quote:UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 14 -- President Bush, reaching out to an audience he has antagonized in the past, told the assembled leaders of the world Wednesday that the United States shared "a moral duty" to combat not only terrorism but also the poverty, oppression and hopelessness that give rise to it.
Addressing the United Nations, Bush linked his campaign against terrorism to the anti-poverty agenda advanced by other nations, although he shied away from adopting some of the specific commitments sought by allies. He later took the U.S. seat at the Security Council for the first time in his presidency to emphasize his solidarity with other countries in the struggle against terrorism.
The rest of the article goes on to talk about an atmosphere of cooperation with the UN that Mr. Bush was working to project on his visit there in honor of the organization's 60th anniversary.
You know...I have to say that if he'd committed to this tactic years ago, and worked with the UN, I might actually count myself among his supporters. As it is, I'll take a "wait and see" attitude to figure out if this is all just talk.
I hope he means it. And I hope it's not just meta-language and what he really has in mind is something else entirely.
Yes, I still don't trust him. But I have to say that this has amazed me. I didn't believe him capable of making this link intellectually. If this keeps up, I may have to actually revise my opinion of him.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I agree, Bob. He's saying all the right words. I really hope that he follows them up with actions, and I really hope that he's not just saying all the right words in order to salvage his slipping numbers.
Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Bush cozying up to the UN, Republican legislators stating publicly that domestic partnerships can no longer be considered a "fair compromise" for gays -- Is the world getting better, or are these signs of the Apocalypse?
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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I thought the same thing, but in a more extreme version, as in:
"Who are you, and what have you done with President Bush."
<cynic> We are about to learn that the best way to improve the economies of poor nations is to increase their military budgets and sell them hardware from the US. And provide them with school vouchers. And eliminate wage supports. And cut taxes on the wealthy. </cynic>
Okay, that wasn't fair. He only said ONE of those things -- we're going to train 40,000 troops in "Africa."
But hey, I'm entitled to a little cynicism since the ideas being kicked around for helping the Gulf Coast recovery effort include those things...
...and pretty much nothing else.
So far.
I'm waiting to see if maybe this UN speech is an indication that he is starting to understand the extent of poverty in the "other half" of this nation, and in the vast majority of the world.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
He also suggested that all countries around the world eliminate all tariffs. If that's the category he puts combating global poverty in, I wouldn't exactly say I'm hopeful that he'll follow through.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Bob, you have repeatedly criticized the voucher suggestion, but it sounds like to me that you haven't bothered to even analyze it.
Vouchers are used in a variety of assistance settings already: schools, housing, child care. They are not a new idea and have been successfully implemented for over 20 years.
Further, the problem is providing additional funding to the schools taking in people displaced by Katrina. Vouchers provide a convenient mechanism for doing that.
One of the major complaints about the evacuation has been not giving people a say in where they end up. Vouchers are a way to help give a say in one very important element of getting on with life.
Many of the vouchers will go to public school systems.
I haven't even seen a reason from you why this is a bad idea. I hate seeing knee-jerking, but more I hate not being surprised by it any more when you do it. It used to be jarring if you did it.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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When I refer to vouchers, I refer ONLY to the ones that Jeb! Bush implemented in Florida. My hatred for that system stems from the following: 1) It was NOT analyzed. The data they used to push it through was from a flawed study in NY (if I recall correctly) that, when corrected, showed that vouchers did NOTHING to help the most impoverished kids do better in school, and it ended up costing more.
2) The GOP swore up and down that kids would not be forced to participate in religious education if they took a voucher to a privately-run religious institution. Within WEEKS of the program's implementation, the State came out with an announcement saying that they realized how impractical that restriction was and that they would not be inforcing it. If a kid is a student at a school, that student abides by the rules of that school. Well duh! It's just that they lied in order to get the thing passed.
3) Vouchers in Florida have resulted in a two-tiered education system. Kids in regular public schools are graded and the schools threatened with closure (or at least loss of funds) if the average grades fail to improve. The non-public schools face nothing. Even when they take vouchers and cater to a student body almost exclusively from the now closed public schools. Nothing! Monitoring is better with charter schools, but still not as rigorous as for public schools.
4) If we want to broaden it, Bush's first term Education Secretary was the guy who "invented" the program that eliminated the drop out program in the Houston School District. He was charged with making that program expand nationally. What came out later was that the way they achieved zero drop out rate was to cook the books. Secretaries started coming forward to admit that if they could get the kid on the phone and he said "yeah, I'll probably go get my GED someday" then he was no longer a drop out. Yippee! No child left behind.
