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Since its establishment as a prison for “enemy combatants,” Guantanamo Bay, the American military base in Cuba, has been protested and decried as one of the most alarming human rights breaches in recent times.  Many of the prisoners, often kidnapped through the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition,” report gross violations in the rights guaranteed by the Geneva Convention.  Despite being both a signatory of the Geneva Convention and an open enemy to torture, the United States refused to detail its activities at Guantanamo.

Human rights groups like Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch have attempted to stop the violations, but the US paid no heed to their concerns.  While some may argue that Guantanamo is a necessary institution in this day and age, with the US being attacked by nameless and faceless enemies, none can argue that they’d like to see US troops treated the same way.  It’s essential that we treat our enemies the way we’d like to be treated.  Repetetively, terrorist groups have paraded dead American bodies through Middle Eastern countries, displaying the horrific things they have done to Americans.  If we’re not setting an example for our enemies, we should set one for our friends . If the US is the model of decency for the world, we should treat our prisoners with the level of respect the world has come to expect from the most modern nation on the planet.

Today isn’t about the breaches of human rights, however.  Instead, it’s about another degree of freedoms they’ve been granted.  Bush, after being besieged by activists for years, has finally barred torture for CIA detainees.  The agreement leaves some room for various other forms of interrogation, but it’s a first step.

Furthermore, the Justice Department has demanded that the executive branch turn over information regarding how they handle Guantanamo.  This is all in an effort for better transparency between the branches of the federal government, and hopefully, it’ll make the government more accountable for the various abuses occurring at Guantanamo.

As the most advanced country in the world, it shouldn’t just be a minor objective of the US to be respectful of human rights.  In a war that’s increasingly hard to follow, it’d be nice to able to have some consistency.  And, in rocky times such as these, it’s important that the US to set an example for the rest of the world. 

Popularity: 38% [?]

The country’s largest voting bloc, the Christian Right, seems to be at a crossroads.  Generations have preached the importance of family values, such as the abolition of abortion.  They also have succeeded in forcing politicians to block the passage of gay marriage amendments.  While these are among the most minor of their activities, they are the most public.  As such, the country has a right to hold their activities in high regard.

Recently, it seems as if some of their leaders have had trouble adhering to the very same standards they preach about.  The Reverend Ted Haggard, once the President of the National Association of Evangelicals, was found soliciting homosexual favors from a male prostitute.  Several weeks later, Haggard announced he was “reformed” and ready to lead again, having attended a re-education camp of sorts to rid him of his homosexuality, exactly what he preached against.  The movie Jesus Camp does an amazing job detailing his activities, and the Evangelical/Christian Right movement. 

Today, however, they’re back in the spotlight as the President of the Christian Action League was found soliciting sex from a prostitute in his hometown.  While not nearly as public as Ted Haggard’s confession and public conviction, this still should be taken seriously.  If Evangelicals can’t even hit their own moral targets, how can they expect others to?  The story’s Newsvine thread contains some rather entertaining comments about Privette’s actions.  The fact that he paid the prostitute with a check won’t help his case both in the eyes of the law, and in the eyes of the public. 

Once again, however, this isn’t an isolated incident.  If incidents like these keep popping up, will the Christian Right lose trust in their leaders?  These breaches in moral policy represent a growing problem for the Religious Right, and it’s something they’re going to have to examine further down the road as the movement becomes more and more important to American politics. 

Popularity: 37% [?]

In yesterday’s WSJ Bob McTeer, fmr. President of the Dallas Fed, wrote an insightful opinion on “our dismal savings rate”. Here’s a little taste:

Economists say the main reason they worry about the budget deficit or the current account deficit is their impact on domestic saving. But my guess is that only other economists really get their meaning. Most people may be even further misled by the implication they hear that since the main harm of deficits is their impact on saving, they must not be too harmful after all. The old-fashioned notion that deficits are bad because they create debt that must be paid back with interest is probably a better prod to constructive behavior. Or that deficits impose a burden on our children or grandchildren.

Absolutely correct. In terms of how it affects the economy, I think that politicians and voters have tolerated budget deficits for so long because few are sure of how they hurt the economy. 

In reality they have a real effect on how much our economy is able to produce. There is of course only a limited amout produced in any given economy over any period of time. Some of that is spent for present enjoyment and the rest is saved. Savings is accumulated for the sake of fueling production in the future, so if their is less saved then the economy will be less able to produce in the future.

