Earmarks and Logrolling

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by Richard Crews
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Who would have thunk it? Earmarks are gone!
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The U. S. Congress--both the Senate and the House of Representatives--has killed earmarking. As candidates for federal office, members of Congress have often mounted impassioned campaign rhetoric against earmarks. They have even "agreed" from time to time to ban them. But now it has actually happened. Right now (and ostensibly for the next two years) our federal legislators are refraining from tagging special home-town funding onto national spending bills.
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Some key definitions:
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Pork-barrel spending: The term "pork-barrel" originally referred to a container for unwanted extras from slaughtered pigs. A hundred-years-and-more ago it acquired a second, humorously related, meaning: a political candidate would climb on an inverted pork barrel on the street corner by the local general store to address the crowd. He would shout and wave his hands and make extravagant promises about all the benefits he would send back home if he were elected. (I say "he" because all politicians were men back in those days--the first woman was elected to Congress in 1916.) The term "pork-barrel spending" came to mean unnecessary government expenditures that were allocated for political reasons.
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Earmarks: The term "earmarks" originally referred to tags put on the ears of cattle so they could be readily identified. The term was extended to the political sphere. Once elected, a politician would tag special spending provisions in national legislation so that they were designed to benefit his constituents back home. Sometimes this was done with a degree of subtlety, for example, a defense contract would be structured so that only a particular, home-town company could actually compete for it. But often earmarking was far more blatant than this.
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Logrolling: Logrolling, or birling, is a sport that originated in the lumberjack tradition of the northeastern United States and Canada. It involves standing on a log that is floating in a river and spinning it with ones feet, either to cooperate with, or to try to throw off another competitor. In legislative circles, logrolling is exchanging of favors such as trading votes to gain passage of actions of interest to each legislative member. A politician would be obligated to vote for other legislators' earmarked legislation if they voted for his--and, more importantly, to agree to greater spending measures than he would otherwise approve of. In other words, if everybody cooperated and "rolled the log" together, then nobody fell off.
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Some key quotations:
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On Congressional spending: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about some real money."
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On the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars: "Most of us don't have to count the zeroes as carefully as Warren Buffet and the U.S. Congress do."
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On the evil and pervasive influence of spending-power: "We have the best legislators money can buy."
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One of the most notorious examples of earmarking in recent years was the Alaskan "Bridge to Nowhere." In 2005, at the behest of Representative Don Young and Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, Congress approved $400 million to build an enormous bridge, the Gravina Island Bridge, in a sparsely inhabited (the island had 50 inhabitants) and little used (but it had an airport) corner of Alaska. While running for governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin promoted the bridge but after the project had been killed in Congress, she claimed credit for defeating it ("I said, 'thanks, but no thanks' "), but kept the money ($223 million) for other Alaskan projects and continued with another federal grant using $26 million to build a highway to the non-existent bridge.
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Earmarks and logrolling have been a major part--politically and financially--of the federal landscape for many years. They particularly ballooned during the early years of the 21st century. Prior to 2000, there were typically several hundred earmarks each year totaling, at most, a few billion dollars. In 2005 the number had grown to some 16,000 earmarks totaling $48 billion; in 2006, the total was $72 billion.
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Now earmarks are gone, for now at least--perhaps even for the next two years--or longer.
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State Budgets and Union Busting

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by Richard Crews
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In recent days there have been massive demonstrations in state capitols across the United States protesting legislators' actions aimed at curbing the power of labor unions. This is an important problem, but also a complex one that can only be understood in an historical context.

In 1941 the U.S. emerged from the Great Depression of the 1930s into the Second World War. The men went to war, the women went to work filling in behind them, and amid a torrent of economic stimulation the government went into debt. By the end of the war in 1945, the U.S. national debt was greater than the GDP of the country for the first time in history. (The GDP or Gross Domestic Product is the total value for a given year of all the goods and services produced in a country.)

After the War there followed a wave of economic activity and prosperity in the U.S. which was, again, unprecedented in history. There was little competition. Europe was in ruins, the economic power that had begun to rise in the Orient had been decimated, and the emergence of the Third World in Africa and South America was still in the future. Fifteen million men returned from the war: half went to college under the G.I. Bill, the other half swelled the workforce (the women left their wartime jobs and returned home, but with a new self-assurance they would never relinquish). With the Marshall Plan the U.S. undertook to help rebuild war-torn Europe. This provided the U.S. economy with enormous stimulation. And the Cold War with the U.S.S.R. emerged to keep the U.S. competitiveness on a razor edge with threats of Communist world domination and nuclear annihilation hanging overhead for the next 40 years.

