Argentina and oil production

Mark Weisbrot, who commonly defends the economic policies of left-leaning governments in Latin America, defends the nationalization of YPF. The crux of his argument is that Argentina needed to do so in order to increase oil production.

There are sound reasons for this move, and the government will most likely be proved right once again. Repsol, the Spanish oil company that currently owns 57% of Argentina's YPF, hasn't produced enough to keep up with Argentina's rapidly growing economy. From 2004 to 2011, Argentina's oil production has actually declined by almost 20% and gas by 13%, with YPF accounting for much of this. And the company's proven reserves of oil and gas have also fallen substantially over the past few years.

However, has anyone made a convincing argument that nationalization will increase production? Steven Bodzin recently wrote that this assumption is wrong:

Oil output and investment were the key issues here, but like Noel, I don’t see anyone stepping in with adequate money to really increase investment. The Chinese might loan some money (Venezuela style) or try to send their own work crews (Sudan-style) but if there’s one thing China likes, it’s stability — and that’s not on order in Argentina. Other companies? Talk to Americas Petrogas, an explorer with big chunks of Argentine shale under license. It’s lost a third of its value in two months as this whole drama has played out. It’s going to be tough for them to get money from the public markets, and the bonds and banks have been shut off since Argentina defaulted a decade ago. I could see a few of import-dependent countries investing, including China and Chile, but with heavy conditions, and not with the kind of money Argentina needs.

See also Boz on distribution problems. Is there reason to believe, as Weisbrot does, that the government "will most likely be proved right once again"? Right now, Argentina is trying to get more investment from Petrobras, which seems lukewarm to the idea:

Brazilian Energy Minister Edison Lobao said during a news conference following the meeting that Petrobras would invest all that it could in Argentina, which he said would amount to roughly $500 million in 2012, unchanged from 2011.

So let's wait and see.

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Romney's Latino DREAM

In the L.A. Times Tamar Jacoby (who is in favor of immigration reform) has a good Republican take on the non-citizenship DREAM Act proposed by Marco Rubio. She makes a number of points that echo a discussion I had in my Politics of Latino Immigration class yesterday (a somewhat more sluggish discussion than usual since student papers were due that day as well). She argues that Romney needs to jump on this because he can nail Democrats who claim to be in favor of reform yet oppose this bill in no small part because they do not want to give Republicans a boost on immigration in an election year.

Immigration will not decide this election but softening Romney's stance on immigration will help in a few key swing states with large numbers of eligible Latino voters. Passing this bill could neatly remove immigration from Obama's quiver during the campaign.

This isn't just the right thing to do. It would also help Romney solve his problem communicating with Latino voters. Truth is he has a lot to say that Latinos could find appealing — if they could hear him. But they can't hear him because some of what he says on immigration is so off-putting, many stop listening to the rest of his pitch. 

For many Latinos, immigration is a threshold issue and Romney is stuck on the wrong side of the threshold. That's why he's doing so poorly among Latino voters, winning just 14% to President Obama's 70% in one poll.

However, she omits one critical point, namely that the non-citizenship aspect is ideological. Latinos vote Democratic overwhelmingly, so Republicans do not want to enfranchise a group that will vote against them. She is correct that the proposal does not rule out citizenship, but it does makes it extraordinarily difficult. From an immigrant point of view, however, that may be far preferable to the precarious undocumented status.

This last point is under-analyzed. We don't really know is what potential DREAMers and their families, along with Latino voters more broadly, think about the proposal. Is citizenship a deal breaker? My hunch is that it's not, but I'm sure we'll soon see polls to give us a clue.

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YPF in comparative perspective

I like this article by Joshua Keating in Foreign Policy, which is a quick comparative historical view of the YPF nationalization in Argentina. He notes five steps in the anatomy of a takeover:

1. Choose your moment
2. Build your case
3. Make them an offer they can't refuse
4. Put the boot down
5. Don't get overthrown

Given the stakes involved, the last point deserves more attention. When do governments get overthrown and when do they not? Argentina is less polarized than Venezuela was in the first few years of Hugo Chávez's presidency, and Spain will react differently from the United States. Meanwhile, Iran in 1953 is tightly bound to the Cold War.

Fernández's nationalization of YPF seems like the latest in a series of provocative international gestures, including efforts to reassert control over the Falkland Islands. While she's clearly counting on the political benefits of these bold movements making up for the international backlash, she's entering very dangerous waters.

Dangerous, I suppose, but the backlash is likely to be more economic than political.

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Blogs not dead yet

Henry Farrell writes at Crooked Timber about the academic blog wiki he started that is now going to be kept up by the Center for History and New Media. I agree with the following:

However, as best as I can tell from personal browsing, academic blogs appear to be relatively robust. It’s a lot harder than it was nine years ago to create an academic blog that can attract substantial public attention, but if you’re primarily interested in talking to other academics and a few interested bystanders, it’s still relatively easy. Academic blogs, unlike e.g. tech blogs or some political opinion blogs, don’t usually have sufficient potential audience to become commercially viable. But most academics are used to talking to smaller audiences, and as long as blogging technology is cheap or free, there will be some people at least who’ll be interested in doing it.

Just like Fidel Castro and the Concertación in Chile, the death of blogs has been predicted for a long time but hasn't yet happened. After more than six years, I'm still really enjoying and deriving a lot of benefits from it, and in fact UNC Charlotte is working to encourage more faculty to use social media, including but not limited to blogs. Blogs will likely persist as long as there are professors (and now more graduate students as well) interested in using short form writing to discuss their research interests and/or current events.

So when the death cart comes around, don't put blogs on it yet.

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Romney and Obama on immigration

It seems clear that the Romney campaign is committed to a strategy of pretending he has a moderate stance on immigration, then accusing Obama of not passing immigration reform.

"We now have a Republican nominee who said that the Arizona laws are a model for the country," Obama said, referring to the state's laws that call on police to check the immigration status of people they suspect of being in the country illegally. 

"Very troublesome," he added. Critics of Arizona's approach say it could lead to ethnic profiling and Obama said it allowed people to be stopped "based on an assumption." 

Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Romney, said the former Massachusetts governor was committed to repairing the U.S. immigration system, "respecting those who are waiting patiently to come here legally, and finally ending illegal immigration in a civil and resolute manner." 

She stressed Obama had also promised in 2008 to tackle immigration reform in his first year in office but failed to do so. "President Obama only talks about immigration reform when he's seeking votes," she said.

There's quite a bit wrong here. First, if you deport record numbers of people then you're not in a position to call anyone's policies "troublesome."

Second, Romney has never explained how he respects those waiting to enter the country. In fact, he has rejected the idea of a temporary worker program for low-skilled labor. He also has never mentioned the insane backlog of immigration cases.

Third, Romney has definitely never advocated a "civil" end to illegal immigration. A "resolute" one, maybe, if by that we mean ramped up law enforcement.

Fourth, oh forget it, as there's really no point in going on. From now until November we will hear all sorts of outlandish comments about immigration, many of them unrooted in reality. I just have to get used to it.

