Month: March 2011

Andy Sumner examines it:

Most of the world’s poor no longer live in low-income countries. An estimated 960 million poor people—a new bottom billion—live in middle-income countries, a result of the graduation of several populous countries from low-income status. That is good news, but it has repercussions. Donors will have to change the way they think about poverty alleviation. They should design development aid to benefit poor people, not just poor countries …

… goes to former-half-term governor Sarah Palin:

I'm through whining about a liberal press that holds conservative women to a different standard, because it doesn't do any good to whine about it. When a shot is taken at me, it is water off a duck's back because I know the important things we need to concentrate on in life — especially the national and international issues that are so important in our country.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I drafted an outline of what I think the Constitutional limits [garbled] have on the President with the War Clause. I went to five leading scholars, Constitutional scholars, and they drafted a treatise for me that is being distributed to every Senator. And I want to make it clear, and I’ll make it clear to the President: that if he takes this nation to war in Iran, without Congressional approval, I will make it my business to impeach him," – then Senator Joe Biden.

It's not a slam-dunk. War on Iran would have been a far bigger deal than the current war in Libya, with far wider and more traumatic global repercussions. But of course, we don't fully know yet what the consequences of the Libyan intervention will be. I remain of the view that, whatever the War Powers Act says, the Constitution clearly vests the power to go to war with the Congress, not the president. We need a Congressional debate and vote ASAP.

Dana Goldstein is impressed by a Rhode Island charter school's attempts at integration:

Given the charter school movement's role in shifting the education reform debate away from integration, I've long been intrigued by the Rhode Island Mayoral Academies (RIMA), a charter school management model built upon the idea that integration does matter. RIMA was founded in 2008 by Daniel McKee, the mayor of well-heeled Cumberland, RI, and Michael Magee, a former Rhode Island School of Design professor with deep ties to the national education reform movement. McKee and Magee convinced the Rhode Island legislature to pass a law allowing mayors of neighboring towns and cities to form partnerships to issue school charters; the resulting schools must be regional, accepting students by lottery from both urban and suburban districts.

Adam Garfinkle pulls no punches while criticizing our slipshod Libya strategy:

We have a great deal riding on the success of the Franco-British operation, assuming one actually takes shape in a hurry. If it doesn’t work, the U.S. government is very likely going to be dragged, even with the President privately kicking and screaming all the way, to a mission definition (again, the only logical one available) that will presage an open-ended commitment.

As I have said, a Qaddafi left armed and dangerous when the dust settles is an unacceptable outcome. Civilian planes will likely start failing out the sky, as did the one over Lockerbie; assassination attempts will multiply, like the attempted Libyan-backed murder of the Saudi king in 2003; al-Qaeda and affiliates might be aided and abetted to do Lord-knows-what to the Italians, the French, the British and, of course, to us. With nothing to lose, and way beyond the threshold of worrying about sanctions and such, Qaddafi could well become more dangerous than ever. If I were Silvio Berlusconi, in particular, I’d pick my future whorehouses with extreme care.

Douthat's outlook on Libya remains equally gloomy.

Glenna Hall rails against sentencing guidelines:

For me, sentencing, particularly for drug crimes, was in many ways the hardest part of my work as a judge. Not because the decisions or the work were hard (though of course they were), but because, given the restrictive nature of the sentencing guidelines in Washington, I had virtually no discretion or authority to consider anything about the human being standing before me. I could consider only the nature of the crime, expressed in a number, and the number and kinds of offenses the defendant had committed, also expressed in a number. From those two quantified factors was derived a quite narrow range I was required to use in imposing a sentence. Except in a minuscule set of circumstances, I could only work within that range. The temptation not to think at all but rather to pick a number in the middle was strong.

(Chart: BJS)

Groupon is launching a smartphone app with two buttons – "I'm hungry" and "I'm bored":

Unlike Groupon’s daily deals, which tend to generate a flood of customers, Groupon Now might lure just a few, but at the right time. Rob Solomon, Groupon’s president, says the true promise of Groupon Now is to help eliminate perishable inventory—food ingredients, labor hours, and anything else that’s wasted if not used immediately. “If we can eliminate 10 percent of perishability, we can change the dynamics for small business owners,” he says. Small businesses would become more like airlines, matching supply against demand to maximize revenues.

Ezra Klein sees the logic.

Wilkinson takes the humanitarian argument seriously:

What we really need is intelligent insight into the death and suffering intervention in Libya can be expected to prevent relative to other feasible options. That no one seems even to try to do this in a serious or systematic way—that it seems almost surprising when someone notes the existence of options "between sitting on our hands and launching something close to all-out war"—suggests that objective humanitarian success isn't actually the guiding light of Operation Odyssey Dawn. 

(Photo: A Libyan rebel stand on an unidentified tank near the key city of Ajdabiya on March 23, 2011 as loyalist forces have encircled the town. By Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)

The situation takes a turn for the worse:

"Government tanks are closing in on Misrata hospital and shelling the area," said the doctor, who was briefly reached by telephone before the line died. "The situation is very serious." … Abdul Basset, another rebel spokesman, said the shelling at Misrata hospital was continuing. "We fear a massacre. There are about 1,000 people in the hospital and most of them are in critical conditions, they can not move or run — many amputees among them," he said. "There are also ten Filipino nurses who we lost contact with on Friday."

He added the generator supplying electricity to the hospital had been destroyed, which left the facility without power. "We call on the world to help us. God help us, God help us," he said.

The above video from Misurata on Wednesday "appears to show gunfire, sniper fire and a line of tanks in the city." Transcript here. An overnight update from AJE:

Gaddafi's tanks rolled back into Misurata under the cover of darkness and began shelling the area near the main hospital, residents and opposition fighters said, resuming their attack after their guns were silenced on Wednesday by Western air raids. The city, around 200km east of Tripoli and home to a major oil refinery, remains of the the last opposition hold-outs in the west.

Extremely graphic footage of dead and injured children in Misurata here.