Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog

It is detrimental, says Thilo Thielke in Der Spiegel, because it creates unfairness and dependency in many different ways. First, using the case of Kenya, Thielke invokes a classical concept of formal organizational behavior: self-perpetuation.

"The roads are in horrid disrepair, and they’ll stay that way for a while. As a result, it would take days or even weeks to get the corn from the west to the northern parts of the country. But why would they need it there anyway? There’s a shortage in the north because the World Food Program is usually there to hand out food for free. The UN’s employees are paid to fight hunger, and that’s why they usually write reports in which they dramatically portray the situation in Africa and which they usually end with appeals demanding more donated food.

These developmental aid workers, whose reports largely shape our image of Africa, behave this way to a certain extent out of an instinct for self-preservation that they believe the Africans don’t have. Without help, they say, all the Africans will starve. And, indeed, without aid, all the helpers would also be out of a job."

A first problem then is that the persistent handing out of free food (largely surplus from Western countries) eliminates any incentives to be locally self-sufficient. And there is also the idea that the WFP needs people to be hungry in order to justify its existence and work (and some well-paying jobs for UN consultants). Even if some adventurous local entrepreneur tried to start local food production in an area with a numerous malnourished or under-nourished population, the results would likely be disastrous:  Read more 

The Grey Lord correctly notes that “everything is designed to ensure we stay.” Beyond all the rhetoric,  Read more 

The National Fanny Cyst Erupts:  Read more 

Actually, I’m not so upset about this- it appears that at least some Congresscritters are on this. I don’t know if they will be able to fix the problem, and $10B is just a drop in the bucket of what we’re about to spend in Iraq. Still, the reason I think this story is important is that I believe it is being repeated, in every government agency, from top to bottom. The rule of law is truly dead in this country, and I guess I’m on a mission to get more people to understand that. Kudos to the Old Grey Ho for being on this, although I’m sure if I looked around, I would find a blogger who beat them to it:

The report, a result of a yearlong investigation, grew out of complaints by four auditors at the agency, who said that senior administration officials had blocked them from recovering money from oil companies that underpaid the government.

…

In one case, senior officials decided that it would impose a “hardship” on oil companies to demand that they calculate the back interest they owed after having been caught underpaying. The agency itself was years behind in billing the companies, because its computers could not perform the calculations.  Read more 

How low can you go, Mr. President?  Read more 

Just got in from one of those “public’s opportunity to comment on an ongoing government action” thingees, and I’m both uplifted and disheartened. Uplifted to realize how many people really do care enough to show up for a boring, unsexy three hour gov’t hearing, and to speak out for the environment. Disheartened to realize that corporations really do run our government, no matter how much we want to believe otherwise. Mining is a “hot” news topic these days, and this post is being filed away for a future ’I told you so’ moment I have no doubt we’ll someday have over the mine in question. It won’t surprise you at all to hear that essentially, it’s yet another case of short term corporate profit winning out over logic, common sense, science, popular will, and long term environmental concerns. And economic concerns, as that is understood to affect all, and not a few, people in this state.

Here’s the deal: a pristine, and undeveloped (except logging decades ago) area of northern Michigan is the target, and a very bad company wants to put in a sulfide mine. The supporting view is that it will “bring jobs and tax revenue to Michigan.” But that isn’t really grounded in fact, and the citizens of this state know it. Too bad one of the bureaucrats told me that he didn’t really care and that the mine would likely go in anyway.  Read more 

ThinkProgress spoke with one of the delegation’s military escorts, Maj. Toby Patterson, who said that he didn’t know who made the bios or why they were created in the first place. He added that his office, the Marine Corps liaison for the U.S. House of Representatives, usually just uses lawmakers’ readily-available bios off of congressionalquarterly.com

I call bullshit. The only way this is true is if Maj. Patterson is admitting things are so out of control in the Green Zone, they can’t even provide reasonable security for a Congressional visit. Or does he expect me to believe anyone can just run around posting flyers and giving them to troops in the Green Zone without notice?

