Hope is not a plan

Members of the Basque terrorist group ETA killed a Spanish civil guard officer who was attending a meeting with French police in Capbreton. As ETA often retreats to French territory, the two governments are trying to work together to combat the would-be rulers of a Basque state. This pretty much puts paid to the idea that they aren't actively trying to kill people, although only certified, self-justifying jackoffs think that phoning ahead makes you less responsible for murdering people, so it's a fairly moot point.

Another civil guard member is effectively dead following this shooting, being comatose with no signs of brain function.

The violence really does not bring Basque territories closer to being independent.

CNN article
BBC article

If you've been following the news, you should have heard that a recent National Intelligence Estimate says that Iran dropped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. George Bush has countered by claiming that this recent NIE is a "warning signal" -- rather than, say, seeing the positives that apparently international pressure can put a nation of nuclear arms.

You can download and read the public version of the NIE by clicking here. Here's the relevant section heading bits:

A. We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.

H. We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so.

Notably, this public version of the NIE was (naturally) not released at the request of George Bush. You can click here to read Dr. Donald Kerr's statement about why they released the information. Here's the punchline, in his words:

The decision to release an unclassified version of the Key Judgments of this NIE was made when it was determined that doing so was in the interest of our nation’s security. The Intelligence Community is on the record publicly with numerous statements based on our 2005 assessment on Iran. Since our understanding of Iran’s capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available. While the decision to release the declassified Key Judgments was coordinated in discussion with senior policy makers, the IC took responsibility for what portions of the NIE Key Judgments were to be declassified.

"...we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available."

"...doing so was in the interest of our nation's security."

The office of the DNI is, perhaps, not as compliant as George Tenet was.

The Iraqi Red Crescent reported this week that more than 25,000 Iraqi refugees returned from Syria to Iraq since mid-September.

The Iraqi Red Crescent says in a report released Tuesday, refugees are returning because Iraq's security situation has improved.

The Red Crescent report says most of the 25,000 to 28,000 refugees who left Syria did so in September and October, and the flow of returning refugees slowed in November.

However, other humanitarian groups claim that many of these refugees left Syria because they ran out of money or their visas expired.

Voice of America article

The second officer shot by ETA grandstanders in Capbreton has passed from brain death to clinical death, putting the official tally to two dead from this attack.

BBC article

As negotiations on the final status of Kosovo approach their deadline with no result, NATO is warning that it plans to keep all 16,000 troops in the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo in place, and will brook no violence toward anyone in the disputed province. This follows on the heels of saber-rattling rhetoric from within the Serbian government:

An adviser to Serbia's prime minister ratcheted up the rhetoric Thursday, telling Serbian state television his country would defend its sovereignty "using all means" at its disposal.

"The state has no recourse other than war when someone does not respect the U.N. Security Council," Aleksandar Simic, an adviser to Vojislav Kostunica, told state television.

Although America backs independence for the largely Albanian Kosovo, other European countries, faced with their own separatist movements, are not so hep to the idea.

On a tangential note, the CNN article I'm about to cite refers to Kosovo, later on in the text, as a "country." Although it's nothing particularly new for an American news outlet to be sloppy, I do wish they'd be a little more careful when it matters. People from nations with controlled (rather than, say, cowed) news reporting agencies are inclined to read things like that as official statements of policy. Now, in this case, Kosovo as a nation pretty much is our national policy, but I don't think that's why the CNN article uses that language. They're just being careless.

CNN article

Regular rail service has begun between South and North Korea. For the moment, this is a single line with a single cargo train set to carry materials into the Bongdong area where a number of South Korean companies have production facilities in a special "industrial zone" at Kaesong. This BBC article discusses the new train, somewhat erroneously indicating that South Korean companies have gone to the North for "cheaper labor." As I understand it, the many costs associated with doing business within the quirky and odd confines of the North Korean industrial zone mean that it is actually more costly and less efficient to operate there. Companies that set up facilities in Kaesong did so with the understanding that they were acting to promote South-North links, rather than for strict economic benefits.

The South Korean government is looking for additional rail links, as well as passenger service between South and North. The former may come soon, but the latter seems less likely, at least as a regular thing. That said, it was possible back in the heyday of German separation for West Germans to travel into the East, as long as they were willing to surrender their passport for a while and sit through questioning and other indignities.

KCNA has no comment on the rail line just yet, although it does tell us that "The National Reunification Institute released an indictment on December 9 branding traitor Ri Hoe Chang as a fascist man-killer, separatist and confrontational maniac, kingpin of irregularities and corruption and human scum."

