New Ideas

In this excellent article in The Nation, New York State Senator Eric Schneiderman makes a useful distinction between transactional and transformational politics.

Transactional politics is pretty straightforward. What's the best deal I can get on a gun-control or immigration-reform bill during this year's legislative session? What do I have to do to elect a good progressive ally in November? Transactional politics requires us to be pragmatic about current realities and the state of public opinion. It's all about getting the best result possible given the circumstances here and now.

Transformational politics is the work we do today to ensure that the deal we can get on gun control or immigration reform in a year--or five years, or twenty years--will be better than the deal we can get today. Transformational politics requires us to challenge the way people think about issues, opening their minds to better possibilities. It requires us to root out the assumptions about politics or economics or human nature that prevent us from embracing policies that will make our lives better. Transformational politics has been a critical element of American political life since Lincoln was advocating his "oft expressed belief that a leader should endeavor to transform, yet heed, public opinion."

....

The ongoing debate over how to prevent an economic downturn provides a perfect illustration of the limits of the transactional approach. Most DC-based liberal groups approached the debate in purely transactional terms. As it developed in January and early February, this transactional approach had two key elements:

• Emphasizing a list of policies and programs for inclusion in a stimulus package—the orthodox list included a tax rebate, increases in food stamps, expanded unemployment insurance, and state fiscal relief;
• Arguing for these policies using a set of principles—temporary, targeted and timely—that rest on a conservative understanding of limited government.

The triple-t framing took the place of a more transformative framework, one that would have been consistent with the mission of building a fair economy that works for all Americans. Given that the final legislation included only one of the four items on the list—tax rebates—it's hard not to conclude that a more transformative approach wouldn't have done at least as well in the short-term, while being much more helpful in the long run.

To encourage more transformational approaches, Schneiderman proposes:

On every issue, with every group of activists, politicians who claim to be doing transformational work should be required to prove it. All politicians who seek your support should produce articles, videos, transcripts--anything that demonstrates that they are challenging the conservative assumptions that frame virtually all discussions of public policy among America's elected officials. How do we talk about abortion? As a duel between "prochoice" and "prolife" extremists--or as an issue of basic human freedom for women denied the power to control their own bodies? What do we say about health insurance? That it requires a delicate balance between the free market and socialism--or that it is an essential investment in our most important national resource and a basic right, without which our commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is meaningless?

This is a sound idea, but it shouldn't be limited to politicians. Current liberal interest groups and think tanks should hold themselves to the same standard.

Washington DC could be the second city in the nation to establish a job standard that ensures employers offer paid sick days.

This week, legislation that would guarantee all workers some paid sick days was introduced with the support of every single city council member.

In interviews for The Mobility Agenda’s national scan for new ideas for better jobs, the fact that nearly half of all private sector workers (and about 80 percent of low-wage workers) don’t have the choice to take paid sick days was mentioned most frequently and fervently by stakeholders of all types across country. But a year ago, dealing \with this issue was barely on the public agenda.

Then last November, San Francisco voters decided overwhelmingly that it would be a good idea to offer all workers there some paid sick days. Since then, Congress has started discussing federal legislation creating a new job standard (not for the first time, but with renewed energy). Meanwhile, over 20 states and localities are considering legislation related to paid time off from work – in Ohio, a ballot initiative guaranteeing paid sick days is in the offing.

The Chamber of Commerce in DC has so far declined to take a position on the legislation. In SF, the business groups never did create an opposition campaign, and voters passed the initiative by nearly a 2/3 majority. A representative of the restaurant owners’ association there noted how popular the idea is and said, “To be honest, if we fight it, we look like complete jerks.”

We’ll be watching closely to see what happens in DC – but it looks good. Congratulations to Karen Minatelli and the folks at the DC Employment Justice Center for their work on this issue - along with supporters from across the country. For more information, check out the website of the National Partnership.

Better pay and more training for employees is good for the bottom line? Yuh-huh, maybe so.

Last month, Circuit City fired about 3,400 employees because they were “paid too much”– that is, between $10 and $20 an hour. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported the retailer expects a first-quarter loss and analysts are citing the job cuts as the reason.

