Captured Documents, Part IV

The conservative blogosphere appears to be going nuts over the released documents, but they seem willing to ignore the nature of raw intelligence to do so -- for instance, taking information at face value without regard to the verifiability of the information or the reliability of the sources.

Even the government is saying there won't be any bombshells in the documents.

According to an intelligence official who declined to be identified, Negroponte plans to release all documents that have no further intelligence value. Files that might help apprehend members of the Iraqi insurgency will remain under wraps. So will files that could violate the privacy or harm the reputations of innocent people. For instance, the Hussein regime used rape as a method of torture, and the government won't release documents containing the names of Iraqi rape victims. Nor will it release files mentioning Iraqi-Americans or other US citizens, such as journalists.

The remaining documents, the official said, will mainly provide insights into Hussein's rule. ''This stuff needs to be laid bare because it helps the democratic process in Iraq, like it did in South Africa, like it did in Germany," he said.

If any of these documents actually proved the government's case against Iraq, it would have been published by now. What bloggers may hope for is finding an overlooked gem, or building smaller cases about specific details.

My own looks back that up. I don't speak Arabic, so I have to rely on already translated documents. But nothing I've found sheds any new light on the question of WMD or links to terrorism.

Still, it's fun digging around in primary documents.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

What do they think will happen?

Critical as I am of the decision to invade Iraq and much of our execution during the post-war occupation, I don't quite get antiwar protesters.

The third anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq drew tens of thousands of protesters around the globe, from hurricane-ravaged Louisiana to Australia, with chants of "Stop the War" and calls for the withdrawal of troops.

As my wife, another war critic, said, "we should get a bumper sticker saying 'Insurgents go home!' "

While a large chunk of the Iraqi resistance is sparked by our presence and will go away when we leave, another large chunk is driven by sectarian goals and the foreign fighters under Al-Zarqawi appear interested in triggering a civil war. Both of the latter would be helped by a precipitous withdrawal. It can be difficult to identify good guys in Iraq, where tit-for-tat killings are becoming common, but I think most people would agree that the latter two groups definitely count as bad guys.

It angers me no end that the Bush administration started this war in the first place, and then dug the hole so deep that we have no choice but to keep digging. But we really have no honorable choice. We must withdraw on our own timetable, not rush for the exits now that the war is going poorly and becoming more and more unpopular. There's nothing wrong with a timetable, but it had better be contingent upon certain milestones being reached -- with a Plan B in case those milestones are judged to be unreachable.

antiwar protests, protests, Iraq, politics, midtopia

More prisoner abuse

Today's New York Times details yet another interrogation center where abuses took place, this time a place called the Black Room at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of an interrogation group charged with locating Al-Zarqawi, the leader of the foreign fighters in Iraq.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. ... Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.

What makes this example particularly bad is that these weren't ill-trained reservists. They were elite counterterrorism troops, occasionally paired with soldiers or intelligence agents who had interrogation skills.

The abuses are described as unsanctioned, but well known to those serving in the area.

It should surprise no one that the abuse was not helpful.

Despite the task force's access to a wide range of intelligence, its raids were often dry holes, yielding little if any intelligence and alienating ordinary Iraqis, Defense Department personnel said. Prisoners deemed no threat to American troops were often driven deep into the Iraqi desert at night and released, sometimes given $100 or more in American money for their trouble.

The good news is that it was complaints from other interrogators -- and institutional actions by their superiors, such as withdrawing CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency interrogators from cooperating with such tactics -- that exposed the abuses.

The bad news is that the unit is still operating, with even less accountability:

In the summer of 2004, Camp Nama closed and the unit moved to a new headquarters in Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad. The unit's operations are now shrouded in even tighter secrecy.

Senior military commanders insist that the elite warriors, who will be relied on more than ever in the campaign against terrorism, are now treating detainees more humanely and can police themselves.

