Jumping To Conclusions

CNN tells us that Transportation Secretary Mineta pledges 'world-class' airport security that "does not tolerate screening mistakes." Oh, good. Even better, he has everything worked out:

"What we're trying to figure out is what are the best practices that we can employ to ensure that we have world-class security and world-class customer service," Mineta said in an interview last week. Whether it's the airport in Los Angeles, California, or Evansville, Indiana, "it's going to be uniform."

Just saw the CBS documentary on 9/11. I just hope some of the politicians, American and European, who have begun to waver were watching. Maybe they'll begin to remember why this war is "open-ended," why there's no "exit strategy" now, why the war can't stop at the borders of Afghanistan. This isn't the U.S. "getting even" with the perpetrators. This is the U.S. making sure nobody ever tries to do this again. The cost needs to be made high, not so that we'll feel better about ourselves, but so that the roguest of rogue states rethinks its support for terrorist organizations.


What's most striking about the documentary is the dignity, the calm professionalism of the firefighters. As the events unfold, you can see them getting more and worried, but they never panic. Until the buildings start coming down and they get the order to evacuate, they're headed in to help. The sickening thuds of bodies falling told them how bad it was, and they're startled, but they don't run. They wait to be told where to go and how to help. It's facile, but I can't help but contrast their behavior with those in the West Bank and elsewhere in the Middle East, cheering, dancing, and celebrating as they hear the news. Still, I spent most of the documentary thinking back to my own experience watching 9/11 unfold on television. The fear, the confusion, as wild rumors spread, the realization that some of the rumors were true, and the relief when others weren't. It's hard to believe it has been six months since then, that we identified who did it and responded already. People who thought this country was soft, who boasted that it would be another Vietnam if we tried to strike back, have already lost the battle. But the war's not over, and it's good to be reminded why it needs to continue.

According to the New York Times, there has been a rash of anti-South Asian hate crimes (Link requires registration.) in the last six months. Interestingly, the story cites a report "to be released on Monday," which raises some questions about the entanglement of advocacy groups and the media. But the big problem is that the report doesn't say anything at all. It has an impressive statistic: 250 incidents in the last 3 months of 2001, four times the typical rate of 400-500 incidents for a year.


Of course, read further and it's clear that there's no there there. The statistic involves incidents which were reported as bias incidents; it's quite logical to assume that reporting would have gone up significantly after 9/11, given all the attention paid to the potential problem. Moreover, it uses the classic advocacy group tactic of lumping together different times of problems and discussing the total number as though they were all the worst type. So in this case, there were 250 incidents, "including racial slurs, threatening phone calls and homicides."


It's the magic of the conjunction. After 9/11, fifty thousand people bought such items as nuclear weapons, mustard gas, and bottled water. Half of all marriages end in ways including divorce, annulment and the murder of a spouse. Two hundred million Americans suffer from such diseases as cancer, AIDS, and the flu.


But I shouldn't minimize the situation. After all, many of the victims cited in the report suffered tremendously: " In many instances, frightened drivers reported being targeted on the road by other drivers who would point fingers at them as if they were carrying guns." Uh oh. Those finger hate crimes.

Weird ideas from the editorial staff of the New York Times: America as Nuclear Rogue. (Link requires registration.) Referring, of course, to the supposed Nuclear Posture Review which was leaked to the L.A. Times this past weekend:

If another country were planning to develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating pre-emptive strikes against a list of non-nuclear powers, Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous rogue state. Yet such is the course recommended to President Bush by a new Pentagon planning paper that became public last weekend. Mr. Bush needs to send that document back to its authors and ask for a new version less menacing to the security of future American generations.

The review also calls for the United States to develop a new nuclear warhead designed to blow up deep underground bunkers. Adding a new weapon to America's nuclear arsenal would normally require a resumption of nuclear testing, ending the voluntary moratorium on such tests that now helps restrain the nuclear weapons programs of countries like North Korea and Iran.

An intramural basketball team at the University of Northern Colorado is protesting the mascot of a local high school (the "Fightin' Reds") by naming itself the "Fighting Whities." (The Rocky Mountain News reports that there may be a personal agenda behind the protests, unrelated to the politics of mascots; the protest leader's wife had a dispute with the high school.)

Little Owl said, "The Fighting Whities" issue is "to make people understand what it's like to be on the other side of the fence. If people get offended by it, then they know how I feel, and we've made our point."

