Click on WORD or PDF for full content
Picking’s staff will be off for a bit during the holidays. Be back soon.
We start today with more interesting WikiLeaks, this time on the administration’s attitude toward Honduras. Rick Richman has great commentary in Contentions.
In the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote that cables released by WikiLeaks show that the administration knew Honduran President Manuel Zelaya had threatened Honduran democracy — but supported him in order to offer President Obama a “bonding opportunity” with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and a chance to ingratiate himself with Latin America’s hard left.
…I have a simpler explanation — not inconsistent with O’Grady’s analysis but closer to the common theme in Obama’s foreign policy in other areas. The day after Zelaya was removed, Obama pronounced it a “coup.” That snap judgment remained American policy even as more and more facts contradicting Obama’s description emerged. After months pushing a reinstatement that virtually every element of Honduran political and civil society opposed, and even though the proper and practical solution was apparent, Obama still engaged in mystifying diplomacy, cutting off aid to a poverty-stricken ally. …
…Obama brought to the Oval Office a self-regard probably unmatched in American history. He apologized for his country while praising it for electing him. He thought that Iran could be handled with his outstretched hand; that a foreign head of state should receive an iPod with his speeches on it; that a video of him was sufficient for the Berlin Wall anniversary; that a prime minister should be summoned to the White House after-hours without press or pictures; that a Palestinian state would be created because this time they had Him. Russia and China were treated with respect, as was Iran, even as it held a fraudulent election and blew through his successive “deadlines.” But allies such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Israel, and Britain were treated differently.
What was visited upon Honduras last year was of a piece.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady has the in-depth story on Honduras in the WSJ.
“The last year and a half of the [President Manuel] Zelaya Administration will be, in my view, extraordinarily difficult for our bilateral relationship. His pursuit of immunity from the numerous activities of organized crime carried out in his administration will cause him to threaten the rule of law and institutional stability.”
—Charles Ford, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, May 15, 2008
…In the opening summary, Mr. Ford wrote: “Ever the rebellious teenager, Zelaya’s principal goal in office is to enrich himself and his family while leaving a public legacy as a martyr who tried to do good but was thwarted at every turn by powerful, unnamed interests.” The State Department says it does not comment on classified documents.
…Though Mr. Zelaya can be “gracious and charming,” wrote Mr. Ford, “there also exists a sinister Zelaya, surrounded by a few close advisors with ties to both Venezuela and Cuba and organized crime.” He eerily observed what Zelaya opponents would repeatedly allege privately in the year to come: “Due to his close association with persons believed to be involved with international organized crime,” the president could not be trusted. “I am unable to brief Zelaya on sensitive law enforcement and counter-narcotics actions due [to] my concern that this would put the lives of U.S. officials in jeopardy.”
The insightful diplomat also recognized Mr. Zelaya’s disdain for other institutions. He “resents the very existence of the Congress, the Attorney General and Supreme Court.” That resentment rose to the surface in June 2009 when the Supreme Court ruled that a referendum on his re-election was unconstitutional. Mr. Zelaya responded by leading a mob to break into a military installation where the ballots for his initiative were being stored.
Hondurans were appalled. The Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant, the military deported him, and Congress voted to remove him from office. …
Robert Samuelson writes that state and local governments have been doing fine thanks to the stimulus, but the real fiscal headache that is coming is underfunded retirements benefits.
…All in all, the present squeeze on states and localities is overstated. The truly bad news lies in the future with massive retiree pension and health benefits that haven’t been prefunded. How big are the shortfalls? All estimates are huge, though they vary depending on technical assumptions and coverage.
…Whatever the ultimate costs, they threaten future levels of public services. The generous benefits encourage workers to retire in their late 50s or early 60s after 25 years of service. The health benefits typically provide coverage until retirees qualify for Medicare at 65. To pay for unfunded benefits, government services must either be cut or taxes raised. How much is (again) unclear. Even low estimates by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College indicate that annual pension payments for some states could roughly double. In Illinois, they could go from 4.5 percent of spending to 8.7 percent. Covering retiree health benefits would add to that.
So support for schools, police, roads and other state and local activities is undermined by careless—or corrupt—bargains between politicians and their public-worker unions. Promises of generous future retirement benefits were expedient contract sweeteners, with most costs conveniently deferred. Even when pension contributions were supposed to be made, they were often reduced or postponed when budgets were tight. If these arrangements look familiar, they should. The U.S. auto industry adopted the same model; the costs helped bankrupt General Motors and Chrysler.
What states and localities can do about this is limited. Pension promises to existing employees are probably legally inviolate. Retiree health benefits are apparently less so and should be reduced or eliminated to limit incentives for early retirement. Even if politicians manage this arduous feat, past decisions will burden the future. Along with an unwillingness to curb Social Security and Medicare costs, America’s leaders have created another way to cheat their children.
The Daily Mail, UK, reports on snow and record cold temperatures in the UK. Any quotes from the Climate Research Unit geniuses?
Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned – grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill.
And tonight the nation was braced for another 10in of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures – with no let-up in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned.
The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910. …
Just to remind everyone how pervasive the greenist conspiracy had once been, let’s take a look back. In 2000, Charles Onians reported on global warming in the Independent, UK.
…Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.
However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. …
The Economist reports on an amazing cell phone milestone, and what the future holds.
SOMETIME in the next few months, the number of mobile phones in use will exceed 3.3 billion, or half the world’s population. No technology has ever spread faster around the globe: the mobile phone took less than two decades to reach this degree of penetration. But the ever-restless wireless industry has already set its sights on getting the other half connected. Two recent reports analyse how to add the “next billion” to the subscriber list. …
…Yet even as the industry strives to make handsets and services cheaper, governments keep adding costs—mainly by levying taxes and customs duties. And these are particularly high in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a report released this week by Frontier Economics, a consultancy, at the behest of the GSM Association (GSMA), an industry lobby. The average ratio of tax payments to operator revenues is 30%. On average the mobile industry, which accounts for 4% of GDP, contributes 7% of national tax revenue.
This enthusiasm for taxation is easy to explain: governments have to tax something, and mobile phones are an easy target, since operators’ billing systems do all the hard work. But treating mobile phones as a cash cow is shortsighted, says Gabriel Solomon of the GSMA, because mobile-specific taxes reduce demand. If governments did away with them and charged only VAT, tax revenues from the mobile industry would be around 3% higher by 2012, the report found, and the average penetration rate would increase from 33% to 41%. (Studies have found that in a typical developing country, an increase in mobile penetration of 10% boosts GDP growth by around one percentage point.)
Whether or not finance ministers are not convinced by such calculations, operators seem to be. Some have offered to guarantee tax revenues if mobile-specific levies are scrapped. …