Time to Party Like It’s 1854

Op-Ed Columnist

By GAIL COLLINS

Published: February 18, 2010

The Conservative Political Action Conference begins Thursday in Washington. Glenn Beck is scheduled to give the keynote speech. Stephen Baldwin is slated to preside over a special nighttime youth event. As always, the right wing is great at producing hot talk shows and terrible at attracting hot actors.

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The workshops and panels range from “Is It Time for a Catholic Tea Party?” to “Getting Started in Hollywood.” But the one that caught my eye was “When All Else Fails: Nullification and State Resistance to Federal Tyranny.”

How many of you out there thought we had settled the question of whether states have the right to nullify federal laws during the Lincoln administration? Can I see a show of hands?

It’s civil war déjà vu. The trick in conservative circles today is to see how furious you can get about Washington’s encroachment onto states rights without quite falling over the edge into Fort Sumter.

The 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which gives the states all powers not delegated to the federal government, is all the rage. (The Second Amendment is so 2008.) Its passionate fans, who are inevitably starting to be referred to as “tenthers,” interpret the amendment as pretty much restricting the federal government to military matters. They feel the health care reform bill is unconstitutional. Perhaps also Social Security.

It’s hard for the Conservative Political Action Conference, which was the home of the right-wing fringe a decade or so ago, to keep ahead of the game. The kickoff event for the conference on Wednesday was a trek to Mount Vernon for the solemn signing of an extremely bland eulogy to federalism and the founding fathers by conservative dignitaries who appeared old enough to have dined there with George and Martha.

Mitt Romney, who won the conference’s presidential straw poll last year after a Herculean lobbying effort, is back with a new book in which he warns that if America doesn’t change its ways it could wind up becoming the “France of the 21st century.”

We all know that Americans would hate to spend the next 90 years enveloped in serious wine and universal health care. But think about how much more threatening Romney’s warning must be for the French. Where are they supposed to go in this new world order? Do you think France would rather be the Latvia of the 21st century or the Finland?

Romney, who is good-looking, wealthy and blessed with a lovely family, is, unsurprisingly, not actually very angry. He would like to be president and run the country like a business, but he is not the kind of guy who is in mourning for the Articles of Confederation.

Romney’s most dramatic recent moment came when he was attacked by a fellow passenger on a flight home from the Olympics in Vancouver. A spokesman said Romney, who was not injured, was “physically assaulted” when he asked a man to raise his seat to an upright position before takeoff.

Perhaps the assailant mistook Romney for a flight attendant.

The attacker was taken off the plane but not charged, and Romney’s spokesman said there was no indication he recognized his victim. But maybe he did. Perhaps he was an irritable Democrat. Or maybe he was an animal lover, still seething over the fact that Romney once drove his family to Canada for a vacation with their Irish setter, Seamus, strapped to the roof of the car.

But let’s agree right here and now that this is a bad idea. Not the dog on the roof. Although that, too, is really, really undesirable. But I was thinking of the attack.

I digress. About the Conservative Political Action Conference. Some of the tenthers’ favorite stars were too busy to show up. Sarah Palin — whose husband once flirted with the Alaska secessionists — declined. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas — who cuddled up to the Texas secession movement in 2008 — is home running for re-election and wowing the crowd at a Tenth Amendment Town Hall. His strongest challenger for the Republican nomination appears to be a woman who told Glenn Beck that she had an open mind about whether there was any American government involvement in the 9/11 attack.

The news media, as Beck said to Katie Couric, is “a sound-bite world — a really nasty place to live.” I would like to think that this is just because we happen to be at a moment in history when the country has a huge number of TV, radio and Internet outlets fighting to be loud enough and shrill enough to get noticed.

That’s what things were like with newspapers at the end of the 19th century, and I cannot tell you what Grover Cleveland went through. But if that’s the explanation, this, too, shall pass. Like the Articles of Confederation.

America Is Not Yet Lost

Op-Ed Columnist

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 7, 2010

We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.

What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.

A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.

