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POLITIK PRESS

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JHU POLITIKjhupolitik.org

MANAGING EDITOR Alex Clearfield

ASSISTANT EDITORS Julia Allen, Colette Andrei, Ari Schaffer

EVENTS CHAIR/PUBLICITY Randy Bell

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Victoria Scordato

HEAD WRITER Rachel Cohen

STAFF WRITERS Megan Augustine, Akshai Bhatnagar, Michael Bodner, Henry Chen, Virgil Doyle, Chris Dunnett, Cary Glynn, Peter Lee, Daniel Roettger, Chris Winer

FACULTY ADVISOR Steven R. David

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Jeremy Orloff, Matt Varvaro

VOLUME XII, ISSUE IXNOVEMBER 12th, 2012

The views expressed within this publication reflect the personal opinions of each article’s author and are not necessarily endorsed by JHU Politik or the Johns Hopkins University.

NOVEMBER 12th, 2012Volume XII, Issue IX

WEEK IN REVIEW

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by Michael Bodner ‘14, Staff Writer

the POLITIK PRESS

Chinese Government Begins Transfer of Power

Leaders of the Chinese Communist Party met in Beijing this week to officially name the next leader of the world’s largest population and second largest economy. In a long expect-ed move by the CCP, Xi Jinping will be named as the next President of China and head of the Politburo Standing Committee. Hu Jintao, the outgoing president, issued an extensive speech listing his accomplishments of the past decade, which include overseeing a quadru-pling of the size of China’s economy. Mr. Hu also warned against the danger of social unrest, and stressed that China must remain united to remain powerful. In addition to the presi-dential change, Li Keqiang will be chosen to replace Wen Jiabao as Premier of China.

Syrian National Council to Meet for Post-War Planning

The leadership of the Syrian National Council convened this Friday to lay down concrete plans for post-war rule in Syria. The SNC, the largest coalition of rebel leaders, currently has no agreed-upon blueprint for ruling Syria should their rebellion force Bashar al-Assad to step down from power. Nations aiding the rebels are concerned that without concrete plans for post-Assad rule, Syria could become highly susceptible to a takeover by Islamist extremists following the war. A source in the SNC stated, “We will not leave today without an agreement.”

Iranian Jets Shoot at US Predator drone

The pentagon admitted on Thursday that a US Predator drone was fired upon by two Iranian Su-25 Frogfoots on Thursday, November 1st. A senior defense official said that he did not know why the unarmed drone flying in international waters was shot at. The drone was not by hit the Iranian cannon fire, which begs the question whether the shots were meant as a warning. Pentagon spokesman George Little claimed that the shots were aimed to destroy the drone. He also defended the delay in releasing the information, saying that the Pentagon does not talk to the press about classified operations. PP

On Monday, October 22nd, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported a “tropical depression” forming off the coast of Nicaragua. In the follow-

ing days, it morphed into category 1 Hurricane Sandy, which ripped through the Caribbean and the Eastern seaboard. It left about 180 dead (109 in the U.S), dam-ages of over $50 billion and a nation struggling to re-build in time for a presidential election. The respon-sibility for that recovery was (and is) left primarily to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA.

Founded in 1979 under President Carter, FEMA’s mis-sion is to “build, sustain and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from and mitigate all hazards.” This includes everything from centralizing disaster relief efforts to rebuilding after terrorist attacks. In the days leading up to No-vember 6th, FEMA became a definitive political issue between two polarized campaigns. Most notably, Gov-ernor Romney jumped from denouncing FEMA fund-ing to supporting it.

Say what you might about his change of opinion, but Romney is not the first to struggle with this govern-ment agency’s role in disaster relief. It poses the ques-tion of who would do a better job at responding to emergencies: states, private corporations or the fed-eral government?

