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Arkansas School Allows Cross-Dressing, Massachusetts School Bans Pink Shirts

It's a weird day in America when Massachusetts could learn a thing or two from Arkansas. But such is the case today. And it all has to do with what kids are allowed to wear at school. Oof.

First we turn to The Natural State. A school board in Marion, AR found it acceptable, after some hubbub and controversy, to allow a lesbian student to wear a tuxedo in her high school yearbook photo. People were concerned that this would be, of course, a slipp'ruh slope! toward kids wearing all kindsa nonsense and weird stuff in their extremely important, life-defining high school yearbook photos. But in the end common sense prevailed in Arkansas where it didn't in Mississippi, and the board saw fit to allow young Sarah Lloyd, who typically dresses in "boys clothes", to wear her tux on picture day.

Good for you, Arkansas!

Bad for you, Massachusetts. Well, bad for you despite good intentions. The principal of Whitman Hanson Regional High School in Whitman, MA has ended a tradition of freshmen wearing pink shirts at the Thanksgiving pep rally, because he fears it leads to unnecessary teasing and bullying. Bullying being such a buzzword these days, and people being overly cautious, etc.

So this is dumb for sure, but at least his heart was in the right place?

Basically, restricting what color T-shirts kids can wear seems silly (unless they're gang colors maybe? is that still a thing?), as does worrying that a girl wearing a tuxedo in a yearbook photo will destroy treasured tradition. (If you buy that excuse for why they blocked her in the first place, which I don't, really.) It's just silly guys, very very silly.

You know what is not silly? The AWESOME besties in the Massachusetts video, at about 58 seconds in. You see them? The boy in the sunglasses and hat, the girl in the nerdy regular glasses and hat? You know they are like the really cool artsy loner kids and he's gay and smokes fancy cigarettes and she writes short stories and plays sweet guitar music and they both want to go to Reed or NYU or somewhere fabulous like that. Oh man. I love them so much! I hope you're reading this guys. Let's be friends!

Ahem. Please excuse that. And, please, wear what you want, huh?

Send an email to Richard Lawson, the author of this post, at richardl@gawker.com. Read more at gawker.com

 

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How Badly Will Charlie Rangel Be Slapped on the Wrist?

The House panel that found Rep. Charlie Rangel guilty on 11 of 13 ethics charges is deliberating which symbolic punishment to give him. Will he receive a "censure," the ultimate strongly-worded letter? We'll see. Rangel, meanwhile, is whining as usual.

The ethics committee's chief counsel, R. Blake Chisam, has recommended that the panel pursue "censure," but some panel members seem more inclined to go with "reprimand," a lesser punishment. What's the earth-shattering difference between these? A reprimand can simply be voted on by the House while the violator sits in his chair, but a censure requires the Speaker to read the charges to the violator while he stands in the well of the chamber. It's more humiliating, and it goes on the permanent record, but that's about it. The harshest penalty is "expulsion," where they, you know, expel the member from Congress.

So this is why it's hard to feel much if any sympathy for Rangel on days like today, when he gave yet another rambling, 15-minute woe-is-me lecture to the ethics panel — a snippet of which is in the top clip —about this terrible injustice done to him. This is a man who's been in Congress for several decades and has exercised plenty of power in his time. He was re-elected this year, even with the ethics violations. He'll still be a member of Congress. So boo hoo. It's no one else's fault that he was too arrogant to follow the chamber's conduct rules, and he shouldn't expect the public to weep for him when he's handed his fake punishment.

Send an email to Jim Newell, the author of this post, at newell@gawker.com. Read more at gawker.com

 

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Your Congressperson Got Richer Last Year. You Did Not.

From 2008 to 2009, the median household net worth for a member of Congress went up 19 percent. During the same time, the national median plummeted by 15 percent. This is known as a plutocracy.

