YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2014 · yaledailynews.com
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NEWS
“Racism is man’s gravest threat to man — the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.” ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL POLISH-BORN AMERICAN RABBI
Haqqani talks U.S.-Pakistan relations BY HAILEY WINSTON STAFF REPORTER American military aid to Pakistan has had detrimental effects, according to former Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. Husain Haqqani. At a Tuesday afternoon talk sponsored by Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, Haqqani spoke to approximately 30 members of the Yale community about the troubled relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan. Although the U.S. has funneled around 40 billion dollars into Pakistani military and developmental operations over the past few decades, Haqqani said America will not be able to change controversial Pakistani policies. “The American delusion is that it can change Pakistani policy while arming and financing Pakistan,” Haqqani said. American aid has had three major consequences: fueling continued military conflict between Pakistan and India, postponing essential Pakistani reform and breeding resentment against the U.S. as Pakistan becomes increasingly dependent on American funds, he said. Haqqani, who is now a political author and journalist, said he thinks Pakistan and America would both benefit from the U.S. “backing away a bit” and letting Pakistan discuss its own national interests. In part because American aid has allowed the Pakistani government to ignore the country’s lack of economic growth, Haqqani said Pakistan lags behind surrounding countries in both education and exports. Haqqani, who resigned as ambassador in 2011 after facing accusations that he sought help from the U.S. against the Pakistani military, said he has not returned to Pakistan for over a
WILLIAM FREEDBERG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Husain Haqqani, former Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S., spoke at length on the rocky relationship between the two countries and what could be done to improve it. year. The environment in Pakistan is dangerous for those who advocate for policy change, he said. “Frankly, I don’t want to run the risk of going to Pakistan and having some idiot shoot me, thinking I’m a traitor or an atheist or an American or an Israeli or whatever agent,” he said. “That is the environment that has been created.”
According to Haqqani, both Pakistan and the U.S. are to blame for the troubled relations between the two nations, and both nations have committed wrongs. Pakistan, for example, harbored Osama Bin Laden, while the U.S. violated Pakistan’s sovereignty when searching for him there, he said. “In a nutshell, the U.S.-Pak-
Malloy favors higher min. wage BY ABIGAIL BESSLER STAFF REPORTER Although Connecticut is already in the midst of raising its minimum wage to $9 per hour by 2015, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy threw his weight behind a second increase, to $10.10 per hour, in a statement on Wednesday. Malloy’s announcement comes just one week after President Barack Obama voiced his support for a $10.10 federal minimum wage in his State of the Union address, a rallying point for progressive politicians across the nation. The governor’s proposal, which will be announced to the legislature on Thursday, is not the first wage increase Connecticut has seen in recent years. In the summer of 2013, the Governor signed a bill that was projected to increase minimum wages by 75 cents over the course of two years, saying that workers’ wages had not kept up with the cost of living in the state. Malloy’s new proposal would change the schedule and increase the minimum wage, currently set at $8.70 an hour, over the course of three years. The change would affect 70,000 to 90,000 workers in the state who currently earn the minimum wage, the Governor said in his statement. “The minimum wage right now is so artificially low that people who are working full time still have to apply for government assistance programs in order to make ends meet,” said State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney. “Anybody who’s working full time ought to be able to support a family.” Immediately after Malloy announced the plan, members of the state’s Congressional delegation, including New Haven Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 praised the governor’s action, calling him a “key ally” in a statement. Murphy and Blumenthal are both original co-sponsors of a Senate bill that seeks to raise the federal minimum wage, currently set at $7.25 an hour, to $10.10 an hour. Politicians across the country have turned to minimum wage increases as a tool to combat income inequality; 13 states set new wage floors on Jan. 1, 2014.
Connecticut’s income gap is the second highest in the nation, according to data tabulated from surveys by the U.S. Census Bureau. Fred Carstensen, an economics professor at University of Connecticut, said the purchasing power of workers has gone down due to a stagnant minimum wage. “Historically, the minimum wage was for jobs at places like fast food restaurants held by teenagers or college students,” Carstensen said. “Now, though, because the job market has been so weak for so many years, there are a lot of people trying to support whole families with jobs at or near the minimum wage.” According to a study published last December by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, the average age of workers nationally who would be affected by a change in the federal minimum wage is 35 years old. More than a quarter of workers who would see their wages increase have children.
The governor is concerned about the fate of working people in this state. LARRY DORMAN Council 4 AFSCME union, spokesman Larry Dorman, a spokesman for the Council 4 AFSCME union, which represents 32,000 workers in Connecticut, said he applauded the governor for taking the lead on the issue of income inequality in the state. He added that, ideally, the wage should be even higher. “The governor is concerned about the fate of working people in this state,” Dorman said. “Corporate profits are skyrocketing, and hedge fund managers and executives are doing well, but working people have fallen behind.” Though Carstensen said he doubts the proposed wage increase would have much of an impact on Connecticut’s economy, he said Malloy’s proposal was a good idea since it would likely reduce the number of families who must now rely on Medicaid and food stamps to supplement their wages. That reduction, he said, would then lower costs to
taxpayers. Looney also said increasing the minimum wage would be economically beneficial: since lowincome families operate on small margins, they would spend the additional money on necessities. This would put the money back into the economy, he said. House Republicans, though, are suspicious that Malloy’s proposal is a political move meant to aid his bid for reelection this fall. In June 2013, 46 percent of voters polled by Quinnipiac [University?] said Governor Malloy did not deserve to be reelected. “This announcement is not about a thoughtful public policy,” said Patt O’Neal, spokesman for the House Republicans. “This is purely election year pandering.” O’Neal, who called increasing the minimum wage a “democratic wedge issue,” said the House Republicans put out a proposal 10 days ago including “targeted tax relief” to consumers and businesses. He said Malloy’s announcement will not affect Republicans’ chances at winning the gubernatorial election in 2014. Republican State Senator Rob Kane, the ranking Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said the state Republicans’ plan going forward was to “educate people” on the cost of increasing the minimum wage. “People don’t understand the full ramifications of these proposals,” Kane said, adding that increasing the minimum wage will cause costs to rise for small businesses. “It’s going to hurt the very people it’s trying to help because less people will get hired.” Kane, like O’Neal, said Republicans remain optimistic about the fall elections. Gary Rose, a political commentator from Sacred Heart University, said he thinks Republican opposition to the proposal will hurt their chances in November. “Quite frankly, though,” he added, “A lot of people who make minimum wage don’t vote.” When the Connecticut Legislature first proposed in 2013 to raise the minimum wage to $9 per hour, 75 percent of state residents expressed support in a March 2013 Quinnipiac poll. Contact ABIGAIL BESSLER at abigail.bessler@yale.edu .
