Image via WikipediaAmerica never felt like 200 little, small countries got in the way when it has exercised or threatened veto power. But America always complains that the UN is too inefficient as an organization to be propped up, too mushy to be given more power. The powerless, the poor do look poorly managed, don't they? They don't seem to have their s____ together. Should not America take the lead on changing that inefficiency? The Importance Of The Private Sector
America has not lacked any confidence in its use of veto power. America should not lack confidence to tidy up the UN as an organization. Of course it is poorly managed.
My Third World People Don't Get To Vote In This City
It is kind of like the schools in the poor neighborhoods in this country. Of course they are poorly managed. But their number one ailment is lack of funds, not lack of great management. The management would improve if they had more money.
I do think there is going to have to be a total spread of democracy before the UN can truly
Image via Wikipedia be the world government it deserves to be. But you can not wait for that total spread of democracy before you can start giving the UN more teeth, before you can shift the power from the Security Council to the General Assembly, before you bring about fundamental reform in the way the UN works. The hiring and firing practices will have to meet the highest management standards. The long term idea can not be to add a few more countries to the list of veto carrying powers. The idea has to be get rid of the veto power itself. But then that idea looks far fetched at this juncture, just like the idea of one global currency, a total elimination of all nuclear weapons, elimination of hunger.
But then it is idealism that drives the best kind of pragmatism. You have to have lofty goals to make the best short term moves.
Each country having its own separate currency is quite a ridiculous idea. It makes no economic sense. And some day. Similarly it is a lack of world government that gives rise to all sorts of regional blocs, regional conferences, and yet another global conference on this and that. One world government would be vastly more efficient. And the long term goal is to have rule of law for nations just like we have rule of law for individuals in many countries.
New York Times
Countering China, Obama Backs India for U.N. Council a priority for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ..... a United Nations that is efficient, effective, credible and legitimate ..... Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. .... China has been especially cool to the idea of permanent Security Council membership for rival Asian powers Japan and India. ..... a 10-day trip to Asia that will take him to four countries, all democracies; it is no accident that China is not on the list ...... “India has emerged.” .... India’s foreign policy establishment had been divided on the issue, with some arguing that the United Nations is increasingly outdated compared with groups like the Group of 20, where India is a major player. ...... Obama on Monday signaled the United States’ intention to create a deeper partnership of the world’s two largest democracies that would expand commercial ties and check the influence of an increasingly assertive China. ...... the almost giddy reaction to the president and his wife, Michelle, in the Indian press
Image via Wikipedia ..... Mr. Singh emphasized the need for the two countries “to work as equal partners in a strategic relationship.” ..... Obama arrived in India on Saturday bearing a big gift: his decision to lift longstanding export controls on sensitive technologies ..... “It’s a bold move — no president has said that before .. It’s a recognition of India’s emergence as a global power and the United States’ desire to be close to India.” ..... during a question and answer session with college students, one demanded to know why he had not declared Pakistan a “terrorist state.” Between India and the United States, a Defining Partnership two men, neither known for their social ebullience ..... Obama called the relationship between India and the United States “the defining partnership of the 21st century.” ..... Obama has called Mr. Singh his guru ..... Mrs. Gandhi had notoriously noxious relations with President Richard M. Nixon. ..... Singh, a reserved academic 14 years his senior .... Mr. Singh replied that he appreciated Mr. Bush’s straightforward nature. .... Obama and Mr. Singh .... Both are better policy wonks than glad-handing politicians. Both enjoy adulation on the global stage that seems to have eluded them at home.
Our Banana Republic The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. .... the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana. .... From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.
Image via Wikipedia ..... The richest 0.1 percent of taxpayers would get a tax cut of $61,000 from President Obama. They would get $370,000 from Republicans ..... the levels of inequality we’ve now reached may actually suppress growth. A drop of inequality lubricates economic growth, but too much may gum it up. ..... places where inequality increased the most also endured the greatest surges in bankruptcies. .... Rising inequality also led to more divorces, presumably a byproduct of the strains of financial distress. ..... losing a job or a home can rock our identity and savage our self-esteem. ..... we’ve reached a banana republic point where our inequality has become both economically unhealthy and morally repugnant. Senator Gillibrand Has New York Home on the Market about two hours’ drive from New York City
What Obama Can Learn From India Many American business executives now consider India the "new China" -- an increasingly important manufacturing and service hub as well as consumer market for their products .... India's economy is growing at an impressive 9 percent this year.