I would hope there is far better oversight now. But history indicates that that might be more hope than reason.

prisoner abuse, detainees, Iraq, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Rumsfeld's missed opportunity

One of the few things I respect Donald Rumsfeld for has been his attempt to reform the structure and bureaucracy of the military. Killing the Crusader self-propelled artillery program, for example, was a smart move. It hurts double to say that, both because I was a tanker (making the Crusader kin of a sort) and because much of the work would have been done here in Minnesota. But the Crusader was a hulking Cold War relic, unsuited for the sort of lighter, nimbler, more flexible military that I agree we need to build.

That's why this essay from Armed Forces Journal caught my eye (a tip of the hat to my friend Munko for pointing it out). It argues that whatever his intentions, Rumsfeld has (once again) messed up the execution, missing his big chance to make a difference in how the military operates:

The Quadrennial Defense Review calls for greater mobility, but the budget terminates both of the Air Force’s airlift programs. The report says America is engaged in a “long war” against terrorism, but the budget cuts back the Army’s planned number of combat brigades. The report says the Pentagon needs to rely more on market forces in its business practices, but the budget proposes creation of a monopoly for producing the most popular military engine in the world.

Despite these seeming disconnects between rhetoric and budgetary realities, the spending request is likely to be the high point of impact for the strategic paradigm underpinning the QDR. The rest of the year will witness a gradual erosion of its influence as political players and private-sector analysts pick apart the rather mediocre document that the Pentagon has presented to them. When the smoke clears to reveal a reconciled Defense Authorization Act for 2007, it will be apparent that the Quadrennial Defense Review didn’t matter; it was another missed opportunity, possibly the last on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s watch.

The article goes on to detail why the QDR doesn't matter. Essentially, it's too late in the budget and political process. The Bush administration's influence is on the wane as 2008 approaches, and if Rumsfeld wanted to make lasting changes he had to start last year. He didn't.

Rumsfeld didn’t really hit the ground running. Strategic reviews and the filling of key positions took too long during the first year, and then the whole process was overwhelmed by the trauma of Sept. 11, 2001. More distractions followed: the Afghanistan war in 2002, the Iraq war in 2003, Abu Ghraib in 2004. So when the time came in 2005 for another term — and another QDR — Rumsfeld’s team had achieved precious little in the way of true transformation.

As it turned out, much of 2005 was consumed by the review itself. The sixth year of Bush’s eight years in office has commenced, and time is running out for military transformation. Two years ago, it was common for policymakers to say that hard choices would need to be made in the 2006 defense budget. When that didn’t happen, it was predicted that truly momentous shifts would unfold in 2007. Now, people around Rumsfeld are predicting real change in the 2008 budget. However, 2008 is the president’s last year in office, so nobody on Rumsfeld’s team is likely to be around to enforce the priorities contained in that budget. In other words, the transformationists have missed the budgetary boat. It’s too late to radically rearrange the nation’s defense posture.

In addition, the writer argues that Rumsfeld's vision of current conditions and future warfare were flawed:

The experience of the past five years has proven these and other precepts of the Rumsfeld paradigm to be inadequate at best. It is apparent the nation is not in a strategic pause; the U.S. intelligence community isn’t all that good; new networks and sensors do not play a decisive role in coping with emerging enemies (and may empower those enemies more than they do U.S. forces); and today’s adversaries are so different from those of the past that they continually surprise U.S. military leaders. ... That the fight [in Iraq] has not gone so well has to raise doubts about whether he and his advisers understand what the military needs. In retrospect, it seems that despite all the talk about asymmetric threats, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and others had a rather unimaginative view of how unconventional the danger might become.

There's more: Rumsfeld's alienation of Congress, an inability to rein in military entitlements, a detached and indecisive leadership style.

In a way, Rumsfeld sums up much of what I think history will say about the Bush administration: soaring and determined rhetoric sprinkled with good and principled ideas, but based on an unrealistic view of the world and executed with almost stunning incompetence.

