Reorienting the drug war

This post really follows up on yesterday's. There is an article by Ralph Espach in The Atlantic about the potential effects of drug legalization in Central America, which makes some good points.

Drugs are a major problem in Central America, but they are worsened by a much bigger problem, one that can't be solved by legalizing marijuana, cocaine, or opium: the lack of public security. From the out-gunned police on the streets to the weak judges in the courts to the corrupt politicians, communities and countries struggle to maintain basic control over their own security. Ultimately, drug legalization -- like the drug war it's meant to solve -- would succeed only if public security is fixed and would fail if it isn't. That means better-trained and -equipped police, new campaign finance rules, faster and more independent courts, and even improved prisons. It means addressing not just the problems in the police and courts but the widespread poverty, malnourished children, and poor education systems. It means creating transparency in the public sector, curbing corruption, and breaking the long-standing links between organized crime and politics. Without these enormously difficult steps, neither drug legalization nor any drug war are likely to solve Central America's problems.

I agree that drug legalization will not "solve Central America's" problems, but I've never actually heard anyone argue that it would.

Instead, I see the current discussion in Latin America as a "critical juncture."  This refers to a moment when the trajectory of something can be changed.  As Collier and Collier put it in Shaping the Political Arena, they may involve a "relatively brief period in which one direction or another is taken or an extended period of reorientation" (p. 27).  In the context of the "drug war," it means the opportunity for a regional rethinking of policy. This doesn't necessarily mean legalization--which should not be viewed as a monolithic policy in any case--but rather willingness to look at all options based on what has succeeded and failed up to this point.

A very good idea would be for the Obama administration to get out in front of this, and convene a forum/meeting with representatives from every country. It wouldn't have to result in anything binding but rather would be an opportunity for each country to air its views. We need an opportunity to take stock and see what kind of consensus exists, and what divisions remain. Hopefully this would lead to some sort of policy reorientation that would be broadly acceptable, or at the very least would take the Latin American side more into consideration.

Of course, it won't happen, especially not in an election year. But the U.S. can keep ignoring Latin American views at its own peril.

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Local violence in Mexico

Via Aguachile: local level violence in Mexico is increasingly a deadly problem, affecting 52% of municipalities (1,269 of them). In nine states, 90% or more of municipalities had deaths related to "la narcoguerra."

Even more depressing is that in 2011, 122 municipalities went from zero executions in 2010 total to a combined 241. Those were concentrated in Veracruz, Oaxaca, Puebla, Jalisco, and San Luis Potosí, meaning the center of the country is now getting hit harder.

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Future of the Latin American drug war

One potential sign that a policy is a failure is when the government has to keep insisting that it's not a failure. Janet Napolitano is in Mexico and Central America:

Ms Napolitano denied the drug war of the US and Mexico was a failure but rather "a continuing effort to keep our peoples from becoming addicted to dangerous drugs".

This isn't really an answer. Any policy by definition is an "effort." The question is whether that effort is achieving its stated goals, and in the "drug war" it is really hard to find evidence to that effect. It is rather sad that Napolitano, whose job centers on monitoring such things, can't come up with a better answer.

No one knows where the decriminalization debate in Latin America is going, but once again the United States is  isolating itself by refusing even to engage it. At the very least, it is incumbent upon the U.S. to provide evidence about which components of its policy are clearly working and which are not.

Given the statements by Otto Pérez Molina, the Latin American drug war is gradually transcending ideology. As a result, in the future I can envision some type of regional initiative, based not on decriminalization per se but a broad rethinking of Latin America's priorities and policy options. Presidents in the region are very far from consensus on the issue, but I can still see them coming together with discussions that the United States government still considers taboo. Self imposed isolation would be the likely result.

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El Rey Rafael

Rafael Correa announced he would pardon the owners of El Universo and the authors of the book El Gran Hermano. He did not do it for himself, but for the people. He was not abusing power, but just protecting human rights. A grand victory, etc., etc., etc. If you read Spanish, then you can get the gist through the presidency's Twitter account @Presidencia_EC.

It is common for presidents to have some type of pardon power. Of course, in the United States it is often controversial (the pardon of Richard Nixon being the most infamous, but there are countless other examples).  So that alone doesn't set Ecuador apart.

What makes this particular case unique is that the president launched a legal campaign against private media, then announced that he would decide whether or not to pardon them. In other words, he consciously and aggressively took on the role of both prosecutor and judge simultaneously. He did so with as much spectacle as possible (see the photo, for example) and the government even took note of admirers calling out about his "noble heart." Taking on this sort of monarchical stance is not good for democracy.

