Reason Hit & Run blog

New Orleans City Business reports that Orleans Parish District Attorney Keva Landrum-Johnson has instituted a new policy of charging minor marijuana offenders with felonies if they have prior convictions. Under state law, possessing a small amount of marijuana is a misdemeanor that can result in a jail sentence of up to six months but is typically punished by a small fine. Subsequent offenses can be treated as felonies, punishable by up to five years in prison for a second offense and up to 20 years for a third offense. But Landrum-Johnson's predecessors routinely exercised their discretion to treat such offenses as misdemeanors. The new D.A. has reversed that policy so she can rack up felony prosecutions and demonstrate her tough-on-crime credentials:

Shortly after Keva Landrum-Johnson took over as district attorney...hundreds of new felony cases flooded the public defenders office, overwhelming the 29 defense attorneys.

After New Orleans regained its title as the nation's murder capital, the public demanded its city leaders crack down on violent crime. By filing hundreds of new felony cases each month, it appeared as if the new DA heeded their call.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the case, said Steve Singer, chief of trials for the Orleans Public Defenders Office.

The flood of new felony charges didn't target murderers, rapists or armed robbers— they targeted small-time marijuana users, sometimes caught with less than a gram of pot, and threatened them with lengthy prison sentences.

The resulting impact has clogged the courts with non-violent, petty offenses, drained the resources of the criminal justice system and damaged low-income African-American communities, Singer said.

Nearly all of the people facing felony charges for smoking pot are black and poor, because, as everyone knows, virtually no middle-class white people smoke pot. One defendant cited by the paper is a man who was "arrested once before as a teenager 20 years ago" and since then "has married, raised a family and kept out of trouble." Now he may have to spend the money he saved for his son's college tuition on legal expenses. Take that, crime!

In May I marveled at New York City's little-noticed crackdown on pot smokers, which has a similar racial skew, unjustly converts citable offenses to misdemeanors, but looks enlightened compared to Landrum-Johnson's crusade.

[via Paul Armentano at NORML]

Trawling YouTube's daily list of top "activism" videos, I found this wonderful, horrible clip of Noam Chomsky pontificating on the evils of pornography. Chomsky first defends himself against the charge that he himself is complicit in promoting pornography because, back in 2004, he was interviewed by Hustler magazine. But, he tells his interrogator, he "had never heard of The Hustler" until someone told him "what The Hustler was." Chomsky, a prolific emailer, apparently didn't know that The Google could have provided him with much information on The Hustler and its filthy contents.

Pornography, says the sage of MIT, is "disgraceful," "a humiliation and degradation of women." Does it matter, the interviewer wonders, that most porn performers "choose to do the job and get paid?" Chomsky offers this labored analogy in response: "The fact that women agreed to it and are paid is about as convincing as the fact that we should be in favor of sweatshops in China where woman are locked into the factory and work fifteen hours a day and then the factory burns down and they all die. They were paid and they consented, but it doesn't make me in favor of it." And for all of you porn consumers out there, Chomsky wants you to know that if you get "pleasure out of the humiliation of women [you] have a problem." So how do we improve the lot of porn performers? By banning "the degradation of woman" and "eliminating the conditions in which woman cannot get decent jobs; not permit abusive and destructive behavior."

 

 

For those of you who speak a Scandinavian language, you can find out just what Noam Chomsky thinks of me here, and just what I think of him here.

In this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Thomas Schweich, a former State Department counternarcotics official, asks, "Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?" Schweich takes 5,500 words to tell his tale of how the good work of brave, committed drug warriors like himself was stymied by "an odd cabal of timorous Europeans, myopic media outlets, corrupt Afghans, blinkered Pentagon officers, politically motivated Democrats and the Taliban." But the short answer to the headine question is yes. A more interesting question, one that Schweich never asks: Why is Afghanistan a narco-state? Schweich warns that the opium trade finances the Taliban insurgency (as well as President Hamid Karzai's allies) and bemoans the corruption, violence, and lawlessness associated with it. Yet he never acknowledges that all these phenomena are consequences of drug prohibition, a policy the United States has insisted on exporting to other countries for nearly a century. It's not hard to see why he omits this point, since his solution to prohibition-related problems is more vigorous enforcement of prohibition.

