The ball that seems to be escaping people's eyes is the Lam investigation. She served search warrants on #3 at the CIA (Foggo), and the #1 (Goss) quickly vacated - both men, of course, strong Bush allies. If the top people at the CIA are corrupt, that's not just a corruption issue; it's a national security issue! These people have essentially unlimited access to valuable secret information that is extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. To be fair, there are degrees of corrupt, and the fact that one might sell favors doesn't prove that one would also sell national secrets, but it demands that the question be looked into. One is certainly no longer above suspicion. And the fact the Foggo gets searched, and Goss scurries off is extremely damning. This is why I think the administration is so balls out on this. There is more to it than partisan corruption of the Justic Department, not that that's a small thing.

Posted at March 23, 2007 1:21 AM in response to What was the U.S. Attorney Purge Meant to Achieve?

Like any analogy, it is addressed to a domain of similarity, one you implicitly defined by using the riots as evidence that things were getting better. Since I have refuted that point, you are now scurrying off to pretend you were arguing something else. The blacks who were rioting in the 60's would almost certainly have welcomed international support. They were a racially distinct minority of the population, and the rioters were, of course, a minority of the blacks. There is no particular evidence I know of that there is a distinct minority from whom most of the rioters were drawn, so the analogy does not begin to hold for the new argument you are attempting to make.

Posted at March 4, 2007 4:13 PM in response to Talking Past Each Other: Which World Do We Live in?

The sequence was: NAFTA, health care, Lewinsky. If Clinton's actions on NAFTA were influenced by his loss on health care and by Lewinsky (about 5 years later), he must have had a time machine at his disposal.

Posted at March 4, 2007 4:07 PM in response to Back to Substance

Jeff, thanks so much for starting this discussion and providing so much knowledge and insight. The information in this post particularly is stuff I did not know, though it is entirely consistent with what I darkly suspected.

I had wanted to bring Mexico into these threads to make the point that much of the reason there is so much development in China and India is that those two countries, and few others whose wages are even lower than theirs, like Vietnam, are sucking the investment oxygen of the whole world. We got Mexico to invest heavily in the maquiladoras only to give China, with which Mexico cannot compete , almost as good a deal a few years later. Mexico agreed to dismantle their ejido system, which was the biggest direct inspiration for the Zapatistas and the continuing unrest Mexico has suffered from ever since. Mexico is not far from paying for the bounced check of NAFTA with its political stability. While one might question why the United States should care more about Mexico than China, the US clearly has more directly at stake in Mexico, and Mexico signed on to NAFTA with certain expectations that we consciously created and then consciously betrayed. While I didn’t support NAFTA, still don’t, and don’t believe it ever would have delivered as advertised, it could have done better by Mexico than it did.

This is also why the impact of China’s growth on the US has actually been less than it could have: most of American industry had already been offshored, and the WTO just pushed the wage bar lower yet.

Posted at March 4, 2007 10:19 AM in response to Back to Substance

I don't see what's so unusual about this. If I'm selling you my dog, and I say you can only have the dog if you can provide a good home for it, am I trying to find a good home for the dog or just to keep from selling it to you if I know you cannot or will not provide one? They are the two sides of the coin.

I doubt any complete cessation of trade deals will be permanent because there will always be money on the table in trade, even if not as much as the merchants would prefer. Profit is profit, the original context of "it's all good". For that reason, a complete cessation, while not optimal, is a perfectly reasonable goal. Close the table, and the money boys will still come back, but chastened.

Posted at March 3, 2007 2:44 AM in response to An Apology to Jeff Faux, and a Restatement of the Question

I kind of surprised you're blowing up at Mark for arguing unfairly when Delong came out and called all of us who challenge the free-trade gospel a bunch of racists. The spit always flies to the left. Just as the right can be uncivil and unfair attacking the center-left, which said center-left doth mightily protest but seldom retaliate, the center-left spits on those further left.

Posted at March 3, 2007 2:03 AM in response to Answering Mark

Another thing: when I wrote: "I don't imagine the Chinese are rioting due to their inability to contain their ecstacy at their gloriously-improved living standards." I thought I was being sarcastic. I didn't think anyone around these parts would actually try to point to the riots as evidence of how good things are going in China. It is a preposterous argument. Yes, people under serious starvation are too weak for violence, but I never said the Chinese were starving. And, yes, I know that there were periods of widespread starvation under Mao. But there was also widespread grassroots violence (instigated by the government) during the Cultural Revolution. Is that also an indication of how well things were going at that point, showing that people felt empowered and prosperous enough to wreck widespread havoc?

Posted at March 3, 2007 12:46 AM in response to Talking Past Each Other: Which World Do We Live in?

I don't buy that multiple independent riots reflect primarily local discontent with particular parties. Many of the US race riots in the 60's were triggered by local allegations of police brutality, but the actual cause was clearly a wider discontent. If your problem is with the local boss, you go after him personally; if you're trashing your whole town, you've got a problem with the system.

Posted at March 2, 2007 6:28 PM in response to Talking Past Each Other: Which World Do We Live in?

The very first thing I said was that I agreed that living standards had been raised. However, the Chinese are rioting for a reason, and I would like to know what you think that reason is.

Posted at March 2, 2007 8:30 AM in response to Talking Past Each Other: Which World Do We Live in?

Now, that is the first thing you've said in this series of posts that is helpful. I think, though, that the only way an international labor organization is going to acquire teeth is with the assistance of powerful national governments. If China needs to support human rights to trade with the US and Europe, they will do so; otherwise, they will not. I could see a WTO with three seats, representing three constituencies: business, labor, and the environment. To enact a regulation requires the assent of any two. Since labor and environmentalism frequently have opposed interests, this need not be simply a matter of "beating up on business", but business would become a voice, rather than the whole megaphone.

Posted at March 2, 2007 12:45 AM in response to Dodging the Question