Debating Myself

My second senior thesis is finished. This paper, written in German, was much more of a challenge in some ways than the Politics and Government thesis. Having chosen specifically to write two senior theses instead of simply writing one larger thesis on a topic that overlaps both subjects, I had a hard time finding my way to a topic of interest to me involving Germany.

My main problem was finding available resources in German to conduct strong academic research from. In the end I chose as similar road as my POLS thesis–namely reanalyzing an existing case-study.

I am interested in theories of federalism, generally, and the European Union as a sort of interesting new experiment in multi-level governance. However, looking specifically at environmental policy within Germany and the EU is ironic, because it is perhaps the type of politics that interests me the least. Luckily I was able to focus my paper on the theoretical implications of the division of power between Germany, the EU and the German Länder in the realm of environmental policy, and avoid tedious discussions of allowable levels of pollutants in rivers and streams.

Mainly, it is just really hard to write a substantial research paper in a foreign language you have studied for only four years–and I am probably most proud of my thesis not for its clear and original analysis (of which it has much less than my POLS thesis) but for my use of the German language. Since coming back to Germany I think my mastery of written German has probably increased significantly due to the outstanding support of my German professor (Professor Lorely French) and the insane amount of papers I had to write in German this year.

Oddly, I wrote more pages/papers in German this academic year than in English. Crazy.

For comparison’s sake, here are the vital stats on my German thesis:

• Pages: 43
• Words: 10,773
• Footnotes: 30
• Words (with footnotes): 11, 476
• Sources Cited: ??
• Sources Consulted: 83
• Appendixes: 0

And, I’m done. If anyone out there is fluent in German and interested, please feel free to read the attached PDF below. For those of you not fluent in German here is an English description of the theme of the paper:

The Federal Republic of Germany is a founding member of the European integration project and a strong supporter of the European Union. Yet the rapidly increasing centralization of European policy in the form of mandates from the EU is particularly complicated for Germany due to its federal structure. The sixteen German states, or Länder, have become increasingly active in the politics of integration in the last twenty years in an attempt to protect their traditional constitutional sovereignty. The Länder have been particularly active, sometimes against the wishes of the federal German government. The struggle against European environmental standards exemplifies how integration can be burdensome and costly for the Länder to implement. This study analyzes the different strategies employed by the Länder in defending their sovereignty.

“Purely Administrative Entities”? The Role of the German Länder in the European Union (PDF)

Regardless of what you think about Hillary staying in the race or not, you have to be excited about the way the prolonged primary has forced the candidates to engage people across the country who never were touched by election politics before.

This Washington Post article about Bill Clinton touring rural communities in North Carolina and speaking in them made me really excited for the prospect of the Democratic Primary descending on Montana. This election season has really brought the election to all fifty states in a way that hasn’t happened for a long time.

Small town America suddenly has big time political significance–that is a pretty exciting prospect.

In his book The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America, Richard J. Ellis writes:

“…no political position is strengthened by suppressing or slighting inconvenient facts or covering up weakness. Protected from criticism, any argument becomes lazy and prone to excess.”

Aside from being a fascinating look at how liberal, or egalitarian, movements are prone to descending into egalitarianism in regards to their own structure, Ellis’ words are important to keep in mind when thinking about the 2008 Democratic Primary.

While a slew of voices on the left are crying out for Hillary to concede to Obama so that the party can unite and to protect Obama’s ‘good name’, these voices are missing the point: after the Democrats pick a nominee the Republican attack machine will go into full swing.

The only way either of the Democratic candidates is going to be able to take on the Republican nominee in the general election is if they both push themselves to be better, refine their message, and “battle-test “themselves.

It is the same reason I am much more critical of political stances, policies, and politicians that I am sympathetic of–just because I support something doesn’t mean I don’t want to challenge its assumptions and facts to make sure they are sound and stable. The only way I will support something is if it stands up to my own challenges.

It doesn’t make you a traitor to your ideology to be critical, it makes you a positive force for improvement.

