Obama's first 100 days

To Newsweek,

I am writing in response to Jonathan Alter and Fareed Zakaria's articles in the May 4 issue evaluating President Obama's first one hundred days in office. I believe that your publication is continuing its habit from the 2008 campaign period of being a one-sided Obama cheerleader. The fact that your magazine has not printed a single satirical cartoon (of many available, see link below) depicting President Obama, when George W. Bush caricatures were a weekly mainstay, is telling. While I think that Obama's performance is above-average thus far (especially on the environment and science fronts, as well as incremental gains in health care, which your columnists did not recognize), how can Alter and Zakaria fill two pages with accolades while neglecting to make even a single criticism or suggestion for improvement?

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/barackobama/ig/Barack-Obama-Cartoons/

Plenty of nonpartisan journalists and economists have voiced concerns over some of the White House's more questionable actions. Domestically, Alter and Zakaria totally overlooked:

-Problems associated with unfilled staff positions in the Obama government, because of his well-intentioned but flawed "no ties to lobbyists" policy (yet he has packed his economics team with people well connected to Wall Street).
-Corruption allegations associated with some key cabinet nominees.
-Caving to Congressional Democrats during the crafting of the generally helpful but pork-laden Reinvenstment and Recovery Act.
-Backing down on gun control campaign promises (and virtual silence on the issue), despite multiple atrocious mass shootings.
-Retaining Bush-era state secrecy policies despite pledges to be the most transparent administration ever.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/06/obama/index.html
-Ambiguity over CIA torture (declaring the practice outlawed and un-American, yet refusing to investigate or prosecute those responsible in the previous regime).
-More mixed signals and controversy over the AIG bonuses.
-Making generous concessions to banks/investors at the expense of taxpayers on TARP.
-Additional billions of Treasury rescue dollars so far have not impelled banks to increase lending, and did not slow the slide of the US auto industry.

While some of these events are out of a president's control, and beyond his influence in the first hundred days, they are at least worth mentioning. I would also like to point out that as of April 29, Alter is incorrect about Obama's budget being approved. Congress did pass interim spending to keep the government running through the summer, but have not passed a version of Obama's massive and contentious $3.6 trillion budget plan that was first proposed in February. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, after months of stalemate Congress is preparing to pass merely a nonbinding budget outline this week.

http://www.startribune.com/ politics/43971737.html

On the international front, Obama has been quite successful and very well received by foreign leaders and cheering crowds, which we have seen before. Mending fences with Russia, making overtures to Iran, easing some restrictions with Cuba, and proposing new arms control talks was refreshing news, and several heads of state have noted that Obama simply winning the presidency has done so much to restore America's image. But so far it's been more words than deeds; Europe has not cooperated much with fiscal/monetary policy or Afghanistan, and there has been no progress towards consensus on Iran or peace in the Holy Land. While no one expects Obama to solve global problems overnight, I think his first steps have been exaggerated. After eight frustrating Bush years, I think any new American leader would be celebrated and welcomed abroad, short of Sarah Palin.

One of his first actions as president was to sign the closing of Guantanamo Bay prison. But declaring it so is different than getting it done, and very few detainees have been transferred or tried. Plus Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan may become our new Gitmo, and there have been testimonials of abuse as well. Obama's near silence over the recent Israeli siege of Gaza (that the UN and other aid groups vociferously condemned) spoke volumes to the Muslim world, regardless of his pledge that the US is a friend. And lastly, Iraq is barely on his radar, even though it was a prominent aspect of his early campaign identity. Violence has spiked recently, and he may find it difficult to adhere to his pledge to bring all combat troops home by the end of 2011.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/168022
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/03/09/bagram/index.html?source=rss

He has performed reasonably well considering the circumstances, but I feel that your writer's unwavering praise is somewhat premature and misleading at this point.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103540635

Obama and CIA torture immunity

"This is a time for reflection, not retribution." - President Barack Obama

"Justice deferred is justice denied." - Congresswoman Diane Watson, at the 50th Anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, a ruling that allowed blacks like Watson and Obama to get a quality education that would allow them to one day run for public office.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090417/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_torture_memos_reaction
http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R904170900 (first 10 minutes of the interview on this subject)

So Obama and Holder have decided to declassify the CIA memos that describe the torture techniques used during the interrogations of the Bush years. Some have praised that move. This shows that they are all about decency, change, and transparency, right? Well, the CIA has been fighting the release of these documents to the public for years, and ostensibly, Obama has only decided to finally do it because the ACLU lawsuit on the matter looks surely to prevail.