Last week, after nine months, the Senate finally approved Martha Johnson to head the General Services Administration, which runs government buildings and purchases supplies. It’s an essentially nonpolitical position, and nobody questioned Ms. Johnson’s qualifications: she was approved by a vote of 94 to 2. But Senator Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, had put a “hold” on her appointment to pressure the government into approving a building project in Kansas City.

This dubious achievement may have inspired Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama. In any case, Mr. Shelby has now placed a hold on all outstanding Obama administration nominations — about 70 high-level government positions — until his state gets a tanker contract and a counterterrorism center.

What gives individual senators this kind of power? Much of the Senate’s business relies on unanimous consent: it’s difficult to get anything done unless everyone agrees on procedure. And a tradition has grown up under which senators, in return for not gumming up everything, get the right to block nominees they don’t like.

In the past, holds were used sparingly. That’s because, as a Congressional Research Service report on the practice says, the Senate used to be ruled by “traditions of comity, courtesy, reciprocity, and accommodation.” But that was then. Rules that used to be workable have become crippling now that one of the nation’s major political parties has descended into nihilism, seeing no harm — in fact, political dividends — in making the nation ungovernable.

How bad is it? It’s so bad that I miss Newt Gingrich.

Readers may recall that in 1995 Mr. Gingrich, then speaker of the House, cut off the federal government’s funding and forced a temporary government shutdown. It was ugly and extreme, but at least Mr. Gingrich had specific demands: he wanted Bill Clinton to agree to sharp cuts in Medicare.

Today, by contrast, the Republican leaders refuse to offer any specific proposals. They inveigh against the deficit — and last month their senators voted in lockstep against any increase in the federal debt limit, a move that would have precipitated another government shutdown if Democrats hadn’t had 60 votes. But they also denounce anything that might actually reduce the deficit, including, ironically, any effort to spend Medicare funds more wisely.

And with the national G.O.P. having abdicated any responsibility for making things work, it’s only natural that individual senators should feel free to take the nation hostage until they get their pet projects funded.

The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government. Senators themselves should recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster. This is something they could and should do, by majority vote, on the first day of the next Senate session.

Don’t hold your breath. As it is, Democrats don’t even seem able to score political points by highlighting their opponents’ obstructionism.

It should be a simple message (and it should have been the central message in Massachusetts): a vote for a Republican, no matter what you think of him as a person, is a vote for paralysis. But by now, we know how the Obama administration deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries. Sure enough, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, accused Mr. Shelby of “silliness.” Yep, that will really resonate with voters.

After the dissolution of Poland, a Polish officer serving under Napoleon penned a song that eventually — after the country’s post-World War I resurrection — became the country’s national anthem. It begins, “Poland is not yet lost.”

Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.

Will my legislator do the right thing?

A Federal Effort to Push Junk Food Out of Schools

by GARDINER HARRIS

Published: February 7, 2010

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will begin a drive this week to expel Pepsi, French fries and Snickers bars from the nation’s schools in hopes of reducing the number of children who get fat during their school years.

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Casey Templeton for The New York Times

Betty Almond, center, uses proceeds from her candy sales at Orange County High School in Orange, Va., to help sports teams.

In legislation, soon to be introduced, candy and sugary beverages would be banned and many schools would be required to offer more nutritious fare.

To that end, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will deliver a speech Monday at the National Press Club in which he will insist, according to excerpts provided to The Times, that any vending machines that remain in schools be “filled with nutritious offerings to make the healthy choice the easy choice for our nation’s children.”

The first lady, Michelle Obama, said last month that she would lead an initiative to reduce childhood obesity, and her involvement “shows the importance all of us place on this issue,” Mr. Vilsack said.

The administration’s willingness to put Mrs. Obama’s popularity on the line is a calculated bet that concerns about childhood obesity have become so universal that the once-partisan fight over who should control school food offerings — the federal government or school boards — has subsided.

But Republican support is far from certain.

Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican and the ranking member on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, met at the White House with Mrs. Obama on Tuesday to talk about childhood obesity. And while Mr. Chambliss released a statement saying that “schools play an important role in shaping nutrition habits of young children,” an aide refused to say whether he would support a ban on junk foods.

Other Republicans said they would wait to see legislation before signaling whether they would put aside long-held views that school boards should control food offerings.

Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from Arkansas and the chairwoman of the committee, said she would introduce the legislation within weeks. “It’s a big priority for me, other members and the administration,” she said.

While Democrats have coalesced around the idea of denying sweets to schoolchildren, many students are not keen. When Asthtyn Bowling, a 16-year-old junior at Orange County High School in Orange, Va., was told of the looming ban, she was shocked.

“That would be terrible!” she said.

The legislation would reauthorize the government’s school breakfast and lunch programs. It aims to transform the eating habits of many of the nation’s children and teenagers, but some school officials say it will further crimp already strained budgets.

In addition to banning sugary treats, the new rules would require many schools to offer more nutritious options, which could be expensive. The administration has proposed spending $1 billion more each year on the $18 billion meals program, but the increase may not be enough to cover the extra costs.

The National PTA and a host of health and medical advocacy groups support the legislation, but local school officials are lukewarm.

“Our feeling is that school boards are acutely aware of the importance of ensuring that children have access to healthy and nutritious food,” said Lucy Gettman of the National School Boards Association.

The bill would exempt bake sales, parties and other occasional offerings of sweets. But drawing the line between routine and unusual can get tricky.

“What do you do about the Spanish club buying Kit Kat bars and selling them in the cafeteria?” asked Doug Davis, director of food service for the City of Burlington Public Schools in Vermont.

The National School Lunch Program serves 31 million children in more than 100,000 schools. It was started in 1946 to ensure that children get enough to eat after health problems related to malnutrition were found in an alarming number of World War II draftees. Now, health officials are also worried that children are eating too much of the wrong foods. About two-thirds of the nation’s adults and a third of its children are overweight — double the rates of 1980.

Junk food has long been banned from official school breakfast and lunch programs, but many schools offer fatty foods and sweets outside of these programs or have vending machines with sodas and candy, with the money often used to finance sports or other extracurricular programs. The legislation would require that all school offerings comply with strict new nutritional guidelines.

Many schools have changed their offerings. Five years ago, fewer than a third of the nation’s school districts put limits on students’ access to candy and sugary drinks. That share jumped to two-thirds by 2008, according to a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. William H. Dietz, an obesity researcher at the disease centers, said that changing school food policies had already helped.

“There’s been a plateau in childhood obesity, and I think one of the reasons is that things are different in schools,” he said.

Industry opposition to the new legislation has softened in part because the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo now sell far more than Coke and Pepsi. So instead of having to yank vending machines from schools, the companies could replace offerings with bottled water or juice.

Kevin Keane, senior vice president of the American Beverage Association, said that companies had been voluntarily taking high-calorie drinks out of schools. But, he said, the industry does not favor a federal ban.

Orange County High School has vending machines with Pepsi, Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper, but even more popular among students is a candy cart wheeled into the school’s central hallway three times a day by Betty Almond, a school secretary.

The cart is laden with Pop-Tarts, Skittles and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and Mrs. Almond and helpers barely keep up with demand from students on their way to class. Sales are between $400 and $500 a week, which Mrs. Almond uses to buy uniforms and equipment for school sports teams. Her most recent project was to outfit the wrestling team, on which her grandson competes.

“The football team wants me to buy them a seven-man sled, but with this new legislation, they’ll never get it,” she said sadly.

Principal Gene Kotulka said he planned to write his congressman to complain about a ban.

“It’s not so much the money as the service it offers to the kids,” said Mr. Kotulka, who has a Santa Claus belly and is known as “Poppa K” to students. “I’d like to give our kids all the opportunities I can.”

At a meeting in his office to discuss food offerings, Bette Winter, director of the Orange County schools wellness committee, suggested that selling candy to students was not a good lesson.

“What’s the best way to teach children? By example, no?” she asked.

But Mr. Kotulka responded that it was parents’ responsibility to forbid children at risk of obesity to buy candy.

Whether the new rules will change eating habits is unknown, but Mrs. Almond’s candy cart became popular only after the school cafeteria got rid of its own sweets two years ago.

Edgar Coker, an 18-year-old senior, buys Pop-Tarts from Mrs. Almond every afternoon for 50 cents. “If I couldn’t buy it here, I’d bring it from home,” he said.

