Recently, I (and everyone else) commented on the McCain/Clinton "gas tax holiday" ludicrousy.

Aside from that, an important component of both Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's strategies for addressing raising fuel prices is to impose a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies, which would supposedly generate revenue for developing renewable, alternative fuels. (Note: Obama accuses Clinton of double-booking this money to pay for the gas tax relief as well, but we'll ignore that for now.)

But while the sentiment of investing in alternative energies is certainly the right one, introducing a windfall profits tax is bad policy, predicated on the false notion that oil companies' profits have anything to do with a windfall.

Strictly speaking, we want businesses to be as profitable as possible. We should encourage our citizens to collaborate and enterprise and take risk, and thus to create goods and services and jobs (and thus wealth) that improve our everyday lives. Profits are the incentives that drive innovation, and punitively taxing firms for innovating too well is counterproductive to this aim. (Think carefully: how would our society be different today if the founders of Ford, General Electric, and Microsoft had all been told at the outset of their enterprising that if they made too much money, it would be taken away from them?)

The problem, then, comes when profits are made at the expense of something else — human or environmental health, for example. When oil companies make billions without internalizing the costs of their share of, say, global warming, they are not creating wealth, but rather redistributing wealth toward themselves. True wealth comes when firms enterprise, innovate, and create wealth without doing any harm.

Suffice to say, corporations in America enjoy a unique set of legal privileges and protections that make them the all-mighty forces they are today, but also allow them to do plenty of harm. As has been noted by the Seminal, these privileges include eternal life, limited liability, and a range of Constitutionally-guaranteed protections (e.g. of freedom of expression, of freedom from unreasonable search, of the right to equal protection under the law) that millions of humans around the globe have yet to obtain themselves. Corporations have long enjoyed a legislative climate that protects the interests of business owners and managers before those of employees or even consumers. They have access to the most free-flowing, wide-reaching financial markets the world has ever seen, as well internationally-recognized mechanisms for registering and controlling intellectual property. They operate in a political environment that holds sacred their rights to support candidates and lobby government, despite having resources exponentially greater than any individual or public interest group could ever hope to amass. And though they love to talk about "free" markets, American corporations enjoy a biblical flow of direct and indirect government subsidization, tax and regulatory relief, and preferential procurement practices that ensure that regardless of whether they are particularly efficient or democratic in their operations, they stay in business and drive the American economy.

These are the underlying legal and regulatory — and more broadly the political and cultural — factors that allow corporations to be so extraordinarily profitable in the first place, though targeting "windfalls" completely fails to address them. Introducing stronger principles of accountability, democracy, and liability to the regulations surrounding corporate behavior, and withdrawing government prop-ups, would constitute a real approach to redistributing oil companies' astronomical profits to the Americans who actually need them.

Like the gas tax holiday, a windfall profits tax is a feel-good gimmick that may win votes, but will at best address a symptom of a much larger, systemic problem. Corporations such as Exxon-Mobil will always benefit from "windfalls," unless we abandon our culture of protecting profits before humans, and before the Earth itself.

Ah yes. Sean Hannity has cracked the case: Al Gore and his friends on the "the global warming bandwagon" are to blame for the global food crisis. Watch, and be amused:

Take a peek at Think Progress for the real story.

Seminal readers, read anything interesting today?

Yesterday the Seminal pointed out that top McCain advisor Tom Loeffler, founder of the lobbying firm the Loeffler Group, spent years lobbying the U.S. Congress on behalf of Saudi Arabia, taking in over $5 million in fees as recently as 2006.

Over the weekend, two other top aides in McCain's campaign, Douglas Goodyear and Doug Davenport, resigned from their posts because of their connections to the Burmese junta. From the BBC:

Both Mr Goodyear and the second aide to resign this weekend, Doug Davenport, worked for the lobbying firm DCI, the former as its chief executive. Newsweek magazine revealed on Saturday that DCI was paid more than $300,000 (£150,000) by Burma's military leadership for lobbying work to improve its image in the US… Mr Davenport, a regional campaign manager for Mr McCain, reportedly was directly in charge of the DCI lobbying efforts on behalf of Burma's authorities in 2002.

