This Seems Bad

There is an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal supporting the Obama plan, but arguing that it needs to go even further. If the situation really is as bad as it is presented in this Op-Ed, than we need to drastically overhaul the banking system. The author is asking the government to use really significant resources - much more than already committed - to save the banks. If they need this much help to stay alive, then they will need lots of help (i.e. significant regulation) to prevent them from getting in this situation again.

Reading this post, you might think I did not know about the crisis. While I am well aware of the situation, this particular Op-Ed made the situation really seem dire and the banks really desperate. I feel that I am not doing a good job of articulating how this article made me feel. It sounds like the author is saying that the banks need this, this, this, this and this, in order to survive. It is appalling that banks got to this point yet feel they don't need regulation.

Maybe it is because I am writing this late at night that I am having this reaction. Or maybe my anger has finally emerged over the reckless behavior and our current situation.

Dambisa Moyo on Development

Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist who has worked for the World Bank, has published Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, a book on development that makes similar arguments as William Easterly's White Man's Burden. Both believe that government to government aid for developing countries is actually hindering development and creating dependency instead of empowerment and self-sustainability.

I had planned to attend a discussion featuring Moyo and Easterly. I did not end up going, but fortunately the organizers have posted videos of the discussion. Moyo's rhetoric is one of empowerment for Africa. She rightly criticizes how Bono and others have become spokespersons for Africa and she asks where the African leadership is. Bono's (and others) heart is in the right place. There is tremendous suffering and I think it attention to these issues is warranted. However, it is not his place to be their spokesperson. Furthermore, the tone of the celebrities and the focus only on the problems perpetuates the myth that Africans are inferior and need our help.

I remember my feeling after reading The Bottom Billion, where Paul Collier states that growth is the only answer. I felt that growth takes too long and the problems were too great and needed immediate solutions. What I am beginning to believe now is that there are no quick solutions. Growth that comes through empowerment and markets, though it may be slow, is the only way for developing countries to achieve self-sufficiency and lift their populations out of poverty. We are not Africa's saviors - Africa has to save themselves. Let's hope people start listening to Moyo.

Choice is an Intrinsic Good

Much of the focus on charter schools is on whether they do or will increase performance. While performance is important, it is not the only reason for charter schools. Charters provide something for public school students that private school students already receive: the freedom to choose.

Part of what makes choices so great is the freedom it can provide. In the private school market, parents and students have the ability to choose between traditional or progressive schools, art schools or engineering schools, single sex or co-ed schools. I do not believe that one model of school is better than the other, but that each model can be effective for certain types of students. Some children may do better in a single-sex environment. Some students will do much better in a school that supports their artistic creativity. It is only fair that public school students have this same freedom.

Some of the early studies of charter schools have shown at most modest improvements in performance. But even when there was no detectable increase in performance, parental happiness over their charter schools has been high. To me, this signifies that parents are happy that they have this option.

By giving more people the ability to choose their model of education, we give them control over their (or their child's) future. We hope this will lead to better performance. But at least we are giving them the freedom to decide for themselves what type of school they want. If we ignore this, we ignore one of the biggest reasons for charter schools.

Freeman Dyson

I have longed for intelligent critiques of global warming but until last week's Sunday Times cover story, had not really found anything. Last week's article was about Freeman Dyson, a relatively famous scientist who started out in physics but is now more of a generalist. He is noted for his ability to gain in-depth understanding of different complicated sciences.

Hearing his critiques, as they were explained by the author of the article, did not change my mind. Some I found a bit absurd, but others did provide some interesting questions.

One of his critiques that I found to be pretty absurd was his belief that we should focus on more important issues, like poverty, famine and war, and deal with global warming when we know more about it. The problem with this argument is that the effects of global warming, if predictions are true, will be borne most by those that are most vulnerable.

We already see that the Sahara desert is growing and the Sahel region of Africa is expanding north. This has caused scarcity of resources in these areas which will only increase as warming continues - leading to famine and conflict. Further, wet areas are projected to get wetter, which will again be borne by those most vulnerable. If we make progress now on poverty issues but not global warming, we'll likely have greater poverty issues in the future.

Furthermore, that critique assumes we can only accomplish one thing at a time, which I do not agree with at all. This argument comes up in many different policy areas, and it never makes sense to me.

Where he prompts good questions is his use of biology in global warming. He is right that the prediction models focus mainly on atmospheric changes and do not seem to incorporate how biological changes could interact with the changes (they track biological changes without incorporating them). In fact, he says that higher carbon may be better for plant and animal species. At one point he says how increases in plant and animal diversity came at times of much higher carbon levels.

Before I go on, I think we need some serious clarification about historical carbon levels. Al Gore and others claim that carbon levels now are far higher than they have been in the last 20,000 years. So is Dyson claiming that is wrong, or is he saying that carbon levels were higher but looking farther back? To me, this is probably the most important question of global warming.

Dyson also has interesting and optimistic proposals for ways to use biology to help decrease carbon levels, and it will definitely be worth learning more about that (trees that can capture carbon).

Finally, the article portrays the way that dissenters are treated. In some policy areas, those who dissent are dismissed not by debating their points on the merits, but by suggesting that their intentions are bad. This happens in policy on the Middle East, and comes up here too. I agree that in cases where oil companies are paying for shoddy research, it makes sense to question the motives. But Dyson seems to have no motivation other than to be contrarian and challenge people's assumptions. The world needs more, not less, of these people - even when they are wrong.

Why Only Darfur?

This book review in the Times really struck a chord with me. If I understand it, the author of the book takes exception to the public's obsession with the genocide in Darfur. He believes that it is based on a lack of real understanding of the history and dimensions in Sudan, and maybe also based on racism.

I do not disagree that the public often latches on to some issues, while ignoring other equally or more troubling situations. We rally around Darfur but pay little attention to the major tragedies in Somalia and the Congo. Actually, while the world watches Darfur, it pays little attention to the conflict in southern Sudan.

While I do think there is something particularly damaging to the fabric of humanity when one group attempts to eliminate another group, that cannot be our benchmark for when we choose to show concern. And our analysis of those situations should be done objectively, where instead we have a history of bias towards whichever side we supported.

Book Report: The End of Poverty

I posted my review of Jeffery Sach's book The End of Poverty January of 2008 at a short-lived Human Rights blog I tried to start. Here is what I said about his book:

More recently I read The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs. Although he also recommends increasing growth, Sachs is inspiring and impatient. He thinks we can end extreme poverty in our generation as long as we actually follow through on promises we have already made - namely 0.7% of GDP for foreign assistance.

His proscriptions are extremely thorough, and you only wish the world would follow through. Looking at the landscape of current development movements, it seems as though at least two of his biggest recommendations are being acted on; help fighting malaria (including work on vaccines, increasing availability of bed nets, and better access to treatment), AIDS, and tropical diseases as well as debt forgiveness (he does a great job of showing why this is so important) are big issues right now. With any luck, two of his other big recommendations - drastically improving infrastructure so that landlocked countries can have access to ports and increasing agriculture production - are hopefully not far behind (and this article on Malawi shows how one country has made strides on this last point).

Overall, his analysis is even more convincing than Collier's. The countries that still experience extreme poverty do so because of tropical diseases, food scarcity caused by low agriculture output, and lack of access to ports. Each of these things can be corrected. And he really reinforces the reality that in a world with as much wealth as there is, extreme poverty is unacceptable.

If you have read my book report on Easterly's book, you'll notice that my position has changed. I am much less enamored with Sach's position, especially his lack of humility and his belief that he / we can save Africa.

Eat Less or None at All?

Someone suggested I read this article from Audubon Magazine about the effects of meat eating on global warming. The article describes the parts of the meat-raising process that increases green-house gasses. It also compares free-range and caged meat, and finds that free-range is not better for mitigating global warming (an interesting finding, but not the reason people turn to free-range).

In light of the significant effects on global warming, the author concludes that vegetarianism is the solution. But he allows that eating less meat would help. Here are the last two paragraphs from the article:

We could also, as a nation, just eat a lot less meat as an alternative to full vegetarianism. Anthony McMichael, a leading Australia-based expert on climate change and health issues, has crunched the numbers. He estimates that per capita daily meat consumption would need to drop from about 12 ounces per day in America to 3.1 ounces (with less than half of it red meat) in order to protect the climate.

I suppose I could measure out 3.1 ounces of meat per day, cook it, eat it, and still feel morally okay. But frankly I’d rather just go without. I’d rather be a vegetarian. It’s easier to explain. It’s easier to defend. And I just plain like it.

