Iran: here we go again on our own...

The subject line of this post refers both to the hit of superband Whitesnake as well as a running joke by The Daily Show concerning our increasingly belligerent tone toward Iran. In short, The Daily Show has followed closely the comments the U.S. has made regarding Tehran, with a keen interest in the fact that our rhetoric today looks just like that more than three years ago concerning Iraq. And as usual, The Daily Show is apparently right.

 

The BBC reported today on the House Intelligence Committee’s assessment of intelligence on Iran. The Congressional report has two items of note: (1) “Iran is a serious security threat;” (2) there are “major gaps in our knowledge of Iranian nuclear, biological, and chemical programmes.” The BBC goes on: “According to the BBC’s Jonathan Beale in Washington, the report contains worrying echoes of US intelligence failures over the weapons programme of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.”

 

Go out an buy Whitesnake today, so we good patriots can sing the lyrics in unison while the bombs fall! Or, if not, apparently we will prove that we can learn from our mistakes—but thereby only proving that we are hypocrites and that our attack against Iraq was unjustified due to lousy intelligence.

 

History can be a bitch, no?

 

-W.

A Question for Economist-types

This post is another appeal to those trained in areas of public policy about which I know not my ass from my elbow. According to the Economist, “America’s total wages and salaries rose by 6.8% in the year to the second quarter of 2006, the most in six years” (“The perils of pausing,” August 5^th). The article primarily deals with fears about the American economy: in spite of apparently stable (if slowing) growth, there is a great deal of concern regarding rising inflation and a looming recession. As a consequence, the article advised Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to continue raising the Fed’s interest rate on August 8^th (he didn’t).

I certainly don’t pretend to know much about economics. In particular, I recognize that such arcane disciplines often befuddle or even contradict what common sense might consider obvious. For example: overall wage increases, the price index, inflation, and the minimum wage. I don’t understand how it is possible that Congress could consider it a good idea to keep the minimum wage at its present level when the price index goes up across the board and inflation is on the rise. This does not even appear to be a moral issue, but simply one of mathematics. If the minimum wage is deemed to be necessarily X dollars one year in order for a human being (or family) to survive an economy wherein each dollar is worth Y amount of stuff, and the following year the dollar is worth less while prices for the same Y amount of stuff have gone up, and other wages on average around the country have gone up, then wouldn’t logic require that the minimum wage be raised? Put another way, either the minimum wage has some justification like my oversimplified layman’s version above, or it has no justification at all. If the latter is the case, then why not abolish it? If the former is the case, does it not need be adjusted whenever the terms of the equation which justifies it are adjusted? I understand that there are those who say that raising the minimum wage hurts small businesses, and that when these do well the economy does well and thereby trickles down to those lowest echelons in society. However, if minimum wage remains at the same level while prices increase, people have less money to buy stuff from the small businesses. Further, if wages overall are increasing but minimum wage does not, then the only way the lower strata could benefit is by a reduction of prices across the board due to the largesse at the top. If this fails to happen, does not the trickle down theory also fail? Again, some might say that minimum wage increases are so devastating to small businesses that they hurt the overall economy. In this model, the “trickle down” metaphor is a misnomer: what it really means is not that things get better for everyone when they get better for the rich, but that when things get better for the rich at least they don’t get worse for the poor. Nevertheless, this still appears specious if the wage remains the same while the price index goes up. Indeed, if it were not at least vaguely sound theory, then why do many economists look at inflation and the Fed by measuring the wage index against the price index?

And this doesn’t even bother with the moral issues. I’m not as interested in these, not least because I believe anything remotely smelling like emotional appeal tends to get pilloried in the public square (cf. former Senator John Edwards). But primarily I find such appeals unnecessary, as they are implicit in the logic of having a minimum wage in the first place. As stated above, if we only have a minimum wage because we want to make sure that Jobob McWorksalot can work and get paid enough to buy an apple (such that the overall economy grows), yet next year the apple costs more while his wages remain the same, then minimum wage cannot be based upon this reasoning.

(As an aside, everything that I have read while studying and teaching philosophy of law points to this understanding of the minimum wage, whether from the most hard nosed economy and law folks or the more liberal writers. Although he does not even mention the topic of minimum wage, Morris Raphael Coben provides an eminently readable example of the logic behind such laws in his essay "Property and Sovereignty.")