But even worse, he has declared immunity for the CIA personnel who participated in the tortures. He said that those people were patriots who were trying to protect America, and were given assurances by Bush's Justice Dept. that what they were doing was legal. But the same can be said of Nazi concentration camp guards. Did the Nuremberg Commission buy that excuse? They were following orders, they were assured it was ok, they did it for their country.

But the rules of war (and US military rules) state that soldiers have a DUTY to disobey unlawful orders. I don't know about CIA regulations, but many of the jailers and torturers were soldiers borrowed by the CIA for unofficial duties. If someone waves a paper in front of your face saying it's ok to execute the prisoners in your care, what will you do? Hopefully you will disobey because you know that it's wrong and others will punish you when the dust settles, even if at the moment your superiors reassure you that it's legal. But torture is different than execution, right? Is it? Detainees have died in US custody due to "harsh interrogation" that was supposed to be non-life-threatening. Sleep deprivation, stress positions, exposure to severe cold, and beatings with blunt objects don't leave visible damage, but the trauma killed several detainees with health ailments. They could even kill healthy people. At least 3 Gitmo detainees committed suicide, either out of desperation for their predicament, ideological conviction, or a coverup for murder. So when a jailer is ordered to do certain things to a detainee that he is assured are legal, and the physical reaction by the detainee is urination, screaming, vomiting, and even unconsciousness - do you continue as if everything is kosher? Not once do you feel that as a US serviceperson and conscientious citizen, you have the obligation to question whether it is right? Not once as a human do you stop and wonder why you have to cause so much pain to a defenseless stranger (who hasn't even been charged with a crime and has not seen any evidence against them), and whether such brutality is even helping national security? People who didn't stop to ponder those questions are criminals; there's no way around it Obama.

http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/may21-04/disobey.htm
http://www.pubrecord.org/torture/677.html?task=view
http://www.truthout.org/article/three-guantanamo-detainees-die-suicides-army-says

The world still looks up to us for moral leadership and social justice (I have no idea why). What kind of message does this send? How can we protest Darfur atrocities, or journalists detained and tortured in Iran? How can we mend fences with the skeptical, angry Muslim world? And beyond that, how do we encourage them to reform politically and respect the rule of law, when we are exonerating the criminals among us? At least jail a couple of Company slackers who had poor performance records anyway, and force some spooks to resign as early retirement with a nice pension. Do something superficial at least, but don't just try to sweep it under the rug as if nothing is wrong. Obama said he would respect the opinion of his AG on the matter, but that is a cop-out. Obviously prosecuting CIA torturers is a legal nightmare. It's probably a tougher challenge than prosecuting terror suspects. Most of these crimes happened years ago overseas, and evidence is shaky at best (remember how the CIA admitted to destroying hours of interrogation and torture videos?). The chain of command is not evident. Well, I'm not expecting convictions and speedy justice, but at least do a little digging around. If the DoJ went after allegedly corrupt US legislators with so much zeal (and made plenty of stupid errors along the way), then I think we can at least try to build some cases against petty CIA torturers, if not the ex-leaders who deployed them. But politics win the day again, and Obama doesn't want to appear that he is on a "partisan witch-hunt", fearing that the GOP may circle the wagons and further impede his ambitious economic recovery efforts.

Obama on the campaign trail, April. 4, 2008:

What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can't prejudge that because we don't have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve.

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity... I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Barack_on_torture.html
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/04/obama/

I think it should be obvious to a law professor that you don't know if a crime has been committed unless you investigate first. So investigate instead of sweeping it under the rug! Both Obama and Holder have been quoted proclaiming unequivocally that waterboarding is torture. Warterboarding was a sanctioned technique in the declassified CIA memos. Torture is illegal according the US Army Field Manual, Geneva Conventions, and many other codes. "No one is above the law". "Genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies?" Well torture is a really bad policy as well as a genuine crime, and no one is above the law, right? Even the CIA. But I am sure Obama and Co. don't want to piss off the spooks, whom they will need to help defend America, assist our allies, and win our overseas wars. Obama already nominated an outsider to head the CIA, probably insulting the senior staff who were looking for a promotion. He doesn't want to hurt morale any further, even at the cost of justice.

