the NAFTA spat

So Bill Clinton was in my hometown, Roanoke Rapids, NC, doing some politicking and trying to pander votes from a community that has been economically stagnant that last few decades. Here are some of his words:

"We can bring manufacturing back to America now," Clinton said on an outdoor stage, with the now-closed mill that was featured in the 1979 Sally Field movie "Norma Rae" looming behind him. "But we have to have a commitment."

During the event, Bill wisely did not mention his previous support of NAFTA, which he pushed through Congress during his presidency, and which along with other free trade agreements, have led to the offshore movement of blue collar manufacturing jobs from places like Roanoke Rapids to places like China and Mexico. If he had done so, he would have discovered a strong, visceral reaction to NAFTA that can be found in any region that has lost out in the globalization game. A recent poll published in the Wall Street Journal showed that Democrats in Ohio disapprove of NAFTA by a 59-13 margin.

Playing to the discontent of voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio, Hillary has repeatedly said that she would consider a renegotiation of NAFTA and claimed to have a history of opposing NAFTA when her husband was in office. Not surprisingly, White House records show that when Hillary Clinton was first lady, she attended several meetings designed to build congressional support for NAFTA. Obama is guilty of waffling on NAFTA too.

The bottom line is, despite bashing free trade in cities like Roanoke Rapids where thousands of blue-collar manufacturing jobs have been lost, neither Obama or Hillary would dare touch NAFTA once in office because free trade is good for our economy:

"... U.S. imports from Mexico have risen sharply since 1993, from $48 billion to $216 billion in 2006. But U.S. exports to Mexico have tripled in the same period, from $52 billion to $156 billion. In 2007, according to the Department of Commerce (PDF), trade with Mexico—America's second-largest trading partner—accounted for less than 10 percent of the trade deficit." ...from "Making sense of the Clinton/Obama NAFTA spat." @slate.com

Globalization and free trade has always been win-win for the US economy, so all the NAFTA bashing we've been seeing is really moot. I was expecting a more honest political discourse this election season, especially with "Straight Talk Express" heading up the GOP. However after reading the following McCain quip, I've realized were in for another "silly season" in politics.

"One of our greatest assets in Afghanistan are our Canadian friends. We need our Canadian friends, and we need their continued support in Afghanistan," McCain said. "So what do we do? The two Democratic candidates for president say they're going to unilaterally abrogate NAFTA. "How do you think the Canadian people are going to react to that?" McCain said.

So, his discombobulated logic here is that we shouldn't renegotiate NAFTA because we need Canada's support in Afghanistan - (all 5000 or so of the token force they have there.)

Living On A Prayer by an 11 year old Korean kid

OK, this kid is amazing. He has more.

"This approach effectively exposes the War on Drugs for what it really is, a war on poor people."

"What we hear from conservatives all the time is that criminals deserve harsh sentences, because they've committed crimes. They should not expect anything else, and if they didn't want to be in jail they shouldn't have committed the crime in the first place. But this harsh stance melts into an accommodating one as soon as the lawbreakers wear suits and carry briefcases. A simpler way to say this is that they get soft as soon as the lawbreakers start to look like them."

http://halfricanrevolution.blogspot.com/2008/04/our-two-tiered-legal-system.html

Don't Mess with White Women

Two suspects have been detained by police in the Eve Carson case, Demario James Atwater and Lawrence Alvin Lovett, Jr.



Lovett was also charged with the murder of Abhijit Mahato, a Dook graduate student found dead in his apartment on January 19th.

There is an obvious disparity in the amount of press coverage and attention paid to these two murder cases that happened less than two months apart, both in the same metro area, and both were students at well-known four-year universities.

One difference comes to mind:



Simply put, one is an attractive white female, and one is a minority. Messing with the first kind is guaranteed to land you in a boatload of trouble. Messing with the second... well... it happens.

"How come they never found Biggie and Tupac's murderers, but they could arrest O.J. the next day" (Dave Chappelle)

I'm not saying Carson did not deserve the attention she got - I'm glad all the various police and government agencies mobilized so quickly and nabbed 2/2 suspects in case with no initial leads in about a week. But makes me wonder if Mahato's case received anywhere near the same level of service from government or support from the community.

Hope

MoveOn.org has moved to endorse Obama.

