4A - Monday, February 13, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 4A - Monday, February 13, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com ASHLEY GRIESSHAMMER JOSEPH LICHTERMAN and ANDREW WEINER JOSH HEALY EDITOR IN CHIEF EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS MANAGING EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. Imran Syed is the public editor. He can be reached at publiceditor@michigandaily.com. Planned atta cks Divestment threatens women's health care Last week, amid public outcry, the breast cancer foundation, Susan G. Komen for the Cure reversed its decision to cut fund- ing for Planned Parenthood. The foundation's initial decision to pull funding elicited much opposition and reignited the political debate over abortion. While it's good that Komen ultimately reversed its decision, this was only one in a series of attacks on Planned Parent- hood. Conservative groups need to stop making Planned Parenthood the face of abortion and attacking its programs, many of which pro- vide essential health-related services to women. Do not reply WhenI think back to my first e-mail address, it's with a sense of nostal- gia that's usu- ally reserved for childhood pets - which my par- ents didn't love me enough to invest in. It was an AOL account, from ANDREW the pioneer- WEINER ing days of the Internet. This was when e-mail addresses were paid for monthly and the words "speed" and "Inter- net" didn't belong in the same sentence. What e-mails would an elementary schooler have received? Still, the blue spectrum of AOL is as burnt into my memory as the excite- ment I felt when I saw I had a new message. Unfortunately now when I look at my inbox, which consists of three accounts routed to my phone, I do so begrudgingly. I delete, ignore and respond - and almost always in that order. Sifting through usually takes longer than reading and responding to the important items. It has to be asked: Is e-mail still working? And it's not just whiny students like me asking this ques- tion. In 2010, Symantec - the compa- ny behind Norton Antivirus - esti- mated that 92 percent of e-mail is spam. While this number is shock- ing, most of this is caught in increas- ingly advanced spam filters and doesn't significantly curb efficiency. Atos - an information technolo- gy firm with nearly 80,000 employ- ees - audited its staff's e-mail accounts in December. They found only 10 percent contained impor- tant information. In response, the company's CEO announced Atos would phase out e-mail over the coming 18 months. Instead, it'll replace e-mail with phone conversations, face-to-face interactions and a business network tool - a sort of company Facebook, something many firms already have. It's a telling sign when one of the world's largest IT companies finds it prudent to leave e-mail in the dumpster of forgotten communica- tion tools with fax machines and telegrams. Other companies, however, are rethinking e-mail systems for rea- sons beyond efficiency. On Dec. 23, Volkswagen decided it would begin to turn on and shut off company BlackBerry e-mail services half an hour before and after work hours, respectively. This wasn't just a case of a corporation gaining a sense of compassion. The move was a result of serious negotiation with labor unions. Instant communication like e-mail has induced the mood that instant responses are expected at all hours of the day. That's not a prob- lem when returning a text from a friend, but it carries costly implica- tions for businesses. Imagine if someone dislikes his or her job. They don't get the satis- faction many get from their work or maybe the management's inepti- tude isn't as endearing as Steve Carell's on "The Office." For those who look forward to non-business hours and weekends, smartphones and e-mail provide a constant and probably unwanted tie to the office. Job satisfaction is at a discourag- ing low in America. According to a 2010 Conference Board study, only 45 percent of Americans are satis- fied with their jobs. Though data on happiness is always inexact and contested, the downward trend is alarming. When the study was con- ducted in 1987, job satisfaction was at 61.1 percent. With less distinction between work and downtime, it will continue to decrease. Most companies are not Volk- swagen. They continue to bar- rage employees with after-hours e-mails. Not surprisingly, this has already spelled trouble for many. The "e-mail as overtime" debate is popping up in courtrooms across America. In 2009, real estate giant CB Richard Ellis and mobile com- munications company T-Mobile both faced lawsuits from employees about after-hours communications. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act regulates overtime pay. The act itself is lawyer-y and complex. Two things, however, are easy to under- stand. First, employers have legal obli- gation to know when their employ- ees are working and pay them for the time. Second, FLSA is in some ways outdated - especially its over- time policy. Some companies have attempted to work around the system. In 2008, ABC News attracted legal trouble when employees refused to sign a waiver stating they wouldn't be paid for using company-issued BlackBer- rys after hours. Employees can't waive FLSA rights. If they could, all employers could bully workers into doing so - defeating the purpose of employee protection. I delete, ignore and respond - in that order. The precedent to decide if e-mails are even overtime is a debate in itself. In the 1940s, courts ruled that awarding overtime to employ- ees performing work at home would be decided on a basis of de mini- mis. Judges have to decide the very minimum amount of work needed to qualify as compensational. Inter- pretation of de minimis has varied from judge to judge. Can the action be quantified and aggregated? Is ita matter of effort or time? Even as it appears e-mail is going by the wayside, the problem needs to be addressed before more lawsuits complicate the matter. The Depart- ment of Labor needs to have more explicit and modern definitions of overtime law. Workers should know their rights and realize in most cases they aren't obligated to keep working when they get home. Employers need to understand the risk of costly public lawsuits, work with employees instead of against them and explore alternative means of communication - even if they entail old-fashioned methods like actually speaking. In person. - Andrew Weiner can be reached at anweiner@umich.