If I were Running Things, Pt. 1

I'm inspired by the bald Italian gangster guy in "Miller's Crossing": "Running things; it's not all it's cracked up to be." A periodic series.

Soccer
I was watching an English Premier League game on TV last night (Everton vs. Newcastle). Something happened that often does--first one team had a guy red-carded (sent off for repeated or severe violation--you can't replace him), then the other team did. The resulting 10 vs. 10 style of play was improved, as it almost always is.

So, my first radical change would be to cut down the number of players on each side by one. The result should be a little less crowding in the box, and generally a little more open play.

Ah, you say, but the players would get too tired this way! Arguable, but you've merely identified the other major improvement I would make: allow two substitutions per half (a third in the first half in case of emergency) instead of three for the whole game. Two more additional substitutions when games go beyond their regular time in cup competitions. The real problem is that there's too much standing around.

Electoral College
Personally, I would junk the whole thing: I can't figure out why we would ever want to have a President that couldn't get more votes than his/her opponent(s). I accept that a runoff might help ensure a clearer decision in the cases (probably quite frequent) that no one gets more than 50% of the votes.

The gimmick passed by the California state legislature--that California would give its electoral votes to the Presidential candidate who got the greatest national popular vote--is too clever and a clear sign of desperation. The idea is that other states would join on the bandwagon; the more that joined in, the greater the probability the popular vote winner would inevitably get the electoral vote nod. I don't think that too many other states share California's particular frustration, and most would correctly calculate that their leverage would be maximized in the short-run by staying out until others go in. So nothing more would happen, and once in a great while (like in 2004) California's electoral votes would defy their voters' choice.

If, though, we can never get rid of the ancient monstrosity, I would make some reform to it. Principally, I would make universal the rule that applies to Nebraska and Maine, that of Congressional district-level selection of electors. Each district would through its vote determine one elector, and two would be determined by the statewide count. The resulting campaigns would be less a high-stakes set of statewide win/loss gambles in a few swing states; the effort would be more diffused, but also focused on areas within states that never got any attention before.

This also would reduce the inequity--each voter would be contributing to the determination of exactly three electors. Finally, it would also throw a complicating factor into the politics of redistricting, one that would quickly lead toward needed national guidelines.

Statehood

It's been about 50 years since we last added any states to the Union (Alaska and Hawaii). It's time for three more.

First, of course, would be the District of Columbia. It's been taxation without representation there since the entity was established; the three Electoral votes DC gets hardly count, as they are a given for the Democrats, not worth a campaign event for either party.

There are no good arguments for denying DC Congressional representation (I mean, representatives that can vote!), only bad ones. The notion that DC representatives are all federal employees and thus shouldn't get involved in state politics is a stupid one; nowadays more of the fed workers live in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, and you don't hear any suggestion they should be disenfranchised. The old argument that DC can not govern itself, as evidenced by the quality of its governmental leadership, has now been substantially addressed.

The only real arguments against DC are pragmatic and partisan ones. First, that it may take a Constitutional amendment to make DC a state, and that's a lot of trouble. Second, that DC senators and representative would almost surely be Democratic, and thus would contribute to the Republicans' imminent loss of control in Congress.

The second additional state would be Puerto Rico. It's time to put up or shut up with all this "commonwealth", "territory", or "domain" stuff. The weird thing is that the US Democratic party is aligned with the status-quo party, while the Republicans are aligned with the Statehood party. This is a formula for stalemate; as with DC, the Republicans would surely not want statehood to become a reality for partisan reasons. PR gets a pretty good deal under the current associate membership arrangement--citizenship without taxation, and the heavy military enrollment level probably counts as a net plus for the residents. The absence of representation or Electoral College votes rankles, though, and it's about time that we recognize that it's the fact of the Hispanic majority there that prevents PR becoming a state, and do something about it.

The third state I would add is one I've never heard mentioned: I believe that Americans Abroad should have direct representation. They are numerous enough, for one thing. The second point is that they are effectively disenfranchised. I know; when I was living abroad, I tried several times but couldn't get New York (my previous residence) to send me an absentee ballot; they couldn't be bothered. Of course, NYS was more than happy to receive my state taxes (and to penalize me when they sent notices I never received to addresses I had departed years before, and yes, they had been informed of the changes). Third, AA would represent a distinctive and important additional perspective (let's call it "influenced by global thinking") to debates on both domestic and foreign issues. Fourth, their partisan leanings are not at all certain, and thus this proposal could be advanced on a bipartisan basis.

