This just in...

CNN is reporting that Senator Barack Obama is resigning from his church. I didn't know you have to "resign" from a church. If so, I owe someone a letter of resignation. I thought you just stop attending. Who would I address that letter to -- the church's HR department?

The impending end of the war in Iraq

In this campaign season, one of the questions on voters' minds is how much longer will the Iraq war continue? Senator John McCain has voiced support for the possibility of maintaining military troops in Iraq for as long as a century. Both Senators Obama and Clinton would withdraw our troops as rapidly as prudence allows after taking the Oval Office, with some minor variations of what that means between the two of them. What none of them are talking about is that the time is actually much more cut and dried than any of them would want you to know.

President Bush acquired his authority to invade Iraq under the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq. Remember it? That's the one both Senators Clinton and McCain voted in favor of in 2002.

What the resolution says is that congress supports the president to "strictly enforce through the United Nations Security Council all relevant Security Council resolutions applicable to Iraq and encourages him in those efforts." It's not as though Bush needed any encouragement but he does need the relevant Security Council resolution. There is a series of them which approves the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), the last of which was the Security Council resolution dated December 18, 2007. With it, the council "decides to extend the [UNAMI] mandate as set forth in that resolution until 31 December 2008." Finally it decides to remain "seized of the matter."

Whether the council remains seized or not, the administration is not requesting an extension of the resolution for 2009. That leaves the UN multinational forces, led by the US military, less than seven months to wrap up the war in Iraq. Considering Bush makes it crystal clear that the American forces will not be withdrawn from Iraq while he's commander in chief, it's unclear what authority he will use to perpetuate the war into 2009. If he follows his standard operating procedures, his authority is certain to be some grotesque contortion of US and international law.

Measured in blood and treasure

"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle." This is a claim you'd expect to hear from a critic of Bush's foreign policy. But this was written by a former senior department of defense official, Joseph J. Collins. In the paper, Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath, he goes on to say, "Our status as a moral leader has been damaged by the war, the subsequent occupation of a Muslim nation, and various issues concerning the treatment of detainees."

The latest of the Institute for National Strategic Studies' occasional papers published by the National Defense University Press, this one was released this month. The paper notes that the biggest cost of the war to the treasury is yet to come. "No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans' benefits or the total impact on service personnel and materiel," Collins wrote. And contrary to Bush's justification du jour for invading Iraq, he reports that our efforts in Iraq have caused it to become an "incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East."

Americans are in agreement that until recently, things have gone very poorly in Iraq. But since the 'surge,' the situation in Iraq appears to be improving. Does that mean there's light at the end of the tunnel? Unfortunately, Collins believes that "despite impressive progress in security during the surge, the outcome of the war is in doubt." He states that, "It is arguable whether the Iraqis will develop the wherewithal to create ethnic reconciliation and build a coherent national government." For many analysts, the war looks like a 'can't win.'

The central finding of this study is that U.S. efforts in Iraq were hobbled by a set of faulty assumptions, a flawed planning effort, and a continuing inability to create security conditions in Iraq that could have fostered meaningful advances in stabilization, reconstruction, and governance.

Collins lays the blame at the feet of the President for the impact made by "senior U.S. national security officials" when they "exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect." They not only treated our allies this way but they even treated our own Congress autocratically.

Collins has substantial credibility to make such claims. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. He retired in 1998 as a Colonel in the United States Army after 28 years of service. He was also a Special Assistant to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. He makes Bush's claims that the war in Iraq is not a debacle ring hollow. Hopefully America now recognizes the folly of choosing war.

Obama's economic plan

Senator Barack Obama has developed a comprehensive economic plan for America. It's more detailed than the plans offered by the other major candidates, albeit not that different from senator Hillary Clinton's plan insofar as you can tell considering that hers is less specific. Senator John McCain's economic plan seems to be the perpetuation of president George W. Bush's failed economic policies -- cut taxes and reform Social Security.

Obama details six principles for modernizing the financial regulatory system:

1. Provide the Federal Reserve with basic supervisory authority over any financial institution to which it may make credit available as a lender of last resort.
2. Capital, liquidity and disclosure requirements should be developed and strengthened for all financial institutions.
3. End our balkanized framework of overlapping and competing regulatory agencies.
4. Regulate financial institutions for what they do, rather than who they are.
5. Crack down on trading activity that crosses the line to market manipulation.
6. Identify systemic risks to the financial system, no matter where they arise.

These are sound principles and Obama elaborated on them in his recent speech on Renewing the American Economy.

Obama also has a plan for Protecting Homeownership & Cracking Down On Mortgage Fraud (PDF). It too is detailed and has some good ideas that could be effective for dealing with the home mortgage crisis at hand. However, there are a couple of questionable components to this plan. He bases his plan to help homeowners facing foreclosure on the claim that:

One of the biggest problems associated with the crisis in the housing market is the decline in house values, which is putting people's mortgages underwater, meaning that their mortgage is worth more than their houses. Many people who find themselves in this situation simply walk away, worsening the foreclosure problem.

There is a basic weakness to this precept. The reason homeowners are facing foreclosure is predominantly because they bought homes they could not really afford using the creative financing instruments that were the hallmark of the real estate bubble. Then when their APR increases, they simply can't afford the new monthly installments, regardless of whether they have equity or not.

