RealCurrents

I hope this isn’t 1965 all over again. But once again we are escalating our involvement in a war that it’s not clear how we can win.

“Gates noted that while progress in Iraq will lead to a reduction in the number of troops there, more troops are needed in Afghanistan because of the worsening violence in that conflict. He said the persistent pace of operations in the two wars over several years has meant a steady increase in the number of troops who are wounded, stressed or otherwise unable to deploy with their units.”

Many people think the Vietnam War was unwinnable, at least in the context in which it was fought. Afghanistan is arguably more difficult, with a long history of invasions which went poorly for the invaders. Now the U.S. is rapidly escalating the war there, though most Americans probably remain largely unaware.

Thus we are in danger of repeating many of the same mistakes of 1965 and 2003, rushing into an escalation of conflict in an area we don’t well understand, with goals we can’t clearly articulate.

There are certainly good reasons to be over there. It is not my intent to argue that we shouldn’t be involved in that part of the world, but that we need to have a vigorous public debate about what are our long-term goals for this war.

As in 1965, we see an escalation occurring without the public really engaged. I suspect most Americans still have the idea that as a result of the 2006 Congressional and 2008 Presidential elections, we were assured a drawdown of our military forces. While this is occurring to some extent in Iraq, Dept. of Defense figures from the end of March (pdf) show total troop deployments were down less than 7,000 (233,800 vs. 240,600) from the end of 2007 (pdf), when the surge in Iraq was beginning to wind down and the presidential primaries were about to start. And now we are seeing substantial increases in both deployments and casualties, sadly, in Afghanistan.

The danger, as in 1965, is that it’s convenient for the military if the public isn’t paying too much attention to an escalation. There’s less scrutiny or criticism in the short run. And once again we’ve got a Democrat-controlled administration and Congress that is looking at massive new social spending programs. In the long run, though, it will be our soldiers and our society that suffers if we don’t get our goals right.

Most important, our military must be given a mission in which it can succeed. 22,000 more troops for the Army will help in the short run, but what is the end game? Just gaining and holding territory in Afghanistan and Pakistan isn’t likely to work anywhere near as well as it’s (hah) worked in Iraq.

Another little detail: after nearly eight years in Afghanistan, and this new escalation, is it not yet time for a formal Congressional declaration of war? Is that too much to ask? The accompanying debate might do a lot to help clarify our goals, because it would force Washington to state clearly who precisely are our enemies.

Certainly, whatever we do in Afghanistan and/or Pakistan is going to continue to be challenging. The culture there has worked out many adaptations for dealing with invaders. Recently, an Army base was expanded into an area filled with Karez, ancient networks of tunnels used both for irrigation and secret movement. A sewer plant was planned right on top of the waterways. By the time the U.S. military realized the error, the Taliban had farmers and other locals in an uproar. How are we supposed to control an area like that?

Like Vietnam, this effort will ultimately require some sort of political and diplomatic solution worked out far from the battlefield. And I really doubt it’s an accident that this announcement has come out the same day:

“U.S. officials “firmly believe” that al-Qaida leaders who planned and carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are hiding in Pakistan near its border with Afghanistan, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday.”

This is a pretty obvious indication that we shouldn’t be surprised if operations in Afghanistan are again expanded, at least to these parts of Pakistan.

Congressman John Culberson, from Bill Archer’s (and George H.W. Bush’s) old District 7 in Houston, is getting a bit of a backlash for daring to say something critical of NASA. Here’s the comments page from yesterday’s Houston Chronicle article, Culberson weighing legislation for NASA overhaul.

Now Culberson has gotten a reputation as one of the most tech-savvy Congressmen, which seems well-deserved. In May, he did a live video, using his cell phone and the Qik service, of the Mars Phoenix landing from JPL. Culberson’s enthusiasm for space, science and discovery is obvious there. He’s also very active on the fast-growing Twitter social network (@johnculberson), to the point that last week he became embroiled in a flap with Democrat congressional leaders over proposed rule changes that would severely restrict congressional internet video and blog posts.