While I can understand his decision, I don't think being a vegetarian is easier to explain or defend. And although he does not get to this point, it certainly is not easier to encourage people to become vegetarians then to encourage them to eat less meat.

A few friends have followed similar plans as mine to eat less meat. They have each decided to cut back to meat once a day and then to cut back to less than once a day. None of those people would have given up meat. This movement will gain a lot more momentum focusing first on eating less meat.

Stiglitz: Not Just a Globalization Expert

I have tended to trust the Obama administration when it comes to plans to fix the financial crisis. It has been hard for me to evaluate the crisis since I do not fully understand Wall Street. I assume many of our politicians are having the same problem. Fortunately though, economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz are providing thoughtful critiques from a liberal perspective. In fact, Joseph Stiglitz's column in the NY Times may have convinced me that the Obama administration's most recent plan for the banks is a bad idea.

The plan will allow investors to buy up troubled assets with most of the money backed by the government. Here is Stiglitz's critique in his own words:

Paying fair market values for the assets will not work. Only by overpaying for the assets will the banks be adequately recapitalized. But overpaying for the assets simply shifts the losses to the government. In other words, the Geithner plan works only if and when the taxpayer loses big time.

[Edit]

So what is the appeal of a proposal like this? Perhaps it’s the kind of Rube Goldberg device that Wall Street loves — clever, complex and nontransparent, allowing huge transfers of wealth to the financial markets. It has allowed the administration to avoid going back to Congress to ask for the money needed to fix our banks, and it provided a way to avoid nationalization.

My first reaction to my lack of understanding was to blame myself instead of the industry. But that was wrong; it is a major problem when the public cannot fully understand how an industry works and worse, how a solution is going to work. Without public understanding, we cannot have good policies that prevent further meltdowns. We need plans that make sense, and we need to make sure that in the future we can understand what Wall Street is doing.

Pork as a Symbol

When I posted recently about the bonuses at AIG, I did not spend any time talking about how the outrage over that issue was over the symbolic gesture of the bonuses and that the actual cost of the bonuses were low compared to the government bailout. The point I would have made is that symbols can be important, even if they are not in proportion to the actual issue itself.

Pork barrel spending is another example of this, and can be even more salient when you consider the difficult times governments are facing. Take New York State for example. The state budget just agreed on by the only three people who matter was $131.8 billion, or $79.2 billion of state operating funds (not counting federal funds). The deficit before the new budget was announced was $17 billion. Total pork spending in the budget was $170 million. Therefore, total pork spending was one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) of the total budget, or two-tenths of one percent (0.2%) of the state funded budget, or just one percent (1%) of the previous deficit. Even though the pork spending is such a small share of overall budget numbers, it seems appalling that the state legislature would choose to allocate limited funds to special projects in their districts, and allocated there because of their power not because of need.

John McCain recognizes this at the federal level, which is why he focuses on it so much. However, one can go far, and make a symbolic issue appear to be more than a symbol. McCain seemed to present eliminating pork as a way to significantly cut government spending. As you can see in the above example, cutting the pork spending would not have helped the state get close to dealing with its budget gap, and the ratios are similar at the federal level.

The point is that symbolic issues are important in the messages they send about priorities. But exaggerating them can backfire, because people see that dealing with that issue will not solve the underlying problem. The state's pork spending is absurd, but not as big a deal as the way the budget was made (behind closed doors) and the appearance that they avoided tough choices.

Book Report: The White Man's Burden

I finished another of the popular books on international development: The White Man's Burden by William Easterly. The main point of the book is how infrequently the money we spend actually delivers results. Therefore, instead of thinking that we can / need to save the developing world, we need to do what we can to help them help themselves. Before I started reading the book, I expected that I would appreciate its position but still disagree with it. Instead, I strongly agree with his call for humility in our aid efforts.

The more one learns about development assistance, the more obvious the extreme waste becomes. Part of that waste stems from aid that is most often delivered through corrupt governments. But aid is also wasted on programs that are not evaluated and not designed with feedback from, or deep knowledge of, the people we are helping. It is when Easterly highlights these flaws that he is most convincing.

He does not have grand solutions, but what he does propose could work. Particularly, he suggests allowing the IMF and World Bank to support private institutions, particularly in countries with terrible governments. He also recommends supporting smaller proven efforts by local actors. Finally, he proposes fewer conferences and frameworks but more serious evaluations.

Where Easterly is less convincing is when he uses the argument that because a certain policy has not worked it is clear it never will work. This logical statement does not account for the fact that those policies in the past may have been implemented poorly.

A perfect example of this is military intervention. The West has a terrible history of using military intervention. Past US military interventions include supporting authoritarian governments according our own interests (particularly during the Cold War) or ineffective interventions in the face of major crises (post-Cold War). However, I would strongly argue that if done correctly and for the right reasons, military interventions could be very successful. Instability is a major obstacle to development and often creates environments of continued instability (this was a conclusion of Collier's book and Nicholas Kristof argues this point in his review of Easterly's book in the New York Review of Books). Without successful interventions, countries in conflict may end up stuck in conflict with dire consequences for civilians caught in the middle.

Before I conclude, I need to mention that Easterly is not opposed to humanitarian aid such as medical and food aid (although he argues that these programs should also be strictly evaluated and conducted with real feedback). Instead it is the development aid he thinks needs to be reconsidered.

Overall the book is well written (although I did skim through many of his anecdotes and historical examples) and convincing. Unfortunately, I think his views do not play as well politically, since he is essentially calling for more modest goals and local control over Western money. With books like Dead Aid now coming out though, maybe his views will gain traction.

Is China Really the Bad Guy?

This article in the NY Times about China cutting back on deals with developing countries in Africa sparked a question. The point of the article seems to be that countries with poor human rights records found they could ignore Western demands by working with China - trading their natural resources for development assistance. With commodity prices falling and economies crashing, these countries are no longer getting aid from China.

What is interesting is how the article draws a distinction between China's decision to work with countries with poor human rights records without conditions while the US sets conditions. Before we feel good about ourselves, I ask this question: Is there any difference between aid that comes with conditions that are never enforced and therefore never met, or aid that comes without conditions?

I guess it is clear that William Easterly is influencing me. But can we really act righteous when all our loan conditions do nothing to change the countries with poor human rights records?

Democracy - It Ain't Easy

I remember some of the arguments I had with some more liberal friends (you know who you are) back during the early parts of the Iraq War. At the time, I was supporting the continuation of the Iraq War and they were opposing it. (I am not sure whether I supported the invasion - I think at times I did and other times did not. My knowledge of world issues was very limited then.)

I believed, influenced by Thomas Friedman, that we could easily create a democracy in Iraq. If I remember my friends' arguments, they believed that Iraqis were not ready for democracy and that it would not work if it was forced on them instead of them fighting for it themselves. (If I have misrepresented your arguments, please correct me.) I completely rejected that, believing everyone can become democratic.

Looking back, not just after six years in Iraq, but looking at other democracies around the world, I realize that I still believe everyone can have a democracy. What I realize though was that my expectations were extremely naive. Democracies cannot sprout overnight. Democracies need time to grow, to learn from mistakes, and to evolve. They also need stability and a strong middle class.

When we look around the world, we see democracies that have had far more time than Iraq to settle. In these countries, we still see significant growing pains. Pakistan continues to deal with threatened autocratic rule, disrespect for the rule of law and corruption. None of their leaders are free of one or all of these charges. We saw what can happen with contested elections in a relatively stable country like Kenya. South Africa right now seems to face a choice between an ineffective leader and AIDS denier (Thabo Mbeki) and a corrupt leader who is also facing serious rape charges (Jacob Zuma).

If you look at American history, you see similar growing pains. It took us two tries to chose the right form of government (see Articles of Confederation). We fought a bloody civil war. And we have had our own long fight with corruption, which is a fight we will never fully win, as Rod Blagojevich proves.

So I look back at my support then of the war, and I am embarrassed about my naivete. However, I can partly excuse myself since I was just starting to learn about the international world and form my own theories. What is scary is that we had a president who knew so little about the world that he believed creating a democracy was easy. Worse, he still believes it.

While I no longer think democracy is easy, this does not mean I will give up hope. It does mean that we need to change our expectations and our policies. We need to help foster the growth of democracies without the expectation that they will form overnight. This can mean helping increase stability and growth of a middle class. We also need to avoid grand plans like Iraq in the future. And in a place like Afghanistan, we need to be prepared for the long haul.