But Denise Snow, the school cafeteria manager, said that children can be taught to eat better. “When we went to whole-wheat pizza, the kids fussed for a while and we lost some of them,” Ms. Snow said. “But now they don’t say a thing, and pretty much everyone is back to eating them.”

Good and Boring

Op-Ed Columnist

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 31, 2010

In times of crisis, good news is no news. Iceland’s meltdown made headlines; the remarkable stability of Canada’s banks, not so much.

Yet as the world’s attention shifts from financial rescue to financial reform, the quiet success stories deserve at least as much attention as the spectacular failures. We need to learn from those countries that evidently did it right. And leading that list is our neighbor to the north. Right now, Canada is a very important role model.

Yes, I know, Canada is supposed to be dull. The New Republic famously pronounced “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative” (from a Times Op-Ed column in the ’80s) the world’s most boring headline. But I’ve always considered Canada fascinating, precisely because it’s similar to the United States in many but not all ways. The point is that when Canadian and U.S. experience diverge, it’s a very good bet that policy differences, rather than differences in culture or economic structure, are responsible for that divergence.

And anyway, when it comes to banking, boring is good.

First, some background. Over the past decade the United States and Canada faced the same global environment. Both were confronted with the same flood of cheap goods and cheap money from Asia. Economists in both countries cheerfully declared that the era of severe recessions was over.

But when things fell apart, the consequences were very different here and there. In the United States, mortgage defaults soared, some major financial institutions collapsed, and others survived only thanks to huge government bailouts. In Canada, none of that happened. What did the Canadians do differently?

It wasn’t interest rate policy. Many commentators have blamed the Federal Reserve for the financial crisis, claiming that the Fed created a disastrous bubble by keeping interest rates too low for too long. But Canadian interest rates have tracked U.S. rates quite closely, so it seems that low rates aren’t enough by themselves to produce a financial crisis.

Canada’s experience also seems to refute the view, forcefully pushed by Paul Volcker, the formidable former Fed chairman, that the roots of our crisis lay in the scale and scope of our financial institutions — in the existence of banks that were “too big to fail.” For in Canada essentially all the banks are too big to fail: just five banking groups dominate the financial scene.

On the other hand, Canada’s experience does seem to support the views of people like Elizabeth Warren, the head of the Congressional panel overseeing the bank bailout, who place much of the blame for the crisis on failure to protect consumers from deceptive lending. Canada has an independent Financial Consumer Agency, and it has sharply restricted subprime-type lending.

Above all, Canada’s experience seems to support those who say that the way to keep banking safe is to keep it boring — that is, to limit the extent to which banks can take on risk. The United States used to have a boring banking system, but Reagan-era deregulation made things dangerously interesting. Canada, by contrast, has maintained a happy tedium.

More specifically, Canada has been much stricter about limiting banks’ leverage, the extent to which they can rely on borrowed funds. It has also limited the process of securitization, in which banks package and resell claims on their loans outstanding — a process that was supposed to help banks reduce their risk by spreading it, but has turned out in practice to be a way for banks to make ever-bigger wagers with other people’s money.

There’s no question that in recent years these restrictions meant fewer opportunities for bankers to come up with clever ideas than would have been available if Canada had emulated America’s deregulatory zeal. But that, it turns out, was all to the good.

So what are the chances that the United States will learn from Canada’s success?

Actually, the financial reform bill that the House of Representatives passed in December would significantly Canadianize the U.S. system. It would create an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency, it would establish limits on leverage, and it would limit securitization by requiring that lenders hold on to some of their loans.

But prospects for a comparable bill getting the 60 votes now needed to push anything through the Senate are doubtful. Republicans are clearly dead set against any significant financial reform — not a single Republican voted for the House bill — and some Democrats are ambivalent, too.

So there’s a good chance that we’ll do nothing, or nothing much, to prevent future banking crises. But it won’t be because we don’t know what to do: we’ve got a clear example of how to keep banking safe sitting right next door.

Next Article in Opinion (1 of 31) » A version of this article appeared in print on February 1, 2010, on page A19 of the New York edition.