Office of the Independent Blogger

Either President Bush has recognized his own inability to achieve anything, or he’s attempting to pander to “internationalists” in this election year, because there is no other explanation for this latest comments about Israel.

President Bush insisted anew Monday that any Mideast cease-fire be conditioned on a wider agreement and said he would look to the United Nations to act to establish “a long-lasting peace, one that is sustainable.” As Israel cut short a halt in bombing and launched new strikes in southern Lebanon, Bush spelled out a series of what he called “clear objectives” to accompany a halt in the fighting. “Iran must end its financial support and supply of weapons to terrorist groups like Hezbollah. Syria must end its support for terror and respect the sovereignty of Lebanon,” Bush said in a speech at the Port of Miami.

The UN should work to establish a long-lasting peace? Heaven help us all — it was the UN’s bumbling that forced other countries to create Israel in the first place! I’m no critic of Israel’s existence, but without the UN’s incompetence in dealing with the land turned over to them by the British, these problems might’ve never happened. Of course, the same can be said for French, English and American involvement in the area, but these countries, at least, have some track record of success. George Bush counting on the UN to bring some sort of peace to the Middle East is like a Fiscal Conservative relying on the Republicans to balance the budget. The President’s job is the President’s job, and he shouldn’t be pawning off Leader of the Free World to Kofi Annan, for all of our sakes!

Bush, in addition, has gotten his UN resolution for the Iranians.

The U.N. Security Council passed a weakened resolution Monday giving Iran until Aug. 31 to suspend uranium enrichment or face the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions. Iran immediately rejected the council action, saying it would only make negotiations more difficult concerning a package of incentives offered in June for it to suspend enrichment. “All along it has been the persistence of some to draw arbitrary red lines and deadlines that has closed the door to any compromise,” said Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Javad Zarif.

“This tendency has single-handedly blocked success and in most cases killed proposals in their infancy. “This approach will not lead to any productive outcome and in fact it can only exacerbate the situation.” Because of Russian and Chinese demands, the text was watered down from earlier drafts, which would have made the threat of sanctions immediate. The draft now essentially requires the council to hold more discussions before it considers sanctions.

This is, obviously, weak even by UN standards, and the Iranian response is the predictable one. Nobody expected the Iranians to say, post-resolution, “Well, the West is serious!” After they continue to stonewall, we will see where the resolutions post-resolution and post-deadline go, and from there we’ll know just which way the Iranians blow. Right now, things aren’t looking particularly good. Worse still for the President, as far as recent developments, he is facing staunch resistance to his “Signing Statements” from the ABA. Let me just say — I think it is so dishonest to attach signing statements to bills saying, “I intend to violate this law if a or b occur.” Veto the damned bill if you must, but don’t play the role of King.

Finally, I’d like to refer everyone here. The world’s refusal to take Global Warming seriously — even by those who pretend that they do — is a disgrace.

Congratulations, Congo, you just had an election! Unfortunately, a demagogue political is boycotting it, an ex-”rebel” fighter is on the ballot, and your militias still rage. However, that doesn’t take away the importance of your Democratic progress, so remember: America didn’t stop killing Indians for a hundred years, didn’t quit slavery for a hundred years, and didn’t stop tolerating miltias for a hundred years. Two lessons to be learned from that: one, progress is slow, but good; two, you should probably work harder at being peaceful, because, when your country is in shambles and your continent’s society needs leadership, it’s better to take the dove by the beak and place her on a pedastal than it is to charge the bull by the horns and shoot it when it fights back. Value Democracy and feed it its rice, and things’ll go from there.

In the LA Times today, there’s a piece about Bill Gates and his funding of education. It’s, overall, a positive look at Bill Gates’ contributions, but there’s a bit I found interesting and disagreeable.

The Gates Foundation’s plan to promote small high schools has also run into unexpected obstacles. The foundation aims to promote higher standards and closer relationships between students and teachers, and indeed, according to the foundation’s own evaluations, students in the new mini-schools have better relationships with teachers, do somewhat better in English and have better graduation rates than those in large schools. However, the same evaluations also show that students in the small schools are learning significantly less math than their peers in the big schools.

Some districts that took Gates’ money to downsize their schools are now backtracking. The Denver school district, a pioneer recipient of Gates funding, got $1 million to convert its 1,100-student Manual High School into three mini-schools in 2001. As a consequence, electives were cut back, as were advanced placement courses, foreign language courses, choir, debate and athletic teams. As college-bound students, athletes and other disgruntled pupils transferred out, enrollments at the Manual mini-schools plunged by nearly 50%, along with student achievement and the graduation rate. Denver closed the small schools this year, and Manual High School is being reconsolidated.

In light of its experiences, the Gates Foundation seems chastened and apparently has recognized that curriculum (what students are taught) and instruction (the quality of teachers) may be no less important than school size. Perhaps, with its deep expertise in technology, the foundation will think about investing in the development of innovative, interactive software to transform the teaching of mathematics and science in the nation’s classrooms, from kindergarten through grade 12. And, by establishing an endowment fund, the foundation could safeguard the future of urban Catholic schools, which have been a gateway to the middle class for so many poor and working-class children.

