one more thing (in english too!)

for those of you who are wondering, the great rematch with sarah took place last night. we did not play kahuna this time, but rather settlers of catan so that we could include both my wife and sarah's sister amy. amy won, a result that both sarah and i could accept.

that's it. now i'm gone. political posts will probably return when i do

eid al-shukr

al-aan, sanadh-hab ilaa wilkes-barre, pennsylvania bisabab eid al-shukr. ghadan, sanusaafir ilaa lewisburg, pennsylvania ilaa beyt waalidat zowjatii. sanabqaa fiihaa Hattaa yowm al-aHad, thumma sanarji3 ilaa shaqqatii.

so i won't be posting until then. eid al-shukr mubarak everyone!

a first

my birthday is on friday. i turn 34. it occurs to me that this upcoming presidential election is the first one ever in which i am eligible to be a candidate. sure, i won't quite be 35 by election day next year, but i will turn 35 before inauguration. so i think i, just barely, qualify to run.

not that i want the job, mind you, or even have any chance of winning. there's no need to start any panics.

silber on why they hate us

my friend hydro has been trying to get me to read the light of reason, a libertarian blog by authur silber, for a few weeks now. the last time hydro emailed me a link to the site, i clicked on it only to find that the silber was going on a short hiatus because of economic difficulties. i didn't go back and then promptly forgot about it.

anyway, today hydro tried again and emailed me an essay posted on the light of reason a few days ago called you want to know why they hate us? you're the reason they hate us. it's a few days old now, and over that time i have seen a few other blogs link to it, but i never bothered to read it until hydro emailed it to me.

i'm glad he did. it's really good. silber says that people who read blogs don't follow links. go prove him wrong.

the medicare bill

it's already passed, so why am i suddenly writing about it now? well, it was such a rushed job, i really didn't have much information before this week. over the past few days the more i read about the bill, the worse it seems. i can't even identify a single reason anyone would vote for such a bill if they were serious about improving medicare, let alone provide a new prescription benefit that is at all meaningful. here's one example that by itself undermines the entire purpose of the bill:

the bill would prohibit the u.s. government from negotiating any lower prices with pharmaceutical companies (something that every private insurance carrier does to keep down costs). thus, if the pharmaceutical industry decided to double the amount they charged medicare to make up for the concessions they give to private insurance carriers, the government would not be allowed to protest. the bill, in a sense, is an incentive for drug costs to increase. because even with the new benefit, the u.s. government will only pay a percentage of drug costs for medicare recipients, with the remaining costs paid out of pocket by the beneficiary, such increase will result in more costs being passed on to medicare recipients. as this study by the consumers union suggests, prescription costs for seniors are likely to increase rather than decrease, because the percentage of drug costs paid for by the government under the plan will likely be overwhelmed by the increase in the overall costs of drugs.

obviously this is not an issue that is easily explained to the general public or reduced to simple sound bites. to explain the problems with this bill, you need careful analysis and complicated explanations. which is why the leadership in congress insisted on a quick vote, to be held less than one week after the bill was introduced, even though the drug benefit will not take effect until 2006. if the effective date is two years away what is the hurry? someone, it seems, did not want this bill read too closely before it passed.

gay marriage

there's a "man in the street"-style article in today's new york times about the massachusetts court decision gay marriage ruling. the reporter apparently wandered around ardmore, pa asking random people what they thought about gay marriage. despite the fact that ardmore is right next-door to me (my back window looks into ardmore), i was not interviewed for the article, but i nevertheless feel entitled to throw in my two-cents as an almost ardmore resident.

the thrust of the article is that while people seemed to be evenly split on whether to allow gays to marry, many of the people who opposed gay marriages did not have a problem with private gay relationships or even extending some benefits of marriage to gay couples. in my opinion the people interviewed were kind of missing the point. gay marriage already happens. for years, in massachussetts and all around the country, gay couples have held wedding ceremonies. these ceremonies have happened long before massachussetts decision, and will continue to take place regardless of how this debate plays out politically. while it's not clear to me what percentage of gay people get married, or even want to get married, there is undeniably some portion of the gay population that wants to get married and will do so. there is no way to prevent them from doing so, as long as the first amendment right to free association exists in the constitution.

so the issue is not whether gays will marry, but only whether the government will recognize the couples as married afterwards. the main reason that anyone would care about governmental recognition are the benefits that go along with being a spouse under the law. spouses legally have a say in their partner's medical treatment, are entitled to survivor's benefits, have inheritance rights in the absence of a will, and have certain rights if the relationship should end through divorce proceedings.

