unraveling
29.April 2013
Looking forward
There seem to be two reasons we didn't look too closely at the actions
of the Bush-Cheney team under a new administration in 2009. "We need to
look forward as opposed to looking backwards," Obama said back then.
Pretty much, we didn't want to know. And pretty much, the system that
survives the occasional change of staff wants to keep going without
interference.
Christie Thompson reports on ProPublica that
six
claims on detainee torture are skewered by an investigation that was
done, and the scathing, 577-page report of
the
Constitution Project on detainee treatment, released two weeks ago,
just as events in Boston utterly overwhelmed public attention.
It's not all behind us, not by a long shot.
Science friction
Not sure where Paul Tyma's coming from, but his lengthy blog post from
last Friday went by me on the slashdot feed today, and here:
Why
we'll never meet aliens. Well worth the read. Shorter: we'll hit the
singularity first, or they already did, and it wouldn't be worth the
trouble to go all. this. way. just to meet us. If they've got it goin'
on to come all the way across the galaxy, they won't need to come here
to study us, and they certainly won't need our water, our uranium, our
gold-pressed latinum, our women, or our planet.
Comment #5 from "inDigiNeous" is entertaining, in another dimension.
Think outside the box, dude.
"...just to clarify: I am one of those who have communicated with these
ETs. They are very real, and we can communicate with them also if we
open our third eye, or our spiritual side."
Along the way, Tyma mentioned
Proxima
Centauri, the nearest known star to ours. Four and a quarter light
years from here, too faint to be seen by the naked eye. Which just seems
to multiply the loneliness, doesn't it?
28.April 2013
What you don't know could hurt you
The folks at the Pew Research Center did another "News IQ" quiz, this
one testing knowledge of science and technology, sampling 1,006 adults
early last month.
The
report page starts with a no-spoiler box and
a link to
the quiz if you want to give it a whirl before seeing how the survey
turned out, or my comments about it. It's a pretty quick process, with
just 13 questions, some true/false and some multiple choice (with 2, 3
or at most 4 specific choices).
Once upon a time, I taught a college level lab section, and part of my
job was to write tests. None of the questions had 50-50 odds. Two
answer, true/false questions had the requirement that if the statement
was false, after you identified that fact, you had to modify it so that
it was true (which I made more difficult than just adding or removing a
strategic "not"). No 2 or 3 option multiple choice questions, either,
and mostly I went with multiple multiple choice: the answer could be one
or more of the choices given. Or—why not?—none of
them.
This quiz is nowhere near that hard. You should get all 13 correct, or
at worse make an innocent mistake or two. Maybe you're not sure about
red blood cells, but even so, you'll have a 33% shot at that one even
with a blind guess. Which is to say that if you're reading my blog, I
think you're in the top 93%, 85%, or at least 75% of the sampled
population.
The results are slightly less alarming when I see that "don't know" was
a selection many respondents made. Otherwise 47% right on a true/false
question would be the same performance as a random guess (within the
±3.7% margin of error of "half," given their sample size). If
the 25% who said they didn't know whether "Electrons are smaller than
atoms" is true or false had just gone ahead and guessed randomly, there
would have been about 60% with the right answer, well
better than what you'd expect for 1,006 tosses of a fair coin.
If more than 40% of the population doesn't know what gas is considered
the central issue for global warming, and four out of five can't
even identify what gas makes up most of the atmosphere, how can we hope
to have an informed discussion about human-caused climate change?
27.April 2013
Money for nothing
When I was a newly minted engineer, 30 years ago now (my how time
flies), one of my first tasks in navigating the bureaucracy was to learn
how to buy something, to "cut a P.O." in the vernacular. (Somebody
explained that verb to me once, but I forget.) Step 1 was filling out a
purchase order form, which was in triplicate or maybe fourplicate.
"Carbonless" paper was state of the art. Who, what, how many, how much.
Depending on how much, you then collected one or more managers'
autographs and turned it into Purchasing. Eventually, you got the stuff.