Asking a question like “What’s wrong with NASA?” is so complex that a long answer is probably of little practical usefulness. I will say that it was a little disturbing how quickly folks who obviously knew far less about NASA than Culberson, including some politicians, turned on him as if he’d blasphemed or something. It’s also frustrating how many immediately viewed this as some sort of attack on the personal integrity of NASA employees.

As someone who once worked, long ago, both for NASA and a contractor, these sorts of arguments seem pretty much pointless. Let me just repeat what I wrote at the Chronicle page:

This has nothing to do with whether NASA has good employees or not. Of course there are many very motivated and dedicated folks at NASA and among the contractors. The real question is whether they’re being used effectively.

Rep. Culberson is right in certain respects. NASA has made great strides in many areas, but two areas, manned spaceflight and propulsion technology, are greatly lagging. We need a concerted effort in advanced propulsion because this drives everything else, and we desperately need strong leadership for a sustained manned spaceflight program.

As far as NASA taking credit for a “growing commercial space industry”, that’s ridiculous. Maybe the agency is finally seeing the light about commercial space, but it’s visionary entrepreneurs and private investors who have long been the driving force.

As to how we should invest funds to best create a vigorous manned space program, I wrote about the basic technical strategy here on my blog AeroGo. Congressmen, responsible for determining NASA’s budget and priorities, at least need to understand the root problem behind our frustrating lack of progress in manned spaceflight, which I noted in this discussion of SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan’s criticisms of NASA:

Because its R&D isn’t properly divided between technology development and operations, NASA remains prone to starving technology development whenever funds are tight (i.e. nearly always), which is much of the root problem. I suspect this is a lot of what is upsetting to Rutan about the program, “that you are not going to learn anything new here that is useful for you to go on to the other moons.”

The reality of NASA budgeting over the last 30 years or more has been that of operational manned space projects - Shuttle and ISS - crowding out most everything else, which leads to a very risk-averse R&D environment where breakthroughs are unlikely to occur

NASA will never be a perfectly efficient organization, but it still could accomplish a lot more if its budgeting were realigned to reflect the strategy needed to make steady progress. Manned flight operations cannot be allowed to crowd out space technology research, especially propulsion, anymore than they can be allowed to displace space probes, space science, or aeronautics research.

Because manned spaceflight is so expensive, however, the reality is that it will end up crowding out the others unless Congress imposes budgetary guidelines to protect these other areas that provide so much technological return on investment. Rep. Culberson is right in calling for an overhaul of NASA, but the budgeting process is key. Even without multi-year appropriations, a lot can be accomplished just by making sure NASA isn’t eating its own seed corn, particularly in the area of space technology R&D.

Raymond’s lament about how CNN has degenerated into the “Celebrity News Network” got me thinking about media and journalism again. I realize how important the media folks are, how much they influence the conversation, and I know it’s essential to keep pushing for improvements in that industry. I, for one, am certainly a fairly dissatisfied customer.

Raymond’s complaint brought up at least two things that particularly annoy me about the media:

1. Journalists seem to be really BAD at ever covering stuff that would actually be useful to know about. We hear about disasters all over the world and, of course, whatever mess (or island resort) Paris Hilton may be in at the moment. Nevertheless, there’s all kinds of practical stuff that we hardly ever hear about. I wrote about one such example, changes in credit card minimum payment rules, back in 2005.

I encountered another example this afternoon, when I was picking up one of my kids from work, and the subject of the minimum wage hike came up. He was wondering when the first increase would go into effect and how much it would be (i.e. whether he’d get a raise). I really don’t know. I think it’s sometime next winter, but I guess information like that is just too practical for the media to bother with.

There’s a lot of examples like that, of missed opportunities to be helpful, across most all the media, and I’ll try to point out more in the future (see the Journalism category).