thus the only practical issue in this debate is whether gay couples should get the public benefits of marriage or not. again, gay people already get married. so everyone who says they are for some kind of civil partnership that gives the benefits of marriage to gay couples but are not for gay marriage itself, are really missing the point. if they could just get over their fear of the words "gay marriage"maybe they would see that.

that's the rant the new york times missed out on when they did not interview me yesterday.

busy weekend

dinner guests friday night, saturday morning i slept in, then rushed off to see the girl with the pearl earings with talk cinema, then dinner with my parents, and after that i finally saw the pianist. sunday morning i did laundry then conducted 3 college interviews for my alma mater (it's early decision season and i am co-in charge of coordinating the local interviews of applicants), then came home, had dinner, then joined our neighbors in watching the fellowship of the rings (or most of it, it got too late, so we will finish it tonight). after that, i went to bed, realizing that i never got around to much of what i planned to do this weekend: review my arabic, finish my book, decide where to hang up those persian miniatures i hauled back from uzbekistan, read the newspaper, and yes, blog.

i did find time to call sarah to plan when i will see her when she is in town this week. while we did not manage to come up with a plan, we did establish that i will kick her ass in some boardgame at some date this week (she's been bragging for the past year about her alleged victory over me in kahuna). sarah also said that she wants to sit through all of my uzbek photos, god help her.

get me out of here

i spent all day today pushing papers around. and yet i feel like nothing was accomplished. not the most productive day

still, it's better than yesterday. the other side did not show up to my hearing and i still think i may have lost. when i told a partner at my firm about what happened she said "anyone can win by default, but it takes a special kind of person to have the other side default and still lose." i don't get an official decision for several weeks. i can't wait to see it.

demolishing hearts and homes

it's mind-boggling how little attention the latest u.s. offensive in iraq is getting. its absolutely staggering, they're bombing in iraq again. but who exactly they are bombing when military leaders regularly contradict each other on who is responsible for the attacks on u.s. forces? (official explanations ping-pong between "saddam loyalists" and "foreign fighters"–the other likely culprits, frustrated and armed iraqis who were suddenly unemployed when bremer abolished the iraqi army, are almost never mentioned by any military authority figures)

i heard a story on n.p.r. yesterday when driving back from my hearing which explained that some of the bombing is targeting houses of people who live in the tikrit area. some of the demolition is also apparently being done the old fashioned way, with bulldozers. the military official who was interviewed on the n.p.r. piece explained that the homes were selected because they had somehow been involved in attacks against u.s. forces–either because the u.s. believes attacks were planned from the homes or because the attackers used the homes for cover when they attacked. the official noted that residents of the demolished homes were given 1/2 to 1 hour warning that their home was slated for demolition so they could clear out their belongings.

so, to review, u.s. forces have been able to determine which houses were involved in attacks against the u.s., but not which people. so they have decided to attack the houses in lieu of going after the actual attackers. the owners of the houses, whom the military apparently believes are innocent--for they do not arrest the owners when they warn them about the houses demolition--are nevertheless punished by being rendered homeless. also reflect for a minute how long it took you to move pack up and get your belongings out last time you moved. when i moved out of our 2-bedroom apartment in chicago it took days to just box all my crap up, much less get it out. just moving the boxes out took several hours. so most of these people are losing not only their homes, but most of their personal possessions. the n.p.r. story described the owners sifting through the rubble of their house after it was demolished.

this is how we are winning the hearts and minds of the people in iraq? especially those in the center of "the sunni triangle" where people are least in favor of the american occupation? (for an example of the type of outrage this will generate even outside the "triangle" see this post from the iraqi blogger riverbend).

with this policy, the u.s. is basically adopting israel's tactics in the west bank. for years they have demolished the houses of the family members of suicide bombers, over the protest by much of the outside world. considering how effective the israeli policy has been in winning over the palestinian population, we can see exactly where this policy in iraq is leading. furthermore, as billmon pointed out a few days ago the demolition policy violates the geneva convention. it's not only ineffective, but illegal.

meanwhile, you have to look hard to even find mention of the bombings and demolitions in the news. the coverage of iraq is already going the route of afghanistan. the fighting there barely ever makes it into the newspaper anymore, much less on news broadcasts. even when american forces are killed in afghanistan, it is a small story of a couple of lines buried deep in the paper. but can we really expect otherwise? after all, michael jackson was just arrested!

excuses excuses

i've gotten busy again. i have to run out to a hearing in malvern, pa this afternoon, then run back into philly for my class tonight. i starting longer rants, only to get distracted when more important things intrude into my life. by the time i can get back to it, the passion is gone so i usually don't complete what i write. such is the reality of a busy lawyer blogger.