I think it’s foolish to say that every large school should be broken up, and that’s the only qualm I have with Gates. There’s nothing wrong with small schools, but not every school has to be to be successful. Otherwise, Bill Gates is a hero for devoting his funds to academia.

I say, my dear lads, someone tell Harry Truman the big news — Republicans have passed a minimum wage increase! Except, it’s not that simple. They coupled it with an cut in the estate tax. Clearly, this is a ploy by the do-nothing Republicans to appear as if they do-something, and it’s merely a way for them to be able to say, “Hey, we tried to pass a minimum wage increase!” when they didn’t. Passing this bill would cost the government three hundred billion dollars in lost estate taxes. Isn’t that grand? Several thousand times so!

Needless to say, Democrats won’t pass this, and that’s the right thing to do, considering our overall budget and the integrity of our legislative process. Color me idealistic, but there’s something absolutely disgusting about the dishonest insertion of something into a bill so as to deliberately kill it for political purposes. It’s an attempt to rob Harry S. Truman to pay Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Harry Reid won’t stand for it.

In other economics news, the Economy’s growth is slowing. The only obvious answer is to cut taxes!

Tony Blair and George Bush have finally come to terms on a plan they’ll be sending the UN to have a multinational peacekeeping force in Lebanon, and now it’s a matter of it being approved by the UN, Israel and Lebanon. It’s good news, but diplomacy is difficult and moves at a snail’s pace, so we’ll see how far it goes. No amount of strong-words in a UN Resolution will force Israel to stop fighting if Syria gets involved, for instance.

In the National Journal today, there’s a disheartening story about possible advances in the war against poverty.

How would this be for a story? Imagine that researchers in Silicon Valley have come up with a miraculous new machine. It isn’t much to look at, just a black box that sits in a cupboard somewhere. Nobody can explain how it works, but it does work, and it is a pretty remarkable piece of kit. Plug it in and every economy in the world instantly works at a higher level of efficiency. With the machine switched on, everywhere you look, everywhere in the world, economies are producing more, at no additional expense of effort or resources. And because they are producing more, people can consume more. Hyperventilating economists check their math and blink in amazement.

Just powering up this free-lunch machine, they say, is going to lift maybe half a billion people out of poverty over the next 15 years. It is going to increase incomes in the world’s poorest countries by around $200 billion a year, or roughly four times what rich countries jointly give them in aid. And it doesn’t cost anybody a cent. Just the opposite, because the rich countries benefit big-time as well. This box is the best thing ever, they say. It’s worth trillions, for heaven’s sake — and the inventors are proposing to give it to humankind free.

But hang on. The world’s governments decide they had better have a meeting about this. They are going to need to talk it all over, for about five years. Let’s not rush into anything, they say. Can we be sure this box is really such a good idea? There is a lot to discuss. How are the gains to be shared among countries, for instance? That will need some tough negotiating. And, country by country, what if some people gain more than others? That would be awkward. Come to think of it, if the world is suddenly going to be more efficient at making, well, everything, then perhaps we won’t need as many farmers, say, or textile workers, as we used to. There might be some temporary unemployment. That would be bad.

So the governments have their five-year meeting. They pledge now and then that the machine will be connected up shortly, once all the issues have been resolved. They reaffirm again and again their commitment to confront the scourge of global poverty (as they call it), and say they understand that switching on the machine is the best and biggest thing they can do for the poor. And then one day they up and announce that, on reflection, they don’t want the machine at all. It is a good idea in principle, they have concluded, but in practice it is all too difficult. They have decided, reluctantly, to let half a billion people molder on in poverty. Better forget those billions — sorry, trillions — of dollars in higher living standards. Each and every government makes a point of blaming the others for the decision.

But in the end, they see things the same. Unanimously, they vote to destroy the machine and tell the inventors to burn the blueprints. Now, am I wrong to think that this would be a story? People would probably be interested in it, and would be scandalized as well, don’t you think? Evidently not. You probably missed it, but this very story was in the news this week. The Washington Post had a report about it, and judged it unworthy of the front page. It ran on page one of the business section, where it was given less prominence than a profile of a well-known expert on conserving energy. (He owns an interesting fuel-efficient house in Colorado.)

How could this happen? How could it come about that anybody who blinked would have missed the news that the Doha Round of trade talks had collapsed — and that even the people who noticed it mostly just shrugged and moved on? One reason is that the talks have indeed dragged on and on, and tracking the deviations of this epic of bureaucratic procedure would test the zeal of the most monomaniacal trade-policy wonk. But another reason, you might think, is that I am grossly exaggerating the whole thing, that the tale is not a clear-cut case of outrageous government incompetence, verging on criminality, as I am suggesting. But this would be incorrect. I am not hyping the evil and the idiocy of what has just happened. If anything, I am playing it down.

