The Policy Farm Team

Michael Neil, PhD ABD

Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver

These past two weeks we have seen the hardest hits to date against the Obama campaign.  Rev. Jeremiah Wright, vilified for his original comments on the anger of African-American America towards the United States, continues to speak out.  While I doubt anyone here would necessarily disagree that his continued presence may hurt Sen. Obama in the polls, I want to offer another possible angle of analysis.  Saying this as a straight white male, we NEED to listen to this man. 

Let’s take this excerpt from a discussion about Ambassador Peck:

I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday, did anybody else see him or hear him? He was on Fox News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out, did you see him John, a white man, and he pointed out, an ambassador, that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Mohammed was in fact true, America’s chickens…are coming home to roost. We took this country by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arowak, the Comanche, the Arapahoe, the Navajo. Terrorism. We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism. We bombed Granada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers, and hardworking fathers. We bombed Qaddafi’s home and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against a rock. We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hardworking people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they would never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye. Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children from school, civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

Admittedly, many of the civilian casualties were unintended in what Rev. Wright is describing.  But, he points to a fundamental truth echoed by Chalmers Johnson in his work Blowback.  Blowback, as Johnson notes, is a CIA term for negative unintended consequences. When I hear foreigners decry the American government, I don’t have to wonder why.  Here are a partial list of CIA interventions since 1945.  Italy (1947-bloodless but illegal campaign rigging), Iran (1953–The assassination of secular progressive nationalist Mohammed Mossadegh), Guatemala (1954 overthrow of reformer Jacobo Arbenz), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1981), 1989 (Panama), Grenada (1983), Greece (1967 General’s coup), Chile (1964 sabotage of Allende and 1973 murder), Dominican Republic (1963 suppression of Juan Bosch), Brazil (1964 overthrow of Joao Goulart), Iraq (1963–an assassination which paved the way for Saddam Hussein).  Not counting what we have done to our own native peoples, it seems clear to me why foreigners and minorities might be skeptical of us.  And now, as Johnson notes, we are reaping what we sowed. 

Next, Rev. Wright gets it partly right:

For every one Oprah, a billionaire, you’ve got 5 million blacks who out of work. For every one Colin Powell, a millionaire, you’ve got 10 million blacks who cannot read. For every one Condoskeeza Rice, you’ve got 1 million in prison. For every one Tiger Woods, who needs to get beat, at the Masters, with his cap, blazin’ hips playing on a course that discriminates against women. God has his way of bringing you up short when you get to big for your cap, blazin britches. For every one Tiger Woods, we got 10,000 black kids who will never see a golf course. The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.

Caitlin Howarth

It’s National Small Business Week. Don’t all start shouting at once - I know you’re excited about it.

To many people, talking about small business is a way to sound cooler, hippier, and less lycra-inclined than the average shopper. You may have a friend whose entire wardrobe was assembled from various little shops in San Francisco and random towns in the Catskills. Or you may have ranted at your mother when she came back from X-Mart with $150 in savings. “Do you know where the savings come from?” you asked her. “Poor people!” you answered without giving her time to reply. “Poor people manufacturing cheap goods in factories without the tiniest glimmer of safe working conditions, let alone healthcare!”

You’d be right about the working conditions and the healthcare, but really, you shouldn’t yell at your mother.

As far as healthcare and other employee benefits go, small businesses aren’t always able to live up to our standards, either. Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Hillman
Indiana University

Over the past several months, Amherst, Davidson, Brown, Duke, Princeton, Emory, Harvard, Stanford, and a handful of our nation’s elite colleges have made “groundbreaking” new commitments to helping poor students afford college.  Basically, most of these colleges have promised all of their lowest income students that they can graduate debt free because the college will cover tuition.  At first glance, this sounds like a great way to open up the gates to the ivory tower, but a deeper and more cynical look raises some doubts. 

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James Downie, Columbia University

This is not going to be a typical post, with links to think tanks and lists of facts. It’s not even really a policy-focused post (though it still puts policy front and center). I have a story in the drafting stages about Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe’s elections, and normally I’d get that up today, but there was a more important topic to be addressed. I could not stay silent on how much the New York Times’s David Brooks has disappointed over the past week. When a man who is supposed to be an example of thoughtful pundits tries to corrupt journalism by excusing frivolous questions on even more frivolous grounds, it has to be dealt with, if only as nothing more than a symbol of all that is wrong with American media today. Read the rest of this entry »

Aaron Welt

Columbia University

The focus of globalization today highlights the immense unification of all the world’s people today. “The world is flat” asserts some optimistic New York Times reporters. Greater communications technology, the internet and its global social networks delineate a trend towards a single global village emerging. But while a consumer in the developed world is now connected to the the third world worker via cheap retail products, the greater underlying inequality remains hidden. The truth is that the gulf between the world’s people is the definitive reality of the modern world, and the industrialized world seems complacent with the mirage of a unified global community.

Nowhere is this reticence manifested clearer than in international aid. It came out last week that 2007 donations to third world development by G8 nations actually fell from the previous year, today standing at $103 billion (or a little over a year in Iraq).  These are the expenditures despite the G8 promising to double aid by 2010, and now the World Bank is concerned that the Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 will be missed. The report issued by the World Bank announcing these shortfalls warns of lack of progress in combating infant and maternal mortality, improving primary school education, nutrition and sanitation. These assertions seriously undermine the current consensus about globalization, that of greater unification and equality between all people and nations.