There are several important arguments to consider when discussing this question. Solely based on geog-raphy and local awareness, states and private corpo-rations have the capabilities to respond faster. This could indeed translate into a more efficient response to emergencies (such as Sandy) that can cover almost the entire coast. However, as the system currently functions, states receive their assistance from FEMA, a national organization. No matter how well the state has been prepared, if FEMA cannot continue to re-spond quickly during the catastrophe, there will be damage – damage that could be avoided if states had complete control over their relief funds. Factoring in the impending fiscal cliff, states could be even further impeded in assisting their citizens.

NOVEMBER 12th, 2012Volume XII, Issue IX

THE FUTURE OF FEDERAL AMERICAN DISASTER RELIEF

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The alternative is far worse: Without FEMA and com-plete control over aid, poorer states would be left be-hind in their emergency preparations, creating dispar-ities that could only grow without federal help.

This leaves the private sector. While some believe we will be better off if we leave disaster relief to ride the waves of supply and demand, they are incorrect. First, private services could potentially cost more, and even if they do not, it could mean worse assistance and less of it. Second, companies would have free reign to deny some people relief if it is not profitable. Other practi-cal services, like basic infrastructure, TSA, Medicare, even flood insurance, were taken over by the govern-ment to reduce cost and to protect Americans regard-less of how much they pay in taxes.

In addition, private corporations do not have the co-ordination to rebuild major infrastructure, such as the New York subway system. Finally, there would be little incentive to fund general disaster preparedness/prediction technology, as it would be difficult to only benefit those who have bought the disaster relief “ser-vice.” It is therefore ridiculous to assume that we can place the bulk of responsibility on the private sector.

I don’t mean to overlook other criticisms of FEMA, or as some like to call it, the “Federal Emergency Mis-management Agency.” In the past, it has been accused of corruption, slow response time and being happy to throw money at “whoever squeals.” However, its re-sponse to Sandy has been much more effective than its response to Katrina. Those who criticize it seem to believe it has totalitarian control over disaster relief, while in reality, it works with the private sector and NGOs to coordinate aid.

In the end, it does not have to be one extreme or the other. Eliminating FEMA is illogical, as is complete-ly foregoing all assistance from the private and non-profit sectors. As we face the mounting consequenc-es of climate change and inevitably more calamities, Obama and our subsequent presidents must consider FEMA reform. Without transparency initiatives and further coordination with the private sector, Ameri-ca’s safety is at risk. PP

by Rosellen Grant ‘16, Contributing Writer

the POLITIK PRESS

NOVEMBER 12th, 2012Volume XII, Issue IX the POLITIK PRESS

It was a summer’s night in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2008 and Senator Barack Obama had just closed the book on that year’s contentious Democrat-ic primary. As he took to the stage, his words

echoed those of another fresh faced senator who had run for president almost 50 years before: “You know in your hearts that at this moment – a moment which will define a generation – we cannot afford to keep doing what we’ve been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future.”

It was this sentiment which got Barack Obama’s first run for the presidency off the ground: that the Clin-ton successes were too small and the Bush damages too big for the Democratic Party to settle for another Clinton in the White House. That the Democratic Party was about more than stable economic manage-ment, school uniforms, and stained blue dresses. That Ted Kennedy’s dream had not yet died.

Fast-forward to this week’s election and the victory for the Democratic Party and Barack Obama is bitter-sweet. The president’s conviction that we deserved better than the infighting of the Clinton/Gingrich years had been replaced with a campaign based large-ly on the economic credibility of the Clinton years. After winning a long and bitter primary by promising he could do better than Hillary, he won this week’s general election by convincing us he could maybe do almost as good a job as Bill. Mitt Romney wasn’t jok-ing when he compared Bill Clinton to Barack Obama’s version of the stereotypical political spouse – a caring companion without whose support the man would not last a single day.