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Chávez absence

Everyone very interested in Hugo Chávez's decision not to attend the Summit of the Americas, and instead go to Cuba for more cancer treatments. Nelson Bocaranda claimed that Chávez needs to stay there 1-2 weeks, and that seems to be confirmed. Over the next week or two, rumors and news will be mixed together even more.

I'm quoted in this Businessweek article on the topic. The bottom line is that this is not something Chávez wants to miss. There are relatively few opportunities to overcome the power imbalance between him and the U.S. president, but having a summit where both are present is one. International institutions offer that possibility at times. He can say whatever he wants, bring some sort of symbolic gift, etc., and the U.S. president has to deal with it. The fact that he is giving that up says more about his health than any rumor.

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Predicting the Latino vote

A student emailed me this article in Time about predicting the influence of the Latino vote in November. It points out accurately that the idea of Republicans needing some particular share of the national vote is misleading since the national vote is irrelevant in U.S. presidential elections. I agree with this assessment:

Latinos are expected to make up about one in ten voters this year, but many of those votes, in big states like Texas, California and New York, will have no impact on the electoral college, since those states are not in play for Romney. But Latinos can have a big impact on the outcomes in Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and Florida, and a marginal impact in states like North Carolina and Ohio, all of which both parties will contest.

One key things missing here is the percentage of the Latino population that is eligible to vote in each state. In states with long-standing Latino communities, of course that will be much higher than places like North Carolina, where it is a relatively newly arrived constituency, has a lower proportion of eligible voters, and a much lower proportion of registered voters. But it is true that the impact will be marginal.

Nonetheless, as the race heats up I expect my phone to start ringing with robo-calls and my mailbox to fill up with fliers.

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Latino vote and Latin America

Businessweek has an article with an argument I've heard before and don't really buy, namely that Latinos in the United States will turn out in part because of Obama's visits to Latin America.

“The president desperately needs high voter turnout among Hispanic Americans,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University in Houston. “It doesn’t hurt for him to be in Colombia, and being seen with Latino leaders of the hemisphere is not a bad photo-op in an election year.” 

Obama’s campaign is gearing up for a close election fight against Republican Mitt Romney, putting a premium on gaining an edge with any voting group. Obama is actively courting Hispanics -- who gave him 67 percent of their votes in 2008 -- with a Spanish-language website and by recruiting Spanish-speaking volunteers and using Spanish-language voter registration forms and phone banks. 

“Key swing states that have large Hispanic populations will be extremely attentive” to the trip, said Susan MacManus, professor of political science at the University of South Florida in Tampa. “Many feel that Latin and South America has been ignored.”

I just don't see evidence for this. Check out this December 2011 poll from the Pew Hispanic Center on the most important issues for Latinos:

Latinos are concerned about their lives here, not policy toward their country of origin (Cuba excepted, of course). I can't figure how a visit to Colombia will suddenly prompt a Colombian-American to vote when they otherwise wouldn't have, or vote for Obama when they were thinking of Romney. Or at least there will be so few as to be inconsequential.

Update: The Miami Herald has the same argument. But where's the empirical evidence?

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Michael Lazzara's Luz Arce and Pinochet's Chile

There is a large and still growing literature on traumatic memory in Chile.  Nearly forty years after the coup and over twenty since Augusto Pinochet left power, the powerful psychological effects of political violence remain painfully relevant. The academic literature has gradually though incompletely responded to understand it. In Luz Arce and Pinochet’s Chile:Testimony in the Aftermath of State Violence, Michael Lazzara grapples with some of the most difficult aspects of memory through a series of interviews with Luz Arce.

The case of Luz Arce is unsettling and tragic, not only because of the suffering she depicts but because she forces all of us to ask ourselves uncomfortable questions about how we would react under extreme duress. As she detailed in her book El infierno (published in Chile in 1993, with an English translation, The Inferno, in 2004) she became part of Salvador Allende’s inner circle in 1972 and worked as a militant in the Socialist Party. The military government abducted her in 1974, tortured, raped, and shot her, then worked to make her a collaborator.  She subsequently provided not only details about the structure of leftist organizations, but also specific names. She became a formal employee of the dictatorship’s notorious intelligence agency, the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), and its successor, the Centro Nacional de Informaciones (CNI). That book is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the depth of repression of the Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

Lazzara begins with an abridged version of her statement to the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1990, which is essentially a boiled down version of The Inferno. He follows with seven thematic chapters consisting of interviews he conducted with Arce from 2002 to 2007. It ends with a discussion by a number of participants in a 2008 forum in Santiago based on the based on the book, which was first published in Spanish but then updated and expanded in an English version.

It isn’t easy reading, because of course the interviews probe the very architecture of authoritarian repression in all its naked brutality. When confronted by the reality that her work with the DINA led directly to four deaths, she quickly responses that “as a functionary I bore no responsibility for deaths linked to the detention of people or to torture” and that “I was forced to be a functionary” (p. 80, emphasis in original). She struggles to reconcile her personal need for catharsis by writing the book in the first place with the fact that she worked for the DINA for an extended period of time, an experience she admits was not entirely negative.

What the book demonstrates is the need for a framework within which we can better understand not only memory but also collaboration.  The complexity of Steve Stern’s trilogy on memory in postauthoritarian Chile (TheMemory Box of Pinochet’s Chile) attests to the difficulties inherent in explaining the experiences even of those who did not switch sides. When perpetrator and victim get blurred together, analysis is even harder.  For example, the forum itself demonstrates how problematic the term “collaboration” can be. The discussants—one of whom suffered the loss of her husband because of Luz Arce--differ greatly in their treatment of Arce, and come to no agreement about how to determine where the line can be drawn between victim and active participant. Rather than acting as a real conclusion, the forum is characterized by the raising of multiple and sometimes contradictory questions.  Arce’s testimony reflects the fact that her answers to such questions change over time.  When asked whether she felt that she was a victim, she responds that initially she did not, but then later did, especially after talking to the Rettig Commission (p. 87).

Ultimately, then, this is a book that seeks not to answer questions, but to leave them open intentionally.  In the introduction, Lazzara notes that he hopes the book can serve a pedagogical function (p. 9).  Of that, there is little doubt.  For an instructor, it would be a useful addition to courses on Latin American politics or on authoritarian rule more generally for the issues it forces the reader to contemplate.

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New website

For anyone who goes to my academic website, here is the new link. By now the old address should be redirecting automatically. For all the constant work I do online, I had always found website updating to be clunky. Now the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is using WordPress. It took a bit of getting used to, but is much easier than anything else I've used because it is just blogging.

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Santos interview

Juan Forero interviews Juan Manuel Santos in the Washington Post. Very rational discussion about drugs, particularly in terms of wanting a broader discussion about strategies without trying to force a particular proposal. Here is a particularly good point about measuring success:

“When I was minister of defense, we were very successful. We took down all the members that were in the list of high-value targets in the drug trafficking, all of them. They are either in jail or dead. We confiscated unprecedented amounts of cocaine. We eradicated unprecedented amounts of hectares of coca, and the DEA director came here and congratulated me and congratulated our people, saying we are doing very well. And you know how success was defined? By the price of cocaine in Los Angeles or in New York or in Washington. And so, because the price went up, we were being successful. But at the same time, if the price goes up, the incentive goes up. So there is a structured sort of contradiction in the whole setup.”

