Jon Stewart's Commencement Address

Just a quick link here, since this came up over the weekend. It's a good one.

Brewing Scandal in Iraq?

As if we needed another one... A couple of Australian papers have run stories claiming that shortly before being named Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi personally, summarily executed as many as six prisoners at a prison southwest of Baghdad. The Christian Science Monitor has a roundup of the coverage. At this point the story appears to have a high probability of being BS, but investigations will almost surely follow. Obviously if anything were to come of this is would be a heavy blow to the US occupation.

More Criticism For the Supreme Court

The Washington Post is running a column from former Illinois congressman, chief judge of the DC federal appeals court, and White House counsel, Abner Mikva. Thirty years ago Mkva co-sponsored the Non-Detention Act, which figured significantly in the court's decision on Yaser Hamdi. Mikva reiterates the principles behind the act, and takes issue with the vague decision of the Supreme Court which passed off much of the responsibility on this issue to lower courts (this is starting to be a theme), and urges all three branches of the government to take to heart the important principles embodied in the NDA.

Re: Scolding the Supreme Court

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick has this article that summarizes the chaos that has erupted from the Supreme Court's Blakely decision.

Scolding the Supreme Court

A Washington Post editorial today takes issue with the vague decision the Supreme Court recently rendered on Blakely v. Washington. The decision casts doubt on the entire federal sentencing procedure. The Post discusses the confusion and various responses taken by federal courts, and urges the Supreme Court to clarify the issue.

Obama Keynote Speaker at Democratic Convention

Another bit of Illinois news here. The Washington Post has a column highlighting John Kerry's efforts to win the black vote, and mentions among other things that the Democrats have selected Barack Obama to deliver the keynote address at their convention. I wholly approve. As I've stated previously I really like Obama, and barring anything stupid happening, think that he could become a major figure in the party over the next 5-10 years. Between Jack Ryan's candidacy going down in flames and this added national exposure, I'd say things are looking good for Obama.

Illinois: Bastion of Liberalism

The Crhistian Science Monitor is running a series of articles analyzing the political situations in various states as an election year feature. Today they covered Illinois. I was a little surprised by their findings, as I was not aware of any strong trend towards liberal values around here. I also find it interesting that their analysis points towards changes in the voting paterns of the suburbs as the cause for the shift. They also did a recent feature on Georgia, and found that it was the massive growth of suburbs around Atlanta, and the strong conservative tendencies of folks living in them, that pushed the state toward the Republicans.

Where's the Beef?

Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson is usually good for injecting a shot of reality into popular political rhetoric. He has a column today taking issue with the preposterous statements of our presidential candidates which ignore reality, but are treated by pundits at "respectable statements that ought to be analyzed and debated". He points out campaign discussions of job creation, fiscal policy, and medical plans as particularly egregious. He also notes that other critical issues are being completely ignored by the candidates and that the press pays no heed to these omissions. I've blogged similar columns on this topic from Samuelson before, as well as written a few diatribes of my own noting this problem. It can make the presidential race difficult to stomach at times.

Score One For the Propagandists

The Washington Post has an editorial on recent trade agreement legislation that demonstrates that the Post has swallowed the standard line of the pro-trade lobbies hook, line, and sinker. Since the beginning of the popular movement against the WTO, proponents of the current trade system have tarred all opposition as being against trade in all forms and situations. I'll grant that there is a radical fringe that would support that position, and further that indeed, mobs of protesters don't do nuance well. But the position of trade reformers has always been more nuanced than the Post suggests. Their claim that "Oxfam, and more broadly the coalition of organizations that campaigned for Third World debt relief under the banner of the Jubilee movement, have largely abandoned their old skepticism about trade in favor of campaigns against egregious rich-world protectionism" demonstrates their ignorance of what Oxfam has been preaching on this subject for some time. They have always been asking for "fair trade", not "no trade". Oxfam first launched its Fair Trade program some 40 years ago. It should be noted that protests are generally focused at the IMF and the WTO, organizations which Oxfam persuasively argues have consistently promoted unfair trading systems. The clear misinterpretation on the part of the Post, a respected mainstream observer, of what this debate has been about signals a victory on the part of anti-reform lobby in their campaign to smear their opposition.