When the government spends in the red it has to borrow money to finnance the habit. That borrowed money comes out of the national savings (total money saved in the economy) and will no longer be available to finnance future production.

But not only is our government not saving but individuals themselves are not saving either:

http://www.bea.gov/briefrm/saving.htm

(The personal savings rate has been negative for each of the last 8 quarters.)

My initial impulse is to consider what might be the causes and effects of such a low personal saving rate.

My first thoughts on the root of the problem have to be the extremely strong consumer culture in America which is doubtlessly more profound than that of other economies. However that culture is nothing new and does not explain the notable downturn in personal savings in the past couple of years.

Another idea is that a loose fiscal policy (taxation wise, i.e. the Bush tax cuts), but that hypothesis does not stand. Certainly tax cuts would spur more spending but they would not cause personal deficits. If anything greater disposable incomes would result in people saving a greater percentage of their income.

The best explanation is that a loose monetary policy has encouraged a massive amount of borrowing and spending rather than savings. One has to question why the Fed would keep interest rates so low since savings rates are so low. Surely its what keeps consumers happy, and investors happy, but its also a distortion of the market.

Three or five or seven years from now people are going to start waking up and realize that there is not enough capital in our economy’s reserves to maintain the level of production that we expected. And then there will be a recession.

Popularity: 22% [?]

What?

Pravda liked it so much, they wrote about it. Maybe that should tell us something.

This is what his website says:

Edwards calls for a national effort to:

• Cut poverty by one third within a decade, lifting 12 million Americans out of poverty by 2016.
• End poverty within 30 years, lifting 37 million Americans out of poverty by 2036.

Needless to say this sounds ridiculous. The fact that Edwards’ plan for a Great Society or New Deal would only stagger economic growth aside, one has to question: how can he say that he (he says ‘we’ but we all knows he means ‘me’) will end poverty? Can poverty ever really be ended?

The point is that poverty is a reletive term and it depends on one’s standard for poverty. By the standards of the Middle Ages–when economic production remained litteraly stagnant for centuries–the Industrial Revolution “ended poverty”. By the standards of the Great Depression, America’s modern economic expansion “ended poverty”. In 2000 97% of Americans below the poverty line had color televisions, they would be considered well-to-do at least by the standards of 1950.

But no matter what Edwards’ standards for poverty are, one thing is for sure: “ending poverty” will require economic progress that no politician can achieve. The innovation and labor of the mind that future economic growth will require can only be achieved by free people motivated by the incentives of a free market just like was required every other time capitalism “ended poverty”.

Popularity: 26% [?]

In the HBO series, Big Love (on which I posted the first portion of my thoughts yesterday), the omnipresent problem facing the Hendricksons is hiding their illegal lifestyle (polygamy) from the government, just as it would be if they were a real life family living outside of Salt Lake City today. Which raises another important question, (on a moral and political level) why should their lifestyle be considered illegal–why should polygamists be forcefully discouraged from practicing their sexual, domestic and other such preferences as they see fit?

Here is the historical background: In 1862, the Protestant dominated Republican Party–which had declared polygamy a “relic of barbarism” in their 1854 platform–passed through Congress a law signed by Lincoln making polygamy illegal across the country. Many Mormons fought against this federal policy for years, declaring it a violation of their religious rights, however they gave up this fight by 1890 in order to achieve Utah’s statehood. And while a sect of the religion still chose to practice polygamy against the law, the Mormon Church, on behalf of the vast majority of Mormons who now staunchly oppose plural marriage, wrote “The Great Accommodation” which castigated the practice. Today, the Mormon Church as well as many other Christian denominations form an inpenetrable political lobby which would block any effort to legalize the practice. 

Much of the political opposition is not surprisingly religious, and given the religious impetus of the practice as well as the opposition, one would think that polygamy should be protected by the freedom of exorcise clause of the first amendment.

Additionally, I am led to question why, if gays are legally allowed to practice homosexuality at their own will, should polygamists not be able to practice plural marriage.

