Narcotics Content

No, I still haven't gotten over staying at a Drury Motel and being refused access to cabdrollery because of its "drug and narcotics content". To be sure, I may have mentioned some few times that the drug war is losing, since for all the money the country has spent, there is no decline in use and sales of drugs. I may have mentioned that we lost support in Afghanistan by wiping out the crops that were supposed to support Afghan families, not processed for their own kids' use. Maybe I should tell you, though, that I'm not going to promote the use of drugs, and consider the legal ones much overused.

There has been a proposal that needs serious consideration, though, that Afghan farmers be allowed to grow poppies as they are already doing, but as a legal crop. The knee-jerk refusal of our government to take such a logical path is not a sign of purity, but of pure stupidity. One workable version of this proposal was posted yesterday at Informed Comment.

Globalization influences the relative profitability of different activities. In the US, globalization reduced profitability of steel production and increased it for software. In corrupt states, profitability soars in the production of goods and services that are internationally illegal: drugs, sex trafficking, contraband weapons or cigarettes, or counterfeit goods. . . .

Once organized crime and its supporters become the largest employers in the country, they play the same role that a more conventional business plays in other countries. They try to influence the political process. Moreover, they need to control the political arena - election of presidents and parliaments - even more tightly than "normal" business people because their very existence depends on having a government willing to tolerate violation of international rules as the country's main activity.

The government structure that emerges is "endogenous": It reflects domestic social and economic structure, which in turn is the outcome of greater international trade and economic incentives, much like other countries, except that the governance structure is, almost inevitably, more corrupt. The recent World Bank and International Monetary Fund's insistence on reforming governance in these countries is bound to fail because the cause is misdiagnosed.
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A different approach is necessary: legalize the currently illegal activities like prostitution and drug use and modify the often draconian US and European immigration laws that stimulate human trafficking. If prostitution and drugs indeed became like haircuts and candies, their production would obey the same rules: Countries that export beauty services and confectionary products are not notably more corrupt than others. Some of the current entrepreneurs would remain in these activities, others would move to others. In either case, there would be a general "normalization" akin to what was observed after prohibition on alcohol sales was lifted in the US. Thousands of "bootleggers" became normal producers of alcohol, alcohol-linked criminality decreased, and only a minority of those with preference for high risk and crime moved to other illegal activities. . . .

Good sense is rejected by the worst administration ever because it has to court a base that cannot get beyond the concept of prohibition. The crime wave that was caused by the original prohibition doesn't convince the right wing. This time, they're sure they will get control by some magical mind meld that will turn everyone into a model citizen who is exactly like them. That is to say, when the right wing envisions a perfect world, lemonade is the beverage of choice, gays are reformed by proper churching, Sunday morning resounds with church bells of a conforming tone, and the demon that lives in them dominates you and me too.

Until such hell on earth comes, there will be differences, and working with them works but mindless opposition doesn't. A purification of other countries, like Afghanistan, turns the citizens of other parts of the world against us. Imposing our idea of order, as we have seen in our occupation of Iraq, only shows us for the insensitive barbarians that we have become under right wing leadership.

We can begin making ourselves part of the real world soon, when the occupied White House is regained. The damage the U.S. wingnuts have wreaked will begin to be replaced by reasonable, reality-based policies when the hirees of the right (Justice Department practices in that matter were detailed in Diane's post earlier) have been winnowed out. That can't come too soon.

Heckuva Job, Wolfie!

Paul Wolfowitz finally announced his resignation as head of the World Bank. He'll be leaving at the end of June. I anticipate that more details on the terms of his departure will be forthcoming, but right now the world's press is more interested in examining why things went so wrong for Mr. Wolfowitz at this most prestigious of jobs. One such post-mortem appeared in this morning's NY Times.

Paul D. Wolfowitz was ready to move on from the Pentagon in early 2005. He had been thwarted in his effort to become defense secretary or national security adviser. And the war in Iraq had deteriorated. So when the World Bank presidency came open, he jumped at the opportunity.