The congressional figures were released yesterday by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tallied them from financial disclosure reports filed by members of Congress. The nationwide figures come from the Federal Reserve. Bottom line—members of Congress have weathered the economic catastrophe just fine, and by 2009, the year the recession ended, their median net worth had rocketed to 122 percent of where it stood in 2004. The median regular household, by contrast, was still underwater last year compared to where it stood in 2004, down 10 percent.

The median net worth for a member of Congress last year was $908,255; the median household net worth was $84,000. (The figures on the chart above are adjusted for inflation, and there was no data for U.S. net worth for 2006.) Nearly one out of two members of the House and Senate are millionaires.

Oh, and Congress just voted today not to extend unemployment benefits for another six months because you lazy motherfuckers need to stop reading the internet all day and get back to work. Vacation's over!

Send an email to the author of this post at john@gawker.com. Read more at gawker.com

 

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God-Fearing Man Tormented by 2,000 Sexy Female Facebook Friends

New Jersey pastor Cedric Miller ordered married congregation to give up Facebook because the "temptation is just too great." His inspiration: The plight of congregant Elliott Subervi, who says 2000 beautiful women friended him, then tormented him with sexy messages.

The New York Post's Joe Mollica reports that Elliott Subervi, a personal trainer, joined Facebook for "harmless social networking." Then, horror, "fitness models" and "bodybuilders" started friending him. Lustfully.

I would get several e-mails a week saying how gorgeous I was and here's my phone number. These girls didn't care that I was married, and my page said so. I didn't want to cheat on my wife, but these women were throwing themselves at me.

Oh, Elliott. Those weren't female suitors; that was porn. Nonetheless, the messages tormented our chaste hero, for they had awakened the carnal beast within. Oh, how he fought the urges!

They were coming on a little too strong. I could see infidelity being eventual.

His wife could see it, too. The pair sought counsel with Reverend Miller, who told Elliott to get off Facebook. (Here's a cached version of his old profile. He has a private one for family only, now.) Then, Rev. Miller told his congregants they should do the same, and ordered married church leaders to quit Facebook or step down.

And that is the story of how one horny middle-aged dude ruined Facebook for everyone at the Living Word Christian Fellowship church in Neptune, New Jersey. [NYP, LAT, Facebook profile of dateahotcougar.com's "Jennifer Wilson" for illustrative purposes only]

Send an email to Maureen O'Connor, the author of this post, at maureen@gawker.com. Read more at gawker.com

 

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Philanthropy: A benevolent byproduct of capitalism, the voluntary redistribution of wealth

In economic terms philanthropy is the voluntary redistribution of wealth. We take from ourselves and give to others.

Philanthropy frees the super wealthy from the demands of shareholders to use their financial and intellectual gifts to work on solving society's problems more innovatively than the governments charged with that responsibility.

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Philanthropy: A benevolent byproduct of capitalism

By Russ Wigh

The A Team has issued a challenge. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have lined up 40 of America's richest people to pledge at least half their fortunes to charity.

So far they have commitments for a cool $115 billion. However, there is at least one influential leader of a charity who objects.

Too much, charges Kimberly Dennis, CEO of the Searle Freedom Trust in an August article in the Wall Street Journal.

Dennis argues that these innovative, entrepreneurial billionaires would reach many more people and do much more good for society by reinvesting that money in their businesses to continue the flow of ideas, products and new jobs that created their wealth in the first place.

Support for Dennis' argument is evident in a novel approach taken by Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun Microsystems and now a venture capitalist in California.

Khosla, whose fortune already exceeds $1 billion, combines concern for the poor with the profit motive. His investment in SKS Microfinance, a micro-lender to poverty-stricken women in rural India, has already returned more than $100 million to him.

His profits will be plowed back into other social welfare efforts in his native country, and he hopes to set an example for India's newly wealthy to follow.

But corporate altruism has limits, and SKS has received criticism on two fronts - enriching the original shareholders who started the company in 1997 as a nonprofit and, after conversion to a for-profit enterprise, making a profit on the backs of the poor.