Today I turned in the fruits of over a year of my labor–my senior thesis in Politics and Government at Pacific University. It is a good feeling and I am actually very proud of the finished product. It is not quite a publishable paper, largely due to a lack of data, but it is a good paper calling for further avenues of research in rural education policy. You can read the abstract below to find out what the paper is all about, but I thought it would be fun to take a statistical look at my thesis:

Vital Stats:

• Pages: 41
• Words: 11,857
• Footnotes: 42
• Words (with footnotes): 13, 337
• Sources Cited: 38
• Sources Consulted: 74
• Appendixes: 1

For those of you interested, here is a summary of the thesis and what it entails:

Rural education policy research has traditionally focused on the sociological aspects of rural areas and often failed to take into account analyses of politics and power. Utilizing a more formal political analysis, this study describes the political universe within which educational policy in rural areas is formed. Using two case studies of the implementation of a national grant program, the Reading First grant, this study seeks to explore the different intergovernmental relationships that rural and urban school districts experience, and the institutional features of No Child Left Behind that place rural areas at a disadvantage when implementing national educational policy. The study concludes by suggesting ways that policy makers and school districts alike can craft future policies to accommodate the unique advantages and disadvantages of both urban and rural school districts.

If that sounds interesting I invite you to download the PDF and take a glance. It is a bit dry, so if you want to be spared the details you can skip to the conclusion and find the most salient points summarized nicely there.

The Myth of the Oak Tree (PDF)

The important thing is that it is done, and that I am proud of the finished product.

Champions of the new left in South America (of the Chavez kind) are about to be faced with what seems to be a stark rebuke of leftist policies and Chavez-esque populism. Evo Morales, the populist President of Bolivia and self-appointed champion of indigenous people and the poor, is facing the apparent disintegration of Bolivia.

Residents of Santa Cruz are expected to have approved a state-wide referendum declaring autonomy from the Bolivian central government last Sunday. According to the Washington Post:

Five more of the country’s nine states — including all of those in the eastern lowlands that produce most of the country’s income — are considering similar referendums in coming months.

For those keeping count it could add up to 6 of the country’s 9 states declaring autonomy from the Morales-dominated central government.

Notably, the autonomy referendum does not declare independence. Leaders of the autonomy movement:

simply want more local control over taxes, the courts, property titles and police forces. An autonomous Santa Cruz would remain a part of Bolivia, and its institutions would still be connected to those of the national government.

This will certainly hinder Morales’ plans for a constitutional revision, but they were already in dire shape having been rather undemocratic (this is a favorite move of South American leaders, and even the distinctly un-Chavez leader, Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, is rumored to be mulling a constitutional revision).

What is interesting to note here is that the issue of devolving power to regional autonomies appears to be an acultural and practically universal phenomenon. From the disintegration of Yugoslavia, to pressures for regional autonomy in Spain, to the long-standing Quebec separatist movement—the nation-state is under significant pressure around the globe.

In this case Bolivia is fitting into a seemingly normal pattern, as the pressure for devolution has divided up along ethnic/culture lines. States with lower populations of indigenous people are feeling threatened by the pro-indigenous policies of Morales, which some have even viewed as racist, and are attempting to separate and avoid conflict. The indigenous people, for their part, feel that Morales is finally representing their interests after a long period of repression and see the autonomy movement as a direct threat.

As one indigenous supporter of Morales put it to the Washington Post:

“They will be killing us — the indigenous — with this statute,” said Alejandro Antezana, who opposes autonomy. “We are going to fight to the death if we have to. We are not going to let them set up their ballot boxes this Sunday, even if that will lead us to confrontation and bloodshed. We have too much to lose.”

In general, if nation-states can’t learn to strike a balance between assimilating and integrating their diverse populations while allowing them to retain their cultural identity, they will always trend toward instability and devolution. The United States has been remarkable in this regard, absorbing millions upon millions of immigrants from diverse places around the globe. Of course, for the United States the assimilation process is lightened because by and large most immigrants choose to immigrate to the United States.

The indigenous population of Bolivia did not choose to immigrate there, or choose to let the Spanish conquistadors in. In that regard perhaps it is more fair to compare the US indigenous populations with those in Bolivia–and of course the US went the route of devolution there by granting Native American tribes significant autonomy (in exchange, of course, for taking all of their land and decimating their population…)

Mixing cultures and ethnic groups under one national government will always prove to be problematic. Bolivia, where the oppressed indigenous peoples finally have power at the national level, is proving that simply giving indigenous peoples power for awhile to run the government also can’t be seen as a solution. Some kind of power sharing, coalition forming, and compromise is needed to ensure stability and a sense of unity.

Unfortunately those words are a lot easier to write than to turn into practical politics.