Analysts said Circuit City had cast off some of its most experienced and successful people and was losing business to competitors who have better-trained employees.

"I think even though sales were soft in March, this is clearly why April sales were worse. They were replaced with less knowledgeable associates," said Tim Allen, an analyst with Jefferies & Co.

In particular, the televisions showing disappointing results are "intensive sales" requiring more informed employees, Allen said. "It's a big-ticket purchase for somebody. And if they feel like they're not getting the right advice or are being misled by someone who doesn't know, it would be definitely frustrating. They will take their business elsewhere."

…. Mike Baker, a research analyst with Deutsche Bank....also said Circuit City's situation is mostly a result of its loss of informed workers. Best Buy "will fare better because of market share gains driven by weakening customer service at Circuit City," he wrote. "We believe that Circuit City's store labor change . . . likely has had a worse than expected impact on Circuit City's service levels and has enabled [Best Buy] to take share."

…. Circuit City's prices and return policies are comparable to those of its competition, so what's left is the sales experience, said Samuel Culbert, professor of human resources and organization at the University of California at Los Angeles. "There is nothing more important than relationships in commerce."

This week, Jim Murphy MP, UK Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform, is visiting parts of North America. His first stop is Washington DC and then he’s off to Milwaukee to learn about the Wisconsin “miracle”, then Canada.

Inclusion met with the Minister and his staff to discuss plans to increase UK’s employment rate and the UK child poverty reduction goal. He was most interested in our our national scan for new ideas to create better jobs. In particular, our findings on community benefit agreements and employee engagement strategies seemed to pique the interest of our UK visitors.

While Inclusion’s Mobility Agenda advisors - Heather Boushey, Shawn Fremstad, Rachel Gragg, Sarah Sattelmeyer, and me - answered many questions from the Minister, we also gathered some useful information for application in our work.

There’s been a lot of talk in the U.S. lately about copying the U.K. national target of child poverty reduction.

Our conversation yesterday confirmed what some of us have suspected for a while: the policy framework in the U.K. is fundamentally different in ways that make it quite difficult to imagine replicating UK poverty reduction here.

There’s a great deal to say about this – but let’s just start with the fact that in the UK, poverty is defined quite differently from the U.S. and was defined at the time the goal was established. This suggests that the government knew where it wanted to end up and established the definition to match the true goal.

Poverty in the UK is relative – a percentage of median income – that is, anything below 60 percent of median, after subtracting housing costs. (Yep, that’s right – after housing costs.) This means that poverty is both a moving target – and designed to measure economic inclusion.

Whereas, our definition of poverty in the US is based on life as it was in the 1950s, when housing costs represented a much smaller part of a household budget, one income was enough to support most families, and child care costs weren’t much of a factor. The poverty rate in the US is adjusted annually, but only to reflect increased costs based on the original assumptions of what's in the basket of basic goods and services to prevent deprivation. This is a measure of hardship – tho not a very good one – not a measure of inclusion.

Moreover, in our discussion with the Minister about The Mobility Agenda – and new ideas for better jobs – it because quite clear that many of the policies and strategies we identified in our national scan are already in place in the UK: universal health insurance, for example.

In the U.S., we start in a fundamentally different place. If we establish a poverty reduction goal here, we cannot hope to accomplish what’s been done in the UK. For the UK, it seems to be the right goal, with a good measure, and some real success. In the U.S., it’s easy to imagine that establishing the goal of poverty reduction would have limited results, while undermining efforts to improve low-wage work and increase economic mobility.

We should consider whether it makes more sense to establish a national goal that takes into account the limitations of our poverty measure and the holes in our social infrastructure that make low-wage jobs so bad.

We should at the very least have full debate in policy circles about where we want to end up in twenty years given the various options for establishing a national goal. Reducing poverty – even under our limited and flawed definition would not be a bad outcome. But, it would be such a limiting goal, likely to force debates over whether there is a “new paradigm of behavior-driven poverty”, and ill designed to improve economic mobility or inclusion. Meanwhile, the debate and the effort to meet the flawed target could suck up all our energy and resources for years to come.