It's too bad, because the military needs what Rumsfeld promised to deliver. We can only hope that the next Secretary of Defense has the same priorities and better luck.

Click here for a follow-up/companion post.

military, Rumsfeld, defense, politics, midtopia

More site tweaks

I've greatly expanded the "Political Blogs" section of the sidebar and begun a list of Minnesota blogs. I've also added a couple of more links to my "Favorites" page.

Inflation -- the good, cosmic kind

A group of physicists says it has direct evidence of how the universe expanded immediately after the big bang.

Physicists announced Thursday that they now have the smoking gun that shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second.

Not only does this provide confirmation of current thought, it provides an opportunity to consider some really cool questions. For example, during the expansion the universe grew many, many times faster than the current speed of light. Does that indicate that the universe itself is not subject to the same laws of physics that hold sway *within* the universe? It also refocuses attention on questions like "what's outside the universe?"

If pondering imponderables fascinates you, this provides a lot to chew on.

physics, universe, big bang, midtopia

Johnson "embellished" conversation with justice

A follow-up to this post. Dean Johnson, given a choice between being branded a liar or an ethics breaker, says he "embellished" his conversation with a state Supreme Court justice when talking with pastors.

"I embellished it to say the judiciary doesn't seem too interested in overturning this," Johnson said.

He said he had been attempting to dissuade the clergy members from the need for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage when two conservative members pressed him on his assessment.

"I suppose I became frustrated," he said. "I made a mistake."

And that will probably be the end of it. The Star Tribune editorialized that Johnson owes a lot of people an apology, including fellow opponents of a gay-marriage amendment, and he does. But as I said in my earlier post, this brouhaha has nothing to do with the underlying merits (or lack thereof) of the amendment. I hope Johnson is properly chastised, but it should not affect his approach to the issue.

Dean Johnson, homosexual, gay, marriage, minnesota, politics, midtopia

Captured documents, part III

Yet more, from another transcript . Saddam's rambling is getting worse. On Pages 2-3, Saddam (presumably; once again he's only identified as "Male 1")is discussing what to do about inspections and the difficulty of documenting the destruction of his WMD programs.

It doesn’t have anything to do with banned weapons, that’s it. They destroyed the industrial foundations. They destroyed the Weapons. But can we guarantee that somebody didn’t forget any file? Then what are the basics for you? What is the value of a piece of paper? ... They were destroyed, now they say you have to bring me documents to show when they were destroyed? What day what time? Every single missile.

In this transcript, Iraqis are discussing a pending inspection visit by Kofi Annan to several presidential palaces, which would place the conversation in 1998. Saddam appears to be "Male 2" this time around. They're talking about where Annan will go and what he will see. It starts out sounding like they're trying to figure out how to hide things... but by page 15 I got the impression that what they're trying to protect is Saddam's privacy. He's in the middle of an international confrontation, and he's mostly concerned with strangers poking around his living areas!

You read enough of this stuff and I guarantee you'll be thinking to yourself, "I am glad I wasn't Saddam." How he didn't die of boredom, I'll never know. These meetings are b-o-r-i-n-g.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Captured documents, part II

A follow up to my initial post, here are some more tidbits from the captured Iraqi and Al Qaeda documents.

From a transcript of an audio tape, we have what appears to be Saddam Hussein (Male 1) discussing various diplomatic, economic and security issues.

Saddam, like all great megalomaniacs, is a boring rambler to listen to. Cut to Page 8, where after talking about the hide-and-seek games they played with inspectors, he complains that Iraq has destroyed all of its atomic, chemical and biological projects, but now the UN is changing the rules.

Flip to Page 10. He starts discussing diplomatic overtures to Iran as a way to get around sanctions or maybe find common cause against a common enemy. He notes the international pressure over Iran's nuclear projects and says the international community is "talking about Iran just like they did with (Iraq) in the beginning."