In the early 1980s, the ballpark estimate of the "overhead" cost of all
that process was $50. If you needed something or some things that cost
$50 or $100, it wasn't worth the overhead, and you'd figure out how to
use petty cash, or skip it, or buy more stuff so that the overhead was
relatively smaller.
"Overhead" comes to mind from the indignant report being promoted by
Citizens Against Government Waste
(picked up by Fox News, of course, our McClatchy daily, and here,
David
Fahrenthold for The Washington Post).
(As an aside, I see CAGW has the "big banner sliding image hogging the
top half of your browser window" design meme with a cute pig leading
off, of course, and declaring they're "AMERICA'S #1 TAXPAYER WATCHDOG"
and MAKE A TAX DEDUCTIBLE CONTRIBUTION!" which is funny, ironic, and
annoying all at once. Everybody wants a piece of me. Please. No.)
Anyway, OMG, Feds spend at least $890,000 on service fees for at last
count 13,712 bank accounts that have a zero balance, because "the
government is required to pay $65 per year, per account to keep them on
the books." You can just about smell the apoplexy from the CAGW head
complaining about the "lack of attention to detail. And poor
management."
Well, maybe. The accounts are tied to specific spending programs, and
they're set up to enable separate accounting for each one, which seems
like a good management practice. For many programs, funding comes to an
end, and that seems like a good thing. We used to have twice as many
zombie accounts, and have cut the number in half, so that's good
too.
Somewhere in the story it's noted that the amount in question
"is a tiny fraction of the federal budget," which indeed it is. We're
spending $4 trillion a year, give or take. Focusing indignation
on 0.000025% of this as "waste" is... well, not the best use of our
time maybe?
I got a kick out of seeing Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) in the band,
complaining of the spending with "no benefit whatsoever." Sort of like,
I don't know, the U.S. Senate? Coburn's salary and travel
expenses and office space and staff and staff travel expenses beggar the
"waste" on empty bank accounts, we can be sure of that.
Wikipedia's
page on Congressional staff tells us that back in 2000, the average
Senator hired a staff of 34 people, and just the average Senate salaries
back then for 14 positions tabulated is north of $640,000. Perhaps as a
vaunted "fiscal conservative," Mr. Coburn could publish the spending
that inures just to his share of government largesse, and set an example
for his colleagues on how spending control starts at home.
And juxtapose that budget with what we get for it, other than a 16 day
recess for Easter and Passover, a few weeks of "session" and now
another
recess until May 6, and pretty soon it'll be Memorial Day, and
oh so humid in Foggy Bottom...
"It's a perennial question and it's a cheap shot,"
says
Rep. Darrell Issa. "There's no better place to be than with your
constituents. A very small percentage of members go on vacation during
these periods." Ok, but other than the benefit of time with
constituents (none of which, I might note, has ever ever ever been spent
with me), what actual benefit do we get out of it? The satisfaction of
seeing lots of campaign money raised and members getting re-elected?
24.April 2013
One hell of a photoessay
Probably the closest I'll get to a gun show:
Patrick Blanchfield's and Jason Francisco's view of
Family
Businesses and Angry Young Men in the
Georgia State Farmer's Market Exhibition Hall.
Rhodesian jungle rounds are a hot item they were told, "but if we're in
the market for something a bit more extreme, he's got that too: Dragon's
Breath, incendiary shells loaded with pyrophoric magnesium chunks
and powder."
"[T]here's also the steady stream of folks, young men all, whom we saw
on the way in. They circulate around the periphery with rifles on their
backs and pistols on their hips, wearing handwritten signs like sandwich
boards on their chests: 'Colt AR – $850 OBO' 'This Shotgun $500'
'Taurus .40 ASK ME.' These are private sellers, and the emphasis is on
'private': you can walk up to them and buy what they're carrying, no
questions asked, for cash and a handshake."
The friend who pointed me in this direction commented "deluded people
think criminals don't shop here."