Meanwhile, Moisés Naím recently had a worshipful interview with Alvaro Uribe, who is really mad about Santos' moderation (and also does occasional Twitter rants).

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Net zero migration

It can be frustrating to read stories like this one in the Christian Science Monitor. The topic is "net zero" migration from Mexico, which means the number of Mexicans going to the United States is roughly the same as the number of Mexicans returning from the United States. The problem is that this is too often conflated with a massive exodus, but they are not the same thing.

There remains no evidence of any large scale exodus. Instead, as readers of our book will know, the demographic fit between the United States and Mexico is gradually disappearing. Young Mexican migrants came in large numbers, and now we see not an exodus, but rather a demographic equilibrium. The U.S. economy no longer needs so many young workers, and there are some more economic opportunities in Mexico than there were in the past, which means fewer Mexicans are prompted to emigrate. Of course more Mexicans came back when the economy crashed--the article notes an increase from 2005 to 2010--but there is no tsunami. Even that increase can be attributed in no small part to the Obama administration's commitment to deportation. Between 2005 and 2010, the number of deportations increased by about 150,000.

In short, I am hesitant to proclaim, as is now fashionable, that there is a remarkable transformation going on. If you view the situation from a demographic perspective, it seems more a gradual and inevitable shift. This also means it can last quite a while, but is not permanent.

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Measuring the drug war

Tyler Cowen argues that Mexico is winning the drug war because it is experiencing economic growth.

If Mexico keeps on getting richer, and the drug lords keep on killing each other, eventually Mexico will win.  Think rates of return, or think of government revenue as rising over time.  I’m not saying the drug problem will ever disappear there.

I don't believe I've ever seen success defined in this way, and I don't understand the causal logic. Economic growth leads to more government revenue, which leads to...what? More resources to fight the drug war? Maybe, though right now the problem seems more about strategy than funding per se.

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Professors writing stylishly

From the Wall Street Journal, on professors writing "stylishly."

Unfortunately, the myth persists, especially among junior faculty still winding their anxious way up the tenure track, that the gates of academic publishing are guarded by grumpy sentries programmed to reject everything but jargon-laden, impersonal prose. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Nearly everyone, including the editors of academic journals, would much rather read lively, well-written articles than the slow-moving sludge of the typical scholarly paper.

This is an interesting point. Junior scholars feel that they have to prove they understand their particular research niche, which can definitely lead to bad writing. That can persist into senior scholardom as well. And, of course, some people are just bad writers no matter their intention. We fall in love with polysyllabic words, like polysyllabic, and throw them like confetti into article manuscripts.

Unfortunately, she doesn't explain why a professor should bother. If arcane language gets where you want to be, then what's the point of being "stylish"? She does mention that it makes work more accessible, which is true, though she doesn't explain why that is necessary. In some cases, it isn't. In political science, however, I think it is, at least to the extent that professors hope their work spreads as far as possible, including the non-academic world. Not everyone cares about this, to be true, but a lot do.

My opinion is that good--if not necessarily "stylish"--writing also increases your chances at publication. Of course, it cannot overcome a bad analysis, and I don't want to overstate the case, but good writing makes the reader and editor more favorably disposed toward you. And that's always a good thing.

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Alabama's buyer remorse

Prior to passage of the Alabama immigration law, everyone with a modicum of sense knew it would be a disaster. Now after its gone into effect, even people without any sense are realizing it is a disaster, and so are proposing revisions.

Unfortunately, the real lesson is going entirely unlearned. These laws hurt the states that pass them. They will never achieve the goals intended by their authors. What's so strange is how proponents believe that putting immigration reform on the backs of state businesses will create jobs.

It doesn't matter what revisions you make. In fact, they simply may make things more confusing, because constantly changing already complex rules just leaves everyone clueless. The bill will hurt Alabama, as the average Alabaman will pay the price that their elected officials refuse to acknowledge.

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More Cuba and the OAS

U.S. News & World Report has a story about Cuba's potential inclusion in the OAS. The article makes it sound like there will be some huge push coming.

The Communist nation has made significant economic policy changes in recent years, but is still far from meeting the political criteria set forth by regional leaders at a previous summit in Quebec in 2001. As a result, according to Piccone, further efforts to push for Cuba's inclusion in the OAS—without the appropriate political changes from the country itself—could be detrimental the idea of democracy in the hemisphere.

The problem here, which I discussed last time the OAS issue came up, is that Cuba has never expressed an interest in joining the OAS. In fact, it has explicitly said it doesn't want to. Until that changes, this is all much ado about nada.

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Quote of the day: Alabama

On the screw-up that is currently E-Verify from the new Alabama immigration law.

While the law says "every business entity or employer in this state shall enroll in E-Verify," Bentley spokesman Jeremy King wasn't able to say Tuesday which employers must register. 

"That's for the lawyers to figure out," he said.

That is the governor's spokesman talking, and he does not seem unduly concerned. That sums up exactly what I've been saying for months and months. State-level immigration law is primarily about paying lots of lawyers. And creating new paperwork for small businesses to deal with.

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Sanity in the South

So some semblance of sanity shines through. In North Carolina, a specially created immigration committee in the legislature decided after a number of hearings that the state will not pursue its own copycat legislation. Meanwhile, Mississippi's copycat legislation died in the senate.

This does not necessarily mean no such legislation will be pursued in the future. In the North Carolina case, there is a clear sense that it is a waste of time and money to push anything before the Supreme Court issues a ruling. Interestingly, though, in Mississippi it seemed the economic impact was more important than the Supreme Court, thus perhaps making it less likely it will pass in the future.

But Laura Hipp, a spokeswoman for Reeves, indicated that not all of the self-proclaimed conservatives in the state were on the same page. 

"Lt. Gov. Reeves believes we need to do something to rid our state of illegal immigrants, but he respects the fact that the chairman listened to concerns expressed by the Mississippi Economic Council, Farm Bureau, the Mississippi Poultry Assn., and local cities, counties, police chiefs and sheriffs, about the potential impact of this bill on taxpayers," Hipp said in a statement.

Either way, a little sanity is nice.

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Romney and immigration

These comments from Mitt Romney is really something else. He criticizes Barack Obama for failing to pass immigration reform while having Democratic control of Congress, which is an entirely fair criticism. The wee problem, though, is that Romney is dead set against immigration reform and so wouldn't have even bothered pretending to try.

“This has always been a priority for the president he chooses to do nothing about,” Romney said. “Let the immigrant community not forget that while he uses this as a political weapon, he has not taken responsibility for fixing the problems we have.”

So that argument won't take Romney too far. Then he slips straight into the rabbit hole by saying we need to we make it too hard for immigrants with skills we need to get into the country while also saying we need to stop illegal immigration. The uncomfortable truth, so to speak, is that those are the workers we need. The idea that we only need high skilled workers is fantasy.

“My own view is our immigration policies are upside down,” he continued. “We make it very hard for people who have skills that we need — education and English-speaking and workplace skills — make it very hard for those people to come here and to stay here. On the other hand, those that don’t have any of those things are often times able to come either across the border or over-stay their visas and remain in this country indefinitely. So we’ve got it backwards.”