"Kingpin of irregularities" is an amazing title. Something to aspire to for the rest of us, perhaps. Incidentally, Lee Hoi Chang was the second-place finisher in the 2002 South Korean presidential election, finishing just over 2 percentage points behind current president Noh Moo-Hyun.

In a recent report titled Rental Housing: Information on Low-Income Veterans' Housing Conditions and Participation in HUD's Programs, the GAO gives us a survey of how veterans are doing in terms of housing, receiving assistance in paying for housing, and related concerns. This is much more of a survey than many other GAO reports, as the investigators have trouble pinning down reasons for some of their findings.

Overall, American military veterans push toward both extremes of the housing spectrum. Based on 2005 census data, 20% of American households are "veteran households" -- meaning that they have at least one member who is a veteran. 80% of veteran households own their own homes; this is higher than the baseline rate of 64% for non-veteran households. However, a whopping third of all the homeless in the nation were veterans in that same year. That's 194,000 homeless veterans on any given night.

In their survey, GAO found that 2.3 million veteran households had low income (defined as 80% of less of area median income -- note that that's median, and not mean). This, in turn, leads to housing affordability issues for veterans. California and Nevada are among the worst places, with up to three quarters of low income veteran households in those states having housing affordability issues. Specifically, the 236,000 low-income veteran households in California represents one-tenth of all low-income veterans nationwide. This is not a particularly surprising result, as modern California represents a confluence of extensive military presence and high cost of living, including expensive rental markets.

The key finding, for which GAO can identify no clear cause, is that whereas 19% of other low-income households receive HUD rental assistance, only 11% of veteran households receive the same assistance. GAO attempts to look into the evaluation structure to see why this might happen. Although they find that veterans do not receive preferential assistance from HUD, it's not clear that this should translate into veterans receiving less assistance from HUD.

This is a case where GAO makes no recommendations for action. If one might make a recommendation in their place, it would be to take another close look at this situation, to attempt to actually pin down the causes behind reduced assistance for veteran renters. In so doing, we might keep more veterans from mustering out onto the streets.

The government of Morocco has asked the UN to intervene to prevent the Polisario movement from meeting to declare a resumption of war with Morocco.

Confused?

You wouldn't be, if you lived in Western Sahara.

The entire region of Western Sahara used to be Spanish Colonial territory. Heading into the twentieth century, locals in what is now Morocco, as well as other nearby areas, rebelled against Spanish control. By the fifties, the area of Western Sahara was in complete upheaval. In the mid-70s, Spain formally ceded control of the area - to Morocco and Mauritania.

As it happens, locals within the area weren't particularly keen on being a part of Morocco or Mauritania, either. From 1976 to 1979, the Polisario (short for Frente Popular de Liberacion de Saguia el Hamra y Rio de Oro), an indigenous rebel movement, fought Mauritania right out of the area. Morocco held on, however, fighting the Polisario to a standstill until 1991, when the UN brokered a ceasefire. This ceasefire has been monitored since then by MINURSO, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara. MINURSO's mandate is to monitor the ceasefire, ensure Moroccan troop reductions, monitor Moroccan and Polisario troop locations, oversee prisoner exchanges, and organize a free and fair referendum on the topic of being independent or joining Morocco.

After sixteen years of war, it's been sixteen years of very, very slow progress toward the referendum.

So what's the most important issue in your world?

al Jazeera article

It's still largely too early to care about specific candidates, or statements that will be recanted later once they realize that the Republican party needs a strong Latino base, but Mike Huckabee's recent declaration that he'll kick out all the illegal immigrants within four months of taking office deserves special mention.

Apparently, Mr. Huckabee has an impulse control disorder. Certainly, he can't have stopped, pulled out a piece of paper, and done the math on this one.

If we go with the normal estimate of twelve million illegal immigrants in our country, and say that four months gives us one-hundred twenty days to work with, then (here's the question now) how many illegal immigrants, per day, have to be found, arrested, given due process, have their cases evaluated, and then shipped back to their respective nations (assuming those nations will take them)?

Got it?

One hundred thousand.

How many employees does U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have?

Fifteen thousand, including both direct federal employees and contractors working for the agency.

