Kevin Drum

The Drug War Down South

| Thu Jul. 9, 2009 8:05 AM GMT

The Washington Post reports on the drug war south of the border:


....Mexican officials acknowledged that abuses have occurred in the fight against traffickers but described the cases as isolated...."I know that the armed forces are not acting inappropriately, although there have been some cases," said Interior Minister Fernando Gómez Mont, who is responsible for coordinating security operations across Mexico. "The government honestly believes that. There is no incentive for abuse."

No incentive? How about money?


It does not exist.


Read the rest in "We Bring Fear," part of our cover package on the drug war in the current issue of MoJo.  The Mexican army's incentives should become pretty clear.

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Positive Feedback in the Amazon

| Wed Jul. 8, 2009 10:31 PM GMT

One of the most alarming aspects of climate change is the existence of positive feedback loops.  For example, as polar ice melts, less sunlight is reflected back into space, thus heating up the ocean and causing more ice to melt.  Rinse and repeat.  Another one: warming causes the permafrost in the Siberian tundra to melt, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, thus warming the earth and causing yet more tundra to melt.

Here's still another, from the latest issue of the Washington Monthly.  Oliver Phillips, a professor of geography at the University of Leeds, has studied a 2005 drought in the Amazon rainforest and come to a frightening conclusion:

In normal years the Amazon alone absorbs three billion tons of carbon....But during the 2005 drought, this process was reversed, and the Amazon gave off two billion tons of carbon instead, creating an additional five billion tons of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. That’s more than the total annual emissions of Europe and Japan combined.

....Significantly, Phillips [] found that the 2005 drought was not the result of El Niño, the cause of previous smaller episodes, but of a regional rise in sea temperatures — one of the expected early signs of global warming. Taken together, these findings suggest that climate change could trigger the worst kind of vicious cycle, with climbing temperatures causing the rainforests to dry out and give off massive quantities of greenhouse gases, which in turn causes the planet to warm more rapidly — a dynamic with harrowing implications.

Read the whole thing for more.  The Monthly's entire special package on tropical deforestation is here.

Lying to Congress

| Wed Jul. 8, 2009 10:14 PM GMT

Congressional Quarterly reports:

CIA Director Leon Panetta told the House Intelligence Committee [on June 24] that the agency had misled and “concealed significant actions from all members of Congress” dating back to 2001 and continuing until late June, according to a letter from seven Democrats on the panel.

Continuing until late June?  As in, two weeks ago?  As in, right up to the time that Panetta testified before the committee?

Wow.  You'd think even Republicans might be a wee bit upset about this.  But no.  You see, a couple of months ago Nancy Pelosi said the CIA misled her about waterboarding, and if Republicans admit the CIA has lied to Congress it might hinder their efforts to attack her:

House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes , D-Texas, this week sent to the panel’s top Republican, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, a letter saying new information led him to conclude that the CIA has misled and at least once “affirmatively lied to” the committee. Republicans disputed its contents and have said that the Democrats were trying to protect Pelosi.

....Republicans said it was true, as Reyes wrote in his letter, that the classified subject about which the committee was notified was a subject of bipartisan concern. But they did not endorse Reyes’ conclusions that the CIA had lied....[Hoekstra] said Democrats wanted to help validate Pelosi’s prior claims by establishing other occasions in which the CIA may have misled Congress.

....Reyes expressed surprise at the Republicans’ remarks about whether the controversy was legitimate and whether Democrats were trying to protect their leader, saying simply, “They know better.”

Sure, they know better.  But what's that compared to the opportunity to keep a minor partisan squabble alive?

Giant Robot Update

| Wed Jul. 8, 2009 3:37 PM GMT

Last week I went to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  I did this because the movie had gotten such mind-bogglingly bad reviews that I was curious to see if anything could really be that bad.  Unfortunately, the sound system in the theater kept cutting in and out, and after about 45 minutes I finally gave up and asked for my money back.  Sadly, the only thing I had learned up to that point was that I had no idea what was going on since I never saw the first Transformers movie.