I guess he does not think that a farm, construction site, hotel, etc. represent "workplaces."

In all, these arguments aren't going to do anything for him, good or bad. His views on immigration are well known, and voters will not be thinking much about them when it comes time to choose.

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Terrorism again

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says the Latin American drug routes could become bomb routes.

Dempsey is wary of a dangerous network of drug traffickers, weapons smugglers and organized criminal elements in South and Central America. They have developed transit avenues — by land, sea and air — that one day could be used to move far more dangerous things, like weapons of mass destruction, across the southern U.S. border, he said in an interview with reporters traveling with him.

Framing Latin America in terms of terrorism has an old and essentially unpleasant history. It is particularly unfortunate to lump disparate threats together and serve them up on one undifferentiated plate.

Rhetoric matters, and especially with regard to terrorism can too easily lead to hasty and likely unproductive policies. He was talking off the cuff, so hopefully this does not mean too much. But the threats to U.S. security as well as citizen security in Latin America are quite a lot more complicated than this.

And, incidentally, we don't fight this effectively by trying to regain "lost" jungle skills.

On Wednesday, Dempsey visited the Brazilian city of Manaus, near the confluence of the Amazon river and the Rio Negro. He toured a steamy outpost where Brazilian troops train in jungle warfare, a skill that U.S. soldiers have lost during a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

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Geography of violence in Latin America

Deborah Yashar gave an interesting talk at the luncheon today at SECOLAS. She's in the middle of a project that examines the geography of violence in Latin America, and especially why it occurs in some places and not others. The basic argument is that the growth of violence seems to correspondent to the growth of illicit drug routes. She looked at the region, but then also within countries (the cases of El Salvador and Guatemala) since violence is not distributed evenly within them either. She argued that the violence was not about the drugs per se, but rather the conflict over territorial control, either between DTOs and with the government. Someone in the audience brought up a good question about Venezuela, where there is a lot of violence in Caracas for example, without being a major transit route. She acknowledged it as an anomaly, admitting it was a work in progress (I liked her candor about weaknesses in the argument, actually).

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Secolas 2012

Blogging is light because I'm at the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies conference, and wifi has been hard to come by. My paper is entitled "Congressional Activism and U.S Policy Toward Latin America."

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Immigration polls

Rasmussen has a new poll on gaining control of the border, and the question is a mess.

In terms of immigration legislation, which is more important - gaining control of the border or legalizing the status of undocumented workers already living in the United States?    

Several problems here. First, "gaining control" isn't defined and on one has ever defined it. So many people will think it's more important, even though they're not sure what it is and it may not be possible. Second, the question clearly leads respondents to believe that border security and adjustment of status are mutually exclusive, when they're not. So if you read a news article saying 60% people want to control the border, be careful about what conclusions you take from that.

For example, a Republican polling firm, Tarrance, reports that the overwhelming majority of Republicans--even Tea Partiers--support a guest worker program.

The Wall Street Journal reporter sums up exactly what I've been writing on this blog for years.

The electorate seems to appreciate that foreign nationals fill niches in the workforce that help grow the U.S. economy -- and that giving these economic migrants more legal ways to enter the country means that fewer will come illegally. Could it be that voters have a more sophisticated understanding of human capital and labor markets than politicians give them credit for?

Absolutely. Americans are far less divided on this issue than many politicians would have you believe, and there is more support for common sense than the presidential primaries would suggest.

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Anti-faculty op-ed

Robert Farley skewers this anti-faculty op-ed in the Washington Post. Normally the misconceptions about academia come from outside of it, so it's disheartening to see it come from someone who should know better. The idea that faculty work, even just the teaching part, is measured mostly by hours in the classroom has no relationship with reality. Just for the teaching side, the list of responsibilities includes, but is not limited to, writing syllabi, preparing lectures, grading exams and assignments, advising students (in some cases, like mine, both undergraduate and undergraduate), assessing academic programs (both your own and others), serving on committees (departmental, college, and/or university) related to student issues, writing letters of recommendation, attending pedagogical workshops/meetings, recruiting new graduate students or majors, sitting on MA or Ph.D. committees, supervising independent studies and last, but not least, answering student emails on all different kinds of topics. I am sure there are others I'm forgetting.

Not all of these activities are equally time consuming, and they come and go (advising, for example, is heaviest in the middle of the semester right before registration), but collectively they take up more hours than most people give credit for. I am not complaining because in fact I love my job and I wouldn't trade it for anything. But I fundamentally disagree with anyone who believes that the job should be measured primarily by the amount of time I stand at a lectern.

There are many other problems with the article but that's enough for now.

James Joyner also weighs in.

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Local immigration cost

The irony is too much. Farmers Branch, Texas, believes that undocumented immigrants cost the city too much in services. Before going further, I should note that the mayor acknowledges that "We're trying to solve a problem that people perceive to have" as opposed to "We have empirical evidence about a problem." But I digress.

It appears the city's solution to the costs of undocumented immigrants is to spend $5 million accomplishing nothing. In other words, the way to address immigration issues is to shift money from the city to lawyers.

A Dallas suburb has spent five years and nearly $5 million trying to ban illegal immigrants from renting apartments within city limits, but court challenges have kept the law from taking effect. Still, city officials say they’re likely to press on. 

I suppose there are now sunk costs, both political and economic. Once you've spent $5 million that you can never get back, then you don't feel you can cut your losses without an uproar, so you double down and keep going. What that does, though, is put taxpayers in a constant spiral of waste.

Further, spending money sends the signal that you are doing something, even if you are not actually accomplishing anything. That has been a core element in immigration policy at all levels in recent years.

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Getting a Ph.D.

I wasn't so sure about Dan Drezner's first list of dos and don'ts for those who want to pursue a Ph.D. (e.g. go ahead and email professors) but this second list is spot on. It is really hard to get into good Ph.D. programs. As someone administering one of the terminal Master's degrees he mentions (in my case it is Latin American Studies) I am experiencing these issues firsthand with my students who are applying to Ph.D. programs. I am also convinced that getting our MA was essential for them getting accepted into those programs.

And yes, publish, publish, publish. I talk about this with my Ph.D.-leaning MA students. You need to start thinking like a professor in that regard as early as possible. Incidentally, it is also incumbent on professors to socialize the students they advise in this regard, and also to co-author with those students as a way to teach them how it's done.

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Border Tunnel "Prevention" Act

Via the Just for Facts blog: the Border Tunnel Prevention Act of 2012 is now trying to make its way through Congress (no pun intended). The fascinating part of this tunnel prevention act is that as far as I can tell it does nothing to actually prevent any tunneling. Instead, it enhances the penalties for tunneling, which is a very different thing. It's not clear to me how this will act as a deterrent, though it is something nice to hold up in an election year.

Further, no one seems to acknowledge the fact that tunneling has increased because of other enforcement efforts. There are leaks in the border everywhere, so the government runs around trying to seal them while creating others in the process.

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Social Democracy in Mexico and Venezuela

Robert Funk and Pancho Díaz take a look at the presidential elections in Mexico and Venezuela as a challenge for social democrats to overcome demagoguery.