Goldman Sachs TARP payback

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103122382
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?guid=%7B18220CBF%2D2FAB%2D4943%2D9693%2D0336B2D16A01%7D&siteid=rss

"Clearly we have created banks that are too big to fail; should we be asking if they are also too big to exist?" - Simon Johnson

There was an interesting interview on Fresh Air yesterday with Simon Johnson, the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund during 2007 and 2008. He is a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management. He raised some interesting points about the bank bailout and the concerns over the Goldman TARP payback news. He also wrote a piece in The Atlantic describing the ways that the financial sector asserts its dominance over Washington, often at our expense.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice

Goldman (stock was near 200 before the crash, hit a low of 45 in Dec., and now is back to 120) claims that it took $10B in TARP money last year because the gov't twisted its arm - Treasury wanted to give aid to healthy banks as well, so that it wasn't obvious to the public which banks were the most troubled, in order to head off bank runs. Goldman claims it didn't really need a rescue, and now like Wells Fargo they are doing fine, so they want to repay their TARP loan. They want to do this to unfetter themselves from all the TARP-associated restrictions, namely compensation limits. With their competitors struggling, Goldman thinks it will be able to attract the top talent during this recession, so that they will be better poised to clean house once the economy rebounds. Basically they want to stack the deck, even if it puts the overall bank recovery and TARP program at risk. With the entire system still near the precipice, old habits die hard for greedsters like Goldman.

But TARP rules state that it is the GOVERNMENT, not the banks, that makes the final call about how and when institutions pay back their TARP loans. So this may become a showdown between the "bank oligarchy" and the Federal Government about who calls the shots during this precarious process. But in Goldman's case, it's more complex. Some think that the Feds would love to get Goldman's $10B returned, because it validates their bailout efforts and demonstrates that the financial industry may be on the mend. Also Geithner will have a fresh $10B to dole out to others. Seems good, right? Well, $10B is a drop in the bucket compared to the trillion dollars Bush/Obama have already injected into economic recovery efforts. More critically, if Goldman returns its loan to show that it is doing well, what does that say about other banks that don't? Will the public assume the worst about them? Even relatively healthy banks may not plan to repay TARP loans in the next 12 months, but now they may feel pressured to accelerate their plans, which may not be beneficial to their institution, clients, and shareholders. But to be fair, Goldman is not the first to try to repay its federal loans; 6 others banks have already done so, and others are considering it, though they're small regional banks and not household names with global influence like Goldman.

This pre-emptive strike is a big middle finger from Goldman to its competition... and to the gov't/taxpayers too. Many critics think that the Feds have already bent over backwards to help Wall Street. You'd think the least the banks could do is hold up their end of the bargain and play straight with us. Nope. Obama had to practically beg them to even accept conditional bailouts (with pay limits), and throw in huge incentives/guarantees for them to offer up their "troubled assets" to investors through the Geithner plan (many banks are still mulling it over). Trying to cover their own asses, the banks have fought us every step of the way, which has only worsened the financial crisis and delayed recovery. And now they have the hubris to think that beggars can be choosers. If the Feds let Goldman have its way now, it will show the public (and other banks) who's boss, as well as cast doubt on the gov'ts ability to better reform and regulate the financial sector in the future.

But we really shouldn't be surprised. Goldman is an investment bank, but during last fall's crash, it applied to become a bank holding company (like Citi and BofA), just so they could be eligible for Federal Reserve assistance. Morgan Stanley did the same, so now actually none of Wall Street's historic i-banks exist anymore. But Goldman is not a bank, it's a risk-taking brokerage house. Just because it bought a few struggling boondocks community banks, doesn't mean it should enjoy savings and loan status. Also, it's hard to argue that Goldman was healthy all along and just took TARP to be a team player. $13B of the initial $80B that went to help AIG meet its debt underwriting obligations went to Goldman.

We have discussed the "revolving door" between Congress and lobbyists, but what about the r-door between Wall Street executives and financial regulators? Clinton's Treasury Sec. Robert Rubin, W's Treasury Sec. Hank Paulson, Geithner's chief of staff, the current head of the CFTC, and others in government are ex-Goldman employees. There is no way they aren't getting preferential treatment from Washington. Oh, and did I forget to mention that Goldman was Obama's #2 campaign donor?

The American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital—a belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America’s position in the world.

Big banks, it seems, have only gained political strength since the crisis began. And this is not surprising. With the financial system so fragile, the damage that a major bank failure could cause—Lehman was small relative to Citigroup or Bank of America—is much greater than it would be during ordinary times. The banks have been exploiting this fear as they wring favorable deals out of Washington. Bank of America obtained its second bailout package (in January) after warning the government that it might not be able to go through with the acquisition of Merrill Lynch, a prospect that Treasury did not want to consider.