2. It used to be there were 3 TV networks, only AM radio, etc., but now that we’ve got a zillion channels, they STILL can’t seem to focus on a specific topic. In other words, an awful lot of media channels are all chasing the entire market, rather than specializing.

CNN isn’t the only channel that’s lost its focus, but what’s more frustrating is that with so many more channels available (and so many owned by major media players), they still won’t specialize.

Radio provides perhaps the best test case, at least here in the Houston area, where we still don’t seem to have a dedicated news station, even though ClearChannel has bought several of the top AM stations. In fact, it’s gotten worse, as long-dominant KTRH 740AM lost a lot of its news coverage (and apparently its staff) after the 2004 election, and is just a shell of its former self.

Why can’t a huge media company like ClearChannel have at least one 24 hour news station in a big market like Houston? The obvious answer is they think they can make more money by changing formats all day long, from morning news to Rush Limbaugh to local talk to sports to UFOs, etc. That may work for them, but the longer this goes on, the more I just lose interest.

I wrote recently on All Things about how most of society STILL isn’t taking information overload seriously, and the major media are prime culprits. It’s not just broadcast media, either. It never ceases to amaze me, for example, how many ads I get for print magazines. Don’t they realize I’ve already got a pile of magazines I can never find time to read?

For years Americans have seemed to be relentless consumers of more and more media output, whether TV shows or sporting events or newspapers, books, etc., but I can’t help but think we’re nearing a limit, and that the winners in the media are going to be the ones who help us to find the right information, and package it for us in easy-to-swallow bites.

Google is perhaps the best example of this currently, of a business that helps us to overcome information overload, to cut a swath through the jungle to just what we’re looking for. In other words, Google is actually helpful, and they’ve been richly rewarded for it.

What I’d like to see are broadcast channels that are actually oriented toward my needs, to where my needs are placed first, and advertising comes second. This will seem ridiculous to traditional media types, but in my view, there’s an incredible amount of media out there, and I’ll just go somewhere else. Who knows, maybe I’ll get my weather updates from Twitter before long. After all, I can’t hardly find them on KTRH anymore.

First of all, in case anyone’s looking for it, here’s the official details on the IRS’ reasons for making April 17th the national deadline for filing your personal income taxes this year. It’s certainly also a good time to be thinking about how we could improve the system, something we all agree needs to be done, but can’t seem to agree how.

Of course, when you really get down to details, I’m not sure any of us quite knows quite what kind of tax system we’d prefer, but there are some basic qualities we could probably agree on. We need a system that no longer penalizes American business competitiveness, we need a simpler system (need I say more?), and we need a system that encourages - or at least doesn’t penalize - savings and various forms of investment and capital formation.

While a lot of conservatives might not agree on this last point, I think we also need a system that is modestly progressive, i.e. that gives a break to the poorest members of society. Even if you don’t agree with this philosophically, there is certainly a public interest in seeing these folks succeed financially, rather than linger on welfare rolls.

I don’t know all the specifics of the FairTax Plan, but this morning Houston City Councilman Michael Berry had Americans for Fair Taxation’s David C. Polyansky on, discussing this proposal. Here’s a summary taken from their website:

“The FairTax plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality, and, through companion legislation, the repeal of the 16th Amendment.

The FairTax Act (HR 25, S 1025) is nonpartisan legislation. It abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities.

The FairTax taxes us only on what we choose to spend on new goods or services, not on what we earn. …”

In other words, the FairTax plan would be based on consumption, not income or savings, so if you made a lot of money but lived frugally, saving and investing what you made - and so creating jobs and wealth - then you wouldn’t get taxed that badly. On the other hand, if you wanted to live like the robber barons, then you’d pay considerable tax - 23% (plus state sales tax, I presume) - but you wouldn’t have to hire an army of accountants and lawyers, nor would you need to worry about estate taxes. That last part alone would probably save wealthy folks enough to where many would gladly pay the 23% on consumption in order to have more financial flexibility.

