The US has long accused Fidel Castro of human-rights abuses.

President Bush was in Rwanda visiting a memorial for the victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide when he was informed of the resignation.

Both Bush and the exiled Cubans in Miami were surprisingly subdued in reaction to the news. The New York Times reported that Bush is concerned about what will happen next in Cuba — whether any potential elections will be fair.

The Reuters story quotes a man in Little Havana in Miami to explain the subdued reaction among the exiled Cubans:

“It’s very good that Fidel resigns. But if Fidel dies, it’s better,” said Juan Acosta, a Cuban who left the Caribbean island in 1980, as he stopped for a newspaper on Calle Ocho, Little Havana’s main street.

“The system there is almost over. You are seeing the end,” said Acosta, who like many Miami Cubans has relatives on the island, in this case his mother and sister. “The dictatorship is over.”

Mississippi’s Republican governor will appoint someone (probably a Republican) to take Lott’s seat until Mississippians vote in a special election. Lott’s seat will then be up for regular election in 2012.

Lott’s retirement is particularly interesting because he is the sixth Republican senator to retire whereas no Democrats have retired. The Democrats control the Senate very narrowly — there are 49 Democrats and two Democratic-leaning independents in the 100-member senate — and an incumbent’s retirement puts the seat in danger of switching parties.

UPDATE (Lara Kattan): Apparently the good Senator’s intentions might be motivated by money (feign shock!). From the NY Times: “By resigning before the end of the year, Mr. Lott would beat the effective date for new ethics rules that double to two years the amount of time former Senators must wait before they can join a firm to lobby former colleagues. The new rule applies to those who leave office “on or after” Dec. 31.”

“…For my money, you can cut out the ‘allegedly.’”

You already know that Congress is ripping you off. You probably also realize that even if you read this whole article to find out just how Congress is hustling you this time, it’s not going to stop, and that it will just get worse in the future.

This isn’t your grandfather’s farm subsidy. Photo by willia4 on Flickr.com, licensed under Creative Commons.

This scam, however, is kind of goofy in its brazenness. Farm subsidies have been going on since the New Deal in the 1930s. Every five years Congress adds more money to the ploy. This year, the farm bill will take about $286 billion from us taxpayers and give it to some people who have owned farms. The intended and unintended consequences of the spending are often surprising, usually far-reaching and almost always bad.

Meet the bribees

“Some people who have owned farms” is a weird way of putting it, I admit. But “farmers” doesn’t quite capture my meaning.

Some farm subsidy recipients (such as David Letterman and the Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller) have day jobs. A 2006 study by the Washington Post estimated that $1.3 billion have gone to non-farming farmers between 2000 and 2005.

Other farm subsidy recipients used to, but no longer, own the farms because they’re — you guessed it — dead. The Government Accountability Office estimated that between 1999 and 2005, $1.1 billion went to the companies or estates of dead farmers.

I said “some people” because most — about three-quarters — of the money goes to the richest 10 percent of farms. (Gasp! Congress cynically buys votes by spending tax money!)

Mohair Mo’ problems

If I produced mohair, would you buy it? No. Who wants mohair? What the hell is mohair?

But if the government sent me a check for producing mohair, I’d produce mohair even if no one wanted to buy it. (This is funny because this actually happens.)

The government hands out much bigger checks for corn, wheat, cotton and soy. No doubt someone will leave a comment on this article saying, “But food is necessary and there are starving people who we have to feed. Mohair is a bad example.” Yeah, but when you want food, you pay for it. When you don’t want mohair (or food), you don’t pay for it. That’s how the market knows how much food (or mohair) to make.

The government is sending farmers checks even when no one wants to pay to consume their crops. Indeed, according to the Wall Street Journal, Americans pay $12 billion more for food a year than we would without farm subsidies (not to mention the taxes we pay to support the subsidies).

The Grapes of Cash

On the other hand, farming is a risky business. A year of bad weather can put your farm in a tough spot for the next year since farming requires high capital investment up front. Subsidies are supposed to provide stability to food prices to keep farmers afloat in bad years, such as 1932.

David Glass, a Justice Department lawyer who has represented the government in numerous agriculture cases, argues that over its history, farm subsidies have contributed to greater production and that “the problem is calibrating the amount of aid to the need.”

“We’re better at that than we used to be, because you no longer hear about warehouses of surplus food that the government has bought to keep the price up,” he said.

Nevertheless, farming nowadays differs from farming during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Agricultural businesses are now larger and more productive compared with the family farms of the Depression era. A bad year nowadays won’t cause mass famine, and the negative side effects of farm subsidies outweigh farmers’ fear of competition (pansies, the lot of them, I tell you).

“It wouldn’t surprise me if there are certain companies or individuals who profit from the system beyond their need,” Glass said. “That seems always to happen with income transfer programs.”

Ten things I hate about you

(Not you. The farm subsidies.)

