David Boaz

Jack Goldstone, who will speak Monday at a Cato Forum, "Civil Resistance and Revolution in the Arab World," has two interesting articles published today in Foreign Affairs and the Washington Post. In the Post, Goldstone, who is the Hazel Professor and director of the Center for Global Policy at George Mason University, suggests that China's rapid economic growth is going to slow down. In Foreign Affairs, more relevantly for Monday's forum, his topic is "Understanding the Revolutions of 2011" (reg. req.). The magazine's summary:

Revolutions rarely succeed, writes one of the world's leading experts on the subject — except for revolutions against corrupt and personalist "sultanistic" regimes. This helps explain why Tunisia's Ben Ali and Egypt's Mubarak fell — and also why some other governments in the region will prove more resilient.

At the Cato Forum — 4:00 p.m. Monday — Goldstone will join Peter Ackerman to discuss similar questions:

What explains the swift collapse of what were considered some of the most stable regimes in the Arab world? Drawing on scholarship and his Center's experience in supporting pro-democracy activists in Egypt and around the world, Peter Ackerman will describe factors — such as strategy and careful planning — that are common to successful civil resistance movements. According to Ackerman, nonviolent campaigns have a better record at bringing down dictators than violent confrontations. Jack Goldstone will describe the conditions that give rise to revolutions, highlight the vulnerabilities of "sultanistic" dictatorships, and identify which Middle Eastern regimes are most likely to retain power.

Register now!

On Monday I pointed out that despite all the hoopla, the $38 billion budget cut was only 1 percent of projected 2011 spending. And now comes news that the actual spending cut in the budget deal is $352 million, or about . . . 1 percent of the purported cut. So now we're told that the parties went down to the wire, negotiating till midnight, over 1 percent of 1 percent of federal spending. As National Journal explains:

As the parties argue over who who won the months-long budget battle that resulted in a deal to cut $38 billion in federal spending, the Congressional Budget Office offered this total buzzkill: the budget cuts were really only worth $352 million. That's less than 1 percent of the touted total; many GOP lawmakers are furious and House Speaker John Boehner may have to count on Democratic votes to get the bill passed. Why did the CBO get such a wildly different number? First of all, the deal actually increased Pentagon spending by about $8 billion, as the Associated Press's Andrew Taylor explained in an article that was quickly passed around by outraged conservatives Wednesday afternoon. When war spending is considered, the budget actually increases spending by $3.3 billion compared to current levels. As for non-defense spending, much of what was cut comes from grants to state and local governments that haven't gone into effect yet. (Example: The CBO provided another analysis to lawmakers smacking down claims that cutting health care-related bonuses to states would save $5.7 billion. The real amount of savings? About $0.) Other cuts withdrew appropriations outlays from earmarks that were never spent--and might never have been. One cut that will seriously cut the deficit? Elimination of year-round Pell Grants. That'll save $40 billion over the next 10 years, but just under $1 billion this year. Politico's David Rogers notes that if you ignore the defense spending, the deal still cuts $42 billion from current levels. Still, the CBO report is a problem for House Speaker John Boehner, Rogers writes. "Given the GOP’s famous '$100 billion cut' rhetoric of the 2010 campaign, the influence of tea party conservatives and projections now of a $1.4 trillion-plus deficit..." The Republican might have to stoop to "borrow[ing] a phrase from Obama and try to sell the deal as an 'investment in the future.'"

Nevertheless, the House has just passed the bill to fund the government for the rest of the year, with 59 Republicans and 108 Democrats voting no. For advice on how to cut the budget, visit DownsizingGovernment.org.

The Washington Post's Fact Checker column looks at the claim that this week's budget deal delivers the biggest spending cuts in history:

For instance, during World War II, the federal budget soared from $9.4 billion in 1940 to nearly $93 billion in 1945. Talk about an expansion of government! But then in 1946, the budget was cut to $55 billion. That’s a cut of $37 billion, technically less than the $38.5 billion in cuts reached last week. But it’s also a cut of 40 percent, which means it is 40 times larger than the deal that is routinely described as historic.... There is yet another way to measure these cuts. As little as $15 billion of the cuts are in the domestic nondefense discretionary budget. How do these cuts stack up to the historical record, when adjusted for inflation (2005 dollars)? From 1981 to 1982, this part of the budget fell by $43 billion (this was during President Ronald Reagan’s term, so at the same time, the defense budget went up $30 billion.) This part of the budget also fell about $15 billion — twice — during the Clinton administration. So, again, the current round of cuts are not the biggest even when looked at through this narrow prism.