Of course, I don’t know how they come up with these numbers, but that 23% would apparently include all Social Security and Medicare taxes, and since it’s a straight number, it would be easy to predict the tax impact of any transaction and, like sales taxes, the amount would apparently only be levied on the final purchase, so there wouldn’t be a bunch of “built-in” taxes that add to the cost of goods. While the combined federal and state tax would be about 30%, twice the European VAT, if it had a downward impact on inflation - and interest rates - it might prove a bargain for these reasons as well, without having the regressive characteristics for which value-added taxes have been criticized.

The FairTax Plan, which currently has about 60 mostly Republican co-sponsors in Congress, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, is reportedly most strongly opposed by Washington lobbyists and some Congressmen in powerful committees, who would lose a lot of influence were it to pass. Perhaps this is the best reason of all for supporting it.

The FairTax would basically be a 23% federal sales tax on everything, that would be balanced by a “prebate” that would rebate the tax burden that would be paid by a family living at the poverty level. So as I understand it, you’d only be paying this consumption tax on purchases above the poverty level.

Moving to a consumption tax is key, because this would put our industries on a much more competitive basis with those of other countries. Right now, in Texas at least (I know some states are different), if you buy a $100,000 home, you have to pay property tax, on the order of 2.5%, every year on that home, which is made in America, of course. On the other hand, if you buy a $100,000 car imported from Germany, England, or wherever, you generally don’t have to pay this tax every year. But if you you buy a $100,000 aircraft made in Wichita, Kansas, you do!

Of course, this is property, not income tax, but it’s just one glaring example of how our system in some many subtle ways (double taxation of overseas earnings is another) rewards importers over domestic industries. A consumption tax would lower the effective cost of our goods overseas and make our manufacturing, agricultural, and other industries more competitive, while at the same time likely doing more to improve conservation of resources and protection of the environment than a lot of other measures would.

While folks are busy fretting about all the terrible things that might happen in Washington this year with a new Democrat-led Congress, Americans might need to keep a lot closer eye on their state and local politics as well. Is it just me, or does it seem that politicians are busier than usual proposing all kinds of odd-ball laws? I saw a report today that someone in New York was proposing a law banning listening to iPods while crossing the street! If legislators have this much time on their hands, they ought not meet so often.

Here in Texas, where the biennial legislative session is a notoriously short 140 days, this shouldn’t be a problem, yet I’m more concerned than usual this year. I must admit I don’t keep very close tabs on Texas state politics in Austin; the general news coverage is far from adequate and usually focusses on just a few bills. Back before the internet really caught on, there used to be an organization, the Texas Grassroots Coalition, run by Austin attorney/CPA Adrian van Zelfden, that did a great job of putting out information, especially during legislative sessions and before primaries. Perhaps nowadays with the many blogs there is something equivalent, but I have yet to discover it.

Despite the information gap, the maneuverings of the past few weeks have been enough to get the attention of even casual observers, whereas, I guess, even the astute were caught off guard by Governor Rick Perry’s draconian power grab last Friday, when he issued Executive Order RP65 mandating the HPV vaccination of all 11-12 year-old girls in the state.

There are so many things wrong with both the scientific/medical and political aspects of Perry’s action that I will leave this to others, or at least to another post. David Watts, Jr. has started a helpful blog, Overturn RP65, to track developments regarding this issue.

Besides that mess and its threats to our civil liberties, not to mention our constitutional form of government, there’s the general budget situation in Austin, and the huge surplus, which Perry, among others, hopes to spend, but ought to by and large be handed back to the citizens of Texas through tax cuts. This will be a huge fight, I’m sure, because all these billions of taxpayer dollars floating around are just asking for trouble.