No matter, though.  Via the WaPo's domestic and robot affairs blog, Rob Bricken's Transformers FAQ explains it all and is probably a lot more entertaining than the movie itself.  Also shorter and cheaper.

Quote of the Day

| Wed Jul. 8, 2009 2:55 PM GMT

From Fox News anchor Jon Scott, flailing around trying to describe my employer:

There's a recent article in Mother Jones magazine, not exacty a....uh....magazine that to put it?....against lightening up on marijuana laws....

Nice save, Jon!  This was just before quoting an excerpt from my marijuana piece — and needless to say, they chose practically the only paragraph in the entire story that had much of anything negative to say about marijuana legalization.  But I guess all PR is good PR as long they spell my name right, isn't it?  And they did spell my name right....

UPDATE: Hmmm.  Bad day for Fox anchors.  Apparently Brian Kilmeade is upset because in America "we keep marrying other species and other ethnics."

Other species?


| Wed Jul. 8, 2009 12:04 PM GMT


But here's the tidbit that caught my eye:





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Torture For Thee, But Not For Me

| Wed Jul. 8, 2009 10:47 AM GMT

Glenn Greenwald was on NPR yesterday to talk about their policy of refusing to call torture by its proper name, and while he was waiting to go on he listened to NPR's ombudsman explaining their policy:

She also said — when the host asked about the recent example I cited of NPR's calling what was done to a reporter in Gambia "torture" (at the 20:20 mark) — that NPR will use the word "torture" to describe what other governments do because they do it merely to sadistically inflict pain on people while the U.S. did it for a noble reason:  to obtain information about Terrorist attacks.  That's really what she said:  that when the U.S. did it (as opposed to Evil countries), it was for a good reason.

Jeez, that Glenn.  Always exaggerating.  For the record, here's what she actually said about NPR's piece on Gambia:

In that case, these were strictly tactics to torture him, to punish him, versus in the United States, and the way that it's used, these are tactics used to get information.  The Gambian journalist was in jail for his beliefs.

Wow.  She really did say that, didn't she?  When other people do it for other reasons, it's torture.  When we do it for our reasons, it's not.

You don't usually find people willing to say this quite so baldly.  Congratulations, Alicia Shepard.

No Agreement on Climate

| Wed Jul. 8, 2009 9:36 AM GMT

Apparently the G8 meeting in Italy won't produce any agreement on climate change:

As President Obama arrived for three days of meetings with other international leaders, negotiators dropped a proposal that would have committed the world to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by midcentury and industrialized countries to slashing their emissions by 80 percent.


“They’re saying, ‘We just don’t trust you guys,’ ” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group based in the United States. “It’s the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president.”

The basic problem isn't the 80% reduction by 2050, which is supported by both Obama and congressional Democrats.  The problem is the 2020 goal.  Right now, the Waxman-Markey climate bill requires a 17% cut by 2020, but that's from a baseline of 2005.  Depending on how you crunch the numbers, that works out to a cut of only 0-4% from 1990 levels.

The Europeans, conversely, want to see a 20% cut from 1990 levels by 2020.  Obama, presumably, sees no chance at all of getting Congress to agree to that, and the Europeans aren't willing to compromise their more stringent goals.  So for now, no agreement.  And Copenhagen is only five months away.

Healthcare in Extremis

| Wed Jul. 8, 2009 8:58 AM GMT

Megan McArdle argues that if healthcare reform includes a public plan, it might mean a reduction in service for a lot of people with severe problems:

Surely the point of worry is that many millions of people will be forced into the public system, because its existence will encourage their employers to dump their health care plans.  Since private systems have so far found it virtually impossible to deny many treatments for long, this will mean that millions of budget constrained people will find themselves with less available treatment than before.

....This is not a crazy worry.  What America is best at is delivering a lot of complicated care in extremis, and "quality of life" treatments.  What European countries are best at is delivering a lot of ordinary care for the sorts of things that afflict people from 0-50, which is why most of the Europhile journalists writing about Europe genuinely have very good experiences to report.  I'd rather be here to have a hip replacement, but I might rather be in the Netherlands to have a baby.  Doing something moderately ordinary here is a hassle.  Doing something extraordinary there is often not possible for the overwhelming majority of citizens, though that depends on what, and in what system.