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Improving the race

Imagine a president saying to the parents of a blonde baby that they are "improving the race" (mejorando la raza). That's what Sebastián Piñera did (video from The Clinic at about 1:34). You're just supposed to pinch cheeks, not say how glad you are that the cheeks are white.

For a president with the worst approval ratings in the entire western hemisphere, and unable to connect to many outside his social class, this is not helpful. It is also a reminder that race matters even in places where race supposedly doesn't matter.

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FARC'ed

The FARC says it will no longer kidnap people, and claims it will release those people it has already kidnapped. A few thoughts come to mind:

First, the FARC has no credibility. I hope this is true, but their leaders are not trustworthy. Just read the official statement yourself (in Spanish)* as it is a tribute to bizarre thinking about how hard the FARC has tried to foster reconciliation (you know, by killing and kidnapping people).

Second, even if true this is essentially just saying we've decided only to keep killing people rather than abducting them for our own financial or political gain. In other words, it just means they return to the normal business of guerrilla war in a country where they have no support.

Third, the Colombian government's crusade to kill FARC leaders is paying off, as the guerrillas are reeling in leadership terms. Even if they renege, just making such a rhetorical concession is important. As always, though, we need to recognize that the government's effort has also led to the second largest displaced population in the world, second only to Sudan.

Fourth, and more troubling, is that cocaine income has made kidnapping revenue less necessary, so the FARC can take the cut without getting hit the way it would've 10 years ago. As long as Americans take drugs, the FARC will have a strong financial base to work with, which of course is an obstacle to ending the conflict.

*it is actually dated February 26, 2002. Apparently they FARC can also turn back time.

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Defining relations with Mexico

In an interview with Excelsior, Rick Santorum says relations with Mexico are not strong right now, and he defines relations with Mexico as more border security.

Las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y México “no parecen particularmente fuertes en este momento”, dice Rick Santorum, el por ahora principal competidor de Mitt Romney por la nominación presidencial del Partido Republicano. 

“Necesitamos fronteras seguras y no las tenemos, obviamente”, dijo Santorum, que como otros aspirantes republicanos firmó un “compromiso” para erigir una barda de seguridad a lo largo de los límites con México. 

“Hay obviamente muchos problemas en la frontera y eso no es bueno”, agregó el candidato, un católico conservador, durante una conversación con Excélsior poco después de haber tomado ceniza y en su primer pronunciamiento en torno a las relaciones con México. 

“La seguridad de la frontera es una prioridad”, dijo Santorum, que fue diputado y senador por Pennsylvania.

The irony is palpable. To the extent that relations with Mexico have soured, in large part it is due to insistence on building fences rather than addressing the broader problems of a broken immigration system, drug demand, weapons sales, and other U.S.-centered issues. Any president who defines relations with Mexico as border security is guaranteed to make relations worse.

h/t Patrick Corcoran

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Immigration Groundhog Day

A member of Congress argues that places like California are becoming too "Latinized" and that Mexican immigrants are driving down wages. He therefore introduces legislation to reduce the number of Mexicans coming to the United States. The president disagrees, arguing that the U.S. is trying to maintain good relations with Mexico and that the proposed legislation is not fair. The Senate passes it anyway, but business interests manage to make it die before it reaches the president's desk. Some of the furor dies down a bit because economic downturn is reducing the flow of immigrants.

Sound familiar? It was in 1930 and was President Hoover.

Google News Archive is a fun diversion.

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Anne Frank and the DR

Anne Frank was given a Mormon posthumous proxy baptism (a phrase I had never seen before) in the Dominican Republic this past Saturday.

Though the church regularly conducts proxy baptisms for dead, in what it calls an attempt to give everyone a chance to accept salvation through Jesus, it has a 1990s-era policy against conducting such baptisms for Holocaust victims.

This just confuses me. Aside from the fact that dead people are not in a good position to accept anything, why was this odd spectacle conducted in the Dominican Republic?

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Immigration and big government

Big, BIG government. From last night's Republican debate:

Newt Gingrich says he would devote as many resources as necessary to securing the U.S.’s southern border and that he would build two separate fences at the border to make it more difficult to cross illegally. He also says he’d send thousands more employees of the Homeland Security Department to border areas....

Mitt Romney says he would put more resources into securing the border and support programs that make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to work in the U.S. 

And there's more big government:

Rick Santorum also said he would beef up efforts to combat illegal immigration.

Ron Paul is the only one who said that the enforcement measures were largely a waste of money.