It offered him a “second chance” to redeem his reputation and realize his ambitions, says a friend who has known him for decades. ...

Now, as friends and critics sort through the wreckage of Mr. Wolfowitz’s bank career, they wonder if it was doomed from the outset. Supporters say he arrived at the bank, a citadel of liberalism, from a four-year stint at the Pentagon, where he was an early champion of going to war with Iraq and left bearing its stigma. He was determined to shake up the status quo by rooting out what he saw as corruption and waste, and demanding measurable results from the bank’s many aid programs.

...others say Mr. Wolfowitz repeated the mistakes he had made at the Pentagon: adopting a single-minded position on certain matters, refusing to entertain alternative views, marginalizing dissenters. [Emphasis added]

Doomed from the outset? Probably, but not for the reasons his friends cited in the article. Mr. Wolfowitz was no banker or financial expert. He obviously knew little about the inner workings of the bank and saw only what he wanted to see based on a preconceived notion that the bank was wasteful, inefficient, and corrupt. In other words, he was a combination of Michael Brown (who knew Arabian horses, but not emergency management) and John Bolton (who hated the institution he was appointed to). Add an absolutely horrendous management style, and the end result was pretty much preordained.

One of the questions I still have and one which probably won't be answered any time soon is why the White House appointed Mr. Wolfowitz to this position in the first place. Was it simply a reward for his service in promoting the Iraq War? Was it a way to subvert a notably liberal world institution? Was it a way to get him out of the Pentagon where he was beginning to cause more problems than he was worth once Donald Rumsfeld was pushed out of the picture?

Whatever the reason, he was a poor choice, just as so many of the Bush appointees have been.

When The Inconceivable Becomes The Norm

The internal committee of the World Bank has issued its report on Paul Wolfowitz and, according to the Los Angeles Times, it is a damning one.

World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz violated his contract, broke the bank's code of conduct and trampled on numerous staff rules in arranging a promotion and a series of raises for his companion, a bank employee, according to a scathing report by an internal committee investigating the controversy.

Citing "the damage done to the reputation of the World Bank Group and to that of the president," the seven-member committee recommended that the institution's board "consider whether Mr. Wolfowitz will be able to provide the leadership needed to ensure that the bank continues to operate to the fullest extent possible" in its mission to fight world poverty.

The report, delivered to the board and released Monday evening, also skewered Wolfowitz for "questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self-interest over institutional best interest."

What CEO would even consider staying on with that kind of assessment? Well, Mr. Wolfowitz, for one, but then he is acting true to form for a Bush Administration appointee. It certainly helps his cause that the White House continues to back the man who used his position to transfer his girlfriend to a post in the State Department with a raise that made her better paid than the Secretary of State.

"Paul is one of the most able public servants I've ever known, and I've worked with him a lot over the years," Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox News during a visit Monday to Aqaba, Jordan. "I think he's a very good president of the World Bank, and I hope he will be able to continue."

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. contacted colleagues from Group of Seven countries "and expressed that he does not think the facts merit dismissal," a department official said.

"A clear reading of the facts in this report demonstrates that this was a unique situation, missteps occurred on all sides, and communication may not have been clear enough," the official said.

The White House had appealed unsuccessfully to the committee to delay sending its report to the board so that administration officials could do "a little internal reporting" on it, said White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto.

Mr. Wolfowitz has just been busted for an egregious lapse of ethics (and this is a bank president, keep in mind) and the US Treasury Secretary doesn't think this merits dismissal? The Vice President thinks Mr. Wolfowitz has been a very good bank president? Unbelievable.

At this point, Mr. Wolfowitz cannot possibly be an effective World Bank president: the bank employees hate and distrust him, the board of directors believe he engaged in unethical conduct, his investors are busy distancing themselves from the whole operation. Yet the White House continues to insist he be allowed to stay on.

One can only conclude that the White House believes that the World Bank, like the federal agencies here at home, is simply an administration toy: to be played with for all it is worth, and then broken when it ceases to amuse.