unraveling
30.Apr.04
During the Cold War, a group working to eliminate nuclear weapons used a
technique to create awareness of the enormity of our arsenal. To
illustrate the 6,000 nuclear devices we had then, BBs were dropped into
a large glass jar. Participants closed their eyes and listened to the
sound of one, two, five, twenty, and then a steady stream that went on
and on for much longer than you'd imagine. It turns out that 6,000 is a
very large number, something we lose track of amidst so many
large numbers around us.
The meditative state of mind and using a sensory channel not usually
associated with numbers had a powerful effect. You should try it some
time.
For more than a year, PBS'
Newshour with
Jim Lehrer has been honoring our servicemen and women who have lost
their lives in the Iraq war with a silent honor roll at the end of each
broadcast. Some days there are only one or two, other days there are
many. Even as brief as it is, it's a moving tribute to their
sacrifice.
Now ABC's "Nightline" has prepared a similar broadcast, but
for all of our fallen at once: 523 killed in action, 200
more killed in accidents and by "friendly fire." Sinclair Broadcasting
Group, which owns many ABC affiliates, has refused to show it, saying
they "do not believe such political statements should be disguised
as news content." Spending 40 minutes to honor the American men and
women who've given their lives is news in a much more powerful format
than we know. As such it will have a political effect whether or not
it's a political statement. Sinclair is making a political
statement, to be sure: we don't want to dwell on casualties, lest it
impair our war-making ability. If Nightline took the time to
make a similar listing of the Iraqi war dead, that would be a
political statement. It would also be many hours more than their time
slot allows. It wouldn't have much of an audience, I'm afraid; not many
people are willing to experience "dead air" quite so thoroughly.
Thanks to
MoveOn.org for telling me about what Nightline and Sinclair
Broadcasting Group are doing.
Now that Google has invented what "search" should mean in the computer
world, they're setting out to re-invent what "I.P.O." should mean in the
business world. An offering of a company managed for the long term,
rather than built to flip sounds like just the tonic for a post-bubble
resurgence of the economy.
Of course, eveyone wants the bubble back, instead; that
Bay of Fundy rising tide
that doesn't just raise all boats but threatens to launch
them to the sky. It's so easy to forget that the tide has to run out of
the Bay twice a day, too.
Business pundits are clucking about the public shares with reduced
voting power, as if shares in other companies actually convey some
voting power to holders at large. Elections for directors routinely are
completed by the nominating committee, when there are exactly as many
candidates as slots open, and one vote is enough for a director to
"win." So what if your share only has a tenth of a vote? One tenth of
a vote will be enough to endorse the slate, just as ten times as many
votes wouldn't kick anyone out.
"The guys sitting in the boardroom are just employees that the owners
are paying to run companies as best they can," a hedge fund manager
says. Can I see a show of hands of who wants Sergey Brin and Larry Page
to be "just employees"? I thought so. Hedge fund managers can be
replaced. I'll go with the one who thinks "Google's attitude (is)
refreshing and candid."
The serious clucking is about something the investment bankers are less
likely to talk about on the record: the percentage for the underwriters is less
than half of the going rate, 3% instead of 7%. The good news for them
is that the auction process will requires less work, and will likely
produce a substantially larger yield. 3% of $3 billion (say) is better
than 7% of $1 billion. One thing about the offering does sound usual,
though: you have to be a client of one of the underwriters to get in on
the front end. Or will Google figure out a way to leverage the auction
more widely, ahead of the open market taking over?
29.Apr.04
When TVs started coming with remote controls, I knew I had to have one
of those. I suspect it's hard for most people to imagine watching
without one of those handy, now. Classrooms are getting
remote controls, too. I would've loved that, I'm
sure. Maybe it's just the novelty, but the students who've tried them
are pretty enthusiastic too, by the best possible measure: class
participation.
"Professor Caron has become something of a hero among his students. ''I
won the teacher-of-the-year award,'' he said, ''and it had to be the
technology, because I'm not that good. I've been teaching 13 years and
never won it, then I'm using this thing and I'm Mister Popularity.''"
And, it cuts down on web-surfing and instant messaging during class, to
boot.
Talk about a difficult job, how'd you like to be the new ambassador to
Iraq? I suppose if there's only one "volunteer," we shouldn't squabble
over his qualifications, but there are
some questions one might ask about John Negroponte.
My Medicare algebra is looking a bit
stale at 5 months old, but that new insurance stuff has yet to kick in.
We've got the drug discount cards coming first, and by
some accounts, they may be puzzling.
Problem: How many times does 1,000 (government bureaucrats) go
into 12.5 million (confused Medicare recipients who may call)?
Answer: Enough times to boost "death by on-hold music" to the top
of the mortality charts.
This sounds too bizarre to be true, but I think it actually is:
The
ACLU files a lawsuit concerning the Patriot Act, but it's so secret
they can't even tell anyone about it. "The group was allowed to release
a redacted version of the lawsuit after weeks of negotiations with the
government." Many details of
the complaint are still under seal, such as who the other plaintiff
(apparently an ISP or related business) with the ACLU is.
A couple more SARS cases in China, apparently more leaks from the same
lab in Beijing. This year, they're not asking everyone to stay home for
the week-long May Day holiday.
Here's the big nut in that energy bill that just won't die.
(Sen. Domenici, R-N.M., has resurrected it and offered it as
an amendment to the Internet tax bill.)
Repeal of the
Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) will put a $trillion
worth of utility assets in play. There is a ton of money to
be made shuffling all that around, with the long-term prospect of
milking the captive audience of utility ratepayers. It's the
shorter-term gravy of "consulting fees," percentages of the action and
golden parachutes that will grease this baby, though.
A Dear George
letter from Congress. Just what did you do with that $40 billion we
authorized for an Emergency Response Fund on September 14, 2001?
28.Apr.04
Ted Olson, one of the stars of the 2000 election debacle in Florida, and
now Solicitor General for the Bush Administration,
arguing in favor of Dick Cheney's secrets, cites
United States v. Nixon to support his position.
Interesting choice, given that the Supremes had Tricky Dick give up his
secrets (in the form of transcripts of his secret tape recordings).
Nixon announced his resignation three days later.
Olson's tone of indignation at the President (and his surrogate, the
Vice-President) being subjected to litigation (litigation!)
during their term of office was taken without irony, I'm sure.
I guess he was busy with Florida's business last presidential term.
The Court's problem with Olson's position is that the Vice President
isn't claiming Executive Privilege; he's just trying to keep the
roster of his consultants private. It's a discovery order that's
at issue, and more specifically, whether or not the Supreme Court has
jurisdiction. Olson doesn't want the president to be "forced" to claim
executive privilege; he argues for the Executive to have
meta-privilege, obviating assertion of Privilege, and then
submitting to litigation and discovery. He's after some high ground
here: protecting the Executive from a process that's "invasive to
fundamental Presidential prerogatives and responsibilities."
Beyond the complexities of legal wrangling in the case, there is the
simpler question: exactly why can't national energy policy business be
carried out in view of the public? What is it in the process that can't
withstand the light of day? Dick?
