The United States – Page 9 – Mutantfrog Travelogue

Drug war roundup

I know we have a lot of fans of The Wire on here, and I think we’ll all appreciate this series on the drug war by Culture 11 magazine. The link is to an anti drug-war piece, which itself links to a pro drug-war piece, a piece specifically on the insanity of marijuana prohibition, and then some debate between the sides. It really is the height of madness that, as a society, we aggressively promote the consumption of the two deadly drugs of alcohol and nicotine and the one moderately safe drug of caffeine (which, did you know, can be freebased like cocaine?) while devoting endless resources to combatting the production, trade, distribution and consumption of every other category of recreational drug. I would be perfectly happy to see 100% legalization of all recreational drugs for adults, replacing the entire drug war aparatus with a moderate boost in traffic cops to manage DUI cases, which are probably the main way that legal drug use can directly harm people besides the user. Of course drug use causes harm to society, but I don’t see how even unrestrained drug use by everyone who wants to go down that road could possibly cause even a fraction of the damage that has been caused by the drug war itself.

[Update] One of the comments on that first piece links to this opinion piece in Time Magazine by the chief three writers of The Wire, in which they suggest that the best way to fight the drug war is through massive civil disobedience.

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest.

They make an interesting case. Of course, if I publically stated here that I was willing to make the same pledge, I might be disqualified from ever serving on such a jury, so I’m going to officially call it a “clever theoretical exercise in civil disobedience as a means of protest”.

Chinese economy now #3

China has edged above Germany to become the world’s third largest economy, based on newly revised GDP data:

China’s economy leapfrogs Germany

The Chinese government has increased its estimate of how much the economy grew during 2007.

The revision means China’s economy overtook Germany’s to become the world’s third largest in 2007.

Gross domestic product expanded 13%, up from an earlier estimate of 11.9%, to 25.7 trillion yuan ($3.5 trillion).

The BBC tries to play this down (“Many Chinese people have not benefited from the boom”), but let’s use some simple algebra with vaguely realistic numbers pulled out of thin air to take a look at some rough growth scenarios:

China vs. Japan

Scenario 1: Given zero growth in Japan’s economy vs. 8% annually for China, China will overtake Japan in 2011.
Scenario 2: 2% growth in Japan vs. 6% for China = China overtakes Japan in 2014.
Scenario 3: 2% growth in Japan vs. 4% for China = China overtakes Japan in 2021.

China vs. US

Scenario 1: Given 2% growth in the US economy vs. 8% annually for China, China will overtake the US in 2034.
Scenario 2: 3% growth in the US vs. 6% for China = China is top economy in 2057
Scenario 3: 2% growth in the US vs. 4% for China = China rules us all in 2080.

So barring some major calamity or re-Maoization, China will overtake Japan as the #2 economy in a few years. The US seems a little safer but numbers like this make you sit up and pay attention to the Business section!

Goodbye New Jersey?

From the current NYT:

Dr. Chu faces a variety of conflicting mandates. For example, he said that using more renewable energy is a national priority and thus will require a national electric grid. To help create such a grid, a 2005 law gives the department the authority to designate high-priority corridors, to overrule local objections to new power lines. But Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat, complained that the department had designated his entire state, New Jersey, as part of a corridor. Mr. Chu promised to investigate.

Does this mean that our entire state will be paved over? Having all the turnpike jokes come true would be very traumatic.

“Successful entrepreneur” offers free video on how to make money… obviously not a scam

This “press release” for “infinite cash secrets” is datelined from my hometown. Google helpfully sent this to me in the form of a News Alert. Looks like since I left Somers has become a hotbed of multi-level marketing scams:

Shawver has achieved his online success by using the principles found in a program called The Infinite Income Plan.

“The Infinite Income Plan allows members of our team to consistently earn $5,000-10,000 dollar weeks by combining its state of the art back office with it’s vast array of cutting edge tools, with even more advanced and state of the art tools we provide to our team,” according to Shawver.

Shawver recognizes that just being handed a plan doesn’t mean that people will put that plan into action, and if they aren’t willing to put some time and effort into it, they won’t succeed.

How far does the economy have to tank before we are all Nigerians?