Schweich repeatedly condemns U.S., British, and Afghan officials who are reluctant to support a more aggressive crackdown on opium, who oppose tactics such as aerial herbicide spraying and execution of traffickers. He never considers the possibility that their resistance might be due to something other than timorousness, myopia, corruption, blindness, political partisanship, or fanatical hatred of America. Yet some critics of Schweich's gung-ho approach, including American and British military officials, view the anti-drug fight as not just distracting but counterproductive, alienating Afghan farmers and strengthening the Taliban. Schweich reports he was astonished to discover that "British forces—centered in Helmand—actually issued leaflets and bought radio advertisements telling the local criminals that the British military was not part of the anti-poppy effort." Schweich brags that he put a stop to that. But is it really so crazy to reassure people whose support you're trying to win (or whose violent opposition you're trying to avoid) that your aim is not to deprive them of their livelihood or to wipe out half of their country's economy?

Schweich also never quite explains the ultimate goal of "the anti-poppy effort." He writes that "eradication was an essential component of successful anti-poppy efforts in Guatemala, Southeast Asia and Pakistan." And now Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world's opium. If Schweich has his way and opium eradication there becomes a top U.S. priority, and if it is ultimately successful, surely that will be the end of it. No one will grow opium anywhere else, so heroin use will disappear.

Here's a fun fact Schweich mentions: The land devoted to opium poppies in Afghanistan, even at the current record level of production, totals just 637 square miles, less than a third the size of Rhode Island.

Previous reason coverage of Afghan poppies and the drug warriors who hate them here and here.

Watching Barack Obama's ich bin ein internationalist speech I found myself in constant, low-level irritation at what one might call the Audacity of Now. Which is to say, the man can't stop telling us that "this is the moment" when we "must" do this, that, and the other.

Not to be too curmudgeonly about it, but what's so special about this moment (as opposed to this moment), aside from the fact that a guy with a furrowed eyebrow and enviable teeth is running for president? Did Communism just collapse? Are we in some kind of hinge moment, a fork in the road between darkness and light? Yet count the ways in which Obama is sure that THIS IS THE MOMENT....

when our nations − and all nations − must summon that spirit [of the Berlin airlift] anew.

when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it.

when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. 

when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.

to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.

when every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday. 

when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. 

for trade that is free and fair for all.

we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East.

when the world should support the millions of Iraqis who seek to rebuild their lives, even as we pass responsibility to the Iraqi government and finally bring this war to a close.

when we must come together to save this planet. 

to give our children back their future.

to stand as one.

when we must give hope to those left behind in a globalized world.

That's 14 freaking Moments, some of them as perennial and/or totally '80s as Vanity Fair Kennedy covers (save the planet? believe that children are our future? stand together as one?); some of them sorta nonsensical (uh, Europeans can freely choose their future these days); some of them code phrases meaning practically the opposite of their rhetorical content (free and fair trade for all!).

I'm an anti-must guy from way back, but what struck me watching was more the implication that all these things are boiling to a head right now because Barack Obama's running for president. I don't often agree with Charles Krauthammer but, well, I pretty much agree with Charles Krauthammer.

And this paragraph in particular gives me chills about Obama's apparently deeply felt belief about how to "give hope to those left behind in a globalized world":

This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably.  Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development.  But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many.  Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth, with meaningful protections for our people and our planet.  This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all.

This, Mr. Hopey, is the moment where the two greatest anti-poverty policies known to mankind − immigration and free trade − are under constant attack in the rich West, precisely from the type of hope-floating politicians who would blame global warming on the Chinese, talk '70s-era bollocks about economic "sustainability," and use the kind of labor vs. capital rhetoric that fell out of fashion long before the kind of people cheering you back home today were jeering Ronnie Ray-gun for asking Gorby to "tear down this wall" two decades ago.

Siva Vaidhyanathan is writing a book called The Googlization of Everything and he's collecting data:

Do you remember the first time you used Google? When was it? How did you hear about Google? What was you first impression?...As Mudbone (Richard Pryor's character) used to say, "you only remember two times, your first and your last."