meanwhile, while listening to n.p.r. this morning, i heard hydro, a guy who often posts here, do a little piece on n.p.r. this morning. hydro is the first close friend i made after moving here four years ago. he's appeared on n.p.r. before, but i always seem to miss hearing him. but not today. congratulations hydro!

more later when i get the chance.

privatization

one day i will write a long rant about privatization of government jobs. the short version is that sometimes privatization works (i.e. it allows the function previously done by the government to be done cheaper and more effectively) but sometimes it does not. the problem is that privatization is practically a religion to some conservatives these days–it is taken on faith that the free market is always cheaper, more efficient and better. in fact, there are many examples when that is not so (my longer rant, if i ever get around to it, will be about why it doesn't always work)

case in point: the u.s. forest service first spent $24 million to study the feasibility of privatizating some of the jobs done by its employees, and then decided to outsource about 250 jobs. the thing is, the privatization scheme is expected to cost the service an additional $425,000 per year. one of the former forest service employee was called back to his old job through a temp agency and found he would earning $4 less per hour with no benefits. (links via cursor)

this all begs the question, where is the extra $425,000 per year going if the new outsourced employees are earning less money. the answer, i suspect, is the money is puffing up the profit margins of the company that won the privatization contract with the forest service.

when government jobs are handed over to private companies, it is effectively converting non-profit work into for-profit work. because the for-profit operation must skim a profit margin off of the amount allocated for the job, there is an element of inefficiency in having the private contractor doing the job that would not be present if the government did it. proponents of privatization believe that government's inherent inefficiencies and bureaucracy will more than make up for the profit-margin-taking inefficiency that goes with private business. but private businesses can be bureaucratic too and sometimes there is no way for the contractor to operate at a profit without cutting corners. in the case of these forest service jobs, they are cutting corners by paying employees less, thereby making it more likely that the best people for the job will go elsewhere where they can make more money and get health insurance. but cutting corners in this case is not enough, so the private company is simply charging the government more to keep its profit margins wide. in the end this is really nothing more than corporate welfare.

occupation and invitation

so when my internet was down over the weekend i got most of my news from n.p.r. i listened to a bunch of stories about this new timetable the administration is floating for returning sovereignty to iraq. (the plan can be downloaded from the coalition provisional authority web site). as the plan was described on the radio, sovereignty will be restored to iraq in june 2004 and that will mark the end of the "occupation." the broadcast noted that u.s. troops will stay in the country after june 2004, but it will be "at the invitation" of the iraqi government.

when i heard this i wondered how the u.s. knows that the new iraqi government will invite u.s. troops to remain. i mean, bush keeps saying the u.s. is going to set up a democracy in iraq. what if the new iraq government responds to a public backlash against foreign forces and asks them to leave? if the country really is going to be an independent sovereign country (as opposed to some american puppet) it could decide to do something unexpected by the administration, or even something bush doesn't want.

this morning i read juan cole's explanation of the stages of the plan. cole notes that under the timetable bilateral agreements with the u.s. concerning troop presence in iraq will be negotiated by march 2004. i.e. before elections* are held in may 2004. this means that these agreements will be negotiated with the c.p.a., a group of iraqis who were handpicked by the bush administration (and can be dismissed by at will by paul bremer). that's how the administration can be sure that the new iraq government will invite troops to remain after june 2004–strictly speaking, the new government will not do the inviting. rather the new government of iraq will inherit an agreement which will require them to accept american forces on terms negotiated between the american government and american appointees.

under those circumstances, there will be little practical difference between the period that american forces are there as occupiers as opposed to invited guests after june 2004. its hard to imagine that iraqis who are resisting the occupation will see much of a difference. everything about this smells of an attempt to artificially declare the end of the occupation in the months before the presidential election when, in fact, all the trappings of an occupation will continue. kind of like how they artificially declared the end of the war even as the fighting rages on.