All that income being transfered reprograms the economy in some surprising, seemingly disconnected ways. Consider the following:

1. Congress likes alcohol more than college students do. Much like the rum we’ve all been chugging at wild parties, the kind of ethanol that Congress mandates be put into gasoline should be made from sugar cane because it’s six times cheaper than making it from corn. Instead, 30 percent of US corn will go to ethanol production by next year. (I’ll let you guess why.) That drives up the price for corn (more demand and all that). Higher corn prices even push up the price of meat since low-grade corn used for feed is also used for ethanol. That’s a major reason food prices have climbed so fast recently.

2. Weather hurt barley and hops yields this year, so beer prices could as much as double. Major-brand crappy beer won’t get too expensive — especially “honeymoon on the beach” (fucking close to water) beers because they contain so little hops — but subsidies aren’t helping any because they encourage farmers to switch from barley and hops to less interesting, more subsidized plants. Mainly corn, though, because of ethanol mandates. (Congress mandates the use of ethanol in fuel so beer prices go up. Supply, demand and irony.)

3. American farmers are more productive than the farmers in rural Africa. That means that African farmers have to work harder to compete with American farmers in the international market. American subsidies make it yet harder for African farmers to compete. So while Americans are growing more than enough food, Africans are growing too little, and the deadweight loss from subsidies means that the quantities won’t balance out. (Not that there are any Africans who need to eat more or anything).

4. Ever read the ingredients on junk food? Toward the top of the list you’ll likely find “partially hydrogenated soybean oil” or “high-fructose corn syrup.” You guessed it: your tax dollars are subsidizing America’s obesity epidemic. Fruits and vegetables receive little to no subsidy compared to corn and soybeans.

5. All the extra farming takes up marginal lands that could be left to nature (such as wetlands), adding to erosion and farm pollution (e.g., cow farts). Additionally, our farm subsidies violate international trade rules and slow trade negotiations with our allies. Not to mention, people farming more than the market demands means that land prices are too high.

Two-hundred-eighty-six billion dollars.

What a rip off.

Flash production by Jason Platz. Graphics by Jacob Watson. Reporting by Billy Schwartz.

(Still with me? Hang in there.)

…gets everyone angry just talking about it. Some hear the word and seethe about theocratic Republicans wanting Jesus in every American womb. Others retort that abortion is worse than the Holocaust. Everyone else would rather avoid the topic entirely. Starting a conversation (or an article) with “abortion” is a great way to lose friends.

But with the Supreme Court’s recent upholding of a federal partial-birth abortion ban, and several states contemplating other abortion laws, this issue is worth talking about.

Bringing up Roe v. Wade also riles people. The pro-abortion left mocks the right as misogynists with no concept of legal precedent. The anti-choice right mocks the left as murderers with no concept of democratic law making.

And then of course they both decry political pandering and invective.

I know I’m not the only one who thinks this is madness. (Necessary…)

But despite the political blather, Democrats and Republicans aren’t all sociopaths. Democrats value their lives and their children. Nor do Republicans want their neighbors in their business or their bodies. The idea that disagreement over abortion stems from disagreement over one of these basic American values — life and privacy — is almost offensive.

“Pro-life” people think that life starts at conception. “Pro-choice” people think that life starts later. Both parties would agree that when and if the fetus is a living human, we shouldn’t kill it. And when the fetus is not a living human, it’s an “abnormal growth” in a woman’s abdomen and the woman gets to choose.

Notice that Roe assumes that life starts after — not at — conception. Precisely that assumption corrupts the national discourse because no one, in making the law, ever honestly debated that issue.

The Supreme Court should protect all rights, but it’s as incapable of determining when life starts as it is incapable of determining which rights exist. All courts can do without being arbitrary and patronizing is enforce the letter of the law. When the court strays from the text, “we the people” aren’t governing ourselves — we’re at the mercy of nine self-righteous and capricious village elders. Only when our legislatures control the abortion debate will politicians stop their bickering over “litmus tests” for judges and focus on the real questions.

Roe does not claim that the Constitution explicitly enumerates a right to abortion, but rather that the right arises from the shadows of other rights. Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe’s precedent decision, explains: “Specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.”

But let’s place sophistry aside. If we or any generation had thought that more privacy protections were necessary than what the Constitution already enumerates, we would have amended the Constitution. The court needn’t guess if we’ve changed our minds — we’ll tell them.

Plessy v. Furgeson and Roe are not morally equivalent, but America’s experience with Plessy shows that we can avoid a lot of trouble if we stick to our original agreement — that is, the text of the Constitution.

Maybe you’re thinking I’m some Republican hack. On the contrary — I think life starts after conception and we should protect a woman’s right to an abortion until that life begins. But maybe I don’t know. I haven’t heard many thoughtful discussions on the definition of life.