Boy, I'd sure like to see some backup for that.  If by "extraordinary" Megan means the most extreme 0.001% of procedures, then maybe she's right.  Maybe.  But nothing I've read about Western European healthcare systems makes me believe that there's any substantial difference between the way they treat severe illnesses and the way we do it.  And no systematic difference in success rates for such treatment either.  Nor should this come as a surprise, since most extreme medicine is practiced on older patients, who are covered by a public plan both here and in Europe.

No system is better at everything than any other system.  There are always tradeoffs.  But the overall evidence is crystal clear: European state healthcare systems, taken as a whole, provide better care than America's hodgepodege system at about half the price.  If we adopted their approach and combined it with American funding levels, we'd have a system better than either.  And rich people who wanted to pay for massive amounts of special care not covered by the state would still be free to do so.

Anyway, speaking of healthcare, the 24-hour bug I thought I had yesterday seems to be more like a 72-hour bug.  Blah.  Blogging will probably be a little light today again.

Speculating on Oil

| Tue Jul. 7, 2009 3:08 PM GMT

The New York Times reports that the Obama administration plans to take a more proactive position toward speculation in the oil market:

In a big departure from the hands-off approach to market regulation of the last two decades, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Gary Gensler, said his agency would consider new limits on the volume of energy futures contracts that purely financial investors would be allowed to hold.

The agency also announced that it would pull back part of the veil on the oil and gas markets, publishing more detailed information about the aggregate activity of hedge funds and traders who arbitrage between domestic and foreign energy prices.

....Oil prices have swung wildly in the last year, hitting about $145 a barrel last summer, then plunging to $33 in December before rising to about $70.

....A growing number of critics have blamed some of the extreme volatility on the role of purely financial investors — those who are simply betting on the direction of energy prices, as opposed to those who actually use such products, like airlines....Non-commercial traders accounted for almost a fifth of the activity in several major oil and gas products for the week that ended June 30, according to data compiled by the commodities agency.

One of the interesting aspects of this is that it demonstrates the genuine difficulty in identifying asset bubbles.  The housing bubble was relatively easy to spot: it took place over a long period of time and prices shot up way, way past their historical trendline.  But oil?  That's harder.

Take a look at the chart on the right, courtesy of Calculated Risk.  It shows oil prices over the past couple of decades, and what you see is moderate stability from 1985-1999 followed by a slow rise starting around 2000 and a sharp jump between 2004-2006.  Was that a bubble?  Prices dropped for a few months after that, and then, over the space of 18 months, tripled from $50 to $150.  Was that a bubble?

To this day, I don't think there's any consensus about this.  Given growing demand and flat supply, prices should have gone up after 2000 — and the sharper rise in 2004 was no big surprise either.  That's not a bubble, it's just the free market at work.  But how about that second spike?  Was it driven by speculation?  Or was it also driven by demand fundamentals, which cratered naturally when the global economy went into recession in mid-2008?  And even if it was a bubble, it only lasted 18 months.  What are the odds that anybody could have identified it and targeted it fast enough to keep it under control?

Beats me.  But although I continue to think that supply and demand fundamentals were behind much of the price rise, I began to wobble on this during the first half of 2008. The oil market really did start to look pretty bubbly, and in August the CFTC begain to produce some persuasive evidence that financial speculators were having a substantial effect on prices.  This speculative bubble couldn't last very long (eventually speculators run out room to store their oil), but there's good reason to think that even a 12-month spike did a lot of damage to the world economy.

So what now?  Oil has been on the rise recently despite the recession, causing a few analysts to suggest that speculation is once again temporarily inflating prices.  And me?  I don't know.  As I've said before, though, one thing we can count on now that demand for oil is bumping up against fundamental supply limits is lots of price volatility.  Given that, trying to keep a lid on speculators creating even greater frenzy in the oil market makes a lot of sense.  The CFTC is probably doing the right thing here.