The administration just can't keep its hands off USAID funding.
First it was reinstating the Global Gag Rule, and barring what NGOs could say or advise women on regarding abortion. Then it was sex workers in the crosshairs of USAID funding restrictions, and effective HIV/AIDS prevention programs are suffering with the "Trafficking Prevention Reauthorization Act."
Do we really want to be that nation, the one who withholds money from HIV/AIDS prevention because we feel the need to take some perceived moral highground on sex work? Because, really, that's all TVPRA is. It's dressed up as an anti-trafficking initiative but--wait for it--provides no funding for actual prevention of trafficking. It just stops NGOs from working with sex worker unions or community groups. It is brutally unfair to women who really are suffering from trafficking in the sex industry than telling them the United States is serious about ending trafficking and then holding out little but empty promises like TVPRA.
For my final project in public policy I wrote an analysis of TVPRA and advocated for its hasty removal. I'll be posting it in parts.
Executive Summary
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Congressional leadership have an opportunity to significantly increase the impact of U.S. foreign aid on the global AIDS crisis by overturning the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) attached to United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding in 2008. At present, TVPRA ties the hands of any non-governmental organization conducting HIV/AIDS programs abroad by forcing them to adopt government-mandated language condemning sex work, curtailing effective programs that could protect thousands of people from acquiring HIV/AIDS next year.
TVPRA should be overturned because it denies funding to effective programs, places unconstitutional restrictions on US non-governmental organizations, tarnishes the image of the U.S. as a leader in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and is counter-productive to its stated goal of actually decreasing trafficking in women.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Keeping 'We' in 'We the People'
Until finals are over (1 more week) I'm planning on running re-runs of my papers this semester. At least there will be new posts...and some quite appropriate as we are about to enter hunting season--I mean, election year 2008.
My public policy midterm asked "Is the US public too ignorant to govern itself?"
Removing the American public from the governance of this country, even if as Hardin states they would get the same outcome if they did not vote, would fundamentally undermine the very concept of a country built on the principle of restrained government power and explicit rights of the individual from government protected in a constitution. If the people are taken out of “We the People,” it in effect cements into place every discrimination and social inequality that has to date not been resolved. The representatives of the American people are not representative of the people, and without public involvement in the process, however limited, there is no incentive for their interests to be considered.
Congress is overwhelmingly white, male and middle-aged. The hundreds of thousands of constituents per representative of the House largely do not fit that profile, at least half of them after all being biologically female. As mentioned in class, only 16.3% of Congress is female, 3% of the Senate is Latino, and there is one lone African-American in the Senate. If this group of representatives were left to make decisions for constituents they share little to no common life experiences, with no input or threat of ouster by the people they represent, there is more than a fleeting chance that social services would be distributed even less equally than at present and laws preventing racial and sexual discrimination in the workplace would not be made into law. Such issues of discrimination would simply not have been experienced by the vast majority of officials.
Historically, the view that "the people" could not govern themselves and needed the help of an aristocratic and benevolent elite to guide them was widely accepted. Some might say that with the emergence of professional politicians in the U.S. we are returning to this school of thought in some regard. As we discussed in the class, the more highly specialized a field becomes, the easier it is for political decisions to pose as technical ones. Removing the people from the process of governance removes yet one more barrier to keeping corruption in check.
Hardin has a dim view of how Americans make decisions on important political issues such as spending on foreign policy. However, one can argue that it is not the ignorance of the average American so much as it is the politicization of the (mis)information she has access to that lies underneath the problem of a misinformed citizenry. Increasingly polarized parties and media outlets shape the course of debate, skewing statistics as it suits the issue. The prevalence of interest groups in theory provides one recourse for citizens to speak truth to power. Groups with the largest numbers of members sharing their concerns are by and large the most effective groups in Washington. Their power comes from the number of engaged citizens they bring to the table with them when meeting about their issues. Yet even with this power, placing politicians above the reach of the public's vote would remove the bulk of their leverage in getting the ear of members of Congress.
It is a slippery slope to remove power from people to have a place at the table of governance. We routinely point fingers at other nations with less democratic participation—perhaps China one day or Russia the next—and decry the ways the will of the people living there is suppressed and ignored. We see the results in exposes on levels of pollution in Chinese rivers, injured miners, or patronage in Russian political circles. We do not say that the people in those nations are too ignorant to question their leaders or fight for change; instead, we applaud them. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard, but we do not do that by removing our power as citizens.
My public policy midterm asked "Is the US public too ignorant to govern itself?"
Removing the American public from the governance of this country, even if as Hardin states they would get the same outcome if they did not vote, would fundamentally undermine the very concept of a country built on the principle of restrained government power and explicit rights of the individual from government protected in a constitution. If the people are taken out of “We the People,” it in effect cements into place every discrimination and social inequality that has to date not been resolved. The representatives of the American people are not representative of the people, and without public involvement in the process, however limited, there is no incentive for their interests to be considered.
Congress is overwhelmingly white, male and middle-aged. The hundreds of thousands of constituents per representative of the House largely do not fit that profile, at least half of them after all being biologically female. As mentioned in class, only 16.3% of Congress is female, 3% of the Senate is Latino, and there is one lone African-American in the Senate. If this group of representatives were left to make decisions for constituents they share little to no common life experiences, with no input or threat of ouster by the people they represent, there is more than a fleeting chance that social services would be distributed even less equally than at present and laws preventing racial and sexual discrimination in the workplace would not be made into law. Such issues of discrimination would simply not have been experienced by the vast majority of officials.
Historically, the view that "the people" could not govern themselves and needed the help of an aristocratic and benevolent elite to guide them was widely accepted. Some might say that with the emergence of professional politicians in the U.S. we are returning to this school of thought in some regard. As we discussed in the class, the more highly specialized a field becomes, the easier it is for political decisions to pose as technical ones. Removing the people from the process of governance removes yet one more barrier to keeping corruption in check.
Hardin has a dim view of how Americans make decisions on important political issues such as spending on foreign policy. However, one can argue that it is not the ignorance of the average American so much as it is the politicization of the (mis)information she has access to that lies underneath the problem of a misinformed citizenry. Increasingly polarized parties and media outlets shape the course of debate, skewing statistics as it suits the issue. The prevalence of interest groups in theory provides one recourse for citizens to speak truth to power. Groups with the largest numbers of members sharing their concerns are by and large the most effective groups in Washington. Their power comes from the number of engaged citizens they bring to the table with them when meeting about their issues. Yet even with this power, placing politicians above the reach of the public's vote would remove the bulk of their leverage in getting the ear of members of Congress.
It is a slippery slope to remove power from people to have a place at the table of governance. We routinely point fingers at other nations with less democratic participation—perhaps China one day or Russia the next—and decry the ways the will of the people living there is suppressed and ignored. We see the results in exposes on levels of pollution in Chinese rivers, injured miners, or patronage in Russian political circles. We do not say that the people in those nations are too ignorant to question their leaders or fight for change; instead, we applaud them. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard, but we do not do that by removing our power as citizens.
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