From the political notebook:

• The always gloomy report of the Social Security and Medicare trustees was released last week. The news focus was that the date for the Social Security trust fund to go broke had been moved up to 2037.

That, however, isn’t the relevant economic date. The relevant date is when annual income begins to fall short of annual expenses.

It is true that both Social Security and Medicare have IOUs from the federal treasury for the surpluses that have been being used for other purposes. But the government will have to raise the money to make good on the IOUs. That means higher taxes, more borrowing, or cuts in other programs.

The Medicare hospitalization fund is already running an annual deficit. For Social Security, annual expenses are expected to exceed annual income in 2016, just seven years from now.

Very shortly, the Social Security surpluses the government is currently using for other purposes will start to decline, beginning the pressure on the general fisc.

After they have come to an end in 2016, the amount the government will have to pump into Social Security and Medicare from sources other than payroll taxes will be small at first.

But it grows pretty quickly. By 2025, it is expected to reach over $500 billion a year.

The day of reckoning for Social Security and Medicare reform is fast approaching.

• Given the circumstances, the fix Legislative Republicans adopted as, they hope, the final tourniquet for this fiscal year, which ends in June, is excusable.

Primarily, they pushed bills due this year into next. Ordinarily, that would be outrageous. But the fall in state revenues has been so deep that it’s hard to work up a lather over any temporizing measures.

Democrats voted almost unanimously against the fix, even though they have recommended postponing payments as a strategy as well.

They objected to a provision requiring school districts to first use excess cash balances to cover their costs in lieu of actually getting their deferred payment next year. But the Democratic argument makes no sense.

School districts have been banking reserves beyond what they can legally spend. These excesses are supposed to be used to reduce property taxes the following year.

So, Democrats complained that using them to reduce what the state actually ends up forking out for its deferred payment to the schools amounted to a property tax increase.

However, the evidence is overwhelming that the districts have not been using excess cash balances to reduce property taxes.

According to the Arizona Tax Research Association, districts have more than doubled their cash balances over the last five years, from $219 million to $443 million.

Moreover, Democrats support reimposing a property tax at the state level. Why cavil at an increase at the local level?

• The lone exception to Democratic opposition came from Sen. Minority Leader Jorge Luis Garcia. He pointed out that using the excess cash balances now reserved more federal stimulus money to offset potential education cuts later. And he’s exactly right.

Independent thinking and actions are rare in politics. Garcia is to be commended for his.

• I attended President Obama’s commencement address at Arizona State University, not as a journalist but as a parent of a graduating student.

A few years ago, I also attended a graduation ceremony at Wells Fargo Arena. The latter was significantly less of a pain in the patoot, but I was struck by the same conclusion: This was a ceremony for the university, not the students.

Yes, my son will remember that Obama spoke at his graduation. And Obama gave a fine commencement address.

But my son petitioned us to get out of there even before his degree was officially conferred by having his college stand up and have a few words of incantation recited by ASU’s president.

There is only one moment that really matters to students and family at these things. That’s when the student’s name is called and he gets to tread across the stage while his clan hoots and hollers. At ASU, there are simply too many graduates to provide the main moment.

This big mega-ritual should be done away with at ASU. Have graduation ceremonies at the school level. Eliminate all the academic folderol and get right to the name-calling, treading and hooting and hollering.

Done right, the thing shouldn’t take more than an hour. And it would be much easier on aging patoots.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Francisco Peña contemplates a math problem at an AIMS workshop at Pueblo High Magnet School.

After many years as a political observer and erstwhile practitioner, I usually understand why what I think is sensible policy doesn’t get enacted.

Often, there is some interest group opposed. In our political system, intensity matters. An organized group that cares a lot can usually carry the day against policies whose benefits are diffuse.

Our political system also is set up to make big reforms difficult. Incremental change at the margins is more the norm. And usually, that’s a good thing.

And not at all infrequently, my views are in the minority, and not infrequently a very small minority at that.

Nevertheless, the failure of policy to move in the direction I think sensible about a high school graduation test in Arizona perplexes me. It doesn’t disadvantage any organized interest group. It’s not that big of a reform. And I think most people would agree with me, although I might be wrong about that.

Nevertheless, Arizona’s high school graduation test remains stuck in a place that makes no sense, and reform efforts, to the extent they are gaining traction, move in the wrong direction.

Arizona has a high school graduation test, AIMS, that all students must pass to receive their diploma (ignoring the temporizing fudging mechanisms the Legislature has adopted and extended).

However, the test doesn’t really determine whether a student knows what a high school graduate is expected to know. Instead, it is set at a 10th grade level.

So, Arizona can be relatively confident that its high school graduates know what a sophomore in high school should know. Wouldn’t it make more sense to determine if they know what a high school graduate should know?

I think Arizona should have a high school exit exam that actually tests what high school graduates should know. If passage were made a graduation requirement, however, the failure rate would be, at least at first, politically unacceptably high.

So, I’ve proposed a two-tier diploma: a certificate of achievement, representing passage of the test; and a certificate of completion, representing passage of all other graduation requirements but failure to pass the exit exam.

No one would be denied graduation because of the test. But employers and universities could place appropriately differential value on the two diplomas.

An AIMS Task Force formed by the Legislature recently released its recommendations. It said, much to my surprise, that AIMS should remain a 10th grade test and should remain a graduation requirement. However, it should be supplemented by two “college and career readiness” tests in the freshman and junior years.

Now, that would mean that there would still be no way of knowing whether an Arizona high school graduate actually knows what a high school graduate should know.

The desire for new “college and career readiness” tests issues from two growing fallacies.

First, that all students should graduate high school ready for college. Second, that what is necessary to prepare for college is the same thing as is necessary for jobs that don’t require a college degree.

If college is to be what it should be, and not just the new high school, then it should require cognitive abilities and a keen interest in hard academic work that just isn’t universal. And the math skills that an aspiring plumber or carpenter needs just aren’t the same as for an aspiring physicist or economist.

This is an overreaction to the commendable desire not to prematurely track kids, and particularly to avoid lower expectations for low-income and minority students.

But there are plenty of college readiness tests that already exist, and the entry requirements for Arizona universities are not opaque. Avoiding low-expectations is a matter of exhortation, not new tests.

Arizona does, however, need a high school graduation test that actually tests high school graduate knowledge.

Getting one shouldn’t be this difficult.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

No matter what you think of Dick Cheney, you can't say he hasn't warned you.