Fact Checker Glenn Kessler concludes:

The Pinocchio Test

We’re going to give the politicians a pass here. Technically, these appear to be the largest raw-dollar spending cuts in history, and we have not found evidence that either Obama or Boehner has pretended otherwise — at least in public. (Note that Obama and the White House always are clever to insert the word “annual” before the phrase “spending cut.”) At worse, these are one-Pinocchio violations, typical bragging that all of the strum and drang over the budget was worth the effort. But it is up to the media to provide context to these claims. On that score the media, including (alas) The Washington Post, misled its readers. Two Pinocchios (to the media)

Hats off to Glenn Kessler for holding his colleagues to a higher standard than politicians. And note that Chris Edwards and I have also questioned these claims about "the biggest cuts ever."

In this week's Britannica column, I look at the claims being made for the budget cuts in the weekend deal:

“The largest annual spending cut in our history,” President Obama said. Speaker of the House John Boehner called it the “largest real dollar spending cut in American history.” Saturday’s front-page, upper-right headline in the Washington Post proclaimed: BIGGEST CUTS IN U.S. HISTORY The story went on to say that Obama “said the cuts would be painful but necessary.” NPR’s Andrea Seabrook reported, “The Republicans got big, big cuts.”

And are they?

Please. It’s a cut of $38 billion in a budget of $3,819 billion. That’s 1 percent. That’s a rounding error in federal budgeting.... That same budget table shows that federal spending fell from $92.7 billion in 1945 to $55.2 billion in 1946, to $34.5 billion in 1947, and to $29.8 billion in 1948 (and all without any of the job losses that we’re told would result from modest reductions today). Check out also the drop in spending from 1919 to 1922, even larger in percentage terms.... The fundamental point here is that federal spending rose by more than a trillion dollars during Bush’s first seven years, and then by almost another trillion in barely three fiscal years. And then we had a titanic battle over whether to trim $38 billion. The idea that the Democrats “have shown that they heard the message that government spends too much” or that the Republicans—the party that increased federal spending by a trillion dollars while nobody was looking during the Bush years—have “imposed a small-government agenda on Washington” is ludicrous.

Read it all here.

Campaign finance "reform" advocates like Sen. John McCain are often heard to complain that official candidates' ads can get lost in the clutter of ads from independent groups -- as if the election belonged to the candidates, not the people. Now McCain has taken this theme a step further: He doesn't like think tanks interfering in politicians' decisions. George Will reports from Phoenix on the Goldwater Institute's criticism of a $197 million municipal subsidy to a businessman in the National Hockey League:

John McCain, who holds the Senate seat once occupied by Barry Goldwater but does not hold Goldwater’s views about governmental minimalism, calls the institute’s actions “disgraceful” and “basically blackmailing”: “It’s not their role to decide whether the Coyotes should stay [here] or not.” Well. Constitutions do not impress the co-author of the McCain-Feingold assault on the First Amendment (his law restricts political speech). But the institute’s job — actually, it is every Arizonan’s job — is to protect the public interest. A virtuoso of indignation, McCain is scandalized that the institute, “a non-elected organization,” is going to cause the loss of “a thousand jobs.” McCain’s jobs number is preposterous, as is his intimation — he has been in elective office for 28 years — that non-elected people should not intervene in civic life. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman agrees with McCain that the world is out of joint when people can second-guess the political class: “It fascinates me that whoever is running the Goldwater Institute can substitute their judgment for that of the Glendale City Council.” He will learn not to provoke [former Cato policy analyst Darcy Olsen, now president of the Goldwater Institute], who says, “It happens to fascinate me greatly that the commissioner thinks a handful of politicians can substitute their judgment for the rule of law.”

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer says "you can't negotiate on the basis that one side gives 100 percent and the other side gives zero." Good point. So let's see: The budget is $836 billion higher than it was in President Bush's last full fiscal year. The chart below the jump shows how much the House Republicans want to cut from that massive increase. Seems like if both sides -- say, the Obama administration and the taxpayers -- each give 50 percent, we'd cut the budget by $418 billion, half the recent increase. Read more...

The government of China finally confirmed that it has detained the artist Ai Weiwei. Meanwhile, Evan Osnos writes from Beijing for the New Yorker about China's "Big Chill":

Step by step—so quietly, in fact, that the full facts of it can be startling—China has embarked on the most intense crackdown on free expression in years. Overshadowed by news elsewhere in recent weeks, China has been rounding up writers, lawyers, and activists since mid-February, when calls began to circulate for protests inspired by those in the Middle East and North Africa. By now the contours are clear: according to a count by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group, the government has “criminally detained 26 individuals, disappeared more than 30, and put more than 200 under soft detention.”

