Myopia Inside the Beltway

After the American Century

There is a myopia inside the Beltway around Washington, which leads people to misjudge the importance of issues. The most recent example is the controversy about whether the CIA properly briefed Nancy Pelosi or not back in 2002, about their use of torture. In the twisted logic of Washington and its journalists, the BIG QUESTION now is whether or not Pelosi knew about the torture. This is about as absurd as US politics gets, since the Democrats were not in control of Congress at the time, and since anyone who has attended meetings knows, it is possible to slip all kinds of things into a meeting in such a way that their true import is lost in the shuffle.

The real issues, of course, is not how much the CIA told opposition leaders in 2002. Rather, it is that the CIA, at the urging of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, pursued a policy of torture that contravenes the American Constitution. For those who have forgotten, the Bill of Rights prohibts "cruel and unusual punishments." Thomas Jefferson would not have approved of waterboarding.

Also note that Amendment 5 declares that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." This is not a point of debate, it is the law. Bush, Cheney, and the CIA broke that law, repeatedly. Quite literally the whole world knows about the torture and it has severely damaged the reputation of the United States. The election of Barack Obama was in part a repudiation of the policy of torture and a demand for a return to the rule of law.

Of course it would be convenient for the Republicans to just move on and try to forget these illegalities. This being difficult, if not impossible, they are now trying to implicate Nancy Pelosi in their own crimes. The Republicans would like to spread the guilt around and divide the Democrats. To some extent this seems to be working, and now Obama's appointment as head of the CIA is disputing with Pelosi about what she knew and when. This is all beside the point. Pelosi did not initiate the torture policy, nor did she have the power to stop it, nor could she have revealed CIA secret briefings to the press, especially in the nervous year after the 9/11 attacks.

The Bush Administration remains responsible for the introduction and the use of torture, a barbaric practice that not only is illegal, but that produces "confessions" of dubious value. Recall that during the Counter Reformation the Inquisition also used torture, in a holy cause of course, and dragged amazing revelations out of its victims: they were in league with the devil, practiced witchcraft, communed with evil spirits, and committed all manner of foul deeds. Torture a man enough and he may confess to almost anything.

The whole Pelosi affair would just be silly, if the Obama Administration had no important legislation to pass.

Obama After 100 Days

After the American Century

The idea that one should evaluate a president after the first hundred days in office is not particularly old. It began with the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, in 1933, when the United States had been in an economic depression for almost four years. The Democrats had won a landslide victory, with majorities so large in both House and Senate that the Republicans were unable to be an effective opposition. In this situation, Roosevelt was able to push through a wide array of legislation in his first 100 days. This precedent is virtually impossible for any subsequent president to live up to, because no otter president since that time has both entered office when the nation was gripped by such a severe sense of crisis and also had the large majorities in the legislative branch that FDR had.

No one until now, one might say, but that would be inaccurate. Imagine that the meltdown in the Bush economy had begun in 2005 instead of 2008, and further imagine that the Republicans had been unable to do anything to overcome the Depression in those three years. Then the situation would be more similar. Even more to the point, President Obama has not had the 60 senators he needs to push through any legislation he desires, at least not yet. However, with the seating of Minnesota's Senator Franken imminent and with the defection of Senator Specter from Pennsylvania, it appears that during Obama's second hundred days he may have the unassailable majority that FDR had in 1933. In the second hundred days, not the first, major legislation, for example on health care, will first be possible.

As for the first 100 days, a great deal has been accomplished. President Obama has dramatically improved relations with Latin America by showing more openness to Cuba and by promising to close the Guantanamo prison. Recall that a bipartisan group of former Secretaries of State called for that closure last year. This is good policy, and puts the United States back where in should be, as an opponent of torture and a champion of legal due process and human rights. These actions and his successful trip to Europe have cemented in world opinion the understanding that the United States has taken a fundamentally new direction.

Domestically, the Obama Administration has shown that it can address many crises at once, as it has coped with the meltdown of the banks, the private mortgage crisis, the collapse of General Motors and Chrysler, and now the flu epidemic, while still pursuing its primary goals, notably that of achieving energy independence. In dealing with these and many other problems, President Obama has evinced excellent qualities in a leader. (1) The ability to reach decisions quickly. (2) The ability to explain his policies in clear language to the public. (3) The grace to admit when he has made a mistake and move to rectify it quickly. (4) Calmness in the face of multiple adversities. (5) An emphasis on dialogue. The character he has shown bodes well for his ability to guide the US through what still looks to be a difficult future.

Why No Quarantine for Travelers from Countries with Swin Flu Outbreaks?

After the American Century

This semester I have been teaching a course on disasters and culture. Eerily, each time we took up a new kind of disaster as a topic, the news media reported on just such a catastrophe. We read about earthquakes and shortly afterwards several Italian towns were rocked to their foundations. We examined fires, and immediately a large area in Australia broke into flames. We took up floods, and in Fargo and vicinity the Red River rose to the highest levels ever recorded. So I had some trepidation as we took up the subject of epidemics, a case study based on a documentary film about the 1918 flu epidemic. And sure enough, shortly afterwards, the swine flu burst out in Mexico. Before going further, I want to reassure readers that we have completed the assigned readings now, so even if the course was somehow provoking disasters, that should be over now.