The Republican Party is a lot like the American auto industry these days. It’s in shambles, but something has got to survive.

The problem is that Dick Cheney, who seemingly has granted more interviews in the last eight weeks than he did in the previous eight years, is obscuring this rebuilding effort.

The former vice president’s message may be worth hearing. But Cheney is viewed so negatively that the messenger is crowding out the message. Some of Cheney’s critics seem to loathe him more than they do Osama bin Laden.

What does Cheney want? Some speculate he’s trying to polish his and George W. Bush’s legacy before it gets burned into history, especially the part about interrogation and intelligence gathering.

Cheney’s stated motive is that he is speaking out now because he is deeply worried that President Obama is replacing Bush administration policies with those that will make the country less safe.

That’s a debate worth having.

Obama last week changed his mind and decided not to release hundreds of photos of prisoner treatment in Afghanistan and Iraq after U.S. military leaders said they feared it would endanger U.S. troops.

In stark contrast to the Bush’s deep-in-the-heart-of-Texas retreat, Cheney has been highly visible and highly critical of the new administration.

If he were an automobile, he’d be the kind they had back in the 1970s when the U.S. auto industry was king, when the Japanese were a minor threat, and the Russians were building fall-apart death trap vehicles behind the Iron Curtain.

The Cheney Charger makes no apologies for the rubber it lays or the dust it leaves. It doesn’t try to appeal to everyone, but if you need to run into or over something to protect yourself, that’s the showroom you’d be in.

Liberal columnists believe this Cheney is crazy-dangerous. Comedians see a big target.

At the recent star-studded White House Correspondents’ Dinner – the Oscars for the bicoastal “Pollywood” set – comedian Wanda Sykes proclaimed: “He’s a scary man, scares me to death. I tell my kids . . . ‘If two cars pull up and one has a stranger and the other car has Dick Cheney . . . you get in the car with the stranger.’ ”

Democrats delight in making Cheney a face of the GOP’s shambled state, and the vice president keeps giving them YouTube moments.

Just last weekend, Cheney was on CBS’ “Face the Nation” explaining why he had been so visible.

“If I don’t speak out,” Cheney said, “then the critics have free run, and there isn’t anybody on the other side to tell the truth.”

So what if Cheney is right? What if, as he says, the tactics the Bush administration used to extract information from suspected terrorists saved hundreds of thousands of American lives?

A former FBI interrogator who questioned terrorist suspects testified this week at a Senate hearing that extreme techniques were unreliable and counter-productive.

Cheney says unreleased CIA memos would back up his claim. Let’s see them.

His critics point to already released CIA memos that say there is no way of knowing whether the same information couldn’t have been gotten with milder tactics. But what if they are wrong?

What if, heaven forbid, terrorists pull off another mass-casualty attack on an American city? Who gets the blame?

Will it be the Bush-Cheney crowd for fuzzying the definition of torture and engaging in waterboarding and other interrogation methods that may or may not have been legal, thereby incubating more anti-Americanism in the jihadist sphere?

Or will it be the Obama crowd for peeling back those policies and leaving the public impression that detention got easier for anyone caught trying to do mass-scale harm?

No matter what you think of Dick Cheney, you can’t say he hasn’t warned you.

Chuck Raasch is political editor for Gannett News Service. E-mail: craasch@gns.gannett.com

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Raasch’s blog

Get more behind-the-scenes reports, context and analysis about politicians and the political process in Raasch’s Furthermore blog. Look for it here.

Bishop John Tong smiles in front of Catholic Cathedral of Immaculate Conception in Hong Kong. The new head of Hong Kong's Catholic church is promising to help unite China's Catholics and work toward religious freedom. Tong assumed his role as head of Hong Kong's diocese in April. He replaced the long-serving Joseph Zen, an outspoken champion of religious liberty who was mistrusted by Beijing.

At a time when religious persecution is at the heart of the world’s most violent conflicts, religious freedom matters.

That’s why the 2009 report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom should be required reading for policymakers in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

The report, released May 1, documents in chilling detail the global assault on freedom of religion and belief, making a powerful case for the need to take religious freedom more seriously in U.S. foreign policy.

The report doesn’t come from the left or the right. It comes from a federal commission that is independent and bipartisan under the leadership of 10 commissioners who did their homework.

This year, the commission names 13 “countries of particular concern” – Burma, North Korea, China, Vietnam, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations of religious freedom.

Another 11 countries are on the commission’s watch list: Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Venezuela.

The worst of the worst include China, where unregistered Protestants are frequently arrested, Falun Gong practitioners are imprisoned and tortured, Catholics are detained and harassed, and Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists are repressed in growing numbers.

Conditions are less severe, but still serious, in “watch list” countries. Venezuela, for example, is now a hotbed of anti-Semitism fomented by the anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions of the government under President Hugo Chavez. As a consequence, many Jews have fled the country.

Religious freedom is practically nonexistent in Saudi Arabia, an ally of the United States with a long history of promising, but failing, to do better.

Members of minority Muslim groups – including Shiites, who make up 10 percent to 15 percent of the population – are frequently detained and harassed.

Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and others among the nearly three million expatriate workers must conform to Saudi religious customs.

Although non-Muslim workers are supposed to be permitted to worship in private, their services are often subject to surveillance and raids by Saudi authorities.

Just about every religious group, it seems, suffers persecution somewhere in the world today. Christians are targeted in Iraq, Baha’is are arrested in Iran, Jehovah’s Witnesses are banned in Tajikistan, Muslims suffer discrimination in Russia, and the list goes on.

Beyond delivering bad news, the commission also makes extensive policy recommendations to the Obama administration and Congress, including asking the secretary of state to designate “countries of particular concern.”

Under the International Religious Freedom Act, the president is required to take action opposing violations of religious freedom in countries so designated.

Given the complex economic and political realities of American ties with some of the worst offenders, religious freedom and other human rights issues often take a back seat in U.S. foreign policy. Saudi Arabia, for example, has been a CPC since 2004 – but a State Department waiver lets the Saudis off the hook.

Even in Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where the U.S. is deeply involved in nation-building, conditions for freedom of religion and belief continue to deteriorate.

A strong case can be made that the lack of religious freedom is one of the greatest barriers to peace and security in both societies.

We ignore this global crisis at our peril. Consider the hard reality behind the idealism that animates the commission’s report: International religious freedom is both an issue of national security for the United States and an essential condition for building societies that are free and democratic.

Assaults on freedom of religion and belief aren’t side issues; they are urgent matters of conscience that must be at the center of U.S. foreign policy.