Beyond this farcical illusion of international connections, this report, and the dearth of enthusiasm to relieve world poverty, seriously undermine intellectual themes of the West. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution espoused the ideal of universal equality, the fundamental privilege to political rights all mankind is entitled to. The American Revolution, similarly was premised on inalienable rights of man. After World War II, the UN was created to ensure basic standards of human rights were realized by all the people of the world. Indeed, the concepts reflected in the Millennium Development Goals are part of this Western tradition of the equality of man. Yet what do all these principles mean when attempted at implementation on an international level are not taken seriously? Can the West and all industrialized countries claim to be upholding the ideals of universal human equality with such differences apparent in everyday life between the world’s poor and rich?

A major source of the problem is not just the contradiction between intellectual principles and material realities, but the overly-militaristic approach that is currently embraced. The US attempts to install a viable democracy in Iraq, and ostensibly the political rights endowed by such a government, in the name of this Enlightenment tradition. Yet the reality on the ground in Baghdad continues to be poor sanitation, lack of health care and stable employment. What good are these political rights without the fundamental, material necessities of daily life? Additionally, the US invasion has created the world’s largest refugee problem, yet the world community has failed to conjure a competent plan of dealing with it. Such realities are emblematic of the West and the US gap between its ideas of universal equality and its actual willingness to act on them.

It is time to get serious about combating world poverty. The genuine benefits to the industrialized world created by the eradication of dire poverty (greater international security, decrease in future aid and more effective means of combating worldwide problems) are reason enough to accomplish the Millennium Development Goals. But additionally our values and moral credibility depend on it.   

There is a new journal on the block. Its name is Catalyst. While my mate Dario is writing about a 2000 dollar car that is going to be hitting the markets in China and India, I am here to tell you about this new project that you will want to get involved in. Its mean and its green.

Read the rest of this entry »

My last few posts have focused on the economy, an issue that is likely to be pivotal in this election year. It too often happens that larger financial issues don’t directly touch the majority of Americans, many of whom do not own stocks and do not avidly follow markets. But the recent economic downturn, which has touched a litany of major banks, will have repercussions across the economic spectrum. This week I would just like to put into numbers, into an un-abstract palpable idea, the effects that the misjudgments of the major banks and financial institutions have had on the American people. The job market is increasingly frugal, with unionized sectors such as manufacturing and construction being hit the hardest.  Last week, the New York Times reported that more Americans will use food stamps than at any time since the program was created in the 1960s. Rising food and gas prices will especially hurt areas where deindustrialization has already eroded a healthy job market, such as Michigan, which now has one in eight residents utilizing food stamps. I hope statistics like these do not bypass the presidential candidates, and that instead of the insane rhetorical maneuvering being heard from Washington, a meaningful dialogue will begin on how to push out the ensuing recession and revamp the American economy for all sectors and citizens.     

Aaron Welt

Columbia University 

Recent news about the economy gives little reason for optimism in the current state of financial affairs. Large banking firms, whose lack of prudence helped create the current downturn, receive bailouts from the government. Meanwhile, innocent bystanders won’t get any relief from the government, demonstrating the double standard for corporate and human citizenship in the US. But under the radar some creative strategies have emerged to getting the socially optimal result from the government’s bail-out of Bear Stearns, notably a turn towards “social wealth funds.”

            Instead of a huge give-away to banks who screwed the pooch in the housing market, the government should stipulate a demand from the financial firms that have beneficial repercussions nationally. A social wealth fund would provide this by requiring companies to repay the government’s bailout money with preferred stock options that would compensate with future returns. Robin Blackburn of The Nation suggests these investments could be put into state Social Security or Medicare, social services that truly benefit all members of American society. Use of social wealth funds would guarantee that companies that made bad investments are accountable to the many people who trust them to keep the economy floating while also allowing the benefits of the bailout to reach all echelons of the American economy.

            Several countries have already set up these funds, which duly helped Merrill Lynch and Citigroup get back on their feet while also putting corporate money towards socially meaningful expenditures. Other measures are certainly necessary to ensure an economic recovery is fair and just, especially extension of unemployment insurance to recently laid-off workers. But social wealth funds provide a dim of light in what looks like a dark year for the American economy.         

Tobi Jaiyesimi

Hunter College

As I thought through issues for the Diversity and Public Policy making Conference at Hunter College (March 28, 2008 at 12, rm b126w), I was honestly overwhelmed by the directions my presentation on the criminal justice system could head in. How does one pin-point specific issues within the criminal justice system, create a concrete perspective or driving principle of analysis without missing out on another very important issue? Well like most, if not all issues in society, it is impossible to perform such a task!

So with the impossibility defined and accepted — I set out with some confidence to speak on the “juvenile branch” in the criminal justice system and diversity (with an added flavor of the New York Court System). I personally aim not only for a statistical and economic analysis but a presentation that shows both the pros and cons of certain policy initiatives concerning juveniles within the criminal justice system. I hope participants leave the workshop with an understanding of the issue, root causes of the issue and an understanding of how certain policy initiatives create more problems for the system though they might “fix” branch issues. Read the rest of this entry »

Whitney Henderson
Providence College

Being in Europe, you’d think that European events would dominate the media. Unfortunately, Britney Spears, Bradgelina, and the US primaries are prime topics in France. I mean, I like being in the know about my motherland, but I could really give two cents about Britney’s latest breakdown. So imagine my delight, after about two weeks of mindless dribble, that there was an intellectual article about the United States. In the February 25th edition of La Liberation, someone decided to write about religion and American politics from the standpoint of a European secularist.

Read the rest of this entry »