In light of the very favorable budget situation, it seems awfully curious to me that Republicans are so busy trying to raise extra cash. Perry’s idea of selling the lottery, unsettling at best even for those of us who oppose state-sponsored gambling, is indefensible with so much surplus already floating around. As ususal there’s various efforts, that I haven’t managed to keep track of, to legalize additional gambling and “use the money for education”, a phrase which some political hack might as well convert to newspeak since we hear it so constantly.

Besides these, there’s the Republicans’ push to privatize new state highway construction. This is one of those ideas that sounds “conservative”, but really is just a different can of worms. Texas has had one of the best highway systems for a long time, especially considering the size of this state, and more public toll roads may well be worthwhile. Private toll roads, on the other hand, would turn the economics of highway construction and repair - and property taxation - on its head. Foreign-owned private toll roads, which have limited exits and which don’t convert to free roads once paid off, are a very bad idea.

In general, it seems state Republicans are increasingly looking for assets to sell, or otherwise mesmerized by big projects to fund, which is making a mockery of the term “conservative”. Since just about every candidate running in Texas these days boasts about how they are a conservative, a little fiscal discipline would sure be refreshing.

With their unbridled willingness to spend money and start new projects, the rush to start war in Iraq, and potentially elsewhere, even while threatening the rest of the world, I can’t help but wonder if many Republican office-holders who call themselves such even understand the meaning of the term “conservative”.

Considering how upset a lot of folks are over RP65, and the disappointments with the free-spending Republican Congress of recent years, I don’t know how much more of this Texas conservatives can take. If our legislators in Austin don’t think real hard before spending Texans’ money, they may well ensure that the 2008 primary gets very interesting.

Business Week has a disturbing article in the May 29th issue about how Exxon Mobil, flush with earnings larger than the GDPs of many countries, has apparently decided simply not to fund a projected $11.2 billion pension liability. This bothers me for a lot of reasons, but most of all because it’s such an outlandishly large example of a flawed mindset that is found today throughout our society, and even more so in the analytical world of finance.

It seems that setting something aside for a rainy day just isn’t “smart” enough for the highly-trained MBA types. Of course, they want someone to hold reserves, but not them. So instead of taking a small portion of Exxon Mobil’s earnings and getting the pension fund ship-shape, I guess the bean-counters would rather use that money to make money, since that would be the “smart” thing to do. Then, if down the road things don’t go so well, they can let their employees and the government - taxpayers - take the hit.

It used to be that the strong, responsible entities in society were expected to hold reserves, but since there is inevitably an opportunity cost involved, nowadays everyone wants someone else to be the one holding financial reserves, inventory, or whatever. Even many governments (e.g. the U.K.) and the International Monetary Fund seem to be souring on the notion of holding gold reserves. Amazingly, the Clinton administration’s manipulation of U.S. gold holdings in the 1990s still remains largely obscure, whether for lack of curious journalists or lack of public interest, I don’t know.

The point is that in the real world, reserves and margin, i.e. “unused” assets, serve a purpose. They provide stability and buffers that guard against damage. While it’s bad enough that in our instant gratification culture many have lost a grasp of this, it’s particularly disturbing that somewhere in their extensive education, those who ought to know best - highly-analytical financial types - also seem to lose an appreciation for the essential role of reserves.

Besides artificial lights and artificial foods, we also live in a world with a lot of artificial economics. Even folks who work in a factory are generally very removed, economically, from the actual production process. By this I mean that they have become accustomed to getting a paycheck, usually the same amount, every two weeks, which is a total fiction when it comes to how things are produced. Just as we have become used to having light, day or night, we have come to expect income streams to be uniform.

We have also become comfortable with increasingly artificial markets, such as those for complex derivatives transactions. Yet there are real dangers in these artificial markets, as the spectacular failures of Long Term Capital Management and Enron have shown.

