Owen abroad

Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

It is fashionable in polite society to be critical of politicians: we talk as if they are generally corrupt and stupid.

I have worked as a civil servant very closely with politicians of all parties, and my impression of them is much more positive.  There have been many politicians that I have not agreed with, but have found to be principled, hard-working, and genuinely committed to the pursuit of public good.  I’ve seen a few wrong ‘uns too; but most of those have been exposed in time.  There are many politicians who I admire and respect, and I’m sorry to see some of them leave the House of Commons.  Politics will be worse for the loss of people like Tony Wright, James Purnell and Bob Marshall Andrews for Labour, John Maples and Ann Widdecombe for the Tories, Matthew Taylor from the Liberal Democrats, and Clare Short, all of whom decided not to contest the 2010 election.

Though I am not a Liberal Democrat supporter, for me the biggest loss to the House of Commons came with the defeat of Dr Evan Harris in Oxford West and Abingdon.  He has consistently stood up for sound science, and evidence-based policy.  He has been the most consistent voice in support of secularism and free expression.  He has advocated disentangling the church from the state, and for remaining respectful of religion while resisting the idea that it should be immune from criticism or ridicule.   We need more people like him in Parliament, and I hope that he will soon return. (This is no reflection at all on Nicola Blackwood, who defeated him, whom I do not know at all.)

The Clock Tower of the House of Commons within which Big Ben, a bell, resides

Since there will be a lot of politics on our TV screens in the next 48 hours, I should like to take this opportunity to issue some timely pedantic reminders:

• England, not the House of Commons, is the “Mother of Parliaments“
• “Big Ben” is a bell which is found in the clock tower of the House of Commons. The clock tower is not Big Ben, nor contrary to the opinion of faux pedants is it “St Stephens Tower”.
• There are no “keys to Number 10″.  The front door of Number 10 Downing Street has no lock. Nor are there any “books” containing the nation’s finances to be given to incoming Ministers.
• If Mr Brown goes to Buckingham Palace he will have “an audience of the Queen”, not “an audience with the Queen”
• The side of the House of Commons where the MPs supporting the Government sit are the “Treasury Benches”, not the “Government benches”
• Anybody “measuring the curtains at Number 10″ will be examining the curtains for the flat occupied by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.  Prime Minister Blair, and subsequently Prime Minister Brown, used the larger flat above Number 11 Downing Street.

Update: 6 May.  For the record, here is St Stephen’s Tower:

St Stephen's tower

Tonight’s UK election debate between the party leaders focuses on foreign policy.  I expect there will be at least one question about international development.  If I were in the audience, I would ask this:

We understand that all the main parties are committed to increasing aid to 0.7% of GDP, with some relatively minor differences about how that would be used.  But if we are serious about development, we need to look beyond aid to address the circumstances in which developing countries are trying to establish economic growth and political stability.  Our other policies – for example, on trade, climate change or immigration – make a huge difference to how quickly poor countries can develop.  Will you, as Prime Minister, be willing to make changes to UK policies which are against the immediate interests of a group of UK citizens – for example, arms exporters or pharmaceutical firms – but which support our collective longer term interest in seeing a fairer, safer and more prosperous world?  If so, what concessions would you make?

The development policy discussion in the UK has focused too much on aid.  As I’ve argued here today, aid is important, because it helps to improve people’s lives while their countries are developing.  But I don’t think aid is the most important factor in accelerating development – for that it is much more important whether we adopt fair global polices on climate change, trade, agriculture, immigration, intellectual property, conflict, corruption and international governance.

The manifestos are largely quiet on how the political parties would address these issues, and they have not yet been pushed to address it.  I think this is because so many people who work in development are dependent for their income on aid, so they tend to judge parties’ policies by their willingness to increase it.  A worthy and notable exception is Alison Evans at ODI, who is always smart, who picks this up in her recent blog post on development in the election:

.. a crucial question is whether there is any a wider read-across from the manifestos to the international development agenda?  Development is not only about aid and there is a danger that the allure of the 0.7 debate can and will detract from a much wider set of policy concerns that impact on the prospects for growth and prosperity in developing countries.  Each of the manifestos cover growth, trade, immigration, security and climate change – all  areas in which the debate about international development policy and global poverty reduction is increasingly engaged – but  none of them spell out in any detail what this means for the way their governments would work on these agendas or how the funding would work. Where is the coherence between policies and between policies and implementation?

