Thursday, December 16, 2010
Wikileaks and Congress-A Comparison
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American crimminal class except Congress.
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator
The question that has come to mind watching members of Congress during the past few weeks is “What are the similarities and differences between the United States Congress and Wikileaks?” The similarities are that both create chaos. The differences are that creating chaos by illuminating some of what goes on behind the scenes is the purpose of Wikileaks whereas creating chaos is not the task the founders of the country thought they had assigned to members of Congress. It just happened that way over time. Another difference, of course, is that Wikileaks is very good at what it does and the United States Congress is abysmal at doing what it does.
Ron Paul (R-Texas) has come to the defense of Wikileaks and in so doing has set himself apart from members of his own party who consider him something of a heretic. They are probably the same people who disagreed with him in 2002 when he was one of the voices in defense of the constitutional prerogatives of Congress with respect to declarations of war.
In 2002, Mr. Paul was a member of the minority in both Houses of Congress that opposed the 2002 Congressional resolution authorizing George Bush to invade Iraq. Mr. Paul said, at that time, that the resolution was not a declaration of war. Instead, he said, the “resolution transfers the Constitutionally-mandated Congressional authority to declare wars to the executive branch. This resolution tells the president that he alone has the authority to determine when, where, what, and how war will be declared. It merely asks the president to pay us a courtesy call a couple of days after the bombing starts to let us know what is going on.” (In taking a stand against the resolution, Mr. Paul was following in the footsteps of Senators Wayne Morse (OR) and Earnest Gruening (AK) who were the only members of Congress to oppose the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. When the resolution was debated in the Senate Senator Morse said: “[H]istory is going to record that Senator Gruening and I voted in the interests of the American people this morning when we voted against this resolution. And I’d have the American people remember what this resolution really is. It’s a resolution that seeks to give the president of the United States the power to make war, without a declaration of war.”)
In a speech in the House of Representatives discussing the leaks of the cables to assorted media by Wikileaks, Mr. Paul said: “The hysterical reaction makes one wonder if this is not an example of killing the messenger for the bad news. Despite what is claimed, the information that has been so far released, though classified, has caused no known harm to any individual, but it has caused plenty of embarrassment to our government.” He went on to say that the American people deserve to know the truth about the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. (Among other things some of the cables disclose that unbeknownst to American citizens, bombings in Yemen for which the Yemeni government claimed to be responsible were in fact undertaken by the United States, and the Yemeni government took responsibility so the United States could continue to surreptitiously bomb members of al Qaeda in that country. After an attack on December 24, 2009, Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, told General David Petraeus, then the head of the US central command: “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.”)
Mr. Paul asks whether Wikileaks disclosures, “lying us into war” [read Iraq and Vietnam] or the release of the Pentagon Papers was responsible for the greater loss of American lives. He asks why people are upset with Wikileaks for disclosing that the government is unable to protect classified information and whether the upset over Wikileaks is more about maintaining “a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security.” He questions whether we’re getting our money’s worth for the $80 billion a year spent on intelligence gathering. Perhaps most importantly, he asks what the implications are for the first amendment if Julian Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information he did not steal. And finally he observes it was once considered an act of patriotism to stand up to the government when it was wrong.
Those in Congress who call for Julian Assange’s execution or imprisonment make no attempt to conceal the chaos they are creating. Unemployment is close to 10% and millions of people face the prospect of their unemployment benefits disappearing just as Santa Claus makes his appearance. For the last two months Congress has tied providing additional unemployment benefits to providing tax cuts for the very wealthy, both dead and alive. Mitch McConnell has said that governing the country is not important-all that matters for the next two years is making sure that Barack Obama is not reelected. All the foregoing and countless other congressional antics suggest is that Congress is no better than Wikileaks-just different.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Executions Should be Painless
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
— Sir Henry Wotton, The Disparity Between Buckingham and Essex
At first blush it seems selfish of Texas. It has more than it can reasonably expect to use between now and next March when its current supply is set to expire. On the other hand, Texas thinks sharing would be worse than discovering that, because of unanticipated events, it had run out. The sought after substance is sodium thiopental, the short-term anesthetic that is administered to the condemned inmate before the other two drugs that will eventually provide the inmate with a comfortable transition to the hereafter are administered.
Followers of such things will recall that the U.S. Supreme Court has approved the use of a three drug cocktail to relieve society of its unwanted members, even though the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) prohibits their use when euthanizing animals. Its reason is sodium thiopental, the anesthetic administered when euthanizing living things so they will not feel pain when the two death dealing drugs are administered, is short acting and may have worn off before the remaining two drugs are administered. When that happens the living thing being euthanized may feel excruciating pain. Unlike the American Veterinary Medical Association, the U.S. Supreme Court is not all that concerned with excruciating pain for people being put to death. As Justice Clarence Thomas observed in the Kentucky case of Baze vs. Rees, the “method of execution violates the Eighth Amendment [ban on cruel and unusual punishment] only if it is deliberately designed to inflict pain” and that is not the purpose of the three drug concoction. It’s just an incidental benefit when things don’t quite go right.
Sodium Thiopental is in such short supply that executions are being delayed. Arizona was planning to execute Jeffrey Landrigan when it learned there was no ST available from Hospira, the sole U.S. manufacturer of the drug. Arizona decided to buy the drug from the British firm, Archimedes Pharma UK , a purchase that upset Mr. Landrigan’s attorneys who tried to block the execution arguing the drug might not be safe for use in an execution. A lower federal court agreed with the lawyers but the U.S. Supreme Court cast that concern aside and Mr. Landrigan was executed in late October. All that would have been unnecessary had Texas not assumed the dog in the manger role.