The whole thing stinks of fascism. Plain, ugly, in your face fascism. Unspoken here is that the number of contractors in Iraq exceeds that of the “regular” military. And those people truly answer to no one.  Read more 

Must have missed this one. NPR not teh suck on this one. Steve Curwood from Living on Earth”

The latest allegations involve two top environmental regulators. Former Deputy Interior Secretary, J. Steven Griles has been under investigation in connection with the Jack Abramoff lobbying affair. Now it turns out that Mr. Griles and his girlfriend, Sue Ellen Wooldrige, purchased a million dollar beach house with Donald Duncan. He’s a vice president of Conoco Phillips, the nation’s third largest oil company.

This is just a little crass, even for the anti-Democrats, eh?  Read more 

This movie is truly excellent. If you read this blog, much of what is discussed in it will not be new to you. Still, I encourage you to rent/buy it. What is best about it is the way in which it speaks so effectively to the audience that needs to hear the message the most- Bush voters. It is impossible to view this film and not come away with the sense that working class white Christians and patriots are little more than cannon fodder and slave labor for the elite warmongers and profiteers. If you have moderate or right leaning friends and neighbors, buy them a copy. For however much you may feel you’ve been unable to convince them to hold your liberal views on the war, this movie will speak to them in their own language and leave them with undeniable rage and disgust. Bottom line: the war is about making money of a reactionary clique of wealthy people, and no amount of sacrificed American blood or treasure will stay their greed. What made me the most angry: how cheaply our politicians are bought. War profiteers make billions, and buy the politicians who keep the war going for literally pennies on the dollar. Truly, the evil in Washington is merely banal. It almost makes me wish for evildoers of more mythic form, for the generation we have now will hardly register more than dismissive contempt in the minds of future students of history.

Is there anything more aggravating than being immensely proud of one’s sense of ethics, and never getting a chance to demonstrate them by turning down a big, fat, juicy bribe?

I guess I’ll never know, because Microsoft did not find me a Blogger Worth Bribing with a superhot top-o-the-line new laptop:

Several bloggers reported last week that they had received Acer Ferrari laptops, which can sell for more than $2,200, from Microsoft. A spokeswoman for Microsoft confirmed on Friday that the company had sent out about 90 computers to bloggers who write about technology and other subjects (such as photography and, oddly, parenting) that could be affected by the new operating system.

Parenting?? You need a 2-friggin-grand laptop (you can get a perfectly decent brand new laptop, and a way better known name than Acer, for a quarter of that at the moment) to write about parenting but not politics? I am so pissed. My only consolation is that the teeth of conscience, not to mention public opprobrium, are gnawing at the bones of the undeserving wretches who did get the machines  Read more 

I bitch about TV all the time, but it’s not really the case that I hate it so much. Rather, I’m just pissed that I can’t be a lazy slob and enjoy a passive moment of slacktivism, and at the same time be stimulated intellectually in the tiniest way. Thank Shiva for Netflix, which allows me to experience some truly severe envy of the British, or at least of those in the 90s (I have no idea if they still are making TV this good).

I won’t spoil it for those who’ve not yet seen it, but I just finished the first half of part two last night, and I am so impressed, jealous, bitter, etc. Why can’t we have political TV like this? I’ve seen a couple of episodes of “West Wing,” and it just doesn’t come close. Again, watching this reminds me of just how childish and stupid Americans must sound to the British. No one uses the Mother Tongue like they do. If you want to be entertained, and still feel like you’re “doing something political,” rent these today.  Read more 

-The cost of equipping an infantry soldier tripled, from $7000 in 1999 to $24,000 today.
-The cost of Humvee’s went from $32,000 in 2001 to a breathtaking $225,000 each today.
-The cost of training, feeding and housing Army recruits went from $75,000 per soldier in 2001 to $120,000 today. (The Army uses private contractors, largely Halliburton’s Kellogg, Root & Brown, to provide most non-training services, such as food service and base maintenance.)  Read more 

Bottom line: Bush has one rule when it comes to the people who work in His Majesty’s Government- loyalty is all. People are hired because of how connected they are to the BFEE, and we’ve seen everything from cronies like Brownie to Ledeen’s 23 year old daughter and back again. So spare me any crap for labeling this post as of the category “Bush Character.” Republicans have been in charge for six years, and this is all. on. them. Via Liz, a shocking LA Times piece:

t least 200 public employees have been charged with helping to move narcotics or illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexican border since 2004, at least double the illicit activity documented in prior years, a Times examination of public records has found. Thousands more are under investigation.