Charles C. Haynes is senior scholar at the First Amendment Center (www.firstamendmentcenter.org). E-mail: chaynes@freedomforum.org

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FULL REPORT

To read the full 2009 report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom go to: www.uscirf.gov

The clock is ticking on the Obama administration’s promises to speed development of the next generation of biofuels.

There isn’t a commercial-scale plant making ethanol from crop residue and other types of plant cellulose, the stuff that’s supposed to replace corn as the feedstock of the future for biofuels.

Biomass fuel isn’t economical yet, and there are obstacles to overcome, including how to harvest, transport and store the huge amounts of biomass required.

But biorefineries will have to be built at a relatively fast rate in the coming decade if there will be sufficient quantities to meet congressional-imposed mandates, according to an analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency.

By 2013, 10 plants, each capable of producing 40 million gallons a year, would need to be built.

By 2018, the industry needs 20 such plants a year, each with an average annual production capacity of 100 million gallons.

That’s the pace needed to produce 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuel by 2022, the consumption level Congress required in the 2007 energy bill.

It can’t be done, given the lack of available capital and relatively low oil prices that the industry faces, said Robert Brown, director of Iowa State University’s Bioeconomy Institute.

The mandate “was ambitious even when petroleum was selling for $150 a barrel and money was available for new technologies,” he said.

The environmental agency analysis provides a look at where cellulosic plants would be, based on where the cornfield residue, forestry waste and other feedstocks are likely to be.

Iowa, with its expanse of corn production, is likely to be the No. 1 producer in cellulosic ethanol in 2022, according to the agency’s forecast.

The agency sees Iowa producing 1.7 billion gallons a year of cellulosic ethanol, ahead of Illinois, Indiana and Louisiana. (Iowa’s corn ethanol plants can now produce about 3.3 billion gallons a year, and the environmental agency sees that capacity rising to 3.8 billion gallons by 2022.)

For now, the question isn’t so much where they will be built, but when, or even whether they’ll be built.

Getting the industry started will require heavy federal financing in the form of loan guarantees, said Brooke Coleman, executive director of the New Fuels Alliance, an advocacy group for next-generation biofuels.

A cellulosic ethanol plant would cost an estimated $5 to $7 per gallon of capacity to build, compared with $1 to $2 a gallon for a corn ethanol facility.

“If the government wants to do this, they’re going to have to stand back and say, ‘If it doesn’t work, we’ll help you out,’ ” Coleman said.

The Obama administration last week pledged to accelerate the use of loan guarantees to refinance existing plants and build cellulosic facilities.

One reason investors don’t want to finance plants is the lack of cars capable of running on ethanol and the lack of pumps for dispensing the fuel.

“The Obama administration has to realize that they’re running their (biofuels) train into what is a wall in the marketplace,” Coleman said.

Coleman said the attention that policymakers are giving to problems in the corn ethanol industry are deflecting attention from advanced biofuels and delaying their introduction.

There’s one way around some of these obstacles: Burn the biomass in power plants and use the electricity to run plug-in hybrid cars rather than turning the biomass into ethanol.

A recent study published in the journal Science says cars would get 80 percent more mileage per acre of biomass when it’s used to generate electricity than making ethanol. And greenhouse gas emissions are lower because electric motors are more efficient than internal combustion engines.

Philip Brasher is a reporter for The Des Moines (Iowa) Register. E-mail: pbrasher@dmreg.com

A 2004 photo taken at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shows a female American soldier holding a dog leash fastened around a naked prisoner's neck.

If there was one incident that led to the decline in support for the Iraq war at home and abroad, it was the 2004 publication of pictures of U.S. soldiers taunting and abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Those photos, broadcast endlessly into homes around the globe, depicted grinning American soldiers – male and female – next to naked Iraqi prisoners stacked in piles on the floor.

Others showed snarling dogs intimidating prisoners. And perhaps the most infamous revealed a female soldier leading a naked prisoner by a dog collar around his neck.

The soldiers who engaged in this rogue, illegal conduct were tried, convicted and went to prison. But the damage they did can never be fully expiated.

Now, a freedom of information filing by the American Civil Liberties Union threatens to open this old wound.

The ACLU filed suit in 2003 to obtain the release of all photos related to military detention, and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found in its favor last September. The Bush administration sought to reverse the ruling, but the Obama administration said in April it would not fight the release of the photos.

Then, President Obama reversed course this week, instructing the Justice Department to challenge the release in court on the grounds of national security.

President Obama now says that the publication of these photos “would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals.”

He added that the most direct consequence of releasing them “would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in danger.”

He did not come to this conclusion without help – namely from Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq; and Gen. David McKiernan, outgoing American commander in Afghanistan, who pushed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to urge the administration to fight the release of the photos.

Better late than never. Obama’s reversal comes after weeks of controversy over his Justice Department’s decision to release Bush administration memos giving legal justifications for the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on enemy combatants.

While the two actions strike some left-wing critics as contradictory, in fact they demonstrate the fine line Obama is trying to walk on Bush-era decisions.

On the one hand, Obama seems eager to punish Bush political appointees for aggressively prosecuting the war on terror.

On the other hand, he’s nervous about doing anything that might provoke more violence against American troops, especially if it might redound to the detriment of his own reputation and that of his administration.

If Obama acquiesces in the release of the photos and terrorist acts against American soldiers or civilians abroad follow, he knows he’ll be blamed.

But the Obama decision also reflects the larger shift on the left from blaming soldiers for their involvement in a sometimes unpopular war to trying to show some respect for military personnel while still attacking the political leaders who sent them to war.

Although Obama is not old enough to remember the Vietnam War personally, he’s nonetheless learned some of the lessons from that era.

Vietnam War protesters spat on American soldiers, literally and figuratively. Many burned the American flag, urged the victory of the communist guerrillas and ignored the torture of American prisoners of war in North Vietnam.

Some, such as Obama friend and political ally William Ayers, went further, engaging in grotesque acts of violence against military installations in the U.S. and later against the police.

The American people overwhelmingly rejected the excesses of these protesters, electing Richard M. Nixon twice.

With some exceptions – notably Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who accused American troops of committing atrocities in Haditha before investigations and courts martial cleared them; and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who accused American troops of terrorizing Iraqi children – most Democrats have tried to sound supportive of American soldiers.

I’d like to think this support is sincere, that they appreciate the sacrifice of the men and women who serve this country so the rest of us can be safe.