Cuny said he, and most other young Indians, are more interested in larger issues, such as health care, tribal treaties with the federal government and mineral rights to their land, but offensive mascots are a starting point to deal with the weightier issues.

The French government apparently can't be bothered to support us in battle, but they do have time to harass innocent citizens (link requires registration). The New York Times reports on the French government's attempts to stop a French doctor from preserving his dead parents in cryonic storage:

But this time, local authorities said, enough is enough. They want both bodies removed and they have charged Rémy Martinot, a civil servant who works in Paris, with disturbing the peace.

"You can't just put a body in a fridge and call it a burial," said Christian Prioux, the lawyer arguing the case for the government. "It's illegal and it can't be allowed.

I can believe that Andrea Yates was convicted of murdering her children. What I can't believe is how quickly the jury made its decision. It took them less than four hours, after a three-week trial. Certainly Texas law made an insanity defense difficult (and Yates' actions made any other defense impossible), but I would have thought that the jury would have debated the issue for longer than it took them to decide what to have for lunch. It will be interesting to see what happens in the penalty phase of the trial, where Yates' mental illness (which both the prosecution and defense agreed existed) can be a mitigating factor.

As Damian Penny points out, there's a huge difference in the approach to defendants who are fathers and defendants who are mothers. There's a presumption that (as Yates' attorney argued), "If drowning five children by a loving mother isn't a gross psychosis, there isn't any such thing as gross psychosis," while a man who does the same is just evil.

And no, I'm not talking about Ruben Rivera stealing fellow Yankee Derek Jeter's glove. I'm talking about the election which just took place in Zimbabwe, where incumbent president Robert Mugabe has been declared the winner by incumbent president Robert Mugabe.

If Jesse Jackson wants to complain about oppressed blacks having an election stolen from them, perhaps he ought to start here, instead. But, hey, it's not as good a photo op, right? He wouldn't be able to use it to raise money which he could then avoid reporting to the IRS, so it's not nearly as compelling an issue. Plus, if he actually went there to protest, he might put himself at real risk, instead of the pretend risk of going to Florida. Certainly, though, Jesse Jackson is not the only hypocrite; the South African government, virtually alone among election observers, is claiming that the election was legitimate. When Africans can claim whites are oppressing blacks (or even that they did so centuries ago), as they did at the U.N. Racism Conference, they're eager to do so. But when a story doesn't fit that script, then they're uninterested.

Okay, not quite, but the New York Times reports that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has called on Israel to end its "illegal occupation" of Palestine. Generously, he also chided the Palestinians:

"To the Israelis I say: you have the right to live in peace
and security within secure internationally recognized borders. But you must end the illegal occupation," he said. "More urgently, you must stop the bombing of civilian areas, the assassinations, the unnecessary use of lethal force, the demolitions and the daily humiliation of ordinary Palestinians."

He continued: "To the Palestinians I say: you have the inalienable right to a viable state within secure internationally recognized borders. But you must stop all acts of terror and all suicide bombings. It is doing immense harm to your cause, by weakening international
support and making Israelis believe that it is their existence as a state, and not the occupation, that is being opposed."

The other problem? As this link explains (from Smarter Times), the Israeli "Occupation" isn't really an "Occupation" at all, let alone an "illegal" one.

Everyone agrees by now that a Palestinian state is inevitably the only long-term resolution to the conflict; the problem is that Israelis stubbornly insist on retaining a state of their own. And somehow I doubt Kofi Annan's stern lectures are going to make a big difference in whether Arafat et al. decide to blow up some more pizzerias.

The major story floating around the blogosphere, and now in the real world, is the Immigration and Naturalization Service's major screwup. Six months (to the day !) after 9/11, they formally notified a Florida flight school that two aliens, who just happened to be a couple of 9/11 hijackers, had been approved for student visas.

The primary focus of the coverage has been how bad the INS' security has to be that nobody noticed the names on the applications -- it's not as if "Mohamed Atta" is obscure anymore. And that's certainly a valid point. But ignore all that, pretend that these were two legitimate applicants, and this is still a debacle.

The INS notified the school of the visa approvals nineteen months after the visa applications were filed. A year and a half. What the hell good does that do? It's useless for the students, right? Well, not exactly. The INS solves the problem of not processing paperwork promptly, by not actually using the paperwork:

The schools are not required to deny instruction to foreign nationals while the visa applicants wait for an INS decision, officials said.