It's not knee jerk. I just figured everyone knew what a horrid failure the voucher education system is.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:When I refer to vouchers, I refer ONLY to the ones that Jeb! Bush implemented in Florida.
(Edit: this is the source of my confusion, then.) In both cases you referred to vouchers with respect to the hurricane. As I mentioned above, vouchers are a common mechanism for distributing assistance. They have also been used elsewhere besides Florida. Many of your complaints are very specific to Florida's particular implementation of a voucher system.
posted
Wow, I'm really impressed. But I'm also with the others who are cynical as to whether or not his actions will follow his words and as to who's writing these words. He could just be saying them and then going offscreen to his speechwriter, what the blazes are you making me say. But I'm gonna hope not.
Posts: 2867 | Registered: May 2005
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I note two things in this speech: let's fight oppression, and let's make nice with the UN.
He has been saying these things all along, and to the limits of the UN's willingness, has done them. The problem is that the goals are contradictory.
The question is which is more important to GWB, and the answer's obvious: fighting oppression. He's had strong diplomatic efforts in place during both terms to pressure countries that allow sex slavery into stopping it. He stopped the civil war in the southern Sudan, and he's at least temporarily stopped the Darfur genocide. In these efforts, the UN ranged from neutral to actively opposed.
When the tsunami struck, the US was on the ground almost immediately with humanitarian aid. The UN held a conference to discuss it. Later they set up a site on Sumatra, and worked on getting catering for the UN personnel. Weeks after the disaster, they still had provided no help. However, they were happy to call US relief efforts "stingy."
Bush tried from the beginning to involve the UN in US efforts to fight terror and genocide, but couldn't get past France, Russia, and Kofi Annan. So the spirit of cooperation from Bush's end is nothing new. The UN hasn't changed either. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
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Maybe I misunderstood people's interest. Maybe the hope is that GWB will at last make the US do what the UN tells it to. But he never said that.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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The problem is the contradictions. Three months ago he was pushing Bolton, one of the greatest sane UN Critics in the world, (There are far worse UN Critics, calling the UN the great satanic armagedon conspiracy. I don't count them as too sane.) as our ambassador to the UN. Now he says he is all for the UN. His words and his actions don't sync up, or at least don't appear to without delving into details that his supporters and his propagandists paste together.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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When he substantially commits to courses of action that back this up, then we can talk. Having read enough Bush speeches and seen how few of the things he talks about that seem surprisingly hopeful actually happen, I'll believe it when I see it.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Remember his rather infamous State of the Union speech about protecting the forests from fire by cutting them down and reducing our dependence on oil by giving millions to oil companies to research ways to make hydrogen fuel for cars out of oil?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: He also suggested that all countries around the world eliminate all tariffs. If that's the category he puts combating global poverty in, I wouldn't exactly say I'm hopeful that he'll follow through.
Actually, I've heard many 'progressive' types call for this, too, since what keeps people from buying more from poor countries who can sell their stuff cheaply elsewhere are tariffs.
I say this neither to support or condemn tariffs, myself.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote: I didn't believe him capable of making this link intellectually.
Yes, and it's because of that condescending attitude that he keeps beating his opponents. Keep it right up.
Posts: 1996 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:In the two urban voucher programs that are funded by public tax dollars, many private schools are either unable or unwilling to educate children with disabilities. In 1996, the year that the Cleveland voucher program began, Ohio businessman and voucher advocate David Brennan wrote to then-Gov. George Voinovich, informing him that "none of the existing private schools will be able to handle a seriously handicapped child."
A few years later, an Ohio Department of Education spokeswoman was equally candid, reporting that many Catholic schools "are not equipped to handle handicapped children" or offer needed services. This is significant because Catholic schools comprise most of the participating Cleveland voucher schools.
Students with disabilities also meet with a chilly reception in Milwaukee, home of the nation's oldest publicly funded voucher program. Only two years ago, Wisconsin officials found that only 8 percent of the city's voucher schools offered special education services.
posted
I'm all for giving extra funds to schools who take in unexpected extra students. But in voucher programs, the money that goes to the "alternative" school comes from the public school that the child would otherwise be attending. Where is it coming from in this case? Are the states of Louisianna and Mississippi going to send their education revenue around the country to fund the vouchers?
If not, why vouchers? Why not just federal grants to schools who take in displaced students?
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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dkw, as I understand this program, these are federal vouchers. It essentially is federal grants to schools who take in displaced students.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Eliminating tariffs (or ALL trade barriers) would do wonders for the poorer nations of the world, especially those with underdeveloped human capital.