During the late 1940s the national debt was paid down (and never again rose to the level of the GDP until now, 2011).

The decades following the Second World War were also the heyday of labor unions. Through their negotiating power, such pillars of U.S. economic democracy were established as the eight-hour workday, the five-day work week, the minimum wage, child labor laws, safety in work environments, and health and retirement benefits for U.S. workers.

The union movement also organized the public sector as well as the private. Teachers, police and fire fighters, garbage collectors and clerks, and bureaucrats at every level of government were organized into unions and lobbied for better pay and benefits.

One of the most important effects of union power was that the economic prosperity of the period following World War II was widely distributed in the population. The G.I. Bill plus economic prosperity plus union power led to the rise of the great American middle class. The polarization of wealth between the very rich and the non-rich population masses that had characterized Western civilization for centuries and come to the fore in the U.S. with the robber barons and wealthy industrialists of the late 19th and early 20th century was not reestablished in post-Depression, post-World War II United States. Wages, wealth, education, health, and all aspects of the country's "standard of living" not only improved but expanded widely in the population.

Until, that is, the past 20 years. With the rise of global markets and financial flows enhanced by information technology, class disparity between the super-rich and the rest of us has risen again. In 1983, for example, the richest one percent of Americans got 11.6 percent of total income; today the top one percent take in more than 20 percent. In 2010, six leading hedge-fund managers got average incomes of $1 billion each while the average teacher salary in the U.S. was under $50,000. In other words, the income of one hedge-fund manager equaled the salary of more than 20,000 teachers.

During the ascendancy of union power, many government entities within the U.S. struck a Faustian bargain. Union demands for their members were met with modest pay raises to be paid now, but with appeasing health and retirement benefits--that the governments could not really afford--to be paid later. These were built into union contracts to be paid, somehow, by future generations of voters and their governments.

Those chickens have now come home to roost. With falling tax income due to the Great Recession and with U.S. Government stimulus money running out, many state governments are being called on to pay huge health and retirement benefits for their workers. Many states, as a result of this and tax breaks for the rich, face severe budget shortfalls. They must raise taxes--but, politically, they cannot; they must lay off teachers and nurses and emergency workers as well as clerks--but, in good conscience, they must not, certainly not enough to cover the shortfalls. Many states are faced with defaulting on their debts--many are, in fact, faced with bankruptcy or the equivalent (although it has not entirely been established whether a state can, in fact, declare bankruptcy). Many are presently attempting to disrupt the lingering power of labor unions in the name of addressing the states' fiscal woes.

Unions have been a powerful positive force in American history. They must not be gutted now to help solve government fiscal problems. They are, in fact, badly needed now because a class of super-rich and powerful financiers, big-business types, and politicians (also including, one notes, overpaid entertainers and athletes) has risen up again in recent years.

The income disparity in the U.S. represents a significant threat to our democratic institutions and our way of life. Unions can help address this, and we need all the help we can get.
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The Challenge of Guantanamo

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by Richard Crews
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Some prisoners of war--the argument goes--are too dangerous to be released, but cannot be tried for their crimes in a court of law because the evidence against them is too shaky, perhaps because it was gathered on a battlefield rather than at a "crime scene" (where careful, knowledgeable arresting officers would gather, identify, and protect the evidence from loss and misrepresentation), or it was acquired under torture (which makes it unreliable since anyone subject to enough pain and fear will admit to anything).

These prisoners pose a difficult dilemma, legally and morally. On the one hand, they cannot be released; on the other, they cannot be tried. Countries around the world have refused to take these dangerous prisoners off our hands. U.S. courts, both civilian and military, have found it impossible to process them.

To house them, the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was created. Importantly, it is not on U.S. soil and it does not hold U.S. citizens; it is therefore beyond the reach of U.S. justice. There, these prisoners are held indefinitely in a kind of legal limbo--without being sentenced, without rights, without hope--and, by the way, at enormous expense to their captors, both financially, and especially politically.