Although I disagree with the enforcement-only policy, I understand its logic. The problem comes when the argument arrives wrapped in the rhetoric of small government. With the exception of Ron Paul, all of the candidates' proposed solutions will require drastic increase of government spending, enlargement of the federal government's workforce, and expansion of the federal government's power over individuals.

All I ask, therefore, is that those facts be recognized by anyone espousing enforcement-only policies.

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Cartoon on Honduran prison fire

h/t Adrienne Pine at Quotha

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Bobby Abreu

I found this tweet amusing. Bobby Abreu is from Venezuela, but it's pretty unusual for an embassy to raise the issue of a player-manager baseball dispute!

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More lies and rumors in Venezuela

The Hugo Chávez saga keeps chugging along. He says there is a good chance the lesion is malignant and is going to Havana because "allá [en Cuba] hay más seguridad para este tipo de operación," by which he means no information can get out.


What this also means is that Venezuelans will likely increasingly consider rumors as more reliable than government sources. The current rumor is that the "lesion" is really a rapidly growing tumor the size of a golf ball. Given experiences from past months, this might not be true but it is more likely to be true than whatever the government says.


One of Chávez's problems is that, despite efforts to stifle it, the opposition press is alive and well in Venezuela. In Cuba, this isn't a problem for the government. Unlike with Chávez, the vast majority of rumors about Fidel Castro's health have been wrong. In Venezuela there are too many leaks to plug, so Chávez tries to follow a Cuban model of secrecy that does not fit his country.


The end result is confusion and distrust, which is exactly what the country does not need at the moment.

Read more here: http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2012/02/22/1132917/nueva-operacion-de-chavez-genera.html#storylink=cpy

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Lies vs. rumors in Venezuela

After the government rejected rumors that Hugo Chávez had gone to Cuba over the weekend, he announced he went to Cuba over the weekend. He still refuses to say what exactly is wrong with him, but only that there is a small lesion in the same place that will need to removed. And, of course, he will have it done in Cuba where control over information is complete and no one will know what is going on.

This would be laughable if it weren't referring to the president of a polarized country in an election year. The government has consistently lied about Chávez's condition and still will not tell the people of Venezuela what is wrong with their elected leader. Yet that same government (through the Minister of Communication) says the opposition is conducting a "dirty war" by spreading rumors that in fact we find out are true. In other words, the rumors are far more credible than the government itself.

It is hard to see how this strategy of constantly lying and then having the world discover your lies is working to Chávez's benefit. That leads logically to the following question: if you really believe your health condition is not dire, then why lie so much about it?

Update: even the Venezuelan Embassy keeps up the idea that the rumors are somehow false, when in fact they were true.

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Baseball Prospectus on the Padres

Baseball Prospectus 2012 arrived in the mail, always a key sign that baseball is coming. I am pleasantly surprised by their take on the Padres (I am guessing written by, or at least mostly written by, Geoff Young). Yes, it does mention that "Fans are sick of 'rebuilding,' but this is going to be another year of it," but it also says:

Bottom line: The Padres are poised for a return to respectability. They had it from 2004 to 2007, slipped, caught a glimpse in 2010, and now are looking to make their next move.
...
Shoot for .500 in 2012, integrate more young talent into the everyday lineup, and keep your fingers crossed.

If you have bothered reading this far, you may be shaking your head at viewing those conclusions in a positive light. One benefit of being a longtime Padres fan is that your expectations remain low, and so just the idea that we might climb up toward respectability--perhaps not losing more games then we win--has a pleasant ring to it.

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Undocumented immigrants and taxes

From the Immigration Policy Center, here's a table regarding state and local taxes paid by households headed by undocumented immigrants in 2010, which totaled an estimated $11.2 billion. It's from last year, but I hadn't seen it before. There is a very, very common belief--often rooted simply in misunderstanding rather than any antipathy--that undocumented immigrants pay almost nothing in taxes.

For a snapshot, here is another figure from the report. North Carolina is tenth in revenues.

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Maybe they leave, maybe they come back

This is the sort of news article that should make every social scientist wince. The argument is that undocumented immigrants are coming back to Alabama because the state's most restrictive immigration laws are being blocked.

Now, on to the evidence:

No one knows how many people initially left the state, so it's impossible to say how many have returned. But some illegal immigrants are trickling back, unable to find work elsewhere and missing the place that had been home for years. 

Of 18 Hispanic immigrants interviewed by The Associated Press in the Birmingham area, six said they had friends or relatives who had returned to Alabama after fleeing because of the law.