As the swine flu outbreak heads towards what seems certainly to be pandemic status, I keep thinking about the familiar notion that all human beings are potentially no more than six degrees of separation away from one another. I realize that being able to reach just about anyone with no more than five or six intermediaries, using telephones, emails, and other communication systems, is not at all the same thing has the movement of a disease through direct human contact. The flu virus enters someone's body about a week before he or she knows it, during which time the illness spreads to strangers, friends, and family. The epidemic spreads rapidly because during the early stages the illness has not yet manifested itself. During this period, when the flu is only latent, an infected person can unintentionally give the flu to countless other people, especially if they travel during that time. And all of these newly infected people are just six degrees of separation from me, or you.

I am not a mathematician, but it seems obvious that as the disease spreads, its separation from me diminishes not as a straight line, but geometrically, and my increasing proximity to being exposed to someone with it would be graphed as a sharply curving line. In short, avoiding exposure is not going to be easy. So far, at least, no one taking my course has come down with swine flu. But then, it has not yet officially reached Denmark, though it has been diagnosed in a German patient in Hamburg and one man suspected of having the illness is being held for observation in Copenhagen.

The disease seems to be moving very fast, and it seems that health authorities are only able to react to help those who are sick, not retard the swine flu's progress. Curiously, back in 1918, an illness moved more slowly, because almost no one then flew. And yet in 1918 it was common to hold travelers in special quarantine facilities if they were merely suspected of carrying a deadly illness. Ninety years ago, it was likely an illness would manifest itself before a ship passenger crossed either the Atlantic or the Pacific. Don't we need to establish quarantine facilities near all airports? If a planeload of people arrives from Mexico, where the swine flu began, does it make sense to let them disperse into the general population? Or does it make sense to hold them all for observation, regardless of whether they seem ill or not? That would be expensive, you say. Well, how much is a human life worth?

Real Test of Obama Begins Now

After the American Century

President Obama has now been in office for three months or so, and his first hundred days will be over soon. While he clearly has had some successes and remains far more popular with the voters than George W. Bush was last year, this is still a period of transition. The massive deficit spending is only beginning to have an effect on the economy, which has continued to weaken overall, measured in terms of rising unemployment, the drop in housing starts, and declining real estate prices. GM and Chrysler remain on the brink of collapse, and banks are still struggling. These are not problems the Democrats created, but the weak economy does distract from attempts at larger reforms. Obama knows this and has kept calling for an overhaul of health care, energy policy, pollution control, education, and defense procurement. In all of these crucial areas, the new administration has not yet achieved very much, precisely because of the financial mess that had to be cleaned up first.

The question now is whether his own party will keep itself disciplined and rise to the occasion. In 1933 FDR's Democratic Party made fundamental changes. We have not seen a 100 days to match his achievements. Arguably, the crisis is not (yet?) as dire, but it is serious and the Democrats need to stick together. Obama has been abroad more than any other president at this point in his administration, and he has shown once again that he is exceedingly popular overseas, whether Germany, the UK, the Czech Republic, France, Turkey or Mexico. This is a good thing, but it may not translate into legislative achievement at home. Arguably, he should stay in Washington most of the time for a good while, and let Secretary of State Clinton do the globe trotting for a while. The real test of whether Obama can deliver his program has begun.

Is the Mortgage Crisis Being Solved?

After the American Century

According to the Financial Times, in the United States more than one out of every nine homeowners (11.9%) is in trouble with mortgage payments. This is the personal side of the larger banking crisis. If these millions of homeowners go down, the rest of the economy goes with them.

For those who are confused about the Obama plan to refinance American banks, there is an excellent short article in the New York Times by a Nobel Prize winning economist to explain things. In it, Joseph Stiegltiz argues that what the Obama team is doing is (Step one) to separate profitable assets from unprofitable ones and then (Step two) agreeing to protect investors from losses on those that are unprofitable. This might sound good, but in practice it will mean that US taxpayers will definitely lose while the bankers who over-leveraged their investments will be protected. For more details, see his article.

Stieglitz argues that nationalization of the banks would be cheaper and preferable. I think he is right. The Obama solution seems to be a case where American laissez-faire ideology has gotten in the way of common sense. In order to protect the "free market" this rescue plan makes sure that there is no free market, for if there were one, then many banks would collapse or be taken over by the FDIC, which insures the ordinary citizens' deposits.

I am missing something? What is so wrong with letting the free market decide which banks live or die, with the government taking over those that die, running them for a little while, and then selling them as soon as possible? This is what the government has been doing for years, after all.

For millions of Americans the problem is quite personal. In February, there were 290,631 legal foreclosures, an increase over January. Assuming an average family size of a bit less than 4, that means one million people lost their homes. About 300,000 of these people are in California. The hardest hit state appears to be Nevada, where one out of every seven houses has been foreclosed in just one month!