Bonus: Must be Nice

I appreciated the Opinion piece in today's NY Times, written by an executive at AIG. In it, the author announces his resignation and his disappointment with AIG CEO's refusal to defend those who received bonuses. The opinion piece was well written and made me think a little deeper about the issue. However, it did not change my mind. I still think the bonuses were outrageous.

Basically, the author of the Opinion piece says that his unit was not responsible for the meltdown at AIG, so therefore the public scorn should not be directed at him. This is true if the only reason people are upset about the bonuses is because they thought the bonuses were going only to people who caused the problem. But the bonuses were outrageous even knowing that they also went to people at the firm who were not involved in mortgage-backed securities.

The company was so close to bankruptcy, and close to bringing the whole economy down with it, that it required a government (taxpayer) bailout. Since the firm is in such a precarious situation, all planned expenses need to be reconsidered to determine whether they are integral to save the firm (or at least mitigate the damage it has caused). Bonuses cannot be considered a necessary expense in light of these circumstances.

Now, some people are arguing that the bonuses were necessary to retain the talent at the firm. This does not make sense; with the number of layoffs at financial firms there is a surplus of labor. This surplus gives the firms bargaining advantage and will drive wages down. So bonuses should not be necessary to keep employees, and if they choose to leave, the firm can find newly unemployed workers to fill those positions.

The government got involved because there were legitimate financial obligations that AIG was likely to have trouble meeting. Bonuses were not one of those obligations.

While I took the opinion piece at face value, there is an obvious contradiction in it. The author mentions that he accepted a $1 salary to stay at AIG in a sense of public duty. However, he still accepted, and felt he needed, a $700,000 bonus, and is now quitting over the outrage it drew. If he recognized the need to accept a $1 salary, then he should have also realized the need to refuse / renegotiate the bonus.

Not Sure What to Think

I cannot decide whether to be a little optimistic about the new Israeli government, or depressed and terrified. And my feelings change depending on the article I read. The fact that this is a right wing government (with Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister) that does not believe in a two state solution depresses me - especially since I thought Obama's even hand might actually be able to guide the region forward.

But then it seems that the right wing government wants to govern from the middle and does not want to anger the Obama administration (and thereby recognizing that Obama will be more willing to actually criticize). And although they do not believe in a two state solution, they want to see economic growth in the Palestinian territories before talk of a two-state solution.

So I guess I am in the middle - neither optimistic nor depressed. I am glad there is talk of fostering economic growth in the territories. However, I am skeptical since I do not know what kind of growth can be expected given the large scale destruction in Gaza (maybe they only mean the West Bank). We'll just have to wait and see.

A Raisin in the Sun

I was raised in the Methodist Church - in a Northeast Methodist Church to be exact. My family went every Sunday and I was required to go to Sunday school even after my Confirmation. I did manage to learn a lot about Christianity - mostly through osmosis probably - and I respect the faith and the teachings (mostly). So you might ask why I do not practice.

In all honesty, I don't have a problem with the more mystical elements like the Virgin Birth, Christ's Resurrection, or the Old Testament teachings (well, there are some stories that I just don't get). My problem is with God. There, I said it. The fact is, that even if He does exist, I can't bring myself to worship Him.

There is a quote from Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun that I loved as soon as I read it and haven't been able to forget about since.

Beneatha: Mama, you don't understand. It's all a matter of ideas, and God is just one idea I don't accept. It's not important. I am not going out and be immoral or commit crimes because I don't believe in God. I don't even think about it. It's just that I get tired of Him getting credit for all the things the human race achieves through its own stubborn effort. There simply is no blasted God - there is only man and it is he who achieves miracles!

Beneatha gets slapped by Mama right after this, but that is beside the point. What bothers me is that God asks us to be humble but requires that we spend some significant portion of our lives worshiping Him. And on top of that, I don't even know what we are worshiping. Am I worshiping a God that allows 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus to be killed in 100 days; a God that allows millions of Jews to die under Hitler; a God that watches as famine, disease, and war (with child soldiers no less) wipe out the most vulnerable among us?

The crux of Christianity seems to be that we created sin, so therefore we are to blame for all of the world's evils. Yet the credit for all miracles go to Him. It has to be one way or the other. Either the human race is responsible for wars and miracles, or God is. I tend towards the former, but if it is the later, then I don't see why God is worth worshiping.

I Still Hate Him

Former VP Dick Cheney has been making press lately by saying that Obama's attempts to roll back some of his administration's worst abuses will make us less safe. This enrages me for a couple reasons.

First, he exaggerates the benefits of using torture and unlimited detentions while ignoring the costs. As we know, torture only creates the incentive for the victim to say what his interrogators want to hear. Sometimes this produces good intelligence, but sometimes not. In fact, it can lead the prisoner to overstate or lie about existing threats (which then further creates the false impression that the torture is working).

More importantly, it completely ignores the effect that our policies of torture have on recruitment of new terrorists. In fact, any security gains policies of torture can achieve are only short-term, while the costs are long term. This works for politicians like Bush and Cheney, who can claim short-term victory, and deny the long term affects that surface after they have left office.

But second, Cheney's statements and the Bush administration policies suggest that security is both attainable and our primary concern; holding to our values and protecting liberties is secondary. The idea that security, that protection from all terrorist attacks, is attainable is false. Once we admit that, that we can never achieve total security, than we must also decide not to sacrifice our values, for there is no payoff.

People like Dick Cheney will always be there, describing our deepest fears and fooling us into thinking that we can be safe. His solution will be through short term policies and sacrificing of our values and freedoms. We can defeat people like that by deciding that our values are more important, and accepting that by living free, we live with risk.

Holy Shit

Holy Shit. This article in the New York Review of Books is infuriating. The article describes a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross regarding the treatment of the 14 "high value detainees" that were until recently kept in secret detention sites outside the US. The description of their interrogations is appalling and very clearly torture. Through all of this, it seems that senior officials were aware of and sometimes directing the torture.

Bush has said that his administration did not torture. But the only way that statement is true is through the cruel and ugly logic of his torture memo, where torture is defined only as causing death, organ failure, or the loss of functioning of a body part. Rejecting that narrow definition of torture, we can accept that Bush did in fact torture prisoners.

Read the article for yourself. And get angry.

Book Report: Chasing the Flame (1)

I am not ready yet to give my thoughts on Samantha Powers' book Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World. I finished reading it a while ago, but I have not been able to organize all my thoughts on it yet. So while I do that, here is a post with some golden quotes from the book (the Kindle is amazing!).

Here is the quote of the book:

To nonexperts, humanitarian action and human rights sounded like synonyms or, at the very least, complements. But he knew that, in the real world, feeding people was often incompatible with speaking out. "How do we reconcile the need for humanitarian access and thus discretion, with the need, sometimes the obligation, for human rights?" he asked a gathering of diplomats from donor countries in Geneva, undoubtedly with the events of Zaire and Tanzania on his mind. "In the face of overwhelming human rights abuses, when do humanitarian agencies withdraw?"

And now some others to get you thinking:

Released from the cold war stalemate, the Security Council of the 1990s had been liberated to enforce international peace and security. But the back-to-back calamities had made it clear that, if civilians were not pawns in a larger ideological struggle, as they had been in the cold war, their welfare would command hardly any attention at all. Instead of using the Security Council to establish and enforce a new global order, the major powers sent lightly armed peacekeepers into harm’s way simply to monitor the carnage. The results were devastating in two regards. First, civilians were murdered en masse. And second, the UN peacekeepers took far more of the blame than the politicians who had handed them an assignment that was, Vieira de Mello liked to say, "mission impossible."

in the 1980s Western governments had spent millions aiding the Cambodian refugees as a way of destabilizing the Vietnam-installed regime in Phnom Penh. But in the Great Lakes area, a region of marginal strategic value, Western governments were not using aid as a tool for promoting their national interests. Rather, they were using aid as a substitute for meaningful foreign policy engagement of any kind. [Something Western governments do way too often.]

He urged UN officials to accept "that humanitarian crises are almost always political crises, that humanitarian action always has political consequences, both perceived and real." Since everybody else was playing politics with humanitarian aid, he wrote, "we can hardly afford to be apolitical."

In 1999 scholar Edward Luttwak published an influential article in Foreign Affairs entitled "Give War a Chance," in which he suggested that aid workers and peace-brokers were prolonging wars that would only end permanently if they were "allowed to run their natural course." "Policy elites," Luttwak wrote, "should actively resist the emotional impulse to intervene in other peoples’ wars—not because they are indifferent to human suffering but precisely because they care about it."