For instance, there are a number of poor Asian nations that have a significant amount of their work force devoted to producing textiles (over 95% of Cambodia's trade w/ the US is in textiles).
On Jan 1 of this year quotas were eliminated for textiles (at least in the US), although tariffs are still in effect. Imports to the US jumped by 25% in Bangladesh, 20% in Sri Lanka, and 17% in Cambodia. That’s a huge leap in income for these poor countries; eliminating tariffs on textiles, which the countries have been pressing the US to do, would lead to even higher gains in trade.
Agriculture is another market that, if freed from trade barriers, would help out these poorer nations. Farmers from poorer countries have a hard time competing with the subsidies that the US, Japan, and especially the EU give to their agriculture. From the Economist:
quote:But agricultural policies in rich countries still distort markets at home and abroad. Worse, they hurt the poor. Price-support mechanisms make domestic consumers pay more for their food, hitting low-income families the hardest. And for farmers in poor countries, OECD agricultural policies are disastrous. If those farmers aren’t being kept out of export markets by quotas or tariffs, they are being undercut in domestic markets by heavily subsidized produce from the developed world.
I’m all in favor of lowering trade barriers, although it should be done in a careful manner to reduce frictional problems for the poor. If Bush actually does this, he'll earn some respect from me.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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um, I was not aware that W had stopped the genocide in darfur. I guess I'll tell my kids to call off that rally and fast.
Anyone have more information on this?
-o-
I'm actually in favor of vouchers, though I agree that the problems that have cropped up need to be addressed.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Kwea - trade barriers don't help us, the American people, either. If there's a tariff on something, part of the cost of the tariff is passed on to us. Tariffs on agriculture mean more expensive food in the supermarket. Tariffs on textiles mean more expensive clothes. And trade barriers in general discourage competition, which also leads to higher prices.
And less jobs are outsourced each year then are regularly destroyed in the churning of the economy every quarter. It's not that big a deal for the economy - it's just a good news story for the media to hype.
quote:<cynic> Anyone checked to see if he's got a new PR person and/or speechwriter? </cynic>
According to NPR today, Karl Rove has been late, missing, and distracted during his meetings over the past few weeks, waiting for a kidney stone to pass---ouch.
That is one explanation on why President Bush's speech last night took 9 minutes to get to the powerful stuff.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I think that while he can hire different speechwriters, that if he didn't believe the words on some level it would show up. And I don't think the discussion of opportunity is a new thing in speeches about the middle east and Palestine in particular. I could be wrong.
P.S. 9 minutes to get to the powerful stuff? He first had to establish a framework that he understood the problem, it seemed like he started into that immediately. This was not Reagans "you'd think there were homeless people all over America" Republicanism.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I listened to a speech of his today, and for the first time, ever, I did not feel like hurling. It actually seemed sincere.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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I would hate to think that Karl Rove has had so much influence over President Bush as to have it be this noticeable when he's out of the picture. Surely the timing of Rove's absence and the obvious change in Bush's rhetoric are coincidental.
I can't imagine a Bush supporter wanting the world to think this is anything but pure happenstance.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote: I guess we could ALLL work as CSR's.....wait, that is outsourced now as well...
I should move to India.
Outsourcing CS work is how I got my free 5-week trip to India. Somebody's got to train them, afterall. Bangalore's a pretty nice city, assuming you have american dollars to stay at a good hotel and you don't have to drive yourself anywhere.
posted
Jhai, that is the Walmart version of the National economy...and while it is good about some things, if ignors others completely,, and passes hidden costs on to all of us.
How many American farmers would be put of of business if there were no tarriffs on imported grain? How would they afford the "new and improved" prices with no income?
I am not completely in favor of tarriffs, but they are in place for many reaosns, and none of tehm are as somple as their detractors would like us to believe.
NAFTA has been hailed as a huge success, but I know a lot of people who would disagree with that.
posted
Kwea - that isn't the "Walmart" version of the economy - it's the generally accepted economic version. Granted, I brushed over a lot of the finer points, but that would mean explaining a fair amount of theory and technical terms that don't really belong on a general interest thread.
Yes, free trade helps some, and hurts some, but the overall benefits outweigh the negatives – or else people simply wouldn’t trade. Less than 2% of Americans are involved in the agriculture industry. We have a social and economic system that allows us to retrain our workers quite well - these people could easily be employed in other work.
People who disagree with NAFTA tend to not understand economics (a very sad failing of our education system, I think), or are unable to think in the long-term - they only see short-term problems, not long-term gains. Most economists only quibble about how free trade ought to brought about (how to disassemble trade barriers), and when exactly it should be done to ease transition costs, not that free trade isn’t an important goal. People who say that the experts “disagree” about the overall net benefits of free trade strike me as making the same argument that scientists “disagree” about evolution - they don't really, they're just arguing about the finer points of the matter.
