Mark WeisbrotAl Jazeera English, September 6, 2012En Español

I am a big fan of the kind of journalistic exercise that David Leonhardt recently launched at the New York Times Economix blog. He has decided to take a long, detailed look, in multiple installments, at “The 14 Potential Causes of the Income Slump.” Yeste

Septiembre 2012, Alexander Main y Annie Bird

September 2012, John Schmitt and Janelle Jones

Dean Baker
Truthout, September 4, 2012

Last week, four Uruguayan peacekeepers who were repatriated from Haiti nearly one year ago after video evidence emerged showing the assault of an 18-year old Haitian man, apparently inside the Uruguayan’s Port Salut base, were finally charged. The prosecutor, however, is charging the four soldiers with “coercion” as opposed to sexual abuse.

As AFP reported last week:

"The evidence on record does not support findings of sexual assault. The indictment concerns only the crime of coercion," said the prosecutor in the case, Enrique Rodriguez.

The Latin American nation's penal code states that coercion -- a crime punishable by three months to three years in prison -- involves the use of physical or psychological restraint to force someone to take or abstain from an action against their will.

"In this case, force was used to oblige another person to tolerate an action against their will," Rodriguez said, noting that the judge has not yet ruled in the case.      

The Uruguayan press, reporting on the charges notes that the judge, even if he finds the accused soldiers guilty, could still forgo giving prison sentences.

The case stands as just the latest example of the problems of holding the UN Peacekeeping mission in Haiti accountable for abuses, from the introduction of cholera to the sexual abuse of Haitians. Under the UN’s Status of Forces Agreement, those accused of abuse are repatriated quickly, where they face judges of their home country as opposed to local Haitian courts where they could face significantly longer and tougher sentences. In March, three Pakistani police were found guilty of rape, yet were sentenced to just one year in prison by a Pakistani military tribunal. Despite evidence implicating MINUSTAH personnel in a cover-up of the abuse, the case in local courts has stalled. In another example of injustice, over 100 Sri Lankan troops were returned to Sri Lanka in 2007 after evidence emerged of their involvement in sexual exploitation and prostitution with Haitian children and women. There is no sign that the troops have faced any form of punishment since.

Along with former Senator Alan Simpson, Erskine Bowles has become known to much of the public as the co-chair of President Obama’s deficit commission. The two of them produced a report that is viewed by many in the media and leading Democrats in Congress as providing the basis for a “Grand Bargain” on a long-term deficit reduction package.

However, in addition to his duties on President Obama’s deficit commission, Erskine Bowles also has a day job. In fact he has many of them. Over the last decade, Mr. Bowles has sat on a large number of corporate boards. This is in addition to serving as the President of the University of North Carolina from 2005 to 2010 and unsuccessful runs for a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina in 2002 and 2004.

Some of the companies for which Mr. Bowles served as a director have gained considerable notoriety in recent years. He served on the board of Krispy Kreme, the upstart doughnut company that was briefly a Wall Street darling. He also sat on the board of General Motors from June of 2005 until it went into bankruptcy in the spring of 2009. He joined the board of Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street investment bank, near the peak of the housing bubble in December of 2005. He remains on its board today. He also joined the board of Facebook in September of last year.

Dean Baker
Al Jazeera English, September 3, 2012

Robert Samuelson gives President Obama a low grade for his economic performance following his initial six months in office (so do I). Let's examine the basis for his assessment.

His main complaint is that Obama pushed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) through Congress. Samuelson complained that this distracted the president from focusing on the economy and created uncertainty. Let's start with the first complaint.

What does it mean to say that the ACA distracted President Obama from the economy? What would Samuelson have had Obama do that he didn't do because he was distracted? Was there some great policy that would have boosted economic growth that he should have been pursuing had he not wasted time and political capital dealing with the ACA?

That is a serious question. Undoubtedly passing the ACA did take much of his staff's time and used up enormous political capital, but that by itself doesn't mean that it came at the expense of policies that might have provided a more immediate boost to the economy. It is necessary to identify those policies and argue that Obama could have pursued them if he had not been occupied by the ACA.

I have my list (more stimulus, work sharing, getting the dollar down, Right to Rent), but I don't see any reason to believe that these policies would have been pushed more aggressively by President Obama if he had not been wasting time with the ACA. Samuelson doesn't even give us a list. What is it that he thinks President Obama would have been doing to create jobs and foster growth had it not been for the ACA? Samuelson doesn't give us any clue.