This is exactly the right question to ask (it is a pity that the post is entitled: “main parties pledge 0.7% for aid but how will it be spent?”). We have been assured that the three largest parties are committed to retaining DFID as a separate government department, with its own Cabinet Minister, and with a budget that rises to meet the UK’s commitment to increase aid to 0.7% of GDP.  But if they are serious about development then DFID will also need to have an important role right across the government, ensuring that the UK’s interests in development are taken into account when the government considers other policies from immigration to climate change.  That does not mean that the development interests should always trump the UK’s other national interests, but they should be considered and there will often be ways to adjust the details of the policy in a way that costs us little but has a huge impact on the developing world.

If we want to help to accelerate development, then some of the time we will need to put the UK’s broad, long-term interest in  building a safer, more equal and prosperous world ahead of the UK’s narrower and short-term commercial or political interests.  The most important international development question for the UK election should be: which of the political parties is willing to do that?

On January 13th, a leader in The Times and Kevin Watkins in The Guardian attacked the development policies of the UK Conservative Party, from opposite sides of the political spectrum.  The Times Leader says that the Conservatives are wrong to commit themselves to increase aid to 0.7% of GNI; and Kevin Watkins says that the Conservatives are wrong to want to reform the way aid is given.   Both attacks appear to be bone-headed efforts to make political mischief by undermining not just Conservative party policies but the mainstream consensus on development. Neither attack does credit to its perpetrator.

The Times criticizes the Conservative Party for their commitment to maintain the planned increases in development spending. The leader recycles discredited assertions about the negative effects of aid rather than offering solid analysis.  There isn’t a single reputable econometric study showing that aid causes harm through  exchange rate appreciations, corruption or slowing progress to democracy.   Peter Bauer, whom the leader article quotes, was criticising Cold War foreign assistance programmes which bear little resemblance to aid programmes today. Aid today is increasingly practical, targeted and measurable, just as The Times says it should be, and it works.

Britain was one of 147 countries which pledged we would “spare no effort” to meet the Millennium Development Goals. As The Times implies, we should not be judged on what we spend but on what we achieve. On this basis we are not yet doing enough to achieve the goals to which we are committed.  That is why it is important that Britain should continue to increase its world-class development programme, and press other nations to increase their spending too.  To resist this on the grounds that 0.7% is an arbitrary figure is a clever-sounding point for a debating society, not a reasoned argument against the commitment of all the main political parties to meet Britain’s international promises, and to press other countries to do the same.

From the other end of the political spectrum, Kevin Watkins in The Guardian seems to be determined to use development to score party political points – and to do so he has had to put himself in the strange position of arguing against the country-led approach to development which is supported by all main UK political parties.

Under the Labour Government Britain has helped build an international consensus that aid works best in support of a country’s own development strategy; that policies imposed from outside rarely work; and that governments should be accountable to their own citizens for their policies and actions.  Kevin Watkins rightly supports these points in other contexts. Yet he apparently won’t entertain the idea that other countries may have different views from his (and mine) about the best way to organise and fund public services.

I’ve read the Conservative Green Paper and it does not call for state services to be rolled back in developing countries. It says that governments should guarantee access to education for all their people; and that donors should fund that guarantee and support and encourage governments to choose whatever path enables them to expand education provision fast and effectively.  It does not propose or advocate market-based solutions in education: it says explicitly that the Conservatives would work with the public, not-for-profit and private sectors.

Kevin Watkins quotes the Green Paper saying “We bring a natural scepticism about government schemes“; this is the entire basis of his claim that “the Conservatives will use aid to roll back the state in key services“.  But it is clear when you read this sentence in context that the Conservatives are questioning the role of the government in aid, not planning to tell other countries how they should manage their public services.

There is now a valuable cross-party consensus on the need to use aid money to support countries’ own development priorities and programmes.  The challenge today is how to bring public sector reform to the aid business – including the possibility of some market-like disciplines to make aid more effective and accountable.  There are proposals in both the Government White Paper and the Conservative Green Paper to make aid more transparent and accountable and to link it more closely to results. Kevin Watkins might have used his space to tell us what he thinks about these ideas instead of trying to score party political points on development.