Poor Ralph Nader...

Nader seems to sound more paranoid and marginal by the day.

Pitbull Fitzgerald, What's Taking So Long?

I'm getting tired of waiting for US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to come out with some news of an indictment in the Valerie Plame Affair. It's been some time since he had a rather long sit-down with the President, and one might imagine that was at the tail end of his investigation. There have been rumors floating around for some time that a grand jury has been impaneled--and a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich. So what's the hold-up?

Well, I suspect it might be that Mr. Fitzgerald is not stopping with the Valerie Plame business--I think he is going after big fish on the forged uranium documents. Remember, the two stories are integrally related, because Valerie Plame was outted as a spy immediately after former Ambassador Joseph Wilson spilled the beans about the unsupported tale that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. After some documents turned out to be really bad forgeries, the FBI began an investigation and nothing more has been made of that investigation. It is entirely possible that the same people involved in releasing Valerie Plame's name were the same people who forged the documents in the first place--or at least knew they were forgeries but tried to sell them on the street as real Rolex watches. And President Bush bought 'em.

I raise this issue because today there is supposed to be a big report coming down from the other side of the Atlantic that suggests there is other intelligence (not related to the forged documents) that supports the Niger-Iraq uranium claims. I must admit that I am dubious. But we will know shortly.

But back to these forged documents for a moment, the Financial Times reported at the end of June that the guy who apparently sold the documents to an Italian newspaper has come forward and told his story to an American televion network. Apparently the tipper has some interesting news about where he got the documents. (By the way, the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report notes that the tipper apparently requested that the Italian newspaper, Panorama, pay $15,000 euros in exchange for the documents.)

Why the network is sitting on the story (if FT has it right) is beyond me. Now would seem to be the perfect time to come out with the story--unless the network is waiting for indictments to come down, or waiting to see what is in the British report.

Or unless this is all just a crock of shit. It's always a possibility...
(Sorry for the lack of links. I'm just too lazy right now. But if anyone wants back-up for anything in here, just let me know. I'll find it. Eventually.)

Not Worth the Effort

This isn't our usual fare, nor Howard Kurtz's, but Kurtz, a Washington Post regular, is running a column in which he trashes the level of customer support offered by many of the companies we deal with on a daily basis. It can often seem like a small thing, but really it touches our lives on a regular basis and can make for some painful experiences. He makes a strong case, backed up by experiences we have all shared. But while he scores points for well-deserved indignation he misses the deeper analysis. The universal degree to which large companies short-change their customer service represents the voice of the market, and the voice says it is simply not worth the money to provide the support. The profits lost by poor service are obviously not a large a figure as the cost to provide good service. No venting of frustration changes that. Even service-conscious consumers have little option to vote with their pocketbook. What phone company can I choose that provides good customer service? None that I know of. It seems the die has been cast and businesses have responded and little avenue remains for consumer choice. And even if the choices were better, there are few channels for communication of this information by which a consumer can make an informed decision. Certainly self-reporting can't be relied upon, as most of these companies claim to have wonderful customer service. Further, most customers don't have any contact or personal experience with a company's service department until after the company already has their money. Is this poor service an expression of the preferences of consumers? Would we rather save the money? Or is this a market failure where consumers are not armed with the knowledge necessary to make choices in line with their preferences?

I know for my part I would, at least some of the time, be willing to pay more for better service. It would help to know how much it would really change the price, and would be nice to be given the choice. But as in many of these cases I think a trusted third party (be it private or public) would be needed to referee this market.

And, on the other hand, there may be a case to be made that the free market works, and this really is our choice. There recently was an article on Slashdot about companies trying to rein in the costs associated with "abusive" customers (which is sort of an interesting topic in itself). Aside from supplying a lot of fodder to support Kurtz's point, the ensuing discussion contained a number of posts from foreigners who visited the US and were absolutely appalled by the quality of service they found there. Obviously things work differently in other markets. Is this simply a cultural difference? Or have companies in those places simply not maximized efficiency to the point that they eliminated funds for customer service? Or have customers in those markets demanded good support by their purchasing decisions? I have little basis by which to answer these questions.