Vieira de Mello wrote a steaming letter to the editor slamming Luttwak’s "simplistic compilation of old arguments and wrong conclusions." He faulted Luttwak for his "uniform picture of war." Since few conflicts tidily confined themselves within national borders, Vieira de Mello argued, turning one’s back on violence would often result in wider, messier regional conflicts. In addition, since so many governments and rebel movements benefited from war, they had an incentive to prolong war on their own. They didn’t need any help from aid workers.

While he acknowledged that humanitarian action could sometimes have perverse consequences, he wrote that "to deny aid altogether is not only unhelpful, it is unthinkable." He noted that he generally valued critical commentary, but he found unhelpful such "oversimplified accounts far removed from the complexities of actual war and blanket statements that lead to quietism." [I have heard this same argument before, and de Mello's response is perfect.]

But he thought the flawed tendency of aid workers to give aid uncritically and indefinitely was a lesser danger than the tendency of rich countries to turn their backs on humanitarian crises altogether.

Only when Western powers stood together unequivocally, flexing their collective diplomatic and financial muscles, did Russia and China come around, as in the Persian Gulf War or in the belated decision to act militarily in Bosnia. But Vieira de Mello knew that occasions would arise when all the Western unity and diplomacy in the world would not change their views. In those circumstances, he was prepared to admit, exceptional emergencies might require a "coalition of the willing" to bypass the paralyzed Council. Ever so rarely, the urgency and legitimacy of the cause could excuse the illegality of the procedures. [Notice how this echoes the US justification for Iraq - without the legitimacy of the cause.]

He adopted a formulation common among those who supported NATO’s action but were nervous about its implications: The war was illegal (under the procedural rules of the UN Charter) but legitimate (according to the substantive ideals the UN was trying to advance).

he also did not understand why disarmament was a key item on the Security Council checklist while human rights were not. "A regime that can grossly violate the rights of its own people is ipso facto a threat to its neighbors and to regional and international peace and security," he insisted.

He knew that the organization he cherished was at once an actor in its own right and simply a building, no better or worse than the collective will of the countries that constituted it.

but he never imagined that U.S. planners would think so little about the peace [in Iraq]. Surely, he thought, they had watched as UN peacekeepers foundered in their "morning after" efforts to maintain order in the 1990s. Surely the Coalition would take precautions to stave off the kind of chaos that could be far deadlier than anything a regular army could unleash. Surely they would understand that establishing human security was a prerequisite to achieving other aims.

In 2000 he had embraced a new norm first put forth by an independent commission: the "responsibility to protect." The first responsibility to protect individuals from violence fell to those individuals’ government, but when that government proved unable (in a failing state) or unwilling (in a repressive state) to offer such protection, then the responsibility vested upward to the international community, which had a duty to mobilize the means to stop mass murder.

This last quote is amazing.

Book Report: Shia Revival

I finished reading The Shia Revival by Vali Nasr. The book mostly focuses on the conflict between Shia and Sunni faiths, with an emphasis on Shiaism, and includes a brief history of Islam (again, with a focus on Shiaism). The book is well written and so it was a quick read.

I learned two main things from this book. First, our understanding of the Middle East and their politics, as covered in the press, is highly skewed. Who we see as the villains and heroes depends on who likes us and who does not. In the past we have seen Iran as a villain and Saudi Arabia as a hero. In fact, as 9/11 taught us, it should be the other way around. We even judge Iran's democracy more harshly because of our relationship with them and yet don't judge Saudi Arabia's repressive government.

The author sees all developments in the Middle East through the lens of Shia and Sunni interactions (conflicts) and that other issues are often pawns in that interaction. An Iraq with closer ties to Iran can counter strength of Sunni governments, whose oppression and intolerance have a negative impact on the region (which is not at all how the US press sees it). Also, the Israel / Palestine issue is manipulated to garner popular support and strength in the region.

The book manages to provide a much more nuanced, and less negative, view of Shias and Iran specifically. Unfortunately, I do not think Americans are ready to accept that view.

The second thing I learned was of course how similar Islam and Christianity are when you contrast their histories. Both religions have had to respond to oppression against their faithful. Early Christians choose martyrdom (a really good analysis of the Gnostic Book of Judas suggests the author believed that martyrdom was against God's will - leading sheep to the slaughter) as a way to promote the faith. In the face of oppression, Shias have at times chosen martyrdom (as the celebration of Ashora remembers) at times modified their faith, and at times simply withstood the oppression.

Both faiths have had to deal with modernization as well, although it seems Islam has had the greater challenge since the modern world has seemed to leave Muslims behind. This debate largely revolves around traditionalism versus change. The faiths also face(d) conflicts over who should lead the faith and who should lead the government - and whether those two should be the same.

The issue that really struck me though was how the religions debate internally whether individual piety or social justice is more important - essentially whether the faith should be inward looking or outward looking. Around the 1950s, Shia clerics argued that the faith was too focused on piety and did not do enough to fight for changes to make people's lives better. Through these teachings, these Shias were arguing for revolution and social change - some argued in support of communism.

This book is a must read because it can both humanize Shias and help people to think about our role in the Middle East differently. We should be supporting states based not on their rhetoric towards us, but how their actions affect us and their own people. Also, by better understanding the power plays between Sunnis and Shias, we can better manage issues and conflicts in the region.

Economy, Interest Rates, and Cycles

As I have been thinking about the economic crisis, one thing keeps nagging at me. I have thought for a long time that interest rates were too low, and yet they kept getting lower. The constant lowering of interest rates during high growth seemed to have been an attempt to maintain growth and prevent a recession. And that decision was made on the assumption that we could actually prevent recessions.

This article in the Atlantic however suggests that the normal business cycle (boom and bust) still exists and maybe always will - that we have not conquered it. So maybe we should have raised interest rates during high growth instead of lowering them to maintain the high growth. By lowering them further while we were growing, we not only created a bubble, but removed one major mechanism we have for getting ourselves out of the recession. Interest rates cannot be lowered further, so the Fed is left with creative but risky mechanisms to get the economy going again.

There has been a lot of talk about lax regulation under Greenspan, and rightly so. But I think the Fed's policy on interest rates needs to be considered as well.

Gay Marriage: What Does the Bible Say?

Newsweek recently had an interesting article focusing on gay marriage. The article tried to engage with Christian arguments against gay marriage, instead of simply dismissing the Bible as an invaluable place to derive policy. Overall, the author made some good points, but oversimplified others. At the same time, I don't know how you can really engage in a discussion on textual teachings of the Bible and be thorough while also meeting space constraints of a Newsweek article.

Her first point, and what I have come to believe, is that most people who oppose gay marriage cannot do it using Biblical textual literalism, since almost no one actually follows all things taught in the Bible. Modern Christians regularly disregard teachings from the Old Testament, especially Leviticus, one of the few places male homosexuality is mentioned.

So if textual literalism is not driving Christians to oppose gay marriage, what is? The common response is support for a traditional family. It is this part of the argument where the author oversimplifies. She looks back to the Old Testament families (especially Abraham and Jacob) and suggests that since they had multiple wives, than the Bible cannot be the source of a focus on the one male - one female family unit. This argument does not make sense if we see that the teachings of Jesus often conflict with, and probably were meant to change, teachings in the Old Testament. The loving and peaceful Jesus was very different from what appears to be a vengeful Old Testament God. So if Jesus did preach about family units, than Jacob's multiple wives doesn't matter as much.

Unfortunately, I don't know as much about all of the teachings of Jesus, so I don't know what focus he put on families. But from what I understand, his (and Paul's) opposition to divorce is far stronger than opposition to gay relationships (the author rightly mentions this as well). So this begs the question - why does modern Christianity put far more focus on gay marriage than on actually dealing with the bigger problems facing what the Bible upholds as the traditional family unit? Through this lens, it seems like bigotry masking itself as righteousness.

If Christians really want to focus on strengthening families, then they need to focus on things that are actually affecting families. If high divorce rates and single family households are contrary to what the Bible upholds as the correct family unit, then Christians should deal with these issues, which are not related to homosexuality at all.

The bottom line is that opposition to gay marriage makes little sense even if you accept that the Bible can be a reasonable place to draw moral lessons. Almost no one can claim they are Biblical literalists and looking at the spirit of the text gives no clues to understand why opposing gay marriage should be a major focus of Christians hoping to protect families.

Book Report: The Bottom Billion

I read Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion a while ago, but never published this post. I did however publish a joint book report on this book and The End of Poverty over at the short-lived human rights blog. I have been reading (slowly) all of the popular books on development, and this was the one I started with.