So, to be clear, before joining the McCain campaign, Tom Loeffler voluntarily worked for a government that he knew regards women as lesser-humans and that for years has profited from America's painful addiction to gas; while "the Dougs" willingly lobbied to improve the image of a government that keeps its people in misery, violently suppresses peaceful resistance, and is now blocking humanitarian aid that it knows would prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Personally, I'm not sure how these people sleep at night.

Call me idealistic, but I believe that those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to choose our professions, and moreover our employers and our clients, have a special obligation not to use our gifts in the service of evil. McCain's aides certainly have the luxury of choosing who they work for, and by lobbying on behalf of certain clients they became complicit in the actions of those clients. Whether they concede it or not Loeffler, Goodyear, and Davenport are accomplices and enablers of two of the world's most brutal and undemocratic regimes.

More importantly though, if the company he keeps and the staff he employs as a candidate are any indication of the company and staff he would seek as president, we can all be certain John McCain's voluminous blabbering about ethics reform and reigning in lobbyists is empty bullshit. From his nauseating website:

John McCain has fought the good fight against the practices that alienate the public from their elected leaders. He has fought for public disclosure of those who lobby lawmakers for a living, and to prohibit them from providing gifts to elected officials. He has fought for greater transparency regarding the official activities of lobbyists, disclosure of those who arrange for lawmakers' travel, and require members to pay full charter rates when using corporate aircraft. He has fought the "revolving door" by which lawmakers and other influential officials leave their posts and become lobbyists for the special interests they have aided. He has fought for an independent ethics office in Congress to help restore the public's faith in the integrity of the legislative branch.

Right, so McCain has "fought the 'revolving door'" by employing Tom Loeffler, who after eight years in Congress swung right through it to found his lobbying firm and represent the Saudis. I suppose we are all now to believe that if McCain were elected, Loeffler, Goodyear, and Davenport would return to their lucrative lobbying careers and never ever ever make use of their relationship with John McCain.

I don't think so. These guys represent the worst of Washington spinelessness — they have money and power, and are happy to sell their services and their influence to the highest-bidding special interest, regardless of whether that interest is a faceless, soulless corporation or a dictatorial foreign government. Now, they have sold their services to the candidate that is most likely to to preserve their right to carry on this type of work, a candidate who calls them friends. I say between them, McCain and his aides have done enough damage to America.

A friend recently sent me this and it made me laugh. Props to anyone who can figure out what it's about before the end…

Truly sad news from yesterday's Bloomberg report:

The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government's top psychiatric researcher said.

Community mental health centers, hobbled by financial limits, haven't provided enough scientifically sound care, especially in rural areas, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He briefed reporters today at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Washington.

Insel echoed a Rand Corporation study published last month that found about 20 percent of returning U.S. soldiers have post- traumatic stress disorder or depression, and only half of them receive treatment. About 1.6 million U.S. troops have fought in the two wars since October 2001, the report said. About 4,560 soldiers had died in the conflicts as of today, the Defense Department reported on its Web site.

Based on those figures and established suicide rates for similar patients who commonly develop substance abuse and other complications of post-traumatic stress disorder, "it's quite possible that the suicides and psychiatric mortality of this war could trump the combat deaths," Insel said.

CBS has been doing a good job covering the issue of suicides among veterans. From November:

And again, from last week:

I'm going to do something horrible and politicize this issue. John McCain claims that he is veterans' best friend. His website states (amid a long list of ways he says he supports veterans):

John McCain has voted consistently to increase funding for veterans' benefits, recognizing that the people who serve our country should get priority over the disgraceful amounts of spending on corporate subsidies and wasteful pork barrel spending.

But this is a straight up lie. John McCain has hardly done everything he can to help soldiers after they've completed their service, least of all at the expense of corporate subsidies. As Think Progress, among many others, have noted:

Not only has he refused to support the 21st Century GI Bill, which the Veterans of Foreign Wars endorsed last June, he has consistently voted against increasing funding for the Veterans’ Administration, which oversees all medical care for veterans:

– Voted AGAINST an amendment providing $20 billion to the VA’s medical facilities. [5/4/06]

– Voted AGAINST providing $430 million to the VA for outpatient care “and treatment for veterans,” one of only 13 senators to do so. [4/26/06]

– Voted AGAINST increasing VA funding by $1.5 billion by closing corporate loopholes. [3/14/06]

– Voted AGAINST increasing VA funding by $1.8 billion by ending “abusive tax loopholes.” [3/10/04]

– Voted AGAINST a $650 million increase in veterans’ medical care funding. [8/1/01]

Seminal readers, I did some searching and came up empty-handed. Can you find a single veteran's group that has endorsed John McCain?