UPDATE 1: The referendum passed by a margin of 85% in Santa Cruz. This blog post details a lot about the referendum and the electoral process throughout the day.

Update: Just found out that Obama supported gas tax holidays too, although it was during his time in the Illinois state senate. Thanks to Buck Naked Politics for the info!

Just as Hillary Clinton is beginning to rise in the national polls thanks to a surge of momentum from her win in Pennsylvania she manages, like so many times before this campaign season, to shoot herself in the foot.

People may not be outraged about it, and it may not stir emotions like Obama’s current problems with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but her recent proposal for a gas-tax holiday this summer (also proposed by John McCain–you might know him) has stirred up more than a little controversy. Top Democrats, like the Majority Leader in the House, have even lined up against the idea. Obama is enjoying telling voters that Hillary’s proposal will cost the government millions and save taxpayers only about $30 each.

Hillary’s side of the story seems to make sense at first, and I’m sure her campaign thought reasoning like what Buck Naked Politics’ D. Cupples summarizes here, would be very persuasive to middle class voters pinched by gas prices right now.

There’s just one problem: it won’t work.

Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist, takes Hillary’s proposal to task in a recent article. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has a great in-depth analysis of the economics behind the issue. If you take my word for it, here it is short and sweet: lower price = more demand and more demand will lead right back to higher prices because supply cannot be expanded. There simply isn’t enough oil.

The Machiavellian argument that Hillary knows it won’t be that effective, but it will win her more votes is okay with me, I support her and would like to see her win. But, that argument appears to fail as well. Fact Checker tell us that when a similar policy was tried in Illinois:

A poll by the Chicago Tribune showed that only 28 percent of motorists believed that they were actually paying less for gas as a result of the temporary suspension of the tax.

Not a significant enough part of the electorate to make a difference.

Across the Aisle features a great article by Brian Vogt discussing Hillary’s proposal and then suggesting some more sensible ways to deal with the gas price problems facing America. Essentially, inflate your tires properly (which will improve fuel efficiency by up to 10%) and let the government and private industry develop some long-term technological solutions that will reduce our dependency.

I agree, but I would argue that fixing the dollar crunch and managing the economy better to preserve consumers’ purchasing power would also go a long way to fixing this problem as well. A large rise in oil prices can be directly attributed to the falling dollar.

There is one aspect of Hillary’s proposal that people aren’t discussing that troubled me greatly (and Obama agrees with Hillary here). Again, from Buck Naked Politics:

That’s why I have called for making Exxon and other oil companies with record profits pay the federal gas tax this summer… I believe we should impose a windfall profits tax on big oil companies and use that money to suspend the gas tax and give families relief at the pump.

Now maybe it is just me, but windfall profits taxes always make me nervous. Sure, Exxon alone made over $40 billion in profits last year, but the market determines the price of gasoline, not Exxon. Exxon is simply the beneficiary of rising oil prices and the success of the OPEC cartel.

Here are some arguments against a windfall tax. My favorite:

The Tax Foundation’s Jonathon Williams and Scott Hodge remind us of more very unintended consequences:

… according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), is that the 1980s windfall profits tax depressed the domestic production and extraction industry and furthered our dependence on foreign sources of oil.

So here’s to Hillary proposing two policies that in all likelihood will sacrifice meager short-term relief ($30 over 3 months) in exchange for:

• A high likelihood of rising prices later
• Decreased oil production
• Weakened support for alternative technologies (in the short and middle term)
• Further dependence on OPEC oil
• No additional political support

I’ll keep my $30 Hillary (maybe even donate it to your campaign so you can hire a new economic adviser). Let’s try to find a more creative solution. I know you can, and have, done much better. As Paul Krugman writes:

I don’t regard this as a major issue. It’s a one-time thing, not a matter of principle, especially because everyone knows the gas-tax holiday isn’t actually going to happen. Health care reform, on the other hand, could happen, and is very much a long-term issue — so poisoning the well by in effect running against universality, as Obama has, is a much more serious breach.

A candidate for Congress in Indiana (a Republican) recently made an odd choice of public appearance. It was odd because Tony Zirkle, an apparently very devout Christian, was appearing at a celebration to honor perhaps the greatest monster of the 20th Century.

Yes, Zirkle was at a Nazi celebration of Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

Zirkle, who is apparently crazy, had this to say:

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn’t know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

“This is just a great opportunity for me to witness,” he said, referring to his message and his Christian belief.