*as cole notes these so-called "elections" even when they finally occur will be anything but democratic. the eligible voters will be a handpicked committee rather than the population at large. thus, even after these elections, the new government of iraq will be indirectly appointed by the u.s., with the iraqi population having absolutely no say in who will be their new leader.

i'm back

so the power finally came back on friday when i was at work. i didn't get back until late that night. when i did i realized that while the power was back, the cable was not--including my cable-modem internet connection. the cable didn't come back until late last night and so this morning is my first chance to use the internet all weekend. i spent much of yesterday on the phone bouncing around the cable company voice message system and fretting about all the emails that i could not read. but when i got on this morning, i discovered i had received exactly one email since i left work friday. so i guess i didn't miss much. what seemed like a really long time to be offline, in retrospect, appears to be only 2 days.

the kennedy-miller bill

i usually don't write about labor law issues here, even though that's what i do for a living, but i can't really help it after reading this in today's new york times:

NEW UNIONIZATION PUSH Two of the labor movement's main allies in Congress, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative George Miller of California, both Democrats, introduced a bill that would allow unions to organize a workplace without an election and by simply getting 50.1 percent of the workers to sign cards saying they want a union. It would also require employers to pay triple back pay when they illegally fired workers for supporting a union. Steven Greenhouse (NYT)

both of the proposed changes to federal labor law is extremely important and desperately needed. the triple-back pay provision is particularly important. under current law, the national labor relations act authorizes the award of back pay to employees who are fired because of their union activity. thus, if a judge finds that an individual was fired for that reason, the most the company can be ordered to do is to reinstate the individual and to pay the employee back pay equal to whatever he/she lost during the time he/she was not working. in other words, it is simply a "make whole" remedy, designed to put the terminated employee in exactly the same position he or she would have been in if he or she was never terminated.

while this may sound sufficient to deter employers from firing union activists, in practice it has little deterrent effect. one problem is the procedural hurdles an employee or the union must navigate before an employer is forced to make an employee whole. say jane is an employee who is fired for her union activity. the first step is for jane or her union to file a charge with the national labor relations board alleging that the decision to terminate her violated section 8(a)(3) of the national labor relations act. the n.l.r.b. is a bifurcated agency, with both a judicial arm and a prosecutorial arm. when a charge is filed, the prosecutorial arm of the agency investigates to find out if there is evidence that the employer fired jane because of her union activity. jane and her union are asked to submit evidence in support of the charge, and the employer is also asked to submit evidence that jane's termination was for a non-discriminatory reason. at the end of the investigation, the prosecutorial arm of the n.l.r.b. uses its discretion to decide whether it will prosecute the case on behalf of the terminated employee.

one problem is that it is jane and the union's burden of convincing the board that jane's termination was improper. they have to produce the evidence to prove that the employer had improper motive. the employer, meanwhile, controls virtually all of the records from the workplace, it can give statements from the supervisors who fired the employee and can comb the employee's personnel file, its production records, etc. for any reason to justify her termination that does not involve her union activity. employers can almost always find something (and it is extremely hard to ever prove that records were not altered to "document" a non-discriminatory reason for the discharge)

on top of that, when the nlrb decides to prosecute a case on behalf of a terminated employee, it bears the costs of litigating the issue. as the nlrb's budget shrinks, the bar that it sets for deciding when to pursue a case progressively rises. in the past, all a charging party had to show was that there was reason to believe that the termination violated the law. now, the board must conclude that it has a good chance of winning if it decides to prosecute. in practice this means you really need smoking gun-type evidence in order for the n.l.r.b. to even take the case before a judge.

and if a case is finally litigated, it is a very slow process. it takes months to get a hearing before an administrative law judge, and the decision of the a.l.j. can be appealed to the n.l.r.b. in washington, and ultimately to the federal courts. this process takes years. even if the termination is ultimately found to be unlawful, employers rarely pay the full back pay. when an employee is out of work that long, he or she is often happy to take a settlement that amounts to a fraction of the total amount that would really be due. often employers who lose offer to drop their appeals if the employee agrees to a small settlement. out-of-work employees often cannot afford not to accept. (and it is very frustrating as a lawyer to see a case where we really have the goods on the employer settle in a way that lets the employer off so easily).

meanwhile, by the time these termination cases are resolved, the unionization campaign that triggered the termination is long over. employers know that unionized workplaces pay higher wages and benefits than non-union workplaces. they also know that firing the employees behind a unionization drive can be extremely effective at undermining the union campaign. terminations both rob the union of their advocates among the employees and send a message to the other employees about the price they will pay if they publicly support the union. under the current law, it simply makes economic sense to fire all the union supporters as soon as the employer learns of their identity. whatever back pay award the employer may be forced to pay will probably amount to less than the increases in wages or benefits they will end up paying if the workplace becomes unionized. one management-side labor attorney i deal with once told me that he counsels his clients to find and terminate union supporters even though to do so would be illegal because in the long run it will save their client's money.

alright, i spent a long time discussing the triple damages proposal, i don't really have time to get into the card check issue. maybe i will find time later. in any case, kennedy and miller's proposed changes to the national labor relations act is badly needed. i have no illusions that the bill will never pass this congress or be signed by this president. hopefully, they can reintroduce it once something better comes along.