This appeared this morning in the news:

Republican John McCain castigated Democrat Barack Obama for voting against John Roberts as Supreme Court chief justice in a speech about the kind of judges McCain would nominate.
…
Obama likes to talk up his image as someone who works with Republicans to get things done, McCain said. Yet Obama "went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the 22 senators to vote against this highly qualified nominee," McCain said.

Yes, while McCain refers to it as going "right along with the partisan crowd," I refer to it as going "right along with your conscience." In fact, Obama voted against the Roberts nomination not because he wanted to divide Washington, but because he believed Roberts would disserve Americans from the Supreme Court.

In a statement regarding the nomination, in which he was profoundly complimentary of Roberts professionally and personally, and criticized partisan behavior of his own party, Obama respectfully spelled out his differences with the future Justice:

The problem I had is that when I examined Judge Roberts' record and history of public service, it is my personal estimation that he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak. In his work in the White House and the Solicitor General's Office, he seemed to have consistently sided with those who were dismissive of efforts to eradicate the remnants of racial discrimination in our political process. In these same positions, he seemed dismissive of the concerns that it is harder to make it in this world and in this economy when you are a woman rather than a man.

Actually, Obama didn't just vote his conscience — he voted in line with his constituents' conscience, which is precisely what he was elected to do. As a Democratic Senator elected by over 70% of voters in a primarily working-class state full of minorities and women, he would have been violating his ethical obligation as a public servant if he did anything other than vote against the Roberts nomination. That McCain should chastise anyone for voting this way speaks volumes about his values surrounding public service, representation, and partisanship.

The good news: McCain neglected to comment on (his new friend) Hillary Clinton's vote against the Roberts nomination. Surprise surprise, McCain still sees Obama as the bigger threat.

This morning the Washington Post reports that the military commission set up to try terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay is moving at a glacier pace, and is unlikely to try any of the 9/11 suspects before George W. Bush leaves office.

Efforts to bring detainees before a court within the framework of the ramshackle 2006 Military Commission Act have been wrought with legal challenges and delays, over the rules of the proceedings, over whether evidence obtained using torture is admissible, over whether waterboarding is torture, over whether defense attorneys can access classified information that helps their clients, and even over basic technical elements like courtroom interpreting.

In seven years, not a single detainee at Guantanamo has seen a trial. The first full case, of Osama Bin Laden's former driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan, is scheduled to begin June 2nd, however, Hamdan himself stated last week that he wants no part of the commission:

In a 40-minute exchange with Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, who is presiding over the case, Hamdan said that he would do anything to get into a regular American courtroom and that the military commissions process is a sham designed to trap him at Guantanamo Bay. He said his victory in a 2006 Supreme Court case, which forced the government to rewrite the rules for military commissions, was hollow because he has been incarcerated for seven years without any change in his conditions.

"I would like the law, I would like justice. Nothing else," Hamdan said.

The Houston Law Review will soon publish a new study that offers the first conclusive evidence that convicted defendants' race affects their sentencing. From the NY Times:

[The study] has found two sorts of racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty there, one commonplace and one surprising.

The unexceptional finding is that defendants who kill whites are more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill blacks. More than 20 studies around the nation have come to similar conclusions.

But the new study also detected a more straightforward disparity. It found that the race of the defendant by itself plays a major role in explaining who is sentenced to death.

You would think this study would serve as sufficient grounds for abolishing the death penalty. After all, the Fourteenth Amendment ensures equal protection of the law, including due process, to all citizens regardless of race, while the Eighth Amendment protects individuals from excessive, cruel, or unusual punishment. In 1987, civil rights attorneys used a similar study to challenge the Constitutionality of the death penalty on these grounds, to no avail:

Twenty-one years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that even solid statistical evidence of racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty did not offend the Constitution. The vote was 5 to 4, and the case was McCleskey v. Kemp. That ruling closed off what had seemed to opponents of the death penalty a promising line of attack, and they are still furious about it.