-Simon Johnson

Bank hysteria misplaced, equal justice for all?

A couple points for thought:

1) Is the bank crisis mostly imaginary, due to people's hysteria and exploiting panic?

The comments below are from a CNBC banking analyst, made before the good news about Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs came out.

http://seekerblog.com/archives/20090325/richard-bove-hysteria-about-banks-financial-condition/
In the last 3 months of 2008 depositors put $100 billion per month into new bank deposits - deposits which cost the banks half the interest rate of a year ago. 98% of loans are paying interest and principle. 97% of loans are also current. Home equity loans - most people think they are awful, no longer supported by real estate equity, etc. But the facts are that only 1.6% of home equity loans are non-performing. Almost all of the banks have positive cash flow - how can they go out of business given the cash flow. Exceptions are Citigroup and In Q1 - 2009 banks are going to show an operating profit. Loan losses are going to go up in credit cards and commercial real estate. But so far the loan losses are not enough to make the banks unprofitable. But note that in Q4 only .25% of CRE loans were in default (per the FDIC). That default rate is increasing.

The Financial Times and other economists don't seem to like the Obama-Geithner toxic asset plan either:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b3e99880-1991-11de-9d34-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/03/25/2009-03-25_the_new_geithner_plan_is_a_flop.html

2) Equal justice for all?
http://www.tcpjusticedenied.org/
A legal group recently conducted a very extensive analysis of indigent defense (court-appointed public defense for people who cannot afford any better) in all 50 states, in order to evaluate whether the Sixth Amendment ("In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall have the assistance of counsel for his defense") is being carried out. Counsels do get assigned, but if they are unable to provide adequate defense (due to excessive workload, poor skills/resources, and other disadvantages vs. prosecutors), then what is the point? The actual report is attached.
"You should not have a better shot at justice, a better opportunity for an adequate defense, depending upon who arrests you in this country or where you were when you were arrested or what court system a defendant winds up in," [co-author] Tim Lewis said. "This is a basic constitutional right." [...] The report goes into detail about the wide range of ways public defender systems fail poor defendants. Sometimes people don't get lawyers at all. Other times they get a lawyer who is so overworked and underpaid that there's no way the accused can get a real defense. -NPR

--------

On the Geithner plan, yeah, it looks like a massive wealth transfer from my tax-paying pocket to a bunch of assholes in the finance industry. Steiglitz wrote a NYT editorial attacking it as ersatz capitalism a couple weeks ago: http://www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=4209

Krugman had a fairly interesting editorial last week as well about making banking boring: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/opinion/10krugman.html The essential argument is that too many smart people are spending too much time pushing money around, rather than actually going out and building something. There's been a huge amount of backlash from the hardcore finance propellerheads arguing Krugman's data, and I honestly don't know enough about it to evaluate the strength of his empirical claims. But I remember being at Stanford and seeing a depressingly large number of really smart people going off to push money around on the plate in finance, rather than going into an industry where they could actually build something useful (and let's not even get started on the consultants).

There's this guy who went back through historical records looking at the percentage of Harvard's graduating class of MBAs each year and correlating that number with the stock market. Essentially what he discovered is that the percentage is negatively correlated with the long-term performance of the US equity market. That is, when ~10% of HBS grads are going into finance, the stock market goes up. When ~30-40% of HBS grads are going into finance, the market's headed for a big correction. It was in the high 30's for each of 2006 and 2007, as the market headed towards the crash. Here's the historical reports: http://www.soiferconsulting.com/soifer_consulting_articles.htm And here's a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reporting about it: http://www.slate.com/id/2109982/ It makes an interesting argument for regulating finance to be a lot less interesting, forcing those big brains can go do something more useful.

----

On the equal justice thing ...

First off, clearly the way indigent defense is handled in this country is shameful, and should be fixed. That said ..

I read over their recommendations for state and federal governments, and they all essentially seem to come down to "put more money into public defense." I think that's probably a reasonable thing to suggest, given the problems. But looking at their reporters and committee, the vast majority of whom seem to be deep in the legal profession, I can't help but wonder if this is really the most efficient way to solve this.

I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on tv, so I'm mostly full of it here. But it seems like some part of the reason that rich people get a better defense than poor people is because of the unbelievable complexity of the law. The advantage the rich have is not that they can actually bribe the court into a better settlement (I mean, ignoring the corruption cases, which are admittedly embarrassing but I think relatively unrepresentative of the overall problem). It's that they can hire a huge team of people to go through and look for loopholes: lawyers to look for weird holes in the law, investigators to look for weird holes in the evidentiary process (I heard that phrase on tv once!), etc.