Stephen Colbert roasts George Bush

Have you guys seen this? The funny part is really the Stephen Colbert speech & stuff. Oh, man! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879&q=owner%3Acspan

What are your reactions?

oil poster

Here's an interesting poster about the world's consumption of oil all throughout time. http://www.oilposter.org/posterlarge-x.html

Crazy UNC Rampage

You guys probably already heard about the incident at UNC on Friday at the Pit. But how do you label it?

http://www.ibiblio.org/wunc_archives/news/index.php?p=445

Power of the courts

Bush's has pushed through his nominees for the Supreme Court, and with Sam Alito, the court is seen as possibly overturning the decision of Roe vs. Wade to at least some extent. What really interested me is the notion that the Supreme Court is like a "back-door" to establishing laws. It is (perhaps ?) easier to bring a case through the court system and have the SC issue its intepretation, which is binding, than having legislators pass or amend laws. Examples for this are Brown vs. Board of Education during Segregation, or Roe vs. Wade when there may not have been enough popular support for women's reproductive rights. This notion was alluded to in a way during Bush's SC nomination process such as 'restoring the court to its constitutional origins' and the SC is 'overstepping its bounds' as a 'rogue court'.

Reading this expert from To Kill a Mockingbird makes me think, though, that the Supreme Court's "power" acting as it has is nothing beyond its mandate.

"But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal - there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States of the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal."
(Finch defending Tom Robinson)

What do you think the future of the court will be? do you think there will be any chance of the SC making a ruling on same-sex marriage as has been done in Canada and Spain? And randomly, what are your thoughts on restrictions on abortion?

Occam's Razor and Bob

Phil got me thinking about my agnosticism the other day. Occam's Razor & Bob's Corollary are commonly invoked in atheist arguments; I've provided short spiels on both below. I've started looking for arguments against both; if you know of any feel free to post them.


Occam's Razor is a logical principle that holds that one should should not make more assumptions than is needed. In other words, the best explanations are the simplest ones. E.g. if we were modeling a few datapoints on a graph, it would make sense to find the simplest curve that encompasses them all, rather than some convoluted curve that fits the data just as well.

Occam's Razor is often invoked by the atheist argument that we can explain everything without introducing metaphysical concepts such as God; bringing God into the picture adds unnecessary complexity.


Bob's Corollary

The more powerful the entity, the less likely it is to exist.
-Bob

Explanations that attribute 'everything' to the existance of a God are suspect because they are untestable. E.g. If I had a scientific test for the existance of God like a litmus slip that turned red to indicate that God did not exist and the slip showed red, this result could be explained away by arguing "God changed the rules so now red means God exists".

Strong theories make testable predictions that have proven true time after time. A theory that invokes an all-powerful God that can change the laws of universe at any moment escapes falsibility. So, in other words Bob's Corollary says that theories that rely on omnipotent beings are weakened by the fact they potentially can never be refuted.

Red Ink

The White House has just released the budget for 2007. If approved by Congress, this budget would increase defense spending by 6.9%, cut money from healthcare, education, and the environment all while adding another $354 billion to the U.S. debt. (NPR analysis).

At the end of FY2000, the U.S. debt - the accumulation of the deficit spending of all previous 42 U.S. Presidents - was $5,674,178,209,886.86. Today it is $8,195,544,127,376.07. Bush took office with a budget surplus and a forecast of a cumulative 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. In just 6 years, the party of tax cuts and balanced budgets, under the steady leadership of President number 43 has added 45% to the Ú.S. national debt.

(from a MetaFilter post by threeblindmice)

My take on the debt is that it is bad because it is financed mostly by foreign nations like China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc... As these are our potential rivals/enemies, they may find reason in the future to stop financing our debt and could wreck our economy by selling off their US bond holdings.

The debt is possibly good if our borrowed money is invested wisely. Since much of our budget is dedicated to waging war, the future economic success or failure of America in part seems to hinge on whether or wars in Iraq & Afgahnistan pay off (by giving us control of the energy resources in the Middle East I presume).

Gong Xi Fa Cai

Kung Hei Fat Choy for the Cantonese speakers, and for Vietnamese, happy Tet!

Let us hail in the Year of the Dog with longevity, prosperity, peace and happiness, and hope that we have rid ourselves of all ghosts and evil spirits.


On another note, I was out partying last night in Chapel Hill until 7am, sorry I didn't have time to get in touch with most of the people here. It makes me a little sad that I haven't made any friends up in Richmond as great as you all or the other friends I hung out with this weekend, but things can always change.

Happy Lunar New Year

What's wrong with our country?

The 50 Most Loathsome Americans. Amusing stuff, here's a preview:

5. Tom Delay

Charges: A politician so horrible, his prior career as an exterminator constitutes fratricide. Smiled for his mug shot like it was a campaign poster. Asked three young Katrina evacuees, “Now tell me the truth, boys, is this kind of fun?” One of an elite handful of white Americans still engaged in the time-honored tradition of screwing over Indians. Responding to a request he extinguish his cigar in a restaurant in accordance with federal regulations, Delay replied, “I AM the federal government.” Claimed that there was “no fat left to cut” from the federal budget to offset New Orleans reconstruction costs. So arrogant in abuse of power that he doesn’t even take time to construct plausible lies.