Finally turn to Page 11 for a humorous finish. He mulls the possibility of asking Iran for his planes back -- the planes he had flown to Iran for safekeeping during the first Gulf War and never got back. He talks about taking the planes apart and trucking them back to Iraq, because they can't fly them thanks to the no-fly zones. It's kind of pathetic, really.


Iraq, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Tired arguments, lousy logic

I didn't really mean to have so many gay marriage posts in the last few days, but the issue just keeps cropping up.

It must have been a slow day for conservative columnist Katherine Kersten, because she devoted her entire allotment of newsprint to regurgitating one of the tiredest attacks on gay marriage -- that it will necessarily lead to polygamy.

Her argument:

But wait. What if a person loves two people, or three or more? If "one man-one woman" is a discriminatory limitation on the choice of a life partner, on what grounds can the state logically restrict marriage to two people? The fact is, once you adopt same-sex marriage -- legally changing the standard for marriage from one-man, one-woman to a "committed relationship" -- there is no principled way to prevent its extension to polygamy or other forms of "plural marriage" or partnership.

First, let's just note that in practical terms this is a straw man. The number of people who actively support polygamy are vanishingly few. It just isn't going to be legalized any time soon because there's no meaningful political pressure to do so.

But I'll play along.

Legally speaking, the major problem with preventing gays from marrying is that the government allows these two people to marry, but not those two people. The only reason for the different treatment is the gender of the people involved. That is presumptively discriminatory, and must be justified on practical grounds -- showing that the discrimination serves a legitimate government interest.

That is qualitatively different from saying any two people can marry, but any three (or more) can't. The situations are not the same, so treating them differently is less of a problem. You might still need to justify it, but the hurdle is far lower.

Logically speaking, polygamists can already make the "two vs. three" discrimination argument. That doesn't change just because we recognize two people of any gender and not just man/woman pairings.

Further, polygamy is a choice, not a condition. That makes it more susceptible to regulation than more ingrained characteristics such as sexual orientation.

Let's now get into the philosophy of gay marriage.

Philosophically, one can view gay marriage as "imposing" acceptance of homosexuality on an unwilling majority. But that implies that legality equals acceptance, which isn't a traditionally conservative viewpoint. A true conservative argues that citizens should generally be free to do as they please, and government intrusion should be kept to a minimum, stepping in only as much as necessary to preserve order.

Approval simply doesn't enter into it. What such a viewpoint defends is the concept of individual liberty -- not whatever each individual chooses to do with that liberty.

And that's all that allowing gay marriage would do. It's not forcing anyone to do anything; it's simply allowing homosexual couples to have the same rights and responsiblities that heterosexual couples do. There's no imposition in any meaningful sense of the word.

Having established those cases, let me now take up the separate question of whether polygamy should be outlawed.

Respect for individual liberty means that the only reason to ban a behavior is if it can be shown to be harmful. So before we get all upset about the prospect of polygamy being legalized, we should establish why it should remain illegal. If we can't show harm, there's no logical reason to ban it.

What harm does polygamy do? And is that harm sufficient to warrant government intervention?

I'm willing to believe that there are provable downsides to polygamy, but I can't think of one offhand. There are plenty of plausible arguments -- it subjugates women, for instance. But proof seems to be in short supply.

There are also practical arguments, such as an increased risk of welfare fraud or the need to rewrite a sizable chunk of our legal code to deal with multiperson marriages. Those are not philosophical objections, and would not be weakened by the existence of gay marriage.

That's the ultimate way to draw a line between two behaviors: show actual harm. Gay marriage opponents have repeatedly failed to show that gay marriage will be harmful to society. So they raise the specter of legalized polygamy as part of their rearguard action. Well, the solution to that is entirely in their hands: if they don't want gay marriage to lead to polygamy, all they have to do is show that polygamy is harmful. Do that, and I'll lead the charge to keep it illegal.

You know where to reach me.

Minnesota, polygamy, Kersten, gay marriage, politics, midtopia

Captured Iraqi and Al-Qaeda documents released

Like every other political blogger out there, I can hardly wait to start checking out the collection of captured documents released by the government today.