The “Yes We Can” Barack Obama of 2008 reminded many Democrats of the promise of the Camelot era. The successes of those three short years—which

saw Americans decide to go to the moon “because it is there,” saw the president of the United States make the most forceful stand for civil rights in a century, and oversaw a foreign policy that sought to “pay any price, bear any burden…to assure the survival and success of liberty” – are the yardstick for any Democratic presi-dency. The “it could have been worse” Barack Obama of 2012 bears more resemblance to the “it depends on what the meaning of the word is, is” Clinton years.

The shadow that the Kennedys cast over the Demo-cratic Party is hard to overstate. Aside from the sitting president, there are said to be more pictures of Bobby Kennedy on Capitol Hill than there are of any other individual. At the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington, there are more photographs of the Ken-nedy brothers than there are of Joe Biden, the Clin-tons, and the Roosevelts combined. The most striking image of Bill Clinton’s 1992 Democratic Convention was a high-school photograph of him shaking hands with President Kennedy. And when Barack Obama needed it the most, it was Ted Kennedy’s endorse-ment that let him blunt Hillary Clinton’s momentum in 2008.

Whenever Camelot died, whether at Dealey Plaza, the Ambassador Hotel, or Chappaquiddick, its promise remains unclaimed. Whether Barack Obama’s presi-dency is measured a success by the Democratic Party will largely depend on whether he can justify his claim to the Kennedy mantle, and its legacy of ambition, in-spiration, and big ideas. If not, he will become another Clinton – not a bad president (no Jimmy Carter), but shackled to feeling of disappointment. A second term may give him time to resurrect his “Yes We Can” at-titude from four years ago, but if not, the Democratic Party will have deferred the dream of Camelot for an-other generation. PP

A CLINTON OR A KENNEDY? BARACK OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S DREAM DEFERRED

by Akshai Bhatnagar ‘15, Contributing Writer

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Nine years ago, the Supreme Court decided that racial preferences in university admissions policies were constitutionally permissible to promote diversity. However, recent research

from Stuart Taylor, Jr., a fellow at the Brookings Institu-tion, and Richard Sander, a law professor at UCLA, chal-lenges the conventional wisdom about affirmative action.

In their new book, Mismatch, Taylor and Sander ar-gue that large admissions preferences—regardless of whether these are based on race, “legacy,” or athletic ability—can lead to academic “mismatch.” Affirmative action helps admit students to more selective schools than they otherwise would be based on their aca-demic credentials alone; once enrolled at these more prestigious schools, the students fall behind and are less likely to finish. According to research done by Es-ther Duflo at MIT, Pascaline Dupas at Stanford, and Michael Kremer at Harvard, teachers focus their in-struction at the average student and those with weak-er preparation struggle and learn less.

According to the authors, the experience at the Uni-versity of California shows that removing racial ad-missions preferences has no significant long-term ef-fect on university diversity. Proposition 209, passed in 1996, banned the use of racial preferences in state programs, including colleges. Immediately following 209’s implementation, black enrollment fell by about half at UC’s most elite campuses and fell for all eight campuses by about 20%. However, public information from UC shows that most of those “displaced” stu-dents attended other California schools. After the ini-tial enrollment drop, black and Hispanic enrollment rebounded and it currently surpasses pre-209 levels, even when taking into account the increasing minor-ity population and changes in total UC admittance.

Ending large racial preferences also coincided with im-proving minority academic success across the California system. Between 1992-1994 and 1998-2005, black four-year graduation rates improved by more than 50%, and black six-year graduation rates improved by 20%, with similar improvements for Hispanics. Black and Hispan-ic GPAs also increased post-209, relative to whites and

Asians, even though research from Sander has shown that more minority students remained in tougher sci-ence and engineering studies. After Prop 209, the GPA gap between blacks and whites fell by more than 40%, with a smaller but still significant decline for Hispanics.