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @andrewweiner. Komen announced its plans to cut fund- ing for Planned Parenthood on Jan. 31, cit- ing a policy that forbids donations to groups under investigation. The decision elicited public opposition and was criticized for being politically motivated. In the aftermath of the announcement, Planned Parenthood received an outpouring of support via social media outlets and it raised more than $3 million. Caving to public pressure, Komen reversed its decision on Feb. 3 and apologized to Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is unfairly targeted by anti-abortion groups. Only 3 percent of its health services are abortion-related. Beyond that, Planned Parenthood provides cancer screenings, testing for sexually transmit- ted diseases and family planning guidance. These are all services that empower women and advance women's health. Anti-abortion groups regularly manipulate the facts to make Planned Parenthood the scapegoat of the abortion battle. Komen prides itself on being a voice for women's health. It's disappointing that an organization that shares goals with Planned Parenthood would resort to cutting funds for political reasons. There's too much baseless political rhetoric surrounding Planned Parent- hood. Organizations need to check the facts before making such drastic decisions. Family planning, sexual protection and STD screening are instrumental in health education and awareness. Planned Parent- hood provides a secure and comfortable envi- ronment for women to use these services, and it's especially useful for low-income women, who couldn't otherwise afford care. Health care for young women should con- tinue to be easily accessible, and Planned Parenthood ensures that it is. Abortion oppo- nents need to stop attacking Planned Par- enthood for procedures it rarely performs. Planned Parenthood isn't an abortion orga- nization - it's an organization that seeks to empower and educate women about their health. Conservative anti-abortion groups need to understand that the variety of servic- es offered by Planned Parenthood are instru- mental in women's health care. JARED SZUBA I The war for oil theory EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Aida Ali, Laura Argintar, Kaan Avdan, Ashley Griesshammer, Nirbhay Jain, Jesse Klein, Patrick Maillet, Erika Mayer, Harsha Nahata, Harsha Panduranga, Timothy Rabb, Adrienne Roberts, Vanessa Rychlinski, Sarah Skaluba, Seth Soderborg, Caroline Syms, Andrew Weiner CliCk to change the world A recent discussion in one of my Middle Eastern studies classes on the topic of natu- ral resources and U.S. foreign policy quickly spiraled into a melee of rhetoric - one which showed me how deeply misinformed many Americans remain about the nature of the U.S- led coalition intervention in Iraq. Most of my classmates were adamant that the U.S. unjustly invaded a sovereign Iraq in reckless pursuit of the world's most sought-after natural resource. The biggest flaw of the popular war for oil theory is that it stands upon a speculative foundation: the U.S. is a leading consumer of the world's oil, Iraq is a major producer of oil and Bush and Cheney were former oil entre- preneurs. If one digs deep into research, one may also discover a certain Halliburton sub- sidiary named Kellogg, Brown and Root that had contracts with the U.S. military early in the war. These contracts were for military logistics - shipping of supplies, construction of base camps, mail delivery, trash collection and doing laundry. KBR was granted no con- tracts for Iraqi oil, and in fact was fired by the U.S. Department of Defense for overcharging for its services in 2006. So what is this foggy concept? Did the U.S. invade to plunder black gold with brute mili- tary force? No U.S. or North Atlantic Treaty Organization theft of Iraqi oil has ever been reported by an official American private or governmental source, or for that matter by any Iraqi source. Did the U.S. invade in order to open Iraq's oil market? The U.S. already regularly pur- chased oil from Iraq prior to the invasion, though the amount was heavily dampened by trade sanctions. If the U.S. needed more oil, removing trade sanctions while requesting that the United Nations lower financial sanc- tions on Iraq would have done the job, as the country was producing well below capacity due to tight finances. Through the first year of the invasion in 2003, the U.S. imported notably less oil from Iraq than it had in the previous three years - less than 500,000 barrels per day. At the time Iraq was only our sixth-largest foreign supplier. In 2008 Iraq was our seventh largest supplier. Or maybe the U.S. invaded in order to lib- erate the Iraqis, thus winning special favor in future oil deals. In December 2009, the Iraqi Ministry of Oil headed one of the largest oil auctions in the history of the industry. Some of the most lucrative contracts were awarded to companies from China, Russia and France - the three nations that most vehemently opposed the 2003 coalition invasion. The most fundamental law of economics smashes the oil war hypothesis. Nine days before the kickoff of the invasion, the average U.S. retail price of gas was $1.72 a gallon. As we all know, the price has only continued to climb since then. Supply and demand proves the U.S. has clearly not benefited from any sort of secretive oil deals or increased import since the invasion. What the U.S. seems to have forgotten is the official justification for the intervention: Saddam Hussein's purported "weapons of mass destruction." When it was discovered that no such operational weapons existed, all derision turned to the Bush administration. Had Bush intentionally misled the world in a belligerent quest for oil paid for in blood rather than in dollars? Two irrefutable facts contradict this. First, no hard evidence has been uncovered that suggests the Bush administration inten- tionally misled anyone. Considering