istan relationship needs to be based on reality and pragmatism instead of delusions and unrealistic expectations from one another that we both have had,” he said. Members of the Yale community who attended the talk said Haqqani made them view U.S.Pakistan relations in a new light. Huma Baig ’16, whose parents are Pakistani, said she is accustomed to hearing Pakistanis voice
a more anti-American view in regards to relations between the U.S. and Pakistan than those Haqqani expressed. “It was very different from what I’m used to hearing,” Baig said. “His approach is much more western, whereas what I’m used to is much more anti-American.” Jaya Chatterjee, assistant editor for politics and international relations at Yale University Press,
said she found Haqqani’s statistics on education and Pakistan most interesting and that she would be interested in exploring what the U.S. could do to help the country develop socially as opposed to militarily. Haqqani became ambassador in 2008. Contact HAILEY WINSTON at hailey.winston@yale.edu .
NHPD investigate slur BY DAVID BLUMENTHAL AND TASNIM ELBOUTE STAFF REPORTERS The City of New Haven and the New Haven Police Department have been taking punitive measures after a racial slur was said on police radio, in an attempt to find the unknown caller and reform any lingering racial tensions at the police department. The city has taken steps designed to identify and punish the offender, who said the word “nigger,” on a law enforcement apparatus’ airwaves at 12:30 a.m. on Dec. 30. NHPD spokesman David Hartman said in a Tuesday interview that, while he and the force had not completely ruled out the possibility that an NHPD officer had uttered the pejorative, the police department believes that either a police officer from a neighboring municipality or an NHPD police officer’s acquaintance had done so instead. The city’s police radio system — which anyone with a two-way “transceiver” radio available at many commercial outlets and the NHPD frequency available online can access — had never experienced this before. According to Hartman, when an officer comes on the tape generally a radio number or name comes up. However, in this case, such identification was absent. “Nothing came up on this one, which makes us very suspicious that this may not have been a New Haven police officer,” Hartman said. Still, the New Haven Police Department has since launched an internal investigation, even enlisting help from the FBI for voice recognition. In addition, officers must now identify themselves and state their car number and beat number when speaking into the radio. Internal Affairs Director Anthony Campbell ’95 DIV ’09 said Police Chief Dean Esserman now requires officers to attend sensitivity and diversity training. The number of training hours has been extended from two to three hours per annum in the wake of this incident. Camp-
bell added that the city could benefit in the long run from the increased introspection that has followed the “hateful and deliberate” remark. “It’s opened up some good discussion and the feedback was extremely positive,” he said. “Now there’s communication on a level that wasn’t before the incident happened.” New Haven residents’ reactions to the NHPD’s response were varied. Some had a similarly generous take on the event and its aftermath, as well as the Police Department in general. The NAACP community is “somewhat pleased with the aggressiveness of Chief Esserman” in trying to identify the unknown caller, said Jim Rawlings, the President of the Greater New Haven Branch of the NAACP. Rawlings met with Chief Esserman on Tuesday morning, and pledged to address the issue collaboratively. At this meeting, Rawlings and Esserman agreed to bring in professionals to support the sensitivity and diversity training.“If someone is saying these words, it’s a symptom of an element of racism in the police department … that may manifest itself in how police interact with our community,” Rawlings said. Rawlings added “We need to excise this cancer.” However, Ward 12 Alder Richard Spears said that the episode and its aftermath were the result of a police department that was “corrupt” and “prejudiced in its actions,”
and that he had serious doubts regarding both the thoroughness of the department’s investigation and the aggressiveness of its response. According to the New Haven Independent, Harp responded immediately, meeting with several fraternal groups of African-American police officers to hear their concerns. City Hall Spokesman Laurence Grotheer said the mayor was pleased with Chief Esserman’s “prompt and very thorough” response, and hopes the controversy will be resolved. Among Harp’s constituents, indifference seemed to carry the day. Of 10 New Haven residents interviewed on or near the New Haven Green Tuesday, none said they had heard of the incident. Tom Chambers, a New Haven resident who said he is of white, Dominican and African-American heritage, called using racial slurs “a part of human nature,” comparing it to the slurs leveled at the Irish and Italians in the early 20th century. “Racism is all over—you’re not going to stop it,” he said. “Let’s not blow this out of proportion.” According to the 2010 Census, 35.6 percent of New Haven residents are black, and minorities make up 57.4 percent of the population as a whole. Isabelle Taft contributed reporting. Contact DAVID BLUMENTHAL at david.blumenthal@yale.edu and TASNIM ELBOUTE at tasnim.elboute@yale.edu .
PHILIPP ARNDT/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The NHPD has recently launched an internal investigation into an unexplained racial slur uttered over the police radio system.