But the results of this study are more robust than the one used in 1987, and the judge who wrote the majority opinion in McCleskey stated after retiring that it was the only ruling of his career he regretted.

Perhaps with a new study (and a new set of Justices…might have to wait a bit on that one, based on how uninterested the Court seemed this week in ensuring equal protection of voting rights) opponents of capital punishment will soon get another day in Court.

You would think that top Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef, having declared he understands American politics, would realize that expressing his support for presidential candidate Barack Obama does the candidate a disservice. Yousef's comments, though fairly innocuous, were made to an American radio station earlier this month:

We like Mr. Obama and we hope that he will [inaudible] the election. I do believe he is like John Kennedy, a great man with a great principle, and he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community, but not with [inaudible] and arrogance.

In response to this, John McCain, who once earned my praise for speaking out against insidious "let's imply Obama is a Muslim terrorist" behavior, just couldn't contain himself. On Friday he not-so-subtly suggested to a group of bloggers that the Hamas "endorsement" means Obama will be a friend of terrorists. From the Weekly Standard Blog:

[Blogger] Jennifer Rubin noted that Hamas had endorsed Senator Obama and asked McCain whether Obama might have given "an unhelpful signal" to the terrorist group. McCain's response:

"All I can tell you Jennifer is that I think it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States. So apparently has Danny Ortega and several others. I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas's worst nightmare….If senator Obama is favored by Hamas I think people can make judgments accordingly."

Wow, John. Way to offer up some not-so-straight talk.

McCain's comments led to a round of statements by both the Obama and McCain camps over Obama's (enlightened) stance on battling terrorism with diplomacy and efforts to reduce global poverty. Meanwhile, the Yousef endorsement prompted Mitt Romney (that ol' has-been) to make his own set of back-handed remarks in a recent interview with a Nevada newspaper:

We probably knew Hillary Clinton very well given her years in Washington, but I think Barack Obama was more of a blank sheet. I think the primary revealed more about him than perhaps he would've liked. The recent endorsement by Hamas of his candidacy is I think the kind of development which people find revealing….

I think he's said in his first year he would be inclined to visit with (Iranian President) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, (North Korean President) Kim Jong Il, (former Cuban President) Fidel Castro. I think they find that appealing…I think again (Hamas) made the endorsement because of the approach of visiting some of the world's worst actors with presidential presence.

"People will find revealing…?" "They will find that appealing….?" Mitt, if you're going to make accusations, how about you be a man and spell them out.

Better yet, how about I going around saying, "You know, when McCain was a POW he refused to leave before his fellow prisoners. That means he WANTED to stay with the Vietnamese, you know, rather than come back to America. What does THAT say, huh? I think people will find THAT revealing."

I could say this, but then I would sound like a ridiculous, desperate, illiterate tool. Which is exactly how Republicans sound when they open their mouths about Obama and Islam.

Raul Castro announced today that he is commuting all death sentences in Cuba (with the exception of 3 individuals charged with terrorism) to lesser sentences, citing humanitarian reasons. Cuba has faced pressure from human-rights activists to abolish its death penalty, which is still administered via firing squad.

The commutations are the latest in a wave of populist reforms introduced by Raul Castro since his older brother Fidel Castro retired and handed him power. Over the weekend he announced he's raising pensions for retirees as well as salaries for some government employees, while earlier this month he lifted long-time bans on Cubans owning cell phones and staying in hotels reserved for foreigners. From the Miami Herald:

The pay increases — which will affect almost one in five Cubans — were the first since 2005 and the first since Raúl Castro replaced his ailing brother Fidel as president. Since taking office in February, he has done away with some of Cuba's most-despised restrictions on daily life, bolstering his popularity and sparking rumors that more changes are coming.

A month ago Castro lifted a ban on owning personal computers. Despite strict government control of Internet access, the Miami Herald also reports the move has accompanied an increase in secretive, uncensored blogs about life on the island. For those of you Spanish speakers, here are a few to check out:

Mi Isla al Mediodio

Generación Y

Potro Salvaje

Seminal readers, what's your take on Raul Castro's reforms in Cuba?