Well, they're not actually the "tip of the spear" against illegal immigration. That job falls to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Fortunately, they're good enough to give us some relevant information. According to this genuinely helpful report that should be required reading for anyone who wants to slog our men and women down with work above and beyond what is possible, in a typical day, CBP:

Arrests 70 criminals at ports of entry
Picks up another 2,402 people for illegal entry

So, do you suppose CBP has the resources to ramp up from about 2,500 people per day to 100,000 people per day? After all, that's only a 3900% increase in workload.

We can't afford to have another aggressively foolish person in our highest executive office. Unless and until he reverses himself, Mike Huckabee has, unfortunately, demonstrated that he's too stupid to lead.

Led by current president Evo Morales, a special assembly approved a new draft constitution for Bolivia last weekend. The new constitution would increase indigenous rights, allow consecutive presidential terms, and, perhaps most critically, redistribute wealth from the rich lowland regions to the substantially poorer highland portions of the country.

By way of reply, the three richest regions in the country declared autonomy.

President Morales has said that this declaration is illegal. It's unclear what measures he'll take to stop or otherwise impact planned upcoming local votes on autonomy in each region.

"The unity of the country is untouchable, it is not up for discussion. There is no referendum to be held on the country's unity," Mr Morales said.

If the story of the nascent twenty-first century is one of globalization and unification, it is at the same time one of regional and ethnic fragmentation.

BBC article

Last spring, the GAO reported that the coalition of the willing was becoming less willing, and that of the $15.6 million given in aid to Iraq, about 70% was loans. This October, they were asked to check in on the situation again. In their brief report Rebuilding Iraq: International Donor Pledges for Reconstruction in Iraq, December 18, 2007, the GAO brings us up to date on the situation.

The current pledge tally, as of October of this year, was $16.4 billion. Once again, it's a mix of loans and grants, coming in at 66% loans now (so the grant percentage has crept up a bit). Donors have ponied up $4.8 billion out of the $5.6 billion promised as grants, which isn't bad at all. The Iraqi government has signed agreements to use only $2.2 billion out of the $10.8 billion in offered loans, which is no surprise given that the Iraqi government wasn't using about 90% of their capital goods budget as of February of this year. A government that isn't organized enough to spend the money it has certainly won't be organized enough to finalize a bunch of loans.

The biggest non-US loans (so the people whose efforts apparently aren't being appreciated) are coming from the same places as before -- Japan, the World Bank, the IMF, and Iran. However, given the poor response from Iraq, it should be no surprise that the actual rate of loans taken (versus loans offered) ranges from a high of just below half (Japan) to none at all (Iran).

The top non-US donors (not on the loan side) are the largely same as before as well, with the addition of nearly a billion coming from the EC.

Recovery in Iraq is fundamentally not a problem of insufficient funding, but very much a problem of insufficient will, whether it be our choices in immediate post-war Iraq or the choices made by those now in some form of power within the country itself.

Full donor chart in the extended.

The Republican party likes to lay claim to a heritage that includes Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps ardent racist and immigrant-phobe (and, paradoxically, Italian-German-American) Tom Tancredo could take a cue from Lincoln's words spoken against another party bent on useless, country-destroying xenophobia:

I am not a Know-Nothing. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that "All men are created equal." We now practically read it, "All men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothing get control, it will read, "All men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics."

When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no presence of loving liberty. To Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

This may, perhaps, be a good letter to send to all our misguided, jingoistic and yet not at all patriotic friends in office in our Christmas greetings this year. I just sent it to Mr. Tancredo.

I hate slavery, because it deprives the republican example of its just influence in the world, enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites, causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.

What do we suppose Mr. Lincoln would have said about Mr. Bush's validation of torture?

In America, higher education -- college and beyond -- is a key to a lifetime of extra money and access to a higher station in life. In their report bearing the extensive title Higher Education: Tuition Continues to Rise, but Patterns Vary by Institution, Type, Enrollment, and Educational Expenditures, the GAO looks at recent trends in the price and value of higher education, as well as seeing who's signing up for that education.

In terms of price, you are paying more, whether you go to public or private school. In the last decade, the average 2-year school tuition increased $420, from $2,091 to $2,510, and the average 4-year school tuition increased $7,330, from $19,185 to $26,515. Most students attend schools at the low end of the tuition school, with only 3% going to schools with annual tuition and fees exceeding $25,000 per year. Note that the price increase for the average 2-year college is less than inflation, whereas the price increase for the average 4-year college slightly exceeds inflation.

What are you getting for your money? In the past decade, private schools spent money equal to or exceeding their increases in fees on education -- in other words, the prices went up, but the money was plowed back into education. You appear to be getting what you're paying for. In contrast, the average public school has seen its education spending fall behind fee increases. The GAO report does not address why public institutions are going in this direction.