Though not all the documents come with translations from the Arabic, they could shed some interesting light on the state of things in Iraq and within Al-Qaeda at various points.

The collection is here.

I'll come back to this when I've had more time to dig through the archive, but for now the most interesting thing I've found is an Al-Qaeda employment contract.

Enjoy.


Al-Qaida, Iraq, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Getting heard

Thanks to the Daou Report at Salon.com for linking to my health-care post. Welcome, Daou readers!

Expensively mediocre health care

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, every American -- regardless of gender or ethnicity -- gets roughly equal routine medical care.

Other studies have shown evidence of racial disparities in treatment, and this study doesn't totally refute those. There are still disparities in access to some kinds of specialized care, and the methodology doesn't really address barriers to seeking care in the first place. But once people sought care, they were treated generally the same.

The real kicker, though, is that that the care was rather uniformly mediocre.

The study ... found that though there are some disparities, the world's most affluent health system fails to provide all patients with optimal care at least 40 percent of the time.

"Differences exist, but they pale in comparison to the chasm between where we are today and where we should be," said chief author Dr. Steven Asch of Rand Health and the Veterans Affairs Health Care System in Los Angeles. "No matter who you are, it's almost a flip of the coin as to whether you get the care that experts want for you."

We spend more money per capita on health care than any other nation on earth. And what do we get? Mediocrity.

There are many things wrong with our health-care system beyond the skyrocketing costs. Most reimbursement systems end up giving bizarre incentives to health-care providers, driving up overall costs. And it simply makes no sense that the cost and quality of health-insurance coverage depends on one's employment status. Not only is that bad policy from a public health perspective, but increasingly it is a competitive disadvantage to American businesses and a barrier to hiring, constricting employment and economic growth.

It is time we seriously considered alternatives.

People talk about health-care rationing, but the alternative to rationing is exploding costs -- which eventually leads to rationing by ability to pay. Perhaps exploding costs would be acceptable if we were getting top-of-the-line care for all that money, but we're not.

Should nationalized health care be on the table? Sure. I don't think it's the best alternative, but it's arguably better than the system we have now.

Worried about a huge new bureaucracy? Right now we're subject to a private medical bureaucracy instead of a government one.

National health care limits choice and results in long waiting lists for non-emergency procedures? Well, all systems have their problems. I just don't see the logic in trying to boast about our system and bash every flavor of national health care out there. None of the systems are perfect; they all represent different attempts to address the cost/benefit ratio.

Say what you will about national health care on an individual level, but on a macro level it seems to keep the population pretty healthy at reasonable cost. And it's not at all clear that waiting lists are an inevitable result of a single-payer system.

But rather than looking at the extremes, I think the more useful discussion would be "is there a combination that provides maximum choice while reducing costs appreciably?" And if we can de-link health insurance coverage from our employment status, so much the better.

I actually agree in large part with the Heritage Foundation on this, especially their assessment of the problems with the current system. We may quibble a bit on the details, but their system is workable and, with a bit of residual government involvement, equitable.

My solution would look like this:

Instead of employers providing insurance, they simply boost your pay by the current premium amount, and you go out and buy coverage yourself. Tax credits help ensure that the money is spent on health care, and that the very poor can afford health care. Future increases are left to the market: the cost of health care becomes just one more factor that workers consider when weighing a salary offer.

Medical costs would automatically become linked to performance, insurance products would become more closely tailored to individual needs, you wouldn't lose your insurance coverage when you lose your job (or be forced to change doctors when you switch jobs), and employers would no longer be locked into ever-higher medical premiums -- eliminating a growing barrier to hiring. Small businesses -- the engine of economic growth -- could compete for the very best workers who might otherwise go to large companies simply for the cheaper, better health coverage.