Public companies (SKS is public in India) are of necessity run by a management team to benefit the owners. Corporate social responsibility is limited by the need to maximize shareholder value.

This model is dictated by a competitive market economy.

If corporations were expected to include social welfare as part of corporate business strategy, it would inevitably result in an extra layer of expense. That would just as inevitably result in higher prices to the consumer or lower profits for the owners and ultimately the boot for the management team.

The only way the capitalist system could be altered is through legislation, a really stupid idea. The alternative is the personal philanthropy of those who have prospered in the system, a really good idea.

Philanthropy frees the super wealthy from the demands of shareholders to use their financial and intellectual gifts to work on solving society's problems more innovatively than the governments charged with that responsibility.

In a more perfect world I fantasize that Congress awoke one morning and collectively realized the merit in privatizing the social welfare system by setting up a charity funded by lawmakers and run by this great talent.

How much of the $762 billion expected to be spent by the U.S. government and the various states in 2010 might we save?

In economic terms philanthropy is the voluntary redistribution of wealth. We take from ourselves and give to others.

Taxation is the involuntary redistribution of wealth. Governments take from us and provide services and give to others.

One of the defining characteristics of charities, foundations and corporations in business for the public good is that they often perform functions the government would otherwise have to provide.

It should go without saying charities can do a better job at distributing services than state or federal governments because political issues are greatly diminished.

Well, in theory it is supposed to work that way.

A recent example of political meddling with philanthropy has to do with the popular Georgia special license plate. Prior to May 2010, if you bought a special plate to support a particular interest such as non-game wildlife preservation, the entire fee beyond the standard cost of a license plate went to the cause you selected.

As of May the state legislature mandated higher fees, now $80, plus a $35 annual renewal tab tacked on to your ad valorem tax. Now only $22 goes to the cause each year.

Apparently the General Assembly cannot abide not controlling all the money coming into state agencies. At the same time the legislature stumbled onto a way to weasel an additional tax out of those of us with benevolent intent.

Surprise!

Russ Wigh is a professor of business at Savannah College of Art and Design. He may be contacted at rdwigh@bellsouth.net. Read more at savannahnow.com

 

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End of the Line for Redistribution and Monetary Policy?

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End of the Line for Redistribution and Monetary Policy?

Over the last few decades, several trends have shaped economic flows and returns. In the developed world, we have seen a historically rare and nearly uninterrupted upward redistribution of income and wealth.

The EU and the US have seen the income shares of their most affluent rise spectacularly. The top 1 percent of US income earners now receives more than 20 percent of individual income. The EU average is measured and reported as the S80/S20 ratio. This measure compares the share of total income earned by the top 20 percent of income earners against the income share of the bottom 20 percent of income earners. For the EU-15 Nations this has risen consistently and in 2009 the top 20 percent of income earners received about 4.9 times as much income as the bottom quintile of income earners.

The GINI coefficients of most OECD countries -- notably the US, UK, France, Italy, and Germany -- have increased. The Luxembourg Income Study, OECD research and various national studies all point in the same direction. Wealth has been more pronounced in its upward redistribution than income. The Luxembourg Wealth Study and the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances document rising concentrations.

Financial assets are luxury goods. Like most luxury goods, they tend to experience increases in price as higher incomes grow disproportionally. We have just lived through 20 years of rapid global financial integration and a real blossoming of financial markets and assets. This has been attracting leading talent, massive attention and altered the size and geography of financial asset demand. More money, in absolute and relative terms, is chasing more assets over greater ranges of product and geography.

Upward redistribution of income and wealth has occurred as new products and investment opportunities abound. Demographic trends have lent a hand as well. Aging populations have been saving and speculating ahead of historically early retirements and record life expectancies.