While we may take comfort in the broad spreading of risks in the derivatives market or in the Fed’s manipulation of interest rates to bring about a “soft landing”, in the “natural economy”, everything inevitably fluctuates. There are physical cycles of day and night, winter and summer, rain and drought; business (demand) cycles of boom followed by bust; and production cycles of planting & harvest or research & development, cycles that in the latter case can be much longer, e.g. years in automobiles or decades in aerospace. Reserves are essential to manage the uncertainty inherent in these real-world cycles.

Of course, there are still some folks who contend with these natural economy effects on a daily basis. These include farmers, entrepreneurs, and long-suffering managers in the global manufacturing economy. Many of these maintain a deep disdain for the financial types, but what is really needed is for those in charge of managing the money to have one foot firmly planted in each world, i.e. to have an appreciation of the fine points of financial analysis while also maintaining a grasp of natural economy dangers.

As an example, successful entrepreneurs soon learn that Job One is managing cash, not maximizing profits. Without liquidity, a business is bled dry, no matter what the balance sheet or income statement says. Entrepreneurs also soon learn that even when you have a good year, that is no guarantee that the next year will be the same. You learn first to use the receipts from “fat years” to fill holes that were left from the lean years, before presuming to tackle other opportunities.

This is simply prudent management, something understood by millions of small business people, and it really bothers me that a huge business like Exxon Mobil could lose sight of something so basic. Besides this, I can’t help but think of all the companies that have wasted windfalls on imprudent acquisitions. Of course there’s Chrysler, for example, who after emerging from bankruptcy with the help of federal guarantees, plowed many of the profits from the success of its minivans into questionable acquisitions, and ended up back on the brink. Then there was also Mobil’s own purchase of Montgomery Wards, which one employee described to me as a “money disposal project.”

There’s no guarantee that oil prices will be at $70 a year from now, and I hope Exxon Mobil’s employees, directors and shareholders, as well as the PBGC, will put pressure on its executives to do the prudent thing and fully fund its pensions now, while they could just “write a check” to do it. Maybe the company is entitled to its “obscene profits”, as some put it, but it’s not entitled to leave us holding the bag.

Since my first post Monday, more has come out about the Dubai Ports World deal to take over operations of six major eastern U.S. ports, plus some additional Texas terminals, apparently, at Beaumont, Corpus Christi, and the Port of Houston.

The UAE has been wise to back off and wait, rather than press to complete the deal immediately. As more facts emerge, it’s starting to look like the sale might not be as bad as it looked at first, but the U.S. is going to have to work through a whole bunch of thorny political issues. It’s amazing how many hot-button issues have managed to be bundled together in this DP World deal.

The most compelling argument in favor of the deal is that the key area for U.S. port security is actually in the overseas ports, rather than stateside. In other words, cooperation with port operations companies and foreign governments on the loading end is critical. The reality is that most ports are near major metropolitan areas, and inspection upon unloading might be too late to catch certain weapons of mass destruction, such as a nuclear device.

The U.S. has cooperative programs such as the Container Security Initiative that are designed to push the threat away from our shores. Nevertheless, it seems pointless to argue that allowing other countries to operate our ports will incur no security risk. Ownership brings access, and a lot of Americans were justifiably shocked to find out operations had already been outsourced to the extent they have.

Obviously, the outrage this sale has generated shows Americans are paying quite a bit of attention to homeland security issues and that the Bush administration’s attempt, once again, to say “simply trust us” isn’t going to work with such a sensitive domestic area.

If cooperation with foreign port operators and governments - so that manifests can be tracked and containers inspected far from our shores - is really key to port security, then the deal may represent an acceptable trade-off. Nevertheless, despite getting pretty much a free pass (and blank check) on Iraq for three years, President Bush is going to have to really make the case for how this will help security. Selling it on the basis of helping the global economy, as Michael Chertoff was reportedly doing this week, isn’t going to cut it.