But even if President Obama’s decision not to release the photos was simply a cold, political calculation, we should be glad he made it.

Linda Chavez is chair of the Center for Equal Opportunity and author of “An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal.” E-mail: lchavez@ceousa.org

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, speaks to a meeting of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank Monday. Referring to the federal stimulus, Bernanke said, "You have to take away the punchbowl, as someone once said, in order to avoid the inflation risk."

The federal government has committed trillions of dollars to domestic bailouts and propping up the recessionary economy, much of it borrowed, much created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve.

How much longer can all this go on? That’s the pressing question facing policymakers, and one without a clear answer.

At some point, “You have to take away the punchbowl, as someone once said, in order to avoid the inflation risk,” said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, paraphrasing William McChesney Martin Jr., who served as Fed chairman in the 1950s and ’60s under five presidents.

But change course too soon, and it could nip a fragile recovery in the bud. Wait too long, and runaway inflation and gargantuan federal debt could be the sequel to the worst downturn since the 1930s.

While nobody thinks the current combination of near-zero interest rates, bank and auto bailouts and trillion-dollar annual deficits is a sustainable economic model, knowing just when to take away the punchbowl is the problem.

For now, the Bernanke Fed is still filling the punchbowl. And President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress are doing the same with government spending.

One reason the Fed has been so aggressive in slashing rates and taking unconventional recession-fighting steps is because “we are trying to avoid another form of price instability, which is deflation,” Bernanke told a Fed financial conference in Jekyll Island, Ga., earlier this week.

The risk of deflation – a widespread and prolonged decline in retail prices, wages and real estate and other asset values – is “receding, but it certainly needs not to be ignored,” Bernanke said.

Despite some recent glimmers of hope, evidence is mixed on whether things are getting better or still worse. Disappointing reports Wednesday on falling retail sales and a jump in foreclosures fueled continuing uncertainties and helped push stocks down.

“You’ve got to take the stimulus off at some point. I don’t think that point is this year,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York. He said Wednesday’s economic reports point to a continuing recession, despite some recent signs of encouragement.

Government and most private economists expect the recession, which began in December 2007, to end later this year, although they expect high levels of joblessness to continue beyond.

In the meantime, recent developments are complicating efforts to tame the deficit once the recession does end:

• White House budget officials said this week that the deficit would widen to a record $1.8 trillion this year, $89 billion more than their estimate in February. They blamed the recession.

• With nearly 80 million baby boomers nearing retirement, the government reported that Medicare and Social Security will face insolvency sooner than previously projected because of the recession – for Medicare in 2017 and for Social Security in 2037.

• A potential $90 billion shortfall opened up in paying for Obama’s health care proposal. The gap comes from congressional reluctance to go along with his proposal to help pay for the plan by limiting high-income families’ charitable-giving and other tax deductions. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the health care bill will be on the House floor before the August recess.

• The administration asked Congress on Tuesday to add $100 billion in new U.S. contributions to the International Monetary Fund as part of a war-spending bill.

Obama proposed just $17 billion in new spending cuts last week, representing savings of less than one-half of 1 percent in his $3.4 trillion budget. Republicans scoffed and even some top Democrats criticized him for targeting popular programs in recessionary times.

By some accounts, the sum of all the U.S. grants, loans, guarantees and new money created electronically by the Fed since the financial crisis began totals some $11 trillion – roughly equal to the country’s national debt.

That sum does include loan guarantees that might not be needed, money that hasn’t been spent, various revolving accounts and U.S. investments in bad mortgages and other toxic, hard-to-value securities that could someday return money to taxpayers. Still, staggering amounts are involved.

“We are creating a government debt bubble that we’re going to have to deal with in a massive way,” suggested Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the senior Republican on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee.

History shows the dangers of calling the end of economic downturns too soon.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt made this mistake in 1936 when, believing the Depression largely over, he sought to pare back public spending and to balance the federal budget. It torpedoed a fragile recovery and pushed the economy back under water in 1937.

Japanese leaders made a similar mistake in the 1990s when they prematurely – and temporarily – withdrew government stimulus spending, helping to prolong Japan’s recession to one that lasted a full decade.

At the White House, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed suggestions by some analysts, including Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist for brokerage Charles Schwab, that the recession may have already ended.

“I can report nobody has intoned that message” at daily White House economic briefings, Gibbs said. “There’s much work to be done.”

Veteran budget analyst Stanley Collender said increases in public spending are an important fiscal tool and that “a bigger deficit is justified in the current economic environment.”

Furthermore, Collender added, if Obama doesn’t push his agenda for more health care, energy and education spending now, when will he?

“He’s got a 60-percent-plus approval rating. And Democrats are willing to work with him. He should go for it now. He’s never going to get a better chance,” Collender said.

Tom Raum covers politics and the economy for The Associated Press.

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is among the British cabinet ministers whose questionable expense vouchers were published.

LONDON – There are titled people in Britain and then there are people who consider themselves entitled.

The current scandal here is that the entitled are not the growing number receiving benefits from government, but the many members of Parliament whose highly questionable expenses are jaw dropping, even to the most cynical observer.

In a series of front-page stories last week in The Daily Telegraph, expense vouchers of majority Labour Party members – including Prime Minister Gordon Brown and several Cabinet ministers – were published.

The newspaper paid an unidentified source for the information, which was due to be released free this summer.

Ordinarily, one might expect those who have been identified as milking the taxpayers for dubious personal expenses to express shame, or at least embarrassment. But instead, the members are unrepentant and fighting back.

Given the nature of the expensed items, it is doubtful they will persuade the British public, which continues to struggle financially.

Barbara Follett, the minister of culture, creative industries and tourism, claimed £25,000 in expenses for security because she doesn’t feel safe living in the Soho district.

Her husband is Ken Follett, a best-selling novelist and multimillionaire. It apparently didn’t occur to her to ask him to pay for her security detail, or move from a neighborhood she regards as unsafe to one in which she feels more secure.

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas expensed women’s clothing and toiletries, including tampons and diapers. Parliamentary rules allow expenses only for items that are “exclusively” for the MP’s use.

Unless the married Woolas is holding something back, it will be difficult for him to explain how tampons are for his personal use.

Members are allowed expenses for second homes. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, however, switched his second-home designation four times in four years, claiming the second-home benefit each time.

Darling recently proposed to increase the income tax to 50 percent. Perhaps he needs the money to help underwrite his expenses.