I know 5 year olds that have enough information to know whether or not to favor neo-Nazis and white supremacists (the correct answer, by the way Mr. Zirkle, is in fact to oppose them).

But this is probably just a ridiculous publicity stunt by this clown, and we are all playing into his devious hands. Go ahead, check out his campaign website and read what he has to say about any number of issues.

The Economist has some juicy quotes on their American blog if you just aren’t up for browsing insanity for more than a little bit. I can’t resist reproducing this gem for you here:

In an interview, Zirkle told FOXNews.com he doesn’t think he is too far out of the Republican mainstream. He believes the solution to STDs and out-of-wedlock births is to separate blacks and whites into segregated states, but he says that’s fully in the tradition of the party.

On the one hand it is a triumph for American democracy and freedom of speech that someone with such crazy ideas could run for office and not be silenced.

But on the other hand, he is crazy, and I’m a big believer that rights come with responsibilities–like not going to Hitler’s birthday party… even if that means sacrificing your opportunity to witness to hate-mongers.

For those of you wondering about what has happened in the Zimbabwe election since I last posted on the topic about a month ago, here is the answer:

Not much

The results of the presidential election have yet to be announced, though it seems the government is making a gesture toward releasing them by the end of the week.

International pressure is mounting, but it seems like Mugabe has some big time countries protecting his regime. Of course China has massive investment interests in Zimbabwe and would probably like the regime to stay stable, while South Africa is fighting a proxy political battle over Zimbabwe pitting President Thabo Mbeki against his political rival Jacob Zuma, who is a staunch supporter of the Zimbabwe opposition (and recently elected head of the African National Congress). The fear here is a win for the opposition in Zimbabwe could lead to a larger win for the opposition in South Africa.

All of this is occurring amidst election violence that some have said is like “a war zone”. In all twenty people are verified to have died from election-related violence, and the Economist ran a story this week saying that the toll may be much higher according some doctors in the country.

It certainly seems like Mugabe lost the election and is trying desperately to hold on to power. Honestly, I’m not sure they’ll be able to force him out–the UN is virtually powerless due to China’s position, and Africa remains largely divided on the issue, so the African Union can be of little help as well.

Mugabe may be able to draw on all of this external support to make up for the lack of internal support he enjoys. We’ll see how it plays out.

Montana Governor Brian Schweizter speaking in Washington D.C. in May 2006. I just stumbled across this video and had to share it. It just reminds me what I like about Montana voters and Montana politics, and what is often misunderstood about us. Montanans vote for the “right” thing when they are told honestly and directly what is at stake. With some honest talk and innovative policies Montana is doing the best it has for the past 12 years or so. Other Democratic politicians in the west should listen closely.

Now I know I’m a little late to the whole Olympic Tibet controversy game, but I hope what I have to say is still worth saying.

What sparked me to write this post initially is this article by Yahoo! Sports’ own Dan Wetzel about the Beijing Olympics. Now I will be the first to admit that I am not a fan of Wetzel–he is too preachy and too political for a sports columnist. If you want to make a political statement in a sports column then do it without a) insulting your readers’ intelligence and b) try to be classy about it. Wetzel should look at Sports Illustrated’s premier NFL analyst Peter King for a career full of examples of this.

But I think I took offense to Wetzel’s column less for its preachy tone (though that remains in abundance) and more for its blatant misrepresentation of the facts and crude assumptions. Wetzel is clearly pandering to his audience based on the assumption that they share some latent xenophobic feelings.

If Wetzel wrote this article for a high school newspaper his editor could have told him that his first paragraph makes one of the (unfortunately) most overused historical comparisons of the 20th and 21st century.

As the news pours out of China about the latest round of murdered monks and slaughtered nuns, as crowds around the world protest the Olympic torch, the prevailing wisdom now is that the Beijing Olympics are looking like, if we’re lucky, merely a redo of the 1936 Berlin Games. And that’s only in the unlikely event the bloodshed ends.

Does Wetzel really want to compare the internal strife in Tibet to the systematic destruction of an entire race, the complete destruction of an entire continent, and the near extermination of an entire of generation of men?

I would like to say that Wetzel is just using this paragraph as a hook to discuss the issue of Tibet more rationally, but unlike Wetzel I am compelled to be accurate and fair in my writing (unless I state otherwise). Wetzel’s article really degrades into anti-Chinese tirade and a rant against those corporate lapdogs the International Olympic Committee.