While critics of Prop 209 claimed that it “resegregated” UC, black students were significantly more integrated across the campuses after 209 than before. Before 209, Berkeley and UCLA used large racial preferences to compete aggressively with the less elite campuses for black freshmen. As a result, about half of all blacks en-rolling at UC in the early 1990s attended the two elite campuses. After prop 209, blacks became more evenly distributed across all eight campuses. A study by Peter Arcidiacono, Shakeeb Khan, and Jacob Vigdor at Duke has corroborated this finding nationally. The use of large racial preferences by elite colleges has the effect of reducing diversity at second-tier schools.

Research has also shown that ending affirmative ac-tion can increase, not decrease, the number of minority applicants and enrollments. Two leading labor econo-mists, David Card and Alan Krueger, the Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, have found that the propensity for highly-qualified black students to apply to Berkeley, UCLA, and UT-Austin did not meaningfully change after those schools imple-mented bans on racial preferences. Instead of declin-ing, Kate Antonovics and Richard Sander found that black and Hispanic students admitted to the UC system after the race-preferences ban were substantially more likely to accept the offer and enroll compared to simi-larly qualified students before Prop 209.

The Court has tolerated racial preferences in higher education based on the assumption that they are ben-efits offered to disadvantaged minorities. Sander and Taylor’s research shows that affirmative action can have harmful effects on those who are meant to ben-efit from it – removing the fundamental legal premise for permitting racial classification.

After 40 years of these preferences, the time has come for us to rethink the role of race in university admissions. PP

RECONSIDERING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

by Christopher Winer ‘14, Staff Writer

the POLITIK PRESS

NOVEMBER 12th, 2012Volume XII, Issue IX

AFRICA: AID VS. GLOBAL CAPITALISM

Rent-seeking is the pivotal feature responsi-ble for Africa’s disparities. African political leaders have inherited a wicked legacy from colonial rule: the vertical practice of patron-

age politics. Today, the leaders of Africa’s resource giants divert public funds to secure the enclaves of production that will provide the revenues they need to ensure their reelection. In doing so, they alienate the hinterlands of their countries, making them less attractive to foreign investment.

As patronage is a colonial legacy, contemporary Afri-can presidents are not the only ones to blame for the process of disconnecting resource wealth from their populations. European rule has left Africa with this governance burden, and now global capitalism is reap-ing the benefits of it.

In Angola, enclaves of oil production are firmly con-nected to the urban headquarters of their transnation-al corporations, while being literally walled-off from their own national societies. As oil revenues add up to four-fifths of the state budget, the Angolan govern-ment employs countless private military companies (PMCs) to secure the oil-rich coastal enclaves in order to attract foreign investment, at the expense of the An-golan interiors. This is a vicious cycle.

A resource-rich country that exhibits little economic disparities like Botswana, also tends to be more evenly integrated into the global economy, as its government re-invests resource rents relatively efficiently. This enables its integrality to become attractive, or rather evenly attractive, to foreign investment.

Countries with the most disparities and the lowest rank-ings on the Corruption Perceptions Index are also those that have experienced the most violence in the last 20 years. Unstable resource-rich environments need se-curity to attract foreign investment, so central govern-ment resources are diverted away from economically less-valued areas, inevitably creating a disparity. Glo-balization does not intentionally neglect vast regions in Africa, but rather adapts to a gap between inclusion and exclusion that it thereby causes to widen.

But how can Western governments mediate the natu-ral workings of globalization? In order to help reduce the gap between integration and marginalization, they must strive to sever the interaction between resource wealth and rent-seeking. Before renewing their con-tracts with African political leaders, Western-based firms must, via pressure or tax incentives from West-ern governments, mandate that resource rents go into public spending. We need to promote an intimate public-private relationship in which firms, the motors of global capitalism, can play a crucial role in limiting the adverse effects that rent-seeking has upon homog-enous economic development.