Who's going to school? Well, in the last decade, enrollment rose 19%, or an additional 2.2 million students. These new enrollees are more often then not some kind of minority, with Latino enrollment up 25%, African-American enrollment up 15%, Asian enrollment up 15%, and white enrollment up less than 3%.

80% of all students enroll in public institutions, and about half of all students are in 2-year programs.

Although rising costs are naturally an issue, the GAO report in many ways paints a positive picture, with college enrollment -- the afore-mentioned key to so many things -- rising in groups of individuals who stand to gain substantially from a solid secondary education. It's a concern that the cost/education ratio appears to be rising for public universities, and it would be good to break that situation down in more detail to see if we can figure out why the past decade saw this change.

...if you're blowing things up, you're killing people.

If you're very lucky, like the Corsican separatists who set off bombs in Ajaccio this week, you'll only injure a five-year-old child.

al Jazeera article

Despite the perhaps negative tone of many things I post about here, I am, on the whole, convinced that the trend line of humanity is going in the right direction. Today's example:

Prosecutors in Italy have issued arrest warrants for 140 people over a decades-old plot by South American dictatorships called Operation Condor.

A judge issued the arrest warrants on Monday, following a request from state prosecutor Giancarlo Capaldo.

One of the true, positive achievements of the last two decades has been an unwillingness to let old crimes against humanity simply rest. In a very real way, there should be no statute of limitations on wanton cruelty, and more and more often, that is the case. It's never a wasted effort prosecuting these people, even decades and decades after the fact.

BBC article

It's election time once again in California. As we and all the other states push our primaries up toward the beginning of the year, let's not forget that in addition to throwing some weight behind a presidential candidate or two, we also need to vote on a number of propositions.

This February's proposition count is seven, although with a certain degree of redundancy in the final four. Once again, I'll be reviewing the propositions and giving each one an up or down recommendation (adding links as the reviews are completed). This year, we have:

91: Transportation Funding Protection, again - Recommend "No" (and so do its former backers)
92: Community Colleges Funding and Governance - Recommend "No"
93: State Legislator Term Limits - Recommend "No"
94: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - Recommend "No"
95: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - Recommend "No"
96: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - Recommend "No"
97: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - Recommend "No"

Prop 91 was superseded by the successful passage of successful passage of Prop 1A in 2006, and is now redundant.

The four Indian Gaming Compact props all ratify gambling agreements made between the Governor and a given Indian group in 2006.

Proposition 91: Transportation Funds. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. - recommend No

California sees quite a few fights over transportation funding. The intent is completely sound, in that we can't afford to let our infrastructure decline. In 2006, Proposition 1A passed with a very similar, albeit less strict than proposed in Prop 91, approach to this issue. Under the relatively new rules enacted by the passage of 1A, the governor must declare a financial emergency to divert funds from the Transportation Fund to the General Fund, and the money must be repaid within three years of the diversion. In addition, having this money "out on loan" means that you can't divert money in a subsequent year until the diverted money is repaid. Finally, only two years in any ten can be declared to be fiscal emergencies.

So what does Prop 91 add to the mix? There are a few changes:

• The governor can no longer issue emergency declarations from the 2007-2008 fiscal year onward.
• All money diverted from Transportation to the General Fund prior to July of 2007 must be paid back to the Transportation Fund by 2017.
• The legislature may, by statute, loan Transportation money to the General Fund, but the money must be paid back within a year

If you've checked in with your voter information guide, you'll notice that there's an argument against Prop 91, but no argument for it. This is because the people behind Prop 91 were happy enough with the rules proposed by Prop 1A, and put their full weight behind that. Prop 91, however, did end up qualifying for the ballot, and once you qualify a proposition, you can't retract it. As such, no one is out there trying to get 91 passed, because they thought 1A was plenty good enough.

Given that 91 is a stricter version of 1A, and I was already recommending against 1A, I have to agree with them.

You can track the minimal money spent opposing Prop 91 here.

You can read the full text of Prop 91 here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 92: Community Colleges. Funding. Governance. Fees. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute. - recommend No

Per its wiki entry, the California community college system is the largest higher education system in the world, serving 2.5 million students across 109 community colleges within 72 districts. If you've never been in the community college system, you may be unfamiliar with the relatively wide range of programs within a given community college. In addition to various 2-year degrees, the community college system also offers a host of professional training courses. I was certified as an EMT a number of years ago at Merritt College in Oakland (I've since let that certification lapse). In addition to training EMTs, Merritt also trains nurses and radiology technicians (and probably many other vocations I haven't looked for).