Given, just as gays cannot get “married” in the same way that a single man and woman can, it would not be expected that a man could get a marriage license with all X amount of his wives. But it should be expected is that polygamists be able to relate themselves with other people and practice whatever lifestyle they desire so long as they do it on their own volition. Essentially, polygamists should not require special privileges from the government just as gays should not, but they should be able to do whatever the hell they want just as gays are able to do whatever the hell they want with out the government stopping them.

All religious, legal, and cultural mumbo-jumbo aside, the question comes down to this: should the government be able to stop people from living their lives as they wish and interacting with other people as they wish, so long as those people are not coercing others?

The way I see it, that’s what most policy issues come down to at their core; and the answer should always be NO.

In the interest of full disclosure: I am not a Mormon, and I do not plan on practicing polygamy. Call me simple but I’ll be perfectly content with marrying just one woman.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Roughly two weeks ago, British officials discovered two parked cars filled with explosives in the heart of London. The devises were set to be trigged by cell phone and were placed in high traffic areas inside London’s nightclub district. The next day, a jeep filled with explosives was driven into Glasgow Airport. So far, British officials have arrested five foreigners in connection to the attacks.

And so Gordon Brown faces his first great crisis after only two days in as Prime Minister. Two years ago, Tony Blair acted with steadfast resolve and moral clarity when his country was rocked by jihadist terrorism. Today, Gordon Brown must set the stage for how his government—and indeed the United Kingdom as a whole—will react to the forces of jihad in the post-Blair era.

Mr. Brown faces quite a challenge. The Muslim population of the UK is amongst the most radical in the world. According to the left-leaning Guardian periodical, Muslims in the UK are the most anti-western in Europe, and a full ¾ of the Islamic population of Great Britain blames jihadist activity on western disrespect of Islam.

Britain’s liberal immigration laws have allowed radical clerics to preach the doctrines of jihad in London mosques and now the country finds itself swamped with a radicalized population where it is easy to walk into any movie store in Islamic communities and purchase propaganda DVDs from al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups.

Under the leadership of Tony Blair, the United Kingdom was a steadfast ally against radical Islam despite its internal crisis. The attempted bombings of two weeks ago are clearly a test to challenge the fortitude of Mr. Brown. Gordon Brown is a capable minister and a decent man—but he must meet the challenge presented to him head on and wage war with the forces that have attempted time and again to destroy everything that his society is predicated upon.

The response of the Brown government will be a clear indicator of how the UK will act years into the future. The British people will either retain their stubborn pride and finish the fight or they will slink silently back into the darkness. So far, the Brown government has refused overhaul the UK’s disastrous immigration policies or take similar bold and necessary action to protect British society.  If Mr. Brown continues to treat the bombings as merely a routine police matter—rounding up the usual suspects and detaining suspected collaborators—the UK will be missing a critical opportunity to reverse the tide of jihad and instead sentence what is in many ways the epicenter of Western Civilization to further suffering.   This is Gordon Brown’s moment. How he chooses to respond is up to him, but he would do well to remember the words of Ronald Reagan:

“During the dark days of the Second World War, when this island was incandescent with courage, Winston Churchill exclaimed about Britain’s adversaries, ‘What kind of people do they think we are?’ Well, Britain’s adversaries found out what extraordinary people the British are. But all the democracies paid a terrible price for allowing the dictators to underestimate us. We dare not make that mistake again. So, let us ask ourselves, ‘What kind of people do we think we are?’ And let us answer, “Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.”

Admin’s note: Chas is NSP’s newest writer. Here is a short introduction.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Watching HBO’s Big Love, a fictional series on a polygamist family in Utah, has raised a couple issues in my mind on the social implications of polygamy especially as they relate to America today. The show, now in its second season, portrays a suburban family in Utah that practices plural marriage. In it the male figurehead, Bill Hendrickson (Bill Paxton), a successful owner of a local home improvement retailer called Home-Plus, rediscovers the fundamentalist teachings of Mormonism after practicing monogamy for 12 years and takes on an additional two wives with the approval of his first/legal wife, Barbra.

While the family’s life is hectic and full of commitment, they are genuinely happy and well provided for. And you have to figure that the ability to provide a comfortable standard of life was an attractive quality to Niki and Margene (Bill’s second and third wives) when they chose to marry Bill–especially Margene who had no Mormon, not to mention Polygamist, connections before she met Bill.