There would still need to be some government involvement, to ensure adequate coverage for people with very expensive medical problems that a true market system, without the "group" aspect of coverage, would lock out. There might have to be a law requiring that everyone have health insurance, much like we do with car insurance. But overall you'd have better coverage and better care without a new bureaucracy deciding what each individual medical procedure is worth.


health care, politics, midtopia

Dean Johnson, Court tamperer?

Democrat Dean Johnson, majority leader in the Minnesota Senate, has been caught on tape saying he had talked to several state Supreme Court justices about gay marriage, and they assured him that the current law restricting marriage to a man and a woman would not be overturned -- meaning that a gay-marriage amendment is unnecessary.

In the recording - made without Johnson's knowledge - he says he had talked with two of the three justices named Anderson on the bench and they had told him, "Dean, we're not going to do this. We're not going to do this." He also said former Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz, who recently stepped down, told him, "'We're not going to touch it."'

If true, Johnson and the justices committed a serious ethical breach. Justices are not supposed to discuss pending cases or make committments on how they'll vote.

The justices deny it and Johnson says he chose his words poorly. But it's hard to imagine any other meaning for what he said. So either he was emptily boasting then, or is lying now.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with whether gay marriage is a good idea or not; it's just hardball politics driven by disagreement over gay marriage. And I think it points up the lack of substantive arguments against gay marriage, especially as framed here in Minnesota.

The proposed amendment would ban not only gay marriage but also civil unions. One can believe that homosexuality is immoral, but that's not an argument for denying gays the legal benefits of marriage. Public policy should be based on objective facts or principles, not personal dislike or religious prohibitions.

And the case against gay marriage has no objective basis. "It will harm marriage?" Nonsense. "Marriage is for procreation?" Nonsense, and besides, gays are conceiving and adopting children in ever-increasing numbers. "It indicates societal approval of gays?" Not true, unless we think that recognizing third and fourth marriages mean we approve of serial monogamists.

Gay marriage isn't about societal approval; it's about keeping the government's nose out of people's private business. If the state can show a compelling interest in providing support to marriage, it may do so -- but it must establish neutral criteria that narrowly address its interest, and provide support to anyone who meets those criteria -- regardless of gender, age, moral character or any other irrelevant factor.

For centuries marriage was a purely civil institution, and did not involve churches. The perfect solution would be to return to a form of that, in which "marriages" are performed by churches and the state recognizes only "civil unions." "Civil unions for everyone, marriage if you want one and can find a church willing to perform the ceremony" would allow all couples to have the same legal rights while letting churches establish their own standards for marriage.

But I don't foresee that happening in the near future. And until it does, gay marriage -- or "civil unions" that provide the same legal benefits as marriage -- is simply the right thing to do.


Dean Johnson, homosexual, gay, marriage, minnesota, politics, midtopia

A continent splits apart

This is just too cool for words.

Normally changes to our geological environment take place almost imperceptibly. A life time is too short to see rivers changing course, mountains rising skywards or valleys opening up. In north-eastern Africa's Afar Triangle, though, recent months have seen hundreds of crevices splitting the desert floor and the ground has slumped by as much as 100 meters (328 feet). At the same time, scientists have observed magma rising from deep below as it begins to form what will eventually become a basalt ocean floor. Geologically speaking, it won't be long until the Red Sea floods the region. The ocean that will then be born will split Africa apart.

Basically, Africa will lose its horn once the land slumps enough to let the ocean in.

Visit the link. There's a lot more there, including photos and maps.

Thanks to Centerfield for pointing out this story.

Afar Triangle, Africa, geology, midtopia

Cracks in the Iranian facade

Iran's hard-line stance on its nuclear program is producing some domestic dissent.

Some people in powerful positions have begun to insist that the confrontational tactics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been backfiring, making it harder instead of easier for Iran to develop a nuclear program.

This week, the United Nations Security Council is meeting to take up the Iranian nuclear program. That referral and, perhaps more important, Iran's inability so far to win Russia's unequivocal support for its plans have empowered critics of Mr. Ahmadinejad, according to political analysts with close ties to the government.