There have been rising in faith in and fury over monetary policy. Fiscal policy has been used, even abused over the last decades. However, comfort with notions of the primacy and range of monetary policy action has outstripped fiscal policy development. Taxes and regulations were stagnant to declining from the 1980s through 2007. This is true with or without factoring in the demise of the USSR and state directed economies in the old Soviet orbit. India and China have rising inequalities of wealth and income among their combined 30 percent of global population and growing shares of world GDP.

The rise of monetary policy has marched in lock step with rising centrality and policy importance for financial markets and firms. Central banks and finance ministries have enjoyed unusual power and prestige. Large banks and non-bank financial intermediaries have ballooned in size, influence and social regard. The surge of hatred for and obsession with leading financial firms speaks to this process. Monetary policy, foreign exchange and asset markets have been more powerful and more central in policy making and policy targeting. Thus, the recent past was been an unusually good period for the demand for and supply of financial assets. Speculative assets are widely ascribed magical powers of wealth creation and impoverishment. Demand flourished with deregulation and upward income/wealth distribution. New communication possibilities and deregulation opened grand vistas for gathering funds and making allocations. As the inflows and development of financial assets have grown, there has been a rising attention and focus on policy interventions that "stabilize" speculative markets and increase asset prices. From bans on shorting to rising regulation of futures and options, there is an asset price inflating bias to policy. Many of these restrictions are popular with a public angry about growing inequality and confused about the source of this rising inequity. Few seem to grasp that their popular rage distorts assets prices upward and worsens growing extremes of income/wealth distribution.

At the same, increasingly dramatic monetary policy interventions target upward pressure on asset prices during crises and price swoons. Quantitative easing, strategically important private firm bailouts and emergency plunge protection teams, have emerged in governments around the world. Dramatic nationalization of private liabilities has moved public treasuries into support of private securities and loans. Looming and implemented capital controls, limits on short duration purchase and taxes on hot money seek to keep floods of inward capital from moving outward. This too can be seen as seeking an upward bias from investment flows. The periphery of the European Union is now engaged in very public struggles to borrow to support state spending and private financial firms while passing profoundly unpopular austerity measures. This will lead to increased upward income/wealth redistribution.

I mention this because the odds are overwhelming that this is not part of how you see the world economy over years past. It should be. We are in the midst of finding the hard constraints -- political and economic -- for upward income/wealth redistribution and asset price targeted monetary policy intervention. Publics, politicians and stability conditions will not abide significantly greater redistributions or policies favoring asset owners. The Federal Reserve's QEII decision of 03 November 2010 is running into massive resistance at home and abroad. Likewise, debates over Bush tax cut extension have made almost no progress as the expiration looms.

Global asset prices are being dramatically pushed and angry calls are ringing out. As we moved through the G20 meetings in South Korea, many nations raised concerns over downward US Dollar pressure from QEII. Quantitative easing will likely take the Federal Reserve's balance sheet from $2.25 trillion up to nearly $3 trillion. US Treasuries, developed and developing world corporate and sovereign bonds, are very expensive. Interest rates are very, very low. The interest rates on mortgages in the US are near 50 year lows as are the yields on US government debt. On the eve of Lehman Brothers' decline and the US Treasury action to nationalize the liabilities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Fed sat atop a $950billion balance sheet. A tripling of the direct asset price support of Fed policy has dramatically pushed up prices. US wages and home prices have stagnated and fallen; unemployment remains higher throughout the developed world.

Thus, we are seeing massive asset price support amid flat prices and economic weakness. In 5 of the last 7 quarters US unit labor costs fell as productivity increased with flat to declining real wages. Developed economies are generating outright deflation. Monetary policy and asset inflation is keeping general price levels from rising. This is what asset price targeted monetary policy with redistribution looks like.

Chinese authorities have increasingly come to recognize the need for inequality targeted policy and economic growth. Latin American nations have been attempting such policies for nearly a decade, often with noteworthy success. Growing and increasingly angry crowds are demanding a social welfare inflected version of the same in the streets of continental Europe. UK welfare and public spending reform and the American Tea Party, appear to be counter instances. Recent demonstrations by university students in the UK and reaction to the Obama Administration's Budget Council suggest trouble coming in the US and UK. Even if declining fiscal policy interventions are forthcoming in the US and the UK, quantitative easing has little more room to run beyond the next 6-12 months. Further significant upward income/wealth redistribution in the developed world is not a politically or economically viable option. The weakness, sometimes from rising inequality, in the private economy is consuming much of the macro economic benefit of aggressive monetary policy.

We are at a cross roads for the monetary policy and redistributive bias that has defined the US for decades. Our economic performance and political stability requires us to learn from the recent past and chart a different path. Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

 

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IPCC Expert admits UN goal is Wealth Redistribution

Marc Sheppard

One need read no further than the U.N. International Climate Accord [PDF] ultimately shot down at Copenhagen’s climate summit last year to understand the organization’s international wealth redistribution goals.  The failed treaty actually contained as many paragraphs outlining the payment of "climate debt" reparations by Western nations as it did emission reduction schemes.

Indeed, for nearly 50-years the U.N. has formulated its own unique brand of “social justice” under the guise of “saving the planet” by demonizing one byproduct of Western economic growth or another.  Carbon Dioxide is, of course, merely the devil’s derivative du jour.

Now, a high-ranking member of the U.N’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has admitted that climate policy has little to do with environmental protection.

On Sunday, Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and IPCC Co-chair of Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change, told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (translated) that “climate policy is redistributing the world's wealth” and that “it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization.”

Edenhofer went on to explain that in Cancun, the redistribution of not only wealth but also natural resources will be negotiated, adding that:

The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War.

And another shot at playing Robin Hood with Americans’ money.  As I addressed yesterday: Now consider the U.N. plan to levy a climate reparations tax on the developed world (read that United States) on everything from airline flights and international shipping to fuel and financial transactions to the tune of $100 billion annually.  That scheme is backed by both Obama advisor Lawrence Summers and radical anti-American billionaire George Soros as a means to meet the annual figure “international leaders” agreed to in Copenhagen and will be a primary goal at Cancun in a few weeks.

Will Barack Obama and his fellow recently repudiated Democrats actually entertain incurring further international debt on the backs of strapped American taxpayers (whose belief in AGW is at an all-time low), given Edenhofer’s staggering affirmation?

Stay tuned.

Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters has more.  Read more at www.americanthinker.com

 

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Will founding father of the tea party movement get his due from party leaders?

Right now, we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico?

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The vindication of Ron Paul

Will founding father of the tea party movement get his due from party leaders?

Ron Smith

Congressional Republicans used to enjoy the luxury of ignoring Ron Paul's cantankerous objections to the political premises they shared with their counterparts across the aisle. The question now is whether in the new Congress to be seated in January the longtime Texas representative will be allowed to chair the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology on the House Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Paul is the ranking minority member now, so the job would seem to be his after the GOP sweep in the midterm election, but the Republican leadership will decide whether to give the leading critic of the Federal Reserve Bank a prominent role in overseeing the Fed itself as well as the U.S. Mint and the U.S. relationship with the World Bank.

As little as they may relish the idea described above, kicking him to the curb could cause a huge problem with those new Republican representatives who identify themselves with the tea party movement.

Remember, it was Ron Paul supporters who kick-started the tea party into life on Dec. 16, 2007, when they dumped a $6 million "money bomb" into his presidential campaign on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

Not that all or even most tea partiers are Paulians when the rubber meets the road. Abolishing the Patriot Act, which he advocates, probably wouldn't be at the top of the priority list for the 52 Republican members of Congress who say they'll join a Tea Party Caucus.

Nor would most of these people back an actual anti-interventionist foreign policy, or ending the drug war, or abolishing the Fed, as does Mr. Paul, who has warned against what he sees as a neocon infiltration into the movement.

In fact, loner that he is, the good doctor will distance himself from the House Tea Party Caucus even though he is a towering figure to many of its probable members. Responding to press queries, his chief of staff, Jeff Deist, said, "Congressman Paul decided not to join the Tea Party Caucus. He strongly believes that the tea party movement should remain a grassroots phenomenon, rather than being co-opted by Washington or any political party."

His son, Rand Paul, also a medical doctor, was elected to the U.S. Senate from Kentucky and is working to organize a Tea Party Caucus within the Senate. However much he might or might not agree with his father's more radical ideas remains to be seen, but the potential for some much-needed principled dissent from the justly maligned status quo in the upper chamber is tantalizing.

We should be particularly grateful to Ron Paul for his controversial performance in the GOP presidential debate in South Carolina in October 2007, the one where he stood before his fellow candidates and supposedly "blamed America" for the attacks of Sept. 11. Of course, he didn't actually "blame America," he merely pointed out that foreign policy has consequences, and that people get angry when their lands are occupied and they are bombed in their homes: "They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. … We've been in the Middle East. Right now, we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting."

Rudy Giuliani, who made his fortune exploiting the coincidence that he was New York City's mayor when the attacks took place, won the biggest applause of the night with this reaction: "That's really an extraordinary statement. That's really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept.11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I have ever heard that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11. I would ask the congressman withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that."

That didn't happen. Ron Paul chose to speak to the American people as though they were adults, thus violating the rules of Politics 101. "America's Mayor" went on to spend more than $20 million to win a single vote at the nominating convention.

Ron Paul never came close to getting the presidential nomination. He just went about his quirky business, talking to Americans as though they were capable of understanding his critique of foreign policy and the dangers of mounting public debt. Due to the Great Recession, a large number of them did understand and acted on the information.

It is he who sparked a new American Revolution and, after all these years, can no longer be easily ignored.

Ron Smith can be heard weekdays, 9 a.m. to noon, on 1090 WBAL-AM and WBAL.com. His column appears Fridays in The Baltimore Sun. His e-mail is rsmith@wbal.com.Read more at www.baltimoresun.com

 

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DA Now Sending Deputies to SF Airport to Investigate Felony Groping

Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com November 18, 2010

Appearing on the Alex Jones Show today, current chief deputy DA and incoming DA of San Mateo County Steve Wagstaffe said his office will prosecute TSA employees who engage in lewd and lascivious behavior while conducting Homeland Security mandated patdowns at the San Francisco International Airport in San Mateo County.

Current chief deputy DA and incoming DA of San Mateo County Steve Wagstaffe on the Alex Jones Show.

“The case would be reviewed and if we could prove the elements of it, that it was inappropriately done with a sexual or lewd intent, that person would be prosecuted,” Wagstaffe told the Berman Post on Tuesday.

Wagstaffe told Alex Jones that county police will be sent to into the San Francisco International Airport. If they witness TSA employees engaged in criminal conduct, they will make arrests and the DA’s office will prosecute. Sexual battery in Mateo County is a felony if the molestation occurs beneath clothing and makes contact with skin and a misdemeanor if the touching occurs outside clothing.

The new government mandated hands-on searches are used for passengers who find naked body inappropriate, when something suspicious appears in screening, or randomly. They can take two minutes per passenger and involve sliding of the hands along the length of the body, along thighs and near the groin and breasts, according to the Associated Press.

In addition, a district attorney in the county south of San Mateo, Santa Clara, told Wagstaffe his office will also prosecute TSA employees for inappropriate sexual behavior at the San Jose International Airport.

Since the new search procedures went into effect, the web has exploded in opposition to naked body scanners and intrusive patdowns. Reports posted by the The Drudge Report, Infowars.com, and Prison Planet.com have gone viral on the internet and forced the mainstream corporate media to cover the issue.