Liberal trade works exactly like a resource-saving technology. So, it makes exactly as much sense for a country to deny itself the advantages of open borders to trade as it would to deny itself the use of personal computers — another disruptive technology that shares its gains unequally within and among nations. Where my analogy goes wrong is that each government has its own liberal-trade machine, which it can switch on independently if it chooses. No international agreement is needed for a country to unilaterally lower its tariffs or cut its farm subsidies. If it does this, most of the gains (lower prices, lower taxes) flow to its own citizens — but there are benefits for foreigners, too. For the past five years, each government has been refusing to switch on its own machine unless other governments switch on theirs first. Why should the United States help Europe and Asia, if Europe and Asia won’t help the United States? And vice versa. In the end, this week, the governments agreed that the easiest thing was to forget the whole idea. When you put it like that, it just sounds crazy. It is crazy. Nonetheless, this is precisely what happened.

What a shame that the complexity and dreary familiarity of the always-in-crisis global trade talks blind people — newspaper editors and expert commentators, as well as ordinary citizens who rely on the experts to tell them what is going on — to this colossal scandal of wasted opportunity and abdicated responsibility. Governments have chosen this course, obviously, because it is the line of least political resistance.

Indeed, they are responding to the demands made upon them. They are listening to the people, or to some of them, at least. This weird ideological schizophrenia, according to which new technology, however disruptive, is good — we want as much of that as possible — whereas liberal trade is dangerous, unjust, politically challenging, even economically harmful, is surely one of the great mysteries of our age. Our leaders blithely accept it. What a price the world, especially the poorest part of the world, will pay.

Reviving the talks will be difficult, although somebody will doubtless try at some point. (Keep an eye open: The story will be tucked away, I expect, inside the business pages.) There are things that the United States could do right now to restart the process if it chose (see p. 59 in this week’s issue). But the United States is no more to blame in all this — actually, less so — than the European Union, the most shameless plotter against the interests of its citizens, or some of the coming-of-age middle-income developing countries, whose governments have lately decided that a fine show of resistance to economic reality is a mark of geopolitical maturity. (Sadly, they are right about that.) Wherever you look, in the United States or abroad, you see capitulation to special interests and an utter lack of ambition and leadership.

The saddest part is that the process itself is no longer mitigating that problem but compounding it. The World Trade Organization and its precursor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, were designed as a forum in which governments could demonstrate to their electorates that trade liberalization was a win-win game. Rather than convincing voters that lowering their own tariffs is good for them (as it is), the process relied on showing that other countries would lower their tariffs as well. The model was based on an exchange of “concessions” — trade reform as shared sacrifice. It was intellectually dishonest but, undeniably, it worked. In the decades after 1945, the world moved from comprehensively managed trade to a more liberal trading order, with fabulous economic results.

Big exceptions remained — notably agriculture, ever the sticking point — but nobody was complaining. The system was apt to wobble from time to time, as you might expect, because it was based on a lie. But for a good few decades it effectively mobilized export interests against groups demanding protection, and the politics worked. Progress was slowing even before the Doha Round. But this week the “exchange of concessions” model finally fell in on itself. The WTO process is no longer assisting liberalization. It is blocking it and, worse, legitimizing the failure. The world has settled for less-than-liberal trade. It is a multitrillion-dollar error; a crime, truly, against the world’s poor; and, it seems, a story barely worth reporting.

I’m passing it along, as a story like this does bear repeating. I think, for what it’s worth, that only short-sighted leaders would see an advance in trade and say, “But, it might cause a little unemployment now in Paris, so we just can’t do it!” It’s the fear of the general public, and no politician is fit for his office if he feels it. It’s one thing to take your constituents in mind: it’s another to be afraid of them.

On Lebanon: President Clinton is calling for a cease-fire, too, and says Israel has gone too far. That is all the news for now, but needless to say, I agree with the President.

Here in Chicago, we’ve got big, national news, and that’s a “Big Box” Law aimed at Wal-Mart, specifically, but that affects other companies like Target, too. I don’t have much love for Wal-Mart, but I absolutely despise the idea of passing a law aimed at forcing a certain type of store to pay a certain wage. If you want a store in Chicago to have a certain minimum wage, pass a new minimum wage law.

That’s it for now.

The situation in Lebanon is the same as it’s been for the last week, and so I’d like to, instead, talk about Senator Lieberman for a moment. Bill Clinton has gone out of his way to endorse him, and Lieberman is trailing his primary opponent. Joe has vowed to stay in the race as an “Independent Democrat” if he loses the Primary, but I don’t think he will. The powers-that-be simply won’t allow it, and he’d be talked out of it, I think. It’s possible that he’ll lose the Primary and run as a third party in the General, but I doubt it. That doesn’t happen very often in today’s day, and iron-clad promises aren’t strong enough to resist the pull of the Party.

Regardless, it’s a shame that Lieberman is going through this, and I compare it to Arlen Specter’s situation in Pennsylvania. I don’t think it’s unfair to Lieberman, per se. You see, he’s a candidate with money and an entrenched base, and this is a Democracy. People have every right to challenge him, and if they beat him, all the power to them. I, frankly, wish Lieberman were a smoother man in public relations, both because it might’ve helped Al Gore in 2000 and because it might help him now. I just kind of feel bad for him, because he’s been engulfed in a War with the Democratic Party’s Liberal wing when he is, in fact, about as Liberal as they come. It’s the Lyndon Johnson treatment.

