Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Politics channel

 

Human Rights Watch’s Take on Obama’s Drone Speech Is Worth Reading

May 24, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
drone-uav

Yesterday's presidential address on the set of security policies collectively called the War on Terror contained lots of clear statements—and yet no one seems to agree on what, if anything, they meant. Among the more detailed responses this morning was this statement from Human Rights Watch. The organization's investigators have on several occasions won access to the Guantanamo prison, and the group has one of the more consistent track records on researching the legal issues surrounding unmanned vehicles, the so-called "drone war." In its summary, the group flags a fine, but ... Read More

The Congressional War on the Social Sciences

May 24, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
nsf-building

In March of this year, Congress voted to eliminate National Science Foundation funds for political science research, except for grants certified by the NSF director as “promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States.” Additional legislation (in draft), the High Quality Research Act, is designed to guard against “questionable projects” at NSF; it would subject NSF grants to an unprecedented level of congressional scrutiny. Meanwhile, a bill is introduced to eliminate health economics research at the National Institutes of Health; in response, the NIH ... Read More

Do (Cheap) Mid-Century Schoolhouses Worsen Disasters Like the Moore Tornado?

May 22, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
moore-tornado

Over the past 24 hours, focus has turned to everything from Oklahoma's economy to its geology to its plains culture to explain why the devastated suburb of Moore didn't have "safe room" shelters in its buildings, including two destroyed elementary schools where at least seven children died. But what about the school structures themselves? "I'm told these schools were built in the 1960s," said Bill Coulbourne, a structural engineer with the American Society of Civil Engineers. Coulbourne oversaw teams assessing damage after Moore's previous tornado disaster in 1999. He was on-scene ... Read More

Why Haven’t Obama’s Scandals Hurt His Approval Ratings?

May 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
obama-shot

Last week, Obama's presidency, long noted for its dearth of major scandals compared to previous administrations, somehow pulled a hat trick. Benghazi, the IRS, and the Associated Press leak stories suddenly dominated all the available media coverage of the White House, and it was hard for anyone paying even modest attention to national politics to not get the impression that something bad was going on. And yet, at least up until now, these scandals do not seem to be hurting Obama's approval ratings. Indeed, by some indicators, more Americans approve of his performance now than did so a week ... Read More

What Can’t It Do? European Austerity Policies Now Giving the World Anti-Matter, Clones

May 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
dolly-sheep

Most people associate brain drain with developing nations. The idea being: a country that can't support its most talented minds will lose them to places that can. Most don't come back. That's now happening in southern Europe. Two cases just this week showed how the need to save five figures in salaries now could cost cash-strapped nations nine or 10 figures in valuable research down the line. Earlier this week we heard the ridiculous story of 30-year-old Diego Martinez Santos, a modest genius from Galicia, Spain, who has been doing research in Holland. Santos had just been voted "the most ... Read More

The Changing War on Terror

May 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
bin-laden-compound

Is the United States safe enough? That is the fundamental question being asked by the public, policymakers, and members of the Obama Administration after the Boston bombing. What shape is al Qaeda in now and how does it affect those of us living in the United States? While working at the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Counterterrorism Center as an analyst and targeting officer I focused on a loose network in Iraq that eventually grew into the al Qaeda we recognize. From my perspective, we are almost witnessing—today—the reverse engineering of al Qaeda back into its initial state ... Read More

Our Political Parties Have Polarized, But They Have a Lot Further to Go

May 14, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
us-reps

Last week, I wrote up a post describing how the parties in Congress have polarized in part because they represent more ideologically distinct districts and states than they used to. I produced a chart showing how the states themselves are polarizing; to the extent senators are simply representing their states today, that would lead to much more partisan behavior than it would have a few decades ago. Here's the same sort of chart showing the presidential vote by congressional district. It's a similar story. The red columns show the number of congressional districts in the 1968 presidential ... Read More

Is Drug Trafficking Worse Than Murder?

May 13, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
drug-trafficking-jail

In Ecuador, an impoverished woman plans to sell 335 grams of a drug she cannot even identify. She’s caught. Her sentence? Eight years in prison. In Mexico, a woman finds heroin planted in her suitcase. Her punishment? Twenty-two years behind bars. In Bolivia, a man stomps coca, the first step in the process to make cocaine. His penalty? Ten years. Mexico, Bolivia, and Ecuador are nations where the minimum and maximum penalties for drug traffickers are longer than those given to murderers. For years, Latin American governments have been dishing out increasingly harsh punishments to people ... Read More

Members of Congress Are Elected to Represent, Not to Get Along

May 7, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
congress-washington

In case you've missed it, there's been a spate of op-eds recently blaming President Obama for a lack of leadership; Obama could have gotten Republican members of Congress to agree on gun control, tax increases, and many more of his legislative priorities if only he knew how to lead. What "leading" means is usually left rather vague. Ron Fournier believes it just involves "rising above circumstance," E.J. Dionne thinks it means showing how much you enjoy your job, and Maureen Dowd thinks it means writing the names of persuadable senators on a chart, just like in an Aaron Sorkin movie. The ... Read More

Should We Retire the Word ‘Sweatshop’?

May 6, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
sweatshop-bangladesh

The casualty count topped 600 in Bangladesh this morning, more than a week after a textile manufacturing complex collapsed outside Dhaka. After an initial spate of weirdly detached debate, some concrete thinking on the challenges of preventing such tragedies has started to bubble. Take this morning's Baltimore Sun: Last year, a fire in one Bangladeshi factory that killed 112 people prompted the Walt Disney Co., the world's largest licenser of branded merchandise manufactured abroad, to pull out of the country entirely in order to avoid negative publicity associated with its inhumane labor ... Read More