You might suppose that liberals actually do want a Constitutional amendment enshrining Roe’s protections lest those damn fascist Republicans with their Big Corporations kill Roe. You might also suppose that conservatives actually do want a Constitutional amendment overturning Roe lest those damn commie Democrats with their Big Unions maintain Roe. Regardless, I would start with the court’s repealing Roe on principle.

But what any of us want doesn’t really matter unless legislatures regain control of abortion law.

On April 25, the Federal Communications Commission recommended to Congress that the Commission regulate violence on broadcast television — as well as on cable and satellite for the first time, according to The Washington Post — to protect children. While Congress would have to develop a definition of violence, the Post suggests that any such regulation would force Fox to temper Jack Bauer’s interrogation style. The FCC says that “exposure to violence in the media can increase aggressive behavior in children, at least in the short term.” While the industry rates TV content (e.g., the TV MA rating in the corner of the screen at the start of a show designed for mature audiences), the FCC feels that those ratings aren’t well applied and that parents don’t take advantage of available technologies to block programming from their children.

On the same day as the report’s release, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Federal Elections Commissions vs. Wisconsin Right to Life. The FEC says that under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (aka the McCain-Feingold Act), corporations and unions are not allowed directly to fund “electioneering communications — television or radio communications that refer to a clearly identified federal candidate and are distributed to the relevant electorate within 60 days prior to the general election or 30 days prior to a primary.” Corporations and Unions are allowed to donate limited funds to political action committees — specially regulated organizations allowed to contribute to campaigns — but cannot produce “electioneering communications” themselves. In 2003, the Supreme Court decided in McConnell vs. FEC that, on the face of it, the BCRA did not violate the First Amendment protection of free speech.

However, in that decision, the Court said that some TV or radio ads which look like “electioneering communications” might actually be legitimate issues ads, which the First Amendment would protect. The current case, FEC vs. WRTL, is an “as-applied” challenge to the law. The Court will decide whether WRTL’s advertisement that mentioned Senator Feingold was a protected issue ad or an unprotected “electioneering communication.”

According to Facebook, twenty-two percent of Northwestern students who list their political leanings categorize themselves as “liberal.” Talking to NU conservatives and liberals about the speech issue shows that liberals tend to take into account context and content, while conservatives view the freedom of speech as absolute.

Weinberg sophomore Blake Yocom whose “views are more conservative than… Republican” sees the prospect of censorship as an affront to free speech. He doesn’t believe in lots of government regulation, and he also doesn’t believe that watching violence will induce people into committing violence themselves — although he did admit to performing some shenanigans with his cousin in his neighbor’s yard after watching Home Alone.

On the other hand, Communication freshman Molly Lafferty, sees the power of images as paramount. Although she doesn’t feel she knows much about the psychology of children, she thinks that regulating violence is more important than regulating the sexual content on TV that’s already banned (recall Janet Jackson).

“People dying in really grotesque ways is worse for kids to see than boobies,” she said.

Weinberg sophomore Nathan Zebrowski, managing editor of the conservative Northwestern Chronicle, agreed with Yocom’s views that a free society is better than a moral one.

“The government should only regulate things that will inherently get in the hands of the wrong people,” Zebrowski said. “Everything else should be left to individual choice.”

Although he’s a liberal, Weinberg freshman Mac LeBuhn mostly agrees with the conservatives about regulating speech.

“I’m sure that violence in media plays a part in violence in society,” he said, but he emphasized that it probably plays a very small role compared to issues such as family values and poverty. However, regardless of media’s role in society, he has a “hard time trusting” a particular group to differentiate good from bad speech.

“[It’s] ideally left up to personal discretion,” LeBuhn said.

While these students had opinions about violence on television, their feelings on the FEC and the regulation of campaign finance were much stronger. Again, conservatives and liberals disagreed on whether the effect of free speech or the principle of free speech is more important.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and the FEC elicited vitriol from Yocom.

“It’s a blatant violation of my free speech,” he said of limits on campaign spending and advertising, including the “electioneering communications” rules.

Zebrowski said he feels that the limits are immoral and that the right of corporations and unions to be as politically active as individuals stems from the right to assemble, which is also guaranteed by the First Amendment.

LeBuhn agrees with Lafferty (both liberals) about the importance of effects. They both think that money dominates the political discussion, and that the government should do something about it. They also emphasized the necessity of a level playing field. LeBuhm would like to see public financing of campaigns, but Lafferty thinks that campaigns would be better if they were outright smaller.

“It’s just a ridiculous amount of money being spent on the process in general,” Lafferty said. “All that money could be going to so many other things, like feeding people, or fighting global warming.” She added that the campaigns were wasteful because they poured money into image rather than content.

However, Zebrowksi is worried that there could be content we’re missing because of the laws. Through the ban on “electioneering communications,” campaign reform laws could be silencing “powerful collective voices we’re not aware of,” he said.

While the Supreme Court has interpreted the constitution differently over the years, Lafferty has her own idea of the best laws protecting free speech. She said that if she were to write the laws, they would simply read, “Don’t be a douche bag.”