Congressional Approval

I'm having a hard time making sense of the question as to whether or not Obama's recent military actions  wrt Libya are constitutional. Many, like Kucinich, are arguing that they're clearly not. But it's not completely obvious to me, although the resolution of the question requires some legal analysis that I'm admittedly not qualified to carry out. An alleged justification for the action resides in the UN Participation Act, Title 22, Section 7, § 287d. Use of armed forces; limitations: "The President shall not be deemed to require the authorization of the Congress to make available to the Security Council on its call in order to take action under article 42 of said Charter and pursuant to such special agreement or agreements the armed forces, facilities, or assistance provided for therein".

The question is whether the reference to " special agreement or agreements " is a reference to an Article 43 agreement, a situation which hasn't taken place under the UN. If it does, then to take action without congressional approval exists only if an Article 42 agreement occurs within the context of an Article 43 agreement. This is the argument, I believe, of Michael Lind.  But, John Whitehouse over at Jenkins' Ear blog, argues: "There are some who see an art. 43 agreement as a necessary precedent to an art. 42 action. This does not make sense by either law – why would you ever have art. 42 if you needed an art. 43 agreement with each state having to refer to constitutional processes? And if you need a an art. 43 agreement for art. 42 to take place, then Section 287d makes almost no sense. – Why would Article 43 agreements need Congressional authorization if Article 42 agreements (which specifically refer to forces) do not? It makes no sense at all."  (they link to this, as well, which I haven't read, as an argument that an article 43 agreement is required precondition for an article 42.)  (Also see, this blog.)

I'm not entirely sure who is right here. I don't think that the morality of the action rests on whether or not he has Congressional approval. Honestly, I see congressional approval as a mere formality. I don't think any of us seriously think that Congress would reject the proposal were they to put it to a vote. Obviously, even if Congress approves it, it doesn't follow that the action in Libya is prudent or the right thing to do. And Obama himself had been unequivocal about his belief that he would need congressional approval to take military action unless an immediate threat existed. It puzzles me a bit why he didn't just go ahead and get Congressional approval, frankly, but for reasons above, I'm not sure to what extent the legal obligation existed. Clarifications welcomed.

Health Care Access

An Ontario woman with breast cancer was recently controversially denied treatment with Herceptin.  (link to a comment from the woman affected.) Herceptin is very expensive and because her cancer was caught early and the tumour is small, it's not clear the treatment will be very effective in treatment or in preventing recurrence. I'm not going to try to argue the medical issues involved in this recent case,  except to say that if the G & M is wrong about this case, the general point still stands, i.e., that any health care system has to draw lines and balance costs with potential returns.  I should also note that the Canadian system, from what I've experienced and understood, is far less niggardly than the US insurance payers and respectful of what doctors deem to be the right treatment options. The sense I have in the US, unlike in Canada, is that doctors are fighting with the insurance companies to get the right treatment options. But there's a key difference between the US and Canadian system: if a treatment is refused in the US, one still has the option of paying for the treatment if s/he believe it's what s/he needs.

The lack of such an option underscores a key and, I believe, somewhat unique characteristic of the Canadian health care distribution system, and that's the fact that this woman has no recourse to avail herself of this treatment, within Canada, after the insurer has declined to cover it. Regardless of what we think about allowing those willing to pay to jump the queue for services, this seems to be a different issue. In this case the government has simply refused her a place in the queue. In that situation, shouldn't the woman be allowed to access the treatment if she's willing to pay for it and take her place in the queue? (Admittedly, insofar as need as prescribed by the system defines the queue, it's not entirely clear where that place should be, but surely that can be determined.) The Canadian system has proven to be a very effective means of justly distributing high quality health care at lower costs, but when it actually prevents a person from getting a treatment that a person believes s/he needs, hasn't it crossed the line from being just a distribution system? Proponents of universal health care argue, rightly, I think, that access to health care is a fundamental right. But that has to cut both ways, ensuring access to quality care for all citizens, but also not denying access to those pursuing what they deem to be their best interests in terms of maintaining or restoring health and willing to pay the financial costs for it.

Another Chernobyl?

I've been closely following reports of threats posed to and by Japan's nuclear power plant since the earthquake. There seems to be much concern that the Japan nuclear power plant situation will turn into another Chernobyl: "US experts fear 'Chernobyl-like' crisis for Japan"  and here's a more "technical" description of the potential problem (source): "Without cooling water, there is a real chance of a meltdown of the reactor core that could result in a large release of radiation. Usually in case of a failure of the main cooling system, an 'emergency core cooling system' would extinguish the nuclear chain reaction by dousing the rods with water treated with boron. This element has a high affinity for the neutrons ejected from split uranium atoms, which are responsible for most of the steam-producing heat transfer."  Ed Markey has also taken this opportunity to argue that this demonstrates that nuclear power poses grave threats of a Chernobyl type disaster.to the US. Now while the situation with these reactors may be grave, it's important to note key differences with Chernobyl.