Civil libertarians around the world have been enraged at the abuse of human rights at Guantanamo. President Obama campaigned on the promise that he would close the prison at Guantanamo. But politicians' promises--like those made by a lover in the heat of passion--are notoriously unreliable. It is now well past the closure deadline Obama set for himself, and still there are some 200 prisoners at Guantanamo--and there is little prospect that any will be leaving soon.

True, some things have changed. A few years ago, Guantanamo was a snake pit of abuse. Prisoners were kept shackled in small, isolated cages. They received poor food and health care, little exercise, no social contacts (with outsiders, other prisoners, the press, human rights workers, or even their lawyers), and they were subject to constant physical and psychological harassment. Most of this barbaric savagery has been ameliorated.

But the problem will not go away. Not, for most of these men, until death--the last and highest court of appeals--releases them from their suffering. And even then others will follow them. In a world of terrorism and ethnic rivalries, of political domination and suppression, of haves and have-nots, there will always be some from whom society must insulate itself, but who do not fall within the convenient definitions of "criminals."

The resolution--the future of Guantanamo--is to create a model for the world to see: to demonstrate how a democratic, humanitarian society deals with impossible people. These prisoners may have to remain prisoners--indefinitely. But the conditions of their incarceration should be as humane as possible: healthful (physically and emotionally), respectful (of both their legal and human rights), and transparent--for their friends and families, human rights workers, lawyers, and the press to shine the disinfecting power of sunlight on their poor estates.

That is the challenge of Guantanamo--for the U.S. to accept the necessity of doing this impossible job, and to do it well.
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The Trouble with the Arab Revolts

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by Richard Crews
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These are heady times across the Arab world. Throughout North Africa and southwest Asia protesters have risen up against their entrenched dictators; they have unseated several and rocked the foundations of many. In the Western halls of liberal democracy one can almost hear a smug refrain, "See? We knew it would happen to you."

In the bed-time-story view of history, oppressed peoples rise up and throw off their yokes--yes, there is tribulation and bloodshed--but no, there is no turning back. Out of the chaos, order rises--pluralistic, peace loving, and devoted to civil liberties.

But the real world is not often like the bed-time-story view. The trouble with the Arab revolts is that there are no seeds of liberalism hiding, gestating, waiting to rise from the ashes. For decades, opposition voices have been beaten down--the would-be leaders have been arrested, murdered, or driven abroad; their nascent organizational efforts have been nipped in the bud.

The functioning of a mature democracy is invariably a messy business. (Knowing that it is invariably messy is the only bleak comfort one can take from the political paralysis that greed and small-minded ambition have brought to the present-day U.S. national dialog.) Running a democracy is hard--building a new democracy is even harder. It depends on having access to the seed ideas but also on stumbling historically across great leaders who have brilliant charisma (which they must have to emerge as leaders) but also grand, ethical perspectives. It depends, as well, on the surging--but unpredictable--tides of history. In other words, in addition to the seed ideas and the time for cooking up the necessary institutions, it depends--let's face it--on luck.

We rejoice with the Arabs in throwing off their yokes. But we also shudder fearfully with them in contemplating the chaos, the mistakes, and the false starts that lie ahead--that must inevitably be a part of the birth of their new nations: the resurgence of bitter tribal rivalries, the assertion of vicious religious and ethnic prejudices, the tenacious greed of the "haves" and the plaintive pain of the "have nots."

That is the trouble with the Arab revolts. At present they are joyous celebrations; the skies are lit with fireworks. But all too soon the liberated peoples must begin to find their way home in the dark, through the wolves and goblins that inhabit the night.
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Arab Uprisings

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by Richard Crews
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There are now civil protests in 17 Arab countries across North Africa and Southwest Asia. These represent some 300 million people, nearly 2/3 of the total Arab population of the world.

In 8 of these countries (totaling 150 million people)--
--either the regime has been toppled (Tunisia and Egypt),
--or there are menacing protests (Algeria, Libya, Jordan, Bahrain, Yemen, and Iran).

In the other 9 countries (representing the other 150 million people) there are what The Economist calls "mild protests" (Morocco, Mauritania, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Djibouti).

These countries have much in common--
--all of them identify with Arabic culture and use Arabic as a predominant language;
--they have all suffered limited freedoms under dictatorships for many years;
--they have young populations, most with a median age under 25--the median age in 6 of the countries is under 21 (for comparison, the median age in the U.S. is 37);
--most are poor, with GDPs/person under $10,000; the exceptions are Lebanon ($13,000), Libya ($19,000), Bahrain ($24,000), and Kuwait ($41,000)--for comparison, the GDP/person in the U.S. is $47,000.