Admittedly, there are many factors that go into this equation. Economists can figure out how to peg minimum wage against some combination of the price index and inflation, whether considered domestically or against other currencies… all this is far beyond my ken. But at the very least it would seem necessary to make the wage much more fluid, such that it might respond to changes in the American economy (and thereby serve its apparent purpose).

If someone could please explain to me either why the above reasoning is flawed, or (if sound) why we have a minimum wage, I would greatly appreciate it.

What is the role of the Justice Department?

This message is not a typical rant, but rather a sort of plea. I would ask that those with more historical knowledge and/or professional background in political matters please respond to the following question: Has the Justice Department always been this cynical? To explain myself:

 

I’m sure that everyone has heard of the many situations in which the current administration has run afoul of the judiciary and the legislature regarding the separation of powers. A federal judge ruled today that the administration’s program of having the N.S.A. conduct warrantless wiretaps is unconstitutional. Specifically, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor stated that the program “violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] and Title III.” This followed hot on the heels of the A.B.A.’s denunciation of the program. Justice will appeal the ruling. This is no surprise. However, I find part of their response telling: CNN cites them justifying their appeal by saying the program is “a critical tool that ensures we have in place an early warning system to detect and prevent a terrorist attack.” They go on: “In the ongoing conflict with al Qaeda and its allies, the president has the primary duty under the Constitution to protect the American people… The Constitution gives the president the full authority necessary to carry out that solemn duty, and we believe the program is lawful and protects civil liberties” (http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/17/domesticspying.lawsuit/index.html).

 

That may be a fair claim, but it is a classic example of a logical non sequitur. The key is the last clause: the lawfulness of the program and its encroachment upon civil liberties literally appear to be an afterthought.

 

Regardless of the rest of Justice’s argument, this piece of specious tripe is dangerously inappropriate. The judge’s ruling has nothing to do with whether the program is helpful at preventing a terrorist attack. Fingerprinting everyone who enters the country would probably be helpful. Implanting GPS sensors in everyone would probably be extremely helpful. Completely shutting down the borders, building 100 foot fences, making routine searches and seizures, condoning torture, all these measures might be awfully helpful at preventing another attack. The problem is that the question of a program’s preventive potential is completely beside the point. The issue is the whether the Executive is adhering to the Constitution. At best, Justice could try and explain to Congress how important it is to amend the Constitution (specifically, to redefine and/or revoke the I, III, IV, V, IX, and XIV Amendments) to allow such procedures in defense of the nation. At worst, this bit of political rhetoric serves the administration: for those few Republicans people concerned enough about wiretapping to keep up with the latest news on the issue, this sentence simultaneously paints the federal judge as an “activist” while it maintains the fear- and war-mongering tone essential to the survival of this administration’s policies. Regardless, the statement has no place in an argument about the constitutionality of a government program. It has the same legal clout as the claim by some states after Brown v. Board of Education that desegregation, regardless of its constitutional basis, would be dangerous to implement and therefore the federal government cannot force states to implement it.

 

One final note: “instead of responding to arguments attacking the legality of the NSA’s eavesdropping program, the government filed for dismissal of the case, citing the ‘U.S. military and state secrets privilege’ and arguing the government would not be able to defend the domestic spying program without disclosing classified information” (ibid.). Delightful. How respond to people who claim that your actions in defense of the Constitution are undermining the Constitution itself? Tell them that you can’t, lest you undermine your defense of the Constitution.

 

But I digress. My curiosity is the role of Justice in all these shenanigans. In this, as in many of the recent squabbles between the Executive and the other powers in the last 6 years, Justice has appeared as the cheerleader for the administration. This has been the case repeatedly: regarding the suspension of habeas corpus, whether Jose Padilla’s solitary confinement for years or the Gitmo prisoners; regarding the use of torture by intelligence personnel; regarding “extreme rendition” to foreign countries with lax or non-existent provisions on torture; regarding surveillance of bank records; regarding military tribunals; regarding the incarceration of a number of children under the age of 15 at Gitmo claimed to be “enemy combatants”; regarding the name “enemy combatant” generally, as a bald attempt to avoid the Geneva Conventions… In all these and many more actions, Justice has spent my tax dollars to defend the administration against all-comers.