Some of Japan's reactors are old but they're also of a different sort, light water reactors, than Chernobyl's  Reactor 4.  As Naoto Sekimura notes in an al jazeera article, "No Chernobyl is possible at a light water reactor. Loss of coolant means a temperature rise, but it also will stop the reaction."  That's because in a light water reactor, the coolant water also plays the role of "neutron moderator". A neutron moderator, counterintuitively given its name, facilitates the nuclear chain reaction because it slows fast neutrons thereby turning them into thermal neutrons that perpetuate the chain reactions of nuclear fission.  So, when the coolant gets too hot, it actually acts as its own release valve because the water density decreases, meaning it loses its effectiveness at "moderating" the neutron speed, i.e., losing its ability to turn fast neutrons into thermal neutrons. As that happens, the radioactivity is decreased because the moderator or the effectiveness of the moderator is undermined.  So, the very material that's used to do the cooling, also actually facilitates the chain reactions, losing one helps to prevent the other, a very elegant deadman's switch of sorts.  Compare this to Chernobyl in which the moderator actually ignited.  This isn't the only way in which Chernobyl and the Japanese plants differ, Chernobyl also had no containment mechanism, so the radioactivity simply dissipated into the air.

None of this is to argue that nuclear power plants are completely safe and foolproof, but I do think it's important to factor this important difference in when evaluating the likelihood that a Chernobyl will unfold in Japan or is likely or plausible in the US.

Don't Volunteer in Haiti?

Last month Catherine Porter wrote an article arguing that people shouldn't do volunteer work in Haiti.  And, in particular, they shouldn't go to help with orphans. I'm always pleased to have good excuses for not doing the altruistic things I wouldn't have done anyway, but I'm not sure I'm convinced by her reasoning here.  Regarding volunteering, the author argues that volunteers take away jobs from Haitians and "children who make and break repeated connections with revolving volunteers are at an 'increased risk of developing disorganized attachments, thus affecting their socio-psychological development and long-term well-being.'" 

Consider the first argument first, that volunteering takes job opportunities from Haitians.  This assumes a lot of things. First, it assumes that the volunteers are doing jobs Haitians are also amply qualified to do. The author admits that, for example, neurosurgeons are an exception, but there may be a lot of volunteer work that is an exception.  She points out that sometimes volunteers do work for which they wouldn't be qualified in , say, Canada. Well, I also find that objectionable, but it doesn't follow that people shouldn't volunteer in Haiti.    but why not simply argue that they should make sure they're volunteering to do things for which there are no or few Haitians qualified or available and for which they are adequately qualified?

But another issue here is that even if there are people in Haiti qualified to do the work, it doesn't follow that one is taking a job from them by volunteering.  If there are no agents who are willing/able to pay Haitians to do the work for which one is volunteering, then one isn't taking a potential job from Haitians. If I go to Haiti to reshingle a building in Haiti because nobody is able to afford to hire Haitians to do the work, then I'm not taking work away from Haitians, I'm just fixing a roof that might have otherwise gone unrepaired.

Finally, this naive advise to avoid volunteering overlooks the fact that volunteer work might contribute infrastructure that could facilitate job opportunities and economic growth. For example, suppose a group goes to Haiti and builds a school or paves a road or puts a well in the ground. Suddenly resources are in place such that teachers might start working, goods might start moving or people could start growing vegetables or using the water for mixing mortar and building homes.

And what of the "orphan tourism". Well, I really don't know enough about psychology and human development to comment authoritatively here.  I'll also acknowledge that it's clearly the case that making efforts to get full time foster parents in place is the most desirable objective.  But I am a little skeptical if the suggestion is that it's better to do nothing at all for abandoned orphans than to help them for only a couple of weeks.

What's Really Wrong with SEO?

I have little sympathy for companies who've been doing SEO and are now finding it not working and I find it most surprising that people are objecting to Google's recent changes. So here I try to spell it out in the most elementary terms what is wrong in principle with SEO as a practice.

Writing content to improve your search engine rank is like teaching to the test. It's letting that which is supposed to be measured, the quality of your webpage, be shaped by the metric, its position in search results pages, rather than the qualities the metric is designed to measure. Good metrics should be indicators of success, but that can be undermined when there is a focus solely on the metric at the expense of that which the metric is supposed to measure. If your scores are improving as you pursue the real objective, e.g., good authoritative content or clear understanding of the subject material, that's very likely as it should be. And if you're successfully chasing the objective and the metrics don't reflect it, possibly so much the worse for the metric.