However, there are significant differences among them--
--literacy rates, according to a U.N. survey, vary from around 90% in Jordan and Bahrain to under 60% in Morocco, Sudan, and Yemen (the literacy rate in the U.S. is 99%)
--unemployment ranges from over 20% in Morocco and Algeria to under 3% in Kuwait (the unemployment rate in the U.S. is 9%)

Most significantly, although they all seek civil freedoms, participation in government, and economic improvement, they are on widely different paths. In several countries there has been brutal, murderous suppression of the uprisings with police firing tear gas and live ammunition into crowds of peaceful demonstrators. In Egypt the army has taken control of the country and may--as it has promised--facilitate democratic reforms, or may--as appears increasingly likely--impose a new military dictatorship.

The Arab world is in turmoil. Changes are in the offing. But the form those changes will take is very uncertain.
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The U.S. Budget Crisis

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by Richard Crews
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The U.S. Government owes $14 trillion, roughly equal to our Gross Domestic Product or GDP (the total value of all goods and services produced in the country in one year). This is excessive; most advanced, post-industrial countries have national debts that are much smaller fractions of their GDPs.

Roughly half of this debt is held within the government, owed to the Federal Reserve, the Social Security Trust Fund, and other funds and departments within the vast federal system. About another fourth is also held within the U.S.--by states, mutual funds and insurance companies, and other large private investors. But a significant portion (28%) is held abroad by the governments of many countries including some like China and Iran that do not necessarily have social and political goals similar to those of the U.S.

Foreign countries hold U.S. government debt because it is the most stable and reliable economic resource available in the world. But owing foreign governments a lot of money is worrisome for the U.S. Remember the aphorism: When your banker calls, you listen.

During the last four years of the Clinton administration (1997-2001), the U.S. government balanced its budget; it did not add to the national debt. Moreover, fiscal plans were made projecting revenue surpluses into the foreseeable future. The national debt was scheduled to decline.

These plans were thrown out during the eight years that Bush was in office (2001-2009). Rather than being reduced as planned, the national debt soared--it nearly doubled (from $5.7 trillion to $10.7 trillion).

During the first two years of the Obama administration (2009 and 2010), because it was necessary to rescue the U.S. (and world) economy from a severe recession--the result of years of private greed and inadequate public oversight--it was impossible to have balanced budgets and surpluses that would reduce the national debt.

The economic recovery is now well underway. The time is nigh upon us to balance the federal budget--to reduce government expenses and increase federal revenues.

Can this be accomplished, not with the ideological meat cleavers of traditional Republicans or even Tea Partiers--which cannot, in any event, be politically sustained--but in a responsible and fair way? Perhaps it can, but with difficulty. Economically it is readily feasible. Even the great entitlement programs and military expenditures can be comfortably and safely curtailed. The U.S. spends nearly $700 billion a year on the military--more than the next twenty most heavily funded military governments in the world combined. Obama has proposed cutting $78 billion from the Pentagon's core spending over the next five years. This is a worthy start, but only a start, and even this is subject to political wranglings since every member of Congress has military facilities--bases, storage and waste depots, training and test facilities--as well as companies with production contracts, and other lucrative pieces of the military fiscal pie within his or her state or district.

What about Social Security? Raising the retirement age from 65 to 70 over the next 20 years would go a long way toward solving the Social Security funding problem. Such an increase is very reasonable; the average life expectancy of U.S. workers has increased by about 15 years to about 80 since the 65-year-old age level was established. In addition to this, raising the maximum income contribution level from the current $107,000 per year to $180,000 per year would cost an individual who makes this six-figure income about $6,000 per year, but would render the Social Security system solvent for many decades.

But neither of these eminently fair and reasonable fixes is politically easy. Probably neither can be accomplished within the current big-money-driven Congressional paralysis.

The additional enormous federal costs of Medicaid and Medicare, each more than 1/3 of a trillion dollars a year, could be "fixed" by sensible changes such as limiting tort settlements in medical malpractice cases to $1 million (which would enormously reduce medical malpractice insurance costs), allowing the use of generic drugs throughout the Medicaid and Medicare systems (they are already used in Veterans Administration facilities), and requiring doctors to work on salaried contracts rather than a fee-for-service basis (which would still provide them with incomes several times the national average).