Criminal charges have been brought against Border Patrol agents, local police, a county sheriff, motor vehicle clerks, an FBI supervisor, immigration examiners, prison guards, school district officials and uniformed personnel of every branch of the U.S. military, among others. The vast majority have pleaded guilty or been convicted.

Officials in Washington and along the border worry about what lies below the surface. “It is the tip of the iceberg,” said James “Chip” Burrus, assistant director of the criminal investigation division of the FBI. “There is a lot more down there. The problem is, you don’t know what you don’t know.”  Read more 

(Via the estimable Kossacks.)

That’s a lot of money to leave on a lot of dressers, wouldn’t you say?

Lieberman really is a Republican, isn’t he?  Read more 

Well, well, well. The FBI sure is busy these days. I wonder what will fall from this particular family tree:

MEDIA, Pa. - Three weeks before Election Day, an
FBI corruption probe involving Republican Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record) intensified as agents raided the homes of his daughter and a close friend.

The FBI swept in Monday and searched six sites in the Philadelphia area and Jacksonville, Fla., including Karen Weldon’s lobbying firm and one of its clients, a Russian energy company, FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman said. The congressman’s home and offices were not searched, she said.  Read more 

Now everything falls into place. American Progress via the excellent Charles from a suggestion by alert areader follow the money at Digby:

As governor of Florida, Jeb Bush serves as a trustee for the state employees’ pension fund. That fund owns approximately 7.3 million shares of Disney stock.

And it’s not like Jebbie would use the worker’s pension fund, money that doesn’t belong to him, corruptly, or anything. I mean, these guys aren’t like the Ohio Republicans, for heaven’s sake!

And, since Disneyworld is in Florida, Jebbie has another way to put Igers nuts in a vice get Bob Iger’s attention:

Disney’s agreement with the state of Florida “gives the entertainment company near complete control over 40,000 acres” in the central part of the state. Disney’s theme parks operate “free from government oversight – [Disney] is in effect the government – and can do almost whatever it wants with its land.”

So, Florida essentially set up a franchise government called Disney: a state within a state. And the franchise Florida giveth, could taketh away:  Read more 

Well, I guess you’re not surprised:

Lobbying-money record broken again
By Jim Snyder
Spending on lobbying totaled more than $1.2 billion for the last six months of 2005, another record, according to a tally on the website politicalmoneyline.com.

For the year, spending topped $2.36 billion, according to the site. For the first time, during the last half of the year, spending to lobby Congress and the executive branch averaged $200 million a month.

The biggest single spenders in the second half of the year were the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, General Electric, AT&T (including SBC), the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform and the American Medical Association.  Read more 

I have no doubt whatsoever that the cop who busted me smoked every last gram of my pot when he got home. Besides the roadmap of substance abuse on his face and nose, I’ve got stories like this to select from every goddamn day of the week:

By Kristin Bender, STAFF WRITER

OAKLAND — A former Berkeley police sergeant who has admitted to stealing heroin and methamphetamine from the department evidence locker will spend a year in an electronic home detention program.
Cary Kent, who spent 18 years with the Berkeley Police Department, was in charge of the drug evidence locker when he tampered with 286 evidence envelopes, authorities said.
He pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of grand theft by embezzlement and one count each of possessing heroin and methamphetamine.  Read more 

I agreed to cover “Farce the Nation” this week solely because half the guests were Sen. Mitch McConnell, Bush fellator supremo and bandit of the Bluegrass, to see if there would be any mention of this story:

Fawn Lake is a golf-course community of 1,400 luxury condominiums, ranging from $700,000 to $1.4 million, whose website touts that “the land surrounding Fawn Lake is rich in Civil War history.” It is a project of NTS Development Company, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, whose President and CEO is Brian Lavin, a campaign contributor to Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Majority Whip.  Read more