I suspect that at least in the case of the US market, aggressive cost-cutting during market downturns led companies to slash service expenses. Then when they saw that the world didn't come to an end, and that consumers, despite a lot of whining, mostly took it in stride, they didn't bother to pump the funding back up later, or even proceeded to cut it further.

Perhaps more fodder for our free market discussions...

A CIA Analyst Punches Back

After the release of the damning report on prewar intelligence by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, it seems at least one CIA agent is not comfortable with intelligence analysts taking all the blame. The Washington Post reports that an analyst has revealed to them that he tried to warn his superiors that much of the content that Colin Powell was about to report the UN Security Counsel was of dubious quality. He mentioned that one major intel source nicknamed "Curve Ball" had supplied data that was especially unreliable. He said his superior responded that "This war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say, and . . . the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about". This seems to be a contradiction to the report's contention that pressure from the administration did not affect the output of the CIA's assessments. In a discussion between DIA official Bruce Hardcastle and the Post mentioned in the article, Hardcastle says that he was not pressured to change his assessments on Iraq, but adds that "Generally it was understood how receptive [Defense policy officials] were to our assessments and what kind of assessments they would not be receptive to." That sounds like pressure to me...

Mercenaries Run Amok

It's no secret that the third largest military force in Iraq is the army of military contractors, essentially ex-military personnel carrying guns for private companies. The BBC is reporting on a crew of former Special Forces soldiers recenlty arrested by Afghan authorities in Kabul, for reasons unknown, possibly at the request of the US military. The report says they found eight people illegally detained by the men at a house in Kabul. One wonders at the implications of this widespread use of mercenaries. How is their conduct governed? Certainly they ought to be subject to international law, but what of the codes of conduct of the US military? What sort of oversight is tracking the actions of these people? The article mentions that they frequently wear standard issue military uniforms and carry standard military weaponry, and that it is difficult to tell who is who and under what authority these various groups of armed men are operating. It seems a prime opportunity for confusion and lawlessness. And what of the concept of the government (whether domestic or that of an occupying nation) maintaining a monopoly on the use of force? I know that privatization is all the rage with current administration, but have we really thought this through?

In the Bubble

I have previously expressed discomfort with the scope of efforts employed to separate President Bush from the public, foreign or domestic. BBC Washington correspondent Matt Frei accompanied Bush on his recent trip to Istanbul and wrote on his experience inside the bubble. Constantly trapped in a zone of privilege and isolation it's little wonder that many administration officials seem to be living in an alternate reality.

Warmongers With Short Memories

So Sir Jeremy Greenstock, British representative to the UN during the runup to the war, finally admitted on BBC that the weapons for which Britain went to war don't actually exist. Then he had to go and botch this admission with the statement that "It's only, again with hindsight, when we saw that probably the Iraqis were cheating Saddam as well as misleading us, that the evidence is just not there." Only with hindsight? I'm sorry, but weren't there a whole lot of people who found the evidence presented by the US and UK considerably less than convincing even before the war? I'm pretty sure there were, because I think I was one of them. And about the Iraqis cheating Saddam, where did that come from? All evidence that I've read suggests that Saddam had his weapons program stand down in order to get the sanctions lifted. The only misleading going on here is the bill of goods Sir Greenstock is trying to sell us. Greenstock's comments came in advance of July 14th release of the Butler report on intelligence failures related to Iraq. Hopefully some of the fallout from that report can find its way across the Atlantic...

The IAEA Gets Serious With Israel

In a great editorial today, CSM supports Mohamed ElBaradei's shot across Israel's bow over their nuclear arsenal. ElBaradei, director of the IAEA, during a visit to Jerusalem this week warned Israel that their nuclear weapons are damaging the credibility of his agency in trying to deal with Iran. CSM makes the case that it is unlikely that Iran will abandon their pursuit of a nuclear deterrent without Israel agreeing to eliminate their arsenal as well. They further argue that if Iran were to succeed in gaining an arsenal it would discredit the IAEA and the Non-Proliferation Treaty and would likely lead to further nuclear destabilization.

