We lamented President Obama’s decision to swiftly end the D.C. voucher program, noting that his administration, which doles out billions of dollars for careless bankers and failed automakers, couldn’t find a trifling $15 million for poor children in the District of Columbia. The Post reports today that the president has yielded to his better judgment and is proposing a fairer method of ending a program, which ideally would not end.
The program provided school vouchers for low-income children in the District to attend private schools for two-year stints. Those in the program showed modest academic improvement and parents were much happier with their chosen schools. It’s no secret that teachers’ unions are hostile to school choice, since it risks diverting public funds from the failed schools they control to the private and parochial schools in which they have little clout. The unions pressured Congress, which is now majority Democrat, and Congress obliged by refusing to renew the voucher program.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan swiftly rescinded the vouchers for the upcoming year, pronouncing the program dead.
The president is now proposing a compromise: the children currently enrolled in the program will receive vouchers through their high school graduations, but no new students will be admitted to the program. This is an improvement over the previous plan, which would have kicked kids of modest means to the curb come September.
The president is right to strike a compromise— compromises are necessary in a democracy— but the president’s choice to compromise on this subject is worrying. On one side are children from low-income families that have few choices for quality education. On the other side are powerful, deep-pocketed teachers’ unions that oppose reform or real accountability measures that might inconvenience or shrink their membership.
Ideally, Mr. Obama would expand the program to afford more low-income District children the ability to escape the city’s schools, which are among the worst in the nation. Mr. and Mrs. Obama, upon moving to the White House, passed over the city’s public schools in favor of the private Sidwell Friends School. Why are the Obamas’ neighbors any less deserving?
Normally it is good for a president to compromise, and this compromise is likely the best he could achieve with this Congress. Nonetheless, this compromise suggests a moral equivalence between low-income children looking for a good education and powerful teachers’ unions looking to protect their privilege.
Update:
On a positive note, the president is proposing $517 million for merit-pay programs. Let us hope this is not window-dressing.
President Obama’s recent decision on the torture memos (to release the memos, but not to prosecute the authors), though dissatisfying to many, is politically a good compromise. It partly addresses the need for accountability for Executive Branch abuses by exposing public officials and their support of torture. The president’s decision not to investigate and prosecute further, though not the ideal solution to upholding the rule of law, will spare the country and Congress from a protracted political argument that would prove to be a needless distraction.
Though some in the administration have justified the end of the torture policy as a way to deprive al-Qaeda and its sympathizers of a recruitment tool, it’s hard to believe that suicide bombers are recruited to their cause solely because of a far-off country’s limited violation of the Geneva Conventions. That said, it is hypocritical for the former vice-president Dick Cheney to demand the full release of all the memos that might suggest the efficacy of torture. During much of his tenure, he defended the administration’s secrecy as necessary for national security. How quickly he changes his mind when it suits his political opinion.
Even if CIA records reveal the efficacy of torture (we believe the CIA can probably torture information out of a suspect provided they find the right suspect), that does not make it right. Mr. Cheney’s utilitarian argument for torture is wrong: we cannot sacrifice human rights in the pursuit of terrorists.
We agree with the president’s decision—certainly a difficult decision for him—to move on.
“George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
So said Kanye West in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when hundreds of poor, mostly black, residents of New Orleans were stranded in the Superdome and atop flood houses in the Big Easy.
No matter, with the election of Barack Obama, surely the Federal government now attends to the best interests of disadvantaged minority populations, right? Not always.
In 2004 Congress passed the District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act, providing vouchers of up to $7,500 for low-income children in the District to attend private schools. Since the District’s public schools are among the worst in the nation and considering that poor parents love their children, too, it’s no surprise that parents jumped on the opportunity with such enthusiasm that the program developed a waiting list. A recent U.S. Department of Education study found that children in the program scored about the same in math and slightly more in reading. Nonetheless, voucher parents were much more satisfied with their chosen schools than public school parents were with their schools.*
The voucher program operated with the strong support of the mayor, the District’s “state” superintendent, and the low-income parents of the voucher recipients (90% black, 9% Latino), who finally got the chance to give their children what their neighbors Mr. & Mrs. Obama give to their children: a quality private education. The parents were happy and the kids’ performance improved modestly. In an era when the Treasury hands out hundreds of billions of dollars to shoddy banks and failed carmakers, certainly the voucher program’s modest success was worth the paltry $15 million annual cost.