Seems like the most efficient solution is to simplify the law. If these processes were easier to work through, without so many crazy holes and trapdoors and so forth, it might make it a lot easier to provide even representation to everyone. Some of that complexity is useful, but we need to start acknowledging as a nation that the complexity also has a huge adverse effect on our ability to build fairness. Admittedly, though, it would force a lot of lawyers to go find something useful to do with their big brains, so it seems unlikely we'll be seeing that recommendation from any lawyerly review panels.

--------

Thanks for the comments and I agree. Yes it would be good to kind of de-incentivize interest in the financial sector and creative investing. I mean, we'll always need fund managers, brokers, and such, but maybe in a more reasonable scale. What can we do though - salary limits? I think 900 people at Goldman Sachs had over $1M compensation last year. They are famous for high pay, so obviously debt-ridden Ivy League MBAers would want to go there (also it's the best place to try to take over the world). It would be better if we could attract more talent towards more tangible innovative pursuits, maybe even education. I guess it does take some creativity and intellect to play these futures markets and move debt around to make money. But yeah, it's clearly not real LABOR. I haven't had a chance to look at your links yet but the correlation is hilarious. Too bad we don't have enough data points to track how HBS US presidents affect the econ, but the first one doesn't look good.

Re: legal fairness - for some problems, throwing money at it can help a lot. Clearly we need to invest more in improving public defense. But if you're talking about re-writing the laws to make them less complex, it's a much bigger challenge than the tax code. Presidents have talked about de-mystifying the tax code for decades, but it's only gotten MORE complex. Heck the recent Obama stimulus bill created 300 changes to the tax code. So you are right that the privileged are better poised to exploit complexities and loopholes to their advantage, yet the long arm of the law comes down hard on lower-income recreational drug users or Earned Income Tax Credit abusers. But getting Congress to do anything large scale is obviously tough.

--------

Oh, so I guess in my excitement I missed explaining what I meant by limiting how interesting finance is and how many people get into it. I honestly don't believe that limiting pay really works ... it usually just forces people to get more creative about how they pay (like back when software firms didn't account for stock options as an expense, though clearly that was how they were paying their people). I think the fix is just more serious regulation of the finance industry: putting limits on how creative you can get with derivatives and related instruments, forcing these instruments to be standardized and over the counter, adding more restrictive capital requirements (and making the requirements counter-cyclical), forcing the markets to be more transparent, blah blah. Krugman's editorial is more detailed about it.

And yeah, I agree that you need more money in public defense. But when I see a report written by a bunch of lawyers which reaches the conclusion that the government should pay a lot more money to the legal profession, it sets off a big red siren in the back of my brain :)

--------

Yeah you're right about the compensation. Even with the "pay limits" imposed on bailed out bank execs, I am sure they are getting other forms of compensation. But just as people get creative about pay, they are doubly creative on derivatives and exotic investment schemes. It seems that the schemers are always one step (or many leaps) ahead of the regulators. But maybe after learning the lessons of this bubble, coupled with increased transparency & restrictions, it can only get better.

Sure lawyers griping about pay looks silly, but of course there is a wide range of pay in the legal profession. Public defenders right out of school get $45k, and 5 years exper. get $61k. Their associate DA opponents get at least $80k in most metro areas. A "general attorney" gets $99k on average in the private sector, and we know some can net much more. I suppose I should use the physician analogy - who would want to be a GP when a radiologist specialist can make 4X more money while maybe even less work? If we can't attract bright people to the dirtier, less glamorous jobs in law or medicine, then those areas will continue to underperform.

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Public_Defender/Salary
http://www.indeed.com/salary/Attorney.html

Gun show loophole

"60 Minutes" had a great segment on the gun issue tonight, and a lot of extra info on their site:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/09/60minutes/main4931769.shtml

Even as the stock market has plummeted, shares in Smith & Wesson have nearly quadrupled since November, and sales of guns are going through the roof. [...] Since November, the number of background checks nationally has jumped over 30 percent compared to last year. [...] People are stockpiling bullets. Three hours into [a gun] show, empty stock trays piled several feet high. Fear of Obama has actually created a national ammo shortage. -CBS

Based on 2002 stats, CA had 9.7 gun deaths per 100,000 residents. I wasn't sure if that was low or high, but you can imagine CA would have a lot of violence due to the gang conflicts in urban areas, as well as the drug trade on the border. Well, it turns out that ALL the Southern states have death rates that are higher. This of course correlates with their more lax gun purchasing laws.