Put your experience in his comments section and/or share it here.

My first google was of my unusual last name "Mangu" in honor of the fact that my grandfather used to check every phone book he encountered on his travels, hoping to find out that there were more of us in America. At the time, the search wasn't fruitful. Now I know that there are Indian and Kenyan Mangus, plus a popular Dominican plantain dish.

Of course, 50 percent of Americans still haven't googled themselves.

Mike Meno at The Gazette (a Maryland weekly) called to say his paper ran additional local coverage about the Maryland State Police surveillance program's activities in Takoma Park, Md. His interview with Maryland Sen. Jamie Raskin (D-Dist. 20), who represents Takoma Park, brings up a good point:

[Raskin] also questioned how effective Maryland is in using grants from the U.S. Homeland Security Department, which provided much of the money that paid for the surveillance.

‘‘I believe this is a tremendous threat to civil liberty and a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars,” he said. ‘‘It reflects a perverse allocation of scarce public resources.”

Read the whole Gazette story here.

Some of the surveillance in Takoma Park took place at Takoma Park Presbyterian Church, which I find disturbing for two reasons: A) Presbyterians are harmless, and B) It sounds a lot like Huckabee advisor Jim Pinkerton's suggestion that we "put a cop in front of every mosque."

Jesse Walker blogged on the spies in Baltimore here.

Paying $4 for a gallon of gas is a drag, but what may be worse is listening to White House wannabes who promise to rescue us from our misery.

Take Senator McCain’s recent proposal to offer a $300 million cash prize to the inventor of a car battery that can out-green 100-mpg plug-in hybrids.  Is McCain’s money pile really necessary to spur our nation’s geniuses to get it together and invent an ultra-efficient car? reason.tv’s Ted Balaker thinks not.

Click here to watch the video.

Most of the criticism of Barack Obama's Berlin speech came before the speech had even been delivered, and focused on trivia (he printed fliers in German!) and traditions that were invented last week or so (presidential candidates don't give speeches in other countries!). But the speech has been given now, and the text is more interesting than the atmospherics. Specifically:
Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur?

That's not pablum. I count at least four extensions of American foreign policy here: increased foreign aid, increased funding for PEPFAR, sanctions, and maybe a little bit of ol' fashioned humanitarian intervention. (That's what he's occasionally suggested for Darfur, at least.) It's proof, if any more was needed, that Obama is not wary of foreign engagements. He's a progressive realist who thinks America hasn't done enough to police the world and to stave off future threats by doing whatever NGOs say we should be doing.

Most of our foreign policy debate has focused on Iraq, in part because that's where John McCain wants it to focus, in part because that's where our forces are at the moment. I definitely agree with Andrew Bacevich that an Obama victory discredits the Iraq project, while a McCain victory validates it. But McCain and Obama want the same thing, for Americans to be proud of their country again vis-a-vis its engagement in foreign conflicts. Put another way: I don't think an Obama victory discredits neoconservatism. He's offering neoconservatism with a human face.

Headline explained here.

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty has a quiz: Obama speech lines versus "We Are the World" lyrics.

UPDATE II: Oh, I love hacks. From Obama's opening lines:

Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

From Team John "Wow, it was a good idea to dare Obama to take this trip" McCain:

While Barack Obama took a premature victory lap today in the heart of Berlin, proclaiming himself a 'citizen of the world,' John McCain continued to make his case to the American citizens who will decide this election.

He declared himself a citizen of the U.S. and the world, smart guys. Is John McCain not a citizen of the world? When his map reaches the Atlantic Ocean, does it turn white and read "Here There Be Dragons"?

It strikes me as more fighting-the-last-war from McCain. John Kerry was vulnerable to attacks of America-hatin' globalism when he did things like say American policy decisions had to pass a "global test." Obama was putting American supremacy in the kind of gooey nougat shell that Europeans like.