Greg Anrig, citing Jeff Madrick, and Thomas Palley, join Mark Schmitt in rebutting the The Third Way's new "policy framework for the 21st Century."

Palley takes a hard look at the The Third Way's economic analysis and concludes that it misrepresents economic reality. Anrig focuses on the strategic limitations of The Third Way's raison d'etre:

... my meta beef is that we should once and for all retire the outmoded and now counterproductive concept of “the third way” itself. The country today is much worse off now on virtually every front than it was when Clinton left office because the government has been in the hands of conservative ideologues. The solution to those problems is getting the conservatives who have supported one failed policy after another out of office. The right is the problem—not Bob Kuttner or any other real or conjured counterpart on the left.

It is revealing that the New York Times columnist the group originally leaked its report to was not Paul Krugman—who actually knows more than a little about the subject—but David Brooks. The idea that Brooks is supposed to represent the sweet spot of centrism that Democrats should be appealing to these days only underscores why any attempts to equate “the third way” with “progressivism” amount to a mindless sell-out to the right.

Even if you think the “Third Way’s” tepid and incoherent policy agenda is a politically safer package than more ambitious proposals, what they and everyone else across the spectrum on the left should be emphasizing is how any Democratic platform would be vastly superior to what the country has been subjected to over the past six years because we all actually believe that government is part of the solution. Continuing to set up the kinds of right-left dichotomies that may have been politically useful in 1992 isn’t doing our side any good. We can debate policy particulars while making it clear that anyone on our team would be far better than everyone on theirs.

One thought I'd add to this is that the whole "Third Way" phenomenon increasingly strikes me as a generational one, specific to the baby boomers, and rooted in the divisions that grew over the 1970s and 1980s between boomers on the roughly Democratic side of the political spectrum. My guess is that third-way thinking, at least in the style of groups like Third Way and the DLC, will recede from prominence at about the same rate as baby boomers yield power and prominence to new generations of leaders and thinkers. You find the early evidence of this shift in stuff like Mark Schmitt's writing, a book like Crashing the Gate by Jerome Armstong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, and the "Death of Environmentalism" by Michael Shellengerger and Ted Nordhas—as well as our own Rachel Gragg's "Winning Well by Losing Well" in the American Prospect. Common to all of this work, at least in my opinion, is the notion that it is possible to think new and differently about how to advance progressive goals and communicate to the public without segregating one's self off from a larger progressive community or moving in next to David Brooks.

PS: The kind of ideological segregationism that one sees in the third way, shows up in plenty of other parts of the progressive policy and think tank world, particularly inside the beltway. One notable example, initially pointed out to me by a colleague, is the difference between many analysts/advocates who think of themselves as "benefits" people (think my former employer CBPP) and those who think of themselves as "labor market" people (think EPI). An interesting example of work that bridges this gap is CEPR's aptly titled Bridging the Gaps project, which integrates both labor market and public benefits analysis.

Thanks to Jason W. for bringing to my attention Mark Schmitt's demantling of a new report from Third Way laying out a "policy framework for the 21st Century". Make sure you read the whole blog (as well as the Third Way report), but here's the heart of Schmitt's case:

[The report] expands the argument that Third Way has made elsewhere, which is mostly that the middle class is doing fine, and Democrats should stop trying to sell pessimism, and instead adopt the inspiring philosophy they call "progressive realism."

.... To rebut the pessimism, "New Rules" points out such fun facts as that in 1979, only 12% of "prime-age households" (that is, singles or couples age 25-59) earned more than $100,000, today, 24% of such households have crossed the $100,000 line. Except for "the very poor," they say, everyone's doing okay. (The Third Way authors don't define "the very poor," but it looks to me like they mean roughly 40-45% of the country.)

....

What then is "the new policy framework" that responds to all this good news? Some of it is great, such as providing every newborn with an asset account at birth. Some of it is unobjectionable, such as, "Encourage more companies to provide investment advice to their workers." But the bulk of the policy framework amounts to: Let's "reflect the hope and optimism" of those shiny happy middle-class families by throwing some money at them through more tax deductions and tax credits: "Tax deductions and credits aimed at middle class families" for college tuition. A "new baby tax credit." "Double the tax break for child care."