The fact of the matter is that when people marry their decision to do so is incentive based, and one of those incentives is wealth. Moreover, so long as marriage is incentive based (be those incentives looks, kindness, humor, values etc.) there will be both a demand and supply aspect of relationships. At face value that may seam a little strange, but then again we live in a society where there is essentially an equal amount of men and women and where most people’s values lead them towards just one person. But in places like the Northern Mariana Islands (which is a US Commonwealth) where the population is only 80,000 and the ratio of males to females is only 77 to every 100 there could be benefits from allowing polygamy. In war ravaged areas like Chechnya (which obviously does not apply to the US) where large numbers of men were killed in war, polygamy could also make sense.

Look at it this way, if demand exceeds supply for men in a given place, it means that the “price” of men also goes up. A higher “price” would mean that the average woman would need to give the average man more incentive to marry him than the other way around. It many also mean that a woman, in order to get a certain man, would be more likely to have to marry a man with a more crowded marital status. Disallowing polygamy in areas such as the Mariana Isles and Chechnya–as any fiscal price ceiling would cause–results in a glut of unmarried women which may only lead to greater unhappiness and more poverty among women. I am not suggesting that polygamy be promoted or forced upon certain domains. Simply, the point is that polygamy would provide certain people with more mobility and choice in marriage.

Now turn the issue on its head and consider a small country like Qatar where much of the population consists of male expatriates, many of them permanent residents. Their male/female ratio, at 182 per every 100, is the definition of “sausage-fest”. There, there is a ridiculous glut of men and the price for women is obviously very high. Now considering the strong Islamic background of the culture, it is very unlikely that any two men would chose to marry the same woman but if you replace the Islamic zeitgeist with something akin to Amsterdam or San Francisco, it would be no surprise to find an emerging impetus for matriarchal polygamy. But still the reality remains that in Qatar, as well as small Arab nations like the UAE and Kuwait, the demand for women far exceeds men and that has economic implications such that women can be far more demanding in their incentive based choices for husbands, or that a man may have to pay a woman’s family to take her hand in marriage (not the traditional dowry which is the other way around).

Going back to incentives, let’s look at the potential for polygamy in another way. Consider individuals who are exceptionally good looking or wealthy or charismatic or the like, surely there are many people who would be willing to share some of the exceptional person rather than have 100% of the best they can get. Take a Tom Cruise for instance (because we all know that he practices strange things like polygamy…or whatever). Mr. Cruise is wealthy, famous, and handsome (according to many women, of course I am not speaking for myself) and there are probably scores of women who would settle for being one of his wives in exchange for whatever unusual pleasure surrounds being Cruise’s wife. Or imagine simply a very wealthy person, there are certainly many people who would rather have a quarter of a billionaire than a whole of a person with a modest income.

The goal of looking at polygamy from this point of view is to recognize that by giving people choice and allowing the “love market” to find its equilibrium, the likelihood of people finding happiness is optimized. Obviously, the vast majority of people would never choose polygamy in accordance to their personal values, but for those who polygamy may be a good choice for it is practical to give them the option to explore that avenue. 

Popularity: 21% [?]

In our first Quarterly Report Card at the conclusion of 2007’s first quarter, we made several promises. First, we promised more content and more writers. Since then, we’ve slowly been adding writers to our staff without a full announcement. Without further delay, I’d like to announce our four new writers: Ryan Chou, Frank Rinaldi, George Hansel, and Chas Morrison. Each will publish entries categorized under their own name. I’ve included a brief snippet about each of them to help our readers understand who helps to bring great content to New School Politics every day. If you’d like to join our burgeoning staff of writers, we’d love to have you. Please send us an e-mail and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Our new writers have caused an influx of comments and visitors. We feel that the new user group has helped to bring a sense of community to the blog; new users engage in intelligent banter with older, more experienced readers, and the entire blog, including its readers, benefit.

New School Politics has embraced a variety of technological means to get our new articles out to the public. Primarily, if you’d like to stay updated, we invite you to subscribe to our RSS feed, which pushes site updates out every time a new article is published. If you’d like to learn more about RSS, please visit “What is RSS?” Furthermore, if you’re a member of Twitter, we invite you to follow our blog. You’ll get updates on your mobile phone if you choose. When our Q1 Report was published, New School Politics had integrated “Share This” buttons to get our content on social news sites. We’ve since disabled those buttons and we’re currently working on a more improved solution. In the mean time, feel free to get a Digg, Reddit, or Del.icio.us account and help promote the articles yourself. Soon enough, we’ll have built in sharing features to help all users share articles.Social news isn’t the only new feature coming.