Word on the street is that Gov. Mitt Romney is the favorite to fill out the GOP's presidential ticket. The American Spectator's Philip Klein says "shut the hell up, street." The key argument Klein makes is that the "Romney gives McCain economic cred" sales job (put forth by Karl Rove, among others) is baseless.
Romney was able to turn economic jitters to his advantage in the Michigan primary (after pledging $20 billion in subsidies for the auto industry), but he wasn't able to gain much traction on the issue elsewhere. In Florida, for instance, despite targeted messaging emphasizing his business credentials, Romney lost to McCain among voters who considered the economy the most important issue, 40 percent to 32 percent.

A deeper look at his performance in the primaries shows that Romney's appeal was stronger among higher-income voters than it was among the type of working class voters who will determine the election. Also, Romney consistently did substantially worse among those who thought the economy was "not good or poor" than he did among people who thought it was "excellent or good." In an electoral environment in which Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the state of the economy, this would be trouble.
Klein doesn't have a dog in this fight—his preferred candidate was some ex-New York City politician whose name escapes me. (He ran this year, right?) And he's right about the polls. But that's the worst reason to reject Romney as a VP candidate. Romney does have economic experience, and he does know more about economics than McCain. In some primary states, McCain was only beating Romney among those "economy" voters because they were voting for McCain anyway. That 8-point Florida lead on economics was matched by a 5-point McCain win. In California, which McCain won by about 8 points, Romney won "economy" voters by 13 points. The problem was that a bunch of people who thought Romney was better on the issue voted for McCain anyway.

Californians were right, by the way. McCain is a shambling mess on economics, whose answers on economic issues fall into four categories: 1)I was part of the Reagan revolution, 2)there's too much pork, 3)Phil Gramm and I are like *this* and 4)I served in Vietnam. I'm serious about that last one. Remember how he responded to this at the final GOP primary debate?
JANET HOOK: There's been a lot of discussion lately about the importance of leadership and management experience. What makes you more qualified than Mitt Romney, a successful CEO and businessman, to manage our economy?

MCCAIN: Because I know how to lead. I know how to lead. I led the largest squadron in the United States Navy. And I did it out of patriotism, not for profit. And I can hire lots of managers, but leadership is a quality that people look for. And I have the vision and the knowledge and the background to take on the transcendent issue of the 21st century, which is radical Islamic extremism.

I can't imagine a worse answer. OK, perhaps if McCain had thrust forward a copy of Das Kapital and said "this is what I'll do!" it would have been worse. But in about a minute he analogized economic management to the logistics of a peacetime Navy squadron and intimated that our problems would disappear if we ramped up the War on Terror just a bit. The cost of the war in Iraq? Decreased oil production? That had nothing to do with it.

So, polling-wise, it would be a mistake for McCain to pick Romney. But that doesn't mean it's fair. If only he'd been a Baptist, the sculpted flip-flopper would be the GOP nominee right now, and he would be making a credible economic argument.

John McCain has issued a curious response to the housing bailout bill. Here's how it begins:

Americans should be outraged at the latest sweetheart deal in Washington. Congress will put U.S. taxpayers on the hook for potentially hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

With combined obligations of roughly $5-trillion, the rapid failure of Fannie and Freddie would be a threat to mortgage markets and financial markets as a whole. Because of that threat, I support taking the unfortunate but necessary steps needed to keep the financial troubles at these two companies from further squeezing American families.

This strikes me as a classic example of intervention's inescapable logic: We broke it, so we bought it, and now it's too big to fail, even though it all sucks in the first place.

On that latter point, McCain has some interesting things to say:

[I]f a dime of taxpayer money ends up being directly invested [in Fannie/Freddie], the management and the board should immediately be replaced, multimillion dollar salaries should be cut, and bonuses and other compensation should be eliminated. They should cease all lobbying activities and drop all payments to outside lobbyists. And taxpayers should be first in line for any repayments.

Even with those terms, sticking Main Street Americans with Wall Street's bill is a shame on Washington. If elected, I'll continue my crusade for the right reform of the institutions: making them go away. I will get real regulation that limits their ability to borrow, shrinks their size until they are no longer a threat to our economy, and privatizes and eliminates their links to the government.

What about Obama?