Both the Mexican and Venezuelan cases present real challenges for social democracy in general, and for possibilities of electoral success. For much of the past decade the centre-left in these countries has found it difficult to gain a firm footing in shifting political sands. However the elections taking place this year also offer the opportunity to reconstruct a disarticulated left, away from demagoguery and towards a forward looking and healthy social democracy which seeks economic growth but also emphasises well and responsibly funded social policy, all within the context of a vibrant democracy. 

What's notable about Mexico, though, is how much AMLO is attempting to shed his past image and once again appear moderate, showing "conspicuous moderation" as Patrick Corcoran has put it. There may be more room for social democracy.

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Chávez's future

I'm quoted in this Businessweek article on Hugo Chávez. All presidents want to appear as healthy as possible, but for Chávez the stakes--not to mention the timing of the president election--are especially high.

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More on academic blogging

Here is some pretty good academic blogging advice from Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson at LSE. It is a bit over the top to say that blogging is "one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now," but it's true that blogging, along with Twitter, is great for academics. I can quibble with specific advice, and I've done so for other posts on academic blogging, but this particular post does a good job of discussing the positives without just bullet pointing what you should and should not do.

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South Carolina immigration hypocrisy

Lots of news stories about South Carolina's recent immigration law (some of which is currently blocked), which has a loophole.

A loophole in the S.C. immigration law exempts farmworkers and private maids and nannies from a mandatory immigration status check. 

The law, which went into effect Jan. 1, requires all private employers in South Carolina to use the federal E-Verify database to check newly hired employees’ immigration status. However, a little-known loophole provides exceptions for four categories of workers — agriculture laborers, domestic workers in a private residence, ministers and fishermen working on crews of 10 or fewer people. 

The agriculture industry and the legislators who supported the exemption said it was necessary because migrant farmworkers would be difficult to check, and no one wanted South Carolina to encounter a shortage of workers to pick peaches, strawberries and watermelons, as Georgia and Alabama recently did.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2012/03/18/2197352/sc-law-lets-farmworkers-nannies.html#storylink=cpy

Critics are up in arms, saying it was done "secretly." I was about to make fun of any advocate who didn't read the entire bill and understand it before it was signed into law, but then took a look at what I think is the text of the correct law. I can't find the provisions. They have to be tucked in there somewhere (there are a ton of links in the document).

Regardless, this is the worst kind of hypocrisy. Maids and nannies? That simply means the wealthy people of South Carolina want continued access to illegal labor to which they can pay low wages with cash.

Supporters of the law and other similar examples across the country claim it will make undocumented immigrants leave the state, thus opening up jobs for U.S. citizens. This loophole, however, demonstrates that they don't believe that to be true. If U.S. citizens will fill these jobs, then why do you need the provision?

This is even worse than Arizona's SB 1070, which at least has a logical consistency. Instead, this law says that South Carolina recognizes how much immigrants contribute to the state's economy, but it wants to make their lives more difficult anyway.

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Gas price reality check

Gas prices often become political in the United States, and with good reason. Gas is an important part of people's budgets, and a rise in gas prices not only eats up disposable income when filling your tank, but causes the prices of many other things to rise as well. It is one of the issues that deserves reasoned discussion, especially in the context of a recession. It is more important than most issues currently being discussed in the campaign.

What's frustrating, though, is that ignorance--willful or otherwise--invades every aspect of the gas price debate. Obviously being in a presidential election year exacerbates that unfortunate reality. Latin America plays a secondary but still important role because we get a lot of oil not only from Mexico and Colombia, but also from Ecuador and Venezuela, the governments of which is vocally opposed to U.S. policy everywhere. As a result, politicians lament how the price increases not only hurt us, but help governments that don't like us and line their treasuries to boot.

Here are some points, a sort of bullet point rant. If nothing else, remember that any politician who says he or she can drastically decrease the price of gas is lying. Period.

In no particular order:

• The price of gas depends to a large extent on the expectation of future price increases. Invading or otherwise messing with an oil-producing country, or just making people think you might do so, will make prices increase. It is then hard to get them down again.

• The 2003 invasion of Iraq had a serious and upward long-term effect on gas prices.

• One consequences of the Iraq invasion was to empower Iran, which then prompted a U.S. response, which then made gas prices go up more.

• The price of gas also depends on demand in large, growing countries like China and India. The United States has no control over that.

• It is easy for a U.S. president to make policy that increases gas prices, but much harder to make policy that decreases them by an appreciable amount.

• The main way a U.S. president can make the price of gas go down is to preside over an economic crash (see chart below).

• The United States has been increasing its gas exports, which is something few people seem to know. It has not made prices go down.

• Producing more of our own oil will not make the global price down much, if at all. What we produce is a drop in the global oil bucket. In fact, our oil production has already been on the increase.

• The presidential campaign is contributing to the price increase because of the talk about Iran (and this is independent of what you think about the ideal policy toward Iran).

• Any serious talk about imposing sanctions on Venezuela or Ecuador would make prices go up, even if no such action is taken (again, irrespective of whether you approve of that or not).

• Even if the Venezuelan opposition wins the presidential election later this year, oil prices will not go down as a result.

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Jason Heller's Taft 2012

Jason Heller's Taft 2012 requires a significant suspension of disbelief, namely that William Howard Taft disappeared on his way to Woodrow Wilson's inauguration in 1913, hibernated, and then reappeared in late 2011. No one in the novel worries too much about the science of it all. And we're not supposed to either, because that's not the point.

The point is to gain some lighthearted perspective on partisan politics and consumption in the United States. Taft is recruited by the newly founded Taft Party to run for president, and finds the movement annoying since it claims to stand for virtually everything and ignores reality.  People have an idealized view of the past, yet Taft remembers it as equally difficult, just in different ways.

Meanwhile, a giant agribusiness named Fulsom is making processed protein foods that are disgusting yet addictive. As it turns out, Fulsom is behind the scenes making the Taft Party possible. Moreover, it was doing so for reasons that were not immediately obvious. I won't elaborate, as that would take the air out of the story.

It's a fun novel that works because it does not take itself too seriously even while making some serious points. There is even a website for the book intended to serve as a mock campaign site. Who is Taft? You are!

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Rubio's Nixon moment

Here's an op-ed on CNN from a conservative Latino, asking Marco Rubio to do a Nixon-in-China and call out the Republican Party about immigration. For reasons known only to the author, he does so by quoting Spock, who apparently mentioned Nixon going to China in Star Trek VI. Does this make the argument more logical?

Anyway, he laments that Ileana Ros-Lehtinen can't join the ticket as VP, so the op-ed is essentially an exercise in damning with faint praise. Rubio is no Ros-Lehtinen, but at least he could do some good if he weren't so soft.

Rubio is referred to as the Michael Jordan of politics. But you don't score points sitting on the bench, basking in the approbation of the hard right, oblivious to the crowd of could-be supporters in the bleachers behind you, unable to muster, even, a faint cheer for your positions on what really matters to them. 

You score points by leading. And that is where Rubio seems to fail -- so far. Rubio's "China" is immigration; by shirking this issue and standing fast to supporters who will brook no compromise, he demonstrates cowardice. 