I was thinking that perhaps we should consolidate a couple of states--the Dakotas would be the ones. They were originally one territory, and now that North Dakota has depopulated beyond the point where its population would earn it a single representative, and South Dakota's down to one, also, it would make some sense. The problem is that I can not think of a single reason why the residents of those states would accept consolidation. Yes, I know the title here was "If I Were Running Things", but still, I don't need to run things down their throats. It would also make sense to separate Northern and Southern California, as they have different issues, different cultures, and are often broadly opposed to one another; on that one, I'll let them take the initiative. If they have a referendum to split, and it passes, I'd endorse the idea.

I was a little concerned about having a nice pattern of stars for the revised flag with 53 stars, but actually it works pretty well. Seven rows, having a sequence alternating eight and seven stars per row, with eight stars for both the top and bottom rows. Do the math, or draw a picture. It looks nice.

Good Virtual Fences Keep out Virtuous Neighbors

Watched some of the debate on the enabling of detainee trials and unwarranted surveillance. The highlight of it was the debate in the House Judiciary Committee on the detainee bill and the vote whether to recommend the bill "favorably". Some of the House Republicans got the wrong message and thought they were able to vote their consciences and the vote was to report the bill "unfavorably" (this was later reversed, off-camera).

The debate on the detainee bill in both houses was around whether to give the Bushites 80% of what they wanted or 70%, the 10% being a provision that prohibits appeals to "habeas corpus" by those detainees who are not American persons. This one is certain to go to the Supreme Court and be decided by a 5-4 margin, one way or the other. One would have to think that it will be struck down eventually, which suggests a way the detainees may gradually have their day to have their cases come forward.

The point I didn't hear in the debate was the fact that "habeas corpus" would have to come, not from the detainee himself, but from some other party who gives a hoot about the fact the government is holding an individual. Gradually, then, the names of detainees would enter the US, people who might be looking for them (or their representatives in organizations like Amnesty International) would bring suit and then the government would need to present some evidence that the person is held for some valid reason. This will require the captors to expend a lot more energy than they do now in substantiating the captivity of many of those who have been simply dumped their and forgotten, and that will address the sin that the whole Guantanamo fiasco represents to most of the world.

As far as electronic surveillance goes, the idea that people actually think no Big Brother can listen to them seems absurd to us all these days. Instead, the assumption we all share is that someone could be listening, if they wanted, and you better watch what you say when it comes to certain issues. The question of whether someone gets a secret warrant on a routine basis is not central, except to the surveillance organizations who have to process the paper.

The final travesty of this session of this insubstantial Congress is the issue of the Stupid Border Fence. Apparently Congress had a little trouble signing onto the "stupid" part; they're looking for something that's mostly really "smart" with a relatively small "stupid" component. It probably doesn't matter, anyway, since they didn't appropriate the money to build anything--it's the intention to build a smart wall that matters?

Pity. I thought maybe they had something with the idea of a huge masonry wall, built by thousands of Mexican immigrants, which would thus drive up the cost of labor of the Mexican immigrant construction workers throughout this region and thus improve even more the rising value of already completed construction (i.e., my home). I certainly didn't think this had anything to do with the number of illegal immigrants coming into the country: most immigrants have come, and will continue to come, through legal channels, and then they just overstay their visas or ignore their visas' limitations on activity.

There is a humanitarian argument, though, for a smart border watch system which uses a variety of methods, particularly well-placed lights and cameras, to alert the border police and help them detain those sneaking in. The bill will be well-implemented if it does something to disrupt the coyote industry--the people who make a living arranging for people to cross the border in unsafe ways, often arranging to rob the migrants themselves. Many people are getting killed trying to come in.

Plus, there's so many jobs to be gained looking at cameras! Perhaps we could train people to do this at their homes, through the Internet?

