politics a la carte

"This case certainly requires a thorough psychiatric and psychological examination. We need to establish if he can be considered responsible for his actions," Mr. Mayer told BBC News.

That is a reference to the Austrian man who was just arrested for keeping his female child locked in a cellar for 24 years and raping her and having seven kids with her. If you haven’t heard about this, you should look it up. It is far worse than what was going on at the FLDS polygamist camp in Texas. I don’t really care if he can be considered responsible psychiatrically or psychologically, whatever the difference between the two is. He should be locked up in prison for the rest of his life. That is just my opinion though and the Austrian courts will figure it out.

I was reading the academic journal Foreign Policy in the library the other day because I had a free day. I will have a bunch of free days coming up and I might spend more time in the library because I like the atmosphere. It was talking about President George W. Bush and his fiscal policy. Contrary to popular opinion, the largest increase in spending in the last seven years has not been defense related. It has been non-discretionary spending, which is to say Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This mandatory spending is what is breaking the US budget, not Operation Iraqi Freedom. To Bush’s credit, he tried to fix this in 2005 with his Social Security reform. To his discredit, he signed into law the prescription drug benefit to Medicaid. Hey look at that; balanced analysis!

This academic (read: liberal/Bush hating) article also went into the extent to which Bush has curbed civil liberties. Surprisingly, President Bush has done little to infringe on American’s liberties when compared with World War I and World War II. In WWI people were arrested and tried for treason. In WWII citizens were interned without cause indefinitely. None of that has happened under Bush. The Patriot Act is minor compared to what Americans have given up in past times of war.

Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton is one of my favorite people. He wrote a book about his tenure at the UN called Surrender is not an Option, and I read it earlier this semester. One of his points about reforming the UN is to move from assessed contributions to voluntary contributions. Most people don’t know this, but America pays 27% of the UN’s budget, and it doesn’t matter if we agree with the mission or not. It’s just “assessed.” Obviously we are the UN’s biggest donor, yet the UN rarely does anything the US supports. It is pretty amazing really. Moving to voluntary contributions would allow the US, and every other nation, to give the UN money only if it was actually accomplishing something. Then, inefficient and wasteful programs could have there funding cut. This would provide more incentive for change at the UN than any Secretary General calling for bureaucratic reform in every corner of the world ever could.

The UN is a place where Russia and China have an equal amount of power and control as the US, UK, and France. Russia and China are two completely undemocratic states, and one of them is a leading human rights abuser. When people say America invaded Iraq illegally, they mean to say we didn’t get the blessing of Russia and China through a UN Security Council resolution, although it can be argued that the coalition of the willing was simply enforcing previous UN Security Council resolutions. To hold the UN up as the end all and be all is to say that Russia and China, by virtue of being on our side during World War II, are fit to lead the world and deserve the power to veto anything the US, UK, or France wants done.

I’m not disparaging the UN here. I am simply stating where I think it needs reforming. I am actually a supporter of multilateralism, which provides a good transition to my next point.

I was reading an article that was very condescending towards neoconservatives and it ridiculed the idea of creating a League of Democracy, or as I came up with myself the United Democracies (UD). This would be structured similarly to the UN, but only democracies would be invited, and they would have to be invited. Procedures could be loosely based on the way the European Union enlarges. What is meant by democracy would of course be a huge debate, but off the top of my head the US, most of the EU, Japan, Costa Rica, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Israel and possibly India or Brazil would be included. Naturally there a lot more that would be invited to the initial summit but I can’t think of them all.

Both the UN reform idea and the UD idea would require intense diplomacy, but I think both could be accomplished, possibly in tandem, if America spent the time and effort required to explain to the world the merits of both.

I would go on and on about this but I doubt anybody else cares about the details of this except fellow Political Science majors with an International Relations option. I think I might do a thesis on this if I ever decide to spend my life inside academia.

Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is trying to freeze the ethanol mandate our congress has imposed, and I’m so glad she has done it. Bio fuel has two major consequences (1) the price of food goes up and (2) tropical rainforest is deforested. I deeply believe in saving the rainforest, but unfortunately places like Brazil have been deforesting at an increasing rate because it is so lucrative to do so. This consequence is largely a result of the first consequence. Food prices go up because corn and other food crops are used to create fuel instead of feeding people, so farmers switch to corn, and then more land is needed. It’s a pretty simple chain to follow. There have been protests across the non-OECD world due to food prices. Poor people across the globe are going to starve because America decided to use its massive food crop to power their cars. That’s not the whole story but it is pretty close.

I took Latin American Politics last semester and I still follow US-Latin America relations. For at least the past couple of months the most important thing going on between the United States and the rest of the Western Hemisphere has been the Columbian Free Trade Agreement. I believe Columbia, of any country in the world, deserves a free trade agreement with America because they are such close allies. Also, to fight the war on drugs we should do other things than just eradicate coca fields from the air. We should give them alternative economic conditions. That is not to mention the economic benefits America can incur. Either way it is unfortunate that Nancy Pelosi won’t give it the chance to be voted on.

I guess I might as well delve into this whole Jeremiah Wright-Barack Obama debate, even though I haven’t really delved into the race for 2008 yet. Since Wright came out and did interviews and reconfirmed all the sound bites everyone has been playing, Obama has been distancing himself even further. I have no idea what is going on, but this is incredibly interesting. Did Obama want Wright to come out and speak so he could disown him? Did Wright come out and speak because he is too stupid to realize that he is hurting Obama? Did Wright come and speak because he is upset that Obama is doing so well? This guy was Obama’s pastor for twenty years, so they obviously have to still be talking to each other, which makes the analysis even more interesting. Nobody has a clue what is going on, and I’ve read article after article and listened to radio show after radio show (online) and nobody can figure out what on God’s green Earth is going on.

Another article in Foreign Policy was about oil. It was about the fact that Big Oil is a small fish in a big pond. OPEC controls oil and therefore gas prices, not Exxon-Mobil, ConocoPhillips, or BP. The fact that American politicians are attacking private American companies and not Saudi Aramco, Venezuala's state owned company, or Iran's state owned company, is simply incomprehensible for me. I thank God every time I hear that American oil companies made record profits, because I know those profits aren't going to Iran or Venezuela. If we want to lower oil prices, we should bust up OPEC and drill in ANWR.

I wanted to thank two loyal readers, Josh and Uncle Ben, for giving me feedback on my cliché style writing. They both didn't like it, and neither did I. From now on I’ll keep it to my natural style.

I’ll close with a recent quote I added to my favorite quotes section of my Facebook profile.

“The average American isn’t so average.” -Michael Savage