(By the way, I admire Kevin Watkins, but I’m not comfortable with the fact that a UNESCO official, paid from public funds, is using his position to make highly partisan and inaccurate attacks in the newspapers on the main UK opposition party. )

I’ve got no party political axe to grind: my interest is in supporting the best possible policies to accelerate development, so that the world is a fairer, happier and safer place for everyone.  It seems odd that the Conservatives should be attacked from both left and right for articulating development policies which seem to me squarely in the mainstream of development thinking.

The cross-party consensus that the UK’s development budget should continue to increase, and that British development policy is amongst the most effective in the world but nonetheless there is room for improvement, should be a matter of shared national pride, not scorn and sniping from whichever direction.  Let’s sustain that consensus, and not allow development policy to be used as a political football even in the heat of an election campaign.

Update: see Kevin’s reply in the comments.

My new working paper, Beyond Planning: Markets and Networks for Better Aid is on the Center for Global Development website in the innovations in aid series.

In the paper I argue that more planning and coordiation among donors will not overcome the political constraints that prevent better aid.  The aid system is in a political equilibrium which we need to try to change; we won’t solve aid’s problems by trying to move away from the equilibrium.  This means making more use of market and network mechanisms to change incentives within the aid system. We need to stop thinking of grand new designs of the aid system and start putting in place mechanisms that force evolution in the right direction.

I’ve listed a set of measures, from the commonplace (untying aid, for example) to the unusual (tradable missions permits, or a tax on proliferation pollution) to illustrate the ideas.

I’ll be discussing the paper at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) on Friday, and on a forthcoming episode of Development Drums.

I’m looking forward to comments and feedback.

George Osborne told the Conservative Party Conference eight times:

we are all in this together.

This is a powerful message.

When 15 million people  face starvation in East Africa this Christmas, let us say:

we are all in this together.

When twenty thousand children die tomorrow from easily preventable and treatable diseases, purely because they don’t have enough money to buy drugs that cost cents to produce but for which we charge rich world prices, let us say:

we are all in this together.

When the developing world demands proper compensation for their part of the atmosphere, which we have filled up with carbon emissions far beyond our share, resulting in the risk of destruction to entire nations, let us say:

we are all in this together.

When the people of the Niger Delta demand a share of the wealth lying beneath their ground, and an end to the environmental destruction caused by our oil companies so that we can drive our cars and cool our houses, let us say:

we are all in this together.

When we complain about corruption in the developing world, forgetting that all the money that pays for those bribes comes from us, and then choose not to prosecute our own companies that pay the bribes, let us say:

we are all in this together.

When we continue to be one of the largest manufacturers and exporters of arms in the world, fuelling conflict all around the world, but are more concerned about a hundred jobs on the Isle of Wight, let us say:

we are all in this together.

When people are forced to leave their homes, their family and their country because they lack freedom or face persecution, or because they cannot find work that pays them enough to support their family, and they look for a new beginning in rich countries, and we decide how we will treat asylum seekers and immigrants, let us say:

we are all in this together.

When the world’s poor demand fair payment for their coffee, cocoa, and minerals, and for their labour which provides us with the cheap clothes and electronics which we take for granted, let us say:

we are all in this together.

When the world economy recovers, companies of the rich world begin to prosper, when bankers get their bonuses again and the rich start to become richer, and we decide how to share the proceeds of that growth within and between nations, let us say:

we are all in this together.

It worries me that people who are interested in reducing world poverty leap so readily on the Tobin Tax bandwagon.

There are three questions to answer:

• should we spend more on reducing global poverty?
  (my answer: yes, if we have to)
• should we tax transactions in financial markets?
  (my answer: maybe, though I am not persuaded)
• should we link aid budgets to revenues from such a tax?
  (my answer: definitely not)

My answers are explained below the fold.

I can see why some people are attracted by a combination of extra money for the world’s poor and a poke in the eye for the unacceptable face of capitalism.  But to support the Tobin Tax on these grounds is at best opportunism, and at worst reveals a hostility to the functioning of markets which will, in the end, not serve the poor.