I'm heartened that the President has decided to support this bipartisan bill that will help ensure that mortgages remain affordable for American families and to prevent hundreds of thousands home foreclosures. In the months since this housing package was announced, nearly a million additional families have faced foreclosure, and our economy has continued to deteriorate. We cannot wait for a million more foreclosures before taking additional action to help struggling families and strengthen our economy. That's why I've also proposed a second stimulus of at least $50 billion with energy rebates for families struggling with high gas prices, relief for states facing budget cuts, and additional measures to protect homeowners from foreclosure.

Bob Barr? A bit like McCain (interview is 10 days old):

I think right now, doing nothing would not be advisable. As much as a Libertarian, we don't like to see − and I don't like to see − the government get further involved with yet another sector of the economy.

I think, because the government has caused this problem, similar to the savings and loan problem that the government caused a generation ago, it has to do something. [...]

Yet, as long as it is done with the thought in mind that there has to be long-term congressional action here to restructure and reformulate the very way Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae operate, I think that would be an advisable solution, but not doing nothing. [...]

But the ultimate goal, I think, has to be a very firm commitment to restructure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

 

Tim Cavanaugh wonders why, in a world where amp-lover and plushy-fetish porn is as near as your web browser, does the cutting edge of erotic exploration seem to be found in material that's nearly four decades old?

Chris Hayes has written an interesting, balanced profile of the liberal cyber-group MoveOn, which is about to turn 10. Here's an excerpt: In many ways MoveOn's relationship to its members looks a lot like a business's relationship to its customers. If a product isn't selling, they take it off the shelves. For activists rooted in an earlier generation of social movements, which tended to prize long, disputatious meetings and the unwieldy process of forming bottom-up consensus, this approach is at best alien, at worst insidious. Customers, after all, aren't part of the creation of the product: they're not running the meetings where new packaging is designed; their input is limited to the final result and expressed through the transaction of purchase. And the role of customer imposes no obligations. You are free to buy or not buy, or in MoveOn's case, sign the petition or not sign the petition. Oscar Wilde once complained that the trouble with socialism was that it took "too many evenings." MoveOn holds out the promise of progressive change without the evenings. Reihan Salam has some sensible follow-up comments, and Jim Manzi adds that the group is "the Richard Viguerie of the contemporary era" -- an especially potent comparison, given Viguerie's mixed legacy.

Barely related bonus video:

Driven to the brink of unhappiness by repeated listenings of "Sowing Season," by Brand New, the members of Russia's Duma are mulling over legislation to ban emo and gothic dress in public schools and government buildings. And the emo kids? Well, they're not gonna take it:

The weekend saw mass protests by Russian emo kids.

In Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, where laws are already being implemented, protestors in a march held signs saying "A Totalitarian State Encourages Stupidity".

Dmitry Gilevich of Russian emo band MAIO stepped in backing the protests, saying: "Expressing psychological emotions is not forbidden by law."

Why does the whole world hate psychological emotions?

Managing Editor Jesse Walker wrote about anti-emo pogroms here.

Hat tip to Emo Paul @ TFS blog. 

Stories pulled  from the Innocence blog the last few weeks:

• Another exoneration in Dallas (see my interview with Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins here).
• DNA testing finally exonerates a Texas man for a rape he always said he didn't commit. Unfortunately, Tim Cole died in a Texas prison nine years ago. Another man confessed to the rape in 1995, but authorities ignored him. It's likely that Cole's wrongful conviction came with a death sentence. A lifelong asthmatic, he'd been able to treat the condition by the time he got to college. Not so in prison. He died of an asthmatic attack in 1999.
• Meanwhile in Tennessee, a stubborn prosecutor may finally back down after years of pursuing the wrong man for a 1985 murder, despite the fact that DNA evidence has cleared the man of the rape the same prosecutor said was the motive for the murder. The U.S. Supreme Court has actually heard this case, tossing the conviction on the grounds that no reasonable juror could have convicted the man given the new evidence. Money quote: "Why, after all this evidence has poured in that House is innocent of the crime, does the state continue to so zealously defend the situation? The reason is because state prosecutors typically never admit error." That's from the federal district court judge in Nashville. Paul House spent 23 years in prison, most of them on death row.
• DNA testing exposes another wrongful murder conviction, this one in New Mexico. It's also another example in how police can extract false confessions, particularly from the mentally disabled.
• Reuters looks at how lax evidence preservation laws are hampering efforts to look for other wrongful convictions.
• Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (unconvincingly) explains why he's opposed to post-conviction DNA testing in capital cases.
• South Carolina is one of just a few states that don't give post-conviction inmates a path to DNA testing in cases where it could prove their innocence. The state legislature passed a bill to correct the problem, and Gov. Mark Sanford was set to sign it. Unfortunately, the legislature then tacked on an 11th-hour poison pill amendment allowing police to take DNA samples from everyone arrested for a serious crime (not just those convicted) for inclusion in a statewide database. To his credit, Sanford had already vetoed a similar bill, and was forced to veto this one. Unfortunately, that means South Carolina still doesn't allow for DNA testing to determine innocence, either.