Not so fast! Enter the teachers’ unions and their partner-in-disparity, Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s non-voting Delegate to the House of Representatives. She made clear her opposition to the program, telling the Post, “…the Democratic Congress is not about to extend this program.”
With Democratic majorities in both houses and at the behest of the teachers’ unions, Congress, fresh from passing $410 billion budget bill, callously failed to renew the voucher program.
If we ran our elections the way we run many of our public schools, there would be civil rights investigations and lawsuits to match. Instead, when public-sector mediocrity denies poor children their right to a decent education, thereby reducing their future life opportunities, the Right doesn’t much bother with an issue it never noticed anyway and the Left willfully averts its eyes toward its well-heeled funders. If voting patterns still hold true, the beneficiaries of these programs would vote overwhelmingly Democrat anyway; the G.O.P. has nothing to gain, the Democrats have nothing to lose. Sadly, the children have much to lose.
In noting the disparities in the quality of public education in America, Rev. Al Sharpton, in a rare moment of clarity, stated why public education continues to fail millions of Americans:
The people standing in the schoolhouse doorway now are people we thought were our friends, liberals wearing suits not bibb overalls, principals and teachers who want to uphold the status quo — condescending bigots who perpetuate a system we know is profoundly unequal.
Conservatives typically don’t make public education their issue, except when it comes to biology (evolution), health (sex), and school prayer. Liberals typically advocate the use of government power to equalize social opportunity and even equalize social outcomes. Even though one would normally expect the Left to advocate policies that best benefit marginalized populations, the Democratic party still knows that both money and ballots talk: the nation’s two big teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, support Democratic candidates with massive investments, volunteers, and votes. When the interests of the unions conflict with the interests of disadvantaged children of color, the former constituency holds the trump card.
Tellingly, Ms. Norton also told the Post several months ago, “We have to protect the children, who are the truly innocent victims here.” Indeed they are.
* In fairness, one might attribute this to the fact that people have a tendency to view the consequences of their own choices more positively than consequences imposed on them by others. Just as people exhibit a pride of ownership in homes, people exhibit a pride of ownership in their own choices. If “choice” can apply to abortions, it should certainly apply to schooling.
Topics: Civil Rights & Human Rights, Class, Education, Identity, Politics, Prejudice, Washington
We never thought we’d agree so ardently with Joseph Stiglitz, but he appears to be among the few voices on the Left willing to call out President Obama on the flimsier elements of his economic plans.
We have noted before (to deaf ears, alas!) that the Obama Administration is no stranger to Wall Street. Not only did Wall Street types donate twice as much to his campaign than to McCain’s, but Mr. Obama then hired Larry Summers as his chief economic adviser. Before returning to Washington, Mr. Summers, as we noted earlier, “earned” a princely $5.2 million advising the hedge fund D. E. Shaw one day a week for the past two years. (Talk about lavish executive pay!)
Anyway, Stiglitz, too, has pointed out the blatant conflict of interest in the administration:
“America has had a revolving door. People go from Wall Street to Treasury and back to Wall Street,” he said. “Even if there is no quid pro quo, that is not the issue. The issue is the mindset.”
Stiglitz is also critical of the administration’s stimulus package, since only a fraction of it is destined to be spent in 2009.
Candidate Obama rightly criticized President Bush for hiding the costs of the Iraq War through supplemental appropriations bills, rather than including the costs in the normal budget. Alas, Mr. Obama is pulling yet another page from Bush book: though Mr. Obama recently included Iraq spending costs in his latest $410 billion budget, he has quickly come back for more, proposing his own $83.4 billion supplemental to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as a few international aid programs.
Though there’s nothing necessarily wrong with requesting supplemental funding, the president’s request raises two concerns. For one, requesting this money a mere month after Congress passed his buget makes one wonder why his budget analysts didn’t foresee these new costs and just include them in the original budget. What’s more likely is that the president just wanted to send to Congress a bill with a lower bottom line so as to appeal to moderate Democrats and GOP deficit hawks (who only now have found fiscal religion).
Secondly, it’s hypocritical for the president to critcize his predecessor for a practice that he, himself, readily adopts once in office.