My Endless New York London was the commercial and financial center of the world from the defeat of Napoleon until the rise of Hitler ..... By the time I got to Paris, most people in the world had stopped speaking French (something the French have been slow to acknowledge). .... The French have a word for the disposition to look insecurely inward, to be preoccupied with self-interrogation: nombrilisme — “navel-gazing.” They have been doing it for over a century. .... It looks outward, and is thus attractive to people who would not feel comfortable further inland. It has never been American in the way that Paris is French ..... They shout at one another all day in Sicilian dialect, drowning out their main source of entertainment and information: a 24-hour Italian-language radio station. ..... the cultures of contemporary London are balkanized by district and income — Canary Wharf, the financial hub, keeps its distance from the ethnic enclaves at the center. Contrast Wall Street, within easy walking distance of my neighborhood. As for Paris, it has its sequestered quarters where the grandchildren of Algerian guest workers rub shoulders with Senegalese street vendors, while Amsterdam has its Surinamese and Indonesian districts: but these are the backwash of empire, what Europeans now refer to as the “immigrant question.” .... at night they return home to Queens or New Jersey .... New York — a city more at home in the world than in its home country ..... As a European, I feel more myself in New York than in the European Union’s semi-detached British satellite, and I have Brazilian and Arab friends here who share the sentiment.
Image via Wikipedia... there is no other city where I could imagine living .... . Chance made me an American, but I chose to be a New Yorker. I probably always was. For Afghan Wives, a Desperate, Fiery Way Out a horrifying escape: from poverty, from forced marriages, from the abuse and despondency that can be the fate of Afghan women. .... The choices for Afghan women are extraordinarily restricted: Their family is their fate. .... Her primary job is to serve her husband’s family. Outside that world, she is an outcast. ..... The most sinister burn cases are actually homicides masquerading as suicides .... the extremes that in-laws often inflict on their son’s wives .... at least 45 percent of Afghan women marry before they are 18; a large percentage before they are 16. Many girls are still given as payment for debts, which sentences them to a life of servitude and, almost always, abuse. ...... “No one in our family has asked for divorce. So how can I be the first?” ..... “The thing that forced me to set myself on fire was when my father-in-law said: ‘You are not able to set yourself on fire,’ ” she recalled. ..... “My marriage was for other people. They should never have given me in a child marriage.” ..... Many women mistakenly think death will be instant. ..... Halima, 20, a patient in the hospital in August, said she considered jumping from a roof but worried she would only break her leg. If she set herself on fire, she said, “It would all be over.” ..... Iran shares in the culture of suicide by burning. ...... Even badly burned and infected patients can speak almost up to the hour of their death, often giving families false hopes....Two weeks after his mother set herself on fire, he stood by her bed as she stopped breathing.
Paul Krugman: Doing It Again as in the 1930s, every proposal to do something to improve the situation is met with a firestorm of opposition and criticism. As a result, by the time the actual policy emerges, it’s watered down to such an extent that it’s almost guaranteed to fail. ..... the small rise in federal spending was effectively offset by cuts at the state and local level, so that there was no real stimulus to the economy.
Image via Wikipedia..... The case for a more expansionary policy by the Fed is overwhelming. Unemployment is disastrously high, while U.S. inflation data over the past few years almost perfectly match the early stages of Japan’s relentless slide into corrosive deflation. ..... conventional monetary policy is no longer available ..... the Fed is shifting from its usual policy of buying only short-term debt, and is now buying long-term debt ...... the Pain Caucus — my term for those who have opposed every effort to break out of our economic trap — is going wild. ..... our domestic inflationistas — the people who have spent every step of our march toward Japan-style deflation warning about runaway inflation just around the corner ...... The only way the Fed might accomplish more is by changing expectations — specifically, by leading people to believe that we will have somewhat above-normal inflation over the next few years, which would reduce the incentive to sit on cash. ..... He’s facing intense, knee-jerk opposition to his efforts to rescue the economy. In an effort to mute that criticism, he’s scaling back his plans in such a way as to guarantee that they’ll fail. ...... as the slump goes on and on. Where Marijuana Is a Point of Pride almost one in 20 residents qualify for cannabis treatment .... a disproportionate amount of debilitating pain diagnosed in men in their 20s ..... Nederland’s ganja-tinged reputation
In Lame-Duck Session, a Hint of the Governing to Come Conservatives warned that Democrats might use the session to push through their cap-and-trade plan to curb climate change by limiting carbon dioxide emissions; environmentalists hoped that was possible....A fuller picture will unfold as Republican leaders grapple with the demands of the Tea Party and Democrats cope with internal tensions caused by Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to run as her party’s leader in the House, despite last week’s drubbing.
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