Hence, revenues in the DRC from international cobalt exploitation may be used to develop the country’s in-frastructure and army. Stronger, more legitimate, and more evenly distributed troops means a more secure country on the whole, and thus a higher potential for foreign investment inflows anywhere in the DRC. Bol-stering its army would end the central government’s systematic and unsustainable reliance on PMCs to se-cure sparse resource enclaves.

Western donors should not blindly send aid to coun-tries in which Western-based firms are simultane-ously encouraging the very behavior that widens the gap between inclusion and exclusion. That aid will be wasted. Of course, donors should continue to send aid to countries like Malawi that are resource-poor and fully marginalized but are demonstrating encouraging governance transparency. However, they must reeval-uate the terms of aid with resource-rich giants like Su-dan, Angola, and the DRC. Rather than just relying on aid, donor countries need to further manipulate the natural mechanisms of global capitalism to promote homogenous development to Africa.

The way to encourage foreign investment in Africa’s most marginalized lands is first to ensure that the national governments are investing there. By hold-ing governments accountable to their citizens as we monitor the contracts of our private firms in re-source-rich Africa, we can help Africa develop from the inside. PP

by Archibald Henry ‘13, Staff Writer

the POLITIK PRESS

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the POLITIK PRESS

Money in politics is corrupting and de-stroying our unique American democ-racy and eliminating the vox populi, the voice of the people. In recent years, es-

pecially after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citi-zens United case, money has penetrated and eroded our democracy to such an extent that it no longer mat-ters whether a candidate is a Democrat or a Republi-can, a conservative or a liberal. Money has bought our elected representatives and politicians and, unless there is serious campaign finance reform, this trend will continue to occur.

Statistics are a revealing indicator of money’s influ-ence in American politics. In an election for a seat in the House of Representatives, the candidate with the greater amount of money in his or her campaign wins the election 93 percent of the time. In an elec-tion for a seat in the Senate, the candidate with the greater amount of money in his or her campaign wins the election 94 percent of the time.

This sends a clear message to current and future poli-ticians: money equals electoral success. A potential candidate who sees statistics like these obviously determines that it is absolutely necessary to accept campaign donations from whatever donor he can. If a candidate with less money wins an election less than 6 percent of the time, why would a candidate hesitate to accept money? Politicians in Washington now see the benefits of accepting money from any donor as it nearly guarantees reelection for years to come.

In the meanwhile, money is not only determining the outcomes of elections, money is also buying our poli-ticians and separating them from the people whom they are supposedly representing. A politician who accepts a large donation from a company or corpora-tion will support proposed legislation that serves the interests of the company or corporation, not neces-sarily the interests of the people whom he represents. This is because the politician has been bought. If a politician does not support legislation benefiting his large donors, then the influx of money will stop and,

as the statistics above show, the politician’s career will likely come to an end. Those donors will turn to an-other candidate with the hope that he will serve their interests.

Now, one may point to the 2012 election campaign and say that money has not diminished and that the will of the people will be more important in determining the outcome of an election. The billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson poured millions of his own money into super-PACs supporting eight Republican candi-dates, including Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the incumbent Congressman Allen West of Florida. Unfortunately for Adelson, all eight of his candidates lost. Although this case makes it seem that money actually is not destroying our democracy, it is important to note that the candidates who did defeat Adelson’s men also accepted millions.

My argument does not apply so much to the presiden-tial election. Both Governor Romney and President Obama received millions of dollars of donations and each had “independent” super-PACs supporting their campaigns. Both have had ample opportunities to pro-mote their positions to the American public. My argu-ment applies more to the local elections, like House and Senate races, as well as gubernatorial races, where the true character of democracy lies. If one candidate running to represent a district in California has sub-stantially more money than his or her opponent, then that candidate can run advertisements and organize rallies that destroy that opponent, often times by un-fairly distorting the opponent’s positions. Consequent-ly, the people in the district could possibly be submit-ting an uninformed vote for one candidate without truly understanding the other.