Larry Summers on ABC's This Week
As we have noted before, hedge funds, private equity firms, and their employees donated nearly twice as much to the Obama campaign as they did to the McCain campaign. After the election, the new administration appointed some of its backers and friends on Wall Street to oversee TARP bailout money. Few have given much scrutiny to this obvious conflict of interest until now.
On Friday the White House released the financial records of some of the administration’s top advisers. As it turns out, President Obama’s chief economics adviser, Larry Summers, “earned” $5.2 million advising a New York hedge fund one day a week for the past two years. Though the President desperately yelped to express his “outrage” at excessive AIG bonuses, he has remained conspicuously mum on the Mr. Summers’s lavish executive pay for such little work in an industry he now oversees.
Some have wondered why the administration has been so harsh on Detroit, threatening bankruptcy and executive firings, while only gently nudging Wall Street banks. The fact that the administration has drawn so many warm suits and generous contributions from Wall Street suggests Mr. Obama holds his friends in finance to a milder standard.
When the Bush Administration let oil companies draft energy policy and let pharmaceutical lobbyists draft the Medicare drug benefit, Democrats cried foul, and rightly so.
Now Mr. Obama surrounds himself with smart bankers and economists who frequently spin around the revolving door between government and the finance sector, having made a fortune on risky bets and now seeing that the taxpayers are left to clean up the mess.
George Will sarcastically notes that the fuel-efficient-car-of-tomorrow boosterism is moot now that gas is cheap again:
The two best-selling vehicles in America this year are large pickup trucks (Ford F-Series and Chevy Silverado). In February, Toyota sold 13,600 Tundra and Tacoma pickups and 7,232 Priuses. It sells the Prius at a loss, which it can afford to do because it makes pots of money selling pickups. Has the Car Designer in Chief, a.k.a. the president, considered the possibility that what he calls “the cars of tomorrow” will forever be that?
The American car-buyer likes big cars, regardless of fuel-efficiency. If the president wants Americans to move away from gas profligacy—a position that seems to be politically popular—he might suggest raising the Federal gas tax to make fuel efficient cars more financially attractive. Though I think this is a wise idea eventually (raising taxes right now in a recession is unwise), I still hold that a Congress bowing to popular will (as it typically should) will handily defeat any such proposal.
The public may agree with statements that the country is too dependent on oil, but its behavior suggests the complete opposite. The Obama energy agenda may not be as popular as he might think.
Today’s New York Times article on Massachusetts’s universal health insurance plan reveals one major obstacle to a nationwide plan:
Those who led the 2006 effort said it would not have been feasible to enact universal coverage if the legislation had required heavy cost controls. The very stakeholders who were coaxed into the tent — doctors, hospitals, insurers and consumer groups — would probably have been driven into opposition by efforts to reduce their revenues and constrain their medical practices, they said.
Though the President and many in Congress promise a universal coverage plan for the nation, they have not publicly acknowledged that the only feasible way to implement it will require the costly appeasement of various lobbies opposed to cost-controls.
The President rightly criticized Medicare Part D’s statutory inability to bargain down drug prices from pharmaceutical companies, but will he stand up to doctors and hospitals and bargain down fees for doctors visits and hospital stays? Will he propose limits on malpractice damages thereby limiting the cost of malpractice insurance, but also limiting lawyers’ incomes? Will he demand that insurance companies accept everyone regardless of condition, even if it raises the premiums for everyone else? Will he try to relieve medical school debt by forcing down tuition costs?
If not, or even if these necessary financial controls are delayed a few years, where does Pres. Obama intend to find the money for this? He is considering taxing employee-provided health benefits, a part of the McCain platform he criticized while running for office. Though a wise idea, the reality of any tax he would impose would contradict his campaign rhetoric (though this wouldn’t be the first time).
A nationwide health insurance plan, though politically popular, would require taxes and fees that would likely prove unpopular, not only among the general public, but among key Democratic constituencies (e.g. lawyers, doctors, professors) as well.