Unintended consequences and such
Mine wasn't the only mail generated in response to
Saturday's nutty Statesman editorial;
they
ran ten letters in today's paper. Two of them were in agreement, one
with congratulations for "hitting the proverbial nail right on the
head!" and another from the founder of Idaho Carry, Open & Concealed
who styled his address as "Hidden Springs," the suburban community
(a.k.a. "census designated place") over the first line of foothills and
in the Dry Creek basin, giving it a defensible perimeter, I suppose.
(You may remember ICO&C as that organization with the one-winged eagle with a pistol in a
gunbelt for a mascot.)
Tony Snesko is more strident than the homogenized editorial board, and
has a wider range of targets. "Shameless politicians," don't you know,
and "Obama/Feinstein."
"Any attempt to pass a gun law is a red herring that allows Congress to
slither out the back door and proclaim victory for the Sandy Hook
children when they are actually dancing victoriously on their graves,
having successfully deceived a gullible electorate, and can now take the
next step that has already been proclaimed by Mario Cuomo, the
confiscation of our guns and the destruction of the Second Amendment,
with the rest of our inalienable rights to follow."
That, and it's a "charade" "being perpetrated by skillful politicians to
extricate themselves from having to admit that our society is in total
moral and ethical decay." I would imagine for Snesko, they're literally
damned if they do, and damned if they don't. You think he'd be happy at
the Senate's purposeful inaction, but he sounds just as grumpy as ever.
As for the 80% against... reviews were not good. "Shocked and saddened,"
"way off base," "illogical," "an embarrassment to all Idahoans,"
"greasy slide," "every one of the NRA's talking points, not very
original," "brain-dead," "one of the most poorly reasoned pieces I've
read."
23.April 2013
Sales tax morass
Nobody seems to like taxes very much (unless you're collecting them, I
guess), but this business of collecting state sales tax for online
transactions is sure an interesting folderol. Every state I've lived in
has had a more or less substantial sales tax, but I do occasionally
visit those strange havens where the price listed is what you pay.
Oregon for example; no pocket full of pennies and odd transaction
amounts there, if it says $4, by golly, the bill is $4.
In Idaho, where we're currently paying 6% at retail on most purchases
(including groceries, and,
infamously,
Girl Scout cookies), we're also supposed to pony up
"use tax" at
that same fraction for things we bought online (or in person, for
that matter; "if you buy something while in another state and are
charged less than the Idaho rate, you owe Idaho the difference in use
tax"). Be honest now, and tell Uncle Butch how much you owe for
"Sales/Use tax due on Internet, mail order, and other nontaxed
purchases" on line 28 of Form 40. See instructions on page 8 and do the
arithmetic yourself.
You could join me and the other
1.36%
of Idaho taxpayers who do that. Idaho legislators have been talking
about joining the multistate
Streamlined
Sales and Use Tax Agreement... for six years now, and just can't
bring themselves to do it. Twenty-four states are on board, but not
Idaho. It would be nice to collect those unpaid taxes on the one hand,
but on the other... Idaho businesses would have to become tax collectors
for other states.
It's hard to believe, but I'm assuming the New York Times
wouldn't lie about this, so here: the United States Senate has
actually
agreed
to consider
legislation to help states force online retailers to collect sales
taxes. 74-20 in favor of talking about the "Marketplace Fairness Act,"
and the $10 or $20 billion of taxes that aren't getting paid to various
states.
The small handful of states with no sales tax (two of the four happen to
be our neighors) are in the opposition, defending their businesses'
right to enjoy freedom from this "targeted strike against the Internet
and the digital economy," as Oregon's Senator Ron Wyden deems it. And
the requirement that the states provide software free to internet
retailers with sales in excess of $1 million per year.
"Opponents predict a bookkeeping nightmare. Online retailers would have
to keep track of more than 9,000 sales-tax regimes. Internet companies
in states with no sales taxes—Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon and
Delaware—would have to build a collection apparatus from
scratch."