They used VA as a case study, since it was home to the Cho-VT mass murder, and it has a bizarre gun show loophole. It is PERFECTLY LEGAL for a private citizen, who is not a registered gun dealer, to sell you or I an assault-style weapon at a gun show without a background check. 30 other states have the same loophole. Supposedly buyers are required to furnish an ID, but since these transactions go unnoticed/unregulated by the gov't, even that cannot be enforced. In an effort to expose and close this loophole, the brother of a VT victim bought an assault weapon at a VA gun show and refused to show his ID when asked. The seller said that was fine if he would throw in another $50 to the sale price. So as you would expect, people from many northern states (with stricter laws) migrate to VA gun shows to buy under these lax laws. Southern guns have been implicated in many crimes up north as well. Even with all the political momentum and public outcry after the VT slayings, the VA legislature failed to pass a law to close that loophole by 2 votes. The pro-gun side argued that Cho did not buy his weapons through this loophole, but the other side fears that the next Cho will.

Supposedly the NRA types are patriots who love America and will defend our freedoms (to bear arms). But why do they support a system where Mexican cartels or Al Qaeda terrorists can infiltrate the US and buy assault weapons no questions asked? Do they count on the diligence/racial profiling of the seller to refuse a brown-skinned buyer? And I guess we can't count on Washington to make much headway, because they are either pre-occupied with the economic crisis, or bought by the NRA. Many of the Dems who won seats from the GOP in the last 2 elections are just as pro-gun, if not more, and accepted contributions by the NRA. 60 House Dems wrote to Obama asking him to reverse his pledge to make the assault weapons ban permanent. But regardless of what Obama wants to do with this issue, it's clear that he won't have Congress' support in the forseeable future.

Taleban video of girl getting beaten in Pakistan

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6030741.ece
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7907070.stm
http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGNAU200902129412&lang=e
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102821443

Maybe you've heard the buzz surrounding a cell video of a teen Pakistani female getting flogged in public for allegedly going out in public with a male who was not her husband. She is being lightly held down by 2 men, and whipped on the buttocks with a small rope by a skinny, bearded man (maybe a cleric or tribal elder?). Dozens of onlookers are nearby as she pleads for mercy. In the end, she gets to her feet (on her own power), and is led away by a man, maybe her husband. The video was purportedly filmed in Swat Valley, a tribal region notorious for Taleban rule, some violence, and lack of central government influence. Over 1,200 people have died there since anti-government fighting intensified in 2007, at the hands of the Taleban, Pakistani Army, or US Air Force. Over 100,000 poor, uneducated civilians (people overlooked by their gov't since the founding of Pakistan) have been displaced as well. Maybe some even went to fight in Afghanistan or India, maybe not. But is it all worth it for 15,000 army troops to hunt down an estimated 3,000 militants there (out of a population of 1.5M)? Amnesty International says yes, because the Taleban have closed down over 170 schools (mostly girls' schools) and committed numerous human rights violations. But at what cost do we want to de-Talebanize Pakistan's tribal belt?

In fact, currently Pakistan has more or less agreed to a recent truce with the Swat Taleban, which hinged on whether President Zadari can authorize some amount of Shari'a as official law there. You might think that the Taleban want this in order to impose 12th Century society on the people there, and it may be partially the case. But actually their main objective is to create rapid Islamic courts in those communities to expedite their form of justice, since they are pretty much cut off from mainstream Pakistan and the legal system works at a snail's pace for them, if at all. This push for Shari'a is nothing new either, and even Benazir Bhutto's regime in the 1990s agreed to it in a lesser extent. It's just taken that damn long for the innefective government to do anything.

Getting back to the beating video... it made such waves among the secular Pakistanis that the Supreme Court (and the newly reinstated Chief Justice) may investigate. Thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets to protest the Taleban. Clearly the video content was offensive, but maybe we should get real here a second. Similar material is posted on YouTube daily by Westerners who supposedly are educated, free, peaceful, and respect human/women's rights. Nurses organize fights among handicapped patients, high school girls brawl with each other, and there have been 4 mass shootings in as many weeks. That Pakistani girl, absolutely not a criminal by our standards, did something that she knew to be forbidden and was publicly beaten/humiliated for it. I am not condoning it, but the lashing was tame and will not leave permanent damage, as far as I can tell. Women are getting killed in other Islamic nations for marital "misconduct" (our allies Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and even at home in the US: http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20090216/NEWS-US-BRIDGESTV-MURDER/). So the outrage is a bit disproportional, yet I am sure that right-wing media will relish another opportunity for Islam-bashing.