But one should never make the metric itself the primary goal. The reasons should be obvious. One may very well end up over-fitting to the metric and gaining "improvements" because one has keyed in on secondary or indirect or ephemeral, but easily quantified, features of the quality under consideration. As the metric becomes better understood by those being measured, those indirect features are then purposefully exaggerated and, as a result, no longer act as reliable indicators of what they once indicated. Consider link text, the feature that Google used to use so heavily. At one time it was a great indicator of popularity. But as soon as people realized that Google perceived it as an indicator of popularity, they started using it to create the impression of popularity and it ended up becoming a far less reliable indicator.  Of course, Google had to change the extent to which they relied on it to measure popularity. This is inevitable when everyone attempts to game Google.  And we shouldn't be surprised or complain when Google changes their measurement tools in response to a change in the characteristics that they're trying to measure.

As an example of what I'm talking about, I read this objection to Google's attempt to penalize content farms. The author lists some methods of SEO:

* Research keywords
* Select keywords that have existing traffic
* Write pages based on those keywords
* Publish pages
* Get those pages ranked against those keywords

S/he goes on to ask, "How is this different to what a Content Farm does? So, if Content Farm pages are undesirable, so too is SEO content?"  (apparently "content farm" is worthy of capitalization!) Can you imagine the great writers of history using anything like these techniques for writing high quality material?  These aren't strategies indicative of someone trying to write useful, relevant, clear content; they're strategies for people trying to be manipulative, advertisers or propagandists. Insofar as people prefer not to get advertisements or propaganda in their search results, Google is right to penalize these methods. Rather than whining, people should go back to thinking about how to write web pages people want to read and let Google worry about ranking them.

Remember when Reich wasn't Radical?

Robert Reich has put up a couple of posts recently on the wealth inequalities in the US and what they mean for the US budget.  (An aside, the Mother Jones graphs are telling but nothing, to my mind, is a more bracing summary of the situation than the fact that the 400 richest Americans have nearly as much combined wealth  as the cumulative wealth of the bottom 50%.) 

The first post  discusses the extent to which changes in income distribution have affected Social Security and how it's just untrue that Social Security contributes to the deficit. In 1983 a Greenspan commission tried to fix Social Security by implementing a plan whereby the ceiling, the point after which wages don't require a SS contribute, would continue to grow gradually, "the ceiling was set so the Social Security payroll tax would hit 90 percent of all wages covered by Social Security."  However, the wage inequalities have been such that the current ceiling of 106,800 covers only 84% of all wages.  To get it back up to the 90% level we'd have to increase it $180 000!  That would be an easy fix for SS and seems a small price to pay for those benefiting from the wealth inequality, but as Reich notes, this is apparently unacceptable in the present climate.

The second post is a bit less wonkish, simply noting the BS that the Republicans are serving up with respect to our economic travails and the Democrats' collective lack of willingness to call them on it.  The "Republican message is bloated government is responsible for the lousy economy that most people continue to experience. Cut the bloat and jobs and wages will return." Of course, the GOP assumptions are highly questionable, as Goldman Sachs notes. But the problem, Reich notes, is that the GOP is now allowed to get away with this stuff. We don't hear the Democrats or Obama talking about the obscene inequities in income distribution or dispelling the myth that government is responsible for the economic difficulties we're facing.  Instead, Reich observes, the Democrats simply counter with "We agree but you’re going too far. Government employees should give up some more wages and benefits but don’t take away their bargaining rights. ... Non-defense discretionary spending should be cut but don’t cut so much." I admit that I've been pulled into this game too.  It's yet another example of the GOP strategy to pull everything hard to the right and then make even conservative positions look left wing. They've played it marvellously in Wisconsin.  Roll back union benefits?  To hell with that, we'll take away their collective bargaining power too. Suddenly the left is fighting just to retain collective bargaining and we've sold the unions down the river on their compensation packages, unquestioningly buying into the myth that they're egregiously overcompensated, even while we blithely accept ludicrous executive compensation packages as a natural and even desirable part of capitalism.

What's interesting and alarming is the extent to which Reich's positions are now radical, far outside the extant political mainstream. Recall that it was only two administrations ago that Reich held a position in the Cabinet. We've come a long way, baby.

Tea Party comes to Washington to fight for liberty?

There's a story in this morning's WaPo about the Tea Party allying with Democrats to help defeat an extension of the Patriot Act.  One reads that it was "a vote that served as the first small uprising of the party's tea-party bloc." I was pleasantly surprised initially. My impression of the Tea Party has been that they're more of an ultra-conservative group of xenophobes than a group seriously interested or concerned about liberty. Tea Party activists, for example, came out in strong support of the Arizona immigration crackdown, real libertarians aren't inclined to have much truck with opposing immigration.  It would be nice if the Tea Partiers were actually taking civil liberties seriously, if they were more Ron Paul-like and less Sarah Palin/Michelle Bachmanm-esque, I'd be less inclined to think the Tea Party was bad for America. 

In any event, my hopes were quickly dashed when I dug into the numbers a bit.  This alleged pro-liberty Tea Party uprising was exaggerated significantly by the Post.  Of 111 congressmen that the Tea Party had endorsed, 96 (86%) voted in favour of the Patriot Act extension, only 12 (11%) voted against and three didn't vote.  Yeah, sure, that's some uprising.