They don't say where "9,000" comes from, and I do wonder. I would have
thought some number smaller than 50, like say 46. Ah, but local
taxes, yikes. Do a search on that 9,000 number, and you find a lot of
statements, but few sources. The American Tax Policy Institute footnoted
a 2007 paper by LeAnn Luna, Donald J. Bruce and Richard R. Hawkins,
which I'm surprised I was able to find and fetch:
"Maxing
Out: An Analysis of Local Option Tax Rate Increases":
"The number of local governments with sales taxes has grown
from just under 3,000 in the early 1970s to over 9,000 today."
Their study was of Tennessee, from 1975 to 1999, and they give no hint
of where they got either of those round numbers. Wikipedia contributors
have put together a
sortable summary
table on a page with 182 footnotes as of this morning, showing the
general tax statewise (with 5 zeroes), and "total with max local surtax"
(only two zeroes, Delaware and live-free-or-die New Hampshire).
I've charted those here in order of increasing general + max local
surtax. The two double-oughts are at left, and Idaho is in the upper
middle, at 6+2.5%.
Maybe the Senate could say one tax rate per customer. Or hey, how about
a flat, nationwide sales tax?
22.April 2013
The boys who cried "sue"
Not much to do but point and laugh at opponents to the Idaho-based
health insurance exchange taking the trouble to call each of the 19
appointed members of the board to
threaten
personal lawsuits against them, except for the problem of not
knowing where to point, since the calls were made
anonymously. One call came from Florida, go figure.
I missed today's session, and will probably miss tomorrow's as well, but
if you're a glutton for punishment (or want to gather some evidence for
the complaint you're still typing up), you can tune in
via Idaho Public
Television.
Blame Obama mostly
There's plenty of blame to go around, but in one of the more remarkable
(as in, remarkably poor) editorials I've seen in the
Idaho Statesman, the paper's editorial board
blames
the president for rampant paranoia leading to spiking gun and
ammunition sales. And what better way to start talking about "ironic
consequences" than a bizarre non sequitur for the lede?
"The law of unintended consequences sometimes can be as cruel and deadly
as a loaded weapon left unlocked in a gun safe."
Or as cruel and deadly as a centuries-old amendment from the days when
we enslaved black men and tried to extirpate natives, eh.
Obama's failure to lead where Congress could not do so on its own can
be—
and
has been—criticized in its own right, and if you don't agree
with him, you won't like namecalling directed at you... give the board
credit for slightly better than "I know you are, but what am I?" in
tossing "reckless" in his general direction.
Nobody polled gun owners? I supposed no one polled gun manufacturers
either, but then they probably would have said "you're doing fine, keep
it up" if they hadn't been too busy to answer the phone.
"Apparently, nobody polled gun owners and would-be gun owners about how
they were going to react to:
-
increases in gun violence exacted on innocents.
-
perceived attacks on their Second Amendment rights.
-
legislation that produced a run on firearms purchases and concealed
weapons permits."
Ah, but the market poll is always open. How would gun owners react to
increases in gun violence on innocents? Buy more guns! Perceived attacks
on the Second Amendment? Buy more guns! Discussion of legislation
(since we haven't had any actual legislation yet)... Buy more
guns!
"The next time gun control advocates hope to design laws to make us
safer, we hope they include some on-the-ground reality polling, a more
crisp focus on identifying and treating the mentally ill and a healthier
respect for established law in Idaho and throughout the United States.
The ability to purchase and conceal weapons is the right of law-abiding
citizens."
Tell me again where in the Constitution there's a right to
conceal weapons, and again where your "crisp focus" will be aimed
next, by all means. It has to sound better than
we
don't need new laws because the bad guys don't obey them anyway.
We have heard one perspective from gun owners, the one tirelessly
promoted by the
radicalized
and
compromised
National Rifle Association: we need more guns, and more "good guys" (and
presumably gals as well) with guns, so we can win more shoot-outs.
Oh, and something to deal with the mentally ill. Maybe
a
bus ticket to somewhere else.
