Monday, November 08, 2010

The United Nations Conundrum

President Barack Obama escorts Prime Minister ...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
President Barack Obama meets with Prime Minist...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
President George W. Bush and India's Prime Min...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.
Manmohan Singh, current prime minister of India.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.
Official presidential portrait of Barack Obama...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.
President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Manm...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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Sunday, November 07, 2010

Time To Attempt A New Tone In Washington



Barack Obama campaigned for president to bring a new tone in Washington. He promised a new kind of politics. But it obviously takes two hands to clap. And it is not like he did not make attempts. There were major pre-emptive tax cuts in the stimulus bill. He put those in there to gain Republican support he did not get.

Now when the Republicans have the House, and credit can more equitably be distributed among both parties, it is time to attempt that new tone thing again.

It requires really listening to the other side. Ideological fervor can lead to sound bites that make no policy sense. But those emotional outbursts are necessary to the political process perhaps, and at some level have to be seen in perspective.

There is a time for campaigning and there is a time for governing. No party has a mandate to outrun the other party. But both parties have a responsibility to the people. Vigorous debates are good. But then you sit down across the table and stop posing for the cameras and craft meaningful legislation in the spirit of genuinely listening, and getting things done.

But then the president also has to draw the line if he feels like the other side has started to overreach. The people elected him for four years and will re-elect him for four more. Two years are not his full term. He has the power to attempt a new tone, and he has the power to draw the line if necessary.

This electoral outcome is an excellent opportunity for the president to attempt a new tone in Washington that was his signature on the campaign trail when he ran for president.

The new tone is about not talking past each other, but talking to each other, listening to each other, doing due diligence and working out the kinks, and attempting middle ground legislations on the big issues of the day, and yes that includes immigration reform next year.

On his part the president has to carry out the work of eliminating the deficit when the time is right, which is when the country is squarely out of the recession.

Both parties have to work to get the unemployment rate down to 5%. That is the number one item on the agenda.

New York Times

Black and Republican and Back in Congress For the first time in over a decade, the incoming class of Congress will include two black Republicans ..... While the number of African-Americans in Congress has steadily increased since the civil rights era, black Republicans have been nearly as rare as quetzal birds. .... Of all the blacks ever to serve in Congress, 98 have been Democrats and 27 have been Republicans; there are 42 African-American members in the current lame-duck Congress..... “His opponent was Pelosi-Obama liberal,” Mr. Thrasher added, “and Allen gave them a different understanding of how government could be.” .... Mr. West said he was more surprised that he won as a Republican in a district carried by the Democratic presidential nominee three elections in a row than as an African-American in a district with a white majority. But, he added, “I am honored to be first black Republican congressman from the state of Florida since Reconstruction. There is a historic aspect of it.”

Paul Krugman: The Focus Hocus-Pocus act of intellectual cowardice — a way to criticize President Obama’s record without explaining what you would have done differently ..... severe crises are typically followed by multiple years of very high unemployment ..... he could have chosen to be bold — to make Plan A the passage of a truly adequate economic plan, with Plan B being to place blame for the economy’s troubles on Republicans if they succeeded in blocking such a plan. ..... I felt a sense of despair during Mr. Obama’s first State of the Union address, in which he declared that “families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same.” Not only was this bad economics — right now the government must spend, because the private sector can’t or won’t

Barack Obama, Phone Home Nothing says “outsourcing” to the American public more succinctly than India. .... the seemingly irrational calculus of Tuesday’s exit polls. Voters gave Democrats and Republicans virtually identical favorability ratings while voting for the G.O.P. .... Traditional Republican boilerplate — lower taxes, less spending, smaller government — was chanted louder and louder, to pander to the Tea Party rebels, but with zero specifics of how it might be carried out. .... Even in victory, most Republicans can’t explain exactly what they want to do .... DeMint published a book last year detailing his view that Social Security be privatized to slow America’s descent into socialism. Paul can elaborate on his ideas for reducing defense spending and cutting back on drug law enforcement. Bachmann will explain her plans for weaning Americans off Medicare.

The Pelosi-Bachmann Conundrum Bachmann is the most visible Tea Party leadership in the House, second nationally only to Sarah Palin in terms of visibility.....our third straight “throw the bums out” election

‘Blindsided’: A President’s Story

Exporting Our Way to Stability: discovering, creating and building products that are sold all over the world. ... every $1 billion we export supports more than 5,000 jobs at home.... some of the fastest-growing markets in the world are in Asia

The Grizzly Manifesto This week, Bachmann triggered a blog explosion when she claimed, on CNN, that the president’s trip to India is going to “cost the taxpayers $200 million a day.” This is more than it costs to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. ..... Men don’t cringe on behalf of their sex when Newt Gingrich goes Islamophobic, or Carl Paladino threatens to take out a reporter.

How Obama Saved Capitalism and Lost the Midterms the presidency of George W. Bush produced the worst stock market decline of any president in history. The net worth of American households collapsed as Bush slipped away. And if you needed a loan to buy a house or stay in business, private sector borrowing was dead when he handed over power..... More than 1 million jobs would have disappeared had the domestic auto sector been liquidated. .... “An apology is due Barack Obama,” wrote The Economist, which had opposed the $86 billion auto bailout. .... Corporate profits are lighting up boardrooms; it is one of the best years for earnings in a decade. ..... Of course, nobody gets credit for preventing a plane crash. ..... Billions of profits, windfalls in the stock market, a stable banking system — but no jobs. .... He should hector the companies sitting on piles of cash but not hiring new workers.

Jobs Data Highlights the Challenges for Washington Nearly 15 million people are still out of work, and the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 9.6 percent..... Economists themselves cannot agree about what kinds of policy measures would rescue the job market. .... battle cries over “currency wars” ..... many of the nation’s long-term unemployed have become increasingly desperate.

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