Exhibit A: Explaining his failure to enlist during Vietnam: “So many minority youths had volunteered…that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself.”

Sentence: Bashed to death with hammer.

censorship

Microsoft is now shutting down blogs (written in Chinese) on its Microsoft Network (MSN) blogging service that are critical of the Chinese government. This isn't the first time that Microsoft's compliance to China's policies has been in the news. If this is the first time you've heard of this, here's a quick rundown: in the past few years, the complicity of Microsoft and other US companies like Google, Yahoo!, and Cisco with the Chinese Communist Party in helping them to construct the "Great Firewall of China" has made possible the censorship of Internet sites and searches related to 'freedom', 'human rights', or 'democracy' within China.

What's worrying about this latest incident is that the censorship is 'global' and not limited to within China. The sites MSN now censors are being taken down from their servers and not merely firewalled by the Chinese government. For example, had I originally created 'An Unnamed Syposium' on MSN and one of us published the words "Tibetian Independence" or "Falun Dong", our blog would shortly thereafter be deleted off MSN's server because of their compliance to China's wishes; (this is also assuming we knew and were blogging in Chinese).

It's not illegal for Microsoft or any other private company to censor a blog that they operate; however this censorship, though limited to Chinese blogs, still seems to reek of evilness... or maybe it doesn't? Do you believe that Microsoft and other American companies' complicity in China's political censorship is wrong?

What's in a name?

Lisen to this story about the 1898 Race Riot in Wilmington, NC.

So it's one thing that this is the only overthrow of an elected government in US history. It's another thing that White people did it at a time and place when Blacks were prosperous and influential. What do you make of one of the words used to describe the actions of the riot instigators -- "terrorist"? Fair/unfair? Weird? Appropriate?

mass transit in the Triangle

Getting to work during rush hour is unbelievably ridiculous. Everyone commutes by car, usually with a 1-person-1-car sort of deal. No one takes the bus, even though a ticket is cheaper than the cost of gas used. What is it with people? Why is their first response to the traffic to just widen the lanes? What do you think about the NC govt.'s new plan to subsidize companies whose employees telecommute from home?

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil?

Phillip posed a few questions about the role of ignorance in ethics a few days ago. To see our thoughts on this issue, read the comments; please chew 'em up and spit 'em out (that means spit out comments, preferably criticisms). I've reworded his questions below:

1) Do we have an obligation to determine the morality of our trivial actions?
2) Does ignorance of what is right or wrong in a given situation excuse you from being held morally accountable in that situation?
3) Does ignorance matter in ethics?

I have moved my inital answers to the comments section of Phillip's original post of these questions (see 12.08.05).

inspire us... please

any ideas for a title for this site?

Recently, a family friend of ours has gotten engaged. People from India are pretty conservative in thinking, and as far as the ones in America, it's especially true of the older generation. They goal of most these people is practically prescribed: study well, get a good job, make money, get married, have kids, and send them through the same process. The son of my parents' friends was older than 30, and had a nontraditional job and lifestyle (organic veg. farmer in VT). The first concern for his parents was the job and lifestyle. As of late, it has been his bachelorhood.

When he announced his engagement, it almost was a surprise. And it was good news, well, to most. One of his parents has not taken well to the fact that the bride (I can't imagine what it would've been like if the spouse-to-be were a groom) is... well... White. In particular, his mom would not be happy unless she was of the same culture and of the same caste. Such an insular attitude isn't too uncommon, perhaps, for 1st generation Asian immigrants. I suppose you could call it indirect racism or something, becuase it's there, but maybe not necessarily overt or intentional.

But then I started to think about racism in general. Or discrimination, or prejudice. I think they seem to breed negativity inherently. A hypothetical example, you'd never hear a Nazi say, "Ooh, congratulations for the Jewish girl, she's marrying that German guy. Now her life will be better b/c he's there. Good for him to spread Aryan values to the heathen Jews." Instead, it'd be, "*@#$ Jewish girl, stealing for herself a German guy. And stupid German guy, for marrying her." Maybe that isn't a perfect example, but anyways, in an us-vs.-them mindset, it's too easy to see the worst in things when different kinds of people interact.

Puahaha... I laughed out loud at the security guard story

Luis - at least for my sake could you provide a better definition of what is "right" - you seem to be saying that in some situations there is no "right" course of action, but there may be a "best" course of action, which according to Mill's theory would then equate to "right." I neglected to read the comments on Luis's post, I think they covered it pretty well.

I'm actually curious about what you all believe about right and wrong as they apply to trivial things - say, do I buy my groceries from Food Lion or the Harris Teeter? Is it my responsibility to find out which is the more ethical/moral choice? Or does morality only depend on what you already know - if you shopped at Food Lion, and that money was being used to nuke rainforests, does ignorance of this fact shield you from being wrong? Or does it matter at all?

Phillip