why living in an arboretum is not all good

when i came home last night at around 8:45 after my arabic class, the row of houses where i live was dark and there was this yellow tape blocking the alley that leads to my car hole (i.e. garage). i drove through it anyway and found that the large 100+ year old tree in back of my neighbor's place had fallen over in the high winds we have had here. the tree had taken out several power lines–some happened to be lying pretty close to the back door to my apartment. for some reason, i decided to climb the metal stairs next to the wires lying on the ground. it only occurred to me that maybe that was a bad idea as i was near the top of the stairs.

no power meant no blogging last night, not to mention no light or heat. our neighbors called saying they were going to watch a dvd on their laptop and invited us to join them, but we just read by flashlight and went to sleep. the neighbors also mentioned that power went out at 9:45 a.m. yesterday morning. i left for reading only 15 minutes before the lights went out.

this morning, we woke up and the power was still out. with no heat it was pretty cold in the apartment. at least the hot water worked. we both went to work early to go to a place with heat.

i'm in the office now, the wind is still howling outside, but at least there is heat here. i just hope the power is back when i get home tonight...

i'm home this morning. i have a hearing today at 11 a.m. in reading. reading is only 1 hour from my apartment, but is about 1 hour 20 minutes from my office. which means it makes no sense to go into my office in philly only to turn around and go back out to reading. i really could get used to this sleeping in and then lazily reading the paper every morning. i guess i need more 11 a.m. hearings in reading (i should add that this is a worker's comp hearing, a type of law that i know very little about. that should make the hearing interesting)

i wrote a long post yesterday about something that happened at work. then i deleted it. stupid client confidentiality! i am playing a dangerous game by even writing it. i am a little paranoid that one will slip through and post.

i'm gonna go and mess with my links now. i'm adding bark bark, woof woof. i'm also going to rearrange some of the links. at least one listed as a "blog" is really more of a "link" (and vice-versa). i'm also gonna delete a few blogs from the list because there haven't been any posts for at least two months. so goodbye lady sun, ishtar, ignatz and codex manasserii. (hey chuck, email me if you restart codex. i will restore the link if you do)

this really isn't an issue i'm into that much

but i give you... the meatrix

(via nathan newman)

a recommendation

go read juan cole's extremely well-written analysis of the current state of american rule in iraq.

syria

yesterday the senate considered a bill to impose sanctions on syria. according to the nytimes article, the bill would require sanctions until syria (1) halts the movement of people and materials across the border into iraq that will be used in attacks against u.s. forces, (2) stops its support of terrorist groups and closes terrorists offices in syria, (3) withdraw its forces from lebanon, and (4) cease its development of medium and long range missiles as well as chemical and biological weapons. as i read the article i wondered how exactly syria was supposed to "halting any movement across its border of people and equipment destined for attacks on Americans in Iraq" when the american military can't seem to do it themselves. indeed, iraq as a country under military occupation probably would have an easier time controlling its borders than syria, which lacks much of the modern equipment that the u.s. could use to detect border crossers. even with such modern equipment, the u.s. cannot completely control its border with mexico

i am no fan of syria. aside from its horrible human rights record, the current government of syria has well documented connections to terrorists groups (although the connections are more to groups directed against israel than al qaeda). but if the u.s. wants a bill that actually has a chance of changing syria's behavior, the sanction bill should have incentives that are actually achievable.

brooks is pissing me off again

is it just me or did david brooks miss the entire point this morning? i mean, he argues against the claims that the bush administration is handing out contracts in iraq to its political supporters. brooks claims that there are strict procedures that the government follows to avoid such abuses. while he alludes to a single no-bid contract, he really does not really discuss the full nature of how critics of the administration claim the regular federal contract procedures are being circumvented. the first contracts in iraq were awarded to halliburton without competitive bids. brooks claims that the no-bid contract was justified because the u.s. government did not have time to go through the competitive bidding process last spring when it needed to immediately get firefighters on the ground in iraq. however, as the article i just linked to points out, the u.s. recently announced that it was extending that no-bid contract even though there is no rush now.

furthermore, because halliburton and its subsidiaries already had equipment and personnel on the ground in iraq because of the initial no-bid contracts, the company had a distinct advantage in the awarding of subsequent contracts. indeed, the bechtel group, a halliburton competitor, has publicly complained that the job descriptions of those contracts which were put up for competitive bids seemed to be written specifically with halliburton in mind. the bechtel group claimed that because they were written that way, it was impossible for any other company to get the contract other than halliburton.

