Hope is not a plan

The "you should have regulated me better" excuse is internationally popular. We've already seen it on both sides of the Atlantic, as American and British financial executives complain that government should have kept them from wrecking themselves even while they spend the other 99% of the time vigorously complaining about regulation.

Now, over in China, one of the executives from the melamine-dosing Sanlu milk company has plead guilty while nonetheless suggesting that the Chinese government really should have prevented the problem:

Tian Wenhua, former board chairwoman and general manager of Sanlu, pleaded guilty Wednesday to her role in the scandal. She and three other executives are on trial for producing and selling fake or substandard products, according to Xinhua news agency.

In a statement distributed by her attorney on Thursday, Tian said China should consider the standards of the European Union regarding the chemical melamine. She also said other independent companies under the Sanlu umbrella produced some of the "tainted milk powder" and their leaders should also shoulder some responsibility.

Given that Sanlu was aggregating milk from a number of smaller suppliers who were individually involved in spiking diluted milk with melamine, on the face of it this claim might make sense. However, we have to remember that Sanlu received complaints for over half a year before New Zealand-based company Fonterra finally had to go through government lines to force Sanlu to officially recognize the problem. Sure, more extensive government regulation might have caught that earlier, but even sans regulation Sanlu executives knew they were receiving complaints, and could easily have run spot checks on their suppliers.

Or, more briefly, the claim that it was someone else's responsibility to make you behave ethically or rationally is reprehensible.

CNN article

Following in the wake of Madoff's multi-billion dollar scam, the SF Chronicle reports that hedge fund "manager" Alexander James Trabulse has been picked up by the FBI on allegations that rather than managing $17.6 million of investments into an improbably healthy $50 million, he'd actually converted it into the less-than-spectacular amount of $12 million, largely by investing their wealth not in the market, but in rugs, real estate, and other goodies.

According to that same Chronicle article, that initial investment of $17.6 million came in 2006, which makes it unclear how anyone would reasonably believe their investments could be worth $50 million after about two (not so great) years. Hm.

SF Chronicle article

Following the successful passage of Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage, its proponents are now asking a Federal judge to overturn the California law requirement disclosure of those who have donated $100 or more for a political campaign or cause. Here's what they had to say about it:

Sponsors of California's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage asked a federal judge Thursday to overturn state laws that require disclosure of the names and employers of campaign donors of $100 or more, saying the laws invite harassment and chill free speech.

...and...

"This harassment is made possible because of California's unconstitutional campaign finance disclosure rules as applied to ballot measure committees where even donors of as little as $100 must have their names, home addresses and employers listed on public documents," said Ron Prentice, chairman of ProtectMarriage.com, the Yes on 8 committee.

Whatever legitimate need the state might have to collect and publish information on contributors to a ballot measure campaign "ceases to exist the moment the last ballot is cast," the lawsuit said.

The concept here is that disclosure of who's spending money to support a cause "chills" free speech. Let's take a look back at the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There's nothing in there about ensuring the anonymity of speech. I think, in fact, that it's rather a stretch to suggest that anonymity is in any way a fundamental component of freedom of speech. More to the point, the inability to see who is funding support for a political measure would obscure things like the fact that Prop 10 was an attempt by one company to harvest money from our state, which was evident the moment you actually looked at the funding (as I always do).

As for the claim that keeping records of funding past an election is unnecessary...well, that's naive in several ways. It's important to be able to track spending historically, of course, but the assertion that records should be destroyed is also naive because it's impossible. If the state changes its policies such that records will be deleted after an election, I'll simply scrape and archive all the records while they're still available. I'm not sure how helpful it is to the general public to have access limited to the few motivated enough to do this, but there you go.

Most of all, I find it ironic that a group that successfully promoted a change in the California constitution that makes a law out of a religious institution is now claiming first amendment protection from accountability.

It doesn't work that way.

SF Chronicle article

In this most recent election, a majority of you voted 'yes' on Proposition 1A, authorizing the state to take out a hefty chunk of bonds -- assuming matching Federal funds -- in aid of generating a high speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

This week, the Chronicle reports that the California High Speed Rail Authority is coming up well short on its own budget this year.

The California High Speed Rail Authority's budget for the current fiscal year, which ends in June, included $29 million from the sales of high-speed rail bonds authorized by voters in November. But because of the state budget crisis, the credit crisis and the poor market for bonds, the state treasurer has not sold any of the rail bonds.

As a consequence, unless an emergency loan can be arranged, design and engineering work on the proposed line will come to a complete stop in short order. Given that our state budget is currently down a fairly shocking forty billion or so, I think it's likely that the Governor's office will be forced to sideline the rail system in favor of keeping the state running properly, at least for now.

SF Chronicle article

Some recent headlines from Gaza...

UN Chief Outraged Over Israeli Attack on Gaza Compound (The IDF shelled the UN's compound in Gaza City, claiming they were taking fire from that location. The UN has pointed out that the IDF knows their number, and could have called them first before directing fire into a position with 700 sheltered people.)

Palestinian Death Toll Tops 1,000 in Gaza (About a third of those are children, and half or so are estimated to be civilians.)

Israelis shell hospitals and UN HQ This article gives us the following quote exchange between Ehud Olmert and the UNRWA rep:

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, justified shelling the UN headquarters claiming armed Palestinians within it had fired at Israeli troops first.

"We always take action against militants ... there were no militants in our compound and now they [the Israelis] are changing their story, saying militants were 'in the vicinity'," he said.

It's not clear how Israel's current course of action can be expected to achieve their nominal end goal of fewer dead Israelis. The evidence of past Israel-area conflicts as well as the course taken by other sectarian conflicts does not empirically support a high likelihood of success for this operation.