To summarize quickly, Collier takes a very pro-growth position on how to improve the countries in the bottom billion - the worst performing countries. He uses statistical modeling to look at what factors affect growth, and he finds that being landlocked, resource rich (oil or diamonds for example), recent conflict or coups, and poor democracy - especially lack of an open press all have negative correlations with growth.

His solutions therefore are to promote democracy, export diversity, and international intervention during / following conflicts. I can agree with all of these, especially intervention. I firmly believe that more peacekeeping missions are both good for stability (obviously) but also a moral necessity to protect the victims of conflict. Sound democracy is hard to argue against also, since it can lead to pressure on the government to make good decisions. And countries with one major commodity can see their revenue misused and their exchange rates harmed (international aid can have the same impact).

I fear that I am oversimplifying, as well as leaving things out. I don't have the energy right now to really get into the details of his economic proposals. The point though is that he analysis made sense, but it seemed both too broad and quick, as well as somewhat cold in its tone. His arguments were all about economics, to the point that his main concern was to see positive growth that might get these countries out of their horrible situation over 20 years or so. What he didn't focus enough on was what to do right now to improve their situation. Their conditions are so horrible that we need equal focus to long term solutions and short-term fixes and I felt that his book was mostly focused on the long term.

The Only Cure for Steroids

I have been despondent about the ability of steroids testing to ever keep up with the cheaters. I believed that the cheaters would always have more resources than, and therefore be multiple steps ahead of, the testing agencies. I still think this is the case. But I recently came across a testing policy that would actually combat this and could be a real deterrent for steroids use. Here is the most important part of the proposal, via Freakonomics:

An independent laboratory stores urine and blood samples for all players, and tests these blood samples 10 years, 20 years, and 30 years later using the most up-to-date technology available.

He has other suggestions, but this is the best one. Cheaters know they can beat the system now, but they also must know testing will eventually catch up to their methods years from now. The next step would be to incorporate clauses in contracts that impose penalties years later if positive results come back years later.

This is the only method that would actually be effective. And the fact that we don't see it, and won't ever see it, shows me that baseball is not actually committed to ending steroid use. The unions would never allow it, and Major League Baseball will never push hard for it. What a shame.

The Bible, Again

In a previous post I mentioned how I was interested in reading the Bible primarily because I wanted to know where it actually talked about homosexuality. In looking back, I realize I did not make it clear why I would be interested in that. In case you do not know me as well, my interest is in how a loving God could ban something that, when done between two consenting adults can be just as beautiful as any heterosexual relationship.

My interest therefore is where in the Bible gay relationships are mentioned, what the context is, and how it compares to other proscriptions of the Bible. I assume that many people who argue against recognizing gay marriage do so with little real knowledge of the Bible and so my goal is to know the Bible better than they do.

In truth, I think I also oversimplified. I also want to read the Bible to understand myself better, to understand my family (ancestry) better, and to understand other conservative thought better.

Big Mac - Hitting Coach

I will always have a soft spot for Mark McGwire. Granted, I am disappointed in how he conducted himself (allegedly) in his chase for the homerun record. But heroes from your youth are hard to topple, and when they do fall, they rarely fall all the way.

So this article in the Times, about his foray back into baseball as a hitting instructor, makes me smile. I am happy that he is finding joy in baseball again. At the same time, I can still admit that he will need to come clean about his use of performance enhancing drugs at some point. He cannot keep avoiding the issue. He owes it to his fans. But more than that, he owes it to those who might come next and follow his example.

Child Soldiers

The problem with a book like A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soilder and a movie like Blood Diamond, is they mostly raise awareness of situations that are long since over. You are left enraged that these conditions existed, but you are left without an outlet. The inevitable question that arises is where the current crises are. Unfortunately, that information is not as readily available, as these incidents are not covered widely. I should have posted about this a long time ago, but here is a brief word about where current child soldier incidents are:

The 13 countries where groups that recruit child soldiers operate are Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo, Myanmar, Nepal, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Colombia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Uganda, according to the report.

Some of these should be no surprise. Congo, Somalia, and Sudan are homes to some of the worst conflicts right now and I imagine that many years from now, the next books and movies will be set in these countries. Sri Lanka continues to battle the Tamil Tiger terrorist group. I have heard about Myanmar's use of child soldiers. It is surprising though that Afghanistan is of course on our radar in the US, but allegations of using child soldiers is not discussed.

Well, knowing is half the battle, right? The other half is action...

No Matter the Consequences

Just a little while ago, I was reading Chasing the Flame, a book about Sergio Vierra de Mello, and I watched the American Experience movies on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Needless to say, these things both made me tremendously sad yet filled me with a desire to live a life fighting against injustice, regardless of the consequences. Unfortunately, that is not what I do right now. But I am working on that. Kind of.

One thing that stood out, was this poem that Robert Kennedy was fond of by Aeschylus (he read it the night Dr. King was assassinated):

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

Each time I read these words, they move me.

Kennedy, above the other two I mentioned, was taken before he was able to show any of his real potential. With Kennedy's death, Nixon was elected to the presidency. I cannot even comprehend (but others can) the different world we might have lived in had RFK lived and won instead of Nixon.

Reading the Bible

A writer for Slate recently read the Old Testament of the Bible and wrote an article, (and a book) about the experience. Reading the Bible does not seem like that big of a deal, until you consider how few people actually do. Instead of displaying any stereotypes I have of religious groups in the US, I'll just reference the writer's point that only evangelical protestants really read the Bible.

I recently began reading the Bible, with the hope of at least being able to talk more intelligently about what it does and does not say. My main reason was to learn more about how and when the Bible disapproves of homosexuality. But I also wanted a more general understanding.

This is no small undertaking, and I have made limited progress. But my thoughts so far are similar to David Plotz's.

After reading about the genocides, the plagues, the murders, the mass enslavements, the ruthless vengeance for minor sins (or none at all), and all that smiting—every bit of it directly performed, authorized, or approved by God—I can only conclude that the God of the Hebrew Bible, if He existed, was awful, cruel, and capricious. He gives us moments of beauty—such sublime beauty and grace!—but taken as a whole, He is no God I want to obey and no God I can love.

I have similar feelings about God's role in the world we live in as a whole, and maybe one day I will share a more personal post I have written on the topic.

I also understand Plotz when he says that his heroes in the Bible are those who question God. In fact, one of my favorite parts of Slaughter House Five is when the narrator tells of his love/respect for Lot's wife because she looked back at God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah even though it turned her into a pillar of salt.

I plan to continue reading the Bible when I have time, although it will be a very slow process. It is interesting reading, although long passages of boring narration surround the interesting and relevant stories. I'm sure I'll have more to say as I read.

Losing Faith

As much as it pains me to say this, I am losing faith in Governor Paterson. And it seems I am not alone. There is not one thing to point to, but a collection of small decisions that do not make sense. I understand that the state is facing a large budget deficit. In two of his proposed solutions, one borrows from the future to pay a part of next year's deficit and the other cuts funding for a cheap but meaningful service (Governor's Island) for very small budget savings.

In fact, I perceive that his administration is trying to balance the budget through lots of small changes that might affect only small constituencies instead of big but painful changes. This choice makes me question his leadership. I want a governor who is going to stand up and make bold choices in the face of a terrible economy. Instead, I feel like he wants to slide by quietly and hope to not makes waves with his budget decisions. Budget gimmicks and cutting of cheap services do not get a government through a recession. Only tough but smart choices will.

I also feel like we have a different David Paterson than the one who was lieutenant governor and senate minority leader. I was expecting someone who was liberal but collegial. Instead, we seem to have a moderate - one who is easing a Pataki environmental decision and less vocal about reforms to the Rockefeller Drug Laws.

Of course, you can draw a comparison to Obama - another person who seemed to be liberal but collegial and instead is showing to be more moderate - but Obama seems more in charge and willing to make tough decisions and defend them. If Paterson is going to win back trust, he is going to have to be more transparent about, and show strength in, his choices.

Progress in DRC?

The developments in the Democratic Republic of Congo continue to fill me with hope. It really looks like one of the most violent regions in the world may get a break. It is particularly exciting given that the region includes the Virunga National Park, a rich rain forest home to the largest population of mountain gorillas, among others. With peace, tourism might return, bringing some prosperity to the region. At least it might allow protection of the park and the gorillas to return.

Of course, I need to temper my hope with some realism. Congo has seen positive developments in the past, only to see greater and more deadly setbacks. In addition, while one of the insurgent groups has folded, there are other economic factors that impact stability for the residents and protection of the park. As National Geographic pointed out, the charcoal industry is also threatening the park and the gorillas.