I’m willing to say that, if Lieberman were opposed by a stronger candidate (not politically stronger, but as far as Liberalism goes) I’d support him. But his opponent just doesn’t do it for me, as he’s not quite as Liberal as Joe (but nevermind that: he opposes the war, so he must be Liberal) or as smart, to boot. If Lieberman’s Joementum sputters to a halt, I’ll be very sorry to see it, and I hope that, if he loses, he doesn’t drag it out by insisting on running as a third party.

Israel is “ruling out a rapid truce” at the moment while the United States is looking at forging one. The American goal, at the moment, is said to be a cease-fire consisting of an International NATO Force patrol, Lebanese control of southern Lebanon, and a prisoner exchange-that-isn’t. Overall, I approve of the plan, but I am disheartened to read that the government has yet to approve a prisoner exchange-that-is. You see, the US wants Hezbollah to give up the prisoners it captured, but has yet to say that it’ll ask Israel to trade a prisoner or two for their men. Guns and bombs simply don’t have the leverage necessary to force Hezbollah’s hand: a couple of captured men do.

Otherwise, it makes sense that Lebanon should control Lebanon (it is a Democracy, after all, and is entitled to its sovereignty), although I’m not sure that Lebanese troops couldn’t do the job of keeping the peace better than NATO. If we needed to maintain our country’s security, I’d prefer American troops than Canadian marines, wouldn’t you? I’ll bet the Lebanese feel the same way.

It’s a rather busy today, between soccer practice (I am a keeper) and working at my school in the morning (I take care of the cows), and so I’d like to redirect you to a couple of articles I enjoyed this morning. First is this about biofuel.

Reasonable people say they’d like to tax or regulate carbon, but alas it’s politically impossible. They invoke President Bill Clinton’s humiliating failure to secure an energy tax in 1993. They declare that carbon taxes or regulations would cripple the economy. These reasonable defeatists should meet Vinod Khosla, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist who bet big and early on Google and Amazon. Khosla’s current bet is on next-generation ethanol. He believes, with all the passion of a techno-evangelist, that we can get most of our vehicle fuel from the Midwest rather than the Middle East, and we can do so simply by growing it. He shows doubters a photograph of a bamboo-like crop that sprouts 11 feet in just one year. If South Dakota were planted with this stuff, our dependence on Saudi fundamentalists would fall — and so would our output of climate-warming carbon.

Khosla has made a fortune betting on technology, and he’s invested tens of millions of his own dollars in the futuristic ethanol that will replace today’s corn-based version. Yet he’s the first to say that we can’t address climate change with technology alone. Government must deliver the right tax and regulatory fixes to persuade people to adopt ethanol. So the first lesson that Khosla teaches is that politicians have to act. But the second lesson is more pleasant: The government fixes that Khosla seeks are not actually so burdensome. Khosla wants government to require auto companies to make more flex-fuel cars that run on gasoline or ethanol. Well, thousands of flex-fuel cars are sold in Brazil, and they’re barely more expensive than ordinary ones. Khosla wants government to require big gasoline distributors to install ethanol pumps at a tenth of their gas stations. Well, it costs less than $50,000 to convert a pump. Assuming 20,000 conversions, this is a $1 billion problem — a flyspeck on a $12 trillion economy.

The other government policy that Khosla wants is a reform of the ethanol subsidy. At the moment, the subsidy is worth 51 cents per gallon, but Khosla proposes that it be lower when oil prices are high and vice versa. By switching to a variable subsidy, the government would insure ethanol investors against the danger that OPEC might cut prices to drive them out of business. Subsidies would rise and fall, but the long-run cost of this reform would be about zero.

Don’t you love creative solutions and innovation? If George Bush’s buddies in Halliburton can screw up our foreign policy so bad, maybe it’s time we turn to Al Gore (in 08!) and have his friends at Google fix things.

In Israel, the War is said estimated to last about ten more days, and in my view, it’s way too many. Alas, George Bush would rather use his clout to allow Israel to destroy a growing Democracy, much like he’d rather use his influence to limit stem cell research, and to change NASA’s mission statement, removing “to understand and protect our home planet” from the agency’s motto. For those of you who look at that and feel cynical indignation, don’t; all he’s trying to do is make sure they focus on the right things, such as the future colonization of Mars!

To the moon, America!

Britain is rightly breaking with the United States over the Israel-Lebanon War (citing Israel’s disproportionate and uncalled for assault of Lebanon) while Syria is sending a double-edged message: first, they’ve announced their desire to talk to us about a cease-fire in Lebanon; second, they’re threatening to intervene is Israel invades Lebanon. I’m not sure what to make of that threat, as Israel’s already invaded Lebanon. I think it’s diplomatic posturing aimed at keeping Israel in shallow Lebanon rather than deep inside it, although it’s clearly serious. I have no doubt that Syria would intervene if Israel went too far, and I think that “too far” isn’t that far off from Damascus. Iran, for its part, is saying that Israel has sealed its doom and should pack its bag and leave the Middle East before it’s too late. This is typical of Islamacist rhetoric — “You have ensured your downfall!” — but it should be taken as serious as Syria is.