You could defend the INS by blaming the delay on their outside contractor, except that:

A spokeswoman for ACS Inc., the contractor that runs the London, Ky., processing center that mailed the paperwork to Huffman, said that INS rules allow the company to wait six months before sending approved student visa applications to flight schools. "There was no delay," said Lesley Pool. "We perform our services according to their dictates."

INS and Justice officials said last night that the company's latest contract, announced last fall, reduces the deadline to 30 days, officials said.

What a system. Aren't you glad the government has taken the responsibility for airport security away from the evil private sector? Don't you feel reassured?

Iain Murray makes an excellent point as to why economics are not the only thing that matter.

There are plenty of countries that are economically free but god-awful places to live -- Singapore, Bahrein and so on. What makes the Anglosphere a distinct branch of civilization is that the social and economic freedoms are all predicated on an older set of freedoms, freedoms from executive power, a restraint placed on government by the people that makes liberty, not safety or the common good or anything else, the main object of the constitution(s).

I hate to be judgmental, but I think the doctor who sent the elderly woman to the morgue alive just might not be a good doctor.

The color of her skin led the doctor to declare her dead and send her to the morgue.

The Washington Post informs us that Hispanic Lawmakers Defy Categorization, which is good to know, because many of us have been spending our free moments, between stereotyping blacks and Jews, trying to figure out how to "characterize" Hispanics. The rest of the article doesn't really say much of anything, except the usual "Hispanics are growing in numbers and are becoming more influential" banalities we can read anywhere.

Never let it be said that Arthur Schlesinger is behind the times. He has a hard-hitting news story in the current American Prospect which makes the heretofore unreported point that George Bush didn't win the popular vote sixteen months ago. He uses this newsflash as a jumping off point to discuss, in tedious detail, the history of the electoral college. You can't learn this stuff elsewhere -- at least not without staying awake in a high school social studies class. Amazingly, while listing the instances where the popular vote leader lost the election, it never once occurs to him that candidates campaigned, and voters voted, based on an electoral vote strategy, and might have acted differently if a different system were in place. But nevermind.

This all leads up to various proposals to "reform" the presidential election process, but I fell asleep while reading, so I can't summarize them. Mostly because, well, who cares? This is one of those issues of great interest to history professors and Al Gore, and nobody else. As Schlesinger himself notes, with regard to the 2000 election:

I expected an explosion of public outrage over the rejection of the people's choice. But there was surprisingly little in the way of outcry.

Let's see. Today we have Iran prosecuting a journalist, with the New York Times explaining

A state-run newspaper, Iran, unexpectedly announced on Saturday that the trial had begun last Thursday, just before President Mohammad Khatami's trip to Austria and Greece. During his past visits to European countries, hard-liners have arrested reformers back home in order to embarrass him.

And then in North Korean news, we have refugees seeking sanctuary in the Spanish embassy in Beijing, threatening suicide and asserting they face starvation and oppression at home. The refugees explained:

"We are now at the point of such desperation and live in such fear of persecution within North Korea that we have come to the decision to risk our lives for freedom rather than passively await our doom," said the statement by the Life Funds for North Korean Refugees. "Some of us carry poison on our person to commit suicide if the Chinese authorities should choose once again to send us back to North Korea."

Most of the time, when people talk about "media bias," they're talking about partisan bias, the idea that a reporter favors liberals or conservatives (usually liberals). But reporters try to be fair, and the real bias tends to show up in more subtle ways than trashing of politicians. Most of the time. But how about this New York Times story on recycling? Now, this isn't on the Op/Ed pages. This isn't in a column, or one of the "fluff" sections like Arts or House & Home. This isn't even labeled "news analysis," the Times' disclaimer that they're going to editorialize in the news section.

The headline alone gives away the bias: "Bloomberg puts doing well ahead of doing good," setting up the two schools of thought on recycling as the people who want to do good things and the people who want to save money. The Times does cite the mayor saying that some forms of recycling (non-paper) are fiscal negatives for the city, and backhandedly acknowledges -- in a single, throwaway sentence -- that he's correct:

Few people dispute Mr. Bloomberg's assertion that tough times demand tough choices.

But to a great degree, experts in consumer behavior say, the mayor's proposal -- and the anguished reaction that some people have had to it -- says a lot about the long strange trip that recycling has been through over the years.