We also had discussed redesigning the blog. We’ve taken considerable steps forward and we’re proud to announce that a redesign is coming. We’ve signed Leo Mancini to custom design every facet of the blog. When the design is complete, you’ll notice a new logo, a new layout, new sharing features, and lots more. We hope our readers benefit from these changes and, should you have any opinions regarding the redesign, we invite you to e-mail us from the Contact tab. As New School Politics has grown, we’ve made some friends in the blogosphere. We’d like to thank frequent commenters like Simmons of Thoughts on the World for livening discussion on the blog, and we invite anyone simply reading the blog to interact via the comments, or by e-mailing us.  Thanks again to all our readers for your continuous support, and we hope to bring you a better New School in the future.  Have a terrific summer! 

Popularity: 46% [?]

This is not a personal blog.  However, as school lets out and the three of us (Eftychis, Ryan and Zach–the founding partners of NSP) find ourselves engaged in other endeavours over the summer, I think it’s important for us to keep our readers abreast of happenings that may affect the frequency of posts on New School Politics.

Politics is a passion for us and because of that we further our individual political interests in many other ways.  In late June, the three of us attended the American Legion’s Boys’ State program, one designed to allow students to learn via a hands-on government simulation.  We’ve been around since then, working and doing odd jobs, but our ability to work on NSP is going to change for the next month.  

Here’s what the three of us will be doing in the up coming weeks:

Ryan has been chosen to attend Boys’ Nation in Washington, DC from July 20-28.  The aforementioned Boys’ State program runs in 49 states (Hawaii does not participate) and, at the end of their week, each state choses its two top delegates to represent the state at Boys’ Nation (the national equivalent of Boys’ State). This year Ryan has the honor of being one of the two Boys’ Nation Senators to represent Connecticut.  There were articles written in both of our town’s newpapers. (Here’s the better one from Ken Partridge of the Greenwich Post).  Ryan will be meeting with national politicians such as Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito as well as President Bush as well as one of CT’s US Senators (Dodd or Lieberman) individually. He will surey write on what those figures have to say during and/or after his time at Boys Nation.

Zach will be traveling to Beijing, China with Stanford University to take a course on International Relations, Economics, and Globalization. He looks forward to an experience with a new culture, and meeting many important Chinse figures, including the Chief Justice of the Chinese Supreme Court.  While the internet may be tough to come by in China, Zach will be sure to keep NSP readers in the loop as to what he learns during his month in China.  

Eftychis will be in Washington, DC as well taking a course from Georgetown University for two weeks.  The program is an international relations crisis scenario that focuses on possible US foreign policy in July of 2008 following turbulent democratic elections in Pakistan. Eftychis looks forward to returning with new diplomatic skills and knowledge of the Middle East and hopes his experience will be able to add to the quality of his New School Politics posts as well.

The next few weeks may be inconsistant in terms of content frequency for New School Politics as our three co-founders will be traveling all over the country-and the world-in an attempt to gain greater political efficacy and knowledge.  We appreciate our readers and hope you’ll stick with us.  Thanks, and we hope you’re having a great summer.

-NSP

Popularity: 18% [?]

Foreign Policy magazine has a terrific article on the state of affairs in Iran:

“Iran’s radical president is sinking fast, and he knows it. Now, there’s only one man who can keep Mahmoud Ahmadinejad out of the unemployment line: George W. Bush.In Tehran, the mood is quickly shifting. And it’s easy to feel it every time you stop to buy a newspaper, have a coffee, or wait in line at the grocery store. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s star is fading fast.Since his election in June 2005, Iranians have had conflicted feelings about their president. At first, he evoked interest and curiosity. And there were great expectations from this humble man who was promising economic reform, an anticorruption campaign, and a rigid moral scheme for daily life. Then came fear—when Ahmadinejad began to destroy any chance of good relations with the outside world.But today in Iran, laughter is supplanting fear. Mocking the president has become a pastime not only for rebellious university students, but also members of the establishment and the government itself.”

continued…

Popularity: 41% [?]