The Boeotian

A quick one: Remember we posted the results of looking up "Bushite" at Merriam-Webster Online (January, 2006)? http://chinshihtang.blogspot.com/2006/01/from-merriam-webster-online-bushite.html

Anyway, one of the 10 similar words they came up with was "Boeotia", which I had to look up, remembering only that it was a state in ancient Greece. Checked with Wikipedia: it's a strategically located area (still an active place name), the big city in ancient times was Thebes (blown up real good, for good, by Great, Alexander the). Here's the key point, at the end of the article:

Pejorative term
As a result of Athens' proud assertion of its cultural superiority, first of all compared to its closest, rural neighbours (bad luck for them, there was no convincing reason), the word Boeotian or Beotian (the adjective derived from and word for the inhabitants of Boeotia) has been adopted in many classical and antique languages as a pejorative term for backward people, simpletons etc.

So, there we have it: Boeotian (pronounced Bo-EE-shun, I think) is, in some sense, a synonym for Bushite. I feel affirmed.

In Memoriam

On the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001, I'm going to try to stay non-partisan. That was how we were, then.

Of the various 9/11-related entertainments, I would say the special "9/11" (the one hosted by Robert De Niro), which focused on the heroism of the FDNY, was particularly moving. "Path to War (Pt. I)" was not as obnoxious as I had been led to believe, and at least as entertaining and educational as the average episode of "24".

I will say that I think those poll questions to the effect of "Are you safer now than you were on September 11, 2001" are kind of ridiculous. Safer than 9/11/01? Of course: who knew then how far that madness could go? Now we have some semblance of crazed normality. Safer than 9/10/01? Of course not.

On 9/11/01 I was in England, just returned from a business trip to Miami (it happens to be the anniversary of my wedding). We looked at the TV in disbelief at the end of a long workday, and, when we were able, we reassured our friends that we were not there at the scene. I cannot claim that I had any personal losses on that day.

On the other hand, I was across the street from the WTC in 1993 when they tried to take it down with a truck bomb. We dodged it that day, but the principles of the WTC as a target and the will of Islamic fanatics to attack it had been established: 9/11/01 only changed the level of our confidence that we could continue to dodge the attacks. I don't even think Osama was involved in that first one.

We need to focus on the worldwide struggle to eliminate those who are turning toward fanatical jihadism by eliminating their emotional, psychological need to turn that way. Ours is a struggle for the hearts and minds; to the extent we have managed to avoid attacks within the US since then (with crossed fingers), it is because our country gives no fertile soil to the seeds of such a philosophy. By showing that there is another way.

We hear that Pakistan has thrown in the towel and agreed not to pursue the Taliban and Al Qaeda in some remote border regions adjoining Afghanistan. The US and NATO should explicitly state that we will not abide by that agreement, then do what is necessary to eliminate that safe haven. We should not, however, fool ourselves that the problem will go away when we have succeeded in doing that, and when we get Osama and al-Zawahiri. Still, we have the right to avenge ourselves, and a practical necessity to prevent safe havens for those who have authored the outrages of 9/11/01, Bali, Madrid, Casablanca, and London.

Finally, it has been reported that Anbar Province of Iraq is now a no-hope zone for our military mission, with the most powerful force being, not just Sunni militants, but Al Qaeda itself. Anbar is a very large province, extending from the outskirts of Baghdad to the Jordanian border. If this troubling report is true, it definitively shows the failure of the mission in Iraq. We need to consult with our allies, including those in the Mideast, and even hostile nations like Iran and Syria, and determine how to root this evil out. Much as we would like to end the US involvement in Iraq, we can't leave an open wound like that.

Mid-Monthly 1:8

Reviews of Import:
The Case for Goliath, by Michael Mandelbaum

I promised you reader(s) that I would read it, and I did. The thesis of the work is what attracted me: it is summarized in the subtitle, “How America Acts as the World’s Government in the 21st Century”. I hadn’t heard this expressed in just that way before, though the basic idea is quite straightforward. Generally, the author (whose day job is reporting on foreign affairs for Newsday) supports it well, though I would quarrel with the tense of the verb and the time period described—I’d say rather that he demonstrates “How America Acted as the Closest Thing to the World’s Government, Especially Right after the Cold War”.

A government needs to provide certain public benefits to the governed, and Mandelbaum covers a range of them and demonstrates that there’s value to the rest of the world (ROTW) in what America has done, in its own interest, in the areas of military security, diplomacy, trade, and financial guarantees. The arguments come from the bipartisan, internationalist, realist school of foreign affairs which has predominated in America since World War II; they’re well supported by references to similarly-inclined scholars and analysts, and they stick pretty close to well-established facts. To be sure, Mandelbaum’s world that we govern is limited to the community of democratic (or, at least, non-Communist), free-trading nations, but since the Cold War ended, that has included the majority of nations and people.