Larry Summers on ABC's This Week
The hypocrimeter dinged loudly this morning when Larry Summers, the President’s top economic adviser, described the folly in rewriting bailout terms with A.I.G. after the ink had already dried. George Stephanopoulos brought up a breaking story that A.I.G., which had received a bailout loan from the Federal Reserve in late 2008, was issuing $1b in bonuses to some of the same employees who drove the company to the brink. Since the terms of the Federal bailout did not preclude such compensatory profligacy, Summers said it would not be possible to force the company to withold the bonuses. Summers told Geroge Stephanopolous on This Week,
Look, if you start changing the rules ex post [facto] on financial contracts— these kinds of contracts— you may get a feeling of satisfaction in the short-run, but the President said something very, very important, George, in his state of union speech: he railed and spoke very powerfully against what has happened, then he said but we can’t govern out of anger. And what’s being done here— no one wants to be doing these things, no one wants to see money going for this purpose with all the needs that our country has— but at the same time if we don’t, um, contain this situation, if we don’t respect laws on which people reasonably rely, the potential chaos, disruption, lack of credit, resulting unemployment will be that much greater. Those are the agonizing judgments that our financial authorities have to make.
Summers is right. Upholding contracts is a key part to upholding the rule of law and it reduces the risk of economic ventures. When contracts are enforced properly, both parties have greater faith in the system and are thus more willing to invest in ventures whose risk would otherwise discourage investment. If debtor banks learn that the terms of their bailout loans will blow with the political winds, banks will be less likely to take the necessary loans and stockholders in existing banks will lose faith and sell their shares.
The hypocrisy, however, lies in the Administration’s support of “cram-down” provisions that would allow bankruptcy judges to modify the loan terms (principal and interest rates) of mortgages for bankrupt homeowners. If it is calamitous to rewrite financial contracts ex post facto, as Summers says, why does the Administration support rewriting the financial contracts between lenders and bankrupt borrowers?
A cram-down provision raises the uncertainty of mortgages, since a bankruptcy judge could rewrite the terms in a way unfavorable to a lender. Lenders will likely respond to this added risk preemptively by adding a risk premium to interest rates. Thus, to save some current insolvant borrowers, future borrowers must suffer. But as we have written before, handing out political favors now at the expense of the future is easy. After all, the future can’t vote yet. At least the Administration will, to quote Summers, “get a feeling of satisfaction in the short-run.”
Today The Post and the Gray Lady are publishing several good op-eds on Obama’s policies and methods.
Michael Gerson argues that Obama’s promise of change now rings hollow. While Gerson’s criticism of Obama’s governing style and the Limbaugh affair are largely irrelevant, he rightly notes that the President is continuing with business-as-usual, i.e. promising everything for the price of nothing:
The pledge of “honesty” and “sacrifice” has become the deceptive guarantee of apparently limitless public benefits at the expense of a very few…. None of this is new or exceptional — which is the point. It is exactly the way things have always been done.
Charles Krauthammer argues that Obama’s stem cell and science policy is unsophisticated and contains a significant logical contradiction:
[The President declared] that we must resist the “false choice between sound science and moral values.” Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the “use of cloning for human reproduction.”
Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.
Is he so obtuse as not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science?
Eugene Robinson defends Obama’s method of confronting all challenges (i.e. banking, health care, entitlements, infrastructure, education, etc., etc.) all at once. He astutely dismisses the critics:
What these critics really want, though, is to delay or derail the progressive reforms that voters elected President Obama to carry out.
Judging by the scarcity of fiscal discipline over the past few years, it’s probably wise to characterize the opponents of the all-at-once agenda as really just opposing the agenda part, not the all-at-once part.
We, however, still hold by our belief that when governments rushes policy, the results are rarely wise (e.g.).
David Brooks (a conservative!) praises Obama’s nascent education policy as recognizing the importance of familial influence, teacher accountability, and charter school competition. He writes that the President “has broken with liberal orthodoxy on school reform more than any other policy”.
Remember Sen. Obama’s campaign promise to examine the Federal buget “line-by-line” to eliminate wasteful spending and earmarks? Shamefully, the president has gone back on his promise and instead signed the mammoth $410-billion omnibus spending bill. An amazing 8,500 earmarks sit like barnacles on $7.7 billion of the bill. One must suppose Senator Obama didn’t think it fair to impose burdensome campaign promises on President Obama.