Psychologists do not have a firm answer why saving and sorting took such root in the American psyche. Some think that it tapped into a frugal frontier impulse that is also behind the phenomenon of swap meets and garage sales, that one person's junk must surely be good for something. Other say it became a crutch, a way for Americans to feel as if they were contributing to the environment without actually changing their consumption driven behavior.

In any case, it is often said that more Americans recycle than vote.

So after setting up this premise, the article goes on to quote an assistant professor of sociology, who denigrates "narrow cost-benefit calculations," the Bronx borough president, who complains that "I think people are sort of in shock," an associate professor of environmental psychology and conservation behavior, who says that he "can imagine people thinking that the city is being hypocritical," and a professor of history (whose book "is considered one of the founding works in the field of eco-psychology"), who gripes that "I'm not sure what the measure is of something working in our society." Lots of experts on recycling, in other words. Oh, it also quotes the president of a company that tracks the waste industry, who says "There will be an increasing incentive to recycle," in support of an assertion by the reporter that "some researchers say that the Bloomberg administration may well have bet on the wrong horse."

There's not a single person quoted who thinks that "cost-benefit analysis" should be the basis for government decisions, let alone someone who agrees with Bloomberg's analysis that cost-benefit analysis comes out on the side of less recycling. There's not a single person quoted who thinks that recycling was a silly idea spread by environmental groups who mistakenly thought that raw materials were running scarce. There's not a single person quoted who thinks that recycling is a great idea but that it should be voluntary rather than government mandated. Is that because nobody thinks these things? I doubt it, since the Times' own columnist John Tierney has written about the bad math behind recycling economics. Couldn't this reporter at least have talked to him?

A column by David Ignatius in the Washington Post asks How can the United States sell a war against Iraq to skeptical Arabs and Europeans? How, indeed?

A good start would be to level with them and admit there is no solid evidence linking Baghdad to Osama bin Laden's terrorist attacks against America.

The Bush administration might win more support for its anti-terrorism effort if it offered less rhetoric and more straight talk about the dangers ahead. There has been a kind of bunker mentality in the administration's actions the past few months.

When you realize that U.S. officials go to sleep at night worrying about nuclear or biological attacks on Washington, you begin to understand their odd decisions: why they planned what amounted to an office of strategic deception in the Pentagon, why they began rewriting U.S. nuclear weapons doctrine, why they created a secret "shadow" government to carry on if the capital were obliterated. Most of these are bad ideas, but at least they become more comprehensible.

James Robbins in the National Review asks the same question I've been wondering about: who leaked the Nuclear Posture Review story, and why? He dismisses the idea that it was the Bush administration, and concludes it was probably disgruntled congressional Democrats. Worth a read.

Tipper Gore may run for the Senate, for her husband's old Tennessee seat. Special bonus: if she does, she might be running against Lamar Alexander. Who exactly thinks this is a good idea? Al Gore couldn't win his home state in the 2000 election, and Lamar "Plaid Shirt" Alexander couldn't even buy his mother's vote in the Republican primaries in 1996 or 2000, finishing just below "Let's cancel the whole thing and create a monarchy."

Charles Murtaugh has a good piece on left wing theology:

Why do bad things happen to good people? This is one of the questions that defines human existence, and in every culture, people have looked to religion for an answer.

What I only recently realized was how similar the theology of the far left is to that of the far right. It came to me in a flash last week, when I heard a interview with Noam Chomsky on a local NPR show, "On Point".

Megan McArdle analyzes the European Union as a corporate merger, pondering the question, what makes a merger successful?

So let's look at the EU "merger". Is there redundancy? Absolutely. Tons of it. But over half the French population is employed by the government -- think they're going to initiate massive cutbacks? The "merger" is introducing another layer of redundancy, not removing it.

How about transaction costs? Well, here we hit the mother load, in the form of national differences that restrict the flow of capital and labor between countries.

There's a third reason to merge, of course, and that's the hope that you can get rid of competition.

European dreams of becoming a superpower to rival or replace the US remain, for now, castles in the air.

Britain is isolated from continental Europe in supporting a United States attack on Iraq.

Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, yesterday brought into the open the growing rift between Britain and continental Europe over taking the "war on terror" to Iraq when he signalled he had no intention of participating in any unilateral military action launched against Baghdad by the United States.