All I can do, right now, is observe the world and jot notes, and from my point of view, we’re witnessing something that could lead to the most dramatic unraveling of peace since 1914. Before it gets too far, Condi Rice needs to work some magic, but before that can happen, George Bush needs to ask her to. I’m not so sure that his mission has been “End the conflict,” but it should be. Oh, I wish I were a fly on the wall in the White House Situation Room right now, because I wonder how many members of the Administration are telling Bush that Syria would never intervene, or that, if they did, it wouldn’t amount to much because Israel’s strong. I’d like to know who is telling Bush to let Israel fight it out, because “a show of force” can “send a message” better than words can. Of course, I suspect that everyone in the Cabinet is giving him the wrong advice, and he’s taking it happily. We’ll see what happens, but for now, I’ve got a couple other things to talk about.

The independent investigation into Chicago Police Torture in the 1980s (I mentioned it weeks ago, here) ended, and you can read about the report here. No one is going to be prosecuted, unfortunately, and I’m confident that it’ll never happen again on anything resembling a widespread basis (as Illinois has laws that are effective at preventing it, namely mandatory videotaping of interrogations) but it’s important to note what happened, and I’m glad that the Chicago Reader brought the matter to my attention before it became big news. Similarly, I’m thankful for their latest feature story about recycling in Chicago, and it’s a good read about what works and what doesn’t. I recommend it.

Now, about Stem-Cells: a Congresswoman is calling Bush’s veto of it “cynical” and claimed it’s a political motivation. While I’m sure that didn’t hurt him when he took it into consideration, I know he genuinely opposes the measure. That is the problem!

Israel’s still going at it, ripping Lebanon apart and invading with tanks, occupying villages and blasting away at a country whose government and general public had nothing to do with the kidnapping of two soldiers. Our government continues to back Needless Warfare, and it’s getting harder and harder to predict when the conflict will end. Fortunately, says Israel, the incursion will be limited in scope! And if you believe that, I’ve got a one-week window to push you through, as I’ve learned that all matters of War and Peace have been in a sort of spinning cycle during Bush’s term; in the Middle East, especially. I can say that I believed the report earlier in the week that said Israel would have a one-week window for further conflict; I’m not so sure anymore. This isn’t an Administration that values deadlines, or that sticks to its word. Its guns, sure, but not its words.

For further on the spin cycle, how many times have we “secured” Baghdad only to have to retake it later? However many times it’s been, add another to it, as the Military says that it will redivert resources to meeting the goal of securing Baghdad. Pretty hard to “turn the corner” in a country when you can’t “hold the capital.” Add a President who refuses to take diplomacy seriously, and we’ve got a Groundhog Day Foreign Policy.

Little noticed though the news was nationally, I find it to be of great significance that Ralph Reed lost out on his bid to be nominated for Georgia’s Liutenant Governorship. Reed was defeated, but instead of being gracious in his rejection, he took the loss, turned it around and aimed the blame toward John McCain. We all know my feelings about the Senator from Arizona, and I think that this move by Ralph Reed signals a shift in the Right’s thinking. Christian Conservatives are turning on McCain again, and, if that occurred (as it seems it is), McCain hasn’t a chance at being nominated for the Presidency. Unfortunately, the entire GOP lineup, so far, looks like a crapshoot, with Bill Frist as the most Moderate of all, but I’d prefer a boot to John McCain. Hell, I’d prefer George W. Bush to John McCain, as their difference is that Bush is straightforward about his Conservatism while McCain covers up his warts with makeup that’ll wash off in the Potomac.

Whichever poison you prefer, it’s neat to note that McCain’s a snake nearing a Reed, and only the Lord (as told by Pat Robertson) knows how that will end, but I am predicting that the merciless snake from Arizona will find fierce critics behind the Reed.

At the Department of Homeland Security — a department that should’ve never seen the light of day — fraud runs rampant, and so does incompetence. Congressional investigators have concluded that the DHS “wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars” in 2005 on iPods, dog booties, beer-making equipment and designer jackets. At this stage, I’m tempted to joke that this is the natural result of Republican government mixed with human ignorance, but instead, I’ll ask a legitimate question: Is Nancy Reagan running the DHS? (Take two points if you get the reference; if not, listen up. Reagan was notorious for accepting expensive gifts, mainly designer clothes, and littering them about.)

We all have political issues that we care about that can be considered niche issues. You know, the things that don’t make the nightly news, things that don’t cross a candidate’s lips. Well, the situation in the Northern Marianas island, by which the minimum wage doesn’t apply in a US territory and people are working for what amount to slave wages, is one I despise, and, as I’ve written in the past, helped push me over the edge on Tom DeLay.