Read the rest of this entry »

Danny Finkelstein in The Times sticks up for Special Advisers.  Alex Evans, who was a Special Adviser in DFID, tells a funny story about being put at the end of a corridor

I returned from leave to discover that my office had halved in size: the wall had been moved six feet.  To create a new meeting room for the Permanent Secretary on the other side.

For the first time I can remember, I agree with Danny Finkelstein (and, less unusually, with Alex).  We need special advisers; and if anything we need more of them, not fewer; and we need to give them proper power and authority.

I say this partly for the reasons that Danny gives: we should be glad to have a diversity of ideas and advice to Ministers.  If civil servants can’t stand that heat of competition, they should get out the kitchen.  And as Danny says, the special adviser network can actally enhance effective Cabinet Government, by maintaining political conversations between government departments that do not work as well through the civil service networks.

But there is one other reason why civil servants should be in favour of having more special advisers: they help to prevent politicisation of the civil service.  For as long as we have sufficient, high qality special advisers, they can write speeches, brief journalists, write political strategies, liaise with MPs and the more political lobby groups – which prevents Ministers from having to ask civil servants to perform tasks which brings them into the gray areas at the margins of political neutrality.  So a greater number of Special Advisers does not imply an increasing politicisation of the civil service, as is sometimes claimed, but rather a protection against it.

I have worked closely with many special advisers, some of whom are now quite well known (whatever happened to David Cameron, John Bercow, David Milliband and James Purnell, I wonder?) and I found most of them to be extremely smart, productive, and responsible. Working with special advisers helps civil servants to understand the political context of their advice better.  A good partnership between civil servants and special advisers enables them to design policies and explain them in ways that are politically attractive, helping to introduce better policies which might otherwise be ruled out on political grounds.

I’d like to think that the Yes, Minister days are behind us, but Alex’s recollections suggest that, at least unconsciously, those civil service attitudes are not yet entirely in the past.

The BBC reports Gordon Brown’s speech at the TED conference today:

The power of technology – such as blogs – meant that the world could no longer be run by “elites”, Mr Brown said.

Policies must instead be formed by listening to the opinions of people “who are blogging and communicating with people around the world”, he said.

Mr Brown’s comments came during a surprise appearance at TED Global.

“That in my view gives us the first opportunity as a community to fundamentally change the world,” he told the TED Global (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference.

“Foreign Policy can never be the same again.”

I agree with that.  I’m very proud of my team’s work to develop and promote open data standards for aid and other resources for poverty reduction, to enable everyone in the world to engage on how resources for poverty reduction are used.   It ensures that the world is not run by elites, whether in developing countries or donors.

I fear I may be turning in to Bernard, the Private Secretary in Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.  Bernard is the slightly naiive, pedantic character who corrects mixed metaphors and challenges figures of speech.  (I once had a job in No.10 a bit like Bernard’s job).

Nick Robinson – the BBC Political Editor – should know better than this:

The fate of nations, of monarchs and of the British people have been sealed in the Commons.  Yet now the reputation of the mother of all parliaments has been brought low by rules written and exploited here by claims for a kitkat, a tin of pet food and a bottle of shampoo.

England, not the House of Commons, is the “mother of Parliaments”.  This phrase was coined by John Bright, in a speech in 1865, in which Bright was advocating an extension of the right to vote.  His campaign led to the Reform Act of 1867 which gave the vote to the (male) urban working class.  Bright said:

We may be proud that England is the ancient country of Parliaments. With scarcely any intervening period, Parliaments have met constantly for 600 years, and there was something of a Parliament before the Conquest. England is the mother of Parliaments.

I realise that this is pedantry. But I would expect the BBC Political Editor, of all people, to understand the resonance of this phrase and to know what it means.

From John Naughton:

The most satisfactory sight yesterday was that of Dick Cheney, looking for all the world like Dr Strangelove, being wheeled off the scene in a wheelchair. The only problem is that he was then helped into a limousine rather than a police van.

The Ethiopian Government passed a new law on Tuesday that limits the activities of foreign-funded organisations. The law prevents organizations that receive more than 10% of their funding from abroad from involvement in human rights, gender equality and conflict resolution.  It has been greeted with howls of protest by international organisations.