Yet often the problem is worse, because sometimes the bank refuses to foreclose on people who cannot afford to pay. In other words, they are abandoning foreclosures. Such banks have begun foreclosure proceedings, meaning that people are told to move out, only for the bank to discover that the legal costs are so great that the value of the building does not warrant the effort. So, the owners, having been evicted, suddenly find that they still own the empty property even though they cannot afford it. Often this news comes in the form of a letter demanding real estate taxes. It gets worse. Empty, low value (often inner-city) properties are often vandalized, and become uninhabitable. This drives down the value of adjacent properties and hurts the already weak market.

Banks that initiate foreclosure and then do not follow through leave property in limbo and people on the street. Do such banks deserve to live? Are they not community destroyers who act irresponsibly?

In other words, the situation is even worse than the statistics suggest. In the end, who cares about the banks? The homeowners should be the government's absolute top priority.

Danish Awareness of "Earth Hour" Dim

After the American Century

Across the world, in 88 countries, cities turned out their lights last night for one hour, starting at 20:30 local time. The Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, dark. The Eiffel Tower? Noir. The Chinese Olympic stadium, Sydney's harbor bridge and opera house, Atlanta's Coca Cola Building, dark. Toronto reduced its total electricity consumption by 15% during "Earth Hour," more than twice as much as last year. It may have been the biggest global demonstration in history.

In most of the participating 2800 cities and towns, the local newspapers and politicians were actively promoting Earth Hour. However, I looked in vain for anything about Earth Hour II in two Danish newspapers this morning. Last night, the City of Odense turned out its streetlights at 20:30, as we did at our house. Yet, as I walked around our neighborhood, few others seemed to have done so. Using the simple test of looking for lighted candles showing in windows, it appeared that most people had lots of light bulbs on, and that perhaps one in ten actively supported "Earth Hour." I hope I am estimating incorrectly, but in the last week I have not sensed any awareness of this event. Not a single student, colleague, or neighbor has mentioned Earth Hour to me, or showed any interest in it when I mentioned it. Not one journalist has called or written an email asking for my view of Earth Hour, from the viewpoint of an energy historian.

This morning, the local newspaper (Fyens Stiftstidende) has not written a single word about "Earth Hour" that I can find. The front page features a photograph of two girls eating ice cream. The three stories on page one are about increasing service charges on house loans, Conservative tactics for the next (hypothetical) election, and an extremely important piece on the development of a cardboard, biodegradable "Paradise coffin" for pets, available in five sizes. On the plus side, the same newspaper has five pages about energy-saving forms of electric lighting in its second section, without, however, mentioning Earth Hour anywhere that I can see.

Apparently, for all-too-many Danes, global warming is only an issue of concern for thousands of cities in other parts of the world. Judging by this event, you would never know that Denmark is hosting a major climate conference that will seek a replacement for the Kyoto Accords. Political parties paid lip service to the event, but except for a single concert in Copenhagen, the event was a non-event in Denmark. For 2009, the clear message from Denmark seems to be that hardly anyone cares very much about Earth Hour or about forging a world consensus to reduce global warming. To anyone familiar with the current government, this should come as no surprise. Maybe next year they will use their wall switches to vote for change, to proclaim the solidarity with others, and to send their politicians a message.

Why You Should Turn Off the Lights Tonight

After the American Century


Turn off the lights for one hour, tonight. Why?

(1) Because this is a way for people all over the world to demonstrate, quite painlessly, that we are concerned about global warming and the over-intensive use of fossil fuels.

(2) Because all of us can use less energy every day, without sacrificing anything, and we need to remember that we are not passive spectators, watching global warming. We are actors. We can make a difference, if we act together. In 1997, the average home in the OECD countries used 38 watts every day just to keep appliances on standby. These 386 million households were wasting 14,634 megawatts a day. Does anyone think this waste is necessary? Of course not. But we need to make an effort.

(3) Because the electrified world is historically new, and once in a while we need to remember what darkness looks like. Human beings evolved without artificial light, and during this hour we might reflect on where we stand in relation to the more than 100,000 years of human history. Human beings have used electricity for light and power for less than one tenth of one percent of human history. In that blink of an eye, historically speaking, we have polluted the atmosphere and the sea and unbalanced ecological systems in ways that we are struggling to understand.

(4) Because your house and your family seen by candlelight are beautiful in ways that you may not have seen lately. The human eye did not evolve to see the world blanketed in electric light, but rather evolved to see somewhat differently by day and by night.

(5) Because if the sky is clear, you will get a good look at the heavens. The urban landscape especially can be improved by reducing electric light. Most urbanites scarcely see the heavens at night, because excessive artificial light reflects into the atmosphere, making it impossible to see more than the brightest stars.

So why let this night be like all the others? Why not turn out the lights, and look for a local arrangement celebrating "Earth Hour" as it is called in many places, following the Australians who began this ritual in Sydney. The Danes are calling it something else, and starting not on the hour but at 20:30.

As the Toronto Star put it last year, “This event is an opportunity to show how individuals acting together as a community can have a huge impact. Ultimately, we hope it gets people thinking and talking here in Toronto and in cities around the world about real solutions to what is arguably the most important issue of our time.”