Margaret Moran, a parliamentarian from Luton South, expensed £22,500 of taxpayer money, just days after she switched her second-home designation, to repair dry rot at her and her husband’s seaside home – 200 miles from her constituency.

Dry rot seems to be a useful metaphor for the condition of Parliament.

As if the outrageous expense claims were not enough, what the Telegraph calls “begging letters” from parliamentarians whose expenses were rejected expose the grip the entitlement mentality has on many politicians.

One Labour MP appealed a ruling against him this way: “From a natural justice perspective, I feel a justifiable exception would be the fairest manner to deal with the current situation.” He wanted a £3,100 reimbursement for a 40-inch Sony TV.

Here’s another: “I object to your decision not to reimburse me for the costs of purchasing a baby’s cot for use in my London home. . . . Perhaps you might write to me explaining where my son should sleep next time he visits me in London?”

And another: “I would be very grateful if (the expenses) could be paid in the last round of the year on Friday. Otherwise, I might be in line for a divorce!”

Like relatives who overstay their welcome – consuming food and drink and soiling your home – at holiday time, politicians in Britain and America come to believe they are entitled to other people’s money simply because they win an election.

When the relatives leave, the owners usually give the place a good cleaning. That’s what Parliament (and Congress) needs to do.

The Labour Party might have handed the Conservatives a powerful issue if the latter had not also been feeding at the public trough. The Telegraph is following up its stories on Labour with similar reports on the Conservatives.

In addition to the second-home reimbursements, one Conservative, Cheryl Gillan, the shadow Welsh secretary, claimed an expense for dog food. (She at least promised to reimburse the government.)

David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader and potential prime minister, (he leads in the polls) apparently escaped embarrassment as his claims have been called “relatively straightforward” by the Telegraph. This might allow him to take on the role of reformer in the coming election campaign.

Conservatives should bring real change to a system that allowed one Labour member to expense the cleaning of his swimming pool. That might be defensible if the member could walk on water.

Cal Thomas is an author and broadcast commentator. E-mail: calthomas@tribune.com

Misinformation serves as placebo rather than actually curing our health care system

The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing Tuesday on overhauling the heath care system. Among those testifying was Steven Wojcik (left), vice president of public policy for National Business Group Health.

The country is about to have a very frustrating debate over health care, characterized more by misdirection than an honest discussion of the alternatives.

A good illustration was provided by the Monday confab at the White House, in which health care executives committed to reduce expenditures by $2 trillion over the next decade.

Or did they?

President Obama, in his remarks, said that they did: “They are pledging to cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year – an amount that’s equal to over $2 trillion.”

The actual letter signed by the executives, however, says something importantly different:

“We will do our part to achieve your administration’s goal of decreasing by 1.5 percentage points the annual health care spending growth rate – saving $2 trillion or more.”

“Our part” is much different, and far more ambiguous, than “we will do the whole thing.”

This is best seen as collusion by the health care industry and the Obama administration to misdirect the American people.

In the first place, what health care expenditures will be over the next 10 years is unknowable. So, the “pledge” is written on water.

More importantly, the commitment was made by trade associations that don’t actually deliver health care. What happens on the ground with health care costs is unaffected by press events held by politicians and lobbyists.

Most important, what happens on the ground already provides incentives for true economies. There are serious distortions in the health care marketplace, but market share can still be gained by reducing costs and prices.

The real significance of the press event wasn’t the phony pledge of cost savings. The event signaled the political capitulation of the health care industry. They will now accept whatever role in the health care system the politicians assign them.

The more substantive event that happened that day was the release of an “options” paper for health care reform by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley.

But, again, “options” is a misnomer. This paper doesn’t really spell out fundamentally different approaches. Instead, the choices are all a variation on a single theme: a government-managed system of private health insurance.

Existing plans would be grandfathered in. But all future health insurance would have to be purchased through a government exchange.

The government would decide the benefit options insurers could offer, and insurers would have to offer all options. Pricing would be strictly circumscribed. Medical underwriting would be prohibited.

The fight over whether there would be a “public option,” a health plan actually administered by the government, is misplaced. If government controls the benefits and pricing of private plans, politicians and bureaucrats are in charge irrespective of whether there is a formal public plan.

The political need for action is driven by the uncertainty over coverage in the American system. The gaps in coverage are hugely worrisome even for those who currently have good insurance.

This uncertainty, however, is easily eliminated at no cost to the taxpayers. There already is a national health care plan, Medicaid for the low income. Universal access could be provided simply by allowing any legal resident to buy into Medicaid at the government’s cost.

The system as a whole, however, makes no sense. Obtaining health insurance through your employer is an artifact of World War II wage and price controls.

Some Republicans want to eliminate this dependence and stimulate a market for individual health insurance. That makes more sense, but the public is unlikely to be comfortable with such a radical restructuring without a government backstop, such as the ability to buy into Medicaid.

This debate will be sad and frustrating.

And the end result will probably be neither fish nor fowl – a system that provides neither the certainty and security of a European-style national health care system, nor the choice and freedom of a vigorous individual health insurance market.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Questions linger on detainees who cannot be tried but are too dangerous to release

Mike Morice (center) and other members of World Can't Wait group perform a live waterboarding demonstration outside the Spanish Consulate in Manhattan last month to urge prosecution in Spain of the alleged involvement of Bush administration officials in the torture of terror suspects.

When President Obama declassified and released legal memoranda from the Department of Justice, he opened the door to a drawn-out battle over the Bush administration’s use of coercive interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists.

We believe that any subsequent attempts to subject those who provided such legal advice to prosecutions are a mistake. They will have a chilling effect on the candor with which future government officials provide their best counsel.

The country must move on from debates about the past, because pressing questions about U.S. detention policy in the war on terror requires us to make difficult choices – and to make them soon.

In January, the president announced via executive order that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay will close within a year. The announcement was easy – but it left unanswered the hardest questions about detainee policy for the future.

How do we prosecute detainees suspected of committing war crimes now that military commissions have been suspended? How should we handle those detainees who cannot be tried, but who are too dangerous to release? Where will we house them?

How should we deal with detainees who, if released, would return to the fight against us? How do we deal with prisoners held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where some detainees captured outside Afghanistan are being held?

There are no easy answers. As senators who have struggled with these issues for years, we believe some basic principles can help us find a common path forward.

• First, do not confuse war with common criminality. The majority of detainees held at Guantanamo are not common criminals, but warriors fundamentally committed to the destruction of our way of life.

