THE WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT - Mike Lillis writes about President Bush’s proposal to buy food from foreign countries s a form of humanitarian aid. The White House has proposed similar food aid reforms for four years, only to be shot down by votes in Congress. The reason for this impasse, Lillis explains, is that legislators from farming states have a vested interest in protecting their agricultural constituents, whose livelihood depends on the crops they send overseas for food aid. Summarizing the views of each side of the debate, Lillis adeptly describes the complexities of this contested issue.... 
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TRUTHDIG - Chalmers Johnson reviews Bad Samaritans, a book by Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang, who specializes in Third World poverty. Chang’s book is a scathing indictment of first-world humanitarian policies, whose aims are to curb competition from emerging markets rather than alleviate suffering. Johnson summarizes the theories and thinkers that have informed Chang’s perspective, from neoliberalism to Thomas Freidman, Alexander Hamilton, and the Marshall Plan. Johnson praises Chang’s grasp on economic theory and history, and concludes that Chang written a conclusive analysis of modern-day...
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MARGINAL REVOLUTION - Kevin Grier at Marginal Revolution observes that free trade agreements are judged before all their provisions are fully implemented. NAFTA dictates that Mexican trucks should have been allowed into the US in 2000, but this rule has never come to fruition. While President Bush tried to enforce it in 2007, Congress attached several stipulations, including a demand that all Mexican truck drivers on US roads speak English. Grier concludes that the implementation of NAFTA provisions are way behind schedule – they won’t all be realized until 2009 – and thus any judgment of the program is...
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