Speaking of tape recordings and transcripts,
there won't be any when Bush and Cheney have their "talk" with the
9/11 Commission.
Nicholas
Kristof's recipe for what to do next in Iraq:
Send in 25,000 additional troops "to try to achieve a secure
transition," give the Iraqis real sovereignty on June 30th, dump the
"carpetbaggers," step away from Sharon, "count to one googolplex before
rushing into Falluja and Najaf to wipe out the resistance," and "bring
back the most professional and least political Baathist generals."
Who wants to do those job interviews, I wonder?
General Wesley Clark provides what ought to be (but of course won't be)
the last
word on the campaign posturing over the candidates' military
service: "I believe those who didn't serve, or didn't show up for
service, should have the decency to respect those who did serve -- often
under the most dangerous conditions, with bravery and, yes, with
undeniable patriotism."
Yes, his point has a sharp partisan bite to it, but the past says
what it says. It's time to talk about the present, and the future.
27.Apr.04
Well, he was
homeless at NYU,
but then his weblog hit paydirt. The good news is "free housing for the
rest of the semester," the bad news is way more demand than even
his upgraded hosting plan is likely to handle.
I guess the only
answer to Li Zhaoxing is "touché!"
"Do you think Hong Kong was democratic under British rule?" Foreign
Minister Li Zhaoxing asked reporters in Shanghai today. "Did the British
raise concerns about that? Did the Americans raise concerns? No. Why
don't you take a look at this double standard?" (Quoted in the related
NY Times story)
26.Apr.04
Still some surprises for me with this
Gravity Probe B thing. I knew it was in a dewar filled with
liquid helium, but I didn't know it was a 400 gallon dewar!
The orbit servo system that keeps the 4 balls centered in their pockets
is pretty cool, too.
The latest system status is
all systems go.
25.Apr.04
It won't come as a surprise to you to read that I'm a big fan of the
NY Times Op-Ed section. Given the 7-day expiration of its "free,
subscription required" access, I'm reluctant to point to it very often,
though. I save what I like in my personal clipfile, a section of hard
disk storage that grows without cluttering the house. That's not
much help for a weblog, though; unless I want to start my own "I say
this is fair use" section, I end up with stale links in a week.
So be it for today, as I have to make note that columns by
Frank
Rich,
Thomas
Friedman,
Maureen
Dowd and
Richard
Clarke are all worth reading.
Rich:
"Mr. Bush knows how to defend himself against journalists -- by shutting
them out and demonizing them as elites out of touch with Joe Public. He
tries to limit troubling pictures, by either forbidding them (soldiers'
coffins) or superseding them with triumphalist tableaus of his own (that
aircraft carrier). But faced with a revolt of The Families, he
buckles."
Friedman:
"We are now in the middle of a low-grade civil war in Iraq for who will
control the place after we leave. That's the bad news. Here's the good
news: I doubt we will be in Iraq a year from now -- certainly not in
large numbers."
Clarke:
"We are seriously threatened by an ideological war within Islam. It is a
civil war in which a radical Islamist faction is striking out at the
West and at moderate Muslims. Once we recognize that the struggle within
Islam -- not a 'clash of civilizations' between East and West -- is the
phenomenon with which we must grapple, we can begin to develop a
strategy and tactics for doing so. It is a battle not only of bombs and
bullets, but chiefly of ideas. It is a war that we are losing, as more
and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United
States and some even develop a respect for the jihadist movement."
In for a dime, in for a dollar (or 4½ if you buy the paper copy):
The Multilevel Marketing of the President, the feature piece in the
Magazine. "Pyramid-based companies have proved amazingly successful at
raising up armies of enterprising Americans; Amway, the world's most
successful MLM, has more than 3.6 million distributors. But some MLM's
thrive by imposing their own strange and insular cultures on their
recruits, and while they offer the illusion of self-employment, those at
the top of the pyramid often demand a rigid kind of uniformity and
loyalty.... When I met with Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, in
suburban Washington, and suggested that the Bush campaign could fairly
be compared to Amway in its approach, he agreed without hesitation.
''Amway, no question,'' he said."
It must help to be "literal to the point of seeming programmed," as
Matt Bai describes the campaign's director, Ken Mehlman. His view of
the trend toward more participation in democracy?
"The lessons of reality TV are that people today are into participatory
activities. They want to have influence over a decision that's made.
They don't want to just sit and passively absorb. They want to be
involved, and a political program ought to recognize that." American
Idol, American President. As George himself might ask, what's the
difference?
Chief butthead (in the literal and most charitable sense, that is) Bill
O'Reilly has found another opponent who is beneath his contempt:
John Doyle of The Globe and Mail in Toronto.
Doyle says: "Talking to Americans is always a tonic. Bring on Fox
News and bring it fast. Let's see this thing that has so many ardent and
incredibly aggressive viewers." O'Reilly says... hey, if you want to
hear what O'Reilly says, you've already heard it, haven't you?
Our cable company has us in a No Faux Zone, they won't let us watch it
unless we make monthly protection payments.
I went shopping for a webhosting package 3½ half years ago, and
after settling on
Westhost, my
needs have been taken care of. They continue to upgrade space and
bandwidth in the "starter" package faster than I can fill it up. I
think it was 20MB when I moved beyond the "free" webspace that came with
an Earthlink account, now it's 600 MB. If you're looking, I
recommend them, and would be happy to get a referral credit for my
recommendation to you.
24.Apr.04
The Unisys patent flap over the GIF format quietly
went away last year when the LZW compression algorithm patent expired,
but the problem of proprietary ownership of basic image formats is
not yet resolved. I always thought JPEG was far beyond dispute, but
here comes Forgent Networks suing everybody and their brother
with a 17-year-old patent they found in their purchase of Compression
Labs. Apparently I missed this when it came up two years ago.
Forgent has until October 2006 when the patent expires to put the
squeeze on users, which includes pretty much everybody using computers
and digital cameras. Actually, the story won't end there: "Remember,
even if the patent expires, once we notify companies that they are
infringing on patent, we can seek damages all the way back to the date
when it was issued," spokesman Michael Noonan said.
10 weeks to go and we're not sure who's going to govern, or how they're
going to be selected, but we have decided that they won't have command
of the armed forces (foreign or domestic), and they won't be able
to enact laws. "Just be patient for 6 months or so," you think that'll
work ok? Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
committee sized it up pretty well: "we risk the loss of support of the
American people, the loss of potential contributions from our allies and
the disillusionment of Iraqis." Other than that, how do you like the
plan?
On the first anniversary of our originally scheduled
trip to China, SARS is in the news
again. An epidemiologist in Baltimore says the good news is that it's
not a new strain; the bad news is that it's the 3rd time it has escaped
from a laboratory. There's more good news, though: the disease has
caused China's government and health organizations to open up to the
rest of the world. From
the NY Times story: "Dr. Julie Hall, the SARS team leader for
the Beijing office of the World Health Organization, said health
officials held a meeting on Friday with the Chinese Ministry of Health.
She said the ministry had asked for their help in trying to determine
what went wrong and to limit exposures."