Unless substantial campaign finance reform emerges in the House of Representatives or the Senate, or is proposed by President Obama, all of which seem high-ly unlikely, we Americans can expect to see the ush-ering in of an American political system characterized not by the vox populi, the voice of the people, but by vox pecuniae, the voice of money. PP

MONEY IN POLITICS CORRUPTING OUR DEMOCRACY

by Peter Natov ‘14, Contributing Writer

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the POLITIK PRESS

Earlier this week, the New York Times pub-lished a story detailing the rise of Egyptian ac-tivist groups that have begun targeting sexual harassers in Tahrir Square. Tactics among the

groups range from forming human barriers between victims and their harasser, to recording instances of harassment and publishing it online, to chasing down suspects and “marking” them as harassers with spray paint. Ultimately these groups, made up mainly of civil-ian men, have formed as a reaction to police and military apathy towards the sexual harassment that takes place regularly on the streets of Egypt’s capital.

Attacks on female reporters and protesters garnered significant media attention during the uprising, but reporting on this issue has declined significantly since Mubarak was thrown out of office and the revolution was deemed a “success” early last year. This storybook version of the Egyptian revolution overlooks the set-backs many democratic movements, particularly those concerning gender equality, have sustained since the revolution ended and Mohamed Morsi, a leader of the ultra-conservative Muslim Brotherhood, took office.

Despite it being one of the major grievances against the Mubarak administration, official apathy towards instances of sexual violence has persisted, if not in-creased, since the revolution. Back in June, a group of female activists became victims of the sexual harass-ment they were protesting when a mob of men as-saulted and molested a number of the participants as they marched the streets of Cairo. That same month, a British journalist was stripped naked and forcibly mo-lested by a mob of men while covering the presiden-tial election results in Egypt. And, just two weeks ago, more than 30 men attacked a French television report-er while she was covering a protest in Tahrir Square.

According to on the ground reports, as well as stories from major news outlets, Police usually stand idly by as this harassment takes place and explicitly refuse when activists or even victims implore them to in-tervene. This culture of apathy towards and violence against women has immediate implications for the victims of these heinous crimes, as well as long-term

ramifications for the successful democratization of Egypt. Amnesty International has condemned official reaction to sexual violence, noting that these attacks, and the lack of official response to them, ultimately suppresses the political interests of women by deter-ring female participation in political activity.

Moreover, there is a well-documented link between gender equality and democracy. At a 2011 UN round-table discussion on the topic, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon cited this link as a key reason why more must be done to reduce the disparity between the number of female and male lawmakers in democracies and to in-crease the number of politically active women in gener-al. He explicitly cited Egypt as an example of the impor-tance of female political participation, noting that, “in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, women have been among those in the vanguard demanding change, rights, digni-ty, and opportunity.” Thus, Ki-Moon argues that gender equality should be a primary goal of democracy build-ing because the “democratic ideals of inclusiveness, ac-countability and transparency cannot be achieved with-out laws, policies, measures and practices that address inequalities.”

This is a particularly important point to consider dur-ing a time of such political upheaval and transition in Egypt. A panel has been appointed to draft a new Constitution by mid-December, and representatives from both the Muslim Brotherhood and the even more conservative al-Nour Party make up a sizable percent-age of the 100-person panel. While the two parties disagree about the time frame in which this transition should occur, both ultimately support the incorpora-tion of Sharia law into Egypt’s legal framework. This means that boxing women out the political discussion now could pose huge and entrenched obstacles to gen-der equality, and thus democracy, in the future.

Ultimately, the recent stories coming out of Egypt should serve as a reminder that the Arab Spring is far from over. There are still important issues that must be addressed before Egypt, not to mention all the other Arab countries in the midst of revolution, can achieve stability, let alone democracy. PP

ARAB SPRING HASN’T SPRUNG FOR EGYPTIAN WOMEN

by Victoria Scordato ‘14, Creative Director

NOVEMBER 12th, 2012Volume XII, Issue IX

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