While a presidential veto would have embodied the spirit of this new “era of responsibility“, the President has decided to play along to get along rather than ruffle the blue feathers at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Wait, haven’t we seen this movie before?
Ah, yes! President George W. Bush waited five years to issue his first veto, preferring to work with Congressional Republicans quid pro quo. The result was runaway spending and unexamined executive power.
Sadly, Pres. Obama had a chance to give us some change we could believe in. The only change he gave us was his promise.
Pres. Obama has wisely proposed reducing agriculture subsidies, particularly to farmers grossing more than $500,000 annually. The idea is naturally running into opposition from pols from states that benefit handsomely from the hand-outs.
Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota points to the fact that income limits on sole-proprietorships can be misleading, as we have noted before.
Mr. Peterson, Minnesota Democrat, scoffed at a proposal to eliminate direct payments to farmers earning more than $500,000 annually as a misguided idea from “some bean counter over at [the Office of Management and Budget].”
“This is a very stupid idea,” Mr. Peterson said Monday at a farmers convention. “If you got a 100-cow dairy, you’re probably going to have over a $500,000 gross [income]. So you’ll probably surprise the Minnesota 100-cow dairyman that he’s a millionaire.”
While it is true that judging wealth based on gross income alone is no good measure of poverty or wealth, agriculture subsidies paid to anyone are a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Robert J. Samuelson in the Post reiterates my point (though I doubt he reads Monumentality) on how the President’s budget, entitled A New Era of Responsibility, is anything but responsible.
If Obama were “responsible,” he would conduct a candid conversation about the role of government. Who deserves support and why? How big can government grow before higher taxes and deficits harm economic growth? Although Obama claims to be doing this, he hasn’t confronted entitlement psychology — the belief that government benefits once conferred should never be revoked.
Is it in the public interest for the well-off elderly (say, a couple with $125,000 of income) to be subsidized, through Social Security and Medicare, by poorer young and middle-aged workers? Are any farm subsidies justified when they aren’t essential for food production? We wouldn’t starve without them.
Given an aging America, government faces huge conflicts between spending on the elderly and spending on everything else. But even before most baby boomers retire (in 2016, only a quarter will have reached 65), Obama’s government would have grown. In 2016, federal spending is projected to be 22.4 percent of GDP, up from 21 percent in 2008; federal taxes, 19.2 percent of GDP, up from 17.7 percent.
I’m still waiting for a President willing to tell the truth: that we should pay the higher taxes necessary to fund the services we demand, or, more broadly, that we can’t always get what we want.
Now that would be an act of responsibility.
Many small businesses such as shops and doctors’ offices are sole-proprietorships, meaning the income of the store is counted on the owner’s tax return as his own personal income. As a result, many small business owners are grossing more than $250,000 annually in income, even though they must pay rent, insurance, and employees’ salaries from this income, leaving only a modest sum to remain for the owner.
These business owners, because their personal income is combined with their business income, may face higher taxes under Pres. Obama’s tax proposals. What makes this coming tax debate interesting is that tax increases will heavily fall on people who voted for the President in the first place. Is this an instance of betrayal or an instance of you get what you vote for?
Victor Davis Hanson at RealClearPolitics, addressing the new President, discusses the implications of classifying small-business owners as “the rich”. He very smartly identifies the Democratic constituencies that will face higher tax bills under the President:
In fact, for your [spending programs] to succeed, you must go after the upper, upper middle-class, those making between $250,000 and $600,000 who are restaurant owners, home builders, labor contactors, architects, surgeons, engineers, hospital executives, college administrators, Ivy-League law professors, and many dentists.
These households are wealthy, yes; but they don’t own or even fly on $50 million private jets or host private Super Bowl parties. Their income is all reported, and with such good salaries come high insurance and, in the case of business, constant reinvestment and expensive inventories. They are not greedy, but the bulwark of the United States’ productive classes who in aggregate pay over 40% of the collective income taxes, and provide most of the jobs in the country. Under your plan many in these high-tax states will pay nearly 70% of their incomes in FICA, Medicare, federal income, and state income taxes. Why gratuitously mislead the American people that those for whom you will lift FICA ceilings or up their IRS bites to 40% are in any way synonymous with the super-rich? Remember the very, very wealthy voted overwhelmingly in your favor precisely because their riches gave them immunity from high taxes, and in many cases they were far removed from the everyday risk and worry of owning a hardware store or trying to keep together a family-owned construction firm. George Clooney is a world away from a paving contractor, just as making $400,000 a year on call 24/7 is not quite making $40 million investing or $2 million for a cameo.