But, again, these changes run counter to entrenched, enormously powerful lobbying--in this case by MDs, pharmaceutical companies, and trial lawyers.

Other moves such as selling off federal lands (the U.S. government owns 30% of the land area of the country, including, for example, 84% of the state of Nevada); streamlining the tax code and plugging loopholes; installing a value added tax (almost every other advanced post-industrial country has a VAT); reducing agricultural and industrial subsidies (which currently cost about $30 billion a year, and support the price of a variety of commodities including cancer-causing tobacco and pollution-causing fossil fuels); all of such moves are politically difficult.

The U.S. budget crisis is severe and urgent. Equitable economic fixes are available, but the political will is probably not.
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Microfinance and Pay-for-Success Bonds

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by Richard Crews
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Microfinance, first developed by Mohammad Yunus in Bangladesh in the 1970s, has enabled millions of people around the world to raise themselves out of poverty. An investor-donor with only a few dollars to contribute can use the Web to participate in one of these programs (http://www.kiva.org/).

"Pay for Success Bonds" is another investment-donorship opportunity on the horizon. You can lend money to a good social program; if it meets its goals, you make 13% annual return; if it doesn't, you lose your investment.

Investment programs like this have gotten under way in the U.K. as "Social Impact Bonds." The Obama administration has set aside $100 million to test pilot programs in this country. Both New York City and Baltimore are interested, and the National Guard Youth Challenge overseen by the Defense Department which provides skills training under military discipline to disadvantaged youth may also try this funding approach.

("Pay for Success Bonds" are discussed in The Economist, Feb. 19, 2011, page 36)
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Nuclear Energy in China

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by Richard Crews
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The U.S. is partnering with China to develop the new "traveling wave" technology for non-polluting nuclear power plants. (The system uses up old reactor fuel rods and even eats its own waste; plus it can be designed to require almost no maintenance for 60 years--at the end of which time there is nothing toxic to contend with.)

The deal is that it would take up to 10 years in the U.S. to navigate all the licensing requirements and regulatory controls, whereas in China--with far less stringent environmental safeguards--it can be done in 18 months.
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STEBYJASAIL

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by Richard Crews
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The civil uprisings across the Arab world during the past few weeks now affect over 200 million people--approximately 2/3 of the Arab population of the world.

The countries affected differ widely from one another--some are rich, some poor; some sophisticated, some backwards; all with big cities, but some with large rural areas.

What they have in common is that the people have been oppressed for decades by vicious dictators. And thanks to modern information technology (satellite TV, the Internet, smart phones, and social media such as Twitter and Facebook), the citizenry have risen up to demand free speech, free assembly, less government corruption, and less of a have-vs.-have-not society.

The title STEBYJASAIL is an acronym for the names of these countries in order (roughly) of their present revolutionary progress--
Sudan,
Tunisia,
Egypt,
Bahrain,
Yemen,
Jordan,
Algeria,
Saudi Arabia,
Iran,
Libya.
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Social Prematurity: A Disease That Has Been Conquered

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by Richard Crews
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When I had my obligatory brush with obstetrics-gynecology during my medical school and internship years in the early 1960s, we used to encounter a condition in which a woman appeared to be, say, six months pregnant but had only been married for three months. The mother and fetus were healthy and the pregnancy was developing well, but all was way ahead of schedule.

The diagnosis carried on the charts for this condition was "social prematurity." To any doctor, nurse, or other medical person reading the chart this meant that the baby was going to arrive well ahead of schedule, but not to worry (as one does about premature births) because only society had a problem.

This condition, social prematurity, has been totally eradicated.
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Whither Egypt?

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by Richard Crews
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Egypt has turned over a new page in history. After 30 years of savage, suppressive dictatorship, a massive popular uprising has thrown out the hated regime. The key question is, where do things go from here?

Egypt has a lot of things going for it. Its culture has storied roots that go back thousands of years. Moreover it is a huge country--with a population over 80 million--and widely respected: it has often been a leader in the Arab world. In addition much of the public elan is peaceful and religiously oriented: it was impressive to see vast throngs of demonstrators break from their agitated activities and kneel facing Mecca for five-o'clock prayers; it was also impressive to hear that "gangs" emerged from the crowds to protect antiquities and prevent looting; millions of people rose up to resist the government without violence, injury, or death--except that rained on them by government thugs.