The appropriate legal foundation upon which detainee policy should be built is the law of war, along with procedures adapted from our military justice system.

• Second, military commissions remain the appropriate trial venue for these individuals. We would strenuously oppose any effort to try enemy combatants in our civilian courts.

By an overwhelming bipartisan vote in 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which set forth procedures for trying enemy combatants for war crimes.

Our domestic criminal laws – including their treatment of classified information – are ill-suited for the complex national security issues inherent in the trial of enemy combatants. We have great faith in our military justice system – appropriately modified for war crimes trials – and we believe that military judges and lawyers render fair and impartial justice not only for our troops, but for enemy combatants as well.

• Third, preventive detention will continue to have a place in the war on terror. Under the law of war, the idea an enemy combatant has to be tried or released is a false choice. Rather, it is well-established that combatants can be held off the battlefield as long as they present a military threat.

While there is little doubt that we initially cast the net too broadly in determining who merited enemy combatant status, the Department of Defense estimates nearly 1 in 10 detainees released from Guantanamo have returned to the battlefield.

This includes Said Ali al-Shihri (second in command of al-Qaida in Yemen), and Abdullah Gulam Rasoul, who reportedly now serves as the Taliban’s operational commander in southern Afghanistan.

We cannot let this continue.

A significant group of detainees still in custody at Guantanamo may be too dangerous to release, but they are not suitable for war crimes trials.

In these cases, a system needs to be devised in which a designated national security court, with a uniform set of standards and procedures administered by a civilian judge, hears the petitions for habeas corpus authorized by the Supreme Court, and an annual interagency review is conducted to determine whether the detainee remains a security threat to the United States.

• Fourth, we must address the detainee situation at Bagram in Afghanistan. An improved system for reviewing the need for further detention of detainees is required at Bagram – but we must not lose sight that Afghanistan is still an active theater of war and we cannot impede the ability of our Armed Forces to fight the enemy.

We are encouraged that the Department of Justice has appealed a ruling by the D.C. district court that extended habeas corpus rights to detainees held on the battlefield in Afghanistan.

In its motion, the Department of Justice argued that allowing the ruling to stand would harm our military’s ability to win the war.

• Finally, Congress must be involved in crafting detainee policy. It is critical for all branches of government to work together to develop solutions to the complex legal problems presented by this war.

We believe that the time has come to focus on these urgent issues, rather than spend the nation’s energy on the debates of the past.

We stand ready to work with President Obama to develop an enemy-combatant detention process that is transparent, provides robust due process consistent with the law of war, involves an independent judiciary, and protects us against a dangerous enemy.

The American people and the international community will see such a system not as an arbitrary exercise of power, but as an intelligent balance of due process and national security.”

John McCain is a Republican senator from Arizona. Lindsey Graham is a Republican senator from South Carolina.

Sen. John McCain

Sen. Lindsey Graham

By John McCain, Lindsey Graham

Republican-turned-Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill.

When Arlen Specter announced he was quitting the Republican Party to become a Democrat, who knew he would be joining the Joe Lieberman wing of the Democratic Party?

Well, that is apparently what he’s done. While the Pennsylvania senator’s decision late last month to switch parties brought great joy to the ranks of congressional Democrats, some of his actions since then have made a lot of Democrats wonder where his loyalties really lie.

Lieberman is a faux Democrat who lost his party’s nomination in Connecticut’s 2006 Democratic primary. He ran in the general election as an independent and won a third term in the Senate. Lieberman, who remains a registered Democrat and continues to caucus with Senate Democrats, calls himself an “independent-Democrat.”

Last year, Lieberman campaigned for Republican John McCain — and against Democrat Barack Obama — during the 2008 presidential campaign.

“Sen. Barack Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who I think can do great things for our country in the years ahead. But my friends, eloquence is no substitute for a record, not in these tough times for America,” Lieberman said during a campaign speech.

Specter was officially welcomed to the Democratic Party’s ranks by President Obama, who promised to support the senator’s 2010 re-election campaign.

It was the prospect of being challenged in the Republican primary by a staunch conservative that pushed Specter, a political moderate, to switch parties.

So how did he respond to Obama’s welcoming embrace? Four days later, Specter tried to put some distance between himself and his new party during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I did not say I would be a loyal Democrat,” he said sternly to David Gregory, the show’s host. “I did not say that.”

And as if to punctuate those words, Specter quickly began to behave like a disloyal Democrat. He voted against a Democratic budget resolution and helped defeat a White House-backed bill that would permit bankruptcy judges to alter the terms of a homeowner’s mortgage.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Specter told The New York Times that Minnesota’s Supreme Court should “declare Norm Coleman the winner” of the state’s still unresolved 2008 Senate race.

The outcome is expected to be decided this summer by Minnesota’s high court. After a statewide recount, Democrat Al Franken emerged with a 312-vote lead over Republican Coleman, who is appealing that decision.

If the court affirms Franken as the winner, Democrats will have the 60 votes they need to stop Republicans from using filibusters to block legislation. So why would Specter — a newly minted Democrat — want Coleman to prevail?

“In the swirl of moving from one (party) to another, I have to get used to my new teammates,” Specter said.

His retreat came amid a howl of protests from Democratic Party operatives and reports that he had been taken to the woodshed by Obama aides.

What’s certain is that Specter will have to decide very soon if he wants to run for re-election as a loyal Democrat, or as a Lieberman Democrat. Having just shed his Republican cloak, it may be tempting for him to stake out a position of independence within the Democratic Party — but it wouldn’t be wise.

Given the choice between a real Democrat and one who joined the party just to keep his re-election hopes alive, Pennsylvania’s Democrats may bring Specter’s tenure as a Senate Democrat to a screeching halt.

DeWayne Wickham is a Maryland-based columnist who writes for USA TODAY. E-mail: DeWayneWickham@aol.com.

From the political notebook:

• Within the spending lobby, there is no more firmly held belief than that Arizona is an inexcusably low-tax state.

The basis for this belief is a report on state and local tax collections from the Census Bureau.

For 2006, the most recent year for which figures are available, Arizona ranked 39th among the states in tax collections per capita. Hence the conclusion that, compared to other states, Arizona is among the bottom dwellers.

Too much was always made of this. Arizona ranks 35th in per capita personal income. So, the proper conclusion all along was that the state taxes roughly proportionate to the body politic’s ability to pay.

As it turns out, even that seriously understates Arizona’s tax load.

The Census Bureau figures aroused the suspicions of the indispensible fiscal sleuths at the Arizona Tax Research Association. So, they started digging into the data’s details.

They found that Arizona’s figures were missing huge sums of money. The state education sales tax revenue wasn’t included. The Maricopa County transportation sales tax was omitted. More than half of Arizona’s vehicle license tax was missing.

In all, ATRA found almost $2 billion in unreported tax collections.

If these missing revenues are included, Arizona’s rank increases to 32nd in per capita tax collections. As a percentage of personal income, or capacity to pay, it rises to 15th highest in the country.

So, rather than being a low-tax state, Arizona actually ranks more toward the middle in terms of nominal tax load, and higher than average based upon ability to pay.

Based upon ATRA’s research, the Census Bureau already has added $1.2 billion to Arizona’s tax collections and is studying the rest of the claims.

ATRA has done a lot of good work over the years. This sleuthing is one of its most valuable contributions.

• As much as public policy debates in Arizona are driven by these kinds of cross-state comparisons, the Legislature should take action to ensure that Arizona’s reported data is accurate.

The local government figures for the Census, for example, were being collected by an ASU professor with limited help. It’s just too big of a job, with too little incentive on the part of the entities with the raw data to cooperate, to do it that way.

Arizona expenditure data in the Census reports are undoubtedly as flawed as its tax collection data. Arizona’s reporting on education expenditures for national studies has also been spotty. Sometimes, the Arizona figures have had to be extrapolated.

To ensure accuracy, the Legislature should assign the job of collecting and reporting this data to the Auditor General’s Office.

And it should make the distribution of state-shared revenues to cities and counties and education assistance to school districts dependent on cooperation with the Auditor General’s efforts.

• The historical importance of Jack Kemp was generally understated in the reporting of his passing last week. Kemp changed the central focus of Republican economic policy.

Prior to Kemp, the Republican central focus was on the need to balance budgets through limiting spending.

Kemp argued that instead the central focus should be on fostering expanded economic opportunity through reductions in marginal tax rates.

Ronald Reagan made Kemp’s idea the principal domestic proposal of his 1980 presidential campaign, enacted it after being elected, and it has been the Republicans’ central economic focus ever since.

Kemp was a graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles. He gave a series of lectures there while I was serving as editor of the campus newspaper. So, I was able to follow him around and get to know him a little. His intellectual appetite for information and policy analysis was nearly exhausting.

Kemp practiced a different kind of politics as well. Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove sought Republican victories by highlighting divisions in which more people sided with Republicans than Democrats.

Kemp was frankly bored when talking to Republican and conservative groups, people who agreed with him. His politics was that of an evangelist. He was always trying to make converts.

He passionately believed that expanding private sector opportunity was a better way to help the disadvantaged than government programs. His sincerity and commitment to building better ladders to success for those at the bottom were transparent.

As Republicans consider how to regroup and regain political traction, they would do very well to try to recapture the spirit of Jack Kemp.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

The state budget for next year that passed out of the House Appropriations Committee last week illustrates that a nominally balanced budget can be achieved without a tax increase.

Whether that is the best course of action is a very difficult question.

As always, some historical perspective is valuable.

After the last recession, state revenues stabilized in 2003. State general fund spending that year was $6.6 billion.

State spending peaked in 2008, at $10.5 billion, or a 60 percent increase in just five years.

The House budget for next year comes in at $9.3 billion. So, that’s a real decrease of more than 11 percent in two years.

But since 2003, it still represents an increase of 41 percent. That’s more than 5 percent a year.

The proposed budget cuts are not small, and certainly not painless. But the proposed end result hardly amounts to a barbaric return to poor houses and one-room schoolhouses.

Instead, the House budget reduces state spending to around where it would have been if it had grown more prudently during the days of plenty.

On the other hand, state general fund revenues are expected to fall $2 billion short of funding that spending. The House budget makes up for that by using federal stimulus money and stealing money from other accounts.

Given that there is still a $2 billion shortfall even after reducing spending growth to a modest level indicates that profligate spending during the Napolitano era is hardly the exclusive culprit.

Nor would the problem not exist if tax cuts had been eschewed during the days of plenty. If state income and state property tax rates were as they were in 2003, they might produce an additional $600 million in revenue, still leaving a $1.4 billion hole.

Simply put, state revenues have run into a severe cyclical downturn that exceeds everyone’s blame game. The conventional wisdom from all sides of the ideological spectrum is pretty much useless and pointless in confronting this situation.

So, what to do?

The House budget is based upon the point of view that the worst thing to do in the current circumstances would be to increase taxes. There is considerable merit to that position. Raising taxes in an economic downturn is a monumentally bad idea.

The House budget illustrates that avoiding a tax increase is doable.

It steals $265 million from cities and counties, which is monstrously unfair and shouldn’t be done. They have their own budget woes and are handling them much more responsibly than is the state.

The other maneuver getting some gas, using excess school district balances, is completely justified. These are funds that should have been used to reduce property taxes and that the districts cannot legally spend anyway.

The money taken from the cities and counties could be replaced, including by deferring some payments if necessary. So, the state could get through next year OK without increasing taxes or borrowing.

But, given a structural deficit of $2 billion, the very same problem faces the state in 2011, with considerably less federal stimulus money to cover it up.

Gov. Jan Brewer says the Legislature should bite the bullet this year and really fix the problem with a tax increase. She’s being less than candid about how much of a tax increase that would take and for how long. But hers is also a position with considerable merit.

The problem – the imbalance between spending and revenues – isn’t going away, and the House budget doesn’t do much to shrink it.

If the Legislature bit the bullet this year, it would make for a much more stable environment for state government and politics.

There are no rights and wrongs here. There are no responsible vs. irresponsible positions. Ideological conventions don’t get you to an end game.

You kick the state government problem down the road until what you hope is a more propitious time to deal with it. Or you fix state government’s problem at a very bad time for the state’s private sector economy.

I’d kick the problem down the road. But I’m not going to reproach those who reach a different conclusion.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Copies of President Obama's fiscal 2010 federal budget books are seen at the White House. After a line-by-line scrub of the federal budget, Obama has signed off on a roster of 121 budget cuts totaling $17 billion.

From cuts in water projects to elimination of nuclear waste and weapons programs, President Obama’s modest proposal for $17 billion in spending cuts is as much a political document as it is a budget blueprint.

The list of 121 programs he wants to cut or eliminate drew immediate ridicule Thursday from opponents, who called it a drop in a $3.6 trillion federal budget bucket.

And it’s a misnomer to call some of Obama’s proposals cuts, because they are either replaced by spending elsewhere in the budget, or would simply push spending back to later years.

Still, Obama is making a statement. Some cuts are campaign promises. Others, like the elimination of a proposed Nevada nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain, address concerns of powerful Obama allies. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has fought that facility for most of his 23-year Senate career.

Among the major points of Obama’s proposed cuts released Thursday:

• About half are in the Defense Department, and include previously announced reductions like the C-17 transport plane, that fit into his pledge to make the military more streamlined, modern and cost-efficient. For example, he proposes pushing back construction of a new Ford Class aircraft carrier that has had cost and design problems.

Obama also is proposing $793 million in cuts in the military’s $7.7 billion recruitment and retention budget. That spending more than doubled from 2004-08, when the military was stretched thin with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Obama said that “interest in joining the military generally rises in a challenging economic environment,” so there’s less need for advertising, recruiting and retention bonuses. But critics are likely to argue that military is still stretched as it sends more troops to Afghanistan.

• Obama said he would not fund a planned $60 million down payment to update the nation’s nuclear warheads because “it is not consistent with presidential commitments to move towards a nuclear free-world.”

• Obama wants to cut $91 million out of a $288 million program to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Critics like Reid have said it poses environmental and safety risks. Obama directed that no more money be spent on Yucca and that the reduced funds be used to find a different way and location to store radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

• The president returned to a campaign promise to roll back “earmarks” – pet project requests by individual legislators – by proposing to peel back $145 million for 301 wastewater and drinking water projects already in the 2009 budget.

But even if he gets his way – and the lobbying to keep money flowing to these projects could be fierce – some of these projects could go forward. Obama said the earmarks should compete against all other proposals, and that he is roughly doubling, to about $4 billion, federal spending on such projects.

Obama was criticized for going against a campaign pledge by signing a $410 billion spending bill in March that included billions in special projects left over from the previous Congress.

• In aiming cuts at big farmers, Obama makes a similar argument he makes on tax cuts. He wants to focus government subsidies to the middle- and lower-income farmers.

He’s proposing to eliminate subsidies altogether for farmers with sales over $500,000 and to limit payments to any one farmer to $250,000, for $3.8 billion in estimated reductions over five years.

But previous attempts have been rebuffed in Congress.

Chuck Raasch is political editor for Gannett News Service. E-mail: craasch@gns.gannett.com.

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Raasch’s blog

Get more behind-the-scenes reports, context and analysis about politicians and the political process in Raasch’s Furthermore blog. Look for it here.

News industry’s depression has spillover implications

The Rocky Mountain News sign is removed from the Denver Newspaper Agency building March 1. Americans more than ever need newspapers as watchdogs whose mission transcends self-interest.

These are depressing days in news, and those still in the profession don’t talk nearly enough about how that affects Americans and their way of life.

Maybe it’s because we’re sensitive to being seen as defending dinosaurs, or too timid after endless ideological attacks on “the mainstream media.”

Newspapers in big cities like Denver and Seattle have folded. The Tucson Citizen’s future is uncertain.

Experienced journalists are being forced out of the business, often leaving to write speeches or press releases for politicians or corporations. State capital press corps have been decimated.

If not there already, we could soon be living in a world where government and politicians spend more on public relations and propaganda than an independent media spends to watch them.

Whether you’re a fan of the news media or not, this is anathema to honest self-government.

Imagine Richard Nixon with a 10 million-member e-mail army behind him, with legions of bloggers attacking his political foes, with a much larger phalanx of taxpayer-paid public relations people defending him, and with no independent investigative reporters raising questions others dare not ask.

If Nixon had survived the “third-rate burglary” at the Watergate, how long would his enemies list have grown, and how emboldened would he have become in spying on political rivals?

At a time when government is growing at an unprecedented pace, veteran Associated Press reporter Bob Lewis says it best: “There has never been a greater need for honest, truthful reporting than now. Sadly, there has never been less support for it than there is now. Invest in freedom. Buy a newspaper.”

In this season of scapegoating, Americans more than ever need watchdogs whose mission transcends self- interest. But it’s open season on the one industry that has tried to fill that role.

When comedian and cable political-show host Jon Stewart beat up on cable business-show host Jim Cramer, some cheered it as a righteous upbraiding of the news media for sleeping – or cheerleading – while Wall Street ran off with the nation’s piggybank.

There are fundamental problems with this claim.

First, as Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen pointed out, the dons of Wall Street were assuring shareholders and business journalists, including Cramer, of the genius behind the complicated financial “products” that later unraveled at investment houses and insurance giant AIG.

As Cohen noted, Wall Street big shots were putting their own money into their own businesses. No red flags there.

Former President George W. Bush assured Americans that the fundamentals of the economy were strong, even as crisis loomed.

Those with government regulatory subpoena and enforcement powers were slow to act or did not act at all. Members of Congress proclaimed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in good shape while the home-loan giants were apparently rotting from within.

Someone needs to be blamed, and what better target than the cartoonish Cramer? Ironically, cable news, where Cramer works, is the news medium that has weathered the financial crisis the best.

Why? Because people watch it, shouting and all. Perhaps because of the shouting.

But the picture is bleak for independent news gathering at a lower decibel. People are migrating to the Internet, where news and advertising have diverged, and where consumers have come to expect news for free.

Coupled with a crippling recession, these trends have cut advertising revenues by nearly a quarter in two years, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Massive layoffs have followed, while independent media race to invent a new business model.

“The problem facing American journalism is not fundamentally an audience problem or a credibility problem,” the Project for Excellence in Journalism said in its annual report. “It is a revenue problem – the decoupling . . . of advertising from news.”

Americans, the group concluded, “hunt and gather what they want when they want it, use search to comb among destinations and share what they find through a growing network of social media.”

The question is not whether platforms for public debate will be available.

Indeed, information overload is a bigger challenge to consumers today. In a world where niche news providers are growing at an explosive rate, consumers are forced to triage their choices. Under such conditions, it’s tempting to create a comfort zone of self-affirming opinion in which compromise and common ground are vilified as weakness.

The media universe may become warring information camps funded by rigidly ideological tribes or multimillionaires who see the public interest as an obstacle to personal success. If that happens, Americans will have a lot more to worry about than a few loud mouths in prime time.

Chuck Raasch is political editor for Gannett News Service. E-mail: craasch@gns.gannett.com