So please no more intellectual dishonesty, Mr. President. Those in great numbers who will pay your higher taxes are not really the rarer Warren Buffets, Bill Gateses, Diane Feinsteins, Teresa Heinz Kerrys, Sean Penns, George Soroses, Oprah Winfreys, or Tiger Woodses, whose mega-wealth really does result in private jet rides, and yet exempts them from worries that increased taxes might wreck their small businesses. (my emphasis)
Some business owners facing higher taxes may find it more economical to incorporate their businesses and file taxes separately for their respective businesses. If this is the case, the President’s plan to boost revenue to pay for all his programs may not collect as much as he anticipates.
(No worries, though, since we can always foist these financial burdens on the unborn. Since when do they vote?)
The President’s opponents highlight that his aim is to redistribute wealth downward à la Robin Hood, but the President himself prefers to highlight his aim to provide such necessities as universal health insurance coverage. However, if the President’s aim were merely to provide necessities, it’s only fair that he come clean with the true costs of these programs.
The Bush Administration, wanting to hide its deepening budget deficits, cynically and dishonestly refused to count Iraq spending as part of the normal budget, instead requesting the money as “emergency” appropriations. Though Pres. Obama is rightly including Iraq spending as part of the normal budget, he is underestimating the costs of his forthcoming health care plans, somehow imagining that taxing “the rich” (celebrities, hedgefund managers, as well as roofing company owners) can somehow finance the all-ages version of the most out-of-control government medical insurance program in the nation.
There is no such thing as free healthcare and the bill must be paid somehow, be it through escalating private premiums or through escalating tax rates. The President is wisely persuing cost reductions through large-group bargaining of drug prices, digitization of medical records, and research into best practices to reduce mistakes. These are worthy goals, no doubt, but like earmark reform, they will merely dent expenditures slightly, leaving hefty bills to be paid through the public treasury.
The super-rich can afford marginal increases in their tax bills, but sole-proprietors grossing more than $250,000 may find this President rather taxing.
Sen. Christopher Dodd is declaring any auto bailout dead for the remainder of this Congress. GOP opposition appears to be too strong and the President has already announced his opposition.
In the New York Times, David Brooks rightly denounces any bailout as government meddling in the process of creative destruction. He distinguishes between Detroit and Wall Street:
This is a different sort of endeavor than the $750 billion bailout of Wall Street. That money was used to save the financial system itself. It was used to save the capital markets on which the process of creative destruction depends.
Granting immortality to Detroit’s Big Three does not enhance creative destruction. It retards it. It crosses a line, a bright line. It is not about saving a system; there will still be cars made and sold in America. It is about saving politically powerful corporations. A Detroit bailout would set a precedent for every single politically connected corporation in America. There already is a long line of lobbyists bidding for federal money. If Detroit gets money, then everyone would have a case. After all, are the employees of Circuit City or the newspaper industry inferior to the employees of Chrysler?
The Wall Street intervention also garnered much wider political support since it threatened the entire national (and international) economy. Though a GM bankruptcy would certainly damage the ever-ailing state of Michigan and its close rustbelt neighbors, it is not a national threat. Furthermore, banking is a fundamentally profitable business, but an epidemic of a lack of confidence brought sound institutions (momentarily) to the brink of failure. The Big Three, however, have been hemorrhaging money for years.
Brooks and other have suggested a more sensible alternative: use government funds only to mitigate the social consequences of automaker bankruptcies, e.g. fund worker retraining programs and extend unemployment benefits for those downsized. Letting the Detroit automakers file for Chapter 11 is not such a bad idea after all. They can shred their existing labor contracts and shed unnecessary plants, models, and employees.
Foreign automakers who have set up shop in the South have shown that it is certianly possible to manufacture cars in America for a profit. It is time for Detroit to emulate them. As much as President-elect Obama promises changes, a government garantee is unlikely to force the Big Three to change.
Washington's Security Theater
How the fear of terrorism limits public access and wrecks Washington's elegance.