We are back at work now, after taking the morning to watch the inauguration.

You can read the full text of our newest president's inaugural address here.

It's a given that many American corporations choose to try and dodge some or all of their Federal tax responsibility by hiding elements of their companies in nations that have limited to poor finance reporting. This is important both because of the general added burden these places on our national budget from these hangers-on and because some companies are major Federal contractors. In that latter case especially, money given to a company that hides its wealth in a tax haven is money handed over into a void.

In a report titled Internatonal Taxation: Large U.S. Corporations and Federal Contractors with Subsidiaries in Jurisdictions Listed as Tax Havens or Financial Privacy Jurisdictions.

I have to offer this one almost without comment, and suggest that you click through to the PDF and just look at the two lists it includes - the top one hundred publicly traded companies, and the top one hundred publicly traded Federal contractors. It's important to note - as the GAO does, of course - that the fact that a company has a subsidiary in a tax haven or privacy jurisidiction does not mean that corporation is actually trying to duck out on Federal taxes. Ireland, for example, is one such area, and we might imagine that a company would have other reasons for wanting a branch there than simple tax evasion.

That said, some of the corporations clearly have whole series of subsidiaries scattered throughout those island nations that are known for their financial opacity, and one suspects some income is being hidden there.

Once again, I recommend looking at the report, but here's the high level punchline:

Eighty-three of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. corporations in terms of 2007 revenue reported having subsidiaries in jurisdictions listed as tax havens or financial privacy jurisdictions. Sixty-three of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. federal contractors in terms of fiscal year 2007 federal contract obligations reported having subsidiaries in such jurisdictions.

Following the cessation of hostilities in Gaza, international aid organizations have been allowed in through the full blockade the IDF has maintained since November. Already, members of the ICRC and the UN's humanitarian wing are declaring their horror at the destruction, and calling for immediate and long-term assistance in rebuilding the area. Unfortunately, efforts to call up money to support the aid to the civilian population of Gaza have been stymied in the UK by the refusal of the BBC to air fund-raising appeals for the Disasters Emergency Committe, a UK-based charity that is currently trying to raise funds for people in Gaza, the DRC, Myanmar, and elsewhere. The BBC decision cited their wanting to "avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story."

I am skeptical about that claim. They didn't refuse the DRC calls, and I've been reading about conflict there in the BBC for months.

As has been argued lately in some circles of Israel supporters in the US, we probably don't do our ally any good by giving them a free pass on everything they do. Certainly, stifling emergency aid to Palestinian civilians can't look good to the bulk of the world, and rightfully so.

In the aftermath of the latest wave of attacks into the Gaza area, it's looking like there may be a serious case made for the IDF having committed war crimes during the conflict. In the past, I considered that Palestinians might not count as protected persons under article four of the fourth Geneva Convention, but on re-examining the legal position of Palestine, I think that is incorrect. As such, there's already a clear case to be made for evaluating the ongoing blockade as a form of collective punishment against non-Hamas Palestinians who are not party to any ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Similarly, the mass damage and concomitant mass casualties within Gaza appear to violate article three of the fourth convention. There's also the added possibility, looking rather more like a certainty now, that some elements within the IDF used white phosphorous on that most civilian of targets, a UN school full of refugees. Indeed, the report is that the Israeli government is already forming a defense team in case war crimes charges are levied. I certainly do not relish the job of Ygal Palmor who had to go on the BBC today and insist that "Parts of the Gaza Strip are open battlefield..." in the face of cellphone video of WP landing on civilians.

Meanwhile, the official word on the IDF site is that the operation was a resounding success.

I think, perhaps, some goal reevaluation is in order.

Through the latter part of this incursion, when the question of whether or not too much force was being used was broached to American political figures, the stock response was that if missiles were being fired into an American city, we'd do anything we could. To that, I have to point out that despite narcotraffickers making Hamas-like tunnels into my old home town of San Diego for years, and despite their violence against American citizens, at no point did we send tanks and infantry into Tijuana after softening it up with an air bombardment.

Clearly, right now Gaza is crippled. However, with four hundred dead kids, it's not at all clear that there won't be more people with a newly learned violent hatred of Israel, ready to do random violence against its civilians in direct defiance of the ostensible goals of this operation.

Meanwhile, the rest of us would do well to question whether or not the IDF blew right through a treaty to which its parent nation is a signatory.

In his book Fire, Sebastian Junger asks whether intentionally provoking someone into committing war crimes against your own people should, itself, be a war crime.

Following an attack on an Israeli patrol near the Kissufim border crossing that left one Israeli soldier dead, the IDF predictably responded by sending helicopters into Gaza to blow something up.

In interviews on the BBC last week, every single Palestinian who the reporters spoke with had nothing but anger for both sides participating in the dubious futile cycle of Gaza violence -- "both" here being Hamas and the Israeli government, and notably not actually the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.

BBC article
al Jazeera article

In the first major glimmerings of something like past tit-for-tat since the disastrous Russia-Georgia "war" of last year, Russia is now claiming that Georgia has kidnapped one of its soldiers from the South Ossetia region.

Georgia, in contrast, says that one Alexander Glukhov has decided to defect to Georgia, citing poor conditions and lack of food in the Russian military. They have him on television saying this, which, naturally, doesn't have to mean anything about how he actually feels. Given known conditions in the Russian military, this could go either way.

Back before the out-and-out fighting in Ossetia, Georgia and Russia took more covert shots at each other, with the last notable outing leading to the deaths of two Russian officers in the Abkhazia region.

BBC article