It doesn't make sense that homeowners would go into foreclosure simply because their mortgage is "underwater." They would still need a place to live even after foreclosure. They also understand the importance of maintaining a strong credit rating. If they could afford the payments, homeowners would keep their homes even were their valuations less than their outstanding principal. Unfortunately, some of the tactics Obama proposes would not be effective since they're based on the invalid assumption that people face foreclosures because they have negative equity.

Obama also proposes refinancing ARMs with fixed-rate mortgages as a solution to those facing foreclosure. But the reason people got ARMs in the first place is because they couldn't afford the monthly payments on a fixed-rate mortgage with the inflated property valuations that existed at the peak of the housing bubble. The only way to afford a mortgage was using negative amortization loans, and the like, which started out with monthly payments at artificially low rates. These homeowners assumed when the rates got high enough that they could no longer afford the payments, they'd simply flip their house for a big gain that they could use on a down payment for a new home. But with negative equity, how could a financially distressed homeowner be expected to make the payments on a fixed-rate mortgage even if they could refinance?

In spite of these criticisms, Obama's economic plan is fairly good on the whole. There are many good ideas in it. With the next presidential administration still almost a year away, Obama has time to shore up the weaknesses in it before occupying the Oval Office. Besides, most of the unaffordable mortgages could already be foreclosed on by that time.

The real milestone of Paterson's inauguration

All the buzz in the press lately has been about David Paterson becoming the first black governor of New York. That is somewhat significant since there have only been a handful of black governors in US history, although the first one was way back in 1872.

However, I don't think that is the most significant milestone of Paterson's ascension to the governor's office. The real milestone is that Paterson is the first blind governor in US history (actually, there was one other, but he only held the office for eleven days).

Paterson's accomplishment is inspirational to those of us with substantial disabilities. It raises awareness of the capabilities of persons with disabilities to be vocationally successful. If the press were to more widely acknowledge this milestone, it would likely cause more employers to think favorably about hiring persons with disabilities in the future.

Granted, racism is still widespread in America. However, the high unemployment rate of persons with disabilities indicate that they face more discrimination than African Americans do.

A hearing without a crime

President Bush is waging a war in Iraq that some say will cost our treasury $2-trillion when all is said and done. Meanwhile the economy is tanking here at home. Yet our congress can find nothing better to do than to stifle free enterprise.

The oversight and government committee from the House called a hearing on CEO compensation packages Friday. The chairman of the committee, Henry Waxman (D), clearly appeared convinced that he had a criminal lineup in front of him: Angelo Mozilo, founder and CEO of Countrywide Financial; Stan O'Neal, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch; and Chuck Prince, former CEO of Citigroup. Waxman's problem was that it is not unlawful for a CEO to be compensated with an income many times greater than that of their lowest paid employees.

Nonetheless, that did not stop him from asking questions like, "When companies fail to perform, should they give millions of dollars to their senior executives?" Stan O'Neal easily explained this away with assertions like "The reality is that I received no severance package. I received no bonus for 2007, no severance pay, no golden parachute. The amount discussed in the press consisted mainly of deferred compensation, stock and options that I earned during the years prior to 2007."

The committee also wanted to know why Angelo Mozilo sold many of his shares in Countrywide shortly before their values plummeted. Mozilo responded that, "The goal was to reduce my holdings because of my retirement ... almost all my net worth was in Countrywide." He was following the most basic rule of investing: diversify your portfolio. Mozilo made it clear that he was completely transparent about his divestiture so shareholders new that he was selling Countrywide stock -- they were free to use that information as a warning that they should be selling theirs at the same time if they wanted to.

As would be expected in this political environment, the hearing was partisan in that it was the Democrats trying to find something to pin on the CEOs. But there was no allegation of predatory lending practices by any of their firms. In fact, in all of the acts that the left side of the committee claimed the CEOs had perpetrated to try and shame them, not one was illegal.

At least the GOP members of the committee showed some sense. Representative Darryl Issa from California wrapped up the hearings nicely when he stated to chairman Waxman, "Mr. chairman, I look forward to finding if something is wrong here. So far you haven't found it."

Height of hypocrisy

The Mexican-American border dispute has reached a new height of hypocrisy. Arizona passed a law, that took effect on the New Year, which punishes employers who knowingly hire workers without valid legal documents to work in the US. In response, a delegation of nine state legislators from Sonora was in Tucson saying that Arizona's new employer sanctions law will have a devastating effect on the Mexican state.

For Mexican officials to point their fingers across the border without acknowledging their own responsibility in this economic situation is not only hypocritical but also arrogant. Their first duty is to create an economic infrastructure in Mexico which would give the Mexican people a decent standard of living. But Mexico, as my friend so aptly put it, is a kleptocratic oligarchy. That would mean the Mexican elite would have to stop hoarding all of Mexico's vast wealth for themselves and invest it instead in their people and their country's future. If they did that, the Mexican people would not want to come to the US in the first place.

America owes the same duty to her people that Mexico owes to hers. That includes maximizing the opportunity of employment for American people. Arizona's move could only serve to reduce the rate of unemployment in the state. The Arizona people should be proud of this legislation, regardless of Mexico's response.