My Diet

I realized recently that I have not blogged yet about my diet. Since my diet choices are based on my politics, it seems appropriate that I do.

A year ago or so (maybe more, I do not remember), I decided officially that I was going to cut back on meat. For a while I had been see-sawing between effective vegetarianism and serious meat-eating with nothing guiding me. That worked at the time because I had no moral or ethical reasons for going either way.

As I learned more about food production in the US, I saw the effects of our dietary choices. First, I started consuming "free-range" eggs as often as I could. This change stemmed from my new understanding of the conditions of battery cage chickens, including the large amounts of antibiotics and hormones that are injected into them to keep them from getting sick (which is far more likely due to the unsanitary conditions in the battery cage operation).

More than that though, I learned about the industry behind our beef consumption. In fact, the meat industry is an enormous contributor to green house gasses and becoming a vegetarian is an easy way to decrease your carbon footprint. I also learned about the scale of pollution produced at the feed lots in the middle of our country and the conditions animals are kept in to feed our enormous appetite for beef.

The conclusion I came to is that our meat consumption is far higher than needs to be and far higher than is sustainable. This is possible because the prices we pay do not take into account the impact we are having. Introductory level economics courses will tell you that markets are ineffective at including environmental costs into the prices of goods (without regulation). Therefore, we are often underpaying, and therefore over-consuming, things that have serious negative environmental impacts. Meat is a perfect example of this.

I firmly believe that if we included the true cost of meat production, including the costs of pollution and greenhouse gasses, prices would be higher and consumption would be lower. People would realize they do not need to eat meat twice or three-times a day.

In the face of all this, I realized that I needed to decrease my meat consumption even before the market found a way to accurately price meat. I first cut back to eating meat no more than once a day. That was not as challenging for me since I was not eating meat for dinner. My next step was to cut back to eating meat no more than three times in one week. My final step has been to cut back to meat no more than once a week, and when I do I try to get it from somewhere that is raising the meat in a way that is sustainable and treats the animals more humanely.

So far, I have found it pretty easy to cut back to this level. (It helps that I have someone who can cook - and teach me how to cook - great vegetarian dishes.) Once you start trying, you find lots of things to substitute for meat. And when you do eat meat, it feels like a treat.

As you can tell, I do not believe that we all need to become vegetarian. I do believe however that we should think about how often we eat meat and the effects that has. It seems in our country that we feel we should eat meat at every meal as a right. There is no legitimate reason for this. We could all cut back and still lead healthy (maybe more healthy) lives and allow for our meat to be raised sustainably and humanely. As my experience has proved, cutting back on meat is not a major sacrifice. You still eat meat, but less frequently.

Now, in truth the same logic could apply to my egg consumption. I feel that free-range is marginally better than battery-cage. However, the bigger problem is overall consumption of eggs. I almost always eat at least one egg per day, which means I am definitely contributing to a level of overall consumption that is likely just as unsustainable as for meat. I will probably need to deal with this sometime if I want to really tell myself that I am being consistent.

How about this, I'll cut back on eggs if you cut back on meat? We'll do this together.

More Services AND Lower Taxes

I think I am learning something important about Democratic and Republican behavior in response to the public’s desire for more services AND lower taxes.

Democrats, when running for office, tell the country they are going to increase services while pretending that they are also going to be able to cut taxes.

Republicans, when running for office, tell the country they are going to cut taxes while pretending that they are also going to be able to provide services.

The point is that as a voter you should know which things a candidate says are real priorities. Despite giving lip service to both things constituents demand, they will only really be able to provide one. A president that tries to do both will end up running large deficits, as Bush did and as Obama right now is planning to do for at least the next few years.


Speaking of Obama's budget, it seems that he is moving away from some of the absurd gimmicks of the Bush years (ie not including war spending in the budget but asking for supplemental appropriations, which should only be used for unplanned expenses and after a year or two, the wars were no longer unplanned). Transparency is a beautiful thing, and it makes this budget analyst almost tear up to see our president moving in that direction.

Oil Facts

I meant to link to this Times graphic a long time ago. Although the numbers may have changed a bit since then, I am guessing the overall picture is the same or similar. Here are the main ideas I take away from this:

- America is the largest oil consumer. (20.6 million barrels per day)
- America is the third largest oil producer. (8.4 million barrels per day)
- The biggest suppliers to the US are:
1. US (domestic production) (40%)
2. Canada (12%)
3. Mexico (8%)
4. Saudi Arabia (7%)
5. Venezuela (7%)
6. Nigeria (5%)

It is striking that Saudi Arabia makes up a relatively small percent of our consumption. Despite its small share though, it is still extremely important as small changes in production (or expected changes in production) have big impacts on prices.

Here is Our Chance

For those of you who have read Samantha Power's book A Problem From Hell, you'll remember her argument that throughout all of the genocides of the 20th Century, the US did nothing. It did not take action and it did not even condemn the genocides. The arguments used were the same - that to even condemn the genocide could cause the leaders of the guilty countries to choose not to cooperate with peace processes. Power argues convincingly that in the end, those leaders did not cooperate even though we avoided condemning them.

Despite countless examples in history to learn from, the same arguments continue to be made and sometimes carry the day. Those arguments have been voiced in regards to Sudan - although the US has condemned the genocide, many voices said that the International Criminal Court should not seek charges or an arrest warrant against Bashir, the President of Sudan. Those people said it could cause Bashir to stop participating in peace negotiations. I am glad those people were not listened to this time and that an arrest warrant for Bashir has been issued.

Those that argued against this in the specific case of Sudan claimed that if Bashir is arrested or otherwise loses power, those that might take over are far worse and that Bashir's role right now is somewhat productive. That may be true (although where are the results?). But for once we need to actually stand up to genocide. We need to show that we won't back down for fear that an uncooperative leader will not cooperate - that a murderous leader will murder more people.

But as with all experiments or new courses, we will be judged by the outcomes. So here is our chance - our opportunity - to show that the one time we condemned genocide and sought action in the ICC while the situation was ongoing, it made a difference. We can show that the best way to stop a killer is not to avoid making his life hard, but to do everything we can to make his life hard.

Here is our chance. Let's follow through. Let's actively seek Bashir's arrest, then continue by seeking charges against anyone else involved. Let's finally put an end to this genocide and set a serious example (unlike all the others before) to those who might perpetuate the second genocide of the 21st Century.

I Beg Your Pardon

As Bush was leaving office, I was waiting for him to issue a whole stream of absurd pardons. But as Obama was inaugurated, I heard / read nothing. So I wondered if maybe he had issued lots of pardons but it just wasn't covered. I went back and looked, and instead, what wasn't covered was the fact that he issued very few pardons at the end (wasn't covered means I didn't see anything in the NY Times - it very well could have been splashed over the Journal but I don't read that as often as I should).

So two things on this. First, I applaud Bush for not issuing a slew of pardons as seems to be the practice. Granted, I am not a lawyer and I don't know how many of the last-minute presidential pardons are legit. But it seems to me that if they are reasonable, then they should issue them at the time they come up. If you have to issue them on the way out, then you are worried about the appearance, which likely means they are probably bad pardons. I am especially glad that he didn't pardon Scooter Libby. (Dick Cheney thinks he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice - I agree. Cheney should have been the one punished.)

Secondly, I am disappointed that this wasn't covered more in the NY Times. If Bush did something prudent, it should be recognized. This is why the paper gets the rep for being very liberal and not objective.

Not Better

In case you were still holding on to the belief that Democrats are more ethical than Republicans, Spitzer's solicitation of prostitutes, Blagojevich's attempts to sell the Senate seat, Daschle's and Geithner's decision to avoid paying some of their taxes, and now stories about Roland Burris should have disabused you of any such notions. It is all simply disgusting.

About Roland Burris, he needs to resign. Either he lied or he is not as sharp as a Senator should be. I think it is both. We need to get the bad Democrats out of office now, so they are not around to make us look bad in 2010.

Disagree but not Disagreeable

Of course the papers / political programs are abuzz with the stimulus bill and what it means for Obama's plan for bipartisanship. Mostly, this is a function of the 24 hour news cycle and journalism's inability to see long-term. Obama will not change Washington in a matter of weeks. What we need to do is look back after two years, or four years, or eight years.

But we also need to be careful about what we are measuring when we evaluate his presidency. While I think the administration should be willing to compromise when that is possible, I don't expect Republicans to vote all the time with Obama (especially considering the fact that most of the Republicans now in Congress are more conservative as the moderates were voted out). After all, they have a different view of government's role in our lives. I do however expect that the tone will change. And I will judge Obama on this in time.

