occurring in countries in the former
Soviet Union and the Middle East that we already regard as
authoritarian. In other words, this eight-year trend is not
primarily the result of more and more democracies slipping into
authoritarianism; instead, it’s more that many existing autocracies
keep tightening the screws.

I don’t think it’s accidental that this eight-year trend has
coincided with two waves of popular uprisings in the very regions
where those erosions are most pronounced—the so-called Color
Revolutions and Arab Awakening. A lot of that slippage has come
from autocrats made anxious by democratic ferment in their own and
neighboring societies. If we notice that correlation and allow
ourselves to think longer term, I think there’s actually cause to
be optimistic that these erosions will not hold
indefinitely, at least not across the board.

One more comment. While the report’s country-by-country data are
useful as usual, I think its introductory essay offers a misleading
idea of what’s needed for freedom to grow. Its author complains not
just about the decline of civil liberties and political rights in
various parts of the globe, but about a “crisis of confidence” in
the U.S.:

The democratic world was experiencing a period of
self-absorption much like today’s when Freedom House launched
Freedom in the World during the 1970s. Once it had
overcome its crisis of confidence, America helped propel a historic
surge of democratization in parts of the world where
self-government was almost unknown. A similar era of change could
be in the offing, and some democracies — including a number in
Europe — have done their best to play a constructive role. But if
there is no reassertion of American leadership, we could well find
ourselves at some future time deploring lost opportunities rather
than celebrating a major breakthrough for freedom.

Let’s be clear: The great force that “helped propel” a global
shift from authoritarianism was the end of the Cold War, a change
that certainly had a lot to do with American actions but is rather
different from the sort of “leadership” that Freedom House seems to
be asking for here. The idea that the oppressed of the world need
outsiders to “lead” them to freedom is condescending nonsense, a
point I made the last
time I wrote about the notion that liberty is in retreat around
the globe. That time I was responding to a New
Republic essay by Joshua Kurlantzick:

In theory, the New Republic article is about
the prospects for liberty and democracy abroad. In practice,
roughly half of it is devoted to fretting about the freer
countries’ willingness to go on global crusades. India isn’t doing
as much as it used to do for Burma’s dissidents, Kurlantzick
complains. And the American public is “increasingly isolationist.”
And while the Obama administration has “maintained significant
budget levels for democracy promotion,” it also “eliminated
high-level positions on the National Security Council that, under
Bush, had been devoted to democracy.” And countries that had to
deal with American and Soviet subversion during the Cold War are
“uncomfortable joining any international coalition that could
undermine other nations’ sovereignty.”

As you read all this, some questions may occur to you. Did India’s
support for the Burmese dissidents actually accomplish anything? (I
can’t help noticing that the junta is still in power.) What was the
real-world record of Bush’s drive for democracy abroad, and might
that record have something to do with that revival of American
isolationism? And when countries that served as Cold War
battlefields are wary of inflicting a similar fate on other
nations, isn’t it possible that they have a point?

Generally speaking, movements against dictatorships are more likely to
succeed when they’re rooted in civic action from below instead
of intervention from outside. The U.S. certainly hasn’t acquitted
itself very well in the Arab Spring: It’s been reluctant to cut off
aid to countries like Bahrain even as they crack down harshly on
peaceful protesters, and when it did intervene forcefully—in
Libya—it’s hard to argue convincingly that the big picture
improved. One of the most distressing changes in [the 2010] Freedom
House survey was the demotion of Mexico from “free” to “partly
free,” the result of a wave of violence in which “government
institutions have failed to protect ordinary citizens, journalists,
and elected officials from organized crime.” That violence is a
direct result of the War
on Drugs, and one of the chief reasons Mexico is fighting that
war is pressure from its neighbor to the north. If Washington
really wants to help the spread of freedom around the world,
perhaps it should spend less time budgeting for “democracy
promotion” and more time thinking about where it’s standing in the
way.