Marco Rubio has a tremendous chance to journey to "China" in the face of the volatile backlash that such a journey would provoke from the far right. He has the chance to delve into an issue with no easy answers -- with the smarts, mettle and energy that he surely possesses, the same way Ros-Lehtinen approaches her own public service.

It's not a particularly well-argued piece, but the main point is worth noting. Conservative Latinos are staying quiet. If Rubio were chosen for the ticket, would he say anything, especially given the positions of the eventual nominee?

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Immigration legislating in NC

The North Carolina Farm Bureau is trying to get out ahead to prevent a strict Arizona/Alabama type law from getting anywhere in NC.

Farmers can't find the help they need from the domestic workforce to pick crops -- and without foreign workers the crops would rot in the field, he said. The Farm Bureau is asking lawmakers to wait for federal government to fix the current system before taking any action. "It's a bad system that needs to be fixed," Daniel added.

Read more here: http://projects.newsobserver.com/under_the_dome/nc_farm_bureau_releases_tv_ad_opposing_tougher_state_immigration_laws#storylink=cpy

From a logical standpoint, this is pretty convincing. From a practical side, however, it's useless because the federal government isn't going to fix anything for at least a year, and only then if Barack Obama wins the presidency. Even then chances are not great.

Instead, it's about waiting for the Supreme Court to decide what aspects of state immigration laws are constitutional and which are not. The court is going to start hearing oral arguments on Arizona's SB 1070 on April 25.

In the past year or so a number of immigration bills have been floating around the state, such as the NC Illegal Immigration Enforcement Act, that are aimed at copying other states (for a list of all pending immigration bills see here). Exactly what to do is now the job of the House Select Committee on the State's Role in Immigration Policy, which was in the news recently because of protests.

State legislators are not always known for common sense, but spending much time before the Supreme Court rules is a waste. Actually passing legislation before then just means a commitment to spending state resources on lawyers. "Boat rocking" just means "lawyer paying." I oppose such laws in any event, but throwing money away makes no sense.

Actually passing such legislation will also hurt the state in other ways, but that's another story.

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Not so stately Brazil visit

A current recurring topic is U.S. treatment of Brazil. The United States has tended not to acknowledge its economic and political influence, slighting the country in various ways. There is a lot of trade and extensive dialogue between the two countries, so it's important not to blow the differences too much out of proportion.

Nonetheless, I have to agree with Andres Oppenheimer on the Obama's administration's bungling of President Dilma Rousseff's visit to the United States.

Brazilian officials are miffed by the fact that despite Brazil’s emergence as a global power, the White House has not granted Rousseff’s trip to Washington the status of “state visit,” the highest-level diplomatic distinction for such trips. State visits generally come along with a black-tie state dinner at the White House, a formal address by the visiting leader to Congress, and week-long cultural events. 

The White House’s explanation was that, because this is an election year in the United States, Obama does not grant state visits. But the Brazilian press was quick to note that British Prime Minister David Cameron is in Washington on a state visit two weeks before Rousseff’s trip. 

An article in Friday’s O Estado de Sao Paulo, under the headline “Dilma will be welcomed by Obama without a state visitor’s honors,” noted that Chinese President Hu Jintao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were granted state visits to Washington in 2011 and 2009, respectively. Not mentioned in the story, but perhaps harder to swallow for Brazilian officials, was that Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón made a state visit to Washington in 2010.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/25/2694201/us-should-treat-brazil-like-india.html#storylink=cpy

What's up with that? Oppenheimer notes a variety of other important slights that involve not only diplomatic problems but also large investments. This just seems dumb, a needless insult to a country we should be getting closer to.

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Johnny Shaw's Dove Season

Johnny Shaw's Dove Season is a hardboiled murder mystery with the Imperial Valley as the backdrop. After years away, the main character Jimmy Veeder comes home to visit his cancer-ridden father, who asks him to find a particular prostitute in Mexicali. Only later does it become clear that it wasn't just an old man's last request but rather part of a larger transborder story.

The book morphs into a mystery, though Veeder is no private eye and the characters and atmosphere are more interesting than the fairly simple mystery itself. That includes a foray into Mexicali and extensive interaction with an old friend who now happens to be head of a Mexican crime syndicate.

It gradually dawned on me that the novel reminded me of the Wall of Voodoo song "Call of the West." It's all dusty streets, amorality, sex and violence in the hot towns on the U.S.-Mexico border, with Ennio Morricone in the background. A bit of Cormac McCarthy but with more of a sense of humor. The first lines of the novel are "There is something about the desert that pisses everything off."

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Headlines vs. content

Headlines tell us something. Authors rarely get to choose them, so they become a reflection of how the editors hope to grab people's attention.

This occurred to me when I saw Tim Muth's guest blog about the Salvadoran elections in the Christian Science Monitor.  The content is about the delicate and uncertain coalition possibilities that exist for both the left and the right, but that the right did better in the elections. The headline, though, is "El Salvador Elections: Another Test for Latin America's Left."

Nowhere in the article did he write about the rest of the region, and nowhere does he use the word "test." This election has nothing to do with the Latin American left, which in any case does not exist in any unified form (and not even within El Salvador).

Several years ago I got a blogging bug in my ear about the incessant and simplistic media obsession with left versus right in the region. This seems to be another similar example--framing it in ideological terms is more sexy than discussing the more mundane question of building coalitions.

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Panetta in Chile

In anticipation of Leon Panetta's upcoming visit to Chile, I have a short Q&A at World Politics Review. Sadly,  drug trafficking is becoming more pressing in the bilateral relationship.

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State Department in 1954

Check out the HathiTrust website at your own peril because if you're interested in government documents then you may find yourself sucked in.

Take this 1954 State Department document on relations with Latin America (Partners: The Story of Our Latin American Relations). The best quote is on the "Communist menace" in Guatemala, referring to how "the Guatemalan people themselves rose up and turned out the Communist conspirators."

That actually got me thinking about what the most egregious cases of U.S. government lying about Latin America might be. It would be a perversely interesting research project.

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Hemosoido

I learned about an interesting project called Hemosoido intended to get Cuban bloggers translated into English and other languages so their words can be disseminated more widely. If you're interested, please take a look.

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Remittances up

The Inter-American Development Bank reports that remittances to Latin America went up 6% in 2011, to $61 billion. After a slowdown when the recession hit, remittances are back on track. Despite media reports, it is clear that there was no exodus back to Latin America. People waited things out, then started sending when they were once again able.

Two intriguing points, both of them positive:

First, despite the recession, Latin American migrants seem to be doing better in the United States.

Most of the money continued to be sent from traditional host countries such as the United States and Western Europe. In the United States, source of about three-quarters of remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean, foreign workers saw improving employment and wage levels. As a consequence, migrants made more transfers for higher amounts than the previous year.

Second, economies in Latin America are doing  better so remittances represent a smaller slice of the economy. Of course, this will only last so long.

In recent years, as regional economies improved, remittances have become a smaller share of gross domestic product. In several countries, however, remittances are still more than 10 percent of GDP.

Overall, remittances are here to stay. Harnessing them to foster further economic growth is the key challenge.