The Bush administration (as many before have done) came into office pledging bipartisanship. At times, they delivered or actually tried: No Child Left Behind received some Democratic support including that of Senator Ted Kennedy, and their attempt at immigration reform was also moderate, although it was scuttled by the far-right of the Republican party.

But when they failed to get Democratic support for other policies - especially the War in Iraq - their tone changed. Instead of respecting the Democrats for their positions, the Bush administration attacked Democrats' patriotism.

The Obama administration cannot do this. The tone in Washington has changed - at least if you believe insiders - over the last ten or twenty years. Democrats and Republicans do not interact as socially and instead the political battles seem to carry over into personal interactions. Obama can slowly change this if he changes his tone and the tone of the party. His campaign showed his potential to do this; he famously said, "We can disagree without being disagreeable." Now his presidency needs to show that he can actually accomplish it. And we need to give him some time to try.

No Anecdotes Please

The election this fall made it clear that our health-care system needed reform. Costs are escalating much faster than inflation and many people are uninsured. The changes we make will need to be carried out thoughtfully. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the debate will be in the form of articles like this one in the Atlantic, where anecdotes take the place of data that explains bigger picture issues.

In places the article mentions the big issues we'll have to deal with: Do we want everyone to have the same coverage or are we okay if the rich can buy better care? Do we want government making decisions about treatments (or insurance companies - an alternative the author doesn't consider)? How does government control affect innovation in health-care? How much are we willing to pay for care?

Although it mentions these questions, the article doesn't really answer them, and doesn't supplement the anecdote with any data to at least get us closer to the answers. So instead, we get a very superficial article about health-care masquerading as something relevant. In reality though, many people will read it - and many articles like it - and decide how they feel about more / less centralized medicine based on the one anecdote. (I haven't seen Micheal Moore's movie, but I have heard it is similar, although from the other side.)

If you have ever heard Senate debate on policy / legislation issues, you know that they also focus on anecdotes. And so I fear that we will end up with bad policy unless the debate begins to include actual information on the real ways different approaches will affect health-care in general. Will centralized medicine prevent drugs like the one in the story from being made? Will everyone be denied more expensive treatments or just the poor? We need to answer these questions through real data, not emotional stories.

Sabermetrics for Basketball

I really liked the book Moneyball. The idea that some baseball skills are undervalued because we do not know what actually correlates with winning, and that using statistics to figure that out and get an advantage, is fascinating. It's like poker, some of it is random and based on luck, but in the long run, you increase your chances of winning significantly if you make bets only where the odds are in your favor.

This week in the Sunday Times there is an article relating this concept to basketball. It is a great article. I am now a Shane Battier fan.

He Would've Made a Good President

Last year, we saw two sad examples of countries where contested election results lead to violence and instability - in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Both cases fortunately garnered public attention and concern for the vulnerable populations.

What is not as often reported is when the transitions go smoothly. Well, in December, Ghana elected a new President, and the winner was not from the same party as the outgoing president. The election was close, but in the end resulted in no reported violence and a smooth transition.

Last year, I actually had the privilege of meeting Ghana's presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo. Mr. Akufo-Addo was from the same party as the outgoing president and was considered the front-runner. The event was a fundraiser in New York. Mr. Akufo-Addo came off as brilliant and deeply committed to improving Ghana. Although my first impression was that he would have made a great president, it is reassuring to see that though he lost, he stepped aside gracefully.

On the other hand, I know nothing about the winner, John Atta Mills, besides what is in the article. Hopefully he is as competent and trustworthy as Nana Akufo-Addo seemed.

There are some serious problems and crises in Africa that need to be addressed. But examples like this should help inform the world that there are many examples of good government to show that the problem is not with the African people, but certain people on the continent and certain conditions that lead to the crises we see.

Just Say We're Sorry

The leadership in Iran has, among other things, requested that the US apologize for its past crimes in Iran. While I do not think we should ever apologize because of pressure / force, I do think we should apologize when history shows that our behavior was deplorable.

Our decision to overthrow a democratic (possibly socialist but unlikely to be communist) government lead by Mohammed Mossadegh and install the Shah in 1953 is one of a series of similar and disgusting acts we committed during the Cold War. In too many cases, we chose to support undemocratic, repressive governments instead of allowing democratic socialist or communist governments. I have been meaning to write about this for a while, but cannot quite get my ideas structured right. Basically though, we had a policy that supported economic liberty (at least in the form of unrestrained capitalism) over political liberty. In fact, in some cases, Iran being one of them, we supported repressive capitalist governments over potentially free socialist governments.

So how could Obama apologize without empowering Iran too much? One way would be to apologize for all examples where we did this at once - Iran, Cuba, Chile, Congo, etc. Obama could also ask that the Iranian government issue an apology for taking over the US embassy and holding hostages.

The bottom line is that our foreign policy was bankrupt, and an apology would signal that we are ready to move away from that hypocritical policy and actually promote our ideals of political and economic liberty.

Promoting Democracy

I will be honest, when President Bush said he wanted to expand democracy across the world, I was excited. After all, who could oppose the expansion of freedoms to more people across the world? And who can argue that democracies do not improve the lives of those that live under them? It was especially refreshing to hear it come from a Republican, since I often associate Republican foreign policy with realpolitik.

In the end, Bush's rhetoric fell far short. He supported president Musharraf in Pakistan despite Musharraf's anti-democratic practices, he called for votes in Palestine only to ignore the results when Hamas won, and he did precious little in pro-American countries like Saudi Arabia to achieve real democratic reforms. In total, it made Bush look like a hypocrite - someone who wanted to use principles of spreading democracy to justify his war in Iraq.

An article in the Times shows that Obama is using less democratic rhetoric while making bigger pushes for actual change. For now it is way too soon to see if he is more willing to require our "friends" to change or to recognize elections that do not go our way and whether he can actually achieve these goals even if he is willing to do more. It is something we definitely need to pay attention to.

Second Bill of Rights

In reading the intro to a book I am thinking about buying, I was made aware of President Franklin Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union in which he lays out the foundation for Second Bill of Rights. In this case, he wasn't looking to change the Constitution, but to proclaim that free people have rights that extend beyond what are laid out in the original 10 amendments to the Constitution. Here is an excerpt from his speech.

We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

This speech gets close to my (still developing) philosophy. There are a couple that I do not completely agree with: right to a remunerative job and the right of a farmer to raise and sell his products at a living return. First, although my understanding of economic concepts is a bit rusty, experience seems to show that eliminating unemployment is unlikely, especially without increases in inflation. Instead, I think people should have a right to a minimal standard of living and a commitment from the government that it will help them find a job if possible. Secondly, I do not know why farmers should have a special right to continue working in their field. If there is an oversupply or inefficiency, than we should not allow that condition to continue just out of nostalgic feelings for our more agricultural days.

As FDR lays them out, these are rights to be enjoyed by all Americans. I would take this one step further - that all humans have these rights. I think this is the point that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights tries to make (although notice how concise FDR was able to be). If we look around the world, we see people living lives that no human should have to endure. Just a basic sense of decency and compassion should make it easy to understand why all humans should have the right to security, food, shelter, education, and health care as much as they have a right to participate in their government, to practice a religion of their choice, to assemble, to speak, and to have equal protections under the law.

In the end, I wish this were the Democratic platform. I do not believe in socialism or communism. I do not believe in redistribution. But I do believe that every human has the right to basic living standards - that if a society is just, it exists to protect everyone and ensure equal participation in the freedoms that exit - including the markets that exchange goods as well as those that exchange ideas. Without adequate nutrition, education or health care, full participation in the society cannot be assured.

Obamanomics: Stimuli

As the new stimulus package is debated, you will hear each side talk with certainty about how tax cuts or government spending are better fiscal policies to stimulate the economy. In fact, each side will claim that the research shows that one is better than the other.

In introductory macroeconomics classes you are taught simple supply and demand equations, with tax cuts or government spending affecting overall economic activity. Depending on whether your teacher is conservative (like my high school econ teacher) or liberal (like my college econ professors), you will see multiplier affects that show tax cuts or government spending having a greater impact (respectively). In those classes, the multiplier effect is given to you by the teacher. This is why for a couple short years after high school, I believed that supply-side was the better policy.