 

Is this their role? Is it the charter of the Justice Department to act as legal counsel for the administration when the latter’s actions come under judicial review? I honestly don’t know. However, I do know that every office of the Executive has legions of legal counsels to examine acts before implementation and defend them after such. Indeed, the current head of Justice was one of Mr Bush’s top legal advisors prior to his promotion, as well as Mr Cheney’s current Chief of Staff Addington. I also know that, according to an old Washington Post article (“Civil Rights Focus Shift Roils Staff At Justice,” November 13^th, 2005), the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division lost almost 20 percent of its lawyers in 2005, “in part because of a buyout program that some lawyers believe was aimed at pushing out those who did not share the administration’s conservative views on civil rights laws.” The article goes on to state that “prosecutions for the kinds of racial and gender discrimination crimes traditionally handled by the division have declined 40 percent over the past five years, according to department statistics.” Although the article is dated, it at least implies that Justice has some other purpose aside from pushing the administration’s agenda at all costs. That is, it implies that the Justice Department is intended to pursue some other issues, that presumably the primary purpose of the Attorney General is not to sit before Congressional Committees either repeating the administration’s position or stating that he cannot comment on issues of national security.

 

In short, is the Justice Department supposed to be a cabinet office dedicated to responding to lawsuits and court orders filed against the president? If so, why do tax dollars pay for White House legal counsels? If not, why is the former doing the latter’s job? In the meantime, who is doing Justice’s job? According to the Post, no one.

 

 

Immigration and taxes

A quick update on immigration:

 

All of you have heard how illegal immigration presents an unbelievable strain on the American economy. Many claim that illegal immigrants do not pay taxes, and therefore benefit from the nation’s largesse without contributing to it. This would appear to be a reasonable argument: if it is illegal to pay illegals, then they must be paid under the table. If they are paid under the table, they are not subject to payroll taxes. Thus, they must be stiffing the government at all levels for tax moneys while nevertheless drawing on government services at all levels.

 

This argument is flawed at almost every level. First, those who rant about the problem of illegal immigration also state that such individuals take away jobs from Americans. These jobs, they admit, tend to be at the bottom of the income tax bracket. Speaking as someone who makes just above the poverty level, one of the few blessings of being poor is being exempt from federal income tax. Indeed, for those who do manage to get on payrolls (e.g., by buying fake Social Security numbers), if they are crazy enough to file their taxes they receive back most every dime they pay in. Regardless, if they pay the I.R.S. at all, then they receive back the majority of that which goes in. Of course, those most vitriolic opponents of our current system still agree that the primary draw is not on the national economy (which, by all accounts and studies over the last 30 years, to my knowledge, actually benefits from our current system) but on states. The argument goes that illegal immigrants receive services while we pay for them.

 

Again, this specious bit of reasoning requires little to be picked apart. Aside from the issue of determining how illegal immigrants can receive public services without citizenship or a Social Security number (it seems I can’t leave the house without someone asking me for the latter), let’s look at the question of state taxes. Believe it or not, USA Today offers some insight. Today’s Snapshot (you know, the little graphic on the bottom right that gives you useless statistics without any context) concerns per capita state taxes collected in 2005. The average for every American is $2,189.84. This breaks down as follows:

 

Sales and receipts: $1,051.42

Income: $875.23

Licenses: $144.33

Others: $80.49

Property: $38.36 (not including local or school district property taxes)

 

If we remember that a good deal of income taxes on low income workers is returned, the vast majority of the taxes paid on average by everyone in the U.S. comes from sales. I would like to hear Lou Dobbs explain to me how those shifty illegal immigrants avoid paying sales taxes whenever they buy groceries. Indeed, considering the difficulty of obtaining public services without citizenship, it would appear that illegal immigrants pay for state services without benefiting from them. If this is the case, they join the filthy rich as the only two groups of people who, although they derive none of the blessings of state services, nevertheless pay for poor and middle class folks to go to school and hospital.

 

What an interesting pair! Since I can remember my father has complained about paying for public schools because he spent the gazillions of dollars for me to go to private schools. Maybe near-sighted affluent Republicans like him should join hands with illegal immigrants under the oldest political complaint in the country: taxes.