Wetzel makes a number of specious claims I won’t bother attacking here, what I want to respond to is his general thesis that the IOC “sold out” to the promise of making billions in China. Seriously,

No, this was a straight sellout, not a gamble. The IOC willingly purchased the unholy bill of goods China was peddling so its sponsoring corporations could, in turn, sell stuff to the Chinese people.

Wetzel is sadly short of history. I need only a mention a few Olympic games here to remind him that the Olympics has often been used to exactly the aim Wetzel doubts: “caus[ing] China to reverse course on human rights, democracy, freedom and the environment.” [For the better.]

Indeed, the 1988 games in Seoul, South Korea marked a turning point to that country, which now possesses the 12th largest economy in the world and is a fountain of stability and democracy in east Asia. Those 1988 games were boycotted by several nations and occurred although South Korea was (and still is) officially at war with North Korea.

Wetzel would probably had criticized those games too. After all, the games were probably enabled by “workers they then cheated out of wages and health care to build substandard Olympic facilities lacking small items like emergency exits and fire sprinklers.”

Hmm. Perhaps Wetzel should peek back at the history of the United States. The US hosted the Olympics three times before African-Americans even began to fully feel the benefits of citizenship in this country (1904, 1932 summer and winter, and 1960). No doubt American workers in 1904 faced perhaps worse labor standards than their Chinese compatriots today (there was, back then, no American consumer complete with hang-ups about sweatshop labor to try to please). From 1920-1940 it is estimated that up to 1,000 African Americans may have been lynched in the United States as the direct result of racism, hatred and bigotry. So clearly the United States had its fair share of violent internal strife and oppressed ethnic groups going on while it was permitted to host the games as well.

While Wetzel decries the death of “between 30 and 148″ people in Tibet he turns a blind eye to his own country’s history of prejudice and bigotry? Moreover, Wetzel pretends to understand the complexity of Chinese-Tibetan relations to suggest that Tibet should in fact be free. Would Wetzel welcome Chinese scrutiny, then, about the United States’ continuing treatment of Native-Americans and the reservation system that traps some tribes into a cycle of abject poverty and dependence on government handouts? Would Wetzel listen to Chinese commentators’ suggestions that perhaps we should grant the Native American’s full autonomy and statehood as reparations for the near extermination of an entire people?

Maybe it is unfair to make this comparison, but it is fair to say that he is overly critical of a situation that is much more complex than anyone with only one side (the Western side) of the story could fairly judge.

Wetzel does not really care about the plight of those in Tibet. Make no mistake, this is a rant against the corporatization of the games. The last sentence of his column makes this position strikingly clear:

What do a hundred dead monks matter anyway when there are so many Big Macs to move?

Wetzel sees the strife as occurring solely for the sale of corporate goods, but this is a false assumption and a terrible generalization to make. The idea harkens back to the example of South Korea I gave earlier–bringing world attention to Beijing will bring about a change in China by welcoming it to the world community, bringing international attention, and forcing it to consider the international consequences of its actions.

Besides is it fair for Wetzel, who will probably see his income spike from columns discussing a myriad of aspects of the Olympic games ad nauseum, to really criticize the games being corporatized? Isn’t that how he gets paid? Put your money where your mouth is and boycott the games yourself–don’t watch, don’t write about it, and don’t support it.

But of course that won’t happen. Wetzel doesn’t really believe, or if he does, he doesn’t care enough to do more than complain about it in a public forum using a dangerously xenophobic conception of China as his background.

I have a great fear that these games will be hijacked by an anti-Chinese political sentiment that has been growing in the United States for awhile now. Instead of focusing on the positive aspects of international attention in China, Wetzel panders to the latent anti-Chinese sentiment that is largely fueled by fear, ignorance and the lack of exposure to Chinese people and culture.

Sure, China has its problems, but so has every great nation that underwent the kind of dramatic industrial revolution currently occurring in China. Only by moving past the rhetoric of fear, ignorance and xenophobia can we ever hope to make a positive out of the strife currently occurring in Tibet. Resorting to yellow journalism to scare up readership will never be part of the solution and can only serve to perpetuate stereotypes and ideas that preclude meaningful engagement and peaceful resolutions in China.

China is hoping for the opposite–a kind of positive media attention that will change people’s minds about China. It will be interesting to see what prevails.