None of those things are terrible, if we had all the money in the world, but they are terribly inefficient. Making college tuition tax deductible, for example, even leaving aside the inflationary effect on tuitions that would wipe out the benefit, would not open the door of college to one single student who cannot attend already. (According to the Department of Education, a student from a high-income family with low test scores is more likely to complete college than a student with high test scores from a low-income family.) The other tax breaks are not as egregious, but at a time of staggering budget deficits and 45 million uninsured, they would hardly be a high priority on policy grounds, and without the magic words "refundable," they would provide no value at all to the 42 million households that don't owe income tax.

But details aside, here's my question: if the middle class is doing so well, why do we need to throw money at them? Why not just give them a round of applause for doing so well that a quarter of them now make over $100,000? Maybe given their great optimism we could even ask the $100,000+ earners to pay a bit more taxes to help those who have the least, to make our society better? What is the theory of social justice that says, the middle class is doing great, so let's borrow more money from future generations in order to give them some extra tax breaks? And meanwhile, we'll just ignore "the very poor" who aren't doing so well, by which they mean roughly 40 percent of the country.

Of course, I'm being willfully naïve. Substitute the word "swing voters" for "middle class" in the Third Way report, and it all makes sense. The affluent swing voters are doing great, and we Democrats need to "reflect their hope and optimism," in order to get them to vote for Democrats. How do we do that? Just as it's always been done: throw some bennies their way.

This is not policy analysis that seeks to determine actual problems and needs, and then craft policies that respond to them. Let's be blunt: It is the decade-old political analysis of pollster-turned-PR mogul Mark Penn—in which affluent white women are key—dressed up in the clothing of economics and policy.

PS: Along these lines, Schmitt's recent response to Senator Schumer's "50-percent policy/message framework" is also very good. Both pieces help illustrate the role the emerging "policy blogosphere" can play in fostering honest debate about policy philosophy and ideas, debate that can only help progressives continue to lift their game.

PPS: There's only one thing that Schmitt says above that I skeptical about—his endorsement of providing early newborn with an asset account at birth. Ever since the UK adopted "baby bonds" I've thought it was a vaguely good idea, but after some recent discussions with Dean Baker, Margy and others, I've become quite skeptical. The kind of argument that Mark Schmitt makes about various other tax deductions and credits proposed by Third Way—that they're "terribly inefficient"—also is quite applicable to Children's Savings Accounts, particularly if they're set up as private accounts in which the initial deposit is getting undercut by signifiicant administrative fees. I've become convinced that what I see as the most important goal of baby bonds—to provide young adults with a "stake" that they can use to invest in their future—is much better accomplished by "stakeholder" plan structured along the lines that Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott have laid out.

The Nation wisely selected James K. Galbraith to kick off a series of essays "outlining a new progressive economic policy." Galbraith's piece, What Kind of Economy?, starts with this helpful overview of what the Hamilton Project gets right and where it falls short, as well as acknowledging the weaknesses in the current progressive economic agenda:

In a debate over the Democratic future, no one should confuse the Hamilton Project with the Republican past. Robert Rubin and his associates have invited a broad dialogue on economic inequality and strategic investment, and on many specific policy questions—including education, health, taxes and wages—they will define the high-profile, wholly respectable neo-Clintonian position in the season ahead. There's nothing wrong with that.

But these advances come at a price, which will be exacted in two areas: the world trading system and domestic fiscal policy. Both of these are far more fundamental to the Hamilton mission than any particular social policy reform. Indeed, one purpose of the Hamilton Project, it seems clear, is to propose just enough creative social advances—such as wage insurance, better teacher pay and healthcare reform—so as to divert discussion from the bedrock commitments to free trade and a balanced budget.

Progressives shouldn't let this happen. And yet we have our own work to do: Our trade position is obsolete, and there is for now no clear progressive fiscal policy. We need to be talking trade and budgets, not simply because they are too important to bargain away, and not just to contest Rubin's worldview, but to build one of our own that is realistic, compelling and also serves larger purposes, including environmental survival and social justice.