The current community college system was established, and is maintained, by legislation (in contrast, the K-12 system, for example, is part of the state constitution). Prop 92 seeks to change this, incorporating the community college system into the constitution, as well as revising how it is managed at the state level and how it is funded. The last set of changes, in funding, are the important meat of this Proposition.

As part of incorporating the system into the constitution, Prop 92 would replace the current board of governors with, well, another board of governors -- but constitutionally mandated, this time. There are some compositional changes as well. The new board would comprise 19 members, at least 12 of them from the "public," including a mix of former or current district board members, community college employees, and faculty members. In addition, the two students positions have been changed from multi-year affairs with no voting in the first year of service into one-year appointments with voting allowed right away.

The board is explicitly not given authority over wages or hours at the district level. It is also explicitly not a new state agency.

The major changes, and the source of all the arguments for and against this Proposition, come on the financial side. There are a couple significant changes.

First, the community colleges are given their own, defined slice of the general education fund. In the past, community colleges netted about 10-11% of general education funding (education funding, in turn, is legally required to receive at least 40% of the General Fund each year). Per Prop 92, the defined chunk of community college funding would be at least 10.46% (so right in the normal range), with increases keyed to a new metric for "student enrollment." Instead of attempting to measure actual student enrollment each year, the law would key the "change in enrollment" (and related changes in funding) to the larger of the increase in state population between 17-21 and 22-25. In essence, rather than measuring current enrollment, the proposed law would attempt to estimate the possible enrollment pool and assign funding based on that estimate.

Second, a small change removes the requirement that any state mandates requiring expenditures at the community college district level be checked by the Department of Finanace to make sure that sufficient funding is available. Note that at the same time the proposed law prevents the Board of Governors from mandating wages or hours, so any large impact in this area would have to come from other things (e.g. requiring that all community colleges update their computers).

Third, Prop 92 would ratchet community college fees back from $20 per semester unit to $15 per semester unit. Historically, community colleges were free up until 1984. In the past decade, fees have run between $11 and $26 per semester unit. Under the current fee level, a student taking a full year of classes (30 units) pays $600. Under the revised fee structure, they would end up paying $450 for the same course load. Fees would then be raised in a manner keyed to increases in the income of California residents. Notably, all fee increases must be rounded down to the nearest dollar. The practical upshot of this last rule is that fee increases will be especially rare. The jump from $15 to $16 would require nearly a 7% increase in average income in this state. Consider, in this context, the fact that the average income for a family of four appears to have jumped about 2-3% in each of the last couple years (income estimates taken from here). The legislative analyst notes that the required level of year-to-year income increase has happened only once in the last two decades.

The ratcheting back and locking in of fees naturally means less income for community college districts (about $70 million per year, as things stand). Rather than offering cheaper education that's also worse, Proposition 92 seeks to fill in this fee difference for those community college districts who don't receive needed funding from the General Fund. Presumably, some portion of the increased revenue directed toward the community colleges -- about $300 million per year -- will go to filling in this difference.

Financial backing for this proposition comes from a mix of community college associations (that is, nonprofits that try to support their local community colleges), staff and faculty groups, and construction firms. Financial opposition comes largely from the California Teachers Association, who argue that it amounts to an unfunded mandate that will damage community colleges and damage other education in California.

I have some of the same concerns as the CTA, in that it's not especially clear where the money here magically comes from. I am also quite leery of the somewhat subtle attempt to lock community college fees in at $15. Although I appreciate the argument that many people do, indeed, choose not to attend community college when fees go up slightly, I would also appreciate more research on the completion rate for people who are willing to pay an extra $150 a year versus those who aren't (or, briefly, are we losing the people who don't finish anyway, or are we driving away people who are likely to finish?).

My own community college experience was that my transit costs and textbook fees both outstripped my actual registration fees.

Although attending a community college verifiably leads to greater income, and although we definitely need the vocational wing of our community colleges to provide more critical members of society (EMTs, nurses, and so forth), Proposition 92 appears to be a financial train wreck waiting to happen. Based on that, I can't give it a positive recommendation.

You can track expenditures for and against Prop 92 (about three quarters of a million on both sides) here.

You can read the full text of Prop 92 here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for other propositions by clicking here.