This Is Not News

So tonight on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Goran and Eames are trying to figure out who dropped a soda machine on a guy. They find a suspect, and then their attention turns to the suspect’s psychiatrist. The doctor was a military reservist who had served at Guantanamo Bay helping with the interrogations, and was so wracked with guilt that she came back home and tried to see if she could use the interrogation techniques in a therapeutic way. Instead she drove her patient to a psychotic episode. At one point during the investigation, we take a break from the crime-stopping so that Goran and Eams can have a slightly heavy-handed conversation with their superiors about whether such interrogation techniques are justifiable in war.

Nice little ripped from the headlines bit, especially when I see this headline that the Bush Administration is trying to find a compromise to Sen. John McCain’s recent Senate bill prohibiting the United States from using “cruel, inhumane and degrading” means of interrogation. I can not wrap my brain around the fact that we have to have this conversation. First there’s a moral argument – we should be better than the people we’re trying to fight. Then there’s the reciprocal treatment aspect – we don’t want to contribute to an atmosphere where our own servicepeople can be subjected to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment if captured. Plus the moral standing concerns – if we want to go preaching to other countires about how they behave, it behooves us to have our own house in order. And then there’s the whole question of whether tortue is even an effective means of interrogation anyway – if it just motivates people to tell the tortuers what they think they want to hear, it can produce as much false evidence as good leads. This article in the Washington Post tells of some of the mistakes that have been made in the CIA’s program to snatch up and interrogate suspects. I couldn’t help but be particularly struck by this passage:

The CIA inspector general is investigating a growing number of what it calls “erroneous renditions,” according to several former and current intelligence officials.

One official said about three dozen names fall in that category; others believe it is fewer. The list includes several people whose identities were offered by al Qaeda figures during CIA interrogations, officials said. One turned out to be an innocent college professor who had given the al Qaeda member a bad grade, one official said.

I guess I should be careful with the grade book this term, huh?

Interesting discussion going on at Young Philly Politics about the local Chamber of Commerce’s efforts to drum up support for a reduction in the local business-privilege tax.

Now, I am not a tax expert. The city’s Tax Reform Commission did say that our system needs simplifying, which surprises me not at all, and that tax rates ultimately needed to go down in order to keep the city competitive. Ray at YPP seems to have some doubts about that, and I see where he’s coming from. Cities provide a certain critical mass of customers and workers that companies are always going to need to be around. But the suburbs do try to compete with the city. I live right near the border with Bucks County, and when we drive to one of the suburban malls we’re greeted by a “Welcome to Business-Friendly Bensalem” sign. And the city and commonwealth wind up providing huge incentives to companies on a case-by-case basis anyway, that maybe we wouldn’t have to provide if we had abetter system in the first place. So simpler and lower taxes are fine by me, if they’re affordable. And there’s the rub. Even the head of the Commission has pointed out that it isn’t cheap to run a city, and wonders where the city will find the money to pay for the Commission’s grand 10-year plan. It may well be that any tax simplification plans are going to have to turn out to be revenue neutral for the time being.

But the Chamber is clearly going great guns to try and get this particular tax cut enacted. It’ll be interesting to see how this fight turns out.

Back in high school the overall conservativeness of a suburban Catholic college prep school was occasionally broken up in interesting ways. One of them was my junior year course in Social Justice, taught by Ms. Lenie Schaareman, who was also the moderator of the World Affairs Club. She was someone firm in her convictions, willing to stand up for them, and not afraid to go against the tide. And so it should be no surprise that snotty high school students such as myself occasionally had a laugh at her expense. Sixteen-year-olds don’t really want to hear about how the World Bank and the IMF have affected international finance and the Third World economy. And we couldn’t quite understand why she was always going on about agribusiness.

Well, I’m a little older and a little wiser now. Globalization is a major buzzword and area of contention. I’m taking a Third World history course at the moment and trying to process the ways my buying habits ripple out to affect the world. (I have to in order to keep my Dewey merit badge.) And of course agribusiness crops up frequently. (Pun intended.) So I was happy to see Neil Sinhababu round up some links on the agribusiness issue over at Ezra Klein’s blog. There’s a good discussion in the comments, so check it out.