OK, so far so good. Mandelbaum’s argument breaks down in three areas: the legitimacy of the USA as the world’s government, the other functions of government which the USA does not do for the ROTW, and finally, the expectation he tries to build that what has been recently, will continue.

Mandelbaum’s section on the political science notion of legitimacy doesn’t even try to make the argument that the USA’s governance is legitimate beyond its borders. He does make reference to traditional concepts of legitimacy, as with the Chinese Emperor of ages past, where the fact of predominance is its own justification, but he chooses instead to posit legitimacy in the modern world in a democratic, legalistic notion. In that sense, it’s the U.N. which is the legitimate organization, but of course it has no power beyond what the national governments and its limiting Charter allow it. Basically, in USA Rule there’s no taxation, and no representation (if there were, it wouldn’t be Dubya in the White House, that’s for sure). The real argument for the legitimacy of USA Rule comes later, in which Mandelbaum implies clearly that there’s a tacit consent among the leadership of many nations to let the Americans handle some of these difficult issues, though they would never admit to it and reserve every right to criticize.

There are a number of areas in which modern governments are heavily involved from which the USA’s world governance is conspicuously absent: housing, welfare for the poor and elderly, labor relations, transportation, regulation of corporate activities, and the broad categories of public health and safety—these don’t come up at all in the argument. All right, it’s a libertarian kind of governance, and, like many governments, there are some no-go zones where its power is not felt so keenly. More surprising is that Mandelbaum does not go more deeply into one area in which America exerts its power in the affairs of other nations, that being justice. In the sense of enforcing its view of who exactly are terrorist organizations, what drugs are illegal, and bringing fugitives under lock and key, America is indeed “the world’s policeman”.

The major inconsistencies and the great weakness of the thesis center around Mandelbaum’s lack of a transformational vision for America’s role in the future. He seems to think things will go along as they have, subject only to the willingness of the American people to foot the bill.

The first part of the argument is that there are no other likely candidates to take on the role that the USA has taken on. He specifically focuses on debunking any notion of a genuine world government coming into being or that Europe has anything to contribute in dealing with these global issues. We can agree that it is difficult to imagine the political circumstances which would lead the national governments to yield their sovereignty, but it is not hard to come up with major issues for which they have proved totally inadequate to address without one: AIDS, poverty, nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, global warming, fossil fuel depletion, demographic whiplash, etc. Most of these are glossed over, with the exception of the nuclear one which he features in his argument of Goliath’s benign rule, and that is one I would argue specifically is failing dramatically before our eyes in these days: we kept the slingshots out of many would-be David’s hands for a long time, but we’ve got to come up with a new deal here or someone’s going to take it between the eyes. The simple fact is that we can only intimidate nations from taking up nukes until they defy us and do so, then we have to switch our strategy to deterrence.

Mandelbaum states that “a world government would, by definition, have responsibility for establishing order everywhere,” but how much does the USA, which “acts as the world’s government” do that? We can all see the deficiencies of the United Nations under its current, post WWII Charter, but Mandelbaum exercises no effort trying to imagine improvements to it, or a pact among the more powerful nations to bring about a more democratic international body. As for Europe, no one is looking for a restoration of the imperial rule of the ROTW by Europeans, but I would argue they are taking on the heavy lifting of solving problems of bringing together many nations with different cultures, languages, economic status under a single governmental roof (even if a cacophonous one), particularly as they take on the tasks of expansion to Eastern Europe and consider the possibility of including Turkey.

The second big quarrel has to do with the domestic support needed for America’s role abroad. Mandelbaum clearly sees America’s foreign policy as “unitary”—something the nation does, united, bipartisan. He says that it’s not so hard for other nations’ representatives to buttonhole someone in a responsible position for American foreign affairs and to influence them. At the same time, though, he states (and I agree) that these policies are driven by an elite—of politicians, academics, and military and economic professional analysts—with the mass of the American public largely uninterested but supportive when it affects it directly. He has little to say, really, about the costs or the benefits to this mass, and the last thing he seems to want is for the public to actually take notice and get involved in these stratospheric affairs. For example, he is quite ready to acknowledge that foreign governments and foreign peoples had very legitimate concerns about the Iraq invasion from the beginning (expressed both through private diplomatic channels and through public demonstrations), but he never once acknowledges that there was also very significant opposition to the policy at home at the time, as well.