Galbraith's identification of fiscal policy and trade as two extremely important areas in which progressives lack a coherent vision is right on.

On trade, he concludes:

The facts are clear: NAFTA is a done deal, and China is a success story we have to live with. Progressives need a trade narrative that moves past these two issues. Broadly, this means accepting manufactured imports and dropping the idea that we can control—or that it matters much—who assembles television sets or stitches shirts. Standards to guard against flagrant abuses such as child and prison labor are fine, but it's an illusion to think they will, or should, dent the flow of goods from China. A progressive trade agenda should focus, instead, on building stronger world markets for our exports, and in ways that do not trample on the needs and rights of poor people in poor countries. That should provide plenty of room for future fights with free-trade absolutists.

On fiscal policy, he makes the case against balanced budget fundamentalism:

Today, many Democrats are converts to balanced budgets and pay-as-you-go budget procedures, and many accept that when Democrats return to power, deficits must be cut before anything else is done. But the world has changed, and while this formula appeared to work for Bill Clinton, it probably won't work for Hillary if she gets that far. Clinton was able to preside over a largely private-sector boom--the information-technology bubble--that can't be repeated, in a time when we weren't yet aware of the wolves at our door. But, just as Alexander Hamilton proposed to build America with public works, today we require major public investment for the vast challenges we face. Of these, as Al Gore warns, the largest is to transform our patterns of energy use and defend against climate change.

Deficit-fetishism also bolsters the perennial campaign to cut the Social Security system, now taken up by the alarmist David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office, and by Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve System. Here the Hamilton Project strategy document is extremely reticent--it barely mentions Social Security by name. But it is riddled with code words about the long-term "entitlement problem," which, it avers, can be solved only by a "bipartisan commission" acting on well-known options, behind closed doors. This is not reassuring.

In fact, Social Security is in better financial shape than ever, holding vast stocks of Treasury bonds on which interest can and will be paid. No economic or budget imperative requires that Social Security be cut, now or later. In private discussion Hamilton leaders let on that they understand this. But they are prepared, nevertheless, to include Social Security cuts--pension cuts for America's elderly, many of whom would otherwise be poor--in some sort of grand deficit bargain. Progressives must be absolutely categorical in rejecting any such deal.

Healthcare costs are a big problem. But they are a problem affecting both public and private healthcare, not Medicare and Medicaid alone. And it's highly unlikely that the problem of rising healthcare costs will extend to the point projected by Bernanke and Walker, who imply that healthcare will absorb one-third of the GDP within a generation--two or three times as much as in any other country. If that happens, as Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has pointed out, we could cost-effectively contract out medical care to the Canadians and the French.

Is there anything really wrong with fiscal policy right now? Present deficits are small, and it's obvious from low long-term interest rates that financial markets do not take the exploding-deficit stories seriously. The greater risk is that a continued fall in home-building and prices could bring on recession, requiring a more active fiscal policy and bigger deficits than we have now. Sure, Congress should let the Bush tax cuts mostly expire, and if one wants to raise future tax rates just to make the long-term projections look better—well, fine. But that's a cosmetic gesture, with no current impact, and easily changed if need be by any later Congress. Our main task is to deliver on the real needs of the country. If we do that, fiscal transgressions will be forgiven. If we fail, fiscal probity will neither excuse nor save us.

Unfortunately for our democracy, hardly any one inside the beltway is making this kind of case these days.

The co-founders of Inclusion—Shawn Fremstad, Rachel Gragg, and Margy Waller—are pleased to announce a new partnership with the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). For a long time, we've admired CEPR's extraordinary work on the most important economic and social issues of the day. Inclusion will gain tremendously from our association with CEPR's economists, researchers, communications experts, and the rest of the CEPR team.

We believe deeply that our work on social policy must be better informed by economic analysis. And, as two lawyers and a sociologist by training, we don't mind a little tutoring on economics.