Well, Democrats proposed that the minimum wage be given them, and Republicans didn’t bite. Democrats also proposed awhile back that the minimum wage be raised here: Republicans refused. Now they’re flip-flopping.

House of Representative Republicans on Thursday introduced their own version of legislation increasing the federal minimum wage. The “Minimum Wage Competitiveness Act of 2006,” introduced by Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) and 13 other Republicans, would raise the minimum wage from the current rate of $5.15 an hour to $7.15 an hour one year and 60 days after the enactment of the bill. Minimum wage legislation has previously been introduced by House Democrats, and in the Senate. The bill also includes a minimum wage increase for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a territory of the US. The minimum wage of the Mariana Islands is only $3.15 an hour. Under the proposed legislation, the Marianas would receive an increase of 50 cents per hour every six months, until the minimum wage was equal to that of the US, which would take approximately four years.

The Mariana Islands are subject to US laws, but are currently exempt from US minimum wage requirements and most provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Republicans’ minimum wage bill would apply the Fair Labor Standards of 1938 to the CNMI, in hopes of improving dire working conditions. Some 30,000 temporary “guestworkers” — predominately women — from China, the Philippines, and Thailand work in the Northern Mariana Islands, but are reduced to little more than indentured servants due to the high recruitment fees and the low minimum wage.

Since 1995 at least 29 different bills regarding labor and immigration issues in the Northern Mariana Islands have been introduced. Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff worked on behalf of the Marianas government and its garment industry to ensure that Congress would not pass laws to improve wages and working conditions for the Marianas workers. Tom DeLay, one of Abramoff’s staunch Congressional allies, helped in keeping any bills regarding the Marianas from reaching the House floor, according to Rep. Miller, and even called the Marianas “a Petri dish of ‘capitalism’.”

Funny how Republicans can say such a thing about living human beings, while disregarding stem-cell research as “murder” and an experiment “playing God.” Disgusting, more like, but about these proposals: I’m not sure that Republicans want them to pass. I’m willing to bet that this is a trap, as they know that Democrats simply won’t like the “50 cents every six months” proposal, and might vote against it because of that. Additionally, Democrats might oppose it because of the one year schedule for the minimum wage increase here to take effect.

I, personally, support this measure. It is likely the best that can be done at this moment in time, and taking this action would be in the best interest of everyone involved. It’s the best we’ll get until we take back the Congress and yes, that does say awful things about Republicans (in regard to the Marianas). I do understand, however, the need to take time for the minimum wage increase here to take effect, as businesses do need time to adjust, so I understand that. It’s the continued selling-out of those Islands that bug me.

Morally, too, I am appalled by a Las Vegas law making it illegal to feed a homeless person for free in a park. I’m tempted to go to Vegas with a sandwich in protest, but I’m glad that, at least, this measure is absolutely unenforceable, because it’s so stupid and senseless.

To share a little bit of myself with you, let me say that I love Eastern Europe. I’d rather visit Kiev than Paris, much like I’d rather be in Moscow than Jamaica, and Alaska than Hawaii. I simply adore these regions of the world for their natural beauty and history. I’m sad to see that the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine is encountering serious problems as elections have caused rifts between the branches of government. I, for one, admired Yuschenko’s handling of the Revolution, but I wish he were better at government. However, I don’t entirely fault him, as Democracy is far more turbulent than dictatorship. I simply wish the best for the Ukraine in all its days to come.

Now, to close, Israel is massing an army on Lebanon’s border, and appears poised to attack. I am discouraged by this news, as there’s no reason, in my view, to assault Lebanon like this. It’s awful, and I think Bush is spineless to allow it, or idiotic to condone it. Both. Yeah, both.

Yesterday, I had my site featured in Slate’s Blogger page. Given that it was an unsolicited notice of my website, the mention was awesome, and it was doubly so since Slate is my favorite newsmagazine. Now, allow me to shift over to Fred Kaplan’s latest article, found here, and on the subject of the current War.

The opportunity for a nonmilitary solution (the phrase “peaceful solution” may be going too far) is golden right now but not for long. In a remarkable statement, the Saudi foreign minister criticized Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks as “unexpected, inappropriate, and irresponsible acts.” So did the leaders of Egypt, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Some criticized Israel’s response as “disproportionate,” or they urged “restraint.” But these caveats seemed almost pro forma. Rarely, if ever, have Arab leaders so condemned other Arabs on an issue of conflict with the Jewish State. Yet there’s something else that binds those Arab leaders—they’re all Sunnis, while Hezbollah, Iran, and (nominally) Syria are ruled by Shiites. This is another reason this fire needs to be put out as soon as possible. Otherwise, it might not only ignite the grand battle between Israel and its most fervent foes, but also feed the flames of the region’s larger war between Sunnis and Shiites.