I am not one who believes that these matters should be left to the “experts”, who make the policies we all then get to rally behind. In particular, it is this lack of vision which is their blind spot: I would argue that American strategic policy in the 1990’s was so weak because it was entirely based on improvisation: our experts had utterly failed to envision the collapse of the Soviet Union, so there had been no thinking about what the world might be like without the Cold War; thus, the opportunity that was present then was largely squandered, until 9/11/01 which gave us something more pressing to think about.

I think that, unreasonable as it is to expect other nations’ peoples to permit gladly the USA’s government to govern them, even at no charge, it is even more unreasonable to expect the American people to continue to foot the bill (using today’s catchphrase, with their “blood and treasure”) without telling them more of the truth and giving them a clearer understanding of what is to be accomplished, how, why, and for how much. Finally, I would expect Mandelbaum, or any advocate for continuing the general line of America’s internationalist, free-trading, realist school, to bring a stronger argument that the American people’s long-term interest lies in getting involved and becoming more knowledgeable about the world, its problems, and possible approaches to solving them.

Singularity Sky, by Charles Stoss

Changing pace dramatically here, this science fiction novel came strongly recommended, and I, in turn, have to recommend it strongly as well. It's been accurately categorized as "space opera", but is also a well-crafted story of political and social intrigue with its share of satire (my personal favorite genre). I found it included a lot of the most recent notions about Einsteinian physics, theoretical spacecraft (and star war) engineering, nanotechnology applications, etc. It combines some of the best features of Dune and of cyberpunk, notably a human Diaspora, people much like us dealing inadequately with future shocks and alien civilization, and a preference for anarchistic modes of self-governance as the best way of accommodating our accelerating technology, without a clear idea of how to get there. Personally, I would prefer to have some of our futurist thinkers consider how we can accelerate our social development so as to be able to handle our expanded powers, but....

Two Almost Post-Fidel Movies
Fidel is almost gone, though it doesn't seem as though that will be very momentous with Raul still around to enforce Stalinism. I saw two recent movies, though, that I thought worthy of some comment that have some connection with Cuba.
The Lost City was Andy Garcia's dream project. He doesn't explain it in terms of family connection, but it would seem to be the story that he has always heard at the family dinner table, adapted for Hollywood. He directed, produced, and starred in it--amazingly enough, he's not credited with the screenplay.
I hope he wasn't responsible for the sound on this--it was awful, at least in the cinema where we saw it (an art house). Muddy, with lots of mumbling. Visually, it was quite nice: filmed in the Dominican Republic, I think.

As a piece of history, I'm not qualified to comment, though I think it captured accurately the spirit of a segment of population before the revolution: liberal, white, urban. It was a state of mind that aspired to make the country better, inevitably terribly disillusioning living within the Batista dictatorship. I liked the segments when his brother went off and joined with the revolution, and the portrayal of Che Guevara. There was an interesting notion which might interest the survivors, post-Fidel/Raul: a couple of references to the liberal constitution of 1940, to which Batista paid occasional lip service but never observed, while Fidel claimed he would restore it (before he got into power, of course). Perhaps it could be revived.

I have to admit that I liked Miami Vice, the TV series, more than it deserved. Yes, the plots were totally formulaic, but there was a stolid earnestness about it (particularly Edward James Olmos) that felt real, and its use of rock music to help set the scene was a milestone, much-copied in latter days. Michael Mann proved he still had the chops with Collateral, so I was pretty keen to see this movie.

I can give it only a mixed review. Jamie Foxx was good as Rico--no surprise there, though he changed the role considerably. Gong Li was, of course, gorgeous, but also interesting as a Cuban/Asian (?) who had the smarts to be the consigliere of the drug runners, but somehow wasn't smart enough to see her doom approaching. The idea of her character going over to Cuba with Sonny in a fastboat for a couple days' of mojitos and partying was a good one, timely and provocative (also filmed in the D.R.?) The use of computer technology as a key tool for the drug runners was a good update to the standard package. Plenty of good action sequences.

The plot was no more than the usual formula, I'm afraid. And I miss the old Gina (her role, as usual, was next to nothing)--why couldn't they get Saundra Santiago back? I'm sure she's still in form; I see she was in The Sopranos, in the revival of Nine, etc.