Some of the folks who didn't go last spring, or on the rescheduled trip
in the fall were slated to go... right about now.
To me, $25,000 is equivalent to a very nice new car. (If I were buying,
the 2nd generation Prius would be on my shopping list.) To 140 people
in Florida yesterday, $25,000 was the price of "a plate" at a
lunch with the President, bringing in a cool $2.9 million for the
election campaign. That's populism for you.
Microsoft's results
exceeded expectations, just like the good old days. The company pays
dividends now, though. $1.9 billion
to Sun Microsystems, $613 million to the EU, half a bill in "stock
compensation expense" (can you say "dilution"? Sure you can),
$.04/share to stockholders.
Russ Kick, laboring in (and about) obscurity on a web site with a great
concept and memorable (!) name, gets a major scoop on the Bigs.
Kudos and a big chunk of bandwidth to
The Memory Hole.
The default-secretive Pentagon said their acquiescence to the Freedom of
Information Act request was "a mistake" they won't making again.
The US Postal Service is
economizing, figuring that Lance might win a 6th TdF, but what are
the chances beyond that? Get out while the going is good. And better
to announce long before the heat of competition so it doesn't seem so
traitorous afterwards.
23.Apr.04
The Bake Back America
campaign was more inspired than MoveOn realized. They brought in
three-quarters of a million bucks holding bake sales.
On an incomparably lovely morning I went for a turn in the yard, and got
the notion to take stock of what all is blooming at the moment. (I took
some pictures, too.) The main crop is Money plant (Lunaria), most
of which is the less common white variety, with a few of the regular
purples. Then Vinca, grape hyacinth, plenty of tulips, only a few
dandelions (my retirement has been bad for them), sweet woodruff
(Gallium oderatum), the first flush of irises (purple, and
miniature purple), Forget-me-not, Valerian, Basket of gold (Aurinia
saxatilus), a last few violets if you look really hard, the end of
the Forsythia, some onions, bittercherry, Narcissus, catmint,
honeysuckle, lemon balm (and maybe some horsemint ringers), candy tuft
(Iberis sempervirens), two kinds of Ajuga (A. reptans), a
shady patch of freckle-face pansies and lily of the valley, a strip of
bluegrass that dodged the mower. There were a number of things that had
the first flower or two showing up: Chinese lantern, larkspur deep in
iris leaf shade, the Comfrey, cotoneaster and geranium. Tomorrow, we'll
have the first Columbine if it doesn't make it by sunset.
Earth Day
The Sierra Club
survived the attempted board takeover by anti-immigration
candidates, with the nominating committee's offerings trouncing the
petition candidates by
10:1
margins. The top 8 candidates (for the 5 open positions) were all
from the nominating committee, with "turnout" over 22%, the largest
in Club history.
We had the full dose of spring weather yesterday: solid rain overnight
and into the morning, some clearing midday and then a wave of thunderstorms
rolling down out of the Blue Mountains. One bolt of lightning came
snap, crackle, pop close to our house and blipped the power enough to
reset one computer and one clock, and bounce me and my office mate in
our chairs. Fresh snow on the Boise front! We'll get the usual blue
sky and 15-25mph winds following the front today, and then back to our
pleasant progress through spring.
21.Apr.04
Everyone likes having to pay less tax, making the endless promotion of
tax cuts by the Bush administration great marketing. But are you
getting yours? Chuck Collins of
United for a Fair Economy
examines the
shell game
that's going on. Here in Idaho, for example, the state income tax went
down along with the federal rates, but that pretty much busted the
budget. We now have a "temporary" increase in the sales tax (from 5 to
6%), and a lot of state and local services which are getting scaled back
or eliminated.
The biggest shell is his "shift #5," sending our taxes on to future
generations. It's the easiest sell to current taxpayers and, given
the demographics of the baby boom, the most invidious short-term
pandering. The UFE has more in their report,
"Shifty Tax Cuts: How They Move the Tax Burden off the Rich and onto
Everyone Else."
One of the ancillary functions of the TSA appears to be the
harassment of perceived political enemies.
Jesselyn
Radack writes about what it's like to be a "selectee."
Yet another big newspaper site starts requiring registration: San Jose's
paper just got a little
murkier.
20.Apr.04
Ahmad Chutzpah - er, Chalabi - tells us
what "we"
Iraqis want in the bully pulpit of The Wall Street Journal.
"A year after Saddam was deposed, the Iraqi people are grateful for
liberation but tired of occupation and delayed promises. Only
sovereignty, democracy and justice will satisfy us now." It isn't clear
how Chalabi fits into democracy over there, however.
Judging from the
responses, he didn't get very far toward convincing his
English-speaking audience, either.
"I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this
press conference with all the pressure of trying to come up with an
answer, but it hadn't yet..."
- George Bush, trying to answer a question at the April 14, 2004 press
conference, about what his biggest mistake has been.
The last several days' entries of the
Dreyfuss Report make me think about the US election's likely effect
on peace and stability in the world, and especially in the middle east and
central Asia. (There's also the
Manichean
angle of the ultimate battle between Good and Evil, but I've heard
you shouldn't mix politics and religion.) What's going to decide
that election, however, will likely be our parochial economic concerns,
as experienced in
fewer than
twenty states.
The Chinese let Cheney have his say
and then provided comrades who might have missed the downplayed event
with a transcript.
They say it wasn't censored or anything... perhaps "freedom" just
doesn't translate to Mandarin?
Sidney Blumenthal's
take on the press conference performance is not good, and further,
that Bush faces a revolt from the military.
"Bush appears as a passive manager who enjoys sitting atop a
hierarchical structure, unwilling and unable to do the hard work that a
real manager has to do in order to run the largest enterprise in the
world." Hey, it worked at the baseball team and the oil company, didn't
it?
We went and saw
Dr. Strangelove last night, in honor of the
Snake River Alliance's
25th anniversary.
Frank
Rich
watched
Lawrence of Arabia, an even more distant classic.
"To revisit Lawrence and the history it dramatizes in embryo is
to feel not only déjà vu but also a roaring anger at the
American arrogance and ignorance that has led to the current
nightmare."
19.Apr.04
Hillary Clinton's talking about health care again, in this week's
NY
Times Magazine feature piece.
"In 1993, the critics predicted that if the Clinton administration's
universal health care coverage plan became law, costs would go through
the roof. ''Hospitals will have to close,'' they said, ''Families will
lose their choice of doctors. Bureaucrats will deny medically necessary
care.'' They were half-right. All that has happened. They were just
wrong about the reason."
Mistakes were made, but
darned if GWB can
identify his biggest. Maybe the problem was having so many to
choose from? Admittedly, this is a nasty question, like the job
interviewer asking what your biggest weakness is. Tell the truth and
you provide ammunition for critics. Make up a dodge, and
your body language will reveal your dishonesty. The third option,
showing the paralysis of a deer in the headlights, does not seem
better than those first two.
18.Apr.04
60 Minutes did it again: plugged another bestseller from
their corporate family, while unveiling another raft of sordid details
from inside the Bush administration. This time it was Mike Wallace
interviewing Bob Woodward about what's in his book
Plan of Attack:
-
$700 million spent preparing for war in Iraq in the summer of 2002,
redirected from Congress' supplemental appropriation for the war in
Afghanistan;
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of
mass destruction."
Dick Cheney, speaking to the VFW, Aug. 2002
-
Cheney as the driving force behind the war, satisfying the obsession that
began when Bush I reined him in at the end of Gulf War I;
-
George Tenet's CIA fails to produce the goods to justify war.
"This is the best we've got?" asks Bush. The Veep convinced him it was
good enough;
-
as of January, 2003.
And the ambassador to Saudi Arabia found out about the plan before our
Secretary of State did.
The good news is that the Saudis (and Bush's big oil buds running the
refineries in this country?) have promised low oil prices in time for
the election.
In describing the state of the neighborhood this morning, a friend had
this item in a longer list: "My culture uses sex to sell everything,
and panics if it sees a bare breast."
15.Apr.04
Tax day, and our local Post Office isn't going out of their way for you
late filers any more: no more scenes at midnight, just the regular
pick-up schedule. Miss it and you get an April 16th postmark. I didn't
need to meet the deadline for our amended Idaho return (the IRS was kind
enough to correct my arithmetic and adjust our return for us), but I did
anyway.
The Spokane River
has been rated #6 on the
endangered rivers list, by virtue of its "added ingredients":
sewage, PCBs, lead, arsenic, zinc, and cadmium. Closer to home, the
Snake River made #3 for the dams that have devastated salmon
populations.
Joseph D. McNamara says we should just let the boys play with
anabolic steroids and whatever else they like. The former
San Jose (Cal.) chief of police thinks we have more important things to
do.
Science catches up with what we all know once again:
love can save your heart. Of course, love can break your heart,
too; life's a risky proposition.
14.Apr.04
The Owyhee iniative process has reached a milestone,
announcing
their
proposal, agreed upon by conservation groups, ranchers and
recreationists -- some of all of those, but by no means all of them.
Now the challenge is whether those who might be able to veto the process
can be persuaded to accept the compromises.
Owyhee Co. will remain cow-friendly under the proposal, which proposes
65,000 acres of
"ungrazed
wilderness" along with almost half a million acres of Wilderness
where grazing will still be allowed.
If you'd like to take a look around, the
Mountain Visions site has some nifty Quicktime panoramas of
the area (and many other places as well). Or get out on the ground
this June, at the
6th Owyhee
Rendezvous.
Rocky Barker of The Idaho Statesman has
a story
on the rollout of the proposal. Contrary to what he wrote,
the "other" 205,000 acres will not be opened up for "new trails," but
rather, the plan calls for stopping all cross-country travel and having
BLM create an expedited NEPA-compliant travel management plan.
Don't sweat it, motorheads, there are 10,000 miles of roads
out there already.
While our President reminds us he's sure he's right and he'll stay the
course in Iraq, the world offers up still more genocide in a country
that isn't making as many headlines: Sudan. Nicholas Kristof has been
there, and recounts the horror. His op-ed piece is titled
Cruel
Choices:
"Then there were the choices faced by the Sudanese refugees I
interviewed. For example, who should fetch water from the wells? The
Arab Janjaweed militia, armed by Sudan's government, shoots tribal
African men and teenage boys who show up at the wells, and rapes women
who go. So parents described an anguished choice: Should they risk their
7- or 8-year-old children by sending them to wells a mile away, knowing
that the children have the best prospect of returning? And what should
parents do when the Janjaweed seize their children, or gang-rape their
daughters? Should they resist, knowing they will then be shot at once in
front of their children?"
13.Apr.04
It's been
45
years (and $700 million) in the making, but it looks like
Gravity Probe B
is finally ready for launch. The "one second window" for
Monday, April 19th, is at 10:01 PDT. (If that doesn't work, each of the
following days has a good second.) When I went to Stanford in 1989-90,
the project was an institution, offering to absorb available talent.
Over the years, it's produced 100 or so Ph.D.s and some very,
very round niobium coated quartz balls.
They'll be some
bake sales for
democracy this Saturday. Find the one nearest you!
Americans aren't terribly interested in
body counts of Iraqis, but much of the world is more focused on
those thousands; hundreds in just the first half of this month. It's
big headlines here when one civilian is taken hostage (there are
7 more missing).
We're trying to help, really. If only we could make them understand.
The force of arms seems to interfere with the force of reason, on all
sides. Maybe they'll
listen to Miss USA?
The
Donald's take on Iraq is a bit different: "It is just a mess that
obviously should've never been started." "Mr. Bush, you're
fired." Well, he didn't say that last thing, but it would make for
good TV, don't you think?
This Reuters image from
a story in The NY Times about the overheated Chinese economy
-- now running trade deficits -- and their reining in monetary
supply (while the US stokes its boilers) is a classic from that country
at the turn of the millennium: a 50" TV being delivered by tricycle.
I've observed that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who
are members of Costco, and those who aren't. I'm in the latter group,
but recent reporting about the company has piqued my interest.
The comparison with
Wal-mart is especially telling, and hopeful: it is possible to be
decent to your employees, and to do well. Now we just need to get stock
market investors to take notice and provide the next level of reward for
virtue.
"Costco, surprise, has a lower turnover rate and a far higher rate of
productivity: it almost equaled (Wal-mart's) Sam's Club's annual sales
last year with one-third fewer employees. Only six percent of Costco's
employees leave each year, compared to 21 percent at Sam's. And, by
every financial measurement, the company does better."
The evacuation of 140 Saudis in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, must surely
become storied lore in Arabia.
Will the 9/11
Commission be asking questions about it, though? This is a short
article from the author of
House of Bush, House of Saud, who also has
his own website for the book.
"(On Sept. 13th, 2001), Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the
Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States and a longtime friend of
the Bush family, dropped by the White House. He and President George W.
Bush went out to the Truman Balcony for a private conversation. We do
not know everything they discussed, but the Saudis themselves say that
Prince Bandar was trying to orchestrate the evacuation of scores of
Saudis from the United States despite the lockdown on air travel."
12.Apr.04
Understanding why we went to Iraq,
the 10 version plan.
Weather forecast:
increasing drought out
this way. We had a pretty good snowpack this winter, but a dry
spring. Southern Idaho and western Montana (among other areas!) could
be headed for trouble this summer.
One of the callers to
Talk of the Nation
today pointed out the apparently differing standards of evidence before
Sept. 11, 2001, and before going to war in Iraq. Rice and Bush seemed
to expect time and place information in the PDB about domestic
terrorism, whereas some vague rumors about yellowcake in Africa were
enough to mount a war in Iraq.
Larry Johnson, who says he wrote about 40 Presidential Daily Briefings
during his tenure,
parses that PDB
for us; just how actionable was the intelligence? And "are George W.
Bush and Condoleezza Rice really as clueless as they are claiming to
be?"
I haven't seen and won't be going to see Mel Gibson's
Passion in this lifetime. I did watch much of
The Patriot last night, since it was on network TV and all.
The "standard revenge plot with the Revolutionary War as an incidental
backdrop" wasn't Gibson's movie, but he starred in it. "Too many
failings in fact, dialogue, lifestyle, behavior, costume, arms, etc. to
allow any but the ignorant to suspend disbelief," said one reviewer.
I was watching Gibson's acting and wondering about the man behind it,
and behind the Christian snuff film that has turned out to be successful
beyond anyone's wildest dreams.
The local "news" quoted one person who expressed what must be a common
theme: it was a difficult film to watch, but he felt better for having
watched it. So, it's like penance? By sharing in the suffering you
become a better person, less likely to inflict suffering on others?
At least by flaying and crucifixion, I suppose. Meanwhile, the real
religious drama, that battle between "good" and "evil" in the middle
east continues apace, long after Mr. Evil has been toppled, captured and
jailed (trial pending). The argument that "this is for your own good"
has not been going over too well; perhaps it suffers in translation.
On that note, the solider's guide to
prayers for
Bush may be useful. "Pray that the President and his advisers will
seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own
understanding."
BSU president Bob Kustra's radio show,
New
Horizons in Education caught my ear last week, with his interview of
Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute. Brown's book was the topic:
Plan B: Rescuing a Planet
Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. "Plan B calls for a
worldwide mobilization to stabilize population and climate before they
spiral out of control. It provides a plan for sustaining economic
progress worldwide." You can buy it in paperback, hardback, or
get the
(free) download.
Ok, now this eye surgery stuff has my attention, with
conductive keratoplasty, said to "correct a common near-vision
problem for people whose eyesight is otherwise excellent, in a minimally
invasive way." I hardly qualify as "otherwise excellent," having
collected the whole set of myopia, presbyopia and astigmatism. There are
treatments for all of those now, can I get a package deal? Not from
C.K. - that's for hyperopia, which AFAIK I don't have.
Maybe one of the "dozen" new types of lens implants is for me, so that I
can "mimic a healthy 20-year-old's ability to see at both near and far
distances"?
Never mind the medical aspect, this is all
big business, which is of course why it's in the NY Times'
Business section.
With tax day approaching, here's
good
news, at least if you're a corporation with a quarter billion or
more in assets: "tax enforcement has fallen steadily under President
Bush, with fewer audits, fewer penalties, fewer prosecutions and
virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes." That's
according to the New York Times' reading of
the
latest report from Syracuse University's TRAC, the Transactional
Records Access Clearinghouse. With the Bush tax cuts, everyone's paying
less (aren't they?) so it's all win-win. Until someone has to pay for
the deficits, and the medical care and social security of the baby boom
anyway.
Oh, and the IRS commissioner and our president are talking it up as if
they're getting tougher on corporate criminals, too. Bush says it
"should be loud and clear to the people in the business world: we're not
going to tolerate dishonesty in the boardrooms of America." The data
make it loud and clear that we're not serious about enforcing that big
talk, it's just made-for-TV campaign B.S.
"The number of civil penalties assessed each year against corporations
for tax fraud and negligence has always been minuscule... But, small as
the number of these assessments have long been, the counts recently have
shrunk even more. From 1999 to 2003, the total number of civil
negligence penalties aimed at corporation all over the United States
dropped from 62 to 12. In the same period, civil fraud penalties fell
from 247 to 170. Although the number of civil fraud penalties increased
slightly in 2003, the dollar amount of assessed civil fraud penalties
was down 19% last year."
"(T)he claimed increases (of audits, from their all-time lows of a few
years ago) are entirely the result of agency's growing reliance on
computer-generated correspondence audits that by their very nature are
comparatively superficial."
The bad news (for you cheaters, that is) is that what enforcement the IRS
does is targeted at individuals: more than 3 times as many audits, and
about 30 times as many "compliance contacts" of all kinds. Much
of those "contacts" are the automated detection of math errors the IRS
does on individual returns, but not corporate ones. (If you make an
honest mistake, as I did this year, that automated detection can be a
good thing. Our refund turned out to be 50% larger than I'd
claimed.)
10.Apr.04
Robert X. Cringely says the software war is over, and
Microsoft won. One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind
them.
Here's a twist in the process of Republicans getting government off our
backs and helping business improve the business of America: Creekstone
Farms Premium Beef wants to test its cattle individually for mad cow
disease, so that the Japanese will buy their beef again.
The Dept. of Agriculture won't let them.
Heard
Talk of the Nation's interview with Howard Gardner, on the subject
of his book,
Changing Minds on Thursday. (Thanks to the web, you can hear it,
too.) As many of the callers said, "it sounds like an interesting book,
and I'm looking forward to reading it." From the inside flap:
"Think about the last time you tried to change someone’s mind about
something important: a voter’s political beliefs; a customer’s favorite
brand; a spouse’s decorating taste; a teenager’s attitude toward
schoolwork. Chances are you weren’t successful in shifting that person’s
beliefs in a significant way. For an endeavor so commonly mentioned and
frequently attempted, why is the phenomenon of changing minds so
mysterious?"
9.Apr.04
Kevin Phillips, interviewed by Bill Moyers, on Now:
"Here, we're running around, we're blaming these accountants, these
tricksters that were in Enron, but George W. and George H.W., his
father, were very much involved in the whole rise of Enron's influence
and power in this country. But you ... you don't see that. People in the
press have a lot of trouble touching these issues right where the rubber
hits the road."
Phillips was the chief political strategist for Richard Nixon's victory
in 1968, and is the author of
Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich,
and the current bestseller,
American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in
the House of Bush.
From the
first chapter of Hans Blix' book,
Disarming Iraq:
"Armed action, indeed, stands in contrast to diplomacy-but it does not
necessarily stand for truth. There might be more to the saying 'The
first casualty in war is truth.' Nor do I find it appropriate to make
diplomacy the opposite of truth -- to project it as lies or illusion.
Diplomacy will often use language that understates the divergence of
positions so as to minimize the gaps that have to be bridged and make
reconciliation less difficult, but lying is not a part of diplomacy -- at
least not of good diplomacy."
The American Enterprise Institute doesn't list the most important
"qualification" of their
new
Visiting Fellow, Liz Cheney: daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Veep. But
hey, I'm sure Affirmative Action had nothing to do with her appointment.
(I wonder if her office is near
her mom's?)
Useful facts from
Molvanîa include "There are four genders: male, female,
neutral, and the collective noun for cheeses, which occupies a
nominative sub-section of its very own." The site says the book is
available in the UK and New Zealand as of April 1st.
What does "next message" in your Inbox mean? If you use
Outlook/Express, it depends on your configuration and how you
have the current folder's index sorted. If you're using Gmail...
you have your choice of "newer" and "older," which isn't quite so hard
to figure out.
Sean Palmer shares an early
report on the service under development from Google, which seems to
me can't be in keeping with their testing agreement, can it?
It seems obvious that we all need a search interface into our stored
email, just as it has become obvious that searching is an essential
element of the world wide web. It's not about having
information, it's about being able to find information when you
need it. And how's this for the highest possible testimonial to user
interface design: "the system is so straightforward that there isn't
really a great deal to comment on." Or this, for an assessment of the
status of the beta test: "gmail is already so good that I've no qualms
over using it for my regular general email straight away."
How many ways can you spell that spam-essential cure for ED?
Cockeyed.com
has figured out that it's more than 600 quintillions, but is in fact
into the sextillions. Appropriately enough!
Ok, now let's see him write a spam filter which will catch them all.
What else can you do with a world wide web? How about...
virtual
potlatch? That is so post-modern.
I've got stop reading the
Scout weblog now, that's
enough bizarre stuff for one morning.
But then Dave Barry sent us to the online Sun for
Hop
Suey! He liked the quote about the lasagne, I liked this:
A council spokeswoman said: "We are liaising with the retailer in order
to prevent a recurrence."
8.Apr.04
Some folks who promote growth as a
generically good thing like to quote the adage "you're either
growing or you're dying." Now it turns out
growth kills, go figure. "(W)orkers in organisations which are
growing rapidly are more likely to suffer the symptoms of work-related
stress than those employed by organisations where there is less change
and more stability."
It was Yahoo!'s meteoric rise (hmm, bit of mixed metaphor, there) that
got me interested in
market momentum back in the bubbly days of
1999. Yesterday, they
reported results that sound almost as good as back then, along with
a 2 for 1 stock split. The stock closed up $7.86 today, a tidy 16%
gain. If it keeps going, it'll soon reach one-fourth of its
price at the top of the bubble: $239 and change. Ad revenue is up, up,
up, "jumping 235 percent," leading to some excess
salivation in that industry.
Congress finally acted on the $80 billion pension handout that I talked
about last week (scroll past the manure and
Commandments). They threw in the A-rated bonds with the AA and AAA
for a little added bonus. If you read through my primer and understood
it, the
quote from Judd Gregg (R., NH) should amuse:
the legislation will allow an extra $80 billion to be invested in new
equipment, new hires, and the like instead of being "misallocated
within the market place" into already adequately funded pension funds.
When you check your cookie jar and find something missing, give Senator
Gregg a call and ask him about misallocation.
If you're second guessing, why not go all the way? Any number of things
could have disrupted the terrorists' plans for September 11, 2001.
Photos of the two known ones could have been run on
America's Most Wanted, or someone could have connected the dots
about pilot trainees who just wanted to know how to steer and didn't
care about landing, or we could have had the FBI and CIA working
together. None of that stuff happened, and talking about what went
wrong won't change what has happened. The only thing to do is
to admit that mistakes were made, and we're striving to do better.
That wasn't in
Condi Rice's script, though. The closest she came was spreading
blame over the last two decades' worth of administrations, and
complaining that no one told her what she should do. ("I don't remember
the al Qaeda cells [inside the US!] as being something that we were told
we needed to do something about.")
George W. Bush broke out of his usual TV non-viewing habits and
reportedly watched all of Rice's testimony. Maybe as a follow-up,
he can read
Alternet.org's reality check for the administration. I suspect that
message won't get through the chorus of true believers saying Dr. Rice's
performance was "extremely strong," though.
The US military has managed to get
the Shiites and the Sunnis working together in Iraq. The bad news
is that they're working together to drive out the US military. So many
problems could be solved with patience, it seems. We really want
to turn over authority at the end of June, but if the war is hot and
getting hotter, a case can -- and will -- be made that we should not get
out.
Not being able to admit mistakes is part of the problem, too, as
Maureen Dowd points out in her dark essay,
The
Iraqi Inversion.
Robert Byrd has something to say about mistakes, too, in his
call for an exit
strategy: "America needs a roadmap out of Iraq, one that is orderly
and astute, else more of our men and women in uniform will follow the
fate of Tennyson's doomed Light Brigade."
Salam Pax: "Remember the days when every time you hear an Iraqi talk
on TV you had to remember that they are talking with a Mukhabarat minder
looking at them noting every word? We are back to that place.
"You have to be careful about what you say about al-Sadir. Their hands
reach every where and you don't want to be on their shit list. Every
body, even the GC is very careful how they formulate their sentences and
how they describe Sadir's Militias. They are thugs, thugs thugs."
7.Apr.04
I noticed in a TV ad yesterday that there's a local gun show using the
name "Fort Boise." We are not related. Nor are we related to any other
of the many enterprises using the name of the old fort. We are a world
unto ourself.
When your call to the customer service goes overseas, and you
give them your account number and other information, how do you know
it's all safe? Well, hey, you don't know if it's safe in this
country, either, but somehow it seems
riskier
overseas.
In the Toronto Star's poll, a few people thought Google scanning
email to decide what to advertise was creepy, but most
didn't see automated processing as an issue. The people who did
should consider that David MacKay of Oakville has it exactly right:
"E-mail is about as private as a post card (unless it is
encrypted)..."
Dan Gillmor thinks the
proposed
privacy policy is "nothing short of chilling." I think it's damn
clever to put it out there before the service is even available. Let
the public harangue away when the stakes are exactly zero, dial in the
policy that people can (learn to) live with it, and go from there.
Mrs. Sonora Lopez won't have to bum walking-around money from her
daughter any more: she made
the big
pull on a $3 slot machine at Borgata. She credits Our Lady of
Guadalupe which should send a bunch of new prayers Her way.
Among those product marketing ideas one might wish one thought of,
the "award winning"
stainless steel
portable hole for tidy tissue dispensing. $20.
5.Apr.04
Technorati says it's tracking
2 million weblogs and 270 (or so) million links. Interesting search
capability, showing what blogs are talking about what interests you.
From IBM's "Collaborative User Experience Research Group," some fascinating
graphical
views of "history flow" in a wiki, a collaboratively edited website.
Reports from the People's Daily:
China's now the world's
4th largest auto manufacturer and its 3rd largest auto consumer.
"Should the current momentum be kept in the next five to six years,
China's auto output and consumption would likely be second to that of
the US only by 2010."
And,
U.S. can't be trusted on Taiwan. "The Taiwan authorities' fantasy of
independence would not have run so rampant without US connivance, and
Taiwan would not have become a question at all had the United States not
intervened." The high dudgeon is about us selling advanced radar to the
island.
If that's not enough of a foreign journey for you, try the
discussion board and hear from "Chinese-Canadian" saying
"If China needs to invade Taiwan, China will give advance warning to
Taiwan which city will be bombed at what time so that no innocent
citizen will die. Never will be in Chinese history to drop atomic bombs
to kill innocent people to win any war." Or the more fundamental
"Patriot's" 6-step syllogism starting with "US can't be trusted because
US is an organized hypocrisy."
Steve Perry
deconstructs Bush's Brain after this winter of discontent: "Rove
could broadcast as well as narrowcast; he had the makings of a fine
minister of propaganda--the intuitive facility for adducing that single,
simple, forceful idea that would win the most people to your side, and
the force of personality to repeat it over and over even if it was
absurd."
The Master Plan that they've lately fallen off of (and will doubtless
return to) is simple: "Include in the mix some tough-but-sentimental ad
spots that function more or less like video yule logs burning in the
electronic hearth: They encourage comfort with Bush. And raise enough
cash to outspend God if it comes to that."