We hope that the CEPR/Inclusion partnership can serve the same important role that other recent "big-idea" projects, including The Hamilton Project at The Brookings Institution and the Shared Prosperity Project at the Economic Policy Institute, play in promoting robust public debate about the steps we need to take as a nation to build an economy that works for all. This debate is about much more than the details of specific policy proposals. It centers on larger questions of economic philosophy, the role of government, and the scale of public investments that are needed to meet the challenges we face as a nation. Social policy experts need to inform and be informed by this debate.

CEPR is co-directed by economists Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot. Dean's blog, Beat the Press, has expanded our thinking about the important role that blogs can play in policy and media work. More importantly, Dean and Mark are alumnae of a Big 10 land-grant school (Go Wolverines!), like Margy (Go Buckeyes!) and Shawn (Go Golden Gophers!). (Rachel is an alum of the PAC 10's University of Washington, but as a former staffer for Senator Paul Wellstone, she's an honorary Minnesotan.) Together, we hope to bring a needed Midwestern, progressive-prairie-populist, public-school perspective to inside-the-beltway policy debates.

CEPR's website: www.cepr.net
CEPR's press release

Along with all of the other changes on the site, you’ll notice the new button and tab for The Mobility Agenda.

For the past year, Shawn, Rachel, and I—with research assistance from Sarah Sattelmeyer and Amelia Dietrich—have designed and developed this new initiative with the goal of strengthening the economy with better jobs. The Center for Community Change provided crucial support for the Agenda by hosting us through the development and implementation year.

Nearly one-third of all jobs pay around $10 an hour or less, often providing no employment benefits and little flexibility. Even though the U.S. is among the wealthiest nations in the world, workers in these jobs are paid less than workers who hold similar jobs elsewhere.

The last decade has seen some progress on advancing a number of well-known policies to improve job quality by boosting the minimum wage and expanding publicly subsidized employment benefits, like child care and wage subsidies such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. Similar progress has been made to address education and advancement strategies to prepare workers for skilled jobs.

However, when one worker advances out of a low-wage job and another worker takes it, the job does not change. Across the nation, state and local stakeholders are experimenting with a host of new initiatives to improve low-wage jobs. These innovative ideas are far less well known and aren’t commonly incorporated into an anti-poverty agenda.

We will identify and promote new ideas and strategies to improve jobs in this large and growing segment of our labor market.

For more information about The Mobility Agenda, including findings from our national scan for ideas and our recent roundtable in Illinois, click on The Mobility Agenda button or tab. And let us know what you think—the search for new ideas goes on!

Just got an e-mail from a good Minnesota friend giving me the latest news about the merger of two great multi-issue progressive organizations in Minnesota, one of which, MAPA, I was on the board of when I lived there back in the 1990s. Here's the story from their website:

Prior to 2005, two successful multi-issue progressive organizations existed in Minnesota, working toward social and economic justice in Minnesota.

Progressive Minnesota, comprising individual members and affiliated organizations, concentrated its efforts on grassroots electoral work in the Twin Cities. The Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action (MAPA), a coalition of member organizations, worked directly at the legislature to effect change on a statewide level. Traveling along parallel paths, MAPA and Progressive Minnesota both evolved into mature and highly effective organizations.

Leaders of both organizations met over a cup of coffee and began a year-long strategic conversation about how to build a more powerful progressive movement in Minnesota.

The resulting organization—TakeAction Minnesota—has the power to shape Minnesota politics in profound and fundamental ways.

In Jeffrey Goldberg's excellent profile of Joe Lieberman in the current New Yorker, these two paragraphs stood out for me:

In another conversation, [Lieberman] told me that he was reading “America Alone,” a book by the conservative commentator Mark Steyn, which argues that Europe is succumbing, demographically and culturally, to an onslaught by Islam, leaving America friendless in its confrontation with Islamic extremism.

“The thing I quote most from it is the power of demographics, in Europe particularly,” Lieberman said. “That’s what struck me the most. But the other part is a kind of confirmation of what I know and what I’ve read elsewhere, which is that Islamist extremism has an ideology, and it’s expansionist, it’s an aggressive ideology. And the title I took to mean that we Americans will have ultimate responsibility for stopping this expansionism.”