Now that President George Bush has dropped his veto threat, the gargantuan housing bailout is on the verge of becoming law, pending passage in the Senate. Thus, a housing bubble that has long been artificially inflated by the ever-growing presence of the government (and quasi-government) in the lending market, especially the lower-income segments; will now be artificially re-inflated, esepcially in the lower-income segments, by a government doubling down on its bad bets. Since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already have their federally guaranteed fingers in about half of all U.S. mortgages, what will be their market share at the end of this downturn/re-regulation process? Sixty percent? Eighty?

To see one reason why we got so quickly to this point, look no further than this objective news lede in the Washington Post.

The House yesterday easily approved legislation that seeks to slow the steepest slide in house prices in a generation, rescue hundreds of thousands of homeowners at risk of foreclosure and reassure global markets that mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not be allowed to fail.

In other news, Jesus yesterday easily approved legislation that seeks to turn water into wine.

Politico has some movie news: David Zucker, the director and writer who helped create "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun" franchise has called on Hollywood's tiny but tightly knit Republican A-list crowd to help him make a broad yet unusually right-leaning political satire titled "An American Carol."

The low-budget indie co-stars Emmy winner Kelsey Grammer with Oscar-winner Jon Voight, cinema icon Dennis Hopper, model-heiress Paris Hilton and frequent Zucker stooge Leslie Nielsen in minor roles. Release is planned sometime by year's end; the director suggested Friday, Sept. 12, to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Now there's a tasteful tribute. But why no role for O.J. Simpson?

Part of me wants to give Zucker the benefit of the doubt here -- the man has made some deeply funny movies in the past -- but he had his chance to show us that he could mix humor and politics when he did some anti-Democrat ads in 2006, and the results were...not inspiring:



The line "History has taught us that evil needs to be confronted, not appeased" has no place in a David Zucker film, unless Leslie Nielsen is saying it while Ricardo Montalban gives him a wedgie. And if you have any doubt that the new movie will be more of the same, Politico's plot summary should disabuse you of the notion: In a climactic scene, [Michael] Moore's stand-in (here named "Michael Malone") finds political clarity at the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center while the admonishing ghost of George Washington (played by Voight) hovers nearby.Caveat: If he works in a sequence where the next 9/11 is foiled by a heroic autopilot, I'll forgive everything else.

The Los Angeles city council says no more fast food joints in South L.A.

Here's what I've always wondered:  If the goal is to get low-cost fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean meats to low-income areas, why are these big city politicians so obsessed with keeping Walmart Supercenters out of the inner city? 

Okay, I know the answer to that question.  But no company has a better track record at getting huge amounts of produce to low income people at discount prices.

John McCain has repeatedly criticized Barack Obama for proposing to withdraw troops from Iraq. But as Steve Chapman explains, McCain's own confused and confusing position has recently been inching towards withdrawal.

What's the largest form of wage discrimination in the world today? To answer that question, Lant Pritchett, Michael Clemens, and Claudia Montenegro have compiled this handy chart for you:

 

Wage gaps between observably identical Nigerian workers in the United States and Nigerian workers in Nigeria (same gender, education, work experience, etc) are... considerable. They swamp the wage gaps between men and women in the US. They swamp the gaps between whites and blacks in the US. Actually, they swamp the wage gaps between whites and blacks in the United States in 1855. For several countries, the effect of border restrictions on the wages of workers of equal productivity "is greater than any form of wage discrimination (gender, race, or ethnicity) that has ever been measured." The labor protectionism that keeps poor workers out of rich countries upholds one of the largest remaining price distortions in any global market.

