Author Archives: Jatiancecab

Is the Military Reluctant to Support the Use of Force?

by Jatiancecab Posted on December 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Retired Gen. Charles Dunlap says we shouldn’t be too worried about all the generals that Donald Trump is picking for his cabinet:

Many in the civilian world misunderstand the ways most generals see the world….Retired generals don’t clamor for war; they are typically the voices urging that all other avenues be exhausted before turning to force.

As chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then-Army Gen. Colin Powell authored a thoughtful but tempered use-of-force doctrine that said America should only go to war with defined objectives and a clear exit strategy. It was designed to persuade civilian policymakers to be extremely cautious about ordering troops into battle. It didn’t work, and true “hawks” of Powell’s tenure often proved to be high-ranking civilian officials with liberal political leanings.

My sense is that this is true. But that doesn’t mean it is, of course. Maybe my sense is wrong. I’d like to hear more about this from both civilian and military folks who have held high-ranking positions in previous administrations. When it comes to the use of force, are ex-generals generally voices of moderation?

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Is the Military Reluctant to Support the Use of Force?

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Quick Reads: "The Bargain From the Bazaar" by Haroon K. Ullah

by Jatiancecab Posted on March 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Bargain From the Bazaar

By Haroon K. Ullah

PUBLICAFFAIRS

Western discussion of Pakistan tends to focus on geopolitics and terrorism. In this refreshing break from the policy stuff, Haroon Ullah, a Pakistani American scholar and diplomat, tells the story of a middle-class family struggling to stay united as violence, political turmoil, and extremism threaten to tear the country apart. The book reads like a novel—whose rich dialogue, colorful characters, and vivid descriptions of Lahore blend seamlessly with historical context to offer glimpses of a Pakistan we rarely see.

This review originally appeared in our March/April 2014 issue of Mother Jones.

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Quick Reads: "The Bargain From the Bazaar" by Haroon K. Ullah

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Obama Dares Insurance Companies to Put Up or Shut Up

by Jatiancecab Posted on November 14, 2013

Mother Jones

Here’s the latest on Obamacare:

The White House on Thursday will announce a plan for allowing insurance companies to continue offering existing individual insurance policies even if they fall short of the coverage standards set by the 2010 health-care law, a Democratic official briefed on the plan said.

….The plan, which the official said could be implemented without passing legislation, would allow insurance companies to extend “substandard” plans in 2014 only if they are already in existence. Unlike the House bill, the administration plan wouldn’t allow insurance companies to offer such plans to new customers.

Here’s my guess: this is primarily a put-up-or-shut-up move from Obama, not a plan designed to really fix the problem of canceled policies. I base this on two things.

First, I think insurance companies are mostly allowed to do this already. Second, I think that most of the canceled policies have been canceled because insurance companies wanted to cancel them. They were designed in the first place to entice buyers away from their old grandfathered policies, and insurance companies did this explicitly so that they would be free to cancel them when 2014 rolled around. This allowed insurers to replace them with more expensive policies without taking any heat for it. They could just blame it on Obamacare.

This is just speculation on my part, so don’t take it to the bank. But I think Obama’s main goal here is to remove this handy excuse. He’s basically daring insurers to go ahead and reissue the old policies. If they don’t do it, it means that Obamacare was never really responsible for the cancellations in the first place. And if the insurers see that their bluff is being called and decide they don’t want to take the PR hit, then the old policies get reissued and everyone is happy. It’s a win-win for Obama.

There are more details to this, including its intersection with state laws and the size of the price increase insurers would attach to re-issued policies. But I suspect this is basically the shape of the river here.

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Obama Dares Insurance Companies to Put Up or Shut Up

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CHARTS: US Carbon Emissions Are Dropping

by Jatiancecab Posted on October 22, 2013

Mother Jones

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One of the next big items on President Obama’s green agenda is a new set of caps on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Set to roll out over the next few years, the rules aim to slash the climate impact of the nation’s biggest polluters. But statistics released yesterday from the federal Energy Information Administration show that even without these new caps, energy-related carbon emissions—those that come from powering factories, homes, cars, and businesses—dropped almost four percent between 2011 and 2012, marking the fifth out of the last seven years for these emissions to decline:

EIA

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CHARTS: US Carbon Emissions Are Dropping

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