In the rural, poor, forgotten areas of our country (America's Swat), women and children are getting abused every day. If mighty, just America cannot prevent those injustices, how can dysfunctional Pakistan? Worldly, secular Pakistanis took to the streets to support that poor girl, but where was their outrage when their army's shells or US bombs were slaughtering their innocent countrymen in the mountains? Is it because those victims were ignorant Muslims, so they don't count? And Defense Sec. Gates just announced that he is recommending to Congress to change the Pentagon budget to spend more on drones and less on missile defense. Probably a more efficient use of resources, and those drones may help our fights in the Middle East - but they will surely kill innocents and promote the cowardly/uncaring image of the US military to the hearts and minds that we are supposedly attempting to win over. So how can we call them barbarians for lightly flogging a girl, when we and our Pakistani allies are displacing whole villages and killing children?

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/09/200898164428829256.html

Some skeptics suggest that the cell video may have even been staged, or the timing/distribution of it meant to persuade Pakistanis to reject the peace deal with the Swat Taleban. The West has already expressed much displeasure over the peace accord. We worry that if you give the Taleban an inch, they will take over that fragile nuclear nation. But history shows it's not the case. Islamists won recent elections in Palestine, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Iraq, and apart from the side-effects of war, none of those nations became disseminators of religious extremism. In fact it was the opposite for Nigeria (see Newsweek article at end). Congress is criticizing Obama's plan to support Pakistan (in order to help stabilize Afghanistan) because it doesn't go far enough to kick them in the pants so they take care of their "Islamist problem". But as we know from countless Cold War examples, it's risky to force others to fight our fights, or micromanage them to fight the way we want them to. Furthermore, it's folly to think that we can totally get rid of religious extremism, just as it's folly for Al Qaeda to think it could ever topple the West and establish a global caliphate. Ideology is usually folly, but it is a part of humanity, and it is futile for one ideology to attempt to exterminate another. Sure in a context vacuum it would be great if we could just magically crack down on extremist militants and human rights abusers with the stroke of a pen. But people who outlaw music and beat their wives for talking to another man are not our enemy like Osama is.

Unbiased religious freedom is a core American value, supposedly. As we all know, people have killed and died for religion for millennia, and will continue to do so. If an outside force tries to repress or take away a people's faith, no matter how "backwards" or "dangerous" that faith may seem to us, there will be violent repercussions. Sometimes the cost is worth it, other times it's not, especially when "victory" is so vague and maybe impossible. In that sense, the Obama White House (and our society) have not yet gotten past the intellectual ball and chain of Bush's War on Terror ideology. Look what happened to Egypt's Sadat when he tried to crack down on the Islamic Brotherhood (a peaceful political rival), maybe at the behest of the West. Dictator-general Musharraf, with carte-blanche Bush support, couldn't defeat the Pakistani extremists, so I doubt his corrupt, squabbling, civilian successors will either. It's like the Jenga game. You need to make small, delicate changes slowly, or the whole structure comes crashing down. The more you rush, the harder it gets. And the more you take, the harder it gets to take more. So we should tread with real caution. But of course US politicians work on the election cycle, and may not have the cultural sensitivity and patience for a drawn-out effort to reduce Taleban influence promoting global Jihad. They want a quick-fix, like de-Ba'athification - and we know how that turned out.

We must distinguish between violent Islam (that isn't even religious actually, but uses Islam as a pretense and motivation for bloodshed) and the fundamentalist Islam that may repulse our sensibilities, but probably won't cause much geopolitical instability. At least no more than similar Western religious extremism like Hasidic Judaism, Koresh-style cult Christianity, and Scientology. There is a cultural class struggle that underlies this religious struggle though. Most nations that have Islamist insurgency problems are failed states and/or ruled by rich, corrupt dictators. These dictators and their affiliates want to hold onto power at all costs, so of course they oppose any grassroots Islamic challenge, and will leverage petrodollars or become puppets of the West if it helps their cause. It's no coincidence that many terrorists are Western-educated and from privileged backgrounds, just like the dictators they fight against. They've seen the "free world" creeping in, and the difference is they prefer the fundamentalist Muslim alternative instead of embracing/accepting the West. I'm not judging what is wrong or right, but just stating a possible explanation. As one Pakistani said on NPR, in his view the Taleban are the "new Bolsheviks", trying to help the poor and restore some moral decency from the decadent, phony-Muslim elites. Of course morality and righteousness are very subjective. But people are not that gullible - Pashtuns support gangsters and despots in the Taleban because their own government (and the West by extension) has an even worse track record with them. Same goes with Palestinians and Hamas/Fatah. But that doesn't make them terrorists or accessories to terrorism. In fact they're pragmatists, and the Islamic extremism just tags along as negative baggage. They believe in food for their families; not 40 virgins in a martyr's paradise.