the sheer number of diplomats in Washington and among our NATO allies, this is astonish- ing. Second, ina series of interviews with FBI agent and Lebanese American George Piro, Hussein admitted he did not have WMDs in 2003, but had planned to resume his weapons program within a year. Out of perpetual fear of renewed aggression from Iran, he admit- ted to leading U.N. weapons inspectors on repeated wild goose chases to convince the international community he had WMDs, hopefully scaring off Iranian belligerence. The Bush administration did not have to deceive the rest of the world - Hussein did it himself. The effect of Middle Eastern political sta- bility on the global oil market was relevant to U.S. interest. The Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait caused slight spikes in global oil prices, and the effect on gas prices of a hypothetical major multinational war of attrition in the region could potentially bring many of the world's modernized economies to a halt. The ulti- mate motivation for invasion was in fact a genuine - if not myopic - fear of Hussein's weapons capabilities based on faulty intelli- gence and fueled in part by a post-9/11 state of semi-paranoia. At such an outstanding academic insti- tution like the University, we should really strive after the facts, not the trendy politi- cally weighted anecdotes. Sadly, almost nine years since the invasion, the war for oil myth still stands as the most popularly accepted conspiracy theory in American history. Jared Szuba is an [SA junior. 01 hile dressed in pajamas at my breakfast table last week, I joined more than 407,000 other Americans in telling Presi- dent Barack A Obama that we disapprove of his recent appoint- ments to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. KRISTEN With a simple tap on my smart- KILUK phone, I was able to connect with a body of people who shared my position. Voicing my opinion through an Internet petition was convenient, but I have to wonder how effective this process is. A simple click of the mouse seems way too easy to have a powerful impact on federal policy and decision-making. Can it really make a difference? However menial my act of Inter- net participation may seem, it's true that the face of the World Wide Web is changing. The Internet is becom- ing a far more pivotal place - a breeding ground for massive social and political collaboration. Take the Internet-mediated evo- lution of the Occupy Wall Street movement for example. It was first organized on Twitter, and mobilized many participants to protest through events, petitions and articles posted on Facebook. The movement even has a central website, www.occu- pytogether.org, where you can find contact information for regional Occupy groups and resources to start up your own Occupy group. The petition I signed last week, though first posted at signon.org in September, has suddenly gained momentum this month. It's a call to stop the appointment of government officials who have ties to the very industries which they are respon- sible for regulating. The key request of the petition is to remove Michael Taylor, the FDA deputy commission- er for foods appointed by Obama in January 2010. A quick look at Taylor's employee profile on the FDA website shows that he has worked in various gov- ernment positions throughout the FDA and Department of Agricul- ture, in addition to some university research positions. He is well-edu- cated and experienced with issues of food safety and policy. But scroll down to the very end of the profile - yes, it is listed as the very last detail on the page - and you see that he served as the vice president for pub- lic policy at Monsanto Company. He held the position from 1998-2001. If you are not already aware, Monsanto Company is the same organization which championed the use of pesticides such as DDT and Agent Orange during and after the Second World War. Given that these two substances were later banned by the Environmental Pro- tection Agency due to their severe health effects, I can't bring myself to entrust the laws regarding the health and safety of the American population to a former employee of such a profit-motivated, socially irresponsible organization. Though it may be inevitable that sometimes the best experts in a field happen to have worked in indus- try, Michael Taylor's close associa- tions with Monsanto and past public stances on agricultural issues seem to be diametrically opposed to the purpose of the FDA. Frederick Ravid, the creator of the petition criticizing Michael Taylor, emphasizes it in the body of the petition's text. "Taylor was in charge of policy for Monsanto's now-discredited GM bovine growth hormone (rBGH), which is opposed by many medical and hospital organizations," Ravid wrote. "It was Michael Taylor who pursued a policy that milk from rBGH-treated cows should not be labeled with disclosures." Taylor's current position in the FDA makes him responsible for overseeing U.S. food labeling, cre- ating a strategy for food safety and planning new food safety legislation. Prior to his appointment, his posi- tion did not exist. *I Americans should embrace online petitions. SignOn.org, where the petition wasposted,issponsored by MoveOn. org Civic Action. "With over 5 mil- lion members across America, we have the strength - together - to stand up to Washington and its cor- porate lobbyists in order to achieve real progressive change for real people," the website states. "We are democracy in action." The philosophy of this website and the example of the Michael Tay- lor petition may be tools the Ameri- can people should learn to embrace. Though it is still questionable whether such Internet tools can be successfully used for the people to gain adequate leverage againstlarge, well-funded corporate interests, one thing is for sure- they help keep an eye on government officials through the dissemination of information and public collaboration. The more tools we can use to let them know we're watching, the more they'll need to watch them- selves.Andifthey're doinganhonest job, that thought shouldn't bother a government official one bit. - Kristen Kiluk can be reached at kkiluk@umich.edu or on Twitter @KristenKiluk.