I’m going to make myself very unpopular with  lots of the ferenj here in Addis Ababa, many of whom make a good living working for NGOs with foreign funding and are up in arms about this. But I see where the Ethiopian Government is coming from, and I don’t think the law is completely unreasonable.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I would not have brought in this law. I think 15 years imprisonment (that was in the draft bill) for breaking this law is draconian. I do not think that government officials should have the right to attend internal meetings of civil society organisations.

But it is not unreasonable for the Ethiopian Government to say that foreign-funded organisations should not be able to use their funding to buy political influence and change in Ethiopia. Foreign donations to political parties are illegal in the UK – that is why there has been such a fuss about the allegations that George Osborne may have solicited donations from Russian oligarchs on a yacht. We are uncomfortable with the idea that very wealthy people should buy political power – that is why we have spending limits and caps on political donations – and in the UK we look rather pityingly at the United States, where funding by rich companies and individuals seems to dominate political life.  Think what this must feel like in a very poor country, where even quite modestly wealthy organisations and individuals overseas have undreamt of wealth by comparison with Ethiopians, and try to use that disparity of wealth to buy change.

So why shouldn’t a very poor country be concerned to avoid having its politics shaped by foreign funding?

There are about 3,800 NGOs here in Addis, with a total budget of $1.5 billion a year. (That is a lot of money in a country in which the annual government budget is about $4 billion a year. The government health budget is less than $300 million a year.) The money going to NGOs could make a huge difference if it were used to improve government services directly, rather that to fund a motley collection of advocacy organisations and fragmented small scale delivery organisations.

It is important to note that the new law does not forbid civil society organisations from being involved in advocacy for human rights. It forbids organisations from being involved in political advocacy if they get more than 10% of their funding from abroad.

So while this law isn’t one that I would have introduced myself, I see where the Government is coming from. It is not completely mad. The hysterical over-reaction from donors, often under political pressure from international NGOs at home, is out of all proportion.

Let me be the 10th person to link to The aspiring dictator’s guide from the Mail & Guardian Online. Here’s an extract.

Rule 3. Make America or China happy. Make Israel and Saudi Arabia very happy. Become a Muslim, like Idi Amin. Visit Moammar Gadaffi often. He likes African leaders. We do not know why. Pray with George Bush and let him see your soul. Make your country’s leading supermodel the ambassador to France and Italy. Ask her to wear a mini when presenting her papers to Nicholas Sarkozy.

From Ethan Zuckerman, FP

On his first day in office in 2001, President George W. Bush  reinstated the so-called Mexico City Policy — known to critics as the global gag rule. It prevents the US government from giving money to organizations that provide counseling and referral for abortion, lobby to make abortion legal or more available in their country, or perform abortions except in cases of a threat to the woman’s life, rape or incest (even if those activities are funded by somebody else).

On Development Drums this week, we heard about the impact of the global gag rule on women in Africa, in an interview with Dana Hovig from Marie Stopes International. (Full disclosure: my partner works for MSI.)  My expert guests were sceptical that Barack Obama would give priority to reversing the global gag rule any time soon.

But this weekend, we have heard that Obama is preparing to reverse some key decisions that President Bush took using executive authority, including on stem cell research, oil and gas drilling and – according to the Washington Post, the New York Times and Bloomberg – the global gag rule:

President-elect Barack Obama will reverse U.S. family-planning and AIDS-prevention strategies that have long linked global funding to anti-abortion and abstinence education, a public-health adviser said. Obama “is committed to looking at all this and changing the policies so that family-planning services — both in the U.S. and the developing world — reflect what works, what helps prevent unintended pregnancy, reduce maternal and infant mortality, prevent the spread of disease,” Wood said.

These seems like a good time to raise the profile of this important issue, to make sure that reversing the global gag rule is on the list of decisions for President Obama to take in his first day in office.  The Center for Reproductive Rights has written to Barack Obama calling for the repeal of the global gag rule.  Now is the time to make as much noise as possible about this to generate political support for an early decision to reverse this policy.

For more information about the global gag rule, listen to the interview with Dana Hovig in Episode 6 of Development Drums (about 30 minutes in to the podcast).

As a West Wing junkie, I’m thrilled that Rahm Emmanuel may become President Obama’s Chief of Staff.

Emmanuel is apparently the model for the character of Josh Lyman (played by Bradley Whitford – pictured right) from his days in the Clinton White House.

Lyman has always been my hero in West Wing (except for that are-they-aren’t-they thing with Donna, his assistant).