One senior Iranian official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the delicate nature of the issue, said: "I tell you, if what they were doing was working, we would say, 'Good.' " But, he added: "For 27 years after the revolution, America wanted to get Iran to the Security Council and America failed. In less than six months, Ahmadinejad did that."

It remains to be seen whether the opposition has any actual teeth, especially with Iran's top cleric, Ali Khamenei, supporting the hardline approach.

In the end it may require a very delicate diplomatic approach from us: keeping the pressure ratcheted up sufficiently high that we reward neither delaying tactics nor the hard-line approach, but not so high that we push the reformers into a united front with the hardliners.

With luck we can avoid the need for my earlier suggestion.


diplomacy, nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Housekeeping and recognition

I've been spending some time mucking with the site instead of posting, and have now added a links page. It's a place for any sort of link I find interesting but that doesn't seem to belong in the main page sidebar. It's far from complete, and suggestions are welcome. Scroll down to the "other links" section of the sidebar, or click here.

Separately, my post on the Republican Study Committee's 2007 budget proposal has been picked as one of the Posts of the Week by Blogcritics. In addition, a link from The Moderate Voice to my post on Iran nearly tripled the site traffic over the weekend. I wish you could see the happy dance, but perhaps it's best all around that you can't.

Thanks to everyone who finds Midtopia a worthwhile place to spend part of their day.


politics, midtopia

Terri Schiavo all over again

The Minnesota House will consider a bill requiring that "incapacitated persons" be provided with food and water.

The bill would create a presumption in law that a person incapable of making his or her own health care decisions would be given food and water. The law would provide for three exemptions:

• If food and water would not contribute to keeping the person alive or would not provide the person comfort.

• If the person had completed a health care directive explicitly authorizing the withholding or withdrawal of food and water.

• If there is "clear and convincing evidence that the person, when legally capable of making health care decisions, gave express and informed consent" to withhold or remove food and water.

What I fail to understand is why legislators think things like this are any of their business. If someone is incapacitated, those closest to them should make decisions regarding their care. Not the government, not me, not you. Nobody can plausibly claim to know the wishes of the patient better than those who know them best.

The exceptions don't address this. I've made it clear to my wife that I don't want to be kept alive if I'm ever in a Schiavo-like condition. But my health-care directive remains unfinished. Would my wife's testimony alone be considered "clear and convincing evidence" of my wishes? It sure wasn't in the Schiavo case.

The last thing we need in end-of-life decisions is more laws, more lawyers and more public nosiness. Leave such decisions to the family, except in cases where there is reason to believe that the family does not have the patient's best interests at heart. Litigate the exceptions, not the norms.


right to die, Schiavo Bill, Minnesota, Schiavo, politics, midtopia

Senate rejects "pay as you go"

The Senate yesterday rejected a "pay as you go" amendment to the 2007 budget.

The vote was 50-50. The 50 "no" votes? All Republican.

Pay as you go is a simple concept: if you want to cut taxes or increase spending, you have to find offsetting spending cuts or tax increases so that the deficit does not increase. We had it for much of the 1990s, but Congress let it lapse in 2002. It pretty much forces fiscal discipline on Congress, which has demonstrated time and again that it needs exactly this sort of cudgel in order to be fiscally responsible.

Republicans as the party of fiscal discipline? Please. The Democrats might be more willing to raise taxes, but at least they don't think it's perfectly fine to spend money we don't have.


paygo, deficit, Senate, budget, politics, midtopia

The military, present and future

Two interesting bits on military recruiting -- one examining a myth, one painting a bleak picture of the future.

In the March issue of Reason magazine, Tim Cavanaugh reports on a Heritage Foundation study that appears to explode the myth of a poor-man's military.

The largest group of new recruits in 2003—18 percent—came from neighborhoods with average annual household incomes of $35,000 to $40,000, compared to a median household income of $43,318. In all, the top two income quintiles (comprising households with incomes starting at $41,688) produced 45 percent of all recruits in 2003. A mere 5 percent came from neighborhoods with average incomes below $20,000 per household.