UPDATE: Here is a great letter from a Chinese-American to Mr. Wetzel.

Vindication through coursework is a rare part of the college experience, but this past week has really been a rewarding one for me. Having recently completed my senior thesis in political science–a study of the effects of No Child Left Behind on school governance and rural schools–I was more than pleasantly surprised to see that the Reading First Initiative, the focus of the case studies in my research, was in the news. Both the Washington Post and the Economist carried stories on the program that can be found here and here respectively.

My thesis is largely critical of the way in which the Reading First program is administrated. Federal grant money is distributed to states, who then subgrant the money out to local school districts. For rural school districts the grant process by itself proves problematic enough, but further complicating matters are the stipulations that the aid comes with, often conditioning the types of reading instruction to occur in the classroom. Decentralization and localization have long been hallmarks of the American education system, and No Child Left Behind purported to continue those traditions, but clearly the Reading First program is an exception–the Washington Post gets it right:

A 2006 report from the Education Department’s inspector general, John P. Higgins Jr., said some program officials steered states to certain tests and textbooks.

Mix in a little classic Bush cronyism just for good measure:

Congressional testimony last year also revealed that some of those people benefited financially…

This was bad enough, but the pattern of unfair benefits was distributed unequally along ideological lines as well–essentially deciding a long standing debate about how reading should be taught:

Critics say that Reading First officials have promoted intensive phonics instruction, in which children focus on learning to sound out words, and that schools have been discouraged from using the whole language approach, which emphasizes teaching reading through literature.

In the case study I used for my thesis, a rural Pennsylvania school district was forced to abandon a highly successful whole language approach due to lack of funding, apply several times for a Reading First grant, and only after a change in party (from elephant to donkey) was a grant for a new type of reading program approved. Rural schools thrive on the whole language model and can be highly successful, because, by their very nature, these schools afford their students considerable individual attention from teachers. Under the Reading First program whole language instruction funding is now highly inconsistent and politicized. The Reading First program unfairly squashes this and tramples on the ability of local school districts to resist federal and state mandates about instructional programs and be classroom innovators.

That said, Reading First has for the most part been a success for non-rural schools, and the phonics method of reading instruction is an acceptable and worthwhile practice. Unlike many aspects of NCLB, Reading First seems to be getting results (again WP):

The Center on Education Policy, based in the District, reported in October that officials in 37 states said the curriculum and assessments helped boost achievement.

So I guess it doesn’t make sense to me why Democrats would cut the funding of this program by more than 60 percent. But that is just what it did. The Washington Post searched for the best answer they could:

“We all agree that the goal of the Reading First program — to help all children learn to read — is incredibly important,” said Rachel Racusen, a spokeswoman for Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.)… “We must have every assurance that Reading First funding is being used as intended — to benefit our nation’s schoolchildren, not to line the pockets of Bush’s cronies.”

Wait what? It is benefiting our nation’s schoolchildren as is–even if it was conceived in an improper way. Children are learning to read from this program. It doesn’t get any clearer! (I’m a critic, and even I can’t disagree that it works.) File this under further evidence that representatives from really big states are generally up to no good and/or certifiably crazy. But, more importantly, Mr. Miller has completely missed the point.

1. The program is currently under administrative review for the transgressions involving yet another case of Bush cronyism. Those involved will be punished, reports will be issued, etc.
2. In the meantime, the program borne out of cronyism appears to be one of the few bright spots in this administration–it is actually helping impoverished American children learn to read.
3. Cutting funding to the program will not kill the benefit to textbook manufacturers or those who sell reading curricula–schools know these programs work and will now secure outside funds to continue these government programs. Unfortunately, it is only better off schools who have the resources to do this, while poor, rural or underfunded schools who need these programs most will actually just cut back reading instruction.
4. The Democrats have proposed no alternative or amendments to the Reading First program to allow reading instruction to continue, while rolling back Bush cronyism.

So instead of taking a stand against President Bush in the Iraq War, around which a public consensus now exists, Democrats have opted to take a much bolder position… punishing children for alleged Bush cronyism. Those Democratic Senators and Representatives are much braver than me; I would have meekly pushed an alternative policy through fixing the improprieties of the program and making it more flexible, while the program continued to quietly improve reading scores across America . Instead the Democrats hope to convince American children learning to read that they need to sacrifice their extra reading education in the name of slapping a few textbook manufacturers on the wrist for allegedly earning an extra 5% in profits. Oh, and the opportunity to stick a finger in President Bush’s eye.