Steamrolled By the Bush Machine

Foreign Policy Mag is running a short editorial noting how easy everyone made it for Bush to have his way on Iraq. Thanks to Howard Dean and others, liberals are beginning to come back to life and have done a decent job of vilifying Bush. However, it should not be forgotten how many people rolled over and played dead in order for Bush to create all of the mayhem that we now need to clean up. Reading this column and thinking about it have brought to mind (again) a couple of internal conflicts that I frequently struggle with.

First, is the conflict between wanting to hold people accountable, and wanting to take back control from Bush and his cronies. This was thoroughly discussed here and elsewhere in the context of Howard Dean (and to a lesser extent Ralph Nader). The Democrats who voted for Bush's war should be held to account. But how can this be done without further aiding Bush and friends? In the presidential race Dean and Clark offered good opportunities for this, but both are now out of the picture. Additionally, in races for the House and the Senate, due to the way elections are structured it is nearly impossible to beat incumbents in the primary, leaving the only real opportunity to inflict penalties through the ballot box at the general election, at which point you would obviously be aiding Republicans in the process. In a strongly partisan environment, it seems that accountability goes out the window. A viable third party would certainly help in this regard..

My other conflict is also between principle and patisanship, but of a slightly different nature. Ideally there should be politicians who are pragmatic and moderate, but who still retain the courage of their convictions. In practice, there are vanishingly few of these people (Feingold and McCain are the only ones who pop into my head, and I think Dean could have been one as well). And with the increasingly severe problem of gerrymandering, these people will grow increasingly rare. More often the choice is between "moderates" who are spineless, calculating political hacks who will roll over to anything that polling supports on a given day, or fire-breathing partisan zealots, who can be counted on to oppose stupid things proposed by the other party, but who will never achieve anything useful through moderation and compromise with the other party. I'm generally fairly moderate myself, and I used to think I preferred the former, but having witnessed what these "moderates" did in the context of the Bush administration I've found myself wishing for more of the latter. But truthfully I despise them both. It makes me ever more worshipful of a Feingold, who has the courage to be the only person in the Senate to vote against something stupid, but the good sense to be cooperative and bipartisan to achieve important results. Unfortunately, like my other conflict, it leaves precious few good choices for voters to make. It is difficult for a person of principle to know what to do. Even more unfortunately it seems that on both issues, the trends are getting worse as time goes on.

Ashcroft: I Am The Law!

This is sort of old news, but I'm trying to get caught up here. So let me get this straight: The justice department evaluates the powers of the executive branch under the circumstances of the "War on Terror", and determines (what good luck for them) that the powers of the executive are unlimited and unrestricted by any law or convention. They can do whatever they damned well please, hurrah! They write a number of memos outlining this fact and documenting other useful bits of knowledge, including penning a definition of torture that would have exempted most of the Nazi doctors who experimented on concentration camp victims. These are then sent to the President, and, lo and behold, some number of months later egregious prisoner abuses are uncovered. Apparently there is still at least one person in the government in possession of a conscience (or more likely, an axe to grind), and the memos are leaked to the press. In view of events these memos appear to be fairly significant and worthy of some scrutiny, so the Senate decides they ought to take a look and request that they be given copies. Ashcroft declines, and rather than citing executive privilege or any legal basis for this denial, claims some sort of lawyer-client privilege between the president and the entire Justice Department. The Senate Judiciary Committee is apparently too dumbfounded by the absurdity of this claim to take any immediate action. Surely the public ridicule will convince Ashcroft to concede. But wait! Mere weeks later, in considering Vice President Cheney's refusal to turn over documents relating to the energy committee, the US Supreme Court vindicates Ashcroft by stating that rather than have awkward moments in which the various branches of the government have to check one another's power, we should just delegate to the executive whatever power they want so that we can avoid conflict. Long live the King! Am I pretty much on track here?

This is getting beyond absurd. In the immortal words of Barf from Spaceballs, "They've gone to plaid!" Are we generating some outrage yet? At what point do we get to the rioting in the streets? This is where we need a Democratic presidential candidate who can do outrage, and who can raise hell and make some waves. If this isn't a moment to point out just how dangerously far off the track we've gone, what is? And where's our candidate? Making minor campaign stops and lulling crowds to sleep all across the country, staying mostly out of the spotlight under the theory that the less the public sees him, the better he'll do. Thank god for Michael Moore. At least there's one person with the good sense to be royally pissed off by all this.