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Honoring unused Venezuelan doctors

In what I guess is unintended irony, Hugo Chávez (or whoever he puts in charge) wrote a tweet honoring Venezuelan doctors even while sitting in Havana because he refuses to use Venezuelan doctors. The bottom line is that Venezuelan doctors are certainly capable of dealing with his cancer, but Venezuela is not Cuba when it comes to control over information. Chávez does not want Venezuelans or anyone else to know precisely what's wrong with him, and treatment in Caracas would yield leaks. Dictatorships obsessed with information control don't have that problem.

Chávez may come back to Venezuela next week. He isn't saying--that news came from the president of Colombia, of all people. As a result, Venezuelans are forced to wait for Nelson Bocaranda to tell them the current rumors, I suppose based on messages coming from Chávez's entourage. Currently he's saying that Chávez needs 25 radiation sessions and has done five so far, including on Saturday.

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Spanish briefing

Thanks to a colleague in Spanish for pointing this out to me.  On Thursday the State Department held its first press briefing in Spanish.



It's a great idea. Any way to reach out more to the Latin American media is a good move, as it is a very real sign that the U.S. is taking Latin America seriously and trying to engage it. That goes far beyond just U.S. policy toward Latin America, as the questions often focused on the Middle East.

And yes, of course it's spin. But it's not a bad idea to spin people in their own language. It's part of el poder blando.

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Coalitions in Chile

Via Twitter Patricio Navia has this graph on his website on identification with the Concertación versus Alianza.

Plenty of fun conclusions:

--Obviously, support for the Concertación has been dropping, but people are becoming ni-nis rather than moving to the Alianza

--The Concertación can't seem to capitalize politically on Piñera's problems (unless that little bounce at the end keeps going upward)

--The Alianza seems to be at a ceiling. It's a bit flexible at any given moment but over time 20% support seems to be about it

--Predictions of the Concertación's demise will continue, and get louder once electoral reform is underway

--Having its own president in power seems to have no effect on coalition approval, though it hasn't been long so it's reasonable to ask what the Alianza's floor might be if Piñera remains so unpopular

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The definition of "duh"

From the WSJ's MarketWatch:

Latin America must take steps to defend itself from a growing reliance on commodities and China, while currency appreciation is warranted given the economic improvements relative to developed markets, the Institute of International Finance said on Thursday.

At least this seems to get more mention than it used to. It's important to note, however, that there is no "growing" reliance on commodities--although the specific commodities may change, it is long-standing and in some cases dates back to the colonial era.

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What Pat Robertson and Peter Tosh have in common

You could not make this up if you tried. With all the talk of drug decriminalization in the air with Joe Biden's trip to Latin America, we have a new advocate: Pat Robertson. Yes, that Pat Robertson, the one who says all sorts of weird and sometimes offensive stuff.

“I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Mr. Robertson said in an interview on Wednesday. “I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”

So this could become a white, middle-class evangelical issue? I wouldn't have thought so, but he puts a new, conservative spin on it:

He attributed much of the problem of overpopulated jails to a “liberal mindset to have an all-encompassing government.”

It's interesting to see how the right in Latin America, and now perhaps--to some limited degree--in the United States are coming to similar conclusions with different logic.

He noted that "he did not think marijuana appeared in the Bible." I am not a scholar of religion, but I would bet he's right. Insert your joke here.

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Brain gain in Brazil

A country undergoes an economic boom and discovers it has a labor shortage even for high skilled jobs that needs to be addressed through immigration. This gets tricky because the government wants to be sure that foreign workers do not take jobs that a citizen could fill. At the same time, that economic growth is attracting undocumented workers, prompting new efforts to fight smugglers at the border. Overall, last year the foreign born population grew by 50 percent.

Sounds a bit like the U.S. in the 1990s, but actually refers to Brazil today.

One interesting tidbit was the suggestion that Brazil's participation in MINUSTAH has led to an increase in Haitian immigration. Under what circumstances does participation in peacekeeping operations connect countries through migration?

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Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son

Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son is a powerful novel. It is sad, as any book about North Korea really must be, but it is also full of life and at times is even funny. At its core is the question of identity. Pak Jun Do was an orphan master's son and took an orphan's name. This means everyone believes he is an orphan even though he is not. That widespread belief, however, led the state to force him to do its dirty work for it, including kidnapping Japanese. He regrets it all and seeks some sort of redemption.

That would lead to an effort to sneak someone, the actress Sun Moon, out of the country. Aside from the main character, everyone in the novel--from the highest official to aged parents who never leave their apartment--drips with resignation. Anyone can disappear at any time, either murdered or sent to a camp, which is just an extended murder. You take great care about what you say to one another. Ultimately identity itself comes into question. A constant theme is the movie Titanic, which everyone seems to mention because the elites have seen pirated versions. The metaphor about a doomed voyage is blunt.

The descriptions of North Korea are bold and vivid--I felt the same impression years ago when I read Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park on the Soviet Union. This book is also unique because it dares to push the limits of verisimilitude. Kim Jong Il himself plays a recurring role, which could have come off quite badly, but it works well. Don't expect the novel to make you feel very good, but it'll stay with you.

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Personal and political of immigration

I recommend Elizabeth Llorente's analysis at Fox News Latino on the Latino vote, which explains the current situation well. One interesting point is that immigration is not just a policy issue, but also has a strong personal element. So you might rank immigration low on your list of priorities, but you are rubbed the wrong way when Rick Santorum says that breaking up families is "worth it" because "this is just who we are."

Even the Republican Party seems to accept this premise. Despite the fact that its two viable presidential candidates very vocally oppose immigration reform and applaud more enforcement and deportation, the party itself tries not to mention it.

“Once again, Latino voters reaffirm their belief that the most important issues are the economy and jobs,” said RNC spokesperson Alexandra Franceschi. “President Obama’s broken promises and failed policies have only brought record debt, out-of-control spending, and higher unemployment to the United States, all of which have disproportionately hurt Latinos struggling to make ends meet in this difficult economy. “

That isn't a winning strategy if Latinos are turned away from an economic message they might like by the personalized rhetoric of immigration.

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The politics of travel warnings

Today there's more on the politics of Mexico needing to maintain its image in the context of a barrage of media attention on drug violence. The Texas Department of Public Safety issued its own travel warning, as it did last year, telling young Texans that Mexico should not be a spring break destination.

The Mexican Embassy quickly released a rebuttal:

Mexico strongly disagrees with the assessment made by Texan officials regarding travel to Mexico in general. As their number one trading partner and largest export market, Mexico believes Texas should be able to more objectively evaluate facts, providing nuance and context, and in doing so, dispel the notion that their motivation is a clear-cut political agenda.

I am not sure there is a "clear-cut political agenda" beyond a generalized hysteria about the security of the border, though Governor Rick Perry did once say he was open to the idea of sending U.S. troops into Mexico to fight the drug war. I am not an expert on Texan politics, but I can't think of what Texas has to gain by issuing the statement.

The stakes are high, because tourist dollars are important, but the PR battle is getting harder and harder for the Mexican government. It endorses the more nuanced State Department warning, which is still pretty dire. The argument now is that lots of people are being killed in lots of states, but your odds of living are good, and if you're carjacked you'll likely live. That's not a lot better than the Texas version.