19.April 2013
Take a deep breath
Gwen
Ifill's take may be old news by now (8:00am EDT... that is so
6 hours ago), but there's still time to review Journalism
101, and try to apply its lessons for this and future events.
"[G]etting more than one source (and taking a deep breath before reporting
the information) is designed to reduce the potential for error."
The stream of consciousness flowing through Twitter is the raw
material of history, and sausage.
The revolution will be televised
And people will follow it on Twitter and YouTube. Not that two Russian
punk extremists constitute a revolution, but consider the personal
report from
Huckleberries
commenter "Phaedrus":
"I followed this on Twitter from the initial murder of the MIT police
officer until 2 am. The cable news networks, CNN, MSNBC and Fox were at
a huge loss as social media was on the spot covering everything live
(although not always accurately) or as close to live as possible; I
watched the uploaded video of the gun battle moments after at
happened."
The
photostreams
coming out of Boston have a certain revolutionary feel, if not in the
direction any child of the 60s might have imagined. Large urban police
forces are blurring the distinction between police and military, at
least in the hardware department. Orders to "stay inside and lock your
doors," public transit turned off, and hundreds (at least, one report
said "thousands") of police officers conducting a
manhunt for the surviving brother of the two presumed perps of
Monday's bombing, and
a
night of mayhem last night. From the NYT coverage:
"Early Friday, a virtual army of heavily armed law enforcement officers
was going through houses in Watertown, outside of Boston, one by one in
a search for the second suspect. The police had blocked off a 20-block
residential area and urged residents emphatically to stay inside their
homes and not answer their doors."
A temporary banner over the top of the Boston Globe's website says it's
"currently available to all readers," by which I take it they turned off
their paywall. And on the flip side, the Cambridge Police Department
said it was
suspending
its tweeting, so as not to tip off the subject via today's
equivalent of the radio scanner.
And yes,
black helicopters.
17.April 2013
Arithmetic has consequences
What happens if you come up with a hypothesis, crunch some data and find
support for it, publish a book about it, winning widespread acclaim, and
then discover
you
crunched the data wrong?
One possibility is you carry on and insist that hey, it's a good
hypothesis, even if our data doesn't actually support it the way we
thought it did. But with
"eight centuries
of financial folly" in your book title, it should be a little
embarassing, at least. That, or the "clear, sharp analysis and
comprehensive data" that you claim in the blurb. Dean Baker, of
the Center for Economic and Policy Research:
"This is a big deal because politicians around the world have used this
finding from [Reinhart and Rogoff] to justify austerity measures that
have slowed growth and raised unemployment. In the United States many
politicians have pointed to R&R's work as justification for deficit
reduction even though the economy is far below full employment by any
reasonable measure. In Europe, R&R's work and its derivatives have
been used to justify austerity policies that have pushed the
unemployment rate over 10 percent for the euro zone as a whole and above
20 percent in Greece and Spain. In other words, this is a mistake that
has had enormous consequences."
Next time, better double- and triple-check your numbers, because
88%
of spreadsheets have errors, don't you know, and some of them are
whoppers.
Update, from Paul Krugman:
Correlation,
Causality, and Casuistry, and
The
Excel Depression.
15.April 2013
Complicated by design
A friend complained about her struggle with some major arcana in
TurboTax this year, and put a pox on it and the IRS, but don't blame the
Internal Revenue Service for what Congress and Intuit have wrought;
they're just the bureaucracy charged with carrying out the rules and
collecting the money.
You hear a lot of Congresscritters join the chorus of complaints about
the tax code, but you don't hear any of them campaigning on having
successfully reduced the complexity, now do you? Never mind balancing
cuts in "revenue" and "spending," there ought to be a law that anyone
proposing a change in the tax code to add complexity has to find
something to simplify to go with.
Simpler, and even "return-free filing" has been a good idea for decades
(Ronald Reagan was in favor of it), but then you wouldn't be buying a
new copy of TurboTax every year, would you? So it's worth it for
Intuit
to spend $11.5 million to keep that dangerous idea quiet, even if it
costs taxpayers two hundred times that amount. Especially if it
does; they call it "gross income."