Steyn is a rather odd choice to admit to looking for advice from. Last year, while guesthosting the Rush Limbaugh show, he made this memorable statement:

... those jihadists, they're not like the gooks in Vietnam. They're not just going to be content to take over Vietnam. If America pulls out of Iraq, they're going to follow us wherever we go.

To broader his information base about European integration and Islam, Senator Lieberman may want to read a new Brookings Institution book, by Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse, on immigrant integration in France. There's an excellent review on the UK Prospect's website:

In an article we wrote last year for the Journal of Poverty Law and Policy, Andy Van Kleunen and I argued:

All Americans should have opportunities for education and training beyond high school and throughout their lives. A broad-based "lifelong education and training" movement is needed to ensure that federal law provides all Americans with a basic guarnatee of access to two years of education and training after they turn 18. Access to different education and training options should be available as part of that guarantee; such options inculde education at a public college or university, education or training that leads to an industry-approved occupational certificate, and access individual coursework or "chunks" of training to upgrade skills throughout a person's life.

This is the intro paragraph from a news story in today's Baltimore Sun:

Gov. Martin O'Malley revived an issue dear to labor leaders and liberal groups in his State of the State speech this week when he deviated from his text and promised to back "living wage" legislation, a proposal that would force companies doing business with the state to pay workers upward of $11 an hour.

It's interesting that the reporters choose to frame O'Malley's living wage pledge as a "politics/special interest" story. Their initial paragraph sets up a frame—O'Malley's support for living wage legislation is little more than payback to special interest "labor leaders and liberal groups"—that will color how many readers respond to the rest of the story.

And note the phase "force companies to pay workers upward of $11." Yes, one can define any law as a "threat backed by force"—as, if I'm remembering right, the great legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart did.

But, in the context of a private business voluntarily bidding to enter into a contact to provide something to the public that will result in the business making a profit, the use of the word "force", with its connotation of violence and coercion, strikes me as a rather odd word choice.

Two recent must-read pieces from progressives on this topic:

Paul Waldman in yesterday's TomPaine.Com

Mark Schmitt in the most recent issue of the Washington Monthly

Schmitt declares that "the era of the tax revolt is over."

In 2006, New Jersey governor Jon Corzine raised taxes. Many expected him to face the backlash that his ill-fated predecessor Jim Florio encountered in the 1990s. Instead, his approval ratings actually went up from the mid-30s to above 50 percent. In 2004, Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia formed a bipartisan coalition to raise taxes and left office in 2005 as one of the most popular governors in state history. This year, the movement to impose limits on state taxes using ballot initiatives (known as Taxpayer Bill of Rights or TABOR), failed in three states once voters— who appear to have become skeptical of tax-cut gimmicks and free-lunch promises—understood the consequences. Perhaps most tellingly, when Bush and the Republicans led a last-ditch defense of their congressional majority with millions of dollars in ads charging that Democrats would raise taxes, it had no impact. In fact, shortly before the election, voters said they trusted Democrats over Republicans on the issue of taxes by 12 percent—a result almost as unlikely as preferring Democrats on national security—even though they fully expected Democrats to raise taxes.

Mark Schmitt writes what I wish I wrote about the Schumer list:

Commenting on Senator Schumer's proposals here is as difficult as, let's say, writing an honest review of a terrible novel by a writer whose work you like. What is that saying: “Homer also nods”? That is, even the best have their lapses.

And this is quite a lapse, almost a parody of the Democratic Party's fetish for list-making. One of the low points in the recent history of the Democratic Party was the House Democrats' agenda for the 2004 election, which purported to be a simple message but had no coherent statement of principles behind it and sixty-three individual policy proposals. When the Democrats came out with the “Six for '06” plan last year – nuanced, but at least six clear points of principle -- I thought they had finally learned some discipline. But apparently not everyone got the memo.

....

I don't claim to be an expert in "speaking American," but I'm reasonably confident that it has to involve putting forward a clear vision of what we want our society to look like, knowing that it will take a long time to reach that ideal. But fifty-percentism, in itself, is not a public philosophy.

Schmitt also offers this interesting example of a 50 percent reduction idea that might not be so bad, but doesn't appear on Schumer's list: