Florida: God, what a mess.

¶ 3 Posted at 10.33 AM ⇒ No Comments ( news | politics )

It is becoming more and more apparent to me that the the "winning" of the Cold War was not an unequivocal good. Now that the governments of the West no longer have the Warsaw Pact nations against which to contrast themselves, it's easier and easier for them to sell out the principles of freedom for which they long stood. The West no longer stands in opposition to the East and thus is no longer compelled to differentiate itself. The motivation is gone. Western governments no longer have to preserve our individual rights the way they had to back when they were presenting themselves as the moral superiors of the godless communists.

The victory of capitalism is also turning out to be a hollow one. The acceleration of the branding and marketing of everything is attempting to achieve the goal of turning us all into consuming automatons (when did we stop being citizens and become consumers?) who live to work and purchase. Ironically, that's not very different in practical terms from the fate we would have been assigned under a socialist system. The ineluctable path of capitalism is towards basically the same end as that of totalitarian communism; we live to work and consume. Here's an experiment for you: count how many times people are referred to as consumers rather than as citizens. When did that happen? Why are people labelled in such a materialistic fashion? When you use metonymy, identifying the whole by a some characteristic, you imply that is the important one. Using consumer as a label for you and me and everyone else is that our defining attribute is that we purchase goods and services. At least in communism there was the "worker," which has a certain nobility to it.

¶ 18 Posted at 12.00 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | bummer )

And now for some political perspective.

¶ 34 Posted at 12.20 PM ⇒ No Comments ( linkage | politics )

I want George W. to be a one-term President. And I want Hilary Clinton to be elected President in 2008. And for no greater reason than the weirdness of it. Consider: the first impeachment in over a century, and only the second ever. Followed by the "election" of the son of a defeated President, who (hopefully) joins his father in the ranks of the one-term Presidents. Then something in 2004, which I haven't figured out yet, followed by the first woman President, the former First Lady. How weird would that be? Exciting times, I think. It would be something for the history books, that's for sure. The ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

¶ 38 Posted at 11.43 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | politics )

I have decided that President Clinton should resign on January 19th. That would give Gore a couple days as President, making George W. Bush the 44th, rather than the 43rd, President of the United States. This would accomplish several things. Most importantly, it would just be weird. Secondly, it would piss off Bush. Thirdly, Gore would get to be President, if only for a couple days. I've decided that Gore doesn't have a chance in 2004. I don't expect Clinton will have to do much Presidentially on the last two days of his term.

¶ 39 Posted at 10.56 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | politics )

The United States Postal Service will insure packages you send through them. That doesn't really make sense. We're paying them extra in order to cover them for their mistakes. That's a nice racket. I wonder if they've gone to the point of figuring out what the optimal level of package loss/destruction is in order to maximize their revenue and profit from insurance. I wouldn't be surprised.

I wonder how we'd go about deregulating the postal service. The problem becomes the "last mile," in many ways like the local phone service deregulation. Presumably there would be multiple mail delivery trucks coming to each residence/place of business. Or maybe it would be on a neighborhood basis. It's simple enough to demonopolize the backend, but the last mile makes it difficult. Something to think about, though.

¶ 44 Posted at 02.50 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Two bits about Clinton from Salon: bit one and bit two.

¶ 46 Posted at 01.46 PM ⇒ No Comments ( linkage | politics )

According to this article, law enforcement used face-matching technology to compare the faces of Super Bowl spectators with a database of known criminals/suspicious persons. They claim that this system is less intrusive than normal video surveillance. I disagree. The difference is that nobody looks at surveillance tapes unless something happens. In this case, they're investigating you before anything has happened. On the other hand, maybe it's more like the dogs that sniff luggage for drugs or bombs. Regardless, people should be made aware that they are being watched like that.

The Super Bowl half-time show was really lame. As I watched it, I had but one thought: this is so corporate. I mean, think about it. The selection of "musicians" chosen to perform totally smacked of "synergies." Not to mention two of them (Britney Spears and N' Sync) are two of the most "made" performers on the music scene today. Let me just point out that these are the most popular musical acts on MTV, which is owned by Viacom, parent company of CBS, the station that brought us the Super Bowl. Sting and Nelly are on Universal (or a subsidiary label), another of the Big Five music labels, while Aerosmith is on Columbia (Sony). I wonder who owns the NFL....

¶ 61 Posted at 12.42 PM ⇒ No Comments ( privacy | politics )

Former President Bill Clinton. Former. That just sounds weird. He's been an omnipresent figure in my adult life. I barely remember Bush (pére), and Reagan not at all. And on top of having to hear President George W. Bush for the next four years...

¶ 75 Posted at 11.45 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | politics )

Keep the estate tax:

Mr. Buffett said repealing the estate tax "would be a terrible mistake," the equivalent of "choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics."

Maybe they're not so greedy after all.

¶ 87 Posted at 10.40 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

His father's son: Bush bombs Baghdad. Our newest President joins the club. He's one of the boys now.

¶ 90 Posted at 03.32 PM ⇒ No Comments ( news | politics )

Clinton explains the Marc Rich pardon. My favorite part was the bit at the end, where the NY Times editors added:

William Jefferson Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States.

¶ 92 Posted at 11.57 AM ⇒ No Comments ( funny | politics )

I'm deeply bothered by the trend towards conservatism in recent years. The abuses of big government have convinced people that minimal government is the only way to go. Somehow the Democrats have managed to drop the ball on this as well, the same way that Al Gore somehow managed to avoid talking about the last 8 years of economic growth. They don't mention how the FDA does a pretty good job making sure we're safe. And if they don't do the best job, it's because they don't have enough power, not because they have too much. Ditto for the NTSB. And the FAA. These regulatory bodies have made our daily lives so much safer ovet the last 30 years, but nobody seems to remember that. And of course there's my big one, anti-trust action on the part of the government. From the oil trusts at the beginning of the 20th centuries to the breakup of AT&T in 1984, to the future (hopefully) breakup of Microsoft, the goverment has been working for our protection. Once again, if they did a less-than-perfect job, it was because they were less active than they should have been, not because they were draconian in their application of the laws. Capitalist idealists (it's not an oxymoron!) claim that the market will punish the abusive companies. The problem is, capitalism as a positive force only works when there is no oligopoly. When you have a situation like the music industry, with only five major players, bad things happen. The same thing almost happened with the American auto industry, but the government was goaded into watching them closely and the Japanese came in and kicked their butts. The worst is yet to come, however, because in many industries, barriers to entry are only increasing. It takes billions of dollars to develop and produce even a niche microprocessor. Similarly, nobody can compete against Microsoft's financial resources; the only recent challenge to their dominance in operating systems comes from one where money is irrelevant. And even if companies can compete resource-wise, restrictive intellectual property laws make it possible for one company to shut out all competitors to the detriment of consumers. When there is no choice, the market cannot operate.

All that aside, even when there is choice in the marketplace, the market wouldn't necessarily decide the right way. Consider free ISPs. Given the choice between a free ISP that tracks your actions online and a pay ISP that leaves you alone, most people would pick the former. If you explained to them the consequences and issues involved in that choice, they would agree in the abstract that they would be willing to pay a nominal fee in exchange for privacy, but they wouldn't necessarily act that way. People are very bad at translating abstract ideals into day to day action. Regulation is necessary to look ahead, to take the long view. Basic rights must be guaranteed by an extra-market power simply because it becomes too much of a bother for consumers to have to decide every time how much of their rights they are willing to give up in exchange for some material benefit. That's why it is impossible to give up some rights in court, because if you are tempted by leniency in exchange for a waiver of rights, you could be easily taken advantage of. It's better in many cases for the regulatory bodies to make one binding decision than for millions of people to make multiple decisions every day. Now, I'm not saying that regulation is the answer to everything. I strongly disagree with many parts of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but then, that law is more of a restriction on individuals than organizations. The government has had its share of foolish behavior. But by and large, government regulations have helped us far more than they have hurt us, and could do even more if people would just realize how much of us has been done already.

¶ 99 Posted at 01.06 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

US Government merges with Mafia. Ok, so that's an exaggeration. And this does come from the Libertarian Party. But asset seizures are getting out of control. There's no need to prove you've done anything wrong for the government to take your property. The burden of proof is on you to show that your property was legally obtained and hasn't even peripherally been involved in a crime. It's almost getting to the point where, if a robber runs through your yard while making his escape, the police can seize your house. And they'll do it because they get to keep the moneys and the stuffs. Disgusting.

¶ 101 Posted at 10.34 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

From the floor of the Senate: The text of John McCain's Opening Statement on campaign finance reform.

¶ 111 Posted at 10.15 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I have a theory. The last few episodes of "The West Wing" have dealt with the process of revealing secret of the President's multiple sclerosis. There's talk of lawyers, conspiracies, and coverups. They throwing around phrases like "perpetrated a fraud against the American public." It's all very sad, because we know that President Bartlett is a good man and had only the best intentions at heart, that his condition never caused any real danger, et cetera et cetera. It seemed like just another May sweeps climactic story arc. Then it hit me. Aaron Sorkin (the writer of the show) is using his fantasyland White House as a bully pulpit. This is his way of joining the ranks of Clinton apologists. There are many similarities. In this case, though, the integrity of the President is (ha ha) inimpeachable. So we take his side. We make excuses for him. We rationalize. And then the next time we think about Clinton, we're a little softer on the guy, because at some level, we've realized that the other side of things is a little harder and more complex than we thought.

What did you expect? It's called jaded.

¶ 125 Posted at 07.50 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | theorizing | tv )

And the villagers rejoice: Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords to leave Republican party for Democratic party.

¶ 129 Posted at 12.32 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | happy )

NY Times: Texas Retooling Criminal Justice in Wake of Furor on Death Penalty. What I want to know is who the hell are those 33% of Texans who think it's ok to execute someone who's mentally retarded? Or the 24% of Texans who think that the possibility of exoneration due to DNA evidence does not justify postponing (not cancelling, but just postponing!) executions. What is going on here? Kill everybody and let God sort it out?

¶ 131 Posted at 10.58 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | politics )

Take a survey (NPR): American attitudes towards poverty.

¶ 135 Posted at 04.44 PM ⇒ No Comments ( linkage | politics )

They agree with me. Therefore good: Spinsanity. Goofy name, though.

¶ 246 Posted at 03.34 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Merriam-Webster has as one of its definitions of corporation the following:

a body formed and authorized by law to act as a single person although constituted by one or more persons and legally endowed with various rights and duties including the capacity of succession

More from Cornell.

The rights of a corporation are the same as those of a person, but the set of corporate responsibilities is less. We need to start bringing those into closer alignment. Many things have been done by corporations that would cause a human to be imprisoned for life. For example, Monsanto and PCB pollution. As far as I am aware, however, there isn't really a corporate death penalty, but there definitely should be. Corporations are great for individuals avoiding responsibility, and many of these go on profiting for years from heinous acts. If there were a such thing as a corporate death penalty, wherein the courts could declare that Monsanto, Altria (nee Philip Morris), and Union Carbide simply cease to exist as legal entities. The company would be dissolved and the assets sold off. The net proceeds (after paying off debts and liabilities) could go to the shareholders, but my instinct is not, as it is the shareholders who are responsible for the behavior of a corporation. This would be a good motivator for them to pay attention to the way their investment is behaving, a type of responsibility sorely lacking today when the only consequence is lawsuits whose settlements barely amount to 10% of a year's profits.

¶ 248 Posted at 01.54 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

So I'm stuck on hold with Chase bank. When setting up access to my account with Quicken, I was told that Chase is currently authorized to share my account and other personal information with other corporations. There was a law passed recently that granted this right to financial institutions. They had to inform customers, but it was an opt-out rather than an opt-in. Clearly Congress got effectively lobbied by the financial industry here. So I made a second call to Chase customer service (because the person at the first number couldn't do this and couldn't transfer me) and wade through another phone menu to talk to a customer service rep. I explain what I want, then get put on hold because this rep has to talk to a "product specialist" who can do this. So she gets put on hold (she claims), so I get put on hold. I get put on hold three times at a few minutes a pop, listening to the same minute-long fragment of a piano song every time. Finally after about 20 minutes on the phone with multiple Chase reps, I get it done. Makes me not feel bad about going on the can while talking to her.

So clearly this is wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if Chase made this process difficult just to dissuade people from getting their information taken off limits. After all, I've done the same sort of thing in my job. The difference is, of course, my job is for a website that only demands an email address, country, and date of birth (for COPPA-compliance). I do not have a record of all of an individual's financial transactions. Nor do I have a social security number, mother's maiden name, or any other, more sensitive information. Clearly Congress was not acting in the best interests of Americans. While the Supreme Court has stated that privacy is a necessary adjunct to freedom of association, and there is the Fourth Amendment ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"), neither is explicit in stating general privacy as a right in and of itself; rather, they support privacy in certain conditions as necessary to advance other primary rights. I think it is time, in this day and age where so much information on individuals is kept by entities outside their control, that American's have an explicit Constitutional right to privacy. The framers could not have seen this coming two centuries ago. Such an amendment would also prevent the so-called "tyranny of convenience," where an entity could effectively coerce an agreement to share personal information by making it sufficiently convenient to do so and sufficiently inconvenient not do, by providing a basis and impetus for Congress to climb out of the banking industry's pocket and make laws with teeth. Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.

¶ 255 Posted at 12.59 PM ⇒ No Comments ( privacy | politics )

Ok, so it's been about two weeks since I last got good and mad. No time like the present to make up for the past. Here you go: Fight terrorism by not buying drugs. I actually watched the Superbowl. Well, it was on in the background while I was cooking dinner. And I saw parts of the second half, which was surprisingly exciting. So anyway, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (like I'm going to link to them) decides to put up these ads during the Big Game equating buying drugs with terrorism. Now, they will claim they're not doing so, that they're just highlighting a connection. Clearly this is not the case. Example (from "I Helped":

Person 1: We just wanted to have a good time Person 2: I helped kill a judge. . . . . Person (say) 11: I just wanted to get high. Person 12: I helped kidnap someone's family and kill his children.

Then the ad ends with "Drug money supports terror." Ok, so they're so way, way off here. Let's start:

1. They're equating all drugs. Let's look at the 6 top drugs that they want to address:
   1. Marijuana - Most of the pot smoked in the US is grown in Mexico, Canada, or inside these borders. I don't see many Canadian terrorists on the news.
   2. LSD - Street prices of LSD are cheap. Nobody makes big money off LSD. Nobody can fund a terror campaign on sales of acid.
   3. Ecstasy - The bogeyman of the moment. To hear the anti-drug forces tell it, everyone under 25 is doing this every weekend, selling it on playgrounds on weekdays, and suffering irreversible brain damage that will put them all in a coma in five years. But there's no evidence that terrorists have sold any to get money to kill people. Organized crime? Certainly. But not terrorism. So don't make that connection.
   4. Cocaine - Everyone knows it comes from Columbia. How about terrorists? Well, there are separatists guerillas. They haven't left Columbia. They're fighting a war against the Columbian government, which isn't exactly known for its englightened policies. They sure do sell a lot of cocaine, though. So they're partly right here, but completely wrong when they lump the Columbian guerillas with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Most of the cocaine trade is in the hands of "entrepreneurs" interested only in their own self-aggrandizement.
   5. Speed - From what I read, this comes mainly from Western Europe, Mexico, and American bathtubs. I've seen nothing to indicate a connection here, not even from this site.
   6. Heroin - Ok, finally we come to a connection. Yup, there is evidence that Al Qaeda used heroin moneys. But on there other hand, last year there was a flood of articles like this one. As you may or may not recall, the Taliban banned the growing of opium poppies for religious reasons. Nobody thought it would work, but it turned out that that the Taliban made a big dent in the Afghan exports of opium and heroin. They did so well that the United States government gave the Taliban $43 million in aid to continue their efforts (source). Even more ironically, the Northern Alliance continued to grow opium poppies to finance their war against the Taliban. Once more we have failed to grasp the important of choosing our friends wisely. The mujahedin from whom the Northern Alliance came also supported their war against the Soviets with heroin profits. We gave them Stingers. And lots of other stuff. Oops. Kinda tricky there, isn't it?
   Judge for yourself. Also look at their information pages on each drug. This site that claims to be about the truth:

   Beliefs about MDMA are reminiscent of similar claims made about LSD in the 1950s and 1960s, which proved to be untrue. According to its proponents, MDMA can make people trust each other and can break down barriers between therapists and patients, lovers, and family members.

   You see that nice little trick? The two parts of the first sentence are unrelated, but make it sound like people are imagining the drug's effects. But look how even these propagandists qualify everything: "Beliefs" (which ones?). "Reminiscent" (to whom?). "Similar claims" (like what?). They construct a sentence around vague innuendo and unproven connections to try to convince you that anyone who tells you that Ecstasy does anything might do something even slightly enjoyable is a deluded fool who sure is going to look silly ten years from now when it's discovered (s)he wasn't feeling what (s)he thought (s)he was feeling. Oops. Most of the drug statements have similar biases. This site claims to be about the truth, but their agenda clearly precludes the whole truth. If drugs were as bad as they make them out to seem, then nobody would need persuading because nobody would do any drugs.

   The Ad Council is one of the groups that supports this campaign. You can see some of their supporters here. Notice in the list the purveyors of the two major legal drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, as well as big pharmaceutical companies. And notice in the list of of drugs any prescription drugs (even commonly abused ones like Xanax or Oxycontin) or alcohol.

2. Another major beef with this ad campaign is that by emphasizing the connection between (some) drug production and (some) terrorism, they gloss over many other connections. For example, the support of fundamentalist Islamic schools of the Wahabi sect by the Saudi government, a sect closely tied with the Taliban. So does that mean that every time you fill up at the gas station, you're supporting terrorism? Seems a much less tenuous connection than the vague mumbles of the anti-drug folks. Then there's Israel. What would you call a nation that assassinates opposition leaders, destroys innocent civilians houses, shoots protestors, and tortures prisoners? Sounds like state-sponsored terrorism to me. Well, not even sponsored, just state terrorism. How do you, the American citizen, support them? Simple. You pay your taxes. America has given billions of dollars a year for the last half century to Israel (source). There's yet another more direct connection between your money and terrorism than this silly drug propaganda.
3. The worst thing about this that their exaggerations cause a serious credibility problem, making it impossible to take anything they say seriously. Heroin's bad, kids. Very bad. You stay away. It wouldn't hurt to stay away from pot, too, but only if you want to be extra careful. Want to know what the lethal dose of marijuana is? So does everyone else. Nobody has ever smoked themselves to death. Plenty of people have drunk themselves to death. Makes you wonder.
4. And then there's the whole thing about equating things with terrorism to try to push a pre-existing agenda (as skewered here in September). Taking what is essentially a social and medical problem and equating it with terrorism magnifies one and diminishes the other, to the detriment of our battles with both. People need some perspective.
5. Finally, there's the complete lack of analysis as to why terrorists might be involved in the illegal drugs trade. Do they sell drugs because it's a way to strike at the weak and infidel West, a way to sap the strength of a corrupt and decadent society, thereby advancing their cause? Yeah right. To state the obvious: (some) terrorists sell (some) drugs because they can get lots of money for them. Same reason lots of other people sell drugs. Do drugs inherently have so much value? As all of us good students of economics know, there's no such thing as inherent value. You match supply with demand and out comes your fair market price. Demand for drugs is a more or less known quantity: there's lots of it. What about supply? There isn't as much as there would be in a truly free market. The government's crusade against narcotics has severely shrunk the supply. Tight supply meets high demand and results in high prices, therefore mucho profits. Let's look at the causal chain: drugs are illegal, but in high demand. Therefore anyone who sells drugs can get a lot of money. Terrorists want a lot of money to finance their activities, and so they sell drugs. Not a hard connection to grasp. If the drugs were legal, at least some of them, there wouldn't be nearly as much money in them. And terrorists wouldn't bother. Nor would other criminals. These people are going after easy money. If anyone can get in on the market, the forces of capitalism will find the optimal price point so that there's a minor profit and no more. The easy money will be gone, leaving criminals of all stripes scrambling to find another source of revenue. Instead, what we're doing is trying to choke off the supply (which doesn't work anyway), which will drive the price even higher, resulting in even more money for those still in the business. And chances are, it's not going to be your friendly neighborhood drug dealer who manages to keep going in that kind of environment, but the guys that you really don't want to mess with. Nor that you want to have millions of dollars. Once again, the drug war will have solved nothing.

¶ 270 Posted at 01.37 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | politics )

NY Times: Supreme Court to Intervene in Internet Copyright Dispute. Here's hoping the court does the right thing and strikes down the Sonny Bono Act of 1998, aka the "Protect Disney's Cash Cow" Act (Mickey Mouse), which retroactively extended copyrights by 20 years. Every day that goes by that I cannot create my own art featuring Mickey Mouse is a day that Disney, through the United States government, is stealing from me and restricting my rights. Granted, this isn't on the same level as, say, stealing my DVD player, or searching my house without a warrant, but it is a completely unjustifiable infringement on my First Amendment rights. In the Constitution, the power of Congress in this sphere is defined so:

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

Clearly the existence of intellectual property was not intended by the framers; ideas cannot be owned. The above (to me) pretty strongly implies that their feeling was that granting such exclusive rights to ideas was an evil necessary to encourage the generation of new ideas. If you asked them, they would say to make the "limited time" as short as possible. Intellectual property isn't one of those inalienable rights an inventor is entitled to, but rather a license granted by Congress as a reward for their innovation. In fact, the whole point is to have inventors and authors to create worthy works that are accessible to all, for the betterment of society at large. The exclusive license is merely in furtherance of that goal, an incentive to create and also a mechanism to enable creation, so ordinary citizens can devote time and resources to invention without falling into poverty. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that there is an inherent right to ownership of ideas. To rephrase Proudhon: Intellectual property is theft.

Incidentally, there's a direct quote by Thomas Jefferson supporting this:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

If the Court goes the right way on this, I might start to forget about the coup of 2000.

¶ 287 Posted at 12.18 PM ⇒ No Comments ( news | copyright | politics )

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.... The Canadian charter of rights and freedoms.

¶ 294 Posted at 05.42 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Oil money supports terrorism (flash).

¶ 295 Posted at 02.35 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

In spite of myself, I find myself liking the Libertarian Party. Sometimes: LP News Online: March 2002: Libertarian Party runs provocative anti-War on Drugs newspaper ads.

¶ 302 Posted at 10.36 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | terrorism )

More on terrorism: This is not a war.

¶ 309 Posted at 05.50 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | terrorism )

The following is the text of a letter I intend to send to my House Representative and Senators concerning the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, or the CBDTPA, introduced yesterday in the Senate by Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-SC.

[edited several times because it was just too long]

---

I am a software developer in Austin, in the 10th Congressional district. I am writing to express my strong objections to SB 2048, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, or the CBDTPA. I am gravely concerned that this bill, if made law, would do great harm to the average American citizen. I believe the bill sacrifices the good of the American people for the good of a relatively small number of media corporations.

My most serious concern with this bill is the lack of protection it affords for the American citizen. While it contains language meant to protect individual consumers, I fear the protections as codified in this bill are neither strong enough nor explicit enough to guarantee my rights under the fair use doctrine, among other rights. Beyond simply stating that fair use should be protected, in order to make any sort of copyright control mechanism acceptable, Congress should pass a law affirming what the rights of consumers are. For example, as a result of Supreme Court ruling in 1986 in the Betamax case, the government cannot take away the right to "time shift" a recording of a television program. However, there is also nothing preventing the technology industry from taking that right away through technical means outside the scope of the law. Before any control mechanisms are implemented in technological devices, it is imperative that Congress guarantee the basic fair use rights of Americans.

By the provisions intended by supporters of the bill, all electronic devices would have mechanisms to verify that all content has been properly acquired. In effect, televisions, computers, compact disc players, and many other electronic devices will actively watching Americans as though they were criminals. These devices would implicitly assume that Americans are thieves and that theft can only be prevented by installing monitoring devices in every American home. This is contrary to American values. The device is not the crime, piracy is. In order to protect the interests of all parties, we must maintain the legality of electronic devices while prosecuting their misuse. Criminalize the deed, not the device. Appropriate laws already exist without compromising the rights of Americans. Furthermore, any digital rights management technology would require registration of individual users, an unprecedented invasion of privacy for entertainment.

We must also consider the impact to the nation's technology industry, widely recognized as one of the most important sectors of the United States economy. The entertainment industry grossed roughly on the order of $40 billion in 2001. By comparison, the combined software, electronics, computer hardware, and telecommunications industries are estimated to have grossed on the order of $500 billion last year, or over ten times the size of the entertainment industry. In spite of this tremendous disparity, we find the peculiar situation of the tail wagging the dog. This bill means considerable harm to the technology industry, as attested to the Senate by Leslie Vadasz, co-founder of Intel, one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers in the United States and the world. He testified as to the damage to the industry should the federal government mandate technological specifications to solve the problem of piracy. The American businessmen and women who have made this country's economy the strongest in the world will have to bear the cost of this technology, reducing the ability of American companies to compete both here and around the world.

Despite the claims of media conglomerates, it is not at all apparent that these measures are necessary. I have been using the Internet as a means for acquiring new music for several years, including using primitive precursors of the now infamous Napster. In that time, I have purchased nearly one hundred music albums as well as many DVDs. I would not have purchased many of the albums had they not been readily available through these illegal means. The reasons for my illegal acquisition of music were solely for evaluation of the music. In nearly every case, if, after sampling an album, I found it to my liking, I acquired it legitimately. While illegal, file sharing services satisfy a need in the market where the music industry has failed. Consumers do not want to steal music, but given the unrelenting blandness of standard music distribution methods, such as radio and television, we are forced to seek other avenues in order to satisfy our tastes. One attempt by the music industry to enter this market, known as Duet or PressPlay, has so far been a dismal failure due to a limited selection of music and draconian control mechanisms, not the cost. In addition, the laws currently in effect have been successfully used to prosecute pirates, including just recently when a counterfeit DVD operation in New York City was shut down.

One of the other arguments made in favor of this bill is that making rich media readily available for download is what is needed to create widespread customer demand for broadband technologies. However, with the existence of illegal content online, broadband nevertheless remains in the early stages of adoption. There is no reason to believe that legitimizing this process will accelerate its adoption. In addition, the federal government should not be influencing the market in this case; broadband Internet access is hardly of the same importance as electricity or a telephone. Any hurdles to broadband adoption are a result of telecommunications companies dragging their feet far more than a lack of demand.

Examining the history of the relationship between the entertainment and technology industries, we find in several instances the former expressed their concerns and fears over a technological advancement, be it the VCR or the audio cassette. In these cases, the fears of the entertainment industry were overblown. In fact, after embracing technologies they originally opposed, the movie studios and record labels managed to increase their revenues and profits, in spite of piracy. While no system is perfect, to some extent fraud is the cost of doing business. No mechanism that protects the rights of law-abiding citizens will be perfect in quashing fraud. The banking and credit card industries have managed to be profitable while still maintaining a fair degree of protection for the rights of consumers. The entertainment industry should be no different.

While I don't doubt that this type of measure would go a long way to stamp out piracy in the United States, it does so by intruding too greatly both on the consumer as well as business concerns. There is a solution to the piracy problem, but it cannot come out of treating Americans like common criminals or burdening the technology industry with further regulation. As such, I strongly urge you to oppose the CBDTPA and all similar measures that only benefit a privileged few to the disadvantage of both individuals and businesses. I would appreciate hearing your position on this issue. Thank you.

¶ 315 Posted at 03.14 AM ⇒ No Comments ( internet | copyright | politics )

Limited Time Offer: The Best Excuse Ever.

¶ 360 Posted at 11.56 AM ⇒ No Comments ( linkage | politics )

God Bless America Day. Another one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. I prefer the suggestion in the comments to this: "Holy Fucking Shit Day."

¶ 389 Posted at 12.03 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Deregulation has many proponents who have convincingly argued its merits based on failures of the federal and state governments to regulate some industries well. What we need is a list of case studies where governmental regulation has worked. The FDA, for example, does a generally good job. It would also be beneficial to have case studies where regulation has failed as a result of insufficient resources rather than inherent inefficiency, like the Department of Agriculture's meat inspections. Hopefully the debacle of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as well as more recent corporate scandals have convinced the American public that strong regulation is necessary in some industries even if it will never convince the current administration.

¶ 420 Posted at 03.23 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The most brilliant thing I have ever gotten out of a Slashdot comment:

The beauty ... of a war on an abstract concept is that the concept never surrenders and the war never ends...

¶ 448 Posted at 12.26 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | terrorism )

All of you who didn't vote or voted for Republicans... way to go. I'm looking at you, Missouri. As if you weren't in trouble enough after giving us Ashcroft. This cannot be good. I'm going off to sulk.

¶ 452 Posted at 08.50 AM ⇒ No Comments ( news | politics )

This cannot be a good thing: U.S. Allows Candidates to Pay Themselves. Quote:

The Federal Election Commission (news - web sites) on Monday agreed to let candidates pay themselves salaries using campaign donations, aiming to encourage people who otherwise couldn't afford to give up their jobs to run. Commissioner Michael Toner, who sponsored the proposal, said it would help scale back some of the advantages of incumbency.

I myself cannot help but think that system could be abused, and badly. I mean, one of the counter-arguments against those who believe American democracy has been completely subverted by money is that nobody can give money to a candidate for office. The best they could do is give candidates' campaigns money, which the candidates could never keep and had very limited use. However, now there will be a direct linkage between contributions and a candidate's wallet, which makes me worried. The theory of allowing more middle- and lower-income citizens to participate in the process is laudable, but I am too skeptical that it will actually work out that way. I guess we will just have to see.

¶ 464 Posted at 05.07 PM ⇒ No Comments ( news | politics )

NY Times: Clinton Says Party Failed Midterm Test Over Security Issue.

Former President Bill Clinton said yesterday that the Democratic Party had lost the midterm elections because its candidates had failed to offer a convincing case that the party could manage national security during dangerous times.

Also:

The former president ... brushed aside the argument by some Democrats that the party needed to return to its liberal roots to regain power.

I don't like it. This is the president, after all, who was largely responsible for the shift to the right of the Democratic party. Surprise of surprises, now he is defending that strategy. I fear that, between Clinton's stature as the only Democratic president to be elected twice since FDR and in the absence of strong Democratic leadership, the Democratic party is likely to be swayed by this argument, and continue to be Pepsi to the GOP's Coke. I've read numerous surveys that indicate a majority of Americans think the Bush administration is corrupt, self-serving, and undemocratic, and yet they still handed them a substantial victory. This tells me there is something very wrong with the Democratic party, and after 10 years of the Clintonian New Democratic Party, I hardly think it is because they are too far left. Americans have had 10 years to get used to it, and I suspect they see no point in choosing a cheap knockoff (the Democrats) when they could have the real thing (the Republicans). It was obvious in 2000 when there was widespread voter apathy due to a lack of perceptible distinctions between the candidates, and it is even more obvious now as the Democratic party flounders without coherent leadership as the Republicans have organized a coherent and disciplined platform. Even if Clinton is correct and the only way to win votes is to effectively be Republicans, that doesn't mean that the Democratic party should shift its whole platform, it means that those more conservative Democrats should just go ahead and join the GOP. What's the point of having two separate but equal political parties?* Well, I guess the point is political leverage, but it is just not a good thing.

yeah, that was a misplaced reference, but so what?

¶ 466 Posted at 08.24 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I read this interesting article in the latest Harper's called In Defense of Liberalism, written by George McGovern (yes, that George McGovern). He brought up an interesting point, namely, what have conservatives done for this country? To me, "liberal" means someone who considers new ideas and wants to "make things better," whatever that means. And a "conservative" is one who wants to maintain the status quo or regress to a previous state. Now, I'm equating "Republican" with "conservative" and "Democrat" with "liberal," an equation that has obvious problems but is mostly right. The Democrats won WWI, pulled us out of the Depression, won WWII, and pushed through civil rights. On the down side, Democrats got us into Korea and Vietnam, and Southern Democrats supported Jim Crow and segregation for decades. The Republicans gave us the Interstate Highway System, "One nation, under God", took us out of Vietnam, the War on Drugs, and racked up the biggest deficits in history. The Republicans would point to Lincoln, but there are a couple of problems there. One, Republicans haven't exactly been enthusiastic about civil rights. Two, for a party that advocates states' rights, you'd think they would have been on the side of the South. I myself am not entirely sure Lincoln did the right thing. Modern political theory supports self-determination, and one could argue the South should have been free to choose its own destiny. One could argue that Lincoln was guaranteeing the slaves' right to self-determination, but given that Lincoln explicitly stated the Civil war was about Union and not slavery, it's clear that the end of slavery was just a happy side effect. So, looking back, it's hard to see where this country has actually been improved by an overall conservative policy. Now, a lot of liberals get crazy ideas, so it's good to have a conservative, skeptical perspective to keep them grounded. However, to have as your primary goal to maintain the status quo and/or regress to a bleaker time just doesn't seem like a long-term strategy for success, to put it mildly. How can you move forward by looking backward? I just don't get it.

¶ 471 Posted at 12.49 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Al Gore to announce he will not run for President in 2004. I guess that's a good thing, but only just. My figuring on that is Gore vs. Bush is far too polarizing. While Gore standing only with other Democrats is clearly the strongest candidate, when pitted again Dubya, Gore takes a much bigger hit due to the rancor and confusion of the 2000 election. Perhaps he looked at the polls and the recent mid-term election results and decided that the Democratic candidate in 2004 was doomed, and did not want it to be him, especially considering the stigma that would be against him as a two-time loser in 2008. Better for him to sit this one out and let the memories of 2000 slowly fade away, and then face another Republican in 2008 starting with a clean slate. Now what he has to do is to find a way to maintain political relevance for 5 years. And to realize he doesn't have to laugh at everything Jon Stewart says on The Daily Show (which he was on last week).

¶ 472 Posted at 12.47 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

It occurs to me that, if we stripped the current Iraq situation of all the details, it would sound rather disturbing. Consider: A nation claims it is threatened by another nation that has a hostile government and wealth. In order to defend its security, the first is compelled to invade the second, invading with an army of the working class and under-priveleged. Along the way, innocents die, cities are destroyed, and the remnants of a nation are thrust into chaos. The merchant class of the conqueroring nation descends upon the vanquished and sets itself to plundering its riches. That is one of the basic templates of wars of conquest. Rome did it. The British Empire too. Tsarist Russia. The Aztecs. Shouldn't we be beyond this? If you look at the polls, you can see that nobody is buying the Bush story; they know it's about oil and revenge. But if you look at the polls, you can see that it doesn't matter. Somehow the Bush administration has managed to convince the nation that war with Iraq is inevitable and there is nothing they can do about it. I'm amazed and depressed at the same time. An imperial, colonialist America is such an oxymoron but it is happening. In fact, that would be the best possible outcome of a war with Iraq, that we occupy the country for many years and leverage American interest in oil to bring money to the region and build a profitable colony, I mean, a stable ally. Imagine the Marshall Plan, but without moral authority. Think carpet baggers. Or MacArthur in post-WWII Japan. The British East India Company. Bush may be the most autocratic and undemocratic President in recent memory, but that he would be so ready to impose his will on a sovereign nation is further than I thought he would ever go. September 11 was the best thing to ever happen for this administration.*

Not that I buy into the conspiracy theories; I accept that what happened is more or less accurate. But George Bush was floundering in mid-2001; now he has sky-high popular opinion, a Congressional majority built on that, a likely second term, and the fear of the American people letting him walk down a path that was never open before, where he can reward the wealthy, connected patrons who got him where he is, increase the size and power of federal government (ironically), and finish off the job dad left undone.

¶ 477 Posted at 01.47 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | politics )

Amir says "hi" with an editorial from the NY Times:

The most telling polling result from the 2000 election was from a Time magazine survey that asked people if they are in the top 1 percent of earners. Nineteen percent of Americans say they are in the richest 1 percent and a further 20 percent expect to be someday. So right away you have 39 percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a plan that favored the top 1 percent, he was taking a direct shot at them.

¶ 480 Posted at 04.35 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

John Perry Barlow talks about Dick Cheney. This being the same Barlow who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization devoted to protecting privacy and civil liberties in the electronic age.

¶ 497 Posted at 01.31 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Anyone wanting to look for signs of a significant shift in the way the US Government regards itself only has to look at the progression in covers of the CIA - The World Factbook. The 2002 cover looks a lot like the box for a Cold War-era Real-Time Strategy game.

¶ 511 Posted at 07.24 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The United States is going to defy the United Nations and attack Iraq for defying the United Nations.

Attacking Iraq to save lives is like saving money by buying things you don't need because they are on sale.

¶ 513 Posted at 12.06 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | politics )

I have developed a single criterion for determining how to cast my vote in 2004. I will vote for the candidate who will undo every policy initiative of the Bush administration. Every law passed will be repealed. Every executive order will be revoked. Every new doctrine will be disavowed. Every sundered treaty will be reaccepted. I will vote for the candidate who will apologize to the world for four years of madness. This candidate need have no vision, no agenda, and no qualifications. All he needs is the willingness to roll back four years of regress, to put this country where it was before it was hijacked by thieves and murderers.

¶ 518 Posted at 09.13 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I almost hate it when others speak my mind better than I can myself: The Lie Of The U.S. Military / Tough gritty American soldiers protect freedom of liberal S.F. columnist? Or the other way around?. Soldiers don't protect freedom. The best they can do is to protect property and people. Physical things. They do nothing to ensure the sanctity of more abstract notions such as liberty. There was a time when other powers wanted to invade this country and destroy our liberty. Even then, however, the military did not protect freedom. What they did do was make it possible for us to protect our own freedom. We ourselves, the citizens. On occasion, freedom may be protected by the police or a district attorney or a judge, but the greatest part of this protection comes from us living by the principles of our Constitution. And now the threat to freedom comes from within. American citizens will willingly give up their freedoms and those of their countrymen for the promise of security. Claiming that external forces will deny our liberty distracts us and makes it easier for internal forces to do the same. It doesn't matter if it is the Communists or John Ashcroft who denies my freedom to speak.

The notion of trading reduced freedom for security is treated as a necessary exchange, but I have seen no evidence to indicate that it is a zero sum system. The only credible argument I have seen for denying natural freedoms is laziness on the parts of those meant to protect us. They say it would be "too hard" to protect this country without maintaining classified dossiers on its citizens. They say that they need to be able to conduct wiretaps and searches without warrants are necessary tools to make them more "efficient." It is simple laziness, on the part of the government and on the part of your fellow citizens, who want a panacea for their fears (reinforced by the government's reckless and effectively useless handling of potential threats), but don't want to pay for more agents or more judges, or face the ever-so-slightly increased danger of a free society. And what then? As an engineer, I often attempt many solutions to a problem before finding the right one. As such, I am used to thinking about what happens when my chosen solution fails. Unfortunately nobody in our government seems to think that way. So when denying my freedoms fails to make us more secure, what happens? Do I get my freedoms back? Or do they demand even more from me, claiming this time it will be different? Somehow I expect the latter. Freedom and security are not mutually exclusive. Those who would deny you your freedoms are your enemies, and the enemies of this country, no matter what excuses they manufacture.

I have tried very hard to use phrases like "deny freedom" rather than "take away freedom" because freedom is an inalienable right. Others may make it impossible for us to exercise our freedom, but it exists independently of any actions they may take. To state that they can take it away gives them the power to do so. This has already happened in some areas, with many people erroneously believing that the government has the power to regulate your speech. This is partly based on a misapplication of this statement by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Schenck v. United States: "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." Freedom of speech does not apply here because you are on private property. The owner of the property has complete discretion over what is said, not the federal government. If the owner of the property gives me the permission to yell "fire," they cannot stop me. Suppose you have a dinner party. At some point, you shout "Fire!" and panic your guests. You may anger your friends, but it is your right. Thinking that the government can regulate that speech is a misunderstanding of the concept and makes the public conception of freedom subject to further erosion. Here is an interesting discussion going further into this issue. Of course, I am not a lawyer, but it sure sounds right.

...putting the "fury" in righteous fury since 2002...

¶ 519 Posted at 05.12 PM ⇒ No Comments ( linkage | politics | iraq )

After some discussion with mute, we both agreed that there is now no way for the United States to withdraw from Iraq. At this point, the least bad outcome is to win. That realization put me in a foul mood. Up to this point, I had held out hope that the situation was salvageable, that there was some way for it not to end badly. Now I have resigned myself there being no good options, only bad ones and worse ones. I realized that I've given up hope. That was the worst for me. I never give up. Anyone who's ever disagreed with me knows that. It's just not me. Now, though, I have given up, and it's terrible. I hate George Bush for making that happen. I hate him for taking my hope away.

¶ 520 Posted at 10.04 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | politics | iraq )

Librarians have been vocal opponents of the PATRIOT Act ever since it was first proposed. One provision that affects their work directly gives law enforcement the power to investigate patrons' reading histories. For (hopefully) obvious reasons, this is a bad thing, and librarians strongly oppose it. Unfortunately, the same law prohibits them from informing their patrons if law enforcement has asked for information on them. Here are Five Technically Legal Signs for Your Library to warn people of the danger. Law enforcement claims it's nothing to worry about because the probability of someone being investigated is very low, but then, the probability of my car getting stolen is very low and I still have insurance. The probability of winning the lottery is very low, but Americans spend millions of dollars per day on tickets. When the risk or reward is great, it doesn't matter if the odds are low.

¶ 521 Posted at 11.43 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Michael Moore was at UT yesterday. He was supposed to give a speech at the LBJ School, but apparently there was enough demand that they moved it to Gregory Gym. I happened to notice a huge crowd of people as I went over for my swim. On my way out, I saw a stretch limo. I asked the driver, who was just standing there, and it turned out it was Moore's. There's a bit of irony for you.

I'm just sick of Michael Moore. His Oscar stunt was clearly a self-aggrandizing publicity move rather than an actual attempt to change opinions. I've read too many things like this and this to trust anything he says. I wanted to see "Bowling for Columbine" at some point, but now I don't want to because I'm afraid of my mind getting polluted by his half-truths and distortions. He's the left-wing's equivalent of Rush Limbaugh or Anne Coulter. Their inaccurate, self-serving, and sensationalistic output does a huge amount of damage by distorting facts and polarizing debates. It's hard for me to believe that any of them truly believes in the causes they espouse; they just use the causes to promote themselves. I would very happily launch those three into the sun, given the chance.

¶ 532 Posted at 03.50 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | politics )

An election correction.

¶ 541 Posted at 12.35 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Double standards, or why some Republicans suck:

• The Clintons make $100K on commodity futures (pork barrels, as I recall) and lose money on a real estate investment (Whitewater). Result: a big media furor and grand jury investigation into Whitewater over several years to the tune of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, which found nothing. On the other hand, George W. Bush steered a sizable University of Texas endowment management contract to Tom Hicks in 1995. Coincidentally, Hicks purchased the Texas Rangers from Bush and his partners several years later, in 1998. Then there is the obvious Halliburton-Cheney connection with Iraq contracts, among others. Result: besides a fuss made in some opinion columns, nothing.
• Clinton orders bombings in the former Yugoslavia at about the same time as Congressional hearings into the Monica Lewinsky affair. He is lambasted in the media and rentals of "Wag the Dog" go through the roof. In 2003, Bush orders the invasion of Iraq after failing to capture Osama bin Laden, which also continues the redistribution of wealth from the common taxpayer to the owners of large industrial corporations such as Halliburton and Schlumberger.
• Clinton is universally ridiculed for his "I didn't inhale" statement, but Bush gets a bye on his evasion regarding use of more serious drugs. His statements have gotten so ludicrous as to be a tacit admission of the use of cocaine in the 1960s and/or 1970s. Then there is the covered-up DUI in the late 1970s. There's the attempted underage drinking of his daughters, which has been mostly ignored. Finally, there was the arrest of Noelle Bush, the president's niece, for attempting to purchase Xanax with a fake prescription. This got swept under the rug while Bush continued to push for increasing penalties against users of illegal drugs.
• Clinton was labeled a draft-dodger. Bush served in the Texas National Guard, a posting that was clearly arranged by his father's good connections. Not only did he avoid service in Vietnam, he also went effectively AWOL for over a year.
• Democrats are knocked as being soft on defense and the military. However, United States involvement in WWI, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War all happened primarily under Democratic governments. The last significant conflict fought by a Republican president was the Civil War under Lincoln. In the last century, we've instead had minor actions in Lebanon, Grenada, and Panama. Even Iraq (either time) fits into the latter category far more neatly than the former category, in that the first offensive lasted either a month or 3 days, depending on how you count, and the second lasted about a month also. I'll also point out that we won WWI and WWII, accomplished our goals (though did not outright defeat the enemy) in Korea, and only failed in Vietnam. In contrast, Lebanon is still basically owned by Syria, a terrorist state and the first Iraq war was mostly a failure (if it wasn't, why was there a second one?).

Somehow I don't think the bias in media is a liberal one. If most news reporting was indeed "fair and balanced," we would have gotten a lot more coverage of these bigger Bush transgressions than we did the more minor Clinton offenses.

¶ 551 Posted at 01.37 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

This is my take on the Democratic field:

• John Edwards - Too little experience. And being a trial lawyer is politically toxic.
• Richard Gephardt - Too lacking in personality. I just don't see him inspiring, well, anything.
• Bob Graham - Who? I guess nobody knew who Clinton was in 1991, but still...
• John Kerry - Funny-looking. Plus he has too much money; I just don't see him being in touch with ordinary people. And his Iraq position hasn't exactly been consistent.
• Dennis Kucinich - I like his politics. He's articulate and thoughtful, and seems to be consistent. Unfortunately, he looks like an AV club nerd.
• Carol Moseley-Braun - Who? There are a whole lot of reasons that have nothing to do with her, but they're enough.
• Al Sharpton - Uh huh...
• Joseph Lieberman - He's a fascist. If he wasn't Jewish, he'd be part of the Religious Right.
• Howard Dean - Needs to be consistent or he's doomed. Not particularly inspirational either, but apparently I'm in the minority on that.
• Wesley Clark - I'm a little turned off by the melodrama surrounding his entry into the race. On the other hand, he doesn't have the credibility taint that the Senators and Representatives do. We'll see what he looks like in the morning.

Right now, it looks like the best shot is a Clark/Dean ticket (or a Dean/Clark ticket, or as I like to call them, "Clean and Dark"). Apparently they know each other and get along, which should help. I doubt the competitors will recognize that Clark/Dean have the best chance of winning until they are forced to, though.

¶ 612 Posted at 10.23 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Approximately 3 million people have died over the last 5 years in the war in the Republic of Congo (aka Zaire). Western media have barely covered it. The NY Times is one of the few, with another article on the war, which may finally be at an end. I found a great link some time back that listed and ranked major events of world history by number of people killed. I believe this is it. By the estimates there, this war ranks in the top 10, possibly even the top 5. If you combine it with the massacre of about 1 million people in Rwanda in the 1990s, it is shocking. At least, it should shock you. Over 4 million people killed in Central Africa in the last 9 years. That is about 15% of the population of Iraq, and well beyond Saddam Hussein's wildest fantasies or capabilities, but somehow our President cannot summon up the same indignation. Doesn't he know they have natural resources too? I guess Halliburton doesn't sell diamonds.* Regardless, spend some time reading the list. There are things on there that I'd never heard of before, and I thought I knew a lot. American education is worthless when it comes to history. There's a whole world out there that we forget.

Yeah, cheap shots, but so what? It's not like any that isn't true.

¶ 616 Posted at 10.57 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I've been watching Fox News lately. Not really intentionally, but because the YMCA seems to always have it on. Today one of their stories was advocating going easy on crooked CEOs because all the damage has been done already and the remaining corporate officers have all learned their lessons. I don't even get mad at Fox or Bill O'Reilly anymore; I just sort of shake my head. I've realized that's just the way they are. It's like the parable of the frog and the scorpion. I just remind myself that their job isn't what we assumed it was. They're not there to report the news. They're there to advance an agenda. Once I got over that hump, I just stopped getting mad at them.

¶ 623 Posted at 09.43 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | tv )

Congress expands FBI powers. Now, I'm unhappy with that bill for the obvious reasons. However, another thing that bothers me is that the measure was slipped in at the last minute. I could write my Senator/Representative now, but it's a lot harder to get a law overturned than it is to prevent it from being passed. So I'm thinking we need some kind of transparency enforcement. It would be pretty simple. All bills have to be made public for a minimum of 1 month before they can be passed. If the bill gets changed, the counter is reset. So a three-month old bill that gets amended in a late-night session to slip in some irrelevant item will have to wait for one more month. Now, the obvious objection is emergency legislation. My answer is also simple. If Congress and the President have deemed a bill too important to wait 1 month (like the PATRIOT Act or the bill enabling the Do Not Call list), they may brand it "emergency legislation" and pass it as things go today. However, any bill passed as emergency legislation automatically sunsets after 6 months. That is more than enough time for Congress to pass it as ordinary, non-emergency legislation, while still ensuring that a permanent change isn't forced through. I can think of a handful of potential problems with this sort of approach, but I can't think of any that are intrinsic; at worst, they are problems with my particular formulation.

¶ 632 Posted at 04.11 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Things you have to believe to be a Republican today. That is pure flamebait, except it's basically true. The only flaw is that it applies all of those statements to all Republicans (I hear they have a big tent these days), when obviously all Republicans are not the same. However, it is generally close to the current overall Republican platform. I found a companion "Things you have to believe to be a Democrat today," but it was rather limp; it seemed composed more to appear to balance the first list than to actually point out any of the deficiencies in the Democratic platform. I'm sure there's a better effort out there waiting to be discovered.

¶ 639 Posted at 11.39 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

As you must know by now, they have captured Saddam Hussein. Phew. I hope that eliminating him as a source of fear and inspiration will make progress much easier. Now they just have to track down Osama.

¶ 642 Posted at 10.17 AM ⇒ No Comments ( news | politics | iraq )

I have this crazy hunch that George Bush will drop Cheney as running mate this spring/summer and will add Condoleeza Rice to the ticket. That would be a killer political move. I don't see it having any downside for them, and it could have considerable upside. I mean, it's not like any conservatives are going to vote for a Democrat because the VP candidate is a woman or black. And it would appeal to a large number of swing voters and traditional Democratic constituencies. The more I think about it, the smarter it seems.

¶ 655 Posted at 03.40 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The US Government's annual debt interest payment amounts. It's surprisingly difficult to get a clear, single answer on what deficits have been over recent history, but based on the rough cross-section, it appears that deficits since the end of the Cold War have been approximately balanced by interest payments. To state that more clearly, recent budget deficits wouldn't have existed if we didn't have to pay interest on the already existing debt. Of course, that's all thrown into disarray with the recent tax cuts and spending increases, but it was true for a rather long time. By cutting taxes in the face of mounting deficits, Bush has effectively raised future taxes by a greater amount. Tax cuts to stimulate the economy are a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

As an aside, the data support the epithet of "tax and spend" Democrats. However, they support even more strongly the hypothetical epithet of "borrow and spend" Republicans. Makes me want to support a balanced budget amendment. Not the kind that says the budget must be balanced every year, but the kind that would have a time limit on how long it can go unbalanced without declaring some kind of emergency, which itself would have painful consequences to deter it being done lightly. Of course, they (all of them) would find ways around it. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm pretty sure it's not cutting taxes before cutting spending.

¶ 656 Posted at 11.25 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I'm pleased to see that Howard Dean has fallen back in the Iowa polls. I just don't like the guy; he doesn't seem reliable or consistent. It would be one thing if he had been running on the centrist platform he could have built from his record as Vermont governor, but his entire platform so far seems to be anti-Iraq war and anti-Bush. While I agree with that, it bothers me that he is displaying such a lack of breadth, not to mention his policy flip-flops. I'd resigned myself to him being the Democratic nominee until last week, when he started slipping. Kerry surprised me by coming out in front. Have Iowans looked at the guy? He's scary. Gephardt's strength is no surprise; he's been a biggie in the Midwest for decades, and his message and consistent adherence to that message make him a no-brainer pick for many Iowans. I was, however, pleasantly surprised by John Edwards's ascent. I don't know that much about him, but what little I do know is encouraging. The only two knocks against him are his relative inexperience and his background as a trial lawyer, which makes him toxic to conservatives. But I guess conservatives would vote against him regardless. I'd be interested to find out what his record of bipartisanship has been in the Senate. Regardless, I'm glad to see Dean getting real competition. I just don't see him taking on Bush and winning. I don't see any of the Democratic candidates doing that at this point, but of those four, I think Dean has the least chance. I don't think Clark and Lieberman are worthy of my consideration.

For me, of course, it's something of a moot point. Texas's electoral vote allocation is a foregone conclusion. I could vote for Erik Estrada for all the difference it would make. That makes somewhat less likely that I would vote for any of the Democratic candidates; I'm more likely to vote for a Green or Libertarian Party candidate just to get their numbers up a tiny bit more.

¶ 659 Posted at 11.14 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I realized that I've been making bold statements about the Democratic presidential candidates without really knowing anything directly about their positions. So I took a few minutes to just read the statements on their respective web sites. I restricted myself to Dean, Edwards, and Kerry, who are the only ones worth considering. It was a tiring exercise. All that thinking. At the end of it, I found that Dean's policies were most sensible, then Edwards, and then Kerry. Kerry is a little too liberal, I think. He is too wedded to some old school Democratic Party ideas that, practically speaking, aren't worth pursuing. Personality-wise, I think Edwards has a clear advantage. I wasn't able to find a specific statement by Dean with regards to an Iraq strategy. Both Edwards and Kerry recognize that we're there now and have to make the best of it, while what I've gathered second- and third-hand is that Dean wants us out ASAP. I just don't think that's practical. It was an immoral, costly mistake (to put it lightly) to invade Iraq, especially under false pretenses. Bush should be voted out of office both as punishment for such a mistake and to prevent him from making similar mistakes for another four years. But we knocked over the law and order they had before (such as it was), and it's our responsibility to get them back on their feet.

¶ 660 Posted at 12.40 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I'm wondering how much luck the Democratic candidate would have campaigning in Missouri against Ashcroft. "Remember how you elected a dead guy to keep Ashcroft out of Washington?" I wonder if it would work to point out "A vote for Bush is a vote for Ashcroft." Or Cheney. Or Wolfowitz. Or any of the other administration guys that just creep me out.

¶ 661 Posted at 08.52 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Due to a realization that my image of Dean is mostly a media construct, and thanks to heavy lobbying by mute and Jothan, I have decided to throw my support to Howard Dean, just when it is becoming clear that it won't matter. Focusing on Kerry's "electability" is a joke. Dean may have an image problem, but when you look strictly at the record, it's clear he would make a better President than either Kerry or Edwards. I don't claim to know how it works, but he's still the delegate leader, so there is hope. And if it ends up being Edwards, well, that won't be bad. But Kerry? Yuck.

¶ 663 Posted at 08.22 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

When I think about it, I am completely bewildered as to how Kerry became the front-runner. The man is a nothing. In 20 years in the Senate, he somehow managed to do nothing. This aura of "electability" is completely baseless. Were Dean to be the nominee, he might be defeated by Bush. If it's Kerry, though, he's going to get destroyed.

You can attack an opponent on two levels, personality and the record. Dean is "the angry guy." Kerry is "presidential," whatever that means. Kerry has no record. Dean's got a decent record. Attacking someone on their record is far more difficult than attacking their personality, and while Dean might not have responded as well during the pre-primary period as he could have, he certainly demonstrated he could take it. And that it already happened is an advantage, because by the time the Bush machine got rolling, it would have been old hat. There's just no way they could have made that an issue for 5 or 6 months.

Dean's liabilities are clear and apparent: he's "the angry guy" and he voted for civil unions. So the playbook would have had two items: make him look hot-headed, and bait homophobes. W managed to overcome being portrayed as stupid, though, and I think Americans would choose hot-headed over stupid any day of the week. So that wouldn't work well. Baiting homophobes would be highly effective for a minority, and moderately effective to a point with the rest. That one's easy to have backfire. So that wouldn't be a perfect strategy either. That's not to say that Dean would automatically win, but that Bush would have a real challenge taking him on.

Not so for Kerry, though. His personality might be inoffensive, but his record stinks. And with 20 years of stinking, there's more than enough to keep the machine fueled up for the election cycle. He missed 70% of the roll calls. He introduced something like 11 (I've seen multiple numbers between 7 and 13) pieces of legislation, half of which were ceremonial. He voted against Desert Storm, against funding for intelligence services in the 90s, and for Iraq War II. He's in support of some of the weakest dinosaurs of the Democratic platform. The only apparent advantage he has is having been in Vietnam, and it's pretty clear just by looking at history that military service doesn't make nearly as much of a difference as people make it seem. In short, he'll get destroyed.

A very cynical weblog post/article about the Dean implosion. To summarize: the media turned against Dean and for Kerry because Dean was a threat. He showed that a candidate didn't need television in the Internet Age. Kerry magically snowballed based on "electability," which means "what I think other people think." How do you know what other people think? Well, the media tells you. I don't know how much I agree with this thesis, but it's enough that I don't dismiss it outright.

mute has something he would like to add.

¶ 665 Posted at 02.51 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I would find homophobes hilarious if they weren't so violent. The anti-gay message is basically rooted in the idea that homosexuality is contagious. I mean, sure, they talk all Sodom and Gomorrah, but it's not hard to see past that. What I find so funny about it is the hypothetical conversation:

Me: So homosexuality is a choice?
Them: Yes.
Me: And homosexual displays of affection, characters on sitcoms, and design shows getting their 15 minutes of fame encourage people to choose homosexuality?
Them: Yes.
Me: So you're saying that they could make YOU gay?
Them: ...

Obviously it wouldn't actually go that way. But the obvious response is so flimsy that they may as well be. "Well, not ME, but you know, other people." I think it's a very illustrative example of the rareness of the ability to think critically, to look at a concept and figure out what it actually means.

Pretty nearly the same thing is going on in the opposition to gay marriage. In addition to the homophobia, the argument is that it "weakens marriage." Uh, right. Bob and Bob from Provincetown calling each other "husband" will make me divorce Jessica. Or beat her. Or cheat on her. Riiight. I don't feel strongly about the issue, but I definitely know that the efforts to "defend marriage" are silly. And the Constitutional amendment idea is downright stupid.

I also like how these busy-bodies trot out research on how marriage correlates with better homes for children (here's an example for you). I don't disagree, mind you, I just find it strange that conservatives want the government to tell you what to do. It's revealing to me how the Republican party is behaving now that they control Congress and the Presidency. All that talk of "states' rights" and keeping the government out of people's lives is out the window. I'm making no claims as to how the Democrats would behave were the situation reversed, but I can't think of any instance where Democrats so thoroughly rejected their previous platforms once they were in position to grab power for themselves. If nothing else, they're just not that organized :-).

¶ 670 Posted at 05.22 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | politics )

I currently about halfway through Perfectly Legal, by NY Times tax reporter David Cay Johnston. The subtitle is "The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else." It's a pretty interesting read. It has a lot of good data. Johnston demonstrates how changes in the structure of Social Security have turned it from a pension plan into basically an income tax by another name, one unbalanced against the poor and middle class. He provides data indicating that the poor are many times more likely to face an IRS audit than the wealthy, and even when the wealthy are audited, the IRS is far less likely to pursue them and actually get paid. Johnston discusses how deferred executive pay allows CEOs and other corporate officers accumulate many millions through interest and capital gains on pay, while deferring taxes for decades. He goes over the corporate jet boondoggle, which allows corporate officers to get nearly free rides on the shareholders' dimes. He talks about how the Alternative Minimum Tax will effectively replace the standard income tax over the next decade for a substantial number of Americans in the middle and upper class (but not the very rich), and thus prevent them from realizing a large part of the benefits of the Bush tax cuts that were promised them. And that's only part of what I've read in the first half of the book. Johnston has assembled an impressive array of evidence in this book. Unfortunately, it's fundamentally flawed.

The flaw isn't in the content or the analysis, but instead the tone that the author chose. He has a tendency to stray from objective language. While he criticizes the (rather successful) language campaign to change the neutral "estate tax" to the politically charged "death tax," he makes a similar mistake by often using phrases like "tax burden." While you may agree that taxes are a burden, it is not objective language. He also will praise certain figures, while making a few (rather mild) ad hominem jabs. "Tax burden" is a phrase often used by Republicans, but Johnston's language is biased from the other side of the aisle; that's just the only example I could remember just now.

Johnston's editor could have helped him a little with structuring his arguments as well. He will go from talking about one set of numbers that apply to those earning $50K - $500K, and in the next paragraph start talking about those making $75K - $500K. That type of slipperiness sets off flags in my mind, because it makes me think I'm being tricked. So I reread it, only to discover there is no sleight of hand at work. But the feeling of discomfort doesn't completely disappear.

Also a problem is Johnston's tendency to state that some people are paying "too much" in taxes while other people are not paying "enough." The obvious problem with that is people have widely divergent opinions on what is "too much" and what is "not enough." Johnston's baseline for "just right" appears to be the tax structure that existed until the early 1970s. But really, statements of "too much" and "not enough" should have no place in this book. It makes the book sound like it's about determining what people should pay, rather than revealing what people actually pay.

Now, you may ask why this matters. I mean, fact are facts, right? The problem is that this is a work on public policy, and implicit in that is a call for change. However, for the change to happen, it is necessary to enlist the aid of the upper middle class. The standard Democratic position on the flaws in the tax system is that the poor and the middle class are paying too much while the upper class isn't paying enough. Johnston's thesis, however, is that everyone except the very rich is paying too much. Not just the poor and the middle class, but even most of the upper class. Both parties have structured the system in such a way that the moderately rich are worse off than they realize and potentially worse off than they should be.

However, many of the upper class are Republicans, and have heard the standard Democratic party line so much that they tune it out. And so when the Republican leadership tells them the tax cuts will help them, they'll vote for them, even though they are hurting themselves. To fix the problems with the tax system, it is essential to break through to those moderately rich Republicans and get them to understand that they are subsidizing the very rich, that things don't actually work the way they have been told. The flaw in the book is that, while it is a well-researched, analytical text, it looks and sounds like a screed. By his use of language, Johnston makes it seem like it is a screed against the upper class. Johnston gives those people far too many reasons to stop reading, because he unnecessarily attacks many things they identify with. And that's a bad thing, because for any meaningful change to happen, they need to be on board.

Johnston has written a revealing book. It contains a lot of data supporting how the tax system has shifted over the years. This is not a book about rich vs. poor. It is not a book about the flaws or merits of capitalism. IT is not a book about spending priorities of the federal government. It is about taxes. It is about how some people make a lot of money and pay little in taxes, while others make little, and pay a lot. You may agree with his conclusions. You may disagree with them. The tone of the book may make you want to put it down immediately, and I understand. But the book is worth reading, to get a clearer picture of the reality behind the rhetoric. The system is broken. Not just for the bottom 50%, or the bottom 75%, but for the bottom 99%. Johnston is angry. Rightfully so, I think. But nothing will get accomplished as long as most Republicans think he is attacking them.

¶ 671 Posted at 12.37 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | books )

There is been a lot of ink spilled about a so-called "battle for the soul" of the Democratic party. While I'm sure that's interesting, what I am more interested in is the battle for the soul of the Republican party. This is a battle that was waged and won (lost) years ago, but like all such battles, victory is only temporary. I vaguely remember a time when the Republican party was the party of prudence, of responsibility, and of caution. This new Republican party is none of those things. It got hijacked by the extreme right-wing branch, the branch that believes in money, social Darwinism, and a fire-and-brimstone flavor of fundamentalist Christianity. The battle for the soul of the Republican party was lost beginning with Newt Gingrich's "Republican Revolution," and fully lost with the ascendancy of George W. Bush over John McCain. The current battle within the Democratic party, effectively over now, pales in comparison with the battle that moderate Republicans lost. While my preference would be for George W. Bush to lose the general election in 2004, it is far more important for the moderate Republicans to take back their own party from the right-wing radicals who currently run the show. Only then can true progress be made.

¶ 679 Posted at 10.46 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

This will probably be my last post about the gay marriage issue. In no particular order (some thoughts cribbed from other places):

• As far as I can tell, there is considerably less opposition to giving gay couples similar rights to marriage as long as it's not actually called marriage. So the debate is about a single word.
• Bush wants to defend the "sanctity of marriage." The "sanctity of marriage" sounds awfully close to a religious definition, which the government shouldn't be involved in.
• The Constitution is a bad place to regulate social behavior. Really, the law is a bad place overall to regulate social behavior, especially the Constitution.
• Bush condemns "activist judges" who ignore the law, but I'm pretty sure that's how he became President in the first place.
• Oliver Wendell Holmes said: "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." I don't see where anyone's nose should be in someone else's relationship (with the obvious exceptions), so the right doesn't end. So to speak. I'm sure there's a clever way to state it, but I was left struggling for it (clearly).
• Ain't gonna happen. The hurdle to get an Amendment is just too high.
• Finally, this is just a big distraction, which is why I intend to avoid the subject in the future. Getting people up in arms about gay marriage means that people are not getting up in arms about Iraq, weapons of mass destruction (absence of), irresponsible tax cuts, Medicare pork, health care, defense pork, environmental degradation, and a whole host of other issues that actually matter where this administration is doing a bad, bad job. I'm not saying this doesn't matter per se, but that it's an election year tactic and won't get passed anyway. So let's not let ourselves get distracted from the real issues at hand. It's all too easy to exhaust your energy in an unwinnable (and unlosable) battle and have nothing left over for the battles that should be fought.

And that's that.

¶ 681 Posted at 01.47 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I know it's old news now, but I never really thought about it too hard. The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill raised the hard money cap to $2,000. My God. How could anyone possibly think that a limit that high is good for democracy? How many people can afford to contribute anywhere near that? The people who are affected by the limit are people for whom that is pocket change. I do well, but I can't imagine contributing more than a tenth of that to a campaign, even one I really believed in. $2,000... How many Americans live on less than that for a month? That number tells you immediately that campaign finance is deeply corrupted just by how it excludes more than 95% of Americans from even having a chance to influence the process.

¶ 683 Posted at 01.50 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I don't usually pay attention to this kind of thing, but did anyone else notice that Thursday, March 11, the day of the Spanish train bombings, was exactly two and a years after September 11, 2001? I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere else.

¶ 687 Posted at 08.14 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

It's sad that the train bombings in Spain will have the desired effect. We don't want the terrorists to "win," after all. That phrase may have been recklessly bandied about in the last couple of years for all sorts of petty reasons, but it's pretty accurate in this case. Spain got targetted because they supported the invasion of Iraq. But how do you say that the Spanish withdrawal was the right thing to do when it was clearly spurred by a terrorist attack? I didn't want Spain in Iraq any more than I wanted the US in Iraq. Spain's people didn't want Spain in Iraq, but, until last week, it appeared they were willing to re-elect the government that was responsible for it. Now the message being sent is that the terrorist tactics work.

The United States faces some of the same problem. The September 11th attacks can be directly traced back to United States policies that are wrong. We support oppressive governments in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. We steadfastly back Israel even when they cross the line. How do we address those failings in our policies without giving ammunition to those who use terrorism to pursue their ends? To me, the answer is clear: the ends do not justify the means. The nobility of a cause is not in its goals, but the tactics used to achieve those goals. Thus, the debate should not be about whether the United States should try to protect its interests and maintain stability in the Middle East, but rather whether we support autocratic governments in order to do so. To me this is clear, but there's a huge number of people who shrink from the principle.

Coming back to Spain, the cause and effect of the bombings in Spain and the war in Iraq goes a little deeper than the obvious. While the more direct connection is that Spain had troops in Iraq, what's even more important is that the diversion of resources to Iraq allowed the Taliban and al Qaeda critical breathing room to regroup and consolidate. The Taliban has regained control of about a third of Afghanistan because American troops were committed in Iraq. The US just launched a campaign to counter-attack the Taliban and to find Osama bin Laden, but we could and should have done this a year and a half ago. It's like antibiotic resistance. You take your medicine until it's gone; otherwise you won't just leave the bugs alive, you'll have made them stronger. The bombings in Spain makes me think that is what happened.

¶ 690 Posted at 11.52 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

For what it's worth, I don't fault the Bush administration for not anticipating September 11. I have no reason to doubt the word of Richard Clarke or the Clinton staff members who said they strongly urged the Bush administration to investigate Al-Qaeda, but let's face it, nobody saw September 11th coming. I don't think anybody thought that big. It's hard to say whether it was practically preventable on Bush's timeline. They'd only been in office for 8 months. The government is a big ship to move. I think all this attention on what Bush could/should have done to prevent September 11th is wasted energy. What we need to focus on is what they've done since then. Actually, I'm a little surprised that the Bush administration has so strongly asserted that they did everything they could have. It's just keeping the story alive. The conspiracy theorist in me says that's intentional to distract from the mistakes made since then, but I don't believe that. So, to recap, then:

• USA PATRIOT Act: Mostly Bad.
• Invading Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban: Good.
• Department of Homeland Security: I'm on the fence.
• Abandoning Afghanistan and invading Iraq: Mostly Bad.
• Continuing to support oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan: Terrible.

The average US citizen now thinks that they were misled about the invasion of Iraq. The average US citizen apparently gives George W. Bush strong marks for "leadership" in the "war on terror," even though they now seem to think they were deceived about Iraq. I don't get it. On a national security level, I don't care much about what Bush did before September 11th. I'm willing to give him a bye even if it turns out mistakes were made. But from where I sit, it looks like everything after Afghanistan is just throwing fuel on the fire.

¶ 707 Posted at 11.47 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | iraq )

When I listened to George W. Bush's speech on Tuesday, I was reminded of a science fiction short story that I didn't read once. As I recall, the plot was about a plot by the military/industrial complex to revive public support (and thus funding) for the space program. They send an astronaut into space, but there is a terrible accident, and he is stranded. They appeal to the public and make a crash effort to put together vehicles to rescue him. Alas, they arrive tragically late, but hey, look at all this neat kit they have now!

That's kind-of-like-but-different-from the way I feel about Iraq now. Bush goes on and on about defending the decision to invade, but, aside from justifying his removal from office, that doesn't really matter anymore. We're there. It's sunk cost at this point; what we have to look for is ways to maximize the outcome given our present situation. If we don't leave Iraq, we'll be worse off, but not as badly off as we would be if we did leave Iraq. There's no way out except through. It's the least bad of our available options. I didn't agree with the decision to invade (der), but I can't agree with a decision to bail out, either. Of course, that's easy to say since I'm not in the military and the draft isn't in effect, but take it for what it's worth.

¶ 714 Posted at 01.52 PM ⇒ No Comments ( iraq | politics )

Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times has an excellent editorial about the lack of tolerance of many liberals to Christians. He's entirely right. It's funny how two factions that both preach acceptance and tolerance have such difficulty accepting and tolerating each other.

¶ 720 Posted at 12.07 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | articles )

• Uzbekistan = Iraq in 1983
• Saudi Arabia = Iran in 1975
• Iraq = Afghanistan in 1989
• Sudan = Rwanda in 1994

Today is the past of the future. We can avoid the past's mistakes for the future, but for the moment, we seem to be repeating them. The only "interest of the United States" is in promoting freedom and democracy, not supporting the corrupt regimes of temporary allies to pursue current enemies. We know where that road goes. The ally of today is the enemy of tomorrow, if it is not just.

Oh, and one more, in case the rhetoric gets too heavy:
Nobody = Germany in 1923/1933

¶ 729 Posted at 03.39 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

A UT student is being investigated by the FBI and Secret Service for filing a Freedom of Information request for information on the maintenance tunnels under UT. It seems a little ridiculous; it was a freshman rite of passage to go running around the maintenance tunnels at Rice. Beyond that, my concern is that they felt it was pertinent to pester him about whether he was a member of UT Watch, the ACLU, or other "activist organizations." Nobody has ever in their wildest, fevered imaginings ever connected either of those organizations to even minor violence, but somehow it's ok for the feds to treat association with them as some kind of unsavory, immoral act.

¶ 730 Posted at 11.35 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | privacy )

Word is that the government is thinking about reinstating the draft. Not only that, but they're thinking about extending the eligibility age to 34 from 25 and including women. While I'm all for gender-equality, that is insane. Let's use that same thinking in other matters. Are parking spaces too small for your Excursion? PARK ON THE CURB. Having trouble sleeping? DRINK MORE. Too fat? BUY BIGGER PANTS.

¶ 734 Posted at 05.25 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

MTV (via USA Today) speculates on Bush and Kerry's job prospects in today's market.

¶ 759 Posted at 05.03 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Have you noticed how the campaign for a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage has collapsed? Like I said before, it just wasn't going to happen. It was just a distraction. In the end, it wasn't even effective as that.

¶ 775 Posted at 04.27 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I tend not to think about Bush's religious beliefs very often, because, well, it frightens me. I mean, my GOD, the idea that our foreign policy is determined by a 2000-year old book of fables and allegories is terrifying. People, we have a President who believes in the Rapture and Armageddon. That is insane. Here's a little article to depress you.

Due to the passing of the previous, hard-right Christian president, I get tomorrow off. I can't think of a single thing to do. How pathetic is that?

¶ 776 Posted at 03.05 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

There's a lot of talk about ways to clean up the horribly messy federal income tax code, but you rarely see plans where the proponents actually give something up. Well, I'll tell you what I will give up. I will give up my 401(k). I will give up my IRA. I will give up my mortgage interest tax deduction. I will give up my medical flexible spending account. I'll pay normal taxes on interest and dividends. I will give up my Social Security and Medicare benefits.

I don't understand why home ownership is regarded as a qualitative good that the government should encourage, especially since few people end up owning their homes outright. Either you pay rent to a landlord or you pay on a note to a bank, but the deduction has market-distorting effects for no meaningful gain. 401(k)s, IRAs, 403(b)s, FSAs, etc. are all unattainable by the poor; they are tax benefits that flow nearly exclusively to the middle and upper-middle class, not to mention they distort capital markets. My tax plan would be this:

• Progressive scale - Just because it's simple doesn't mean it's flat. I believe progressive rates are good. It is expensive to be poor. Corporate taxes rates are the same as individual tax rates (which shouldn't really matter, since most corporations would earn at the top rate).
• Federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and payroll taxes are combined into a single tax which is paid explicitly by the employee. No "hidden" taxes paid by the employer. No matter what your position on tax rates, having multiple overlapping taxes like we currently have only serves to cloud reasoned debate. Furthermore, the current cap on Social Security has the effect of flattening the progressive income scale at levels above the cap.
• Corporations can deduct dividend payments from their income. I believe that the stock market would be less destructively volatile and focused on quarterly numbers if dividend yields were common again. However, I believe individual income should still be taxed; nobody should have tax-free income simply by owning stocks.
• Deductions for education - loans, tuition, books, with a set allowance for lodging and additional expenses like computers. There would be a maximum.
• Deductions for taxes already paid - state income tax, property tax, etc.
• Deductions for charity
• Deductions for health care
• Standard deduction

With the exception of married vs. single rates (something I have yet to think about) and capital gains (a sticky issue), that's it. It would fit on a postcard. A very powerful reason for keeping it this simple is that it is really obvious when someone tries to push through an entitlement for a favored constituency. Adding a new deduction to a list of five is much more obvious than adding a new deduction to the thousands we have now and much easier to fight.

¶ 791 Posted at 10.33 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

A lot is made of George W. Bush's "moral clarity." I've always felt that was a liability, not an asset. Just look back over history. Few great figures saw the world in black and white; usually they saw greys. And of the major actors who saw the world in black and white, who suffered from no doubt, who pursued their goals without question, how many did good for the world? I can't think of many, especially in the 20th century. And so I find it odd that they are trumpeting this aspect of Bush's character, and that people are so readily accepting it as a positive trait. Someone who sees the world in black and white, who makes up his mind regardless of evidence, and seeks to avoid, discredit, and deny evidence that contradicts his world view is at best a naive buffoon, and at worst a dangerous zealot. But don't take my word for it. Just look at the histories.

¶ 794 Posted at 07.57 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I have a hopelessly idealistic plan for foreign policy. Let me say up front that it will never happen. But I can hope. I believe that the long-term interest of the United States is in encouraging the spread of democracy and human rights. Often, our government acts in ways that are contrary to that goal in the interest of short-term gains. I believe we are better off supporting democracies that disagree with us, like France, than we are supporting dictatorships that agree with us, like Tajikistan. I also believe that the biggest favor that the United States can grant a foreign country is free(r) trade. The military may threaten, but it can never encourage. And so I would tie a country's economic relationship with the United States directly to its freeness.

Everybody wants to trade with the United States. Every move towards democracy and human rights knocks a couple of trade barriers down, no matter if you are enormous China or tiny Sierra Leone. We let our judgment get too clouded by short-term gains. We lose sight of democracy as a practical good in the long run. We brandish the stick daily but rarely wave the carrot. And we are losing credibility. There is intangible good in spreading freedom and democracy, but there is also tangible good in the products of a free populace that cannot come from oppression. Some of the best, most innovative economies in the world are democratic countries with few resources but their own people: Israel, Taiwan, Japan, etc. Some of the worst, most backward economies in the world swim in natural resources but suffer from oppressive governments: Russia, Saudi Arabia, the Republic of Congo, etc. We need to recognize that what we can gain from the people of other nations is greater than what we can gain from exploiting their resources and turning a blind eye to their autocratic regimes. Our national economic interest is in developing the people, not their natural resources, and our foreign policy should reflect that. This isn't a warm and fuzzy plan to hold hands and sing songs; there is much greater tangible benefit to be had in the long-term. I just wish our leaders and our people were far-sighted enough to see that.

¶ 797 Posted at 10.18 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

In the history of the world, nobody has been so great as to deserve 4 weeks of a flag at half-mast. I'm well past sick of hagiographic treatment being awarded Ronald Reagan.

¶ 804 Posted at 06.59 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

According to the Columbia Journalism Review, political reporters are getting overwhelmed by the Bush and Kerry campaigns and getting caught in an "endless loop of spin." Found from Spinsanity, a site you really ought to be reading. While you're at it, read Fact Check as well. And FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. Then take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

¶ 806 Posted at 05.04 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I think the Arnold Schwarzenegger "girlie man" comment is getting as blown out of proportion as the Janet Jackson's Super Bowl Nipplegate, if not more. Yeah, sure it's impolite and not worthy of a state governor, but it's not like he dropped the F-bomb on the Senate floor (which should have gotten more press). Normally, I'd just ignore it, but I find something funny in the Democratic response, which calls the comment "sexist and homophobic." I don't think a homophobe could be married to Maria Shriver for 18 years or sustain a Hollywood career over an even longer period. That does not compute. But that's not the funny part. The Democrats are criticizing the Governator for being homophobic based on his use of the phrase "girlie man." It's clear that it is "sexist," but the Democrats are going beyond the plain meaning of "girlie men" and, in calling the phrase homophobic, are equating it with "gay men." In other words, the Democrats say gay men are girlie men. Nice going, guys.

¶ 815 Posted at 03.19 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

WMDs don't matter. There. I said it. See, there's all this talk about whether there actually were WMDs in Iraq, who believed there were WMDs in Iraq, whether it was plausible that there were WMDs in Iraq, and whether the Bush administration overstated the case for WMDs in Iraq. Now, there's plenty to find fault with on that issue, but all that focus on WMDs in Iraq ignores that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq period, regardless of the WMD issue. There's too much to do with Afghanistan. There was no connection between Iraq and September 11. The idea came out of left field to begin with, and the focus on WMD intelligence completely ignores that there was no relationship between the demonstrated threat of Al-Qaeda terrorism and Iraq. So I'm going to proclaim a heresy: even if Iraq was proven to have the banned weapons, so what? That doesn't justify an invasion when we had our hands full with chasing down Al-Qaeda, when we had other ways of confronting the problem, and when Iraq was basically contained.

¶ 821 Posted at 05.19 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

My (new) (lovely) (insightful) wife points out that Michael Moore might not have had a shot with the moderates and independents in the first place as I had suggested. Her point was that Michael Moore was already too polarizing a figure to have gotten them into the seats no matter how even-handed the movie. I have two responses to that.

One, Michael Moore is a recently prominent Democrat. His ascent was triggered by his Oscar for "Bowling for Columbine" and his now notorious acceptance speech. I believe that he already had the idea to make "Fahrenheit 9/11" at the time and that was not just a publicity-seeking move, but a publicity-seeking move with the specific purpose of setting the stage for his next film. So he could have avoided strutting so much on the left if his goal was to appeal to those moderates and independents; it wasn't something that had been decided and set in stone.

Two, forget about the unconverted and just focus on the converted. Don't they deserve the truth? Don't the people who are in theory already on Michael Moore's side deserve to be treated with a modicum of respect? They're already on board with the pro-Kerry/anti-Bush program; there's no reason to insult their intelligence with unsubstantiated allegations and innuendo. I hate feeling like I'm being manipulated, especially by someone with whom I should be able to find common ground, and I doubt I'm the only one.

My position on "Fahrenheit 9/11" remains the same. George W. Bush does not need Michael Moore to demonstrate that he is unfit to be President; Bush has already done it. All that was necessary was to present the obscure and overlooked evidence. By stretching the truth, Moore damaged his own credibility and that of "his side"* while simultaneously insulting those on his side.

* Most people are not critical thinkers who make fine distinctions between what Moore says, what Terry McAuliffe says, what Howard Dean says, what Kerry says, etc. It's unfortunate, but that's the reality we live in; Moore's excess taints them all. On the other hand, Fox News has certainly learned how to make a subjective point of view look objective by filtering it through a large number of talking heads... Hmm. This could be a whole new avenue in and of itself: Michael Moore offends me for the same reasons Fox News does. He is not "fair and balanced." He doesn't just report and let me decide. But it's late, and I want to go back to bed.

¶ 824 Posted at 04.51 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | media )

So it turns out the most recent "terror alert"* was based on information several years old. Fran Townsend, the White House's Homeland Security adviser, was quoted saying that the information† was recently updated and "We thought we had to get it to the American people so that they could protect themselves." So we could protect ourselves? What the hell is that? Isn't that their job? Isn't that why they have the PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Act? Please don't tell me that they weakened my civil liberties and blew a wad of government cash (my tax dollars at work) so I could protect myself. Isn't George W. Bush running on the platform that he has protected America? Protect ourselves? How is that even possible? The more you look at it, the more obvious it is that there is nothing there. It's empty political manipulation, all posturing and ass-covering with no practical value. It's the "war on terror" in microcosm. More on this later.

* A hilarious term, when you think about it.

† I refuse to call it "intelligence." It is not intelligent and use of the word only serves to make it sound more credible and grandiose than it really is. Not to mention that it just doesn't feel like good English. Of course, "information" isn't a good substitute, since these alerts are anything but informative.

¶ 830 Posted at 08.03 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

An editorial from the Christian Science Monitor suggests media complicity in enhancing the impact of terrorism. It makes some important points; after all, you can't have terrorism without terror.

¶ 833 Posted at 06.13 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

So, if you felt like dismissing my concerns as the ramblings of a loonie, be aware that the Bush-Cheney campaign is requiring loyalty oaths to see the candidates speak. That second article points out that the Democrats are no angels either; they used the "free speech zone" at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. That's even more offensive; the whole country is a free speech zone.

¶ 839 Posted at 10.20 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

You've heard over and over that John Kerry is "the most liberal member of the Senate" and that John Edwards is the "fourth most liberal." If you look at those statements for a moment, you realize there are all kinds of problems with them 1 . Who made the list? What were their criteria? What actions are covered? What time period is involved? Spinsanity covers those issues with their usual thoroughness, including a link to an analysis by a University of Houston professor. Note that according to that analysis, Ted Kennedy is not "the most liberal" either.

¶ 842 Posted at 05.47 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | media )

"Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness." One of many sources.

¶ 844 Posted at 02.51 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | terrorism )

I'm surprised and pleased that George W. Bush said this:

We actually misnamed the "war on terror." It ought to be "the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world."

Source. Marketing hates the name, but it's a far more accurate summary of the problem than I've heard to date from this administration (marketing hates accuracy too). Of course, these words are only as valuable as the actions that reflect them. So far, Bush's administration hasn't acted as though they believe it; witness the ridiculous assertion by the head of the FDA that importing drugs from Canada opens the United States to another vector of terrorist attack. How that is a danger when Ecuadorian bananas or Canadian maple syrup are not is beyond me (unless it's a ploy to deflect criticism of big pharmaceutical companies, but that wouldn't happen). Until the Bush administration stops exploiting the word "terrorism" for cheap political gain, I can only think of Bush's statement above as words. Perceptive words, perhaps, but only words.

¶ 845 Posted at 11.35 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | terrorism )

In 2004, I'm not going to cast my vote for John Kerry. I have the gift and curse of living in Texas. Barring a major catastrophe, Texas will go overwhelmingly for Bush in this election. If Texas doesn't go for Bush, then it is likely almost no state is going for Bush and Kerry will win by a landslide. That's not likely, of course, but it does cover my bases. This inevitability is ironically liberating, as it frees me to vote for whomever I deem most fit for the presidency without guilt. It is also a reminder of how messed up the system is. True power does not come from being able to vote. If you can choose who appears on the ballot, the votes don't matter. Oppressive dictators the world over know this and use this. In the United States, it is more subtle. Instead of putting only one choices on the ballot, there are many choices, but they convince you that most of them are a waste. Then they stack the system to make that so. I can't think of anyone who passionately supports John Kerry. Even Gore aroused some enthusiasm. If we had a real choice, John McCain would be President today. If we had a real choice, Howard Dean would be the Democratic candidate. We cannot choose what we really want because the true power is in the hands of the parties and the system that keeps those two parties at the top.

I was one of those who voted for Nader in 2000. Of course, being in Texas, that vote didn't have the same impact as a vote for Nader in Florida, but I might have done the same thing there. I believe that the far right of the Republican party has learned a tactic that Democrats would do well to learn. In 1988 at the Republican National Convention, George H. W. Bush made the bold statement, "Read my lips: no new taxes." Several years later, Bush was forced by mounting deficits to renege on his promise and pass a tax hike. In 1992, conservatives stayed away from the polls or went to Ross Perot. George Bush lost to Bill Clinton because he abandoned his base, and they punished him. The conservative base of the Republican party wanted to teach Bush a lesson and to set an example for future candidates. Knowing that, can you imagine any Republican trying to raise taxes? That was my thinking in 2000. The Democratic party of Clinton had moved to the center. In the view of many, they moved to the right 1 . A binary choice between Democrats and Republicans gave you little real influence. The only leverage you had was throwing the election to the other guy. That was the purpose I saw for Nader, a purpose he served with some success. He was there to keep Gore honest. If Gore went too far to the right, he would lose his base to Nader and lose the election to Bush. Ignoring the snafus of electoral procedure, that's about what happened. Nader's effect would have been nothing if he'd folded his hand when his bluff was called. Gore didn't stay honest, and he was punished for it. If it hadn't been overshadowed by September 11th and Iraq, that lesson would have stood for future Democratic candidates, to make sure they were honest where Gore wasn't.

Unlike many people, I don't blame Nader and his supporters for Bush's victory in 2000 and everything since. The common feeling at the time was that it didn't matter who you voted for because the two candidates were so alike. I didn't agree with it, but I understood it. In retrospect, that perspective might not have been the best, but hindsight is flawed. Regardless, I believe people are taking the wrong lesson from that. The sense in 2000 was that there was no substantive difference between Bush and Gore. The last four years being what they have been, most people now believe there was a huge difference, and that what they felt in 2000 was completely wrong. I disagree. Imagine a world where there had been no September 11th. Without the PATRIOT Act, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and other things that came as a result of, September 11th, a Gore presidency wouldn't have been hugely different than a Bush presidency. It is only through the events of September 11th that what were previously minor variations became magnified into stark differences. In other words, the choice between Gore and Bush in 2000 was neither irrelevant nor of monumental proportions, but a combination of the two. In the case where those four years were much like the previous four years, there wasn't a great distinction. But in a world of extraordinary changes, these differences become vastly more important. The lesson to take from this is not that selecting the candidates is always of paramount importance 2 , but instead that you are selecting a president for the incredible and extraordinary possibilities as much as you are for the norm. It's not about choosing a forseeable future but instead buying insurance for the futures we can't foresee.

¶ 856 Posted at 11.02 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

In a fantastic and surreal turn of events, Alan Keyes plays the race card against Barack Obama. There are so many things wrong with that.

¶ 863 Posted at 03.34 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

If there is a terrorist attack before the elections, and it is not an attack on John Kerry and John Edwards (or their campaign), it will be a boost for George W. Bush. This is obvious enough that any potential attackers know it, which means they must intend that. I won't go so far as to say Al Qaeda wants Bush in power, but it's clear that Bush has reacted to September 11th about how they hoped, polarizing the Islamic world and enabling extremists to pull more supporters to their cause.

¶ 864 Posted at 11.20 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | terrorism )

I have been reading over and over that the Republican National Convention is leading with its moderates, Giuliani, Schwarznegger, and McCain. The problem is that McCain is not a moderate. He is worthy of respect, but there are few more conservative members of the Senate than him. In this ranking I linked previously, John McCain is the fourth most-conservative Senator. Is it any wonder he didn't want to be John Kerry's VP? He may be a maverick in the Republican establishment, and I'd choose McCain over Bush in a heartbeat, but he's no moderate.

¶ 866 Posted at 12.34 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The Young Republican Majority sound just like moderate Democrats, with the exception of fiscal policy, although their foreign policy goals are vaguely stated.

¶ 869 Posted at 12.35 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The Kerry campaign has been fighting a losing battle against the label "flip-flopper." That's unfortunate, because if they weren't so much on the defensive, we could examine the contrast between "flip-flopper" and "decisive leader." That's probably what the Bush campaign wants. Up close, the boldness is revealed as recklessness, the decisiveness as a lack of imagination, the determination as stubbornness, and the strength as belligerence. Bush's courage is lauded, but I'm at a loss as to when he displayed this courage. The Bush campaign has done an excellent job of offense, so their praise of Bush's character isn't revealed as such a double-edged sword. Kerry stands in stark contrast to Bush, who has exactly 3 ideas that he applies to any issue: enrich the wealthy, bomb the brown people, and pander to the religious right. Kerry is forced to defend something that isn't bad, an appreciation for complexity and context for which Bush either lacks the capacity or interest to understand. I have no idea how the Kerry campaign can turn this around, but I do know the Bush campaign is taking a risk that they might. They have laid it all out, so all Kerry needs to do is shift how it is viewed.

¶ 875 Posted at 11.43 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The subversion of democracy? America as a One-Party State: how Tom Delay has manipulated obscure and arcane rules and regulations to squeeze out Democrats and homogenize the Republican party.

¶ 880 Posted at 05.20 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

On ballots in Texas, you have the option of checking a single box to vote the party ticket for Democrats or Republicans. By making voters think of the party rather than the individual candidates, it encourages them to turn off their brains and rubber-stamp the candidates selected by the party apparatus. If you want to vote all Republicans or all Democrats, you should have to select each one individually, at least to maintain a nominal degree of power. Otherwise, you become helpless to the party machine; they can control your vote by being just marginally better than the other party, without actually being good. We see that in the disproportionate influence that New Hampshire and Iowa have over the presidential process. The true will of the people is obscured and subverted. Would you rather have Kerry vs. Bush or Dean vs. McCain? If you can control who is on the ballot, it doesn't matter what the vote is.

¶ 881 Posted at 07.23 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I believe a partial solution to the increasing cost of health care is aggressive, preventative care. It's been proven that the effectiveness of treatment is much greater when medical conditions are detected early in their development; similarly, costs are considerably less. A substantial portion of health care spending goes to paying for patients in the later stages of disease. Not only are their chances of survival less, but their costs are much higher. So I would propose that employers and insurers join together to encourage preventative medical treatment. Right now, people (with health insurance) view their health insurance as something to use or not use at their convenience. That is the wrong way to view things, as it provides an undeserved safety net for the irresponsible and costs the responsible.

I would favor a system where insured persons are required to have annual physicals and quarterly blood/urine tests (blood tests for cancer are in development). If they don't, they must pay extra to keep their insurance. I might also favor additional costs for risky behaviors such as smoking and not exercising, as long as it is limited to things that are a choice. I see this as a can't-lose proposition. Liberals will like it because it reduces the cost of health care and thus makes it easier to provide health care to those who couldn't otherwise afford it. Conservatives will like it because it rewards responsibility and keeps the responsible from paying unduly for the irresponsible. There is no way the current system can survive, but we don't have to see it as a simple choice between providing health care and not. We can save money and provide better health care at the same time, but it will require turning insurance from a blank check into a responsibility.

¶ 885 Posted at 05.36 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I am puzzled by the fascination in American politics with home ownership and home ownership as an investment. I admit, for a time I was under its spell, but after running a few numbers, I've decided that there is little benefit to home ownership over renting. People often point to tax benefits to owning a house. Then there are the subsidized mortgage loans offered by the Fair Housing Authority and others. Since those are applied relatively uniformly, all they do is inflate the price. After all, if everyone gets more money, they'll simply pay more. Even worse, the tax benefits are skewed toward the lower end of the market, meaning it is the cheapest houses that are inflated the most. When you think about it, it makes sense that the market would price renting and owning at rough parity; the two being out of step with each other would result in a net movement of people to compensate, correcting the imbalance.

Since most people (including me) buy their homes with loans, they don't actually own the homes outright; they have exchanged a landlord for a banker. I believe that the direct costs of home ownership are played down; I'm about to drop 5 large on new AC/furnace and attic insulation. Then there's $300 to repair my garage door, a few hundred for the bug man, and, of course, property taxes. When you add it all up, it's a substantial amount to pay on an ongoing basis, not to mention that it is your problem instead of someone else's.

People often talk about building up equity in a house, but that should be looked at like any other investment. If you subtract the cost of renting a roughly equivalent dwelling from the cost of "owning" it and invest that difference in a mutual fund, you'll come out about even, give or take. Now, if you live in a place where housing prices are increasing faster than the stock market, you'll come out ahead, but it could just as easily go the other way.

Don't take this to mean I think it's a bad idea to buy a house. I'm just saying that if you're going to buy, you should do it because you want to. There are tangible benefits. It's hard to rent a nice house, so if you want a house rather than a condo or apartment, you will have to buy. Sometimes you can get a really good mortgage rate, but low rates generally coincide with low rents; however, if inflation is high, it can be an advantage to have a locked-in payment. Sometimes, the only option in an area you favor is buying due to the nature of the area. And sometimes you just want hot pink walls. But don't let anyone tell you that home ownership is always a good investment, because it isn't. You can get lucky, but you can't count on it; the factors are usually things out of your hands. There are benefits to buying, but there are benefits to renting. Focus on the non-financial aspects, because the money doesn't matter.

¶ 889 Posted at 12.36 PM ⇒ No Comments ( house | politics )

A recession is when someone you know is out of work. A depression is when you are out of work. And a recovery is when George W. Bush is out of work. Credit to this Slashdot comment. Oh, wait, I see that's an update of a Ronald Reagan quote. I think it's more true now than then, though, and turnabout's fair play.

¶ 896 Posted at 08.15 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | funny )

I never agreed with the Iraq invasion, but if John Kerry truly thought it was the right thing to do, this is what he should have said about it in the debate:

The Bush campaign has been insistent about calling me a "flip-flopper" on the war in Iraq. They claim that I've changed my mind about the war to fit public opinion. They are right that I've changed my mind, but about this President, not the war. The President has said that I saw the same intelligence that he did. He's half right. I read the report that said that Iraq had acquired aluminum tubes for producing nuclear materials. I did not see the report that said those tubes had another purpose, which the President did see. I read the report that said that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Nigeria. I did not see the report that said that was a fabrication, which the President did see. I read the report that said that there were contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Al-Qaeda. I did not see the reports that said that those contacts amounted to nothing and Iraq had no role in the attacks on the United States. I saw the intelligence they used to justify this war, but they kept hidden the intelligence that undermined it. I voted for the authorization for this war because I trusted that this President was being honest and would use that authority wisely. Unfortunately, that trust was misplaced. This President knew there were flaws the case he presented. This President only made a token effort to avoid a war. This President rushed to war with too little planning and too few troops, resulting in the grim headlines we see every day. Yes, I voted to authorize the invasion, but I didn't realize we were giving such power to someone who would use it so poorly.

As an aside, it's kind of fun writing a fake speech. The flow and cadence are different and more important. It's kind of cool.

¶ 905 Posted at 10.12 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | iraq )

I finished watching the debates this weekend (well, at least the parts I had recorded) and had a couple more comments.

Kerry said at one point that Osama bin Laden is using Iraq to recruit; Bush didn't deny it (and in fact, implicitly agreed) in saying that we shouldn't allow bin Laden to dictate our foreign policy, i.e., just because it's advantageous to bin Laden doesn't make it a bad thing. Later, however, Bush said that bilateral talks were exactly what Kim Jong Il wants. Apparently, Kim Jong Il can dictate our foreign policy.

Through most of the debate, Bush attacked Kerry for sending the wrong message to the troops by criticizing the war in Iraq. He repeatedly quoted Kerry's comments about it being a "diversion" and the "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time." Bush kept talking about what affect those words would have on the US soldiers stationed in Iraq. I have to wonder, how out of touch is this guy? The troops know the war is going badly. They know it's being handled wrong; it's right in front of their faces every day. Kerry isn't telling them anything new and Bush is insulting their intelligence to suggest that it's John Kerry affecting their morale. Think about what the message is when your commander-in-chief is claiming everything is sunshine and roses when you see it's exactly the opposite. What is worse, a commander-in-chief who admits a mistake or one who denies reality? Which one is more likely to get you killed? It's the same disconnect that has become cliche with this administration; they think that by controlling the message they control reality, which is more than a little crazy.

¶ 906 Posted at 08.38 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

If it is disrespectful to the troops of Kerry to question the Iraq war, what was it when Bush invited attacks on those same troops when he said, "Bring it on!"

¶ 915 Posted at 11.04 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | iraq )

You may have heard the brouhaha about Jon Stewart's recent appearance on CNN's "debate show" "Crossfire." He showed up with an axe to grind, that the news media aren't challenging politicians on meaningful issues. The politicians and their minions would rather trick people into coming to their side than persuade them. The media let them get away with it by focusing on irrelevant and superficial issues; instead of real debate, they just present competing liars. They may ask "hard questions," but they don't follow through with them. Jon Stewart stated his point several times in several ways, but didn't seem to be getting through to either Paul Begala or Tucker Carlson, the hosts of the show. The irony is that, in their attempt to deny and distract from his point, they validated his concerns and justified his criticisms. Therre is a transcript of the show, but you should watch it instead. You can get the video from IFilm (but you have to watch a commercial first) or use BitTorrent.

¶ 918 Posted at 12.13 PM ⇒ No Comments ( tv | politics )

Amir sent me a couple of topical articles. From Rolling Stone, a liberal infiltrates the Bush campaign. From the NY Times Magazine, George Bush sure is sure about a lot of things.

¶ 920 Posted at 05.53 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I joined the club and voted early this weekend. I was one of those "undecided" voters you hear so much about. In the end, I decided not to waste my vote on a third-party candidate and instead wasted my vote on a major-party candidate. I decided that, while the Texas electoral votes might not be going the way I want them to go, maybe I could give the state a little nudge to be less "guaranteed for Bush" and more "leaning toward Bush." The journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step, after all. I was thinking about Gore yesterday. All the current Kerry voters who either voted for Bush or Nader in 2000 or didn't vote at all would probably kill to be able to vote for Gore today. Gore has his faults, but does anyone think Kerry would be a superior President to him? I sure don't. There's a lesson in that.

¶ 923 Posted at 09.59 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Bush's determination is often cited as a reason to support him because he has the drive to carry the "war on terror" to victory. I question, however, whether he truly has the will to succeed. Success requires unsentimental, ruthless self-analysis. Everybody makes mistakes, but successful people learn from their mistakes. Bush has shown no willingness to undergo this self-examination, and so he can neither recognize his mistakes nor avoid repeating them in the future. This stubborn refusal to admit fault is a clear sign that he doesn't truly want to succeed. He isn't willing to make the sacrifices necessary, both personally and politically. He talks the talk, but he won't walk the walk. Kerry may have his faults, but I have much more confidence that he will be able to come up with the right strategy for success.

¶ 925 Posted at 10.52 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I don't hold out high hopes for a Kerry presidency. Part of it is the man. In addition, he will be facing a hostile and Republican Congress 1 . Most important, however, is that Bush's policies have constrained and shackled Kerry to an extent unmatched previously 2 . Many decisions have effectively been made for Kerry, especially in the big issues like Iraq and tax policy, and to back out either is impossible or would be catastrophic.

The greatest virtue of Kerry the President is the same as of Kerry the candidate: he is not Bush. We can be relatively sure that he will not initiate disasters such as the invasion of Iraq 3 . However, he will be beholden to disasters that have already been created. I see little likelihood of his policy initiatives gaining traction, given the fiscal burden of Iraq and the tax cuts. In some ways, there is a silver lining to a second Bush administration. I oppose Bush's presidency because I think his policies lead to more bad things and fewer good things than would happen under better policies. Bush has spent four years either evading or delaying the reckoning, but after eight years, it would be impossible for all but the most partisan Bush supporter to deny. Four more years of Bush would put the nail in the coffin for neoconservatism, supply-side economics, and other bad Bush policies 4 . A Kerry victory would actually let those bad ideas live on, as any failures resulting from them would instead be blamed on Kerry.

In several places I have seen statements like (paraphrased), "this is not the most important election of our lives; the most important election of our lives was in November 2000, but we didn't know it at the time." The more I think about it, the more I agree. With Election Day now upon us, it is important that we have reasonable expectations of what is to come. I will celebrate a Kerry victory, but I know that it will take a lot more to repair the damage done by four years of George W. Bush.

¶ 935 Posted at 09.49 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

How the hell did he lose to this guy? If Kerry couldn't beat Bush, maybe he didn't deserve to win. At least my stocks are going up.

¶ 939 Posted at 10.15 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

So, who's up for 2008? In the Republican corner, we have Bill Frist, John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani, "Jeb" Bush, Chuck Hagel, and possibly (as an outside shot), Colin Powell. Jeb Bush is the most obvious successor to George W. Bush, but that may backfire. A clear omission from that list is a candidate with George W. Bush's evangelical credentials. In the Democratic corner, we have John Edwards, Howard Dean, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Richardson. Hillary Clinton is the top candidate for the nomination, but I think the strong Republican turnout in this election would make her candidacy a dicey proposition in 2008. Obviously I'm omitting candidates who will emerge over the next four years, but this list is already crowded with heavyweights; I don't see how there's room for a middle-level candidate like Wesley Clark. The next four years will tell if this election reflected a strong turnout or a fundamental shift in the electorate. Until that becomes clearer (likely in 2006), all this prognostication is nothing more than a pathetic attempt to be positive.

¶ 942 Posted at 10.48 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

There is no state income tax in Texas. State revenues are derived primarily from sales tax. County and city revenues are derived from sales tax and property taxes. Sales taxes are inherently regressive, as spending grows more slowly than income; poor people spend more of their income than rich people, overall. Under previous law, property taxes are deductible from federally taxable income. The recent corporate tax bill will allow taxpayers to deduct sales tax as well. This deduction, while matching the deduction available to those who pay state income tax, compounds the regressive impact of the sales tax. This deduction can only be taken by people who itemize their deductions. Most poor people take the standard deduction of $4750 (2004 FY). For them to justify the sales tax deduction, they would have to have spent about $50,000 on taxed goods (at Austin's sales tax rate of 8.25%). Few people spend that much money. In general, only people who were going to itemize anyway will benefit. That generally means the middle-class, upper-class, and/or homeowners. If they're getting a tax break, someone else will have to make up the difference. That means poor people.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to deduct taxes paid. The sales tax is already regressive, but this tax deduction 1 just makes it worse. Sales taxes should be fixed so they're not regressive. Maybe that means refunds. Maybe it means making it deductible without itemizing. Maybe that means outright elimination. I don't claim to have the answer, but I know a problem when I see one. Poor people pay for being poor in many, many ways 2 . That helps to keep them in poverty because they cannot accumulate the critical mass necessary to look beyond the next paycheck.

¶ 945 Posted at 11.01 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

It's time for the United States need to go their separate ways. It's been a swell 228 years, but we're different states now, and, well... this is so hard... we've met someone new. It's Canada (shock and dismay... "My best friend! How could you?!?!"):

Credit to... I don't know; it's been all over.

I'd like to think that I live in a little embassy to Jesusland. Take a look at this map and notice the blue dot in the middle of Texas. That's us, baby. And if we're an embassy, we're sovereign territory of the United States of Canada. Or maybe we're like a Lesotho within South Africa 1 . Yeah... whatever I need to tell myself so I can get out of bed in the morning.

¶ 947 Posted at 08.09 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The standard red vs. blue map is too simple. Try something more complex.

¶ 955 Posted at 03.29 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I have heard that other nations make Election Day a national holiday. It's such an obvious idea that I'm amazed we don't do it. People are busy, after all, and having the elections on a Tuesday only makes it less likely that people will vote. I'm sure a substantial part of the discrepancy in turnout between the United States and other democracies can be ascribed to Election Day being a regular working day where elsewhere it is a holiday. Of course, to make Election Day a national holiday, we'd have to give up some other holiday. Looking around the calendar, the nearest holiday that I found was Veteran's Day, on November 11. It was perfect. It's a holiday to honor the soldiers and sailors who fought for our country. They fought for freedom and democracy. More than anything else, free elections embody the spirit of democracy. After writing this up, I discovered I'm not the only one who thought of this.

¶ 964 Posted at 01.58 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

If you don't find the concept of a gasoline war tax compelling and stubbornly insist that gasoline should be as cheap an plentiful as water, don't think of it as a "war tax," think of it was a "war prevention tax. The United States has fought wars caused by oil, and it's naive to think that the United States has never been induced by oil to enter into wars, but in those cases, it was always mixed in with other reasons. That may change, however, in the next 20 to 50 years, though. If our economy isn't weaned off oil, it is inevitable that we (along with other industrialized nations) will make a bald grab for oil. The United States may be top dog today, but I hesitate to assert the same will be true in 20 to 50 years. With all the difficulties in Iraq even as top dog, I shudder to think what such a war would be like. Heavily taxing gasoline wouldn't just pay for our current military involvement; it would also force us to find alternative energy sources 1 so that, while the rest of the world is squabbling over oil, we're sitting pretty in our nuclear/wind/solar-powered fortress. There is a counter-argument that the market will naturally solve the problem once the price of oil rose enough. Seeing how our government's foreign policy has already been influenced by oil with it as cheap and plentiful as it is today, it's clear to me that the tail is going to wag the dog even harder in the future; natural market forces have never been the dominant factor in oil. Think of a gas tax as part of your patriotic duty. Paying a little extra now will help us avoid paying more later, in money and in blood.

¶ 966 Posted at 09.40 AM ⇒ No Comments ( issues | politics )

The NY Times has a long article on how the federal government has produced and distributed "video news releases" that are then broadcast by various news programs. In many cases, those segments are not clearly identified as being produced by the government. It's not the end of the world, but it's not exactly a positive thing. Besides, didn't anyone stop to think about how this was going to make Fox News feel?

¶ 1036 Posted at 06.41 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I've stated before that I think gasoline is too cheap. Chances are pretty good that you disagree with me. Ask yourself this: has the price of gasoline altered your use of it? In a capitalist economy, buyers and sellers each set their own prices. If a buyer or seller doesn't get a price they can accept, they do without. If you think gasoline is too expensive, but you haven't changed your driving habits, the vehicle you drive, or done anything else that would reduce your consumption, you're just grousing. Everybody who buys anything would like for it to be cheaper. The proof isn't in what you say but what you do. Gasoline isn't "too expensive" if you're still buying just as much as you did before.

¶ 1077 Posted at 01.23 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I have mentioned before that I think people who choose to live in less healthy ways should pay more for health insurance. It looks like I'm not the only one thinking that.

¶ 1082 Posted at 07.03 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

In Australia, job seekers have to meet what is called a "mutual obligation" requirement in order to receive unemployment benefits. They must:

• actively seek work
• constantly strive to improve their competitiveness in the labour market
• give something back to the community that supports them

That's a really good idea. It's too easy when you're unemployed to sleep late, watch TV, and generally loll around like a slug. That's wasted time that could be put into something useful. Furthermore, it also helps people learn new skills at the same time, eliminating the chicken/egg problem with experience 1 . IT workers with obsoleted skills could help local non-profit organizations. Are you a machinist? Maybe your church needs some audio/visual support. If you're a graphic designer, you could help your public library design materials promoting a literacy campaign. Can't find work in the building trades? Habitat for Humanity is everywhere and always in need. Obviously, people can already do this, but having local government mandate it while connecting unemployed people with such work would go a long way.

¶ 1084 Posted at 03.30 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

IBM has joined Microsoft, Intel, and other large technology companies in claiming there will be a critical shortage of IT workers in the United States in the coming years. These companies bemoan the decreasing numbers of students interested in math and science. Is it any wonder? How many people has the tech industry laid off in the last 5 years? Employment is only now getting its legs under it and they're claiming the sky is falling.

I have a solution to their problems: pay more money and offer more job security. Do that and the rest will solve itself. Why haven't they done that? I think it's pretty obvious: they don't want to. The cynic in me says this is just laying the groundwork for increasing those H-1B allocations. Now, don't get me wrong; I think free trade is a fine idea. H-1Bs aren't free trade. H-1Bs are temporary. The workers come in, work for a few years, gain skills and experience, save their money, and leave. At the end of 5 years (or so), we end up with 5 years of work for the employer while 5 years of experience and a big chunk of money permanently leave the country. I think our government should encourage companies to give jobs to Americans. That can mean hiring someone who is an American today, or it can mean hiring someone from another country and turning them into an American. At the end of 5 years, the employer has gotten the 5 years of work at a somewhat higher up-front cost, but the 5 years of experience stay in the country and the money goes back into our economy. Immigrants will displace American workers when they arrive. That's inevitable. Over time, however, they contribute to our economy and we end up with a stronger economy than we would have had otherwise. The emphasis is over time. If those immigrants leave after 5 years, then we pay the up-front cost of displacing an American worker without reaping the long-term benefit of gaining an American.

The H-1B program was originally intended to allow companies to hire workers who had unique skills that could not be found domestically. My extra-rectal estimate is that there are about 1,000 people in the world who are that special. Obviously, with an H-1B population numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the imported workers are a little less unique than that. This is all work that many Americans could potentially do, assuming the market was allowed to operate the way it should. Temporary immigration is government intervention into the market that short-changes the labor side, and thus the citizens and permanent residents. Eventually, that will come back around by reducing the number of domestic customers, and thus retarding the growth of those same companies and the US economy as a whole. It's not like they can switch to another country, either. The United States consumer is currently (and irresponsibly, but that's another topic) driving the global economy. China and India are growing fast, but they are so large that it will take decades before the world economy is sufficiently diverse that the US couldn't drag it down. In other words, I'm against short-sightedness, not capitalism.

Bad enough that we lose a skilled potential American. What's worse is that our loss is another country's gain. I think free trade is a fine idea, and India and China and Eastern Europe need to develop sophisticated, domestic economies. We can encourage their success without shooting ourselves in the foot. In the long run, we prosper from their prosperity. I would prefer, however, that it happen by them gaining their own advantages rather than us giving away ours.

It's good politics in the United States to speak in favor of improving the educational system. Sending jobs overseas is bad politics, so US corporations want to appear as though they care about domestic fortunes. If American tech companies really believed what they say about a worker shortage, they would offer more money and more security. That they haven't indicates that they don't believe it after all. That is unfortunate, because they would reap dividends for decades if they invested in America.

¶ 1092 Posted at 02.02 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | (un)employment )

If your job is delivering pizzas and you drive a (new) Ford F-150, gasoline isn't too expensive.

¶ 1094 Posted at 11.09 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The Atlantic Monthly had an article in the June 2005 issue about How We Would Fight China. Newsweek had several articles asking "Does the Future Belong to China?" It is the conventional wisdom that China will be, if not an opponent, then an increasingly dominant counterweight to the United States in the coming decades. China's economy will likely exceed the United States economy in size around 2020, and where economic power leads, political and military power soon follow. In order to keep from being eclipsed, the United States needs to bulk up. In this kinder, gentler time, that means forming alliances and building strong partnerships. There is one country that could be a solid and valuable partner, and that is India.

The common ground between India and the United States is great. India is the world's largest democracy. India has a large English-speaking population and a strong Western influence through its colonial history. India is a polyglot of cultures and ethnicities like the United States. Both nations are deeply concerned about Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Cricket and baseball are both dumb games.

India and the United States also complement each other well. The United States has a very strong presence around both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, while India is growing increasingly dominant where we are weakest in the Indian Ocean (der). India has a large supply of inexpensive labor to supply the insatiable American consumer, while the United States has deep experience and knowledge in technology and business. India's billion people are a very large potential customer for American agriculture, and their burgeoning middle class is a logical consumer of American innovation.

International relations highlight the contrast between China and India. Taiwan is China's top national security priority, and we will butt heads with them over it for a long time to come. Pakistan is India's top national security priority, and their interests align closely with ours, especially once the Pakistan's inevitable Islamic Revolution occurs. We will inevitably disagree with China over Japan and the Korean peninsula, whereas there are no similar issues with India. India and the United States share a common interest in the stability of the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean area, and Central Asia.

China can provide a lot for us in the short-term because of their sheer brute force, but in the long run, our relationship with them will be unstable. China has too great a need to be the dominant power in a region that we care deeply about, while India is both less aggressively assertive (excepting Pakistan, of course) and has a sphere of influence that overlaps less with our own. China's repressive government and semi-planned economy bear the potential for civil strife in the long run, while India's democracy, while fractious, is inherently more stable. We've expended a lot of energy trying to push the Chinese along in terms of human rights; India is already most of the way there.

A strong partnership is more than simply being friendly and having free trade agreements. We want them to be closer than close. The US-India relationship should be as close and strong as the relationship between the United States and Great Britain or Japan. We need to ease trade and travel and eliminate foolish restrictions on Indian students studying in the United States. We need to conduct more military exercises to build operational compatibility and mutual respect. We need to engage in more joint ventures such as peacekeeping. We need to support India's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. In other words, India and the United States can and should be BFF. The world is changing, and the United States will need close ties with reliable partners in order to maintain its position in the new century. India is a rising power with much in common with us and much to offer as a partner on the world stage.

¶ 1099 Posted at 12.29 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Scientists have discovered that switching a single gene in a female fruit fly will induce it to behave like a male, according to the International Herald Tribune. That seems to be a solid step down the path of establishing homosexuality as being a result of genetics. And that is not a good thing. I'm not saying it's a choice, either, nor that establishing it as a choice would be any better. Frankly, I don't care, and neither should anyone else. This is one of those damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situations. If homosexuality is proven to have a genetic cause, then social conservatives will argue it is a genetic defect. If it is proven to be a choice, then they will argue it is a depraved and degenerate practice. They can find arguments condemning it if it's caused by non-genetic biological factors, by environmental factors, or by cosmic rays and Cher. Now, I'm not saying that we should pay attention to what social conservatives think. In fact, I say quite the opposite. Arguing about whether the cause makes it acceptable is still wrong and still lets them dictate the agenda. It implicitly acknowledges that one's sexuality needs to be justified to unaffected, uninvolved parties. I say that it doesn't matter one bit where homosexuality comes from except for academic reasons. What matters is that homosexuality hurts nobody 1 and is nobody's business. Root causes are irrelevant. It just is, and that should be good enough for everybody.

¶ 1109 Posted at 10.26 AM ⇒ No Comments ( science! | interesting | politics )

There's a controversy in Austin about toll roads. A bunch of people want them. A bunch of other people don't. The latter have bumper stickers condemning toll roads as "double taxation." They make me gag. Taxpayer-funded highway construction is a popular pork item, which effectively makes everybody pay for roads that only some people use. Toll roads are a good idea because people who use the roads pay for them in proportion to their usage, and people who don't use them shouldn't. The "double taxation" catchphrase is, well, catchy, but it's also stupid. If there was no toll on the road, everyone's taxes would go up to compensate, but I don't see anyone complaining that their taxes are too low because of the tolls. Similarly, if there was no tax money being used for highway construction, the tolls would be substantially higher, but I don't see "double taxation" opponents clamoring for higher tolls. They want their road usage to be subsidized by the general body of citizens; "double taxation" is just a smoke screen.

To digress briefly on toll roads... I suspect that one thing that deters people from using mass transit more is that they have to explicitly pay per use. Using roads costs money as well, but paying those costs is decoupled from any given use of it. If we had toll roads, on the other hand, you would explicitly pay per use, eliminating that perceived difference, and (hopefully) increasing the use of mass transit.

¶ 1112 Posted at 05.58 PM ⇒ No Comments ( austin | politics )

The NY Times writes about the Heritage Foundation's internship program. Quote 1:

Mr. Lowry theorizes that young conservatives are especially interested in the ideas undergirding their politics...

Quote 2:

Among the perks of the summer program is a lunch series in which interns make their way through the conservative canon. "Being raised a Christian, with family values, I want to make sure I have a solid philosophical footing," said Mr. Hurff, 21, the Wake Forest senior.
Mr. Cribb, whose uncle, T. Kenneth Cribb Jr., was a Reagan aide and a Heritage fellow, said that the internship offered a chance "to study the fundamental ideas of conservatism."

Now, this article happens to be about the Heritage Foundation, but I don't mean to pick on a conservative group. My point applies no matter what your political beliefs are. The quotes I excerpted above basically say, "you get your beliefs first and justify them second." It's a perspective that says that what you believe has entirely to do with who pitched you first and how well, that politics are about salesmanship and the first-mover advantage, not about what ideas lead to better outcomes. The better outcomes are only useful insofar as they support the advancement of the belief you already hold.

That's a problem with people, not Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, or whatever simplistic division of the world you would like to employ. To paraphrase the cliche, "most people use argument and reason the way a drunk uses a lamp post, not for illumination, but for support." That's the kind of discourse that leads to talking heads talking past each other with competing talking points, serving less as expert commentators than as cheerleaders for "their side."

This is a viewpoint that results in the means to an end become the end in and of itself, like affirmative action or low taxes. Too often, we discover our beliefs and ideas in our heads, and we don't think about how they got there. I am immediately skeptical of someone who believes the same things their parents believe. I am also skeptical of someone who believes the opposite of what their parents belief. Being a reactionary is no better than being a follower; both serve as substitutes for thought.

I am increasingly convinced that the core of the problem is that we as a species are struggling to cope in a world that is far more complex than the world we evolved for, and we just barely manage to get by. "Getting by," though, means simplifying, ignoring, and rationalizing a lot of the things we do and deal with. We just wouldn't be able to function otherwise. We certainly make incremental improvements, like abolishing slavery or granting universal suffrage. Most people don't realize that the line separating good from bad has been the same in every one of those battles, and so the cause of progress must fight the same battles in slightly different forms with each generation. Progress still happens, but it happens in random fits and starts, and without ever finally settling the deeper issues. Critical thinking skills are necessary, not just intelligence. Some of that can be taught 1 , but I despair that it can all be. To advance beyond this state of affairs requires that we as a species change. There is a place where idealism and pragmatism converge, but getting there may be beyond us.

¶ 1114 Posted at 04.58 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

In February, several House Representatives introduced HJ 24, proposing an amendment to the Constitution repealing the 22nd amendment, which limits presidents to two terms. This is likely the sort of token gesture that often takes place in Congress, but it's a good idea. I agree with the general intent of term limits, but they are not optimal. Term limits are the ideal solution to a problem we don't have, of politicians serving in office for long periods of time. The real problem is that incumbents have an inherent advantage over prospective challengers. Term limits may rectify that, but at considerable cost to the freedom of voters to elect officials of their choosing. How many people would kill to have Bill Clinton back, warts and all? We should focus instead on measures that more directly reduce the powers of incumbents, such as financing of campaigns, franking privileges, stronger anti-corruptions laws and enforcement, and elimination of gerrymandering. Term limits are a hack, not a solution.

¶ 1116 Posted at 12.27 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The Justice Department is making quiet noises about requiring ISPs to log all customer Internet use. Web hits, chat logs, file transfers, etc. would be included in this. The destruction of privacy is obvious, and you don't have to think very hard to guess my opinion. More than being offensive, however, such a policy would just be stupid. Anybody with anything to hide (and lots of people without) would switch to using encryption, such as Trillian's SecureIM, PGP, tunneling over SSL, etc. It would be useless in catching criminals. Then there would be the terabytes and petabytes of storage required, which would likely bankrupt most ISPs. I doubt this would pass, because it would be too expensive and would accomplish nothing. Even if it was practical to save all that data, even if it wasn't a gross violation of the 4th amendment, and even if mobsters, child pornographers, terrorists, etc. used unencrypted channels (which they don't even today), the government wouldn't be able to analyze all of the data; it's just too much. This is just an attempt to avoid doing the real and hard work of criminal investigation while still appearing to be doing something. Technology cannot solve social problems. It can be used as a tool, but like all tools, its effectiveness is narrow, and it cannot replace a real solution.

¶ 1117 Posted at 02.06 PM ⇒ No Comments ( internet | politics )

Hillary Clinton slipped a notch in my eyes by advocating regulation of computer games. It's a stupid thing to get incensed about, especially when there are real problems that need to be solved.

¶ 1136 Posted at 09.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Rick Santorum was on "The Daily Show" last night. He clearly believes certain things very strongly. My feeling is, ok, whatever. However, he wants to legislate certain things that I just fundamentally disagree with. That provokes a different reaction. Santorum isn't arguing about what color to paint the bike shed, he's arguing about how people live their lives. One thing that separates him from other social conservatives, though, is that he says "you should do this because it leads to better results," rather than "you should do this." To me, that's a big difference. It allows me to say in response, "measure it." You believe very strongly that certain behaviors are bad and lead to bad things. Go out there and prove it. It's not enough to make a logical, qualitative argument; you can make sound, persuasive arguments based just on reason that contradict each other. Public policy needs more. It needs data. Gather some data and prove a causal effect, and then we can talk. Until then, it's just a theory, and people's lives are too important to meddle with based on just theories.

¶ 1141 Posted at 09.34 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

It would be nice if more news articles (including opinion columns) stated their sources. There are obvious reasons for that. The less obvious reason I want to see such references is because in so many cases a story or allegation has only one or two sources, but the echo chamber of partisan media makes it seem like there are a lot more.

¶ 1149 Posted at 01.21 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Whoa... The Bush administration actually did something to address an official's incompetence. Michael Brown isn't fired or demoted, though, nor has this affected anyone further up the ladder. I'm sure the buck stops somewhere...

¶ 1160 Posted at 03.27 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I cringe whenever someone mocks Bush's occasional mispronounciations and malapropisms. I similarly cringe when someone points out his poor record in business, mentions his troubles with alcohol, or asserts that he only got where he was based on his family. All of those things may be true, but they are also irrelevant. What matters is what Bush does, and those things should be evaluated independently. A bad idea from Bush is a bad idea. A good idea from Bush is a good idea, period. Making it personal simply distracts from the actual issues and turns politics into high school.

There is plenty to oppose in what Bush does without focusing on Bush the person. Making it personal (regardless of whether you support or oppose his policies) is illogical, as you don't and can't know Bush as a person. I have no reliable information whatsoever on Bush the person. Everything I have seen and heard has been passed through multiple channels that select, emphasize, decontextualize, interpret, and otherwise distort what might be a clear picture. Furthermore, I rarely see people I know personally making speeches, conducting town hall meetings, visiting disaster areas, or getting interviewed on prime time television. Those are all unnatural and rare occasions for a person to be in, so I cannot rely on them to give me a picture of what that person is like under more ordinary circumstances. Bush as a person is irrelevant; all that matters is Bush the President. After all, Bill Clinton had many flaws as a person, but as a President, he did a pretty decent job.

Beyond being useless, focusing on Bush the person also makes you look bad. If you're a Bush supporter, you look foolish when you say you support him because of perceived personality traits. If you're a Bush detractor, you look even more foolish when you pick on minor, personal foibles because you sound petty and mean. In both cases, you look like an immature, empty-headed dolt who is easily lead by the nose and doesn't think for himself. It makes you sound unreasonable and petulant. It's especially galling when someone will pick out a mispronunciation when Bush announces that Exxon/Mobil is going to club baby seals to fuel SUVs. Who cares how he said it, what matters is that he's trying to do a bad thing. Get some perspective. The only way we're going to accomplish anything lasting is by convincing people who currently disagree with us on various that our way is superior, or by letting them convince us that their way is superior. To do that, you have to be sober, open-minded, and reasonable, else they will write you off as irrational and not worth talking to, and I'd be hard-pressed to say they were wrong.

Speaking of being convinced that other people's ways are superior... I have also become increasingly convinced that Roberts will be a good justice. This is not because I agree with his politics, but rather, because I believe he will leave his politics outside the court room. I have come around to a more strict interpretation of the role of the judiciary and the Constitution. It has nothing to do with being against abortion, the rights of accused criminals, separation of church and state, gun control, or battered women. While I may agree with the results, the process used to achieve those results is faulty.

The federal courts have read concepts into the Constitution that simply aren't there. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you govern with the Constitution you have, not the Constitution you want. If you don't like the law, your choices are to live with it or to advocate change. Our Constitution has a mechanism for change in the legislative and amendment processes, and it does not involve the judiciary.

I believe that there is a fundamental right to privacy, but the Constitution only partly acknowledges that in the Fourth Amendment. I believe that there is substantial public interest in making it harder to acquire and distribute guns, but the Second Amendment is the law of the land. I believe the Ten Commandments have no place in the Texas State Capitol, but their simple presence does not violate the First Amendment's prohibition against Congress establishing a religion. I believe endangered species should be protected, but "interstate commerce" has nothing to do with a hapless toad. There is what is, and there is what I want to be, and I cannot resort to an abuse of power to make what I want come to pass. Taking shortcuts may seem to achieve something in the short term, but in the long run, it weakens our system of government and creates divides between our citizens. The ends do not justify the means.

¶ 1161 Posted at 12.57 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Surely the illegal surveillance ordered by George W. Bush surpasses any personal indiscretion and perjury committed by Bill Clinton. How have we arrived in this place where such a revelation does not immediately lead to impeachment? It is baffling how reason and common sense have been up-ended in just four short years that the President can assert the power to do anything and everything in furtherance of a badly-defined, ineptly-waged war on an abstract concept, without answering to any other authority. Yes, there is controversy, but not nearly the attention demanded by such a thorough and gross violation of numerous laws, a rejection of the principles on which this nation is founded. They called Clinton the Teflon president, but he's got nothing on W. What does it take?

¶ 1192 Posted at 02.46 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The bizarre thing about the spying on Americans scandal is how seriously people are taking the Bush administrations assertions that they have that power. Most Republicans are basically taking the line, "oh, well, it's basically just a clerical error that it's not in the Constitution." The Democrats and some Republicans, on the other hand, are responding with, "oh no, you've made a slight error in your reasoning." The proper response is to laugh in the face of the hapless Bush minion making the claim, possibly spraying your beverage all over him. These aren't arguments that are on shaky ground; this is nonsense, it's pure fantasy. The Bush administration's ability to read this so-called presidential power in the Constitution makes the "judicial activism" of Earl Warren et al. look like Scalia's textualism 1 . The worst part is the way Congress is (not) reacting, letting themselves be enslaved to cowardice 2 and partisanship to the detriment of us all.

¶ 1198 Posted at 08.40 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Some web site has a list of the 50 most loathsome people of 2005.

¶ 1211 Posted at 05.49 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | news | funny )

It's been a while since I last looked at 2008 presidential candidates. To make it simpler, I'm just going to eliminate a bunch of candidates:

• Hillary Clinton: video games are a threat, she voted for the Iraq War, and, last, but not least, Congress is not like a plantation with Democrats as slaves. Also, she's unelectable. She might still get the nomination, but she can't win.
• Bill First: he betrayed his medical background by "diagnosing" Terri Schiavo from a videotape and implying that HIV can be transmitted through sweat and tears in an effort to build his credibility with the fundamentalist base of the Republican party.
• John Kerry: isn't it enough that he lost once already?
• John McCain: he choked on the Confederate flag issue in 2000, supported and continues to support the war in Iraq (the latter being more egregious), and (the last straw) believes that Intelligent Design should be taught in schools. He has many positive deeds and attributes, but those overshadow them.
• Rick Santorum: yeah, right.

I cannot see myself voting for any Republican. The Republican Party has been hijacked by fundamentalist "Christians" and jingoistic neo-conservatives who have no concept of freedom, liberty, compassion, or true morality. I could (in theory) support a Republican like Barry Goldwater 1 , but as long as the Republican party is tethered to that base, every Republican president will be beholden to them. My preference from the list of potential 2008 candidates is for Russ Feingold (the only Senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act) or Al Gore. I don't know enough about Bill Richardson, Evan Bayh, or Mark Warner to have an opinion. I have weaker (Joe Biden) or more obvious (Al Sharpton and Wesley Clark) opinions on the remainder of the Democratic possibilities.

¶ 1218 Posted at 01.01 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas... sigh) is ordering an investigation into Citgo because of its program to provide heating oil for up to 60% off list price for poor and low-income residents of several northern states. This is a unilateral program initiated by Citgo at no cost to anyone except themselves. The problem? Citgo is owned by the government of Venezuela, and thus controlled by our pal Hugo Chavez. The column I refer to above also claims Barton is a friend of the oil industry, but that's more speculative, so I'll shy away from it, mentioning only that it's pretty hard not to be a Texas politician and care about oil, if only for the sake of your constituents (set your benefit of doubt on maximum).

¶ 1231 Posted at 08.11 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

George W. Bush should be impeached. There is no longer any question in my mind. You can make a case for Bush being a terrible president based on Iraq, Katrina, federal deficits, and any number of other, awful Bush administration policies, but elevating those to the level of crimes justifying impeachment is hard.

What is unambiguous is that he has committed treason. He has violated his oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." George W. Bush, in signing the renewal of of the Patriot Act, included an addendum that stated he did not feel bound to obey its requirements. This is mind-blowing stuff. George W. Bush has as much said that no Congress or judiciary has the authority to constrain him. He denies the checks and balances that are built into the Constitution based on some complete nonsense.

Take for example the NSA wiretaps, where the Bush administration has argued that the President has "inherent power" to do anything and everything necessary to "protect the nation from foreign attack," and he and only he decides whether a particular action is for that purpose. In other words, George W. Bush claims he can not just eavesdrop on your private communications, but also take your property, search your home, forbid public assembly, confiscate your weapons, imprison you indefinitely and without charges, torture you into self-incrimination, kill you, and give you a wedgie. Quite obviously, that is bullshit. By ordering such actions, and even just asserting the executive branch has those powers, Bush has violated his oath of office and the Constitution, and thus committed treason against the United States.

Of course, this will never happen. The Republicans in Congress are too blind and too partisan to see the damage that Bush has done. It's not enough that he is going to leave office in 3 years, assuming he doesn't claim that he has the "inherent power" to remain in office after the expiry of his term to "protect the nation." This country cannot permit any person to overthrow the Constitution, not even once, and allow that to go unpunished, lest it set a precedent. He must be investigated, tried, and punished the maximum extent permitted by law (which, for treason, is pretty severe).

¶ 1260 Posted at 12.33 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

McIntyre in the Morning is talk radio show in Los Angeles. It's nice to see someone admit he was wrong. I have to be mean-spirited and question a couple of his comments:

None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement of the opposition party. The Democrats are equally bankrupt.

Emphasis his. I understand why he is reluctant to endorse the Democrats. They have shown few virtues and little spine over these last years, and his point about their lack of vision is entirely right. Nevertheless, to claim that they are bad is simply ridiculous. There's a big difference between Bush & Co.'s ongoing train wreck and most Democrats' cowardly, impotent silence. He also impugns Al Gore unnecessarily, putting him on the same level as Bush. Al Gore has his faults, but nobody could reasonably think that a Gore presidency would have been nearly the disaster that the Bush one has been.

I feel somewhat guilty about this criticism, however. Saying "I told you so" does nothing good. It makes people less likely admit their mistakes when that is the welcome they receive. Nevertheless, I believe Doug McIntyre deserves that criticism because he is either making the mistake of saying they're all the same, or making the mistake of bending too far backward to be fair. Yes, both parties make mistakes, but to claim they are equally responsible is as bad as saying that one party makes no mistakes. That kind of over-simplification is just plain wrong, and perpetuates the fundamental issue that has contributed to our current state, that of rhetoric and bluster passing as reasoned argument.

¶ 1284 Posted at 05.57 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Nancy Pelosi has said Democrats won't seek impeachment even if they win a majority in the 2006 elections. That is absurd. Impeachment is completely justified, to the point where Congress is neglecting their duty to the country by not pursuing it. This isn't about political tactics anymore, but rather an unobstructed, unlawful grab for powers anti-thetical to the governing principles of this great nation.

The Democrats are afraid of seeming vindictive, but the people who would accuse them of that would call them all kinds of names no matter what. No amount of bending over backward to appear fair will matter to the knee-jerk reactionaries, so they should just ignore them. Mainstream America wouldn't consider impeachment vindictive when presented with the volumes of evidence detailing George W. Bush's violations of the Constitution and (other) federal law. There's no way to appear fair other than by being fair.

The Democrats justifiably don't want to be unfair by being overly harsh, but their attempts to avoid that are taking them down the even worse path of being overly meek. There are real crimes that must be investigated and punished, both for the present and to destroy any possibility of these actions serving as precedent. The right thing to do is the right thing to do. I can hope that Pelosi's statement was meant keep from ruining their chances in the 2006 elections, but I don't really expect them to magically find their spines the day after.

¶ 1285 Posted at 03.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Wikipedia has the standard county-by-county red vs. blue image of the United States shaded by the results of the 2004 presidential election. The difference with this one, besides using purple, is that the counties have been resized according to population. Looks a little more balanced, doesn't it?

¶ 1354 Posted at 12.16 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I voted today. I don't remember the last time I voted on the actual election day, since early voting is more convenient. I had a simple formula for choosing candidates in all the non-gubernatorial races. I voted for Libertarians when there were candidates, otherwise Democrat. I always voted against the Republican. I'm not against Republicans as a matter of policy, but I'm certainly against these Republicans. As long as the party is dominated by the fundamentalist warmongers, there's just no way they'll ever get my vote.

¶ 1384 Posted at 12.02 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I put little stock in Rumsfeld's resignation. For one thing, it was inevitable. For another, its timing was clearly chosen to blunt the media attention given the Democrats. It also makes it easier for them to shift strategies on Iraq and buy more time, as a lot of baggage goes with Rumsfeld. As incompetent as Rumsfeld was, though, let's remember who his boss is who supported him for almost 6 years. An interesting tidbit from Bush's press conference yesterday:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Last week you told us that Secretary Rumsfeld will be staying on. Why is the timing right now for this, and how much does it have to do with the election results?

THE PRESIDENT: Right. No, you and Hunt and Keil came in the Oval Office, and Hunt asked me the question one week before the campaign, and basically it was, are you going to do something about Rumsfeld and the Vice President? And my answer was, they're going to stay on. And the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign. And so the only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that answer.

Translation: I lied to you for political gain. What's surprising is how frank he was about the lie, and how the reporters just accepted it.

¶ 1392 Posted at 02.55 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

What are the odds that the Democratic ticket in 2008 will not be Hillary Clinton on top with Barack Obama as VP? <sigh>

¶ 1404 Posted at 12.32 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

We want to use less energy. Compact fluorescent light bulbs use much less electricity than incandescent bulbs. So it makes sense for, say, Australia to ban incandescent bulbs, right? Except... GE has developed an incandescent bulb that uses the same amount of electricity as a CFL. That's great news for everyone who doesn't live in Australia. This is an excellent example of why governments shouldn't try to pick winners. If you want people to use less electricity, make electricity more expensive. People will figure out their own solutions. Some people will do nothing and pay more. Some people will install better light bulbs. Others will put in skylights. And others will just sit in the dark. I don't care what they do, and neither should the government. What matters is that people use less electricity, not how they do it. One size does not fit all. Try running an Easy-Bake Oven on a CFL.

The hybrid tax credit is the same. If you pay taxes in the United States and I buy a hybrid, I want you to know that the income tax credit that I get for that is a waste of your money. I drive a 30 mpg Toyota Corolla a distance of about 5,000 miles per year. It makes no sense to give me $3,000 so that I use 100 gallons of gas per year instead of 160. And that $3,000 isn't going to get a Hummer driver into a Prius. You make gas more expensive, and I won't care because I don't use much anyway, but the Hummer driver will take notice. If consumption of gasoline is the problem, make gasoline expensive. 1

The City of Austin is considering mandating that all houses sold in the city be made more energy efficient at the time of sale. That's the same sort of one-size-fits-all solution that wastes money. My neighbor is a bachelor living by himself. He doesn't eat much food or do much laundry. Why should the city force him to have a new dishwasher or clothes washer? On the other hand, we eat at home nearly every night of the week, and having a toddler in cloth diapers means a buttload (haha) of laundry. It might make sense for us to have new appliances. But that should be our decision. After all, we could easily switch to using disposable diapers. Even a general mandate such as investing 1% of the sales price in such measures is misguided; there are year old houses and 100-year old houses, and they use vastly different amounts of energy. Applying no upgrades to the former and 2% of the value of the latter will achieve far more good than a flat 1%.

Higher prices aren't (just) about profiteering. Price is an important mechanism for balancing supply and demand, as I described in a hypothetical example last year. If you want less demand, increasing the price is the simplest and best way of doing it. It allows people to reach their own accommodations with the new reality, whether through substitutes, conservation, avoidance, or just ponying up the extra dough. It keeps the focus on the real issue. Mandating compact fluorescent light bulbs does not deter electricity wasted on a TV nobody's watching. It also makes it obvious exactly what's going on; how much do you suppose Toyota and Honda lobby for the hybrid tax credit? Let's be clear: we as a society do not want compact fluorescent light bulbs. We don't want hybrid cars. We don't want Energy Star appliances and weather stripping. What we want is for people to use less energy. Let people find their own ways of getting there.

¶ 1407 Posted at 02.58 PM ⇒ No Comments ( energy | politics )

Sigh. It looks like Barack Obama has demonstrated he's not so "clean" after all: Obama campaign circulates document critical of Hillary Clinton's links to Indian groups, including a reference to Clinton as "D-Punjab." I don't like Clinton, and I'd like to think I am objective enough for this not to be about India. It's just an ugly smear.

¶ 1483 Posted at 12.14 PM ⇒ No Comments ( india | politics )

Bill O'Reilly is a lying jackass, so I mostly don't mind that Home Depot will no longer advertise on his program 1. However, I was more than a little bothered by this sentence in the email from the Home Depot representative: "The Home Depot has a policy that prohibits the running of its advertising on programs that express strong opinions or political views." I mean, I understand, but it's still pretty depressing.

¶ 1522 Posted at 03.48 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I can't find the fire in me to get angry about what the Bush administration does anymore. It's not that I have other things that take my attention. I've just lost the ability to be outraged.

Every President has caused outrage for something. Most Presidents have made at least one egregious violation of American principles. Nixon had Watergate. Reagan had Iran-Contra. So far, Bush has:

• Launching the Iraq War under false pretenses
• Abu Ghraib
• Guantanamo
• Warrantless wiretapping
• Extraordinary rendition
• Valerie Plame (by association)
• Signing statements
• US Attorney firings
• Torture

And those are just the highlights, just the mistakes that violate American principles rather than simply demonstrating incompetence. When other Presidents screwed up like that, they'd bob and weave and try to tap-dance around it. They'd try to play down the controversy and play it cool. Not Bush. He'll either assert that he's right, lie, or ignore it. Then another scandal will erupt, and we'll forget about the previous one.

That's why I can't be outraged anymore. It's overwhelming. It's like the circuit in my brain that handles that emotion doesn't work anymore. It carried too much for too long, and now it's blown out. I'm sure I'm not the only one. If it was intentional, I'd say it was a brilliant and audacious strategy. At least I can take comfort in knowing that Bush has probably motivated more people than have burned out.

¶ 1536 Posted at 12.25 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

He's certainly providing ammo. Unlike Kerry, though, this one is legit.

¶ 1540 Posted at 12.39 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Back in 2005, Alaska (of course) Representative Don Young changed the contents of a bill after the House and Senate had passed it. How is this even possible? Every single job I've had has had a system for preventing exactly that kind of thing, even when it was just a music web site.

¶ 1546 Posted at 02.46 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | stupid people )

Russia under Vladimir Putin is becoming a fascist state. The word fascist gets abused a lot, so let me be clear what I mean by that. Russian nationalism is on the rise, encouraged by the government. Power has been increasingly centralized from local communities and provinces. Russia is increasingly portrayed as a victim of the West. The key historical event in that perspective is the dissolution of the Soviet Union, with the more recent expansion of NATO and the EU into Eastern Europe and the presence of American military forces in Central Asia also figuring significantly.

Russia's foreign policy has become increasingly aggressive, even belligerent. Russia has asserted itself in the UN Security Council on issues ranging from Kosovo to Iraq to Sudan; even when the issue seems irrelevant to their interests, they seem to assert their veto just to be acknowledged. Its activities in surrounding countries have been bolder. Russia has used its natural resources agreements as a weapon against Georgia, Ukraine, and Belarus. The fight for independence of Chechnya was violently suppressed to arrest the further fragmentation of Russia.

The internal politics have also become more fascistic. There has been steadily increasing government control of the media and a corresponding decrease in press freedoms. There is effectively only one political party in Russia. The FSB, successor to the KGB, is thoroughly entrenched in the government; Putin himself and many of the other high-level officials are former KGB and/or FSB. Individual freedoms and rights are secondary to the needs of the state.

Finally, the central government has been asserting greater control over the economy by blurring the lines between corporate and state. Key examples are the near-invisible line between the Russian government and Gazprom, the Russian natural gas company, which has been used to advance both domestic and foreign policy goals, and the effective expropriation of Yukos, a petroleum company. While the Soviet Union controlled the whole economy and production was centrally planned, fascism relies on nationalizing primarily the key industries, with much of the economy remaining relatively laissez-faire.

While there is no agreed-upon definition for fascism, today's Russia certainly seems to hit the common elements. The government is authoritarian, with many direct and indirect appeals to the good of the state. Nationalist sentiment is stoked by the government by portraying Russia as a victim of foreign powers. Strategic elements of the economy are effectively indistinguishable from the central government. Mussolini's definition of the term fascism emphasized the primacy of the state (centralized control) and "strength through unity" (i.e., "uniformity"). More than any other nation today, Russia embodies the idea of the fascist state. It turns out I'm not the only one who thinks so.

¶ 1569 Posted at 01.04 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Media coverage around the 2008 presidential election is excessively focused on the campaigns. They describe and dissect the daily doings of campaigns like Monday morning quarterbacks. They talk about tactics and perceptions rather than the candidates and the issues. It's too much about the machinery and not enough about the end goals. It's too much noise signifying too little, but its appearance of pulling back the curtain makes it seem deep rather than shallow. It's all built up out of nothing, which makes it easier for the media to shape it. They give their blessing to the "serious" candidates who play the game, like Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney, while dismissing as jokers and weirdos the more interesting candidates like Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, or Mike Gravel.

A naïaut;ve observer might have guessed that 24-hour news would have offered the opportunity for broader coverage, but instead it has enabled saturation bombing of even narrower messages. I have similar hopes for the Internet, with some satisfaction to be found from the strength of Ron Paul's showing, but there's also the lesson of Howard Dean to give me pause. The campaigns are no more relevant than the card stock used for mailings. Losing sight of the candidates and the issues makes it easier for weak candidates with a poor grasp of the issues to slip through; indeed, it encourages it. Unless we reject the shallow focus, we'll get more of the same, and we'll deserve it.

¶ 1597 Posted at 12.13 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | media )

Fact: John Walker Lindh never attacked or planned to attack US citizens or US soldiers. Fact: Lindh never provided assistance to Al Qaeda. Fact: though Lindh was involved the Taliban, he primarily did so before the United States had any dispute with them, i.e., before September 11th. Fact: Lindh had nothing to do with the uprising at the prison in Mazar-i-Sharif, nor the death of CIA officer Mike Spann. Fact: Lindh was tortured and otherwise deprived of the rights due a US citizen. Fact: the worst offense Lindh pled guilty to (he was convicted of nothing) was carrying weapons for the Taliban.

Due to all of that, Lindh is now serving a 20-year sentence in the ADX SuperMax facility in Colorado, where he is kept in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, with only 1 hour outside his cell in the prison yard. Consider the other guests in residence there, and their crimes. Lindh may have broken the law 1, but there is no way that what he did justifies his treatment. He didn't kill anyone. He didn't injure anyone (that I'm aware of). He didn't kidnap anyone. He didn't steal anything. He didn't commit treason 2. As far as we know, he never fired his weapon or even raised his voice in anger. For this he gets 20 years. If there was anything remotely like justice in his case, he would be a free man today 3, but if justice could be relied on, this never would have happened. I just wanted to make sure you didn't forget he existed.

¶ 1610 Posted at 05.37 PM ⇒ No Comments ( issues | terrorism | politics )

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that latest National Intelligence Estimate (PDF) concludes that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and does not appear to have restarted it. Furthermore, the report states that Iran would not be able to build a bomb until 2010-2015, even if they started now. The Bush administration has been trying to pick a fight with Iran for almost 6 years (counting since the "Axis of Evil" State of the Union speech in January 2002). How do they respond? I give you National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, from the press briefing yesterday:

...we have good reason to continue to be concerned about Iran developing a nuclear weapon, even after this most recent National Intelligence Estimate. In the words of the NIE, "Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons if a decision is made to do so."

And:

...we are very unsure of Iran's attentions [sic], even with respect to the covert nuclear weapons program that Iran has halted. Again, let me quote the National Intelligence Estimate: "We do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidentially whether Tehran is willing to maintain the halt of its nuclear weapons program indefinitely while it weighs its options, or whether it will or already has set specific deadlines or criteria that will prompt it to restart the program."

In other words, Iran isn't the threat we've been claiming for 6 years, the seeker of World War III (according to George W. Bush in October), the crazed fanatics itching for a nuclear apocalypse. But, because they might change their minds, we have to continue our current strategy, i.e., threatening (and likely planning) war. This only serves to reinforce what I've suspected all along: most of the "tensions" and "crisis" with Iran has been provoked, caused, or outright invented by the Bush administration.

As a side note, the Bush administration may have been sitting on these conclusions for quite some time, given Hadley's tap-dancing around the question in the press briefing mentioned above (refer to the Q&A portion), even as they continued the same bellicose rhetoric.

¶ 1611 Posted at 11.31 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Extra time in debates is one way the "front-runners" get preferential treatment from the media. "Front-runner" status becomes self-reinforcing. I'd like to steal an idea from the chess world. The candidates are each allotted the same amount of time at the beginning of the debate. From the moment the moderator finishes the question until the candidate finishes answering, the candidate is on the clock. If a candidate runs out of time, that's it; they can't talk anymore throughout the debate. If you want to spend your whole time budget talking about fishing, you can do that. If you want to allocate the same amount of time to each topic, you can do that too. I figure for a 90 minute debate with 8 participants (the current Democratic field), you'd give each candidate a 10-minute clock, with 10 more minutes for the moderator to ask questions 1. For the 9 Republican candidates, it would be 9 minutes each, plus 9 minutes for the moderator. This would also nerf the biased tactic of questions directed at particular candidates. Of course, since this would take power away from the political machines at the center and distribute it more towards the fringes, it would never happen, but it's nice to dream.

¶ 1616 Posted at 05.46 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

A woman becoming President of the United States is a victory against sexism. A vote for a candidate (even partly) because she is a woman is a victory for sexism.

¶ 1619 Posted at 04.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I'll renew my prediction from last February that the Democratic ticket will be Hillary Clinton for President and Barack Obama for Vice President. To that I add that they'll win. I don't know what will happen for Republicans, and I don't much care as long as it's not Giuliani; he's both scary and seems to have a chance of winning. Mitt Romney isn't scary (just disagreeable), and Mike Huckabee won't win.

¶ 1630 Posted at 04.40 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I'm standing by my Hillary as President, Obama as VP prediction, even after her Iowa loss, and even after she loses in New Hampshire today. I just don't think Obama has staying power. I know Clinton's performance in the debate is going to hurt her 1, but that'll blow over; what won't blow over is that Obama only has 2 years in the Senate as a qualification. As much as he's supposed to be the candidate of change, I don't see much different between him and the mainstream Democratic platform. He and Clinton aren't that far apart. I think that will become more evident. Iowa and New Hampshire aren't everything.

I certainly don't want Hillary Clinton to win; this is just a prediction. She's also very close to the core Democratic platform, which, like that of the Republicans, is just a bundle of positions lacking conceptual coherence and unifying principles. The people who are consistent and make sense are the ones I like, and are inevitably longshots: Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, and Ron Paul.

So. Obama's going to run out of steam. Clinton is going to be humbled but win through, and the two of them will unite to make an unstoppable pair. I don't think John Edwards can make it, and this time being #2 is not going to be good enough; the Clinton/Obama synergy is just too strong. Bill Richardson was just in the race to become VP, which is also not going to happen. He's got the most impressive resume of the field, but that's apparently not important, and Obama has trumped his Hispanic heritage. Joe Biden I think was running just for fun.

Of the Republicans, the main thing that matters to me is that Giuliani lose. He's such a bellicose law-and-order authoritarian. Somehow Americans seem to like him in spite of his many, many flaws. George W. Bush got lucky with September 11th, but then screwed up the aftermath; Giuliani got similarly lucky, but term limits scooted him out of there before he could screw it up, too. Romney I could live with, but I don't see him winning. Huckabee kind of worries me, but I don't think he can win, either. The other one to watch seems to be McCain; he has a broad appeal in spite of his staunch conservatism, and could give Clinton/Obama a run for their money.

If I had to summarize my prognostications, I'd put my dollars on Clinton/Obama beating McCain/Huckabee in November by a respectable but not large margin.

¶ 1637 Posted at 11.51 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

On NPR on the way home, they were interviewing some New Hampshire women about their votes in the primaries. One exchange appalled me. This is my best recollection of what they said:

Interviewer (to a Hillary voter): The polls all said that Clinton was going to lose. Why do you think they were so wrong? Do you think they underestimated women voters?
Interviewee: Yes, I think they did underestimate women voters.

W... T... F... How the hell does she know? In fact, what does that even mean? And this is NPR, which is better than most other mainstream media outlets. That's just pathetic.

¶ 1640 Posted at 08.25 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | media )

This clip from a Clinton speech really annoys me. Watch:

C'mon, Hillary; your campaign is so carefully calculated, and you make a mistake like that? His name wasn't "Mahatma;" that was a title. His name was "Mohandas."

Anyhoo. The Indian joke itself doesn't bother me. I can't explain why.

¶ 1642 Posted at 12.58 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | video )

Beautiful:

"Why, as a New York-based paper, are we not backing Rudolph Giuliani? Why not choose the man we endorsed for re-election in 1997 after a first term in which he showed that a dirty, dangerous, supposedly ungovernable city could become clean, safe and orderly? What about the man who stood fast on Sept. 11, when others, including President Bush, went AWOL?

That man is not running for president.

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani's arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn't share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city's and the country's nightmare to promote his presidential campaign."

¶ 1649 Posted at 06.57 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Florida gave me what I wanted: Giuliani got thumped. Again the NY Times got in some choice hits 1, starting the article with: "Perhaps he was living an illusion all along." Also the more subtle "Voters seemed to embrace a man so comfortable wielding power..." Then: "Perhaps a simpler dynamic was at work: The more that Republican voters saw of him, the less they wanted to vote for him."

¶ 1654 Posted at 08.20 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

It seems like all of the remaining candidates can point to one or two key attributes that distinguish them:

• Ron Paul: freedom, principle
• John McCain: character, independence
• Mike Huckabee: Christian conservatism, "everyman"
• Mitt Romney: executive competence
• Barack Obama: charisma, "freshness"

Notably absent is one Hillary Clinton. She claims "experience," but that's a pathetic claim. I can't reduce her to two adjectives. Does that mean she's a weak candidate, or does it mean she has a broad appeal1?

I'm sticking by my prediction of Hillary Clinton winning the Democratic nomination and getting Barack Obama as VP. To go slightly further out on the limb, I predict that if Obama does in fact win the nomination, the situation will not be reversed. Hillary's already been a bit player in the big show; she's not going to do it again. Can you imagine Bill Clinton as "Second Gentleman?" I think not. She'd rather wait 4 years (see below) and take another crack at it. My guess for Obama's VP candidate is Bill Richardson. His depth and breadth of experience will provide a nice backstop, and the Hispanic appeal won't hurt 2. I don't think they'll win, though. McCain/Huckabee will hammer Obama's lack of experience, and it will work, because it's such a weakness. I'd go so far as to say that they will crush him.

Now, I would never advise someone to vote based on "electability;" you should vote for the candidate who best represents your views and whom you think would do the best job regardless of what anyone else thinks. However, I recognize that many people won't follow that advice. As such, if you're leaning Democratic, do not vote for Obama in the primaries. He'll lose. In fact, if you truly want Obama to be president, the best way to get him there is by voting for Hillary. That way he can be VP for 4 or 8 years, fixing his fatal flaw of inexperience and making him a much stronger candidate in 2016.

I myself am strongly considering holding my nose and voting in the Republican primary to give Ron Paul another iota of support. I am indifferent to all the other candidates. I think my vote is more valuable going to him; maybe the value of one's vote is inversely proportional to the total number of votes the candidate gets.

I've given some thought to how I'd feel about the various candidates winning. I don't think I'd be too bothered by Mitt Romney winning. I think the accusations he's gotten of being socially moderate are probably right. To me that's a plus. As far as actual competence goes, I think he can deliver, probably to a greater extent than any of the other candidates. I wouldn't freak out over Hillary Clinton winning, either. I'm concerned about McCain; he's a little too unpredictable, and very, very conservative. And he apparently doesn't know anything about economics, which is worrisome because economics are basically the key to everything. I'd worry about Obama as president, and Huckabee is both socially conservative and worryingly weak on policy issues. Ron Paul I'd be fine with because the worst case scenario is that nothing happens; I don't have to worry about him going off and creating some debacle like the Iraq War or Star Wars.

So. to summarize... Clinton/Obama will barely beat McCain/Huckabee in November. Or McCain/Huckabee will crush Obama/Richardson. And vote Clinton if you want Obama for president (someday).

¶ 1658 Posted at 08.52 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Nicholas Kristof said:

At a New York or Los Angeles cocktail party, few would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama's race or Hillary Clinton's sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with deriding Mike Huckabee's religious faith.

Those things are not the same. Sex and race are not choices. You don't criticize people for things out of their control, especially when there's nothing wrong with them. Religion, on the other hand, is a choice, and a candidate's philosophy and outlook are important. Of course, that also means one can justify voting for the religious candidate based on that distinction more than one can justify voting for the black candidate or the female one based on those ones.

¶ 1661 Posted at 04.19 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

It's bizarre how easily otherwise intelligent people freak out about Hillary Clinton. That's why it's nice to see a sober, considered explanation of why she'd be a bad President (scroll down a bit)1. The leadership comments are especially significant; that jibes with what I've inferred from her actions. Too much pandering and triangulating. She doesn't seem like someone who has a coherent set of core beliefs, at least not ones that inform her actions.

Given that there are legitimate criticisms backed by evidence from her record, it's really strange the degree to which people loathe her. The same thing happens with George W. Bush. Let's be clear: Bush has been an awful president. It's hard to think of one worse in the last century, or even longer. That says practically nothing about him as a person. I know some people with rather disturbing beliefs who are great friends. I'm sure there are plenty of people who believe the same things I believe for the same reasons whom I'd absolutely hate. If you've seen "Journeys With George," you know that he can be a charming and pleasant fellow. The personal and political are separate. George W. Bush is a great guy and an awful president.

Here's the thing: you don't know these people. At all. You've almost certainly never met them. If you have, it probably wasn't for very long. You might have seen them in person, but probably at a distance. Most likely, though, you've only seen them on TV or read about them. That's all mediated. What you know has been selected and edited and sliced and diced six ways from Sunday. Furthermore, it's never about anything natural; they're in unusual situations, and they're performing. What can you infer about somebody's personality based on their ability to deliver a speech someone else wrote? Do you think that Hugh Laurie is an American doctor? Of course not; he's playing a part. There's a word for people who can't distinguish between the actor and the character: crazy.

Your judgments about people are calibrated to your normal life. You meet people at social gatherings, in school, at church, or at work. It's usually in intimate, personal settings. How many of your friends hold press conferences? Do they give speeches to the Sierra Club or the NRA? Do they spend hours shaking hands and kissing babies? Of course not. All of your instincts about personality are useless in these situations. The problem is they keep telling you that they're working, even though it's garbage in and garbage out. Actually, it's worse than that. Your instincts can work against you because they are no secret. It's not like the politicians don't know you're watching. They and the media work together 2 to manipulate you into reaching a particular conclusion. Their relationship can be cooperative or it can be adversarial, but the result is still due to their combined efforts. Sometimes that's to make you think well of someone, like George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Sometimes it's to make you think poorly of them, like Hillary Clinton or Al Gore3. Your judgments about a public figure's personality aren't just worthless, they're of negative value because you're being manipulated. You know practially nothing firsthand, and even if you know a little bit, it's swamped by all the junk they throw at you until you can't tell whether you think something because it's your own thought or because it was planted in your head. These people are very, very good at this. They want you to think you know these people because that's an easier way to get your vote than substance.

What can you do? Take the personal completely out of the equation. Aside from the above, just think about it. There are people with personalities that are complete opposites that are identically qualified. Colin Farrell, notorious party boy, casual drug user, and womanizer is a great actor. So is Christopher Walken, who's apparently reserved and has been married to the same woman for almost 40 years4. There are professional athletes who drip charisma, and then there's Ricky Williams. All that matters are the basics: can they work with others? Do they learn from their mistakes? Are the open-minded? The rest is at best a distraction, at worst, well, much worse. Focus on the evidence. Look at their record. Read their speeches; definitely do not watch them or listen to them. Look at their proposals. Look at what's real, and don't let your judgment be hijacked.

¶ 1669 Posted at 12.50 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

She may still have an edge in delegates, but Obama has won 6 primaries in a row, and by no small margins. That O-mentum is going to influence voters, even if it's something of a distortion of the actual level of support. This could be settled by Ohio and Texas on MArch 4.

¶ 1675 Posted at 09.32 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

It's blindingly obvious that the Democrats' "super delegates" have to go, right?

¶ 1680 Posted at 08.25 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

There's Billary and Bennifer, Brangelina and TomKat. For John McCain and Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign, I'm hoping for Huckain, or, even better, McAbee. Barack Obama and Bill Richardson give me nothing to work with. The best I can do is Barichardson, which even I admit is pretty weak.

¶ 1682 Posted at 11.51 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Hillary Clinton might become the first female President of the United States, but who will be the second? Where are the female politicians with the national stature and appeal to run in 2012 or 2016? Few other potential candidates have had the luck of being married to a President, so they'll have to make their way the old-fashioned way, through their own careers 1.

Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and Dianne Feinstein will all be too old, not to mention they're probably too liberal; Elizabeth Dole and Kay Bailey Hutchison will also be too old. Barbara Mikulski is too old and too obscure. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine are too moderate to get the Republican nod. Also in the Senate are Lisa Murkowski, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Debbie Stabenow, Amy Klobuchar, and Maria Cantwell, but none of them has attained any kind of national recognition.

There may be better candidates among the state governors. Republican Sarah Palin of Alaska is already rumored to be a desirable vice presidential candidate 2. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan was born in Canada, so she's out. In our shallow media culture, Janet Napolitano of Arizona won't get anywhere. M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut will likely be too old, and Ruth Ann Minner of Delaware definitely will be. Linda Lingle of Hawaii is Jewish, not to mention being from Hawaii, a freak state. Christine Gregoire of Washington barely won the first time, so who knows where she'll be in 4 or 8 years.

Personally, my money is on Kathleen Sibelius. She's a blue governor of red Kansas, and generally well-respected for her ability. She attained office by being directly elected, rather than falling into office as Lieutenant Governor. She also won a convincing re-election in 2006, with 57.8% of the vote to her opponent's 40.5%. She's already been rumored to be a potential VP candidate, is chair emeritus of the Democratic Governor's Association, and is a supporter of Barack Obama 3. Furthermore, Kansas has term limits, so she'll be looking for a new job in 2 years anyway. Watch out for her in the future.

¶ 1688 Posted at 10.47 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

"The candidate for (modest amounts of) change." If people really wanted change, they would vote for Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich or a third party.

Used to be that living in Texas meant avoiding political advertising during the presidential campaign. The state was irrelevant in the primaries and unshakeable in the general election. *sigh*. I miss those days. Stop calling me already.

¶ 1689 Posted at 09.57 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Bill Richardson endorses Obama. He sees the way the wind is blowing and wants to be VP.

¶ 1698 Posted at 01.32 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The FBI commits shenanigans. To summarize, the FBI got a legitimate subpoena for certain records, withdrew it, issued a National Security Letter 1 even though NSLs weren't applicable to the type of records in question, got refused, got another subpoena, and then went to Congress saying that they needed wider powers because NSLs were inadequate. They shouldn't have even been given that inch, and they're reaching for a mile.

¶ 1739 Posted at 01.40 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )