Gregg Easterbrook

Pundits, columnists and editorialists are good at saying who and what they don’t like. But what is it that they do like? All opinion-makers should be required to pen regular accounts of who and what they admire. As my two-year stint as a Reuters weekly columnist concludes – you’re not out of the woods, I may pop up occasionally – let me offer an incomplete accounting of ideas, organizations and people I view as worthy of praise:

World Vision: Many Christians conveniently ignore Jesus’s teachings about the poor. Many Americans don’t care about the billion people globally who are impoverished. World Vision, an evangelical organization, combats both problems by working to end poverty in developing nations. World Vision has done more to help the global poor than most governments, is pragmatic regarding economics, and its staffers don’t proselytize. There are few organizations one can admire without reservation: World Vision is one.

Barack Obama: His “next year we will get serious about the national debt” act is wearing thin. But in the main, Obama has been a good president – and Americans are turning post-racial so quickly that already we seem to shrug about the incredible historic significance of an African-American in the Oval Office.

Obama took command of the country at a low point: a deep recession, a costly quagmire in Iraq. If he’d come onto the national stage under the conditions encountered by the previous two chief executives – Bill Clinton took the White House at the start of an economic boom, George W. Bush took the White House just before 9-11, which ensured him a five-year honeymoon as the nation rallied – Obama might already be viewed as a great president. And he might still cross that threshold. ObamaCare was a major legislative achievement, and though it has bureaucratic-nightmare potential, bear in mind that few of its advantages have yet taken effect.

Doctors Without Borders: In the parts of the developing world where there are medical emergencies, workers of Medecins Sans Frontieres are viewed as saints walking among men. That’s the way I feel, too.

Cass Sunstein: Obama’s regulatory czar wants regulations to be necessary and cost-effective, which offends both ideological extremes. He’s doing a fine job.

Third Way: The Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute continue to do good work. But Third Way is the future of think tanks, focused on pragmatic solutions, not panel discussions.

International Justice Mission: Founded just 14 years ago, IJM already has achieved results in pressuring the legal systems of African, Asian and South American countries to recognize human rights and to take concrete action against human trafficking, government corruption and police brutality.

Red Cross/Red Crescent/Red Star of David: The structure of the Red Cross, Red Crescent and Red Star of David societies can be confusing. But in a world of situation ethics and I’ve-got-mine-Jack, the brave personnel of these organizations represent the embodiment of selfless virtue.

Stephen Carter: Author of important nonfiction books, of bestselling novels and a chaired law professor at Yale University, for my money Carter is the nation’s leading public intellectual. A political and religious moderate – not many Ivy League professors have written a column for Christianity Today, which is traditionalist on spiritual issues and liberal on social questions – Carter is a fine candidate for a Supreme Court opening. Yes, he writes novels that contain conspiracies, including an evil Supreme Court justice. They’re novels! Surely even the Senate Judiciary Committee can understand the difference between scholarship and entertainment. Carter would bring to the highest court intellectual heft, equability and humility, all of which the Supremes need.

The deficit commission report: It’s the map for the only clear path out of America’s primary domestic problem.

Berea College: Founded to aid the poor of Appalachia, Berea College is a private institution that does not charge tuition. “Financial need” is a requirement for admission. As top colleges and universities increasingly become preserves of the well-off, Berea College tirelessly works to end college-based class distinctions.

Mitt Romney: So he flip-flops. If this is the worst thing about him, he’s a welcome addition to national politics. Romney has been a success as a business and a government executive. He behaves honorably and treats others with respect. At a time when American discourse grows bitter and divisive, an Obama-Romney presidential race could set an example for high-minded public behavior.

The Pew Charitable Trusts: The Pew Trusts is the nation’s leading progressive philanthropy, campaigning for reform in health care, the environment, energy policy and other subjects. Its divisions concerned with state government and public opinion do great jobs. The founding impulse of Pew was a left-wing Christian – a flavor missing in national discourse. Its president, Rebecca Rimel, is a self-made woman who began her career as a nurse.

Reuters readers: I thank all readers who followed this column. You’re number one on my list of What I Like.

PHOTO: People stand together as they create the biggest human smiley in the world on the Zagreb main square May 6, 2011.

Physicists in Switzerland just reported they are closing in on the “Higgs boson,” a hypothesized ultra-small unit that may be the building block of subatomic particles. Let’s hope they are right, so European taxpayers get a return on the $10 billion complex built to look for the Higgs boson.

Whether this particle is found will not affect your life in any way. But the search for abstract knowledge is part of the human quest.

Last year as the holidays approached, I reviewed the state of understanding of the size and age of the cosmos. This year for the holidays, the topic is what science knows (or thinks it knows) about some fundamental questions of nature.

* What is matter? When the atom was shown to contain neutrons, protons and electrons, these were assumed to be the basic components of matter. Then such particles were shown to be made up of quarks. Now it turns out quarks — well, you can fill in the sentence. The closer researchers look at matter, the less seems to be there. A baseball is solid at the macro scale: at the subatomic scale, it seems to be made of rapidly spinning packets of nothingness.

The Higgs boson, from which quarks may be made, is conceptualized not so much as a solid entity, rather, as a fluctuation in a mysterious field that some researchers think permeates the cosmos. What is the mysterious field? Your guess is as good as the next Nobel Prize winner’s.

Some scientists expect the Higgs boson to be proven a manifestation of “strings,” the hot idea in academic physics. String conjecture holds that in addition to the four dimensions of human experience — geometry plus time — there are six others. These dimensions are compressed to such smallness they make electrons seem huge; the spinning of the additional dimensions changes nothingness into substance. Ultimately, cheeseburgers are made of rapidly spinning other dimensions.

So far there is no evidence other dimensions exist, nor any proposal for what “another dimension” might be. In 2008, the New York Times ran an article about string thinking that hilariously included an attempt to illustrate alternative dimensions. The fifth dimension was depicted as looking like a paper towel tube. If there are 10 dimensions, good luck depicting them in three dimensions! This book by Lee Smolin, a prominent physicist, contends string thinking is highfalutin mumbo-jumbo.

* Why is most of the universe missing? The part of the cosmos that astronomers can locate — stars, nebulae and, increasingly, worlds – involves perhaps 100 billion galaxies containing 10 sextillion stars, a sextillion being an unfathomable number that is a one followed by 22 zeroes. Yet by current scientific estimates, only about four percent of the matter and energy of the cosmos resides in those stars, plus their associated planets and black holes. The other 96 percent is, well, we’ll get back to you on that.

Evidence indicates there is considerably more “dark matter” and “dark energy” – assumed present owing to the way galaxies move, but not yet located — than regular matter and regular energy. New evidence further suggests the preponderance of the cosmos is “dark energy,” which may be the utmost force in creation, more potent than all gravity, radiation and stellar output combined. Yet as Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University, who just shared a Nobel Prize for a key discovery about how dark energy appears to affect distant galaxies, says, “I have absolutely no clue what dark energy is.” Here is your columnist talking to Riess.

If dark energy and dark matter are real, then what we’ve always thought of as regular matter – what we are made of – will turn out to be weird stuff, since almost all of the universe will be made of something else entirely.

* Why is the universe friendly? Had dark energy been only a tiny bit weaker in the first eon after the Big Bang, all matter would have collapsed back into black holes. Had dark energy been only a tiny bit stronger, galaxies could not have formed. Had gravity been a tiny bit stronger, the stars would have burned through their nuclear material very quickly, and the cosmos fallen dark before life could originate. Had gravity been a tiny bit less strong, planets would not have formed; a haze of elements would orbit stars. If the four known fundamental forces possessed slightly different values, the cosmos would be weirdly distorted instead of geometrically normal. Had it not been for an unlikely idiosyncrasy of the element beryllium, stars could not manufacture the carbon on which life depends. In Harper’s, MIT physicist Alan Lightman just mulled these quandaries.

Maybe the universe is “friendly” because our cosmos has the only possible set of physical laws. (My chips are on that bet.) But having the universe be anthropocentric in character disquiets some researchers, suggesting purpose. In response, cosmologists have developed “multiverse” thinking or M-theory, which holds there are billions or even an infinite number of universes, all of which, through chance, received different physical laws. In M-theory our universe got laws that make life possible, which is good news but also a random fluke.

Stephen Hawking laid out the case for a multiverse in his recent book The Grand Design. Where’s the proof? There is none. Backers of this idea suppose that other universes are accelerating away from ours at more than the speed of light, and thus can never be observed. This makes the multiverse concept late-night dorm-room rumination, not science. To be science, an idea must be falsifiable. It’s impossible to disprove the existence of something claimed as beyond all observation.

M-theory is popular in academia, as it seems to say the “friendly” aspect of the cosmos is just a meaningless coincidence. Physicist Charles Townes, who won a Nobel Prize for the concept of the maser, wryly observed, “To posit the existence of an infinite number of unobservable universes seems considerably more freewheeling than positing a single unobservable God.”

* How did the universe begin? How did life begin? It may be centuries or millennia before humanity knows – if we ever know. So let me wish you happy holidays and close on a light note:

* What is the name of the universe? Our world is Earth, our star in Sol, our galaxy is the Milky Way. But the firmament lacks a name.

Perhaps the cosmos should be christened Ametros, Greek for “without measure.” That’s a pretty classy name. Or maybe we should call it Miss Universe. In alternate years, it could be Mr. Universe.

PHOTO: An artist’s rendering shows a planet called Kepler-20e in this handout released December 20, 2011. REUTERS/NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech/Handout

By Gregg Easterbrook
The opinions expressed are his own.

Conventional wisdom says the Republican presidential nomination will go to Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. This could change – don’t be surprised if it changes more than once. But suppose conventional wisdom proves correct. If you were Barack Obama, which would you rather run against?

A follower of polls might say, “Of course Obama wants to run against Gingrich.” An Obama-Gingrich race could end with a walkover for the incumbent, as happened in LBJ-Goldwater of 1964 and Nixon-McGovern of 1972.

Gingrich, some thinking goes, has a borderline personality. His past is full of strange diatribes on a weird range of subjects. As Ronald Reagan sometimes confused movies with reality, Gingrich confuses science fiction novels with reality. He threw a temper tantrum about his seat on Air Force One. Hardly anyone likes him personally. He was a transparent opportunist with Fannie and Freddie, organizations that voters hate. Gingrich is proficient at bloviating, and the one time in his life he held actual responsibility as Speaker of the House he did a terrible job. Would you trust the nation’s budget to a man who ran a $1 million tab at Tiffany?

Gingrich hectors others about their personal lives, while presenting himself as a champion of traditional values. Yet he admits betraying not one but two wives. Some kind of new low in politics was achieved when Gingrich formally pledged to stop committing adultery. Gingrich wears the letter H — for hypocrite — around his neck as Hester Prynne wore an A around hers in The Scarlet Letter.

These are sound reasons why Obama might prefer to face Newt. They are reasons the Republican National Committee is said to be feeling panicky about a Gingrich candidacy. Newt has the potential to lose by a spectacular margin, dragging Republican Senate and House candidates down with him. The Republican establishment has not forgotten how much damage he did to the GOP during his administration of the House. Run against a guy even your opponents despise? Sounds promising.

But, as you’ve probably guessed by now, there is a but.

Gingrich is a wild card. He probably would end up a flaming wreckage in electoral terms, but there’s a chance he could become seen as the man unafraid to bring sweeping change to an ossified Washington, D.C. There’s perhaps a 90 percent likelihood Obama would wipe the floor with Gingrich, versus a 10 percent likelihood Gingrich would stage an historic upset. In game theory terms, this invokes the minimax problem – should Obama maximize his chance of a huge victory or minimize his chance of a stinging defeat?

We must take into consideration that Gingrich can be vicious. He viciously denounced Bill Clinton and demanded his impeachment for having an affair, all the while, as we now know, Newt was busy cheating on his own wife. This shows Gingrich will say anything in order to serve himself. Of all GOP contenders, Gingrich seems the only one who might stoop to appealing to the very worst aspects of the American character — if he thought he would personally benefit.

Now consider Mitt Romney. He is perceived as being more appealing to independents than Gingrich. Romney possesses an air of maturity and reasonableness, qualities Gingrich sorely lacks. Also unlike Gingrich, Romney has been a success as an executive — running private businesses, the Olympics and the state of Massachusetts. There seems little chance Romney will stage a campaign that melts down and simply hands a reelection to Obama, which Gingrich might do. Because he is perceived as admirable, Mitt could help Republicans pick up House and Senate seats, even if they miss the White House.

Overall, in most respects, Romney is a significantly more formidable opponent than Gingrich. Yet there are reasons the president might prefer to run against Mitt.

His Latter-Day Saints faith could be a negative — one Obama need not even mention. Evangelicals normally turn out for Republican candidates, but they may be put off by the longstanding question of whether Mormons are Christians. As a churchgoer myself, I think Mormons have the same claim to be followers of Christ as anyone else does. But then I belong to an eccentric joint Christian-Jewish congregation that takes a broad view of spirituality. Many traditional Christians, however, are suspicious of the Mormon denomination. This could knock a couple of points off a Romney vote without the president having to do or say anything.

Romney’s other powerful negative is his background in private equity. Right now “Wall Street” is an expletive, and Romney is Wall Street up one side and down the other. His years running Bain Capital will be described in campaign advertising as vulture capitalism – corporate raiding, followed by layoffs and outsourcing with huge profits for wealthy insiders and average people out of work.

That may not be a fair charge, but it is a powerful one, with which Obama could pillory Romney. There is a clear political playbook to use against Romney.

This especially matters to the youth-vote/youth-volunteer equation. The young voters who enthusiastically supported Obama in 2008 now seem more turned off by him. But if 2012 pits Obama versus Mr. One Percent, young voters might get excited again. Obama would be offering them a chance to defeat Wall Street, at least symbolically.

Whatever other failings he may have, Romney has always comported himself with dignity. An Obama-Romney contest would be the kind of decorous, high-minded campaign at which the president excels. In an Obama-Gingrich race, practically anything could happen.

So forget the polls. If I am Barack Obama, I want to run against Mitt Romney.

Photo: Republican presidential candidate former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) looks on as fellow candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (L) makes a point during the Republican Party presidential candidates debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, December 10, 2011. REUTERS/Jeff Haynes

By Gregg Easterbrook
The views expressed are his own.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo just struck a deal with his state legislature for a long-term tax increase on the well-off, while California Governor Jerry Brown recently said he wants a November 2012 voter referendum aimed at raising the state’s top tax rate.

Conservatives predictably are in a tizzy, liberals in a transport of delight. Moderates might simply be glad to learn that California and New York are dealing with budget deficits on their own, rather than demanding a bailout.

Both states are moving to raise their top-rate taxes on personal income, making the rates border on confiscatory when one combines it with the federal and local taxes. Yet both are holding property taxes down. In June, Cuomo persuaded the New York state legislature to impose a cap on property taxes. California is entering its fourth decade of property taxes capped at a low level for most homeowners, under Proposition 13, passed in 1978.

Here’s the problem: Personal income is mobile — it can leave State A for lower rates in State B. Real estate cannot move: it must stay in State A.

Cuomo’s plan will raise the New York top rate income tax to 8.82 percent (a temporary “surcharge” about to expire was slightly higher). Meanwhile, across the state border, Connecticut’s top rate is 6.7 percent. For a well-to-do household, a move to the Nutmeg State might be very attractive.

On the other side of the country, Brown’s plan would raise California’s top rate income tax to a stunning 11.3 percent. Meanwhile, Nevada, right across the California border, has no state income tax.

But top earners may not have to actually uproot themselves to a lesser taxed state because courts can broadly interpret state residency rules. Former White House adviser Rahm Emanuel was able to spend many years living in Washington, D.C., and also satisfy the residency requirement for running for mayor of Chicago by telling a court he had “intended” to move to Illinois.

Think about a Hollywood mogul or Silicon Valley executive who makes $5 million a year, which would mean a $565,000 annual state income tax under Brown’s proposal. In theory, that person could buy a pied-ἁ-terre in Reno, use the address to stop paying California income taxes, and if pressed legally, say he or she “intended” to move to Nevada.

These New York and California examples assume that the rich will be completely honest with their taxes. But the higher state income tax rates are, the greater the incentive for a wealthy flier to hire a tax attorney who can make income appear to be earned in some other jurisdiction.

The actions by California and New York might bring a short-term revenue boost. However, long-term, high top-rate taxes may drive income to lower-tax states, leaving the Golden and Empire states worse off.

So, are the governors of two of the nation’s largest states crazy? No, they are pandering to the number-one voting bloc in the United States: senior citizens.

Seniors don’t pay much in income taxes. Even affluent senior citizens rarely reach top-rate territory for earned income. Instead, they tend to receive their income as interest, dividends and capital gains. But seniors do hold real estate, and complain vociferously about the property tax.

Last month the Pew Research Center reported that seniors are the best-off large cohort in America. Those over 65 years have a median net worth of $170,000, compared to $102,000 for those 45-54 — traditionally the peak earning years — and young adults have a median net worth of just $4,000. Seniors are also the only large group in the U.S. to receive federal income supplements via Social Security: an income-transfer program funded mainly by taxes on the young.

Political proposals to cap or hold down property taxes while raising top-rate income taxes sound like populist crusading against the rich. But this is just cynical politics, disguised as idealism.

Photo: Caroline Meeks, M.D., teaches a laughter therapy class to a group of seniors at the Clairmont Friendship Center in San Diego, California November 17, 2010. LAUGHTERYOGA REUTERS/Mike Blake

Gift-buying season is upon us. And so are books-of-the-year lists. Here are some new books that have not necessarily made it on to any book list, but which are nonetheless good reads and good gifts:

WINNING THE WAR ON WAR by Joshua Goldstein

This is the most important political book of the year. It deserves substantial attention and is worthy of awards. Goldstein, a professor emeritus at American University, shows in meticulous detail that Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia are terrible exceptions to what is otherwise a trend of steady decline in incidence, intensity and severity of human combat. Cable news creates an impression of general carnage: yet with each passing year, nations and tribal groups harm each other less, both directly through war and indirectly through conflict. “Book trailers” are a mixed blessing; the trailer for “Winning the War on War” is worth watching.

Steven Pinker, a better-known writer, also published a book this autumn about the decline of violence. Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature” is also worth reading or giving. Pinker concentrates on the evolution of morality (how violence has gradually come to be seen as wrong), whereas Goldstein’s focus is politics (the policy choices that reduce conflict and prevent harm).

Either way, you should read both books. The decline of war and violence is the no. 1 overlooked story in the international media.

JOIN THE CLUB by Tina Rosenberg

Everyone complains about the malevolence of peer pressure – what about its positive uses? Drawing on examples and interviews from around the world, Rosenberg, whose “The Haunted Land” won the 1995 National Book Award, shows how positive peer pressure has been employed by educational reformers, public health officials, entrepreneurs and nonviolent “velvet” rebellions against dictatorship. A wise, noteworthy book with clear applications both for protest movements and business administration.

FUTURE BABBLE by Dan Gardner

Does it seem to you that “expert” predictions fare little better than coin flips? Gardner, who specializes in science and risk-perception, shows they fare no better. “Future Babble” is delightfully entertaining, and might be considered dark humor if it did not contain so many examples of widely-listened-to “experts” turning out to have no idea what they were talking about.

THE END OF ANGER by Ellis Cose

America may or may not be becoming post-racial. But black rage and white guilt are both on their way to being antiquated concepts, contends Cose, who used to write for Newsweek. It’s hard to ideologically characterize his African-American voice – which is a reason to read this book.

STATE VERSUS DEFENSE by Stephen Glain

The Department of State and Department of Defense have overlapping duties and jurisdiction, plus conflicting institutional incentives. There is too much recitation of well-known incidents from this globetrotting international writer, but it’s a smart guide to a major behind-the-scenes Washington story. As the Department of Defense hands over Iraq to the Department of State, this subject will rise in magnitude.

CHURCHILL’S SECRET WAR by Madhusree Mukerjee

Count me as a card-carrying member of the Winston Fan Club. But as Mukerjee shows, Churchill’s World War II-era abuse of what are now India and Pakistan was shameful, and was in part racially motivated. Shipping food out of starving India so England could have more in reserve may have been the kind of terrible choice leaders make during war. Churchill’s legacy should also include his mistreatment of a region that his nation conquered by force. Mukerjee is an India-born physicist who lives in Germany.

GETTING BETTER by Charles Kenny

Just as war is assumed to be ever-worse while it actually is in decline, the developing world is assumed to be falling to pieces while it’s actually improving on most measures – health, per-capita income, freedom of expression, education for women. Kenny, an economist who has become an important scholar on the reality of the developing world, shows that conditions in most nations are trending upward, and that this is happening almost entirely because of the efforts of developing world citizens – not U.S. or European Union initiatives. The latest United Nations Human Development Report backs up this book’s claims. That the developing world mostly is improving, not imploding as predicted, is another story rarely reported.

TERROR SECURITY AND MONEY by John Mueller and Mark Stewart

This timely and provocative book, by professors at Ohio State and University of Newcastle in Australia, contends that in the wake of 9/11, all investments in domestic security were assumed justified: yet much of the spending has been wasteful or even counterproductive. Some $600 billion (in current dollars) has been spent combating domestic terrorism since 2001. In calling for rational decisions about security, Mueller and Stewart sound like they are arguing that a few terror deaths per year don’t matter. But what they are actually saying is that security appropriations should be subject to the same benefit-cost analysis as any other kind of government spending.

Mueller holds the best academic title in all of higher education, as the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at Ohio State. Presumably, in matters of national security, the Woody Hayes chair advises the Pentagon to go straight up the middle.

THE WAR LOVERS by Evan Thomas

Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, William Hearst – all were eager for the United States to go to war against Spain. A century later, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were eager for war with Iraq. Will we ever learn? This book weaves the psycho-history of its protagonists into tales of Ivy League politics of the era, and sidetracks onto Thomas Reed and William James. Thomas, a former Newsweek writer, who is currently a professor of journalism at Princeton University, is the author of the bestseller, “Sea of Thunder”, and is supplanting David McCullough as America’s most accomplished writer of serious popular history.

RACE AGAINST THE MACHINE by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

These two faculty members at MIT warn that digital advances and automation may backfire against humanity by wiping out jobs. One hardly even needs to point out that a jeremiad against electronic commerce was published digitally as an e-book via Amazon. So far, the Luddites have been wrong: electronic advances have improved living standards for average people. But the night is young.

A few other new books to bear in mind:

GRAND PURSUIT by Sylvia Nasar

This book has gotten attention but it deserves even more. Its trailer would be an excellent high school or college teaching tool.

FLOURISH by Martin Seligman

A tad touchy-feely, but from a University of Pennsylvania professor who is the guru of the academic “positive psychology” movement.

TOP SECRET AMERICA by Dana Priest and William Arkin

The book version of a must-read Washington Post series about using the patina of anti-terrorism to justify government secrecy and wasteful spending.

INSTANT CITY by Steve Inskeep

A profile of Karachi, a crossroads city of Pakistan, a country the world worries about more every day. As someone who’s spent time in Pakistan, I found this book spot-on.

THE SUBMISSION by Amy Waldman

Had to throw in one novel. Don DeLillo’s “Falling Man” has the best literary grace about 9/11. The Submission is the most original and challenging novel about what happened on September 11, 2001.

Photo: An employee holds copies of the six shortlisted books for the Man Booker Prize as she poses for photographers in a bookshop in London October 5, 2009. REUTERS/Toby Melville