This is just a sickening example of partisan politics at its absolute worst; in this case on the part of a Democratic Congress seeking to exact retribution from a Republican executive at any price. Is a policy that has widely benefited millions of poor and disadvantaged American children really the policy the Democrats want to choose to punish President Bush on? Shouldn’t they take their rage out on him in a more benign and sensible policy area–choosing randomly of course–like the Iraq War, the nuclear deal with India, etc ad infininum?

The Washington Post piece ends on a sober note that readers should be left with:

“Reading First has made so much of a difference in the lives of so many people,” said James Herman, the program’s director in Tennessee. “We’re going to punish the children. I don’t understand that at all.”

I don’t either Mr. Herman.

Lawmakers are complaining that oil executives are exploiting consumers through artificially inflated oil and gas prices.

This is an odd criticism for politicians to make, considering they reap those very oil company profits to finance their campaigns–oil and gas contribute upwards of $20 million a year to political campaigns.

Of course, it looks good to stand up on C-SPAN for the whole world to see and fight for the American consumer. But please, if you would Big Oil CEOs, leave your donations for our political campaigns at the door on your way out…

This is part one of a multi-part series addressing the issue of free trade and the arguments used against it. In this section I take on the historical protection of manufacturing jobs by opponents of free trade. Future sections will address environmental concerns, concerns of 3rd world exploitation, and an honest appraisal of the evidence in favor of and against free trade.

The recent debate about free trade bubbling up in Montana politics is the perfect opportunity to discuss this highly misunderstood issue. Montana Gubernatorial hopefuls Don Pogreba and Jason Neiffer have criticized Max Baucus, Montana’s free trading senior Democratic senator, as supporting a policy of:

Enhancing the bottom line of multinational corporations who operate above the law and whose profits rarely make it to the hands of workers who produce them? Sane fiscal policy.

Though they criticize Senator Baucus for misrepresenting opponents to free trade, the above quote shows that their campaign has also misrepresented the arguments in favor of free trade as well as missing an opportunity to move the Democratic party forward in its thinking on this issue.

This is not surprising–ever election is marred by a consistent misunderstanding of free trade. Politicians on the left use American fears about job security, the environment, and exploitation of the 3rd world to frame free trade as an exploitative and hurtful practice–often favoring protectionism as a solution. At the same time the right unilaterally supports free trade arguing that pure free trade is the only trade policy to have on the basis of economic freedom–even if it is sometimes exploitative or imperfect.

Of course not all of those on the left are against free trade–Senator Baucus is a Democrat–and some bloggers on the left, Jay Stevens over at Left in the West in particular, are actually supportive of reopening the discussion of free trade and searching for a middle ground. I think all Democrats would be well advised to welcome a discussion of how to:

encourage trade, but… make sure our trade agreements are fair, that they benefit American workers and businesses, not just multinational corporations looking for cheap labor and a way to trample over workers’ rights and avoid environmental standards.

Before we can move forward in our thinking on free trade we need to look at the historical basis for the Left’s rejection of free trade. Pogreba and Neiffer trot out this historical justification that still drives left opposition to free trade today:

concern about stagnant or even declining wages for American workers who struggle to find manufacturing jobs

This objection is based on a vision of the world centered on human intensive labor and wide scale industrial production. The US Government publication “Outline of the US Economy” provides a really good description of the diminishing role of labor in the traditional manufacturing sense:

Manufacturing has declined in relative importance, and the service sector has grown. More and more workers hold white-collar office jobs rather than unskilled, blue-collar factory jobs. Newer industries, meanwhile, have sought highly skilled workers who can adapt to continuous changes produced by computers and other new technologies.

If you want numbers to prove it, enjoy:

Service-related industries accounted for 24.4 million jobs, or 59 percent of non-farm employment, in 1946. By late 1999, that sector had grown to 104.3 million jobs, or 81 percent of non-farm employment. Conversely, the goods-producing sector — which includes manufacturing, construction, and mining — provided 17.2 million jobs, or 41 percent of non-farm employment in 1946, but grew to just 25.2 million, or 19 percent of non-farm employment, in late 1999.