In a move that highlighted the breach between Tony Blair and his European partners, Mr Schröder's spokeswoman confirmed a report that Germany would only join in a broadening of the US-led "war on terror" if the action were backed by the United Nations. "It's a position of principle of which our American partners are also aware," she said.

Mr Schröder's reported remarks chimed with the sceptical stance adopted by Paris. French government sources said Mr Schröder was "pretty much in line" with their view.

Tony Blair had better watch out, becausean attack on Iraq without UN authorisation would be illegal, according to Saddam Hussein The Guardian.

Pressing ahead against Iraq without council authorisation would be illegal under current international law and would undermine a significant accomplishment. The charter has helped prevent wars by maintaining a delicate balance between the good achieved by collective action and the catastrophic destruction that might result if an intervention conflicted with the vital interests of a major power.

Only those who have no reason to fear military force can contemplate a world without these protections. It is the possession of a credible nuclear deterrence - and plans for missile defence - that make Bush think he can disregard the UN. The UK, as a middle power, needs international law. The effective use of the UN, not Trident, is what enables the UK to punch above its weight.

Matt Welch dissects the strange story of the San Francisco Chronicle's pseudo-apology for falsifying quotes. That this story hasn't received more notice is disgraceful, but not all that surprising.

Charles Johnson takes on the New York Times' "unbelievable" attempt to whitewash the propaganda-spewing Arab News.

The Washington Post reports that Tipper Gore has decided not to run for Senate, after "consulting" with her family and other Democrats.

She said that although it "would be such an honor to work for the people of Tennessee," she had decided the time was not right to launch her political career.

The Times also notes that

Tipper Gore's decision brought relief to many of the former vice president's supporters. They feared that if she ran and lost the Senate race, her husband would have a more difficult time mounting another presidential bid in 2004.

On the third hand, does it really matter? Unless Al's "presidential bid" is for the presidency of Harvard, is there anybody operating under the delusion that he has a chance to defeat George Bush? Certainly, two years is an eternity in politics, where many things can happen, but "Al Gore being elected president" doesn't count as one of them.

Why does the New York Times bury this story on page A11? Palestinians in Ramallah show Support for Attacks, Not a Truce. These "attacks," of course, are not upon the Israeli troops that are supposedly provoking the Palestinians, but are upon Israeli teenagers walking home from school.

Today's attack "boosted the morale of our people," said Iyhab, a Palestinian fighter who would not give his full name, echoing the sentiments of numerous people interviewed here this afternoon.

In fact, Palestinians say that Yasir Arafat, their leader, has issued no order in recent days to stop the terror attacks and probably could not enforce one in any case.

"Internally, we are against any kind of cease-fire," said a fighter named Tasir, who would not give his last name but said he was a security officer for the Palestinian Authority. Several of his armed colleagues stood by nodding as he spoke.

"We are security people, and it is our responsibility to implement orders," he said. "But we are not in a position to implement any kind of cease-fire agreement. It is in our blood, every one of us. We will continue fighting."

Should I add the obligatory OpinionJournal's "Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994" footnote? Seems like plagiarism, but I guess I should do it at least once in my life.

Apparently Iranian President Mohammad Khatami hasn't heard that using phrases like "Axis of Evil" will set back international relations by centuries.

But Mr. Bush's implied threat against Iran generated a discussion among politicians here about relations with the United States, with many arguing that anti-American oratory no longer serves Iran's interests. Some suggested that direct talks were the only way to avert the threat. The minister of defense, Ali Shamkhani, was summoned to Parliament to answer questions over hostile remarks by one of his commanders.

Davood Hermidas Bavand, an independent political analyst and a professor at Tehran University, said the implied American threat had changed the political situation here.

"Naming Iran part of an evil axis, and categorizing it along with Iraq and North Korea, have created serious concerns and worries which have changed the conditions," he said. "It is natural that under the new conditions, there would be suggestions for constructive dialogue, which is the first step for resolving any matter peacefully."

[By the way, the New York Times buried this story on page A12. If Iran had threatened to attack the U.S. in response, is there any doubt that it would have been on A1?]

Tim Blair points out the bizarre role-reversal by the left since the 1960s:

Which is precisely what our idealistic young anti-globs are fighting to maintain. What do they want? Over-regulated and burdensome taxation regimes, run by hidebound bureaucracies!When do they want it? NOW!

