Niall Ferguson is undoubtedly an expert. As the bio on his Newsweek column points out, he's "a professor of history at Harvard University. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution." His latest column (1/23/12) is about the need to sell the public on the policies recommended by experts:

To the kind of people who spend their careers inside elite institutions, the technocratic turn is welcome. Decisions about economic policy, they reason, are too difficult to be entrusted to the people's elected representatives.... But there's a catch. The sacrifices we need to make are bound to be painful: just look what Greece and Italy are going through now. Yet people can tolerate job losses, spending cuts and tax hikes if they believe that a payoff will come in the foreseeable future. How to persuade them of that? The only way is through political leadership.

Ferguson's column concludes:

American voters want competent government. But they also need to be convinced to swallow the bitter medicine that competent government sometimes prescribes. [...] Read more»

By the tone of  some of the media coverage, you might have thought Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a plan to slash military spending yesterday.  On the front page of USA Today (1/27/12), under the headline "Panetta Backs Far Leaner Military," readers learn in the first paragraph:

The Pentagon's new plan to cut Defense spending means a reduction of 100,000 troops, the retiring of ships and planes and closing of bases--moves that the Defense secretary said would not compromise security.

The piece quotes critics of the cuts like Sen. Joe Lieberman and an analyst at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. And the article talks about the most commonly cited figure of $487 billion in cuts over 10 years. As economist Dean Baker writes about such coverage--"Military Budget Cuts: Denominator Please"--there is no way people can assess the significance of what sounds like a lot of money if they don't know how much the Pentagon is planning to spend over the same 1o-year period--roughly $8 trillion.

The PBS NewsHour did little to clarify the issue. The broadcast began with Jeffrey Brown announcing, "The Pentagon today outlined almost half a trillion dollars in budget cuts that would shrink the size of the U.S. military by trimming ground forces, retiring ships and planes, and delaying some new weapons." PBS aired clips from Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich denouncing the budget cuts, and then interviewed a Pentagon official.

Even coverage of the Pentagon's new "austerity" that managed to include some helpful context didn't make things very clear. "The Pentagon took the first major step toward shrinking its budget after a decade of war" was how a New York Times story by Elisabeth Bumiller (1/27/12) begins. In the fourth paragraph, readers found this:

Even though the Defense Department has been called on to find $259 billion in cuts in the next five years--and $487 billion over the decade--its base budget (not counting the costs of Afghanistan or other wars) will rise to $567 billion by 2017. But when adjusted for inflation, the increases are small enough that they will amount to a slight cut of 1.6 percent of the Pentagon's base budget over the next five years.

So the "first major step" in cutting the military budget... isn't really a cut? [...] Read more»

There's a news article in the Washington Post today (1/26/12) that really captures that paper's view of the way the world works, and how it ought to work. Headlined "After Earthquake, Japan Can't Agree on the Future of Nuclear Power," Chico Harlan's piece begins:

The hulking system that once guided Japan's pro-nuclear-power stance worked just fine when everybody moved in lockstep. But in the wake of a nuclear accident that changed the way this country thinks about energy, the system has proved ill-suited for resolving conflict. Its very size and complexity have become a problem.

And what exactly is that problem?

Nearly a year after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi facility, Japanese decision-makers cannot agree on how to safeguard their reactors against future disasters, or even whether to operate them at all.

Some experts say this indecision reflects the Japanese tendency to search for, and sometimes depend on, consensus--even when none is likely to emerge. The nation?s system for nuclear decision-making requires the agreement of thousands of officials. Most bureaucrats and politicians in Tokyo want Japan to recommit to nuclear power, but they have been thwarted by a powerful minority--reformists and regional governors.

[...] Read more»

You may have heard last week that right-wing media critics were howling about this:

"Those liberals are calling us dumb!" seemed to be the feeling on the right--a strange reaction to a piece written by conservative Andrew Sullivan.

Newsweek is back on the case this week: [...] Read more»