America is no longer a manufacturing economy. Manufacturing jobs are protected out of a nostalgia for the hayday of workers’ movements, and having been the focus of labor activism for decades, the compensation for these jobs is artificially inflated. Resorting to protectionism to hold on to this distorted version of the labor market is damaging for a number of reasons…

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It was a big week for NATO this week. First, President Bush put pressure on the organization to set a timetable for Ukrainian and Georgian membership. Though Ukraine has made clear its desire to join NATO, which is seen as a first step along a path to EU membership, the timing of the announcement comes amidst much saber rattling by Russia–and a change of power, at least officially, from Vladmir Putin to Dimitriy Medvedev.

Further, membership invitations were extended to Albania and Croatia, and membership talks were intensified for Bosnia and Montenegro. Interestingly, Serbia, the site of recent riots and the burning of a US Embassy, was encouraged to apply for membership.

There was more going on in Bucharest at the NATO summit than just talks of expansion. A historic agreement was reached on the controversial deployment of US missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic as well. After years of negotiations an advanced radar facility will be built in the Czech Republic and ten anti-ballistic missile missiles will be deployed in Poland.

Significantly it appears Russia played a key role in shaping the outcome of the summit. Not only did the NATO press release concerning the agreement on the ABM systems specifically urge Russia to drop its objections, but some argue that the rejection of an invitation to Georgia and Ukraine may be the key to achieving Russian consent on the issue.

What does all of this mean? Well, the aggressive expansion of NATO could precede an expansion in EU membership–though it appears the EU is a bit worn out from expansion. Another factor that NATO expansion has is a larger pool of troops to draw on while fighting the war in Afghanistan. Indeed, the summit did conclude with a larger commitment of troops to Afghanistan.

Most importantly, however, is the increasing tension between Russia and NATO. Russia’s implicit veto of membership talks with Georgia and the Ukraine are significant.

While the United States, Canada and nine Eastern European nations supported putting Ukraine and Georgia on the path to membership, Germany, France, Italy and other Western European nations resisted, arguing that the two were still too unstable and expressing concern about poking Russia in the eye.

That West European countries are acting out of fear of some form of Russian retaliation, perhaps through a rationing of gas supply, signals the weakness of Europe’s “core” in dealing with nation-states outside of the liberal democratic consensus. While the EU has been wildly successful at enticing nations who have an interest in the liberal market and other benefits of EU membership, the Union has been just as unsuccessful at adequately coping with those that wish to stay outside of that consensus (for example, Iran, North Korea and Russia).

The EU’s continued lack of both a cohesive foreign policy and a sizable military force is beginning to spillover into NATO and cause tensions within the defense community. The EU, according to the Economist this week, has already shown its commitment to the fight in Afghanistan to be half-hearted at best (with the exception of the Brits, of course).

The current weakness of NATO only emphasizes the need for a stronger and more unified EU to help build a stable bloc to offset rising Russian power, and continue the fight and rebuilding in Afghanistan.

David Isenberg over at the Partnership for Secure America has written a great post critiquing the media for making a big deal of the supposed “milestone” 4,000th American casualty in Iraq. He puts it much more thoroughly and eloquently than I can.

Having had a family member serve in both Afghanistan (3x) and Iraq, the artificial ways we use to count the costs of this war are ever more infuriating. Why don’t the wounded, whose lives will be forever marred by the war and who will rely on the unreliable support of taxpayers for care the rest of their lives, count at all? Isenberg has a good point here:

And as Mideast Stars and Stripes reported yesterday the number of wounded coming to the 435th Contingency Aeromedical Staging Facility at Ramstein Air Base Germany is nearing 44,000 patients from Operation Iraqi Freedom and is close to reaching 7,000 from Operation Enduring Freedom, according to Air Force statistics compiled this month. Nearly 11,000 of those patients — or 22 percent — are considered battle injuries. While American commanders and soldiers have pointed to signs that the troop “surge” in Iraq is working, the facility has not seen a dramatic drop in the number of overall patients.

I can’t say enough about the article. Read it. The true cost of war is much deeper than the tragic loss of 4,000 lives.

Even if you support the war you should be interested in a more comprehensive look at the costs of the war. How can you propose solutions if many of the problems remain obscured behind weak reporting and skewed facts? We need to be open and honest about the real costs so we know where best to allocate the meager resources we have for the fight.

And, if being open and honest means that no one wants to allocate those resources? Then I guess it is time to come home.