Fiona's transit of
Fallujah involved dodging some bullets; she shares the feeling of
traveling through a ravaged land at war.
The New Hampshire Gazette has an entertaining editorial cartoon
archive, including the likes of
"The day honesty unaccountably showed up on a photo-op
backdrop."
4.4.4 DST
You've heard about the pieces of the puzzle for years: Bush/Cheney energy
policy, the Pioneers and Rangers pumping jumbo bucks into election
campaigns, the gutting of the EPA. Bruce Barcott assembles the puzzle
in today's feature piece in the NY Times Magazine:
Changing All the Rules.
"Having long flouted the new-source review law, many of the nation's
biggest power companies were facing, in the last months of the 1990's,
an expensive day of reckoning. E.P.A. investigators had caught them
breaking the law. To make amends, the power companies were on the verge
of signing agreements to clean up their plants, which would have
delivered one of the greatest advances in clean air in the nation's
history. Then George W. Bush took office, and everything changed."
If you don't think the issue of "executive privilege" and secrecy in
government matters, consider that "a Gallup poll in 2001 found that 81
percent of Americans supported stronger environmental standards for
industry. According to another 2001 poll, only 11 percent thought the
government was doing 'too much' to protect the environment." There was
simply no way to safely get this job done under the light of public
scrutiny.
"One key element of the strategy was putting the right people in
under-the-radar positions. The Bush administration appointed officials
who came directly from industry into these lower rungs of power --
deputy secretaries and assistant administrators. These second-tier
appointees knew exactly which rules and regulations to change because
they had been trying to change them, on behalf of their industries, for
years."
We've had sufficient law for more than 25 years. What we haven't had is
sufficient enforcement of the law. To call the Bush
administration's "Clear Skies" initiative a smoke screen would be too
cute, and too generous. "Clear Skies allowed 50 percent more sulfur
dioxide, nearly 40 percent more nitrogen oxides and three times as much
mercury as the Clean Air Act -- rigorously enforced -- called for."
Corporations that were prepared to finally submit to the overdue
enforcement action that was started and well underway during the Clinton
administration have simply walked away from negotiation and
agreements. Clear Skies didn't fly, but the administrative solution is
even more egregious. Try seven times as much mercury emissions
as current law allows.
Most bits of Flash seem to be exercises in programmer
self-gratification. The
gallery
from an HP photo/story contest succeeds in making something
interesting even more interesting, and a lot of fun, besides.
Some good news from the University of Idaho:
Caxton Press of Caldwell
has a
proposal to preserve the UI Press. The less-than-good news is that
"Caxton will not be assuming the publication of new manuscripts,"
though.
Frank Rich writes about politics. As art. There's been a lot of that
in the past couple weeks, and he wants to know,
Are You Now
or Have You Ever Been in the Situation Room?. There hasn't been
that much news that's new, but there has been a lot of drama:
Clarke, Bush's slide show, Condi on the talk show circuit, the
occasional Senator...
Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, went even further, attacking Mr.
Clarke's book as an attempt to profiteer on his inside access and
"highly classified information." Apparently Mr. Frist did not know that
the White House itself had vetted Mr. Clarke's book for possible
security transgressions and approved it. Nor did the senator seem to
remember that he had written his own, far cheesier post-9/11 cash-in
book, "When Every Moment Counts: What You Need to Know About
Bioterrorism from the Senate's Only Doctor." (I know it sounds like a
parody, but that's the real title.)
The chart accompanying
Gretchen Morgenson's story in the Sunday NY Times
Two Pay Packages, Two Different Galaxies beggars the imagination.
Have you heard of Cendant Corporation? I've heard the name, but
couldn't tell you much about it. We're told it's a "travel, real estate
and direct marketing concern," so I suppose it's reaching out and
touching us in our private places without our knowing. For what the CEO
is paid, it should be the talk of the town, right up there with GE,
Wal-Mart and Microsoft. (It isn't among the top 100
market cap companies, though, running about 164th.) Henry
Silverman's $3.3M salary is just the start of what came to $60
million last year. His board members -- the folks who decide what
his compensation should be -- get $160,000 a year and some fat insurance
policies as well. Cendant paid $4.6M for Silverman's insurance premiums
last year.
The real gravy is in options. Thirty-seven million bucks worth of
realized gains last year, and more than seven times that amount
in unexercised option value. "Salary is clearly excessive, the annual
bonus is excessive, former grants of stock options were clearly
excessive, and the provision of life insurance is also excessive," said
Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at
The Corporate
Library, a governance research organization in Portland, Maine.
For counterpoint, we have James Sinegal of Costco, a company you
have heard of, and that is exceptionally well-managed.
3.Apr.04
Can you tell the difference between manure and bullshit? The former
comes out of the back end of a cow (or bull), and needs to be managed if
said cow (or bull) is in an animal feeding operation. The latter
comes
from the front end of some legislators in Idaho.
(Thanks to
The Light Horse
for the pointer to the
ICL's
page on the Idaho Legislature. Wish I'd known about that during the
session!)
Dennis
Mansfield's explanation about his civil disobedience over the moving
of Boise's Ten Commandments monument seems to illustrate "non sequitur."
Connection to our military? Whu'?
The only thing disobedient about the whole affair is the time and money
wasted on the Save the Commandments' lame legal proceedings. The
decent thing left for them to do would be to repay the city, admit that the
ultimate resolution is a win-win for the city of Boise and its
residents, and to escort their friends and neighbors down to St.
Michael's for regular visits if they need help getting the Decalogue
memorized.
Had a scene with a soccer dad today, during our USTA mixed doubles match
at Lewis and Clark. On his way out from the soccer fields and between
the two sets of fenced-in tennis courts, he was idling tossing a soccer
ball against the fence, a bit of a distraction to the four of us trying
to concentrate on serving and returning tennis balls. I asked him
politely to stop what he was doing. He replied, with exasperated
sarcasm, "you've got to be kidding!" I said no, I wasn't. Since
my request seemed to be putting him out, I added "It's not a big
deal..." and figuring we could either wait him out or ignore him if he
really needed to keep banging the fence for a while. "Right, it's not a
big deal," he said, leaning into the sarcasm. Apparently the idea that
he might have to constrain his behavior for our benefit was deeply
insulting to him.
By this time, the coordinator for the Saturday youth league (whose table
was set up at one end of the alley between the fences, and who knew we
were having a league match) tried to intercede, and also said something
to the guy. He whined back at her, "I'm not being belligerent," to
which I replied "at first you were just ignorant , and now you're
being an asshole." That brought a complaint about my using such
inappropriate language in front of young children, as the soccer
coordinator continued her attempt to solve the problem by asking the guy
if he wanted her to kick his child out of the league. (I hope that
doesn't happen -- having a father like that must be punishment enough
already.)
The game, set and match we had going were completely disrupted at this
point, and the four of us gathered at end of the net away from the fence
to wait for the weather to improve. Butthead proceeded to walk back to
the coordinator's end of the fence where there was a gate, and to come
into the tennis courts. The rest of the two teams were moving into the
cluster, so there's a dozen of us standing there (our opponent
scrambling for a cellphone, ready to dial 911) as this guy walks up,
and I look at him calmly, questioningly, "are we going to fight now?"