Let me translate that:

We decided to interview some people we found on the street for a tiny and unscientific sample. Then we generalized their experiences to talk about an entire state, while admitting we have no idea whether what we argue is true.

So maybe people left, and some people came back. But from this article we can't really say anything with more precision than that.

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The end of 287(g)?

The budget proposal for the Department of Homeland Security shows that the Obama administration plans to reduce the 287(g) program in favor of Secure Communities, and it is reasonable to believe they will eventually phase it out. From page 101 of the budget proposal:

FY 2013 Major Decreases:
• Realignment and Reduction of 287(g)…………………………………..-$17.0M (-24 FTE)
This request reduces the 287(g) program as Secure Communities reaches nationwide
deployment in FY 2013. The Secure Communities screening process is more cost effective
in identifying and removing criminal aliens and other priority aliens than the officer-focused
287(g) model. Proposed funding reductions in FY 2013 will impact the 287(g) jurisdictions
with the lowest criminal identifications.

And from page 16:

287(g) Program: In light of the nationwide activation of the Secure Communities program,
the Budget reduces the 287(g) program by $17 million. The Secure Communities screening
process is more consistent, efficient and cost effective in identifying and removing criminal
and other priority aliens. To implement this reduction in 2013, ICE will begin by
discontinuing the least productive 287(g) task force agreements in those jurisdictions where
Secure Communities is already in place and will also suspend consideration of any requests
for new 287(g) task forces.

This seems mostly a question of labeling. From page 15:

Secure Communities: The FY 2013 Budget includes funding to complete nationwide deployment in FY 2013 of the Secure Communities program which uses biometric information and services to identify and remove criminal and other priority aliens found in state prisons and local jails. Secure Communities is an important tool in ICE’s efforts to focus its immigration enforcement resources on the highest priority individuals who pose a threat to public safety or national security. While we continue to focus our resources on our key priorities, DHS is committed to ensuring the Secure Communities program respects civil rights and civil liberties. To that end, ICE is working closely with law enforcement agencies and stakeholders across the country to ensure the program operates in the most effective manner possible. We have issued guidance regarding the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in appropriate cases, including in cases involving witnesses and victims of crime, and implemented enhanced training for state and local law enforcement regarding civil rights issues related to the program, among other recent improvements.

This has the same goal, namely to connect federal and local law enforcement for the purposes of deporting criminal undocumented immigrants who end up in local jails.

Some local law enforcement, including near me in Gaston County, aren't happy about the reduction. Since the federal-local connection will remain, the concern may stem from the explicit mention of cutting funding to 287(g) jurisdictions that didn't find many criminals. The purpose of these programs is to find criminals, not simply to deport lots of people, and so if you didn't as many criminals as other jurisdictions then you won't get any more money.

Given the administration's proven commitment to deporting more people than ever before in history, I would be very surprised if the phasing out of 287(g) reduced that commitment.

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Michael Chabon's Summerland

Michael Chabon's Summerland is a really quirky book. I don't force myself to keep reading books that don't interest me, and several times I contemplated setting it aside. Yet its quirkiness brought me back. The plot centers on Ethan Feld, a boy who is drawn into a parallel magical world and has to play baseball (barnstorming with a motley group of kids and creatures, including a kindly female Sasquatch) in order to save everyone from destruction.

It is loaded with symbolism and mythology, with references ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Paul Bunyan to Norse cosmology (the world is held together by a massive tree). My complaint is that Chabon gets bogged down too often in the mythological references, so the plot periodically comes to a dead stop.

Nonetheless, the themes are eternal and endearing. The sounds and smells of baseball, the relationship between fathers and children (mothers for some reason don't appear much), good versus evil, and happy endings. With baseball upon us, it's not a bad choice.

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Tony Gwynn

The news that Tony Gwynn had 15 hours of surgery to remove cancerous tumors from his mouth (and then replace cheek nerves with some from his neck and shoulder) was particularly sobering for me. In San Diego during the 1980s, Tony (and very often people refer to him only by his first name--you just know to whom they refer) became an idol when I was a teenager attending lots of games. He even acquired the nickname "Mr. Padre." Not only did he have an amazingly sweet swing that sent so many balls to the 5.5 hole, but he was also the most affable athlete imaginable. When you think of the Padres, you think of Tony.

As a kid I had the chance to talk to him very briefly at autograph signings, which only reinforced his image of being a really nice guy. I have this print by Christopher Paluso in my office on campus. I hope Tony has a full recovery.

It also reminds me of the "Bring Back the Brown" movement to go back to brown uniforms. Tony played in the heyday of the brown:

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