It isn’t clear—it’s a matter of dispute even among the experts—how tightly Syria controls Hezbollah, or to what extent Syria (or Iran) knew in advance of Hezbollah’s actions this past week. Certainly there is some degree of control; very probably, there was some level of advance knowledge. But we won’t know to what degree, at what level—we won’t know if either country has the ability or desire to put a lid on Hezbollah’s activities—unless channels of communication are opened. Yesterday, I wondered when President Bush would send Condoleezza Rice on a mission of “shuttle diplomacy.” There’s something else he has to do first. The point of shuttle diplomacy, when Henry Kissinger and James Baker conducted it, was to talk with leaders who can’t talk with one another, shuttling back and forth conveying messages, feints, fears, and ultimately offers. One problem right now is that the United States—the would-be shuttle diplomat—has long cut off relations with Syria and Iran, both of Hezbollah’s enablers (and thus potential disablers). If Bush doesn’t reopen the lines, there’s no point in sending Rice on the plane; it would be a shuttle to nowhere—and, short of sensational luck, a region sliding to war.

I’m not so sure that the region is sliding into a greater War. All around, you can see the conflict dying down, as Israel apparently has one week left to fight. As much as I opposed the beginning of the War, the fact that there is some chain around their neck is comforting. Further, the Syrians aren’t willing to attack Israel right now, and little suggests that Israel plans to attack Damascus anytime soon. Without an attack by Israel, barring some mojo not seen in the Arab world since the last invasion of Israel decades ago, the outbreak of war is unlikely.

I am happy, however, that someone else is lamenting the fact that Bush has disabled diplomacy by refusing contact with these nations. If I am making that point, and Kaplan is making that point, I do hope that someone in the White House is, too. There’s a bright spot to be found here from this War, which I’m surprised to say, since I was and am reluctant to endorse Israel’s initial invasion of Lebanon, and I refuse to condone its actions in tearing Lebanon apart.

I’d like to redirect you now to this piece in Slate, about how Arlen Specter has caved into the White House on wiretapping, rather than the other way around.

Even by the desultory standards of legal writing, the 18-page draft of the bill is daunting. (Former Department of Justice lawyer and Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman, no stranger to convoluted legislation, declared it “almost unreadable.”) So, perhaps the initial headline writers can’t be blamed for spotting language about judicial review by the FISA court and concluding that it represented a compromise. The problem is the gulf between the real oversight established by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed in the wake of the rampant domestic snooping of the Watergate era, and the fake oversight envisioned in this bill. FISA mandated judicial review each time the NSA applies for a warrant to eavesdrop. Specter proposes a blanket review of whole surveillance programs. Leave aside for the moment the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that search warrants must be issued on an individual basis and the fact that some of the NSA’s programs reportedly monitor thousands of people. There’s an even bigger problem: Review by the FISA court is optional. Whereas under the 1978 law, the president could authorize surveillance without seeking a warrant for up to 15 days after a declaration of war, Specter’s bill eliminates the declaration-of-war provision and expands that 15-day grace period—to a year.

And Specter is just getting warmed up. Toward the end of the bill, a few sly additions demonstrate that everything else, accommodating though it seemed, was mere preamble. Section 801 proposes to amend FISA by inserting the phrase, “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to limit the constitutional authority of the President to collect intelligence with respect to foreign powers and agents of foreign powers.” In other words, none of the constraints just outlined should be interpreted as absolute, because nothing in the preceding pages counts! This provision, along with the accompanying suggestion that the president can find authorization to wiretap either through FISA or “under the Constitution,” effectively codify the Bush administration’s controversial argument that the president’s authority as commander in chief under Article II of the Constitution gives him virtually unconstrained license to do whatever he sees fit, national-security-wise. According to this view, it’s not the NSA surveillance program that’s unconstitutional, but FISA itself. Critics have dubbed this the Article II on Steroids theory; and however much he puffs out his chest at the administration, it appears that Arlen Specter has become a subscriber.

So, to sum up this civic morass: In 1978 Congress passed a sweeping law limiting the power of the president to spy on the American people. A quarter-century later, Bush administration lawyers concluded that this law was unconstitutional. Rather than challenge its constitutionality in the courts, they elected to violate it in secret. And now, in the name of oversight, the chair of the Senate Judiciary committee is proposing to bypass any rigorous judicial assessment of the president’s constitutional prerogatives and instead to endorse the administration’s position—a position, incidentally, that the Supreme Court rejected just weeks ago in another context. The bill amounts to the repeal-by-amendment of FISA.

No surprise there. Arlen is not the lower-case-republican he pretends to be. Just because he’s not Rick Santorum doesn’t mean he’s a moderate, and that’s a shame, because the issue of Wiretapping is one that requires Moderation. Clearly, some sort of wiretapping program is necessary, as any Administration will have to utilize that tool at one point or another. The point of objecting to this program isn’t that wiretaps are unconstitutional or that they should be discouraged, but that some sort of warrants are necessary so as to keep balance. Arlen Specter effectively destroys that, and for hindering Democracy by bowing to Dick Cheney, he ought to be ashamed. What he is trying to get passed is a bad bill that leaves us worse, considering where we started.