The study itself is available here. But interestingly enough, the National Priorities Project analyzed the same data and came to a different conclusion.

Nearly two-thirds of all recruits (64%) were from counties with median household incomes below the US median. About one-third were from counties with a higher median household income. All of the top 20 counties had a median household income below the national median household income.
* 19 out of the top 20 counties had lower median household incomes than their respective state median household incomes. (As a whole, the county-level incomes averaged 70% of the state median income levels.)
* 15 of the top 20 counties had higher poverty rates than the national average.
* 11 of the top 20 counties had higher child poverty rates than the national average.
* 16 of the top 20 counties had higher child poverty rates than the state average.
* 18 of the top 20 had higher poverty rates than the state average.

Subsequently, both organizations offered dueling arguments about who was right here and here.

So who is right?

The answer appears to be "neither." The undisputed facts are these:

1. Households with income under $20,000 are underrepresented;
2. Housholds with income of $20,000 to $25,000 are proportionally represented;
3. Households with incomes of $25,000 to $55,000 are overrepresented;
4. Households with incomes over $55,000 are underepresented.

One problem is that the same "household income" can mean widely varying standards of living, depending on family size. A single person making $30,000 is doing far better than if that same $30,000 has to provide for a family of four.

There's also the imprecision of the data. An area's median household income doesn't reveal which households that area's recruits are coming from; they may be coming from an unrepresentative sample of the area's population -- disproportionately poor or minority, for example.

That said, the above data suggests a few things:

1. It makes sense that the poorest households are underrepresented, because the very poor are less likely to meet military standards, be it because of poor schools, physical problems or a criminal record.

2. The wealthiest households are underrepresented because the wealthy have far more options, and because they're more likely to go to college than enlist.

3. In between those two extremes, the share of recruits increases as income increases -- but only to a point.

The conclusion seems clear to me. The military is primarily working poor and lower middle-class. This reflects the convergence of educational attainment and economic incentives in those income brackets. Income levels are low enough to make the military an attractive option, but high enough that potential recruits are more likely to meet military standards. Heritage's claim of a "middle-class" military is overreaching; NPP's claim of an army of the poor likewise hyperbolizes.

One other thing the studies agree on is that while rural areas are slightly overrepresented, four out of five recruits come from urban and suburban areas. That may help explain why so few of the next generation of young adults are considered potential recruits:

The military doesn't want most people in the prime recruiting age group of 17 to 24.

Of some 32 million Americans in this group, the Army deems the vast majority too overweight, too uneducated, too flawed in some way, according to its estimates for the current budget year.

The projected pool shrinks to 13.6 million when only high school graduates and those who score in the upper half on a military service aptitude test are considered.

Other reasons for exclusion: obesity, a lack of physical fitness, the use of Ritalin and other stimulants to treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders, other medical problems, criminal histories, and having too many dependents.

That leaves 4.3 million fully qualified potential recruits and an estimated 2.3 million more who might qualify if given waivers for certain problems. Fifteen percent of recruits received such waivers in the last federal budget year.

That's long-term bad news. From those 6.6 million potential recruits, the military has to get enough soldiers to fill its 1.2-million-soldier ranks. For the Army that means 80,000 recruits a year. That means the Army just needs to get 1.2% of the eligible recruits to sign, and they're sitting pretty. But last year the Army missed its recruiting targets.

If you ever wanted to know how few people join the military, that should tell you. The ongoing war in Iraq isn't helping, but military recruiters are getting the sort of low response rates usually reserved for spam or cold-calling. And as more and more of our population ends up in urban/suburban areas, and obesity rates increase, that pool of potential recruits will continue to shrink.

It may be hard to believe, but in a generation the world's last superpower may find it difficult to field a military as large as North Korea's.


NPP, Heritage Foundation, recruiting, military, politics, midtopia