The GOP goes down the rabbit hole

This post was recently published in the PA newspaper Voices (July/August edition). Even though I wrote it, I think I need to credit them in some manner. Therefore, um, I hope this suffices.

-W.

Everyone knows that the cartoon is the true barometer of American politics. Recently, CNN’s Bill Mitchell portrayed Mr Bush announcing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death: While the president looked somber, his dancing shadow played the castanets. Indeed, between the surprise news of al-Zarqawi and the completion of Iraq’s government, it should have been a good few weeks for the Republican Party.

Unfortunately, the weeks also saw the suicides of three Guantanamo inmates (a “good PR move” on their part, according to one senior State Deptartment official), the 2500^th U.S. casualty in Iraq, and continual news about Haditha.

On June 16^th, House Republicans fought back with a resolution entitled “Declaring that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary.” This clever bit of skullduggery belied the GOP’s growing desperation in the face of sagging support, but it was clever nonetheless.

Following a similar item in the Senate, the House resolution praised U.S. troops, labeled Iraq the “central front” in the war on terrorism and rejected any “arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment” of U.S. troops. As reported by Forbes, this was an attempt “to force the Democrats’ hands… to put all members on record in support of the president’s wartime policies.” The House resolution passed 256-153; the Senate 93-6.

In short, brilliant. Your party is hurting, due in part to growing dissatisfaction with the war. Craft a resolution that places your opponents in a ridiculous paradox. If they vote yea, they affirm the execution of the war and reject a timetable. This should make them terribly unpopular with their party; or you may be able to cast them as weathervanes. If they vote nay, they are on record stating that they don’t support our troops and that they think America will lose the war on terror. Come midterm elections, you don’t even have to make up smut for your commercials. Flawless—as long as you believe your constituents are too ignorant to investigate your ads and discover your bald manipulation of the political process. (Too cynical? Cf. former Senator Max Cleland.)

Yet nothing is that simple in Wonderland, D.C. The Pentagon revealed its own surprise on June 21: a 74-page “debate prep book,” emailed to select members of Congress. According to ABC News, the document “is an exhaustive rebuttal of criticisms of the war and a defense of the administration’s conduct of the war.”

Hardly. By my reading (The Raw Story has a copy on the web) it is a poorly organized collection of unsupported assertions and vacuous talking points. But what do you expect? The military is not known for its ability to convince folks with words. Now they’re providing debate tips to senators?

Further, the document is illegal. As Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) pointed out in a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon (an arm of the Executive) spent “taxpayer dollars to produce partisan political documents,” with the implicit intent of lobbying the Legislative. Aside from raising eyebrows concerning the Constitution’s separation of powers, this violates at least two acts of Congress. The Pentagon quickly recalled the document.

This was the White House’s turn to look nonsensical, but not long before the roles were reversed. Remember Representative William Jefferson (D-LA)? After finding $90,000 in his freezer, the FBI and Justice Dept. stormed his office with a court warrant. The GOP should have been delighted that a Democrat was taking center stage in the “Culture of Corruption.” Instead, they exploded. Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) demanded that the White House order any confiscated materials returned. House brass held a meeting in which (according to the Washington Post) there was talk of demanding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ resignation. Meanwhile, Mr Gonzales, along with Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and FBI Director Robert Mueller III all threatened to resign should Mr Bush return the documents.

Apparently the Legislative was upset about the Executive overstepping its reach.

Wait… what? Since when is this Congress concerned about the expansion of Executive power? Besides, why challenge the administration when they could sit back and watch a Democrat get pilloried? Maybe Mr Hastert is hiding something in his office. (“The Daily Show” speculates he is hording candy bars and cheeseburgers.)

What could cause all this mad behavior? Surely not the Democrats. The left is as divided now as they’ve ever been. Most likely they will run in all directions until November, to no end (save ranting and panting and occasionally colliding; they would fit nicely in Lewis Carroll’s work).

House Republicans would do well to forget both Democrats and the White House in order to get back to the business of Congress: doing nothing. Witness the profound summer agenda of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN): ban gay marriage, ban flag burning, curtail abortion. As for the executive branch, its offices should emulate their boss: go on vacation.

-W.