Lyndon Johnson was famous for urinating in potted plants and asking people to carry a conversation with him while he used the washroom. Bill Clinton had an insatiable lust for women other than his wife. Ronald Reagan insisted on being allowed to makeup stories no matter who he was talking to, most famously illustrated when he told the Israeli Prime Minister that he’d been shot out of a plane during World War II. These things are all odd, creepy character traits, but not one of them is as creepy as this, which is a clip of George W. Bush giving Angela Merkel an unsolicited and apparently unwelcome neck massage. For all the knocks against Clinton’s libido, at least he never gushed that Vladimir Putin’s eyes betrayed a beautiful soul, and he certainly didn’t molest a foreign leader.

Aside from Tony Blair.

Our right-wing Senate decided yesterday to pass a bill that the House had already pushed through: a lifting of the federal ban on stem-cell funding. George Bush is expected to veto it, and use his first ever veto on it at that. All I have to say is that George Bush is no champion of science, and no Grover Cleveland. It’s absolutely disgusting that in the era of big, bloated government, deficit spending and the Rise of the Pork Barrel, Bush’s first veto is going to be used against stem-cell research. While George W. Bush won’t give the greenlight to stem-cells, he has no problem giving the green-light to war. The Guardian reports a bit that is good news, I think, and that is that Bush gave the green light for a limited war in Lebanon, meaning Israel has one week left.

The US is giving Israel a window of a week to inflict maximum damage on Hizbullah before weighing in behind international calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon, according to British, European and Israeli sources. The Bush administration, backed by Britain, has blocked efforts for an immediate halt to the fighting initiated at the UN security council, the G8 summit in St Petersburg and the European foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels. “It’s clear the Americans have given the Israelis the green light. They [the Israeli attacks] will be allowed to go on longer, perhaps for another week,” a senior European official said yesterday. Diplomatic sources said there was a clear time limit, partly dictated by fears that a prolonged conflict could spin out of control.

I think that a one-week window of retaliation is defensible, although the war instantly spun out of control as soon as Israel decided to destroy Lebanon’s infrastructure. If it is just a “one week window,” then at least we know that the offensive onslaught of Israel will be over soon. Not soon enough, though.

I’ve always, before this outbreak of fighting in the Middle East, been a staunch supporter of Israel, and in none of its prior conflicts have I ever opposed Israeli military action, but, as I’ve said, I find what they’re doing to be appalling. Not because I sympathize with Hamas and Hezbollah — that is a feeling that will never come from me — but because I sympathize with Lebanon and its people. Their entire infrastructure and society is being destroyed by an Israeli military hellbent on “sending a message” to a terrorist group. You simply can not fight a non-state entity as if it is a state, and you can’t treat an entire populace as if they were responsible for what was done by a group backed by people from another country. Crucifying Lebanon’s people for what Hezbollah has done is akin to planting a bomb at the Fox Network’s HQ because you don’t enjoy Seinfold. It simply isn’t ethical or rational, and I find myself nodding in agreement with this article.

Shed a tear for Lebanon, the beautiful country being destroyed by a war that is not of its own making. After earlier suffering 15 years of civil war, Lebanon finally saw the departure of Israeli forces in 2000, followed five years later by the withdrawal of Syrian troops. But just as Beirut was rediscovering its old joie de vivre, the spectres of the past have returned: the Israelis, the Syrians, the Iranians and the Americans, all fighting their wars on Lebanese soil and playing with Lebanese lives. Lebanon may mean “white”, but its colours have reverted to blood-red and burnt-black. Supported by the US, Israel claims the bombardment of Lebanon and its attempt to crush Hizbollah are for Lebanon’s own good. Syria and Iran are all too happy to stoke the conflict, support Hizbollah, and fight Israel to the last Lebanese. Lebanon is burning, on the Golan Heights the ceasefire line with Syria is the quietest of Israel’s borders.

The late, great Yitzhak Rabin put it best years ago: “Enough of blood and tears. Enough!” One day, someday. Just not today, because the rest of the World won’t push all parties to embrace peace, and because the Middle East won’t allow itself the opportunity without the West’s urging. Israel, for instance, has declare, with the full backing of the United States, that fighting will continue for several weeks.

Just look to Iran for further proof that the Middle East needs active urging from the West, and note that the government has begun to threaten Israel, saying that no part of Israel is safe from attack, although they wink and say that Lebanon is the one threatening Israel. I for one am concerned about the prospect of a larger war breaking out in the Middle East, but this article is mildly reassuring, as it delves into the reasons why a regional war is unlikely. It may be right, and I hope it is, but I think that we need to look at the situation now and see how, in the coming years, we will end the madness.

In the Middle East, change will never come without constant nagging from the West. Americans must be willing to push the Israelis to bend, and the Palestinians to come to the table. The situation in the Middle East is a giant game of Chinese Checkers, littered with old armies and past battles, peppered with the tempering influence of foreign powers but it is a dishonest game. It is a game where no one will win until everyone is playing fair, and that means that the United States must be willing to warn Israel of the long-term dangers of retaliation, and everyone else must be willing to push Palestinians into diplomacy. When Israel no longer has a blank American check, and the Palestinians know they have a world willing to give it a chance but which’ll expect it to keep promises, then will the situation be resolved.