Since 1974, when the Supreme Court decreed that the death penalty was a respectable member of American society, and until January 1 of 2010, Texas has executed 447 prisoners. It did not achieve that distinguished record by sloppy bookkeeping. It was always prepared and ready with all the tools it needed to maintain its productivity in the death chamber. One of those tools was keeping a good supply of PT on hand. It did not want to embarrass itself as Arizona and other states had done, by finding itself unable to continue its executions because of the absence of PT. Accordingly it has 39 doses of PT on hand, all of which have expiration dates of March 2011. In order to take advantage of its foresight it is going to have to execute 39 of its approximately 333 inmates on death row within the next four months or see 39 doses go to waste. Even for a state as productive as Texas, that is a challenge. Since 1974, the best year it had for executions was 2000 when it executed 40 inmates. There is no way it can use up all 39 doses between now and March given the fact that only 3 executions are scheduled before March 2011. Nonetheless, Texas is unwilling to share any of its doses. When asked about this a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said: “We do not have plans to distribute the drug to other states. We have a responsibility to ensure we have an adequate supply of the drug on hand to carry out any executions scheduled in the state of Texas.”
Oklahoma was forced to go to federal court to obtain the court’s approval to use a different drug to proceed with an execution. Arizona went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to gain approval of use of the British drug. In August a Kentucky a state judge refused to sign two death warrants because of the unavailability of the drug. Questions have now been raised about the provenance of the sodium thiopental available in San Quentin and executions in that state may have to be postponed because it may have come from England .
It seems a pity that executions in other states must be delayed because of Texas’s stinginess. Texas is probably stingy because it doesn’t want to give another state the opportunity to replace it as Number One in the number of executions performed since 1976. Hoarding the supply of sodium thiopental is a good way of protecting its record. It’s hard to blame it.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Flying Unfriendly Skies
I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
Herewith an explanation of what might appear to the casual traveler to be nothing more than the kind of corporate greed to which we have become accustomed. It is an explanation for the reason for changes that airlines have introduced to the traveler that significantly increase the cost of travel while not affecting the price of tickets. This apparent anomaly has a simple explanation that is often overlooked. Before offering the explanation, however, it is helpful to look at some examples of increases in the cost of travel. For purposes of this piece we focus on the Friendly Skies of United Airlines (UAL) although the changes described and the motives as well, are equally applicable to those less friendly airlines.
Among the first of recent changes was one affecting passengers’ suitcases that was announced in about 2008. For many years the suitcase accompanied the traveler as a matter of right without additional cost. Today the charge for the first suitcase at UAL is $25 and for the second $35. In order to lessen the resentment many travelers felt at this additional charge, UAL came up with a solution. It sent customers an e-mail announcing that “United is the first airline to save you time and money with this simple and convenient service.” The simple and convenient service required the passenger to pack a suitcase a couple days before travelling and then call FedEx to pick up the suitcase and ship it to the traveler’s destination. Travelers who took advantage of this service did not have to pay UAL $25 for checking the suitcase. Instead they paid FedEx somewhere between $149 and $250, depending on where the suitcase was going, a figure that according to UAL’s website, has now dropped to $99 per bag.
Ever looking for new ways to improve the convenience for suitcases’ travels, UAL has added a new luggage service for those who don’t want to use FedEx. According to its website the traveler can pay the airline $349 for the one year privilege of checking two bags each time the traveler flies. That is much cheaper for the frequent flyer than paying FedEx and more convenient than having to pack a couple days before travelling. Having taken care of suitcases, UAL came up with another new idea. This improvement involved travelers’ comfort.
In the cheap seat section of the airplane it installed a few rows of seats where what would have been considered intolerable leg space 20 years ago became highly desirable. At first the seats were given at no cost to those who had attained privileged status with the airline. Then it occurred to someone that the company could make them available to others by charging an additional amount. To make the offer attractive, those seats were advertised for sale with pictures of a flyer with legs stretching into infinity which, of course, is no reflection on how much space is actually between those seats. Travelers flying from Chicago to Madison pay $9 for the better seats. Those flying from Denver to Seattle pay $49.
Now, UAL has come up with the newest, most exciting innovation yet. For years it has encouraged people to become members of their Mileage Plus Program because of all the good things that accompany the accumulation of great numbers of miles. One of the best was using the miles to remove oneself from the cheap seats into the business class seats. The number of miles required to accomplish this feat depended on the distance travelled and required the purchase of a more expensive coach class ticket than the least expensive one being advertised. Realizing that travelers didn’t like to have to buy a more expensive ticket in order to upgrade, UAL changed the rules. Anyone wishing to upgrade can now buy the cheapest ticket being advertised and use miles to upgrade. There is, however, a catch. It had the catchy name of “co-pay.” With the new program, a member of Mileage Plus who wants to use miles to upgrade from coach to business class when going to Europe, buys the cheapest coach ticket, takes miles from the mileage plus account and then participates with UAL in the “co-pay.” The co-pay for those travelling to Europe is $900 for round trip travel in addition to the price of the ticket. Those travelling to the Far East pay $1,000. And now, the reason for these additional charges that have helped the airlines keep ticket prices low. The answer can be found in taxes.
A 7.5% excise tax is imposed on passenger fares. The excise tax is not imposed on the assorted fees charged passengers described above including, presumably, the co-pays. No one likes paying taxes. UAL and other airlines have figured out ways of avoiding them. No one likes being gouged. Airline passengers have not yet figured out how to avoid that.