brooks writes that those people "who actually know something about the government procurement process" do not see anything wrong with how contracts are being awarded in iraq. but the bechtel group certainly knows about the process, it has been a government contractor many times before, and yet it went to the press claiming that the bidding process was being undermined to favor halliburton. the members of the senate also are familiar with the process, which is why they included in the recent $87.5 billion appropriations bill a provision that future contracts cannot be awarded without competitive bids or congressional oversight. the provision was taken out by the house members in the conference committee and was not in the final bill that president bush signed. if nothing odd is going on here, why did someone work hard to get the competitive bid and oversight provision removed?

everything about this iraq adventure reeks of war profiteering. reconstruction of iraq has often been compared to the marshall plan, but the marshall plan included strict oversight of the money allocated, and a requirement that reconstruction priorities be decided by locals who could use local companies to perform the reconstruction work (if you think about it, using local companies makes the most sense if we really want to rebuild, rather than simply loot, iraq. when you use an american company, the portion of the reconstruction funds will flow out of iraq as profits. if you use a local company the profits stay in iraq to be reinvested in the iraqi economy). brooks' weak defense of the bush administration's corruption when it comes to iraq only makes me support naomi klein's call to get foreign company's out of iraq.

admitting the iraq war isn't over

for the past few months the new york times has printed a little box with the names and home towns of americans who have died in iraq. at the top of the box they have also given a running tally of the number of people who have been killed so far. until recently, at least, the tally has given the number killed since bush declared the end of "major combat operations" last may. today, however, i noticed that they just gave the number killed in iraq, without any mention of the may proclamation, saying 388 american service members "have died since the start of the Iraq war." i have no idea how long ago they started doing it this way.

i guess there is no way to continue to pretend that the war is over now that the u.s. military has resumed bombing in iraq.

lame non-excuses

i feel like i've neglected my blog lately. at first, i didn't post because of various things that kept me busy in my life (see "lame excuses" below). but then even when i got through my hearings and arabic mid-term, i still did not get around to blogging. it's not that stuff did not happen that i was not itching to rant about. there were the elections last tuesday, mounting deaths in iraq, the new anti-abortion law, and many other rantable things. it was a pretty eventful week, now that i think about it. but i still never got around to it. i thought i would catch up this weekend because my wife is away at a conference. but that didn't happen either. in the end, i guess i have no excuse, so i blame society.

more later (really, i mean it this time...)

one more thing

sean paul is heading to azerbaijan and uzbekistan today. i am jealous. his travelogue will be here.

lame excuses

my blogging (both reading and writing) has fallen off this week. its a busy week for me. i got an arabic mid-term as well as a busy week at work (today was a hearing in some indistinguishable north new jersey town that looks like every other one i've been to. tomorrow, i will be at a hearing in allentown. and after that i have to go to a hearing in trenton. who says i don't go to exciting places as part of my job?). meanwhile, my wife is leave town for vancouver tomorrow, so i've been trying to get in all the quality time i can with her before she leaves.

one quick update: atrios and that stalker guy have apparently reconciled. in case you haven't heard and are curious, that is.

books

i finished "the minotaur takes a cigarette break" last night which was the last book on the pile by my bed. i have a problem controlling my book buying, so i have this rule that i am not allowed to buy any books until the by-the-bed pile is empty. and today it is. let the good times roll.

"the minotaur," by the way, was a good book. it tells the tale of what the minotaur from the greek myth is doing today. it turns out, he is a cook in the american south who lives in a trailer park, fixes cars as a hobby and dreams of opening his own corndog business. i loved how he led a quiet, ordinary, somewhat sad, existence and yet the people around him only had a vague inkling that there was anything unusual about their bull-headed co-worker and neighbor.

before that i read "for love of country", a collection of essays about political philosophy. it started with an essay by martha nussbaum, a professor of law and philosophy at the university of chicago. in 1994 she wrote an essay about the meaning and utility of patriotism in modern society–ultimately concluding that patriotism should be discarded in favor of "cosmopolitanism," i.e. the idea that we are all citizens of the world, rather than citizens of a particular country. over twenty philosophers (some famous, some not) wrote essays responding to nussbaum's essay, fifteen are reprinted in "for love of country." nussbaum then gets the last word with a rebuttal essay at the end. the book was okay, it certainly was a much faster read than most political philosophy books i have encountered. but as much as nussbaum's general thesis appealed to me, it seemed a little simple-minded. the 15 reaction pieces each criticized nussbaum's idea from a different angle. some made good points that nussbaum never quite addressed in her rebuttal (there were too many to address all of the objections in one essay) and so her rebuttal seemed half-hearted.