Who cares? You weren't planning on seeking employment in Nigeria anyway. The upshot is that even a very limited loosening of borders could do enormous, immediate good. No other poverty alleviation policy--microcredit, education, public health interventions, anti-sweatshop activism--compares with a work visa, even a temporary one. The Pritchettarians do the math:

• "Simply allowing one member of a Bangladeshi household to work in the US for one month (for a gain of US$835 in present value) brings a larger increase in earnings to that household than a lifetime of microcredit (for a gain of US$683 in present value)."

• "The cumulative lifetime effect of the anti-sweatshop movement on an Indonesian worker’s earnings could be earned if that person had the chance to work in the US once for a period of about 30 weeks."

 

• "An additional year of schooling [in Bolovia] is associated with an annual wage gain of $205. The net present value of a lifetime of such additional payments is about $2250.35 which is about 21% of the annual wage gain to a Bolivian working in the US."

The paper is here, and my interview with Lant Pritchett is here. Another classic Pritchett chart can be viewed here.

Via Chris Blattman.  

Some California newspaper is out with the latest profile of Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr. Faye Fiore kicks it off with a vignette from his Supreme Court presser.
Then he threw it open to questions from members of the Fourth Estate, whose average age looked to be about 19.

"Do you think the country is ready for a president with a mustache?"

"Do you think you could take Ron Paul in an arm-wrestling match?"
Yeah, I have no idea who that guy was. But I treasure my audiotape of Barr explaining that he and Paul talk about "issues of... substance." There's a lot of color here, plus the usual pondering about Barr's spoilage potential, plus some good scene-setting.
If Bob Barr is anything, it's focused. He acknowledges his campaign is a long shot, but at the very least he will bring attention to the values of freedom he learned growing up the son of a civil engineer in far-flung places such as Iran and Iraq. (The longest place he lived as a boy was Baghdad, for three years.)

It was that kind of focus -- that and his love of the limelight -- that powered him when he was the lone voice calling for impeachment and members of his own party dismissed him as foolhardy.

It's been a busy day, and Barr boards the evening shuttle from Washington back to Atlanta and his 12th-floor consulting offices, the temporary campaign headquarters.

All around are remnants of the substantial elephant collection -- elephant bookends on a desk, a close-up of an elephant's trunk in the hallway. It's an awkward display, considering he now regards Republican lawmakers as wimps scared into submission by Bush. But as Barr is fond of saying, "I don't worry about it."
Also, Barr's campaign manager Russ Verney responded to John Boehner's comment about conservatives "wasting their votes" on Barr.
Rep. Boehner would rather coerce people into voting for someone they do not want through fear tactics so that the Republicans and Democrats do not have to change their runaway spending habits. After all if they have no dissent from the voters over a big spending Republican and a bigger spending Democrat, they are free to argue over whose special interests get the benefits of our hard earned tax dollars.

I think if the public is happy with the direction our country is headed then they should thank the Republicans and the Democrats. If they want a change, their only option is Bob Barr.

Also, Ralph Nader's campaign pestered reporters today with an exceptionally piqued press release about a Friday congressional hearing about impeachment. Bob Barr will be there. Ralph Nader was disinvited.

This is not the first time that I have been excluded from testifying on subjects both of us have been concerned about and have discussed. Remember your invitation to testify at your unofficial public hearing right after the 2004 elections regarding "irregularities" in Ohio? Within two days, your chief of staff, Perry Applebaum, persuaded you to disinvite me.

Applebaum has been a problem with my appearing before a Committee Chairman whom I have known, admired and worked with for nearly forty years. He has performed his exclusionary behavior on other occasions. It is time to make this public and to ascertain why he prevails again and again with his superior either not to invite or to deny requests to testify regarding subjects well within my knowledge, experience, and forthrightness.

You know, some people say that Nader is running a vanity campaign and soothing his Galactus-sized ego. I don't see it.