He said no, and I explained to him the circumstances of my simple,
polite request as best I could. Tennis requires some concentration...
have you ever seen a tennis match on TV?
He was not prepared to articulate much of anything, defend his behavior
so far, or convince us why he should be allowed to continue bouncing the
ball off the fence. The best he could do was sarcastic phatic, leaving
us with "have a great day." I guess his child must have lost the game
this afternoon or something; it's the first genuine miscreant problem
I've had on a tennis court.
Late last year, the business of "pension reform" got on my radar. I was
vested in my former employer's plan and had the option of retrieving my
money as a lump sum (and rolling it into an IRA to defer income tax on
it), or leaving it in the plan to do that later, or to take monthly
payments when I reached "real" retirement age. I'm guessing that the
political issue is nearly incomprehensible to the majority of voters,
but it's Big Business for corporations and unions in this country. The
Congress has been resolved to "fix" the problem for some time, but is
having some trouble agreeing on just how generous to be to the business
interests and how much to take away from workers.
That's not the way the stories you'll read describe the issue of course.
I doubt most journalists reporting on it understand the problem any
better than Joe Q. Public does. The House passed a bill last year to
get this job done, but the legislation didn't make it through the end of
session wrangling over budgets and judicial appointments in the Senate.
Action was promised early in the new session, but it wasn't until
yesterday that
the House passed "a temporary solution" by a wide margin; 336-69.
From the Dow Jones Newswire story, what resistance there is in the
Senate appears to be about how much more of your money they want
to give away.
"Pension reform" and "relief" are the watchwords, but what do those
terms mean, exactly? Pension plans are being "reformed" by "relieving"
companies from having to put as much money into them to fund eventual
payouts. The latest estimate is $80 billion to be relieved from
pensioners in two years.
This is how it works: in order to provide for an obligation of $1
of pension obligations in the future, companies need to set aside
something today. But how much? It depends on interest rates. If I
need $1 in 20 years and I can earn 5% interest, I need to invest $.38
today. If I could earn 6.5% interest, I'd only need $.29 -- a savings
of 9 cents, almost a fourth of the money I have to set aside today and
not touch for 20 years.
In today's economy, workers are not so likely to work 30 or 40 years at
one company and then retire at 65 to collect their pension, however. If
an employee leaves a company and takes his or her pension now
rather than later, it isn't a matter of setting money aside, it's a
matter of paying it out. The company has to actually transfer $.38
from its bank account to the employee's. Or, after this legislation
gets signed, sealed and delivered, the company will only have to
transfer $.29.
Let's try some real numbers. Suppose that you have 20 years in at
XYZ Corp., and 10 years to go before you retire. You have a "defined
benefit" pension that will pay 50% of your salary when you retire.
If you make $50,000 the year before you get the gold watch, and
the actuaries guess you'll live 8.3 years after, your pension will be
worth about $170,000 on retirement day if all the calculations are based
on 5% interest. The company needs to have $104,000 set aside today to
meet that obligation. If you quit and take a new job somewhere else,
the company needs that $104,000 to pay you the value of your
pension right now, assuming you're fully vested (and you don't
just "let it ride" in the company plan).
The revision to the interest rate in question is likely to be 1 to
1½%. Run those numbers with a 6.5% interest rate, and the
company only has to pay you $85,000 today. Thank you very much
for your contribution of almost $20,000 to bail out corporate America.
That didn't hurt a bit now, did it?
2.Apr.04
They
said, "Across a broad range of issues -- from childhood lead
poisoning and mercury emissions to climate change, reproductive health,
and nuclear weapons -- the administration is distorting and censoring
scientific findings that contradict its policies; manipulating the
underlying science to align results with predetermined political
decisions; and undermining the independence of science advisory panels
by subjecting panel nominees to political litmus tests that have little
or no bearing on their expertise; nominating non-experts or
underqualified individuals from outside the scientific mainstream or
with industry ties; as well as disbanding science advisory committees
altogether."
He said "did not!"
Dr. Seuss Sees
America: the battle of Good and Evil in Whoville.
Doing some website maintenance for an NGO, I had occasion to visit some
BLM sites. The
FAQ for the national
site is rather interesting in that the words "grazing," "livestock,"
and "range" do not appear on it. "Grazing" also is not an entry in the
keyword index with 240 entries for the USDA Agricultural Research
Service. Things that make you go "hmmm."
Am I entitled to free
land from the BLM? No, and yes. No, you can't have any to
yourself anymore. Yes, we all share in the ownership of BLM land.
Oh well, I'm not going to redesign their site.
This year is the 20th anniversary of
the federal Underground Storage
Tanks Program, which the EPA's history describes as being instigated
by a segment on 60 Minutes in 1983. "In the 20 years that have
passed, more than 1.5 million old, unsafe tanks have closed; almost
300,000 petroleum leaks have been cleaned up; nearly all underground
tanks have been upgraded or replaced; and newly discovered leaks have
dropped dramatically, from a high of over 66,000 in 1990 to roughly
12,000 last year."
1.4.4
 |
| April Fool's puzzler: the photo was
taken at 12:12 MST on March 22, 2004. The tree stands vertically at
43°45'46"N, 116°04'11"W. The fall line points 30°W of N. What's
the pitch of the slope? |
Air America Radio
is out of the starting blocks. The website looks real, although sadly
it doesn't have show archives (yet?). Fort Boise is a long way
from any of the major markets where it's broadcasting, and the streaming
feeds struggle... and then the advertising density is pretty high.
I think I still prefer NPR.
On the other hand, "coming up on the O'Franken Factor, today's guests
will be Robert Reich and Hillary Clinton."
Franken's Rumsfeld imitation was worth the price of admission.
"Am I going to keep asking myself rhetorical questions and then
answering them? Absolutely. Is it annoying? You bet!"
Google's approach to email
sounds eminently sensible. Naturally. You should be able to save
everything, and find whatever you want. For free. It's not rolled out
to the general public yet, but everything else seems to be in order.
From the FAQ: Why is Google offering email? I thought you were a
search company. "Google's mission is to organize the world's
information and make it universally useful and accessible."
The ombudsman at NPR has been getting a lot of mail about Bob Edwards
leaving Morning Edition.
He
says "more than 5,000 and climbing."
The National Park Service appears to be
supporting a faith-based
explanation of the Grand Canyon in its bookstores and museums.
In the "religion" section, do you suppose?! (Writing this made me think
I should be collecting April Fool's blurbs today...)
The Foresight Institute has a website for "news and discussion of coming
technologies," Nanodot. I love the
typographic inspiration of their logo.
Some time later, I stumbled forward into
Howard Lovy's Nanobot.
That's interesting, too; stories from the nanotechnology frontier from
a rumpled journalist.
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
Home
Weblog
Useful
Sporting
Sailing
Friendly
Site map
Fine Print
Friday, 07-May-2004 09:20:27 MDT
http://fortboise.org/blog/200404.html