On a related note, I am totally in love with this site Skeptoid, a podcast (with transcripts) dedicated to debunking pseudoscientific junk like Reiki and homeopathy. While the site is generally a gold mine (see my favorites on how to argue with a creationist and the myth of peak oil), most relevant to the topic at hand is his take-down of pyramid schemes called “Bend Over and Own Your Own Business.” To wit:

Here’s a typical way this works. You see an ad in the paper or on the Internet promising financial freedom, owning your own business. For some fee, say $500, you can become a authorized sales agency for XYZ Company, which sells timeshare condominiums or some other product or service. In exchange for your $500, XYZ Company will provide you with qualified leads, and you are free to pursue those leads however you see fit. Call them on the phone, knock on their door, chase them down on the street and make dramatic flying dive tackles, do whatever you can do (at your own expense, of course; you are self-employed), and hopefully get some sales. You, of course, do not have any timeshare condominiums yourself, XYZ Company does; so you need to spend a portion of the money you earned from the sale to have XYZ Company provide the product to the customer. Everything works out swell for everyone. The customer got his timeshare; you earned a profit; and XYZ Company made a sale. So what’s the problem?

Well, your friend Bob was applying for a job at ABC Company at the same time you were selling your old record albums to raise the $500. Bob was given a nice office at ABC Company, was freely handed the same list of leads that XYZ Company made you pay for, and he proceeded to make phone calls on ABC Company’s phone bill until he made a sale. ABC Company paid him a handsome commission, deducted nothing from it, and Bob went home for the day, secure with his employee benefits package. Bob is not only $500 richer than you, he incurred no costs of his own, and ran no risk of being poor since most salespeople like Bob are paid base salaries.

But I understand why you don’t want to turn green with envy. After all, you have your freedom and are self-employed! Bob is not, Bob has to answer to his boss; and that’s a lifestyle you don’t want no matter how nice of a BMW Bob gets on a company lease. Your friend Red feels the way you do. Red is an independent sales rep. He sells products from various companies, and earns a nice commission on every sale. He comes and goes as he pleases, and answers to no man. But when you ask Red how much he had to pay each of his companies for the business opportunity, he looks at you like you’re from Neptune. Red explains “You don’t pay companies to be their sales rep, they pay you.”

And now you see how you’ve been taken advantage of. XYZ Company has sold you on becoming their sales agent, working at your own expense and at your own risk, and also managed to take $500 from you for no good reason. If you wanted to be an independent sales agent, fine; you could easily have gone and represented any of the same companies that Red sells for, and not paid them a dime.

Japan as a model for American prison reform?

The Washington Post has a very interesting article on Senator James Webb (D – VA)’s campaign to reform US criminal justice and prisons. Webb seems to be among the few senators who actually realizes how broken the US justice system is, with its obscene incarceration rate and often stiff penalties for minor violations. This is all to his credit, and I hope he succeeds in achieving some level of reform, but this is not the part of the article that caught my attention. Here it is:

Somewhere along the meandering career path that led James Webb to the U.S. Senate, he found himself in the frigid interior of a Japanese prison.

A journalist at the time, he was working on an article about Ed Arnett, an American who had spent two years in Fuchu Prison for possession of marijuana. In a January 1984 Parade magazine piece, Webb described the harsh conditions imposed on Arnett, who had frostbite and sometimes labored in solitary confinement making paper bags.

[…]

In his article about the Japanese prisons, Webb described inmates living in unheated cells and being prohibited from possessing writing materials. Arnett’s head was shaved every two weeks, and he was forbidden to look out the window.

Still, Webb said, the United States could learn from the Japanese system. In his book, “A Time to Fight,” he wrote that the Japanese focused less on retribution. Sentences were short, and inmates often left prison with marketable job skills. Ironically, he said, the system was modeled on philosophies pioneered by Americans, who he says have since lost their way on the matter.

I must admit that I know absolutely nothing about the history of prisons in Japan, and for that matter embarrassingly little about the history of prisons in the US. How much are Japanese prisons really modeled after American theories? Certainly the Japanese court system tends to give out shorter sentences for at least certain types of crime, but is there any truth to the idea that inmates leave with job skills? I could easily imagine that an ex-con in Japan is even more stigmatized in the job market than one in the US.

Inventing Xmas

Christmas is over but “the holidays” continue.