Also important on the positive side, the uprising in Egypt is taking place on the world stage. Modern information technology--satellite TV, the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, and smart phones--have brought poignant words and images from the streets of Cairo into homes around the world.

There is another important positive factor. The army--not the regime's hated, vicious police--is in charge. And the army has been built up by conscription; it is said that there is not a family in Egypt that does not have at least one young member in the army. During the uprising, the army refused to fire on the demonstrators; the army did much to keep the piece. On the other hand, while the lower ranks of the army are "of the people," the upper ranks are aligned with--and have been enriched by--the dictatorial regime. How the army's role in managing a possible transition to democracy will play out is a very important question.

The transition to democracy--if there is one--may be long and arduous. For 30 years all political dissent has been savagely suppressed; there simply are no political leaders and parties waiting in the shadows. Even the Muslim Brotherhood, the closest thing to a political alternative to the defunct dictatorial regime, has been brutalized.

The future of Egypt, at its best, looks like this:
--Thirty years of "emergency law" will be lifted;
--The Army will shepherd a peaceful transition to democracy;
--The constitution will be amended to limit the term of a president and to strengthen the judiciary;
--Political leaders and parties will emerge;
--Free and fair elections will be held in September under international supervision;
--And a stalwart contingent of activists will continue to hold their ground in Cairo's Tahrir Square, ready to sound the alarm and call the populace back onto the streets if the reform transition falters.

The future of Egypt depends on all of these factors. It is a precarious time. The whole world is watching--especially the Arab world (especially the Arab dictators and their downtrodden people).
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Key Quotes

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by Richard Crews
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Here are some key quotes worth thinking about:

On the dark side of vested power: "As WikiLeaks demonstrated, even the government of a morally inclined culture with a tested and tempered democracy will indulge in mischievous perversions."

On the importance of free speech and a free, unfettered press: "The only possible antidotes to government corruption and malfeasance are full disclosure and accountability: as the saying goes, 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant.' "

On the gullibility of the masses: "The politically driven deluge of misinformation regarding healthcare showed us that even a literate and supposedly sophisticated people can be swayed by vehement rhetoric."
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Worldwide Awakening

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by Richard Crews
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Twenty five hundred years ago over a span of about four generations there appeared at many places around the Earth the greatest flowering of the human spirit the World had ever known.

In Greece, this was the age of The Seven Wise Men who are considered by many to be the founders of Western civilization; these were the days of Periclean Athens: Socrates and Plato laid the foundations of Western Philosophy; Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes created the theatrical arts as we have come to know them; Herodotus and Thucydides laid down the founding principles of writing history; democracy was born; the root ideas of rational scientific inquiry were created; and more.

Prophets of the Old Testament were staking out the moral and ethical bounds of the three great Abrahamic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

In India, the Buddha Gautama arose from meditation under the Bodhi Tree to begin his forty-year ministry, and started a wave of religious enlightenment that spread across India, Tibet, China, and Japan.

In China, Confucius composed the Analects and Lao-Tse, the Tao Te Ching during this brief period; these are, to this day, the two great pillars of Chinese philosophy and religion.

There were great social, intellectual, and artistic achievements in South and Central America, and in North Africa.

Indeed, those few decades 2500 years ago produced across the globe the greatest era of human achievement and flowering of the human spirit the world had ever known--an Awakening which has been unsurpassed.

Until now--until the worldwide intellectual and social revolution of our own day.

We are in the middle of the Second Worldwide Awakening. The industrial and scientific revolutions of the past two centuries are part of it, as are the globalization of commerce and the spread of democracy and human rights which has accelerated over the past few decades.

Do not be distracted by reports of savage dictators and genocides--those are the historical norm; it is only in recent decades that they have come to be seen as aberrant offenses to the human spirit and internationally illegal. Yes, it is true that one sixth of the world's population live in abject poverty without enough food or clean water, but this has always been true, and until recent years, no one took particular notice of them. Nowadays three things are different. First, the impoverished and downtrodden have a voice and an image; the Internet, social media, and the ubiquitous press are making them seen and heard around the world. Second, rich people care; every year philanthropic billions channeled through thousands of NGOs (as well as First-World governments) try to help, and are making a difference. Third, science and technology as well as global politics have made solutions possible.

We are in the midst of the Second Worldwide Awakening. It is--and will be--even greater than the first. True, the challenges are daunting--but also true, the resources are formidable.
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