“Nationwide outrage against the TSA is not only bringing to light new cases of airport abuse, it’s throwing fresh attention on previous incidents that have been going on for years,” Paul Joseph Watson wrote on Wednesday. Watson notes several lawsuits initiated against the TSA, including one connected to a 2008 incident at the Corpus Christi airport where the TSA exposed a young woman’s breasts.

Coverage of TSA groping and public outrage has resulted in airports around the country reconsidering the procedures.

Earlier today, Orlando Sanford International Airport decided to opt out from TSA screening. Larry Dale, the director of the Sanford Airport Authority in Florida, said he will send a letter requesting to opt out from TSA screening, and instead the airport will choose one of the five approved private screening companies to take over, according to central Florida’s WDBO.

“The outcry is huge,” Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison told the TSA administrator, John Pistole, at a Capitol Hill hearing yesterday. “I know that you’re aware of it. But we’ve got to see some action.”

“I’m not going to change those policies,” Pistole promised. Read more at www.infowars.com

 

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Private Military Companies as Quasi-States

Vatican City is a sovereign city-state with an area of approximately 110 acres and a population of just over 800. As the capital of the Catholic Church, it is the headquarters of a global corporation, albeit of the theological variety.

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Private Military Companies as Quasi-States

Our latest entry in law journal articles on private military contractors is "Why Private Mercenary Companies Should Be Legitimized and Allowed to Enter the World Stage." This was published in the spring 2009 issue of the New England Law Review.

The author is Edieth Y. Wu, who is Professor of Law at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University.

In a mere 16018 words, which is positively svelte by law journal standards, she makes the argument "Like the multinational, PMCs have the potential to impact domestic and international politics and "spread wealth, work, technologies that raise living standards and better" the lives of millions, which gives them an opportunity to participate in the global economy."

That's a fairly bold assertion. Even PMC trade associations don't normally make such a claim, as it puts PMCs right up there with Apple, Google, and Microsoft. And not even Eric Prince, back when Blackwater was at the top of the PMC heap, would go that far.

Still, once you get past the fact that Professor You is calling PMC a "mercenary" company - you would think a law professor of all people, trained to used word with exactitude, would know better - she has some intriguing things to say regarding PMC regulation.

In particular, she calls for the United Nations Security Council, to support a resolution to legitimize properly registered PMCs. She writes, "The U.N. is in the best position and can "bring[] essential assets to bear on any effort to deal with pressing problems" of PMCs. The U.N. has legitimacy because it represents the world and can call on nations to assist in situations that affect humanity as a whole. The U.N. should pass an "Emergency Private Mercenary Company Resolution" (Emergency PMC Resolution) similar to the resolutions that address measures to prevent international terrorism."

She notes there is precedent.

After the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States, the U.N.'s response was decisively unprecedented and swift. Resolution 1368 was unanimously adopted by the Security Council within twenty-four hours of the attack. The Resolution called for all States to work to bring the perpetrators to justice, and it called for the "international community to redouble their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts." The same swiftness and assurance of support should accompany the Emergency PMC Resolution. The Emergency PMC Resolution would legitimize reputable companies that are willing to comply with the Emergency PMC Resolution and the augmented three-tiered process. The Emergency PMC Resolution should be drafted under Chapter VII of the Charter because it addresses threats, breaches, and aggression against the peace of the international community.

The Resolution would require all member nations to pass and enforce national legislation making it compulsory for all PMCs to register with the U.N. under their home country's membership. After the company registers, all of its employees would then be designated as having dual nationality. That is, nationals of their home state and nationals of their company's state, analogous to the situation in the Merge case. The individual's dominant nationality would be the nationality of his contracted employer, the PMC, based on the dominant nationality principal. A mercenary would also be subject to the municipal court system of his or her employer's home country because of the voluntary contacts and participation in said activity.