As you recover from over-eating, you might enjoy reading about how America’s modern Christmas traditions were born. About.com has a concise guide. One interesting tidbit on the first depiction of the modern Santa:

Santa’s suit features the stars and stripes of the American flag, and he’s distributing Christmas packages to the soldiers. One soldier is holding up a new pair of socks, which might be a boring present today, but would have been a highly prized item in the Army of the Potomac.

Beneath Nast’s illustration was the caption, “Santa Claus In Camp.” Appearing not long after the carnage at Antietam and Fredericksburg, the magazine cover is an apparent attempt to boost morale in a dark time.

If you saw the Colbert Christmas Special, you might remember Toby Keith singing “Santa Claus and Uncle Sam are one and the same.” I guess there was more truth to that than is widely recognized!

Burying the lede?

The NYT has a new article explaining in a decent length how currency-finagling led to a codependent financial relationship between China and the US over the last few years. Yes, that’s all very informative, but as is often the case they slip the best part in towards the end, where most readers will have already given up.

In a glassed-in room in a nondescript office building in Washington, the Treasury conducts nearly daily auctions of billions of dollars’ worth of government bonds. An old Army helmet sits on a shelf: as a lark, Treasury officials have been known to strap it on while they monitor incoming bids.

With a line like that, it’s criminal that the photograph for the article was Secretary Paulson and President Hu wearing boring suits.

American democracy at work

I mentioned earlier I have some issues with the way Japan’s voting system works, but this leave’s me speechless.

I’m sure the whole thing is legally justified and all that, but still. “I move to allocate this ballot to lizard people.” Wow.

How different, really?

Thomas P. Barnett says the institutionally entrenched bureaucracy in federal agencies is more powerful than the leaders who take over for short terms when we elect new politicians.

There is the assumption that it’s the political appointees who run things or change things or are the real power players in DC. My experience has always been that the real power in DC is the persistent class of senior bureaucrats just below the political level. The appointees typically last about 12-to-18 months, getting up to speed for most of that period and–maybe–having some actual impact if they’re quite focused in their goals. Otherwise they come and go, leaving nary a trace. They may think they run things and we may hold them ultimately responsible, but the truth is they’re more powerless than powerful.

The dominance of the bureaucracy over the elected officials and their direct appointees has been a mainstay of just about all English-language coverage of Japanese politics going back decades.

With discussion that Caroline Kennedy may be appointed to replace Hillary Clinton’s soon-to-be vacated senate, many people (such as in this piece by Glenn Greenwald or this one by Nicholas Kristof, who also suggests an alternate and more qualified woman) are pointing out that dynastic succession is at an all-time high in American politics. (As an aside, I think I’ll take a policy in the future of never supporting any dynastic candidate. I was disgusted in 2000 when GWB made it to the nomination based on no other qualifications than his father. I was disgusted when Hillary Clinton won her seat based on the political influence of her former president husband, which is one of the reasons that led me to prefer Obama early on.) Joe Biden tried to get his son to replace him, Jesse Jackson Jr. is a leading candidate in Illinois (to be fair, his father wasn’t an office holder so it’s more of a celeb issue than legacy per se) and Greenwald points out that “at least 15 current U.S. Senators — 15 — with immediate family members who previously occupied high elected office.”

In Japan, legacy politicians are such a fact of life that the standard Japanese language Wikipedia template for Diet members actually has a field to list how far back their political dynasty goes. Here’s one example, listing a third-generation legacy.

And finally, the American financial crisis is being repeatedly compared with the Japanese crisis of the 1990s, and any number of sources are pointing to Japan’s response as either a model to follow or a model to avoid like the plague. And overnight, blatant state corporatist control of industrial policy ala MITI has gone from anathema to conventional wisdom.

All of which raises three possibilities.

A) Differences between the American system and the Japanese system have been historically exaggerated.

B) The systems are becoming more similar.

C) Current similarities are being overblown.

Comments?

Chomsky on 911 Conspiracy Theories

I don’t even remember why I stumbled across this on youtube, but it’s quite good.

His thoughts on this issue are almost 100% the same as mine, which I discussed some time ago as part of an off the cuff essay I wrote on conspiracy theories prompted by, of all things, checking up on the history of GPS.