before that was "anil's ghost" which was great. my wife is a big fan of michael ondaatje and read the book a while ago. she told me it was a good book to read while traveling so i took it with me to uzbekistan.

whenever i plan a trip alone, i always think that i will read a lot when i travel. i read a lot when i am at home and traveling alone always includes plenty of dead time, especially when i am in a developing country with its inevitable delays and inconveniences. but when i travel alone, i never seem to read much, instead i write. i write postcards, i keep journals, etc. i spend all the dead time documenting what i see around me and never find the time to read. there's always time to do that when i get home. the uzbekistan trip was no different. i hauled "anil's ghost" and 2 other books across the country, never cracking them open except for on the plane home.

but i finally read "anil's" after i got back. surprisingly, it made me want to go to sri lanka. i think my wife had the opposite impression. and i agree, it would have made a good travel book. that is, if i read while traveling.

and speaking of no accountability...

in my "friedman" post below i mentioned that i think the world is not willing to contribute more to rebuild iraq because the u.s. won't allow there to be any accountability for the money they pledge, well now it looks like there won't be any accountability for the money the u.s. taxpayers pay either:

The final version of the $87 billion spending bill for Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) is missing provisions the Senate had passed to penalize war profiteers who defraud American taxpayers. House negotiators on the package refused to accept the Senate provisions.

The Senate provision was authored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.). It was one of the last major sticking points this week as negotiators worked through the compromise appropriations bill. The conferees narrowly defeated the amendment after lengthy debate, with House negotiators offering no substitute and no willingness to compromise, despite repeated offers from Senate conferees to negotiate the language. Republican and Democratic Senate conferees consistently supported the provision, which had been unanimously accepted during Senate Appropriations Committee markup of the bill. Leahy, Feinstein and Durbin are members of the Appropriations Committee and also of the Judiciary Committee (news - web sites), which has jurisdiction over the criminal justice system.

"Congress is about to send billions and billions of dollars to a place where there is no functioning government, under a plan with too little accountability and too few financial controls," said Leahy. "That's a formula for mischief. We need strong disincentives for those who would defraud taxpayers, and removing this protection is another major blot on this bill."

the president is expected to sign the bill, blot and all, tomorrow.

why is the world so cynical about our aims in iraq again?

(via atrios)

letter to the editor

i wrote a letter to the new york times this morning. i used to do it more often. i ride my train into philly each morning reading the paper. by the time i get to center city, usually something is annoying me. that thing rattles around in my brain as i walk the three blocks from the train station to my office. during the course of the three blocks sometimes my annoyance congeals into something coherent which i dash off by email once i get to my desk. most of the time, the letter disappears into the ether after i write it, never to be heard from again. but it makes me feel better and so i can forget about whatever pissed me off and get to my work.

on five occasions they have published my letter. but they only seem to publish one out of every 15 or so that i write. you do the math. i do this a lot. but not as much since i got this blog. i guess it's just a new place for me to vent which is cutting into my nyt letter racket.

anyway, for whatever reason this morning i emailed a letter to the times rather than simply blogging about it. they never contacted me about publication all day, so i guess that it will not get in. actually, now that i'm rereading it, i can see why. the times likes letter best when they have one simple point, preferably short easily articulated points. in my letter i think i was trying to say too much. or maybe it just sucks.

anyway, here it is:

To the Editor:

In his column "Iraq War III" William Safire both claims that the recent attacks against American forces in Iraq is a different war than the war to topple Saddam Hussein's government last spring and characterizes those attacks as "terrorism." As the Times' language expert I really expected better from Mr. Safire. On the first point, Safire claims that the current attacks are by Saddam loyalists. In other words, the perpetrators are the same enemy in the war last spring. If that same enemy is still fighting six months later, how can it be called a new war? Instead it looks like the "prior war" never ended after all. And as for his characterization of the attacks as "terrorism," terrorism is acts of violence against civilians to accomplish military or political aims. Downing a military helicopter filled with soldiers during a war is not terrorism, it is guerrilla warfare.

friedman

i finally got around to reading thomas friedman's column from this morning. he spends half of the column puzzling over why france and germany didn't promise any money to rebuild iraq at the madrid donor's conference earlier this week. as he goes through the motions of exploring their possible reasons for not pledging anything, setting up several straw men to knock over in the following sentence.