It's confusing when we condemn some fundamentalism but tolerate others. It's hypocritical when we commit human rights abuses but seek to punish Muslims who do the same - and only the Muslims in unfriendly regimes (i.e. China and Saudi get a pass but Sudan and Iran do not). Of course there are varying degrees of criminality, but it's better if we can stay above the fray. And Obama's message that America is not at war with Islam gets droned out by the furor over our air strikes and such.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/187093

Few people in the [Swat] valley would say that the current truce is their preferred outcome. In the recent election, they voted for a secular party. But if the secularists produce chaos and corruption, people settle for order.... The Pakistani government is hoping that this agreement will isolate the jihadists and win the public back to its side. This may not work, but at least it represents an effort to divide the camps of the Islamists between those who are violent and those who are merely extreme... The Predator strikes have convinced much of the local population that it's under attack from America and produced a nationalist backlash. A few Qaeda operatives die, but public support for the battle against extremism drops in the vital Pashtun areas of Pakistan. Is this a good exchange?
-F Zakaria, Newsweek

Mass shootings, politics, and the NRA

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/04/04/2009-04-04_who_is_jiverly_voong_aka_jiverly_wong_co.html

Jiverly Voong/Wong - said to be Viet but a strange name - probably a pseudonym. I don't know when we will finally tire of these attacks enough to force our leaders to stand up to the NRA and regulate arms better. Just this year (and we're only in April) more people have died from mass shootings than the year of Columbine. We don't have to be Germany, but I don't think it's a stretch to make it harder to own a gun than obtaining a driver's license.

Despite all the attacks, the Obama admin. (despite earning an "F" rating from the NRA's PAC) is too gutless/preoccupied to even challenge Congress to restore the Brady Bill (assault weapons ban). I have no idea why the NRA is so powerful, but they even have ultra-liberal Pelosi from SF (a city that tried and failed to ban handguns in a recent vote, similar to the DC law that was struck down by the High Court last year) eating out of their hand.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/some-obama-promises-get-punted-2009-04-02.html
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/reid-joins-pelosi-in-opposing-weapons-ban-revival-2009-02-26.html

The administration official said the White House has tried at every turn to fulfill the five-day comment promise, but some timing issues have surfaced on select legislation. The president has not publicly broken his promise to reinstate the assault-weapons ban, which is strongly opposed by the National Rifle Association. Still, the administration has taken a hands-off approach.

When Attorney General Eric Holder discussed the reinstatement of the ban in late February, the White House deferred comment to the Justice Department. Newsweek reported recently that White House aides subsequently told Justice Department officials to drop the issue. Even if Obama were to pursue the gun ban, it doesn’t have the votes to pass Congress.

-TheHill.com
So if we can't even stop semi-automatic military weapons from sale in some states, I doubt we can do much on concealed handguns. The GOP said that in the War on Terror, sometimes civil liberties have to be curtailed in the name of public safety/national security. Same goes for gun violence then; it may be our Constitutional right to bear arms, but not at the expense of public good. And it's getting even worse when thousands of American arms are being smuggled into Mexico to fuel their drug violence that has claimed thousands. Legitimately or not, our government and its affiliates have given/sold arms to conflicts around the world too, sometimes arming both sides. The US has jostled with Russia for top arms dealer status since WWII.

NRA background:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29953973/
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/27/supreme_court_strikes_down_dc_handgun

Gun control activists say they are baffled by the sway the gun lobby has over Congress. They argue the NRA no longer dictates election outcomes and that the group inflates its own importance.

"They operate on the principle of fear. They're trying to hold some mythical power from the early '90s over the heads of leadership that I think is totally irrelevant to what's going on today, but still has some long legs," said Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Helmke said NRA's recent efforts to demonstrate its clout are partly "a sign of desperation. They realize this is probably their last gasp in terms of trying to be the force that they used to be."
-MSNBC.com