These anti-freedom monkeys are strange inheritors of the 1960s protest tradition. Hippies hated rules (or so they said); the anti-globs want rules for everything. They're a whole different breed of idiot. Witness how protests have changed over the past 25 years:

1967: Give peace a chance
2002: Give police states a chance

1967: LSD is good
2002: Genetically modified food is bad

1967: Ban the bomb!
2002: Ban the burger shops, shoe makers, crop scientists, coffee stores, trade, business, and commerce!

1967: Think global, act local
2002: Think local, act anti-global

1967: Expand your consciousness
2002: Throw rocks

Australia's Prime Minister John Howard rules out sanctions against Zimbabwe over Mugabe's stolen election. But he did agree, after meeting with South Africa and Nigeria, to support Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth for one year. That's right -- just one year. If Mugabe had stolen a Chevy Cavalier, he'd have gotten a more serious punishment. Next time Mugabe steals an election, Howard has threatened to send him his Christmas card three or four days late.

"Australia would like to see another election held in democratic circumstances as soon as possible," he told ABC Radio.

But Mr Howard said the most important thing was that the three leaders had adopted a consistent approach to anti-democratic action.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is complaining that Israel's behavior "has come to resemble all-out conventional warfare." Well, it's about time. Unfortunately, Annan couldn't find the time to send a similar letter to Yasir Arafat -- or at least not to leak it to the media.

Maybe if he had, the Palestinians would stop blowing up buses. Or maybe not. It's not as if people generally listen to Annan, after all.

Remember how the United States is evil because we make decisions without consulting the French first?

Well, our "allies" in France are now saying that they won't cooperate with the United States if Zacarias Moussaoui, the "20th hijacker," gets the death penalty.

[French rights groups] said Justice Minister Marylise Lebranchu told them in a letter that she had instructed her officials to contact the U.S. Justice Department to voice concern that information gleaned in France could put Zacarias Moussaoui on death row.

But at least it's good to know we're not the only ones exasperated by the French.

CLASHES between protesters and riot police threatened to overshadow the European summit in Barcelona last night, as Tony Blair stepped up the pressure on France over its refusal to import British beef.

...

The Prime Minister told Lionel Jospin, his French counterpart, that Britain was becoming increasingly irritated with France’s determination to defy international law and uphold the ban.

In yet another campaign finance rant, the New York Times explains that Campaign Reform's Time Has Come. The Times' vision of campaign finance "reform," of course, is that nobody should be allowed to have any say in elections, including candidates themselves. (Except, of course, for newspapers. More on that below.)

The bill aims at shutting down unlimited "soft money" donations to political parties from corporations, unions and rich individuals, and greatly curbing such donations for state and local parties.

It would also ban corporate and union funds to independent groups for sham issue ads running just before elections, and require disclosure for individual donors to such groups.

While the Times wants to prevent groups from advertising on television or radio in the months before an election -- on the theory that (gasp) rich people might tell you what they think, and us commoners (definition: everyone who doesn't work for the New York Times editorial staff) are just too darn stupid to see through these ads -- they don't propose limiting the rights of newspapers to accept ads or to editorialize in favor of candidates. While we can't put a precise monetary value on a New York Times endorsement, we can get a general idea. The New York Times accepts advertisements for the bottom right corner of the opinion page. They charge $30-40 thousand for one of these ads. In short, an editorial endorsement by the New York Times is essentially a $30,000 campaign contribution from the corporation which publishes the New York Times. (Yes, newspapers are corporations.) But that doesn't count as a "sham issue ad," in the mind of the Times' editors. Wonder why.

The United Nations has figured out how to cure poverty. And you'll be shocked to hear this one: rich countries need to give lots of money to poor countries.

In anticipation of the U.N. International Conference on Financing for Development, the United States and Europe each pledged billions of dollars to poor nations last week. But the United Nations says much more is needed – international development aid must double to $100 billion a year to meet the international goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015.

"It's a good beginning, but nobody has suggested that's all we need," U.N. spokeswoman Susan Markham said. "The donors have agreed we need to increase aid. The fact that they're even discussing an increase in (overseas development aid) is a breakthrough."

While we're solving that simple problem, the United States thinks that aid should only be given to countries that reform their politics and economies. For some reason, that isn't going over too big.

Many aid recipients say that conditioning aid amounts to meddling in their internal politics.

Advocates for the poor say some of the neediest live in countries whose governments are corrupt or totalitarian and they shouldn't be punished for the sins of their leaders.