In all, this is an amazingly complex political situation. Here are some additional factors deserving consideration:

• It’s still not clear exactly what DP World is “buying” in this transaction; obviously the operations of U.S. ports are not at all well understood by the public. Certainly Congress needs to take a new look at the port laws that are on the books and make sure roles and authorities are clearly and perhaps uniformly defined.
• Jimmy Carter’s quick support of the deal was puzzling. It would be easy to simply say the port deal is analogous to Carter’s giving back the Panama Canal, but consideration of Carter’s mindset about foreign affairs may shed some light on the politics. His assertion midway through his term that foreign policy was complex and beyond the understanding of the average American was what really sunk his presidency, and the current administration seems to have slipped into a similar error.

  Americans instinctively grasp there’s a balance to be struck in our political system between the ideals of republic and democracy. We leave most details to elected officials (republican/representative rule) but still must know enough to judge the performance of these officials (democratic elections). When officials start wanting to leave Americans out of the loop entirely, arguing that the issues are just too complex, the people know better, and there can be a swift political backlash as happened with Carter and again this week.

  Because Americans also understand the need for strong military leadership, there is more latitude given in this area to the President, but sometimes politicians presume too much from this. An example was the 1946 congressional election, when many were voted out because the country was fed up with wartime price controls that the government “experts” insisted must continue.

• The accusation that Americans are being xenophopic or even racist is way out of bounds. As long as Muslims insist on regularly blowing each other (and others) up, they’re going to have a real tough time persuading Americans they’re trustworthy. It’s hard to trust someone who seems to enjoy violence. The U.S. has fought a lot of foreign wars in the past century, but there’s always a lot of political pressure to end them and come home. We’ve got better stuff to do.

  Concerning the UAE, specifically, I’m not sure banking links to terrorists mean much, and Bush’s claim of strong military and intelligence cooperation gives support to the deal. On the other hand, to argue that everyone in the UAE supports the U.S., and so can be trusted, seems quite simplistic. According to AP’s Robert Burns, “the relationship is so politically sensitive in the UAE that the Pentagon does not openly discuss details.” It also has been reported that in 2004, the most recent year’s data available, the UAE sided with the U.S. in United Nations votes only 5 times, and opposed the U.S. 67 times.

• The media deserves some of the blame here for its monolithic coverage of the Middle East. This is very frustrating but unlikely to change, so if Muslim countries want to foster understanding in the U.S. and appreciation for Muslim culture, they will probably need to do the job themselves. The fascinating magazine Saudi Aramco World is a bright spot here, providing a glimpse of these cultures that is virtually unobtainable in the U.S.
• As I noted last time, the administration has gotten worse and worse at communicating its message, at a time when clear communication and articulation of strategy is needed more than ever. Obviously, changes in the White House staff are long overdue.

  Beyond that, the President needs to work a lot harder at sharing his vision of democratization of the Middle East, and be more forthcoming about what strategy, if any, he is following to get there. As I noted before, it is long past time for a real debate about our aims in the Middle East to take place in this country. It may be possible for Muslims to gain a glimpse of Western life and leave behind strife and unrest, but I suspect most, at first encounter with our culture, don’t understand its fundamentals any better than we understand theirs.

• Obviously, the failure by the Bush administration to recognize the volatile mix of terror, frustration over Iraq, outsourcing, unions, the $726 billion trade deficit, disgust with Mideast violence, and out-of-control borders, along with the casual approach it took to the deal were major political miscalculations. Bush quickly found Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, from the landlocked state of Tennessee, opposing him on the port deal.

  Republicans now find themselves in the odd position of needing to avoid appearing outflanked by Democrats on the security issue, and the lax approach taken by the Treasury Dept. in approving deals may well have to go. Most of all, as I emphasized last time, Bush needs to avoid the tendency, or at least appearance, of only half-heartedly fighting a war that is still much too poorly defined.