Of course the West Wing scriptwriters foresaw that Emmanuel would become Chief of Staff: in Series 7, Lyman becomes Chief of Staff to Matt Santos, the first non-white President of the United States (played by Jimmy Smits).

To the managers of the banks

Every time I have suggested things you might do differently, I have been told that this is impossible as you are under an obligation to pursue the interests of your shareholders.

Now that I am – unexpectedly – one of your shareholders, I expect you’d like to know what I would like you to do.  Here are seven new instructions to be getting on with.

1.  Short-term profits are not important: what is important is long-term value.  I would like you to stop chasing short term arbitrage opportunities and overnight trading and focus on identifying and investing in the best-run, most productive and valuable enterprises.  There will be no trading in derivatives or other purely financial products.

2.  Cut executive pay immediately.  From now on, nobody in the bank will get paid more than four times the salary of the lowest-paid employee.  If you want to award yourself a pay rise, you’ll have to increase the salaries at the bottom.

3. All our branches and subsidiaries overseas will pay local taxes, in full. There will be no clever arrangements to transfer profits to tax havens to avoid tax.

4. No more junk mail trying to persuade people to take out new credit.

5. It is no longer our objective to inflate house prices.  An increase in house prices is not an increase in net wealth: it is a transfer from those who do not own houses to those that do.  We will try to dampen the housing market, not reinvigorate it.

6. Every bank that is “too big to fail” will be split up into smaller banks.  We are going to reverse the cycle of mergers and takeovers that has created these monolithic institutions that have held us all to ransom.

7.  There will be no lending for businesses or individuals involved in industries that are harmful to our society and planet.  That means no lending to any of the following: the arms trade, advertising and marketing, tobacco, extracting or burning fossil fuels, or the motor industry.   Instead, please invest more in clean technologies, technologies appropriate for developing countries, non-profit organisations and community groups.

I know that you have many new shareholders, and it will take time for you to get to know us all.  My views won’t necessarily be shared by all your new bosses, but you can be pretty sure that lots of your new bosses  think more along these lines than the old lot.

I was a bit hesitant about becoming a bank-owner, but now that it has happened, I think I’m going to enjoy it.

Work hard – but not too hard.

Yours,

Owen

I’ve never liked the name of the FT’s lifestyle section, “How To Spend It“.  But with financial markets as they are now, it seems particularly ludicrous.  How to spend what, exactly?

Sitting in the airport lounge in Washington DC today, I was a bit surprised to find a “bonus issue” of How To Spend It in today’s paper.

I expect that there are lots of investors whose main concerns today include “whether the perfect sound system exists”, “the demure allure of autumn’s flattering longer skirts” (the Cavalli skirt is a snip at £3000), and “whether corporate gifts can ever truly be objects of desire”.

I know this is all very immature, but I thought this was a funny idea (via):

when you make a donation to Planned Parenthood in her name, they’ll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor. Here’s the link to the Planned Parenthood website:

https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp10000_inhonor

You’ll need to fill in the address to let PP know where to send the “in Sarah Palin’s honor” card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington , VA 22202

PS make sure you use that link above or choose the pulldown of Donate–Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular “Donate Online”

I know that it isn’t nice to laugh at the misfortune of others, but you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at this.

First the religious right were asked to pray for rain during the Denver Democratic National Convention:

Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family, one of America’s leading evangelical groups, was shown in a video filmed at Denver’s Invesco Field, where 75,000 are expected to cheer Mr Obama on Aug 28, asking Christians to pray for “torrential” rain.

“I’m talking ‘umbrella-ain’t-going-to-help-you rain,” the former pastor and television meteorologist said. He explained on the video: “I’m still pro life, and I’m still in favour of marriage as being between one man and one woman. And I would like the next president who will select justices for the next Supreme Court to agree.”

Did it rain on Mr Obama’s parade? Did it heck.

But what’s this? Hurricane Gustav has prompted a rethink over the Republican convention. John McCain said:

“But you know it just wouldn’t be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near-tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster. So we’re monitoring it from day to day and I’m saying a few prayers too.”

If the Big Guy is sending rain according to which side he’s on, then He seems to be a Democrat.

Al Gore (reported in the NY times)

“We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change.”