as a preliminary matter, friedman glazes over the fact that france and germany did pledge money at the madrid conference. both france and germany are members of the e.u. and the e.u. pledged 200 million euros at the madrid conference. that is on top of the 100 million euros they have already donated to humanitarian assistance in iraq. while 300 million euros is not nearly as much as the u.s. is donating, it is not nothing. friedman only tacitly acknowledges this when he refers passingly to "their share of the paltry E.U. contribution[.]" paltry as it is, it is not zero as friedman says in the first sentence of the column. furthermore, arguably at least, france and germany's share of the e.u. contribution--which is a grant, not a loan--is worth more than saudi arabia's $1 billion in "new loans and credits." france and germany, at least, will not put iraq further in debt.

but more importantly, when friedman explores the possible reasons for france and germany's decision not to contribute more, he never bothers to raise what i think are those countries' real objection to dumping significant amounts of money into iraq: that the money would be totally under the control of the americans, with no accountability or transparency on how it is spent. the u.s. was asking, in effect, for a blank check. france and germany were not alone in their reluctance to hand over the money to an administration that has shown nothing but contempt for their concerns. nor does he mention that france and germany were hardly alone in their reluctance to contribute. the madrid conference showcased just how isolated the u.s. is and how unwilling most of the world is to invest heavily in iraq without any kind of outside accountability for what the u.s. does there. friedman claims the madrid conference is a symptom of the different ways that the u.s. and europe see the world. maybe there is something to that point, but it seems to me that the rest of the world is not thinking all that differently than the europeans.

pictures of mongolia

an old friend (and my college roomate) is an archeologist and just got back from mongolia. his slideshow is here

rummy acknowledges that the war in iraq is not over

when asked about the tragic downing of a chinook helicopter today (which killed 15 and wounded 21 soldiers) rumsfeld said:

"It's clearly a tragic day for America... In a long, hard war, we're going to have tragic days, as this is. But they're necessary. They're part of a war that's difficult and complicated."

so apparently we are still at war in iraq. has anyone told the president yet?

paying the bills

atrios points out how the bush administration assured the american public last april that american taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to rebuild iraq. what interesting is that back then the administration specifically rejected an analogy to the marshall plan, which costed u.s. taxpayers $97 billion (what the marshall plan would be in modern dollars). now that the administration wants us to pony up $87 billion (for starters, i don't think anyone believes this will be the last and final payment), marshall plan analogies are back in vogue.

why the difference? back in april, the war was just starting, and the administration was still assuring us that it would be cheap. the marshall plan meant a long-term financial commitment which was contrary to the easy-in, easy-out tale that bush was trying to sell.

but now things have changed. we are in iraq, and will probably be mired there until it becomes a stable country. so now bush is pushing us to buy our way out. they pretend that they never told us it would be easy or cheap to get out of iraq and ignore the fact that one major reason why it will be so expensive is that we have alienated our allies by pushing ahead with this globally unpopular war they will not help share the costs of rebuilding. once the american public has accepted that rebuilding iraq is a long-term commitment that for the most part we will have to bear, the marshall plan analogy becomes much more favorable to the bushies. after all, the marshall plan was ultimately a success and, most people would agree, was worth the substantial investment by american taxpayers. now that bush is no longer pretending that we won't foot the bulk of the bill he wants to convince us it will work out well and will ultimately be worth it.

yglesias to hawkish-former liberals

matt yglesias makes the following appeal to former liberal hawks:

* Take a deep breath. Look in the mirror. Take another deep breath. Look at some photos of your liberal friends and family. Ask yourself: Do you really believe that they opposed the Iraq War because they wanted Saddam Hussein to stay in power; do you really think they don't care if your hometown gets destroyed by terrorists?
* Try reading some actual policy statements put out by Democratic foreign-policy hands, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and members of the Armed Services Committee. Ask yourself: Do the views expressed therein really sound like the characterizations of them you've read on NRO and the hawk blogs?
* Look again in the mirror, focusing this time on your hairline and that little space next to your eyes that gets wrinkly when you squint. There's no easy way to say this, but . . . you're getting old. I am too. It's scary, it happens to us all. Ask yourself: Has the left really changed, or am I just that cliché guy who stopped really caring about the poor as I aged?
* Take a look at the transcript of the latest White House press conference. Find some other examples where the president had to respond on-the-fly to questions. Ask yourself: Given the perilous international situation, am I really comfortable with the fact that a total moron is president of the United States.
* Read this post again. Consider the condescending tone, the cheap psychoanalysis, the refusal to confront your actual arguments. Ask yourself: Isn't this exactly what I've been doing all this time

i was so impressed i had to reprint it here.

better today

i've been out of it for a few days because of that cold. i will probably get back to posting later today. thanks for your patience