Last week I delighted in the extensive press coverage remembering Rosa Parks and in her becoming the first woman to receive the honor of lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. Her example showed how anyone can make a difference, and a lot of times it’s the small things that really end up tilting the scales. It’s also worth remembering that there were two teens, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith, who had exhibited the courage to take similar stands in previous months. I guess Rosa Parks was in the right place at the right time, but she still had to have the courage to stand up, or in her case sit down, for what was right.

In the midst of what is a fitting tribute, I hope those of us in the U.S. don’t miss what is going on right now in another democracy, the world’s largest. The Indian Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the rights of Christian Dalits (”Untouchables”), who have been denied basic rights and opportunities granted to others in India, even Dalits of other religions.

The issue is not a minor one in India, where millions of Dalits have turned to Christianity. The estimate of 18 million Christian Dalits implies a population similar in size to that of Blacks in the U.S. in 1960. The Indian Supreme Court is expected to hold a hearing later this month. I hope the Indian courts and Parliament will give full recognition of all Dalits as valuable members of their society, with appropriate opportunities for affirmative action to help them overcome the effects of the oppressive discrimination they’ve suffered.

At the same time, this would certainly be a fitting time for the mainstream press to incorporate a new element into professional journalism practice. In a way similar to the practice of seeking comments from both sides of a story, it might well prove most helpful and enlightening for journalists to start including coverage of what is happening currently when recounting past struggles and suffering. The sad fact is that there’s almost always a similar struggle going on now somewhere in the world, and I think viewers and readers need to know that, just as the nation needed to know about Rosa Parks in 1955.

Shenzhou 6 has launched successfully today, and I’ve written about the Chinese space program on my site AeroGo. With regard to space policy, I noted that the Chinese are reportedly working to develop a small station and so we need to start making efforts to ensure they use common interfaces and pressures, so in the long run all manned spacecraft can have compatible docking and environmental support systems.

I also noted how the Chinese and Indian space programs have been showing steady progress for many years, and ought not be underestimated for the future.

It’s amazing that the bankruptcy bill’s provisions regarding hikes in credit card minimum payments aren’t being covered all over the mainstream press. I’m still not clear on whether credit card issuers are definitely required to double minimums on bills after October 17th, or just being pressured to do so (most reports indicate that it’s mandatory).

I’ve long been annoyed by how the press feeds us constantly news we can’t really do anything about, but ignores stuff we could actually use, or at least need to know about (one reason why blogs are growing in popularity). This sparse coverage of credit card changes would seem to be an extreme example of this. In a year where we’ve seen gas prices double, electric and natural gas rates rise rapidly, etc., it seems like a really bad time for any more abrupt changes.

I still remember the effect of the congressional bounced-check scandal back in 1994. Americans are sensitive about their pocketbooks. When they found out their congressmen were writing hot checks as a matter of course, Newt Gingrich put together the Contract With America and threw a bunch of them out. The Republicans have controlled the House ever since.

If this is true, that minimums are doubling this month, then I can’t help but picture in my mind millions of Americans furiously calling their credit card issuers, only to be told that it wasn’t their doing; Congress passed a law requiring it. I doubt that’s likely to go over too well.

Obviously, any big change ought to be phased in gradually (gradualism is one of the basic tenets of conservatism). As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises observed, any governmental intervention in the economy is likely to produce opposite of the desired effect. Rather than “helping” Americans to pay off their credit cards faster, such a change is likely just to increase fees and therefore credit card balances, or else some other form of loans.

I don’t want to be alarmist, but I can’t help but wonder if blogger Dana Blankenthorn is right when he writes, “The next U.S. recession will start in earnest on October 17.” In any case, it will be interesting to see if there’s a quick reaction by Congress over this to fix it.

Certainly any hikes in minimum payments ought to be phased in, rather than doubled abruptly, but even if Congress reacts quickly, the holiday shopping season will likely be ruined. Add to that the housing boom and autos, I suppose.

I hope that if there really is a train wreck over this, that the press has to answer for their negligence, as well as the politicians.