The truth however is that what research there is shows wide variation in results. Some research does show a greater multiplier effect for tax cuts than government spending, while others show the reverse. (This Freakonomics article talks about one reason why the research is so unclear - that not as much fiscal policy research is done as monetary policy research.) In fact, a quote from an essay Christina Romer (Obama's selection to head his Council of Economic Advisors) wrote (taken from a David Brooks column) suggests that in surveys of past recessions, fiscal policy seemed to have little effect in ending the recessions.

So what are we to make of all this uncertainty? One, fiscal stimuli are more of a political tool than an economic one. They show that the government is working to make things better (even if it is somewhat cosmetic). Obama, by including tax cuts and government spending, is hoping to please people on both sides without proclaiming that one works better than the other. Two, the stimuli should at least go to things that we need. And this is the best part about Obama's stimulus package. If it is used to improve our electricity grid - a necessity if we are to actually try to change our energy supply - to improve our roads and public transportation, and to rehab our schools and public housing, it will be money spent that can both create some temporary jobs until the recession is over but also accomplish tasks that have for too long been put off.

It may not help end the recession, but it should make the transition easier while making us stronger for when it ends.

Peace in DRC?

It appears that the prospects for peace in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo have increased recently. The violence (and epidemic of sexual violence) stemmed from four armed groups in the area with shifting alliances; the Congolese government troops, Hutu militants (those responsible for the genocide in neighboring Rwanda), Laurent Nkunda's Tutsi militants (supposedly there to protect Tutsis from the Hutu militants but with aspirations to take down the democratically elected government in DRC), and UN Peacekeeping troops (yes, they were there to keep the peace, but there were accusations that they too were contributing to the sexual violence while not effectively protecting the civilians).

Recently, Laurent Nkunda has been arrested by the Rwandan government and his militia is apparently disbanding. Jeffrey Gettleman's story says that there was a deal between Rwanda and Congo, where Rwanda would stop Nkunda, and Congo would let Rwanda go into Congo to attack the Hutu militias.

The only chance for sustained peace will be if Nkunda's militia does in fact disarm and no one steps into the vacuum (there are other rebel groups in the area, including Nkunda's former chief of staff, who is wanted for war crimes) and if the Hutu militia can be neutralized. Both of these are real challenges, but I am particularly worried about the later. The genocide happened in 1994 and the Hutu militants have been hiding in Congo since then destabilizing the region. Hopefully now is the time they are finally stopped. Unfortunately, stopping them may result in more bloodshed among the people living in Eastern Congo.

At the very least though, this new development brings hopes of peace to one of the most troubled regions in the world.

I Don't Predict the Future

So my prediction was wrong. Although I was right that the governor didn't choose Kennedy or Cuomo. Well, if you believe the rumors it seems as though he was going to pick Kennedy. But I did mention Kirstin Gillibrand.

I still think he should have chosen Byron Brown. The Senate could use more African-American representation - one isn't really enough, especially when that one is Roland Burris (yes, he made a very bad first impression on me).

Even though I would probably have preferred Brown, I do like this choice. Gillibrand is moderate and will represent upstate New York well. And as much as I am a downstate snob, I think upstate needs good representation at statewide office.

Oh yeah, and former Senate Majority Leader Bruno was indicted. Yesterday was a crazy day for New York State. (The funny thing is that I am not sure which was the bigger news story: Bruno, Gillibrand, or Patterson's seeming lack of leadership.)

The Inauguration

I don't have a lot to say about the inauguration except that I am excited. There is so much hope and possibility now with a smart and liberal president. I can't wait to see the new direction (or sometimes lack thereof?) in so many areas. My mind reals just thinking of the possibilities.

Overall, his speech was good. It started off somewhat dull but competent and ended really inspiring. His call for responsibility, hard work and sacrifice, and rising to meet challenges was such a breath of fresh air compared to Bush's "go about your business." Now we wait and see how the words transform into reality.

Also, I thought Aretha Franklin was great. So was the quartet piece written by John Williams.

And I made sure to watch Bush leave on the helicopter. I am glad Obama was respectful. But it was good to see Bush leave.

Portraits of the Future

The New York Times Magazine has a feature this week with portraits of Obama's top campaign / administration staff and top Democrats. The portraits are really well done. Check them out if you haven't already. This is our future people!

Dynamic Duo: Bolton and Yoo

There was an opinion piece in the NY Times recently calling for treaties to be ratified by a 2/3rds vote of the Senate, as called for in the Constitution. Who wrote this opinion piece? John Bolton and John Yoo. John Bolton, you'll remember, was Bush's appointee as Ambassador to the United Nations. Coincidentally, he is the same person who does not think the US has much use for international bureaucracies. Apparently Bush wanted to appoint someone that would antagonize the UN, instead of work with it, but I digress. And John Yoo... who was he? Wait, wasn't he the guy who wrote those illegal torture memos that conservative lawyer Jack Goldsmith rescinded? Yes, that's him. So we are going to take legal advice from him?

The best part is that the two don't suggest that all treaties go through this process. They admit that trade treaties like NAFTA were passed with simple majorities by Congress, and they are fine with that. Basically, they argue that the Constitution requires only treaties they don't like (liberal treaties like ones that ban weapons that are the most dangerous to civilians, like land mines or cluster bombs, or treaties on human rights issues, or treaties that deal with global warming) to get 2/3rds support from the Senate while treaties which conservatives support do not need to.

I admit that I don't know all the constitutional and legal requirements about which treaties should have to go through Senate with 2/3rds support and which can be passed with simple majorities by Congress. But it disgusts me to see people profess to care about legal and constitutional arguments only when it serves them. If the Constitution requires that treaties need to get 2/3rds support in the Senate, than that includes trade agreements along with everything else.

Finally, can we please stop quoting the founding fathers as if everything they said still holds true? The international world was far different in the late 1700s than it is today. If we are going to venerate something Thomas Jefferson or George Washington said just because they said it, then we have to do that for everything. And that means eliminating political parties and more bloody revolutions.

Selfish Burris Helps Governor

I get no pleasure in writing a post like this, but I think it needs to be said. Rolland Burris seems to be more concerned with becoming a Senator and extending his political career than he is with doing what is best for Illinois. If he had anything other than his career in mind, he would see that the best thing for him to have done when Governor Blagojevich called would have been declining to accept the nomination and then politely advising the governor to step down.

Instead, Burris is empowering the governor and giving him back some legitimacy by helping the change the topic of discussion. His trip to DC today was a sham. While there is some debate about whether the Senate can in fact refuse to seat Burris, they cannot seat him until his appointment is certified by the Governor and the Secretary of State of Illinois. But he showed up to the Capital without the Secretary of State's signature and he did it as a political stunt. All of his speeches and circus antics help no one but the governor of Illinois (and maybe Burris himself).

Don't get me wrong, I also think that Obama's replacement should be a person of color. But to hear Burris and friends talk, you would think he is the only person of color in the state. I hope that Illinois and the US Senate are able to prevent Burris from joining the Senate, and then get a different appointment from a new governor. Burris should not be rewarded for his self-serving antics.

I Predict the Future

I predict that Governor Paterson will name Byron Brown, Buffalo mayor, to fill Hillary's senate seat. I have no inside information; it is just my educated guess. Granted, he might choose a woman instead, and select Representative Carolyn Maloney (Congresswoman from New York City) or Representative Kirsten Gillibrand (Congresswoman from Albany). But I don't think he will choose Caroline Kennedy or Andrew Cuomo.

First, I think Paterson will want to select a person of color for the senate, especially with Obama's seat in flux (granted, by the time Paterson has to name his selection, Obama's seat may be resolved), so that points to Byron Brown. And Brown is from upstate (Paterson will be sensitive to selecting someone from upstate to state-wide office to help with his re-election in 2010), while Carolyn Maloney is from the city (as are Kennedy and Cuomo). Kristen Gillibrand is from upstate, but I think she is too new, just having been elected to Congress in 2006.

The only downside to Brown is that he doesn't have the name recognition, and therefore the obvious fund-raising ability, that Cuomo or Kennedy has. But I now think that is less important considering the senior senator from New York is good old Chuck Schumer, someone pretty good at fund raising.

Not Immune

As is becoming clear, Democrats are no more ethical than Republicans. Stories about Governor Rod Blagojevich in Illinois, Congressman Charles Rangel, and now a story that raises questions about the Clintons (Destiny USA? Talk about a blast from the past) and allegations against Bill Richardson are all over the news. For now, it does not seem to be sticking to the Democratic Party. But the party better get a handle on these things soon and hope there are no more waiting to break. Otherwise, we could see another midterm election that takes away a Democratic congressional majority from a sitting Democratic president.