Of course, trying to define "reputable companies" is akin to determining how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. Maybe we can outsource that task to Jesuits, as they have a reputation for arguing over the obscure.

But what is really breathtaking is this:

First, mercenary companies should not be placed under regulations that control state-run militaries; instead, mercenary companies should be designated through a U.N. Resolution as a "Quasi-State," a cross between a multinational corporation and a non-governmental organization. Because the designation would flow through the U.N. and its members, the necessity for global harmonization and legitimacy would be unquestioned. The "quasi-state" status would be viewed as global entities who are allowed to operate as a result of a decision by the community of nations. These Quasi-State companies would be given semi-international legal personality so that they would be subject to the International Court of Justice's jurisdiction as well as the ICC's, which already has the power to adjudicate individual defendants. Large PMCs are "no longer ordinary players on the international scene, [these] corporations have achieved effective global governance by virtue of their control of economic" and military expertise. Additionally, they have "rights or duties," in the global community and should be evaluated based on the "extent to which other legal persons resemble states in their ability to bring [and have] international claims" brought against them. Corporations have been branded as "corporate states"; this is not a U.N. or state designation. To date, "states are unwilling, also, to elevate corporations to the status of a nation." They "may be a party to a contract recognized by international law and possibly become a subject ... but this does not invoke legal capacity to act like a nation." The opportunity to bestow the quasi-state designation allows world leaders to not only place controls over a growing and specialized corporation but also allows them to protect global citizens at the same time. The insecurity concerning PMCs has created an avenue "to re-establish democratic control" n198 and enhance oversight over this growing multinational corporate segment. A clear message would be articulated that corporations "are legally not more significant than a single human being or a non-governmental organization ... . False [they] are just nationals like other nationals in international law," except they would now be subject to stricter scrutiny for acts committed as a result of their business activity, enhanced prosecutorial reach extended to the ICJ, ICC, and national courts.

In one way this actually makes sense, sort of. After all Vatican City is a sovereign city-state with an area of approximately 110 acres and a population of just over 800. As the capital of the Catholic Church, it is the headquarters of a global corporation, albeit of the theological variety.

By contrast Xe Services, formerly Blackwater, another multinational, has a headquarters of 7,500 acres and its firepower far outstrips that of the Swiss Guard who protects the Vatican. If they go to war someday I know who I'm putting my money on.

And if a PMC decided not to play ball with this arrangement? Prof. Yu writes:

PMCs that refuse to cooperate would be classified as "Rogue Companies" and could be prosecuted by another state under the principles of preemptory norm (jus cogens) ( http://definitions.uslegal.com/j/jus-cogens), if the home state refused or was unable to prosecute. Similar to the difference between pirates and legitimate privateers, unregistered companies would be treated like pirates - illegals - and would thus suffer strict and swift punishment. Illegal or unregistered companies would be subject to the U.N.'s declaration that they "violate the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter." As a result, states would be mandated to "take the necessary steps and to exercise the utmost vigilance against the menace posed by the activities ... and to bring to trial those found responsible, or to consider their extradition, if so requested, in accordance with domestic law and applicable bilateral or international treaties."

So, if you are willing to accept the initial premise we could, theoretically, have states issue contracts to PMC to apprehend and bring to justice the perp, oops, I mean the disreputable PMC. It's rather like the concept of issuing letters of marquee to fight pirates, which, after all, is in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

Hmmm, PMC as pirates? I'll go out on a limb and say PMC probably want to avoid something that could put them in an equivalent status. After all, piracy is considered a breach of jus cogens, an international norm that states must uphold. Pirates are considered by sovereign states to be hostis humani generis (enemies of humanity).

Still, I hope PMCs do get quasi-state status, if only so we can see PMC representatives pontificate like all the others at the U.N. General Assembly and the Security Council. Perhaps Eric Prince can come out of retirement and be designated Xe Services' UN ambassador. Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

 

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