What are these hidden costs and things that are ignored? Name these problems (as well as your reasons for tariffs), and I can address them properly.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Well, there are some economists who think that certain key products should be protected as a hedge against major disasters (including war), such as agricultural goods, but yes, the consensus is that nearly everything should be subject to free trade.
For instance, the EU's Common Agricultural Policy wasn't chosen to be good economics -- it was chosen so if there were a war in Europe the EU countries could feed themselves.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Kwea, do you have reason to believe that there are tariffs on imported grain?
That would be like Saudi Arabia taxing oil imports -- or carrying coals to Newcastle. What would be the point?
---
Genocide in Darfur: Bush admin did manage to call a halt to this, at least so far. It may not last. The war in southern Sudan *did* stop, by Bush admin diplomatic efforts, and S Sudan gets to vote on full independence in a few years. These things don't get much press, but they're a matter of public record.
It's really twisted that people would condemn Bush for his greatest humanitarian victories -- thwarting genocide -- but, given the spirit of the times, no longer surprising.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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The end of the war in Sudan had been building for several years before Bush took office, and was due in large part to the efforts of countries other than the US, such as the EU: http://www.sudan.net/news/press/postedr/76.shtml
There's a reason Bush doesn't get credit for those humanitarian victories -- because one hasn't happened yet and the other isn't something he can claim much credit for.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Oh, there's no question that Darfur remains dangerous. But the mass killing has stopped. I think this is a good thing.
The EU applied trade sanctions a decade ago, and that's why Bush can't claim credit for his admin's accomplishments regarding southern Sudan? Wow. Could we possibly come up with a thinner reason that the Bush admin gets no credit for its actions?
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
No, the trade sanctions weren't what I was referring to, it was the series of talks on what Sudan needed to have done in order to get those trade sanctions lifted. Serious talks along those lines started in the late nineties.
quote:On January 9, 2005, a peace deal was signed to end the long war between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLM). This war, which has raged for the past 20 years, is commonly referred to as the North-South conflict and is often confused with the violence in Darfur. This peace deal signed earlier this year did not address the issues in Darfur, where the genocide continues.
quote:Genocide in Darfur: Bush admin did manage to call a halt to this, at least so far. It may not last. The war in southern Sudan *did* stop, by Bush admin diplomatic efforts, and S Sudan gets to vote on full independence in a few years. These things don't get much press, but they're a matter of public record.
Bullshit.
I hate to break it to you, but he did far too little far too late to help...
Calling this a diplomatic victory is like calling Katrina a miracle...
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Free trade is one of those things that makes a nice sound bite, but in reality isn't perfect, and isn't the best soultion to vevry single problem.
There are very real concerns that it doesn't address, such as te ability of the US to meet it's own demands with it's own country for critical items, such as steel and electronics.
We removed most of the steel industrys protection, and gues how many of the US Steel factories folded? It is very possible that if a war were to begin our supply of imported steel could be cut off, and we could lack the ability to jump start the industry in time to do much good.
Pittsburg went into a huge depression after teh mills closed, and that sparked (or at least was a major contrubuter to) an economic downturn that affected many throughout the country....none of which was figured into the cost of allowing those mills to close.
Also, talk all you want about "relocating and retraining", I know that most fo the jobs people are "retrained" for are NOT on the same level as their old jobs were, at least not in many cases. The goverenment may consider flipping burgers a "production" job to improve their employment stats, but trust me, it isn't the same at all, nor does it pay well.
Don't get me wrong, I am not in complete disagreement with you or with free trade agreements, I just think that the view earlier presented is looking at the situation with rose colored glasses.
One more thing...tariffs and price supports for specific goods...such as particular farming crops and milk....as usually lumped in together as practices that are against free trade, so I use grain as an example. I realize there are not tarriffs for imported gains in the US, but we do use proce supports to artificially inflate the cost of some farm crops....such as paying some farmers to NOT prodice specific grains and/or crops.
We do this so make sure those farmers (and their farms) can still make a living, and will be around if we need them.
That is not necsarily a bad thing at all. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
What you're referring to is transfer costs and the need for strategic goods – goods that are considered necessary in times of war, when normal trade may not be viable.
Neither one of these is a good argument against free trade, although they’re both brought up time and again by people who have not studied the subject.