Indeed, everywhere I turn today, there's news about Chinese censorship and fear of dissent, of ideas, of art, of words like "luxury." The Washington Post has a major article on Bob Dylan's concert Wednesday night in Beijing. Dylan, the troubadour of the peace movement and the Sixties and civil rights, in the capital of the world's largest Communist party-state. How'd that go? Ask Keith Richburg, whose Post article is titled "The times they are a-censored":

Rock music icon Bob Dylan avoided controversy Wednesday in his first-ever appearance in Communist-led China, eschewing the 1960s protest anthems that defined a generation and sticking to a song list that government censors say they preapproved, before a crowd of about 5,000 people in a Soviet-era stadium. Keeping with his custom, Dylan never spoke to the crowd other than to introduce his five-member band in his raspy voice. And his set list – which mixed some of his newer songs alongside classics made unrecognizable by altered tempos — was devoid of any numbers that might carry even the whiff of anti-government overtones. In Taiwan on Sunday, opening this spring Asian tour, Dylan played “Desolation Row” as the eighth song in his set and ended with an encore performance of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” whose lyrics became synonymous with the antiwar and civil rights protest movements. But in China, where the censors from the government’s Culture Ministry carefully vet every line of a song before determining whether a foreign act can play here, those two songs disappeared from the repertoire. In Beijing, Dylan sang “Love Sick” in the place of “Desolation Row,” and he ended his nearly two-hour set with the innocent-sounding “Forever Young.” There was no “Times They Are a-Changin’ ” in China. And definitely no “Chimes of Freedom.”

Read more...

President Obama's incomprehensible "kinetic military action" in Libya has driven George Will to distraction, and to mordant wit:

At about this point in foreign policy misadventures, the usual question is: What is Plan B? Today’s question is: What was Plan A?

Not to mention literary allusion:

Perhaps the CIA operatives should have stayed home and talked to some senators who seem to know what’s what. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) refers to the Libyan rebels as part of a “pro-democracy movement.” Perhaps they are. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) must think so. Serving, as usual, as Sancho Panza to Sen. John McCain’s Don Quixote, Graham said last Sunday (on “Face the Nation”), “We should be taking the fight to Tripoli.”

Read the whole thing.

As the days dwindle down to a precious few before a Shutdown, some Republicans are still insisting on $61 billion in budget cuts, while others are offering to compromise at $33 billion or $40 billion. Sen. Charles Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, tells his colleagues to call the proposed Republican budget cuts "extreme." And he's certainly taking his own advice. But just how extreme are the cuts, even at $61 billion? Tad DeHaven and Cato's newspaper ad offer one perspective. Tad also noted the incredibly small Pentagon "cuts" that the Republicans unveiled and the way discretionary spending will keep growing. And here's what's happening with "mandatory programs" -- none of which are actually mandatory if Congress wants to change them. Jacob Sullum of Reason summarizes:

The cuts represent less than 2 percent of the total budget, less than 4 percent of the deficit, and less than 5 percent of discretionary spending, which rose in real terms by 75 percent from 2000 to 2010 and by about 9 percent in each of the last two fiscal years.

Maybe the figure at the right will help. It shows the House-passed $61 billion budget cut in relation to the past decade's rapid rise in federal spending. In fiscal year 2001, which ended in September 2001 but was mostly set in place before President Bush took office, the federal government spent $1,863 billion. After seven years of Bush and a Republican Congress, spending was more than a trillion dollars higher -- $2,983 billion in FY2008. Then the financial crisis, TARP, the stimulus, and the omnibus spending bill came along, and FY2011 spending is estimated at $3,819 billion -- $836 billion more than just three years earlier, and $1,956 billion more than when Bush took office a decade ago. So a $61 billion cut is a lot of money anywhere except Washington. In Washington, it's less 2 percent of the budget. It's less than 10 percent of the three-year spending increase. It's one-sixth of this year's spending increase, the increase from 2010 to 2011. The figure shows what that "extreme" cut looks like compared to the soaring federal budget.

In my Britannica Blog column today I look at some brand-new examples of what might seem to be liberal bias at NPR and PBS:

NPR’s Diane Rehm Show devoted an hour to Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent socialist from Vermont, talking about his new book The Speech. But it looks like Diane has not interviewed Sen. Rand Paul, the constitutional conservative from Kentucky, about his new book The Tea Party Goes to Washington, even though it’s selling better than Sanders’s book. It’s pretty clear to book publicists that it’s much easier to get a liberal author on the Diane Rehm Show than a conservative or libertarian author. Meanwhile, this week PBS is featuring the latest in its program Journey to Planet Earth, this episode featuring “environmental visionary Lester Brown,” the long-time president of the Worldwatch Institute. The episode, “Plan B: Mobilizing To Save Civilization,” “delivers a clear and unflinching message – either confront the realities of climate change or suffer the consequences of lost civilizations and failed political states.” Matt Damon hosts. But Lester Brown’s decades-long predictions about environmental disasters have been wrong more often than the 5.9 million NCAA brackets filled out on ESPN. See this review from 1999 or this one from 2000 or this one from 2009. Meanwhile, a PBS documentary featuring the ideas of Julian Simon, who challenged doomsday orthodoxy and notably got things right? Don’t bet on it.

For more examples and why it matters, read the whole thing.