The Fate of the Middle Class

While I was traveling overseas I had little access to current news and events. I did, however, find a cache of magazines that had been left in the apartment in France when my aunt was last there in January. There were some interesting and relevant articles in them, particularly in the Jan/Feb issue of the Atlantic Monthly. One of them, Are We Still a Middle Class Nation by Michael Lind, is a frank and wide-ranging discussion of the history and current challenges of America's middle class (which as you may know, is a favorite pet topic of mine).

Lind tracks the middle class across three distinct phases: the early land-owning farmers, industrial workers, and the modern professionals. He notes the critical role of government policies in fostering each group. Lind moves on to cover the current challenges faced by the middle class. While he mentions the role of globalization in reducing the bargaining power of middle class workers, he places most of the focus on automation and mechanization. Lind cites economist William J. Baumol who theorized that a disparity between the rate of productivity growth in mechanized sectors and the growth rate in human service jobs will increase the relative cost of labor-intensive services. The problem emerges here, Lind asserts, that while productivity surges in the mechanized sectors, employment drops and the labor market becomes flooded in those sectors, so the large gains in profit created by the increased productivity are reaped by the small class of owners and managers. Labor then is pushed into sectors where long term productivity gains are relatively small, and will suffer as a result.

I'm not entirely sure that I buy this position. I agree with Baumol's thesis regarding the effect of varying rates of productivity between automated and non-automated sectors, and I concus with Lind that a relatively small number of people will benefit from the increased profits generated by the automation. However, if wages generally fall while automation makes many sectors more productive, wouldn't much of the benefit of the automation have to be realized through lower prices of goods and services in order to be able to sell them to our now lower paid middle class? It may become a sort of deflationary cycle where prices drop, but lag behind falling income... I don't really know, this is reaching beyond my meager knowledge of economics, but it seems like a more complicated and dynamic situation than what Lind depicts.

In any case, Lind finds solid numbers to back up his theory that the middle class is losing ground, regardless of what is ultimately the cause. Lind also finds that public policy, which once aided the middle class, now appears to be favoring the upper class at the expense of the middle class. Lind considers the options for restoring the balance of wealth and income and discusses frankly the need for a system of redistribution. He discusses the obvious option of increasing taxes on the wealthy and using the revenue to subsize the rising costs of education, child care, and health care for the middle class. But Lind worries about the potential for increased tax evasion or emmigration by the wealthy.

Instead Lind suggests "universal capitalism". While much more modest in its approach, this "universal capitalism" sounds strikingly like Marxism, in that the basic ideal is to the restore the balance of income between the capitalists and labor by making the labor the owners of the capital. It also sounds strikingly like some of the market-based personal retirement accounts championed by many conservatives as a replacement for the social security program. Lind proposes that child trust funds, invested in the stock market, be established by the government for all children. People would be able to save or spend the money in these accounts without restrictions. These accounts would be funded by tax revenues, but only in small amounts, as Lind puts it, "planting seeds capable of growing along with the economy over time". He suggests a system where the government matches contributions of low income workers to the account.

I have a hard time buying into this idea. The basic idea is sound: If increasing automation results in most of the benefits being delivered to the ownership class, then the public can best benefit by making everyone a part of the ownership class. However, I am not sure this would play out as intended, particularly as Lind proposes it. For example, it would obviously not work if there are no access restrictions on this account, and the government is willing to match contributions (I would assume only up to some limit) into the account. A single dollar could quickly be multiplied (by repeatedly depositing to and withdrawing from the account) into the government matching limit. Clearly there will need to be limits on access to the account. And given our obvious problems with intelligently handling credit, debt, and savings, I'm not sure how successful a program dependent on individuals (particularly individuals who are already strapped for cash) contributing to a saving account can be. Perhaps there are behavioral remedies...

Overall, I was not thrilled with the article, but it did introduce some new ideas to chew on. Baumol's theories on the impact of automation may be worth further investigation. Additionally, Lind mentions that Britain has recently introduced a system of child funds somewhat in line with the universal capitalism concept. I would be curious to learn more about how exactly that works.