Transfer costs are not a good reason to argue against any particular change, unless you suspect that the change will not be a long-term one. For instance, not so many years back, most people stored their music collection on cassette tapes. Then CDs came along, and people started buying CDs instead of tapes – often they would buy the exact same album on CD that they already had on tape. People who had perfectly good tape players started buying CD players as well. Why? They did it because of the benefit of having CDs –better quality music, the ability to go immediately to a certain track, and, now, the ability to rip the music onto one’s computer. There were transfer costs associated with this transition, but that didn’t mean that the change wasn’t worthwhile.
However, this only works as long as there’s a long enough time-horizon for the transfer costs to be amortized until the gain from the change is greater than or equal to the transfer cost divided by the time. For instance, if those CD buyers thought that there would be an even better format for music coming out in six months, it wouldn’t be worthwhile to switch to CDs for six months: the gains from CDs wouldn’t be worth the price of the transfer.
Free trade isn’t likely to be going away any time soon. And the economic gains from free trade are high enough that transfer costs can be regained in a matter of months or years, depending, of course, on the industry in question (there are some industries where every domestic job costs about half a million in dead weight loss – I’ll look them up when I get home). And there are ways to decrease the transition costs – it all depends on how you set up the policy in question. Naturally, going cold turkey on trade barriers isn’t a good idea – you’re going to have a bad hit in a lot of sectors, which could lead to an economic downturn in an economy.
Bad policy decisions, however, shouldn’t distract from the fact that free trade, overall, is a good idea. For instance, government-directed retraining isn’t a very good solution, you’re correct. But trade barriers can be taken down slowly, as to allow workers to find other jobs or reeducate themselves by enrolling in a community college. If the transition time is long enough, you can just encourage young people to look for other lines of work when it they graduate from high school.
There is no reason why strategic goods can’t be stored. Some things, such as steel, take to storage very well – we could easily store enough steel to give us time to reopen steel mills, should that be necessary in a time of war. Other goods, such as food, can’t be stored as well. But the foods that are really necessary can be stored for quite awhile, and when they start reaching their expiration date, they can be rotated out and sold on the market, and new goods rotated in. Think that would cost too much to start up? See my point above regarding transition costs.
I stand by my point that, overall, free trade is a net good. Do you have any other objections (or do you feel I haven’t refuted your points well enough yet)?
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Jhai: Europe wasn't thinking wimpy little wars, they were thinking world war one and two scale conflicts. Stored good just don't cut it.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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fugu - what do you mean by the phrase "Europe wasn't thinking..."? Do you mean what Europe is currently thinking? I can't speak for all of Europe, but I know that farming in Germany is incredibly inefficient, because the small-time farmers are very good at lobbying for subsidies.
Anyways, if you're in a war like WW1 & WW2, where the battle is taking place on your turf then there's not going to be a lot of farming going on whether you had farms to begin with or not. If it's not on your turf, or there's only very minor fighting in certain areas of the country, then you'll be able to mobolize factors of production away from luxury goods and towards farm production in those areas. At the most, you'd only need a year's supply of food, minus what was in the country at the start of the war. That's assuming there is abosolutely no trade going on in the world, which is unlikely, and assuming that citizens don't start their own home gardens , which is also unlikely.
Same story with steel - you only need enough to last you until you can move factors of production to where they're needed for the war effort (by "move" I mean either central planning - not a particularly good option - or allowing market forces to move to fill the gap that imports previously were).
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I mean that the rhetoric surrounding the formulation of the CAP (before it was even called that) involved significant discussion of the need for each country to be self-sufficient in food in case of major wars such as had recently rocked the continent (heck, going all the way back to the napoleonic conflicts). Those countries with significant food production before the wars started were much better able to feed their populations during the wars.
Cases cited included Britain, which while sustaining very little fighting on the ground, had food supply problems for lengthy periods in both wars because they had focused on trade and stockpile strategies -- and Germany in both world wars spent significant efforts sinking incoming supply ships and bombing food stockpiles.
Your optimistic scenarios involve the relatively free movement of goods and services to continue, and for access to sufficient resources to easily shift production. Experience says major wars are major impediments to both, particularly the first.
BTW, I never said the CAP was a successful policy, I said their reasoning for the choice was largely not economic in nature . Also, the modern policy bears little resemblance beyond the superficial to the original one, in large part due to major shifts in how food is produced.
Another common reason Europe makes economically inefficient choices in certain areas is to preserve the national character, so to speak. For instance, there are certain areas in Germany which receive support for timber growth and harvesting, not because they think its better for the economy, but because its considered an important part of the heritage of the region by the people of that region, Germany as a whole, and the EU. It would be economically better to get the timber from another place, such as Turkey (I think they offer comparable timber much cheaper).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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