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Piñera still unpopular

Barack Obama's chances in the 2012 election hinge to a large extent on how people view the economy. If people feel good about jobs, for example, then his chances improve considerably. Sebastián Piñera must be wondering what the problem is, because Chileans still don't approve of his presidency even though they are giving him increasingly good marks on how his government deals with jobs.

Look at these numbers from Adimark. Ouch.

Meanwhile, 53% approve of the way he is handling jobs, up from 45% in both December 2011 and January 2012, and the highest of his entire presidency.  It should be noted, though, that only 43% approve of his handling of the economy overall, which is down a few points, and is close to the lowest of his presidency. It's an interesting discrepancy.

He saved the miners and the economy is doing OK, but the government's response to problems like education and Aysén are crippling him.

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Latin American right and wrong

Via Americas Quarterly Twitter feed: Juan Manuel Santos is headed to Cuba to talk both to Raúl Castro and Hugo Chávez.

“Vamos a ir a Cuba con dos propósitos: el primero para tener la oportunidad de hablar personalmente, como se hablan todos los buenos amigos, con el Gobierno cubano, con Raúl Castro, el tema de Cuba en la Cumbre que se va a realizar el mes entrante en Colombia”, informó el Presidente Santos. 

Anunció que en el encuentro con el mandatario venezolano, Hugo Chávez, se busca firmar los anexos que permitirán la entrada en vigencia del Tratado Comercial entre Colombia y Venezuela.

Along with Otto Pérez Molina's drug decriminalization talk, this is a shift from the Latin American right. Not necessarily permanent, but still noteworthy. Colombia is always cited by the right in the U.S. as a major ally, yet its conservative president is talking in a friendly way (even "buenos amigos"!) to our enemies, while the U.S. refuses to do so.

It's another example of self-isolation. We're at a point where we can't even convince the more conservative governments in the region that our policies make sense. As a result, they just ignore us.

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Mexican middle class

In a column remarkably free of her normal hyperbole, Mary Anastasia O'Grady argues that the Mexican middle class is rising. Roque Planas, meanwhile, points to a study from last July showing poverty on the rise. I discussed this very issue in November, noting similar contradictions.

In the Mexican case in particular, the government really wants to demonstrate that drug-related violence is not damaging economic growth. It needs to convince investors that it is a good place to come and that there is a strong domestic market for international trade. That is neither surprising nor necessarily bad. But it complicates things when there is so much contrary data out there.

The most useful analysis, then, is one that takes both into account and explains the contradictions. At this point, that's not happening.

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Dirk Hayhurst's Out of My League

There is no way not to like Dirk Hayhurst's Out of My League: A Rookie's Survival in the Bigs. You probably won't believe me, but baseball isn't even the most important part of the book.  Yes, of course baseball is central, and the insider details are cool, but he doesn't even leave for spring training until Chapter Ten. Instead, it is a raw, introspective, and absorbing account of dealing with a dysfunctional family, getting married, and figuring out your career even when things turn sour. It just turns out the career is baseball.

Like his first book, The Bullpen Gospels (which I reviewed when it came out two years ago), this book is unflinchingly open. There was more than one time when I read in amazement about what he was telling the world about his insecurities (not to mention ballplayer nudity). What makes this second book different is that his relationship with this future wife takes center stage, as he is trying to understand how to make that work within the confines of baseball demands. In fact, he's trying to sort out exactly how important baseball really is, a question that for most players is sacrilegious, or at least something you would not make public. At one point after a bad start, in frustration he just screams, "I hate this fucking game!"

But as always, Hayhurst is often funny, really funny. The account of his first time on the mound in the major leagues (for the Padres, coincidentally) is priceless (such as having the umpires remind him what direction the next base was when he walked in his first at bat). Or the account of what living in a minor league apartment is like--bare and stripped, with no more belongings than what will fit in a battered suitcase. Or how his mother called him, all excited because she saw him on SportsCenter giving up a home run to Manny Ramirez.

From the perspective of a baseball fan and reader, I wish Hayhurst could have a long career in many different places and chronicle it all. That wouldn't necessarily be the best for him, since every player's goal is a long-term contract to play in one place. But I have to wonder, and I am sure he has done so himself, how many seasons he can write about until people are wary of being written about. He is now off to play baseball in Italy, where I am guessing books on baseball aren't exactly topping the charts so it won't matter. Hopefully he will write a book about it, and it will burst with introspective insight. I look forward to it.

Incidentally, when you read the book you can also check out his photo gallery of that year: http://dirkhayhurst.com/media/media-photos-portland-2008/

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Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere

A bill on Iran-Latin America ties is starting on its way through Congress. Click here for the full text of H.R. 3783, the Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act of 2012.

It essentially mirrors public declarations about the topic, which means it combines solid facts (of which there are plenty) with rumors written in the passive tense to avoid admitting that the sources are unknown.

The thrust of the bill is to require the Secretary of State to document Iran's role in the hemisphere and discuss policy options to counter Iranian influence.  That former point should not be controversial--it's worthwhile to have a comprehensive look, especially one that sticks to the facts.

The problem with the bill comes with the details of the latter.  The bill requires pressuring Latin American countries to participate in a "multiagency action plan." Since at this point even the "allies and partners" of the United States don't necessarily agree with the threat perception, this could easily backfire.

There is also the question of addressing "the vital national security interests of the United States in securing energy supplies from the Western Hemisphere."  This, of course, can mean anything and will immediately look like a threat to oil-producing countries (and given the authors of the bill it is quite likely intentional in that regard).

Given the current tensions with Iran and the desire not to look weak in an election year, I would venture to say its chances are good at passage in some form. If it does get to that point, then I hope it ends up looking less unilateral.

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The American people and immigration

Immigration gets a lot of media attention, and is a source of obsession for many politicians.  A new USA Today/Gallup poll reminds us what we've known for years (and which my dad and I discuss in our book) but which you wouldn't know by listening to the rhetoric of the presidential race: Americans aren't nearly as concerned about immigration as commonly portrayed. It's certainly relevant, but just low on the list.

The easy answer is that given the Republican primary, this is all about the base. But an exit poll in Arizona--supposedly ground zero of anti-immigrant sentiment--showed only 13% of primary voters considered immigration the most important issue.

Further, if we break down the USA Today/Gallup results by party, we see that even Republicans rank immigration very low as an issue of importance for deciding their 2012 presidential vote.

These results tend to play out at the state level as well. For their own reasons, politicians at all levels play up immigration as if it were a major concern for voters (very often using the phrase "the American people"). This gets reported widely, and then copied by other politicians.

Exactly why is a matter for debate, as there are many possibilities that vary according to what level we're analyzing. They may truly believe that Americans agree, or may figure enough of their constituency does to emphasize immigration as an issue. Or they just emphasize it because it's a pet issue and they don't care whether others agree or not. And the media, of course, loves controversial human interest stories.

Regardless, it's important to remember that immigration is rarely as high on the list of "the American people's" priorities as we often hear in the media and from the mouths of politicians. In the 2012 presidential election, they are going to vote in large part on the economy, not on immigration.

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