Spinning attitudes on taxes
If the poll results
cited
by NBCNews' TODAY contributor Amy Langfield are
representative, the headline could have been Most Americans think
Uncle Sam fair on taxes, but ho hum, amirite? Headlines are not
about accuracy, they're about getting attention. More Americans think
Uncle Sam is unfair! More than used to, that is, and especially among
conservative Republicans. Ten years ago, when tax rates were lowered to
pretty much what they are today, the "fair" respondents were closer
to two-thirds than the just-over-half 55 ±4% found in the latest
poll.
"Do you regard the income tax which you will have to pay this year as
fair?"
was the poll question being reported upon, garnering a comparison
between the alternatives of "what I pay seems fair" and "I have to pay
more than is fair," I'm guessing? Ah, but no reason to limit oneself to
biased media, there's a link to
the Gallup
report, and halfway down they did break into the third
alternative:
"Do you consider the amount of federal income tax you have to pay as too
high, about right, or too low?"
50% said "too high," 45% said "about right," 2% said "too low" (and the
remainder said... wha?). Which is interesting, because it means some
people must have said their taxes are "too high" and they're
"fair." Seems like "too" and "not" should go together either way. Too
low and too high are both unfair, aren't they? But that would mean only
the 45% "about right" group would have answered "yes, they're fair."
Gallup observes that "the decline in Americans' belief that their taxes
are fair is due mostly to Republicans' changing views"; even though the
self-indentified Republicans still have a slight edge to "fair," those
deeming themselves "conservatives" say "not fair" by 50 to 45%.
Gallup speculates a bit under "implications" but at least one inference is
clear enough: attitudes aren't closely tied to absolute rates. "Lower"
strikes most people as "fairer" (more people thought "fair" in 2003,
when taxes were lowered to essentially what they are now), and vice
versa. Thinking taxes are going to go up probably feels unfair too.
Gallup didn't ask me, and I don't know how I would have answered on the
spur of a phone call... other than maybe to hang up? That's what I did
the last time Rasmussen called, but if the Caller ID or live human being
(do they still use those?) had said "Gallup," I think I'd play along.
Anyway, with the benefit of reflection, and having my taxes all done,
I'd say "not fair," and "too low" (and "far too complicated").
Happy Tax Day everyone!
No doubt you've filed (for an extension?) by now, leaving you time to
consider the bigger questions. Such as
James
Livingston's suggestion, "why not tax corporations as if they were
natural persons, in accordance with their newly discovered rights of
free speech?" As opposed to our story so far, which is that
"by slashing corporate income taxes and forcing a new reliance on
payroll taxes to finance government spending, we have redistributed
income to the already wealthy and powerful. Our tax system has actually
fostered inequality."
Anyone out there shocked, shocked to learn all the tax code fine print
favors the wealthy? A system with sufficient complexity is ripe for
manipulation, even as it defies accurate measurement and direct policy
choices. Who should fund government, and by what means? We have plenty
of answers, and arguments for and against, and precious little knowledge
of cause and effect.
People pay all taxes, ultimately, so we shouldn't tax corporations at
all? Increasing taxes on corporations will discourage investment and
reduce jobs? But in spite of our nominally high corporate tax rate, we
see examples like G.E. paying 0% on $5 billion domestic revenue.
How much lower would their tax rate have to be to fuel economic
growth? (Yes, we've been trying "negative tax rates" as
this compilation
(PDF) from Citizens for Tax Justice shows.)
Joseph
Stiglitz reports the class contest score more directly: "As the top
1 percent has grown extremely rich, the effective tax rates they pay
have markedly decreased." As Warren Buffett said, his class is winning.
Which could mean a rising tide to lift all boats, but not
necessarily:
"One of the reasons for our poor economic performance is the large
distortion in our economy caused by the tax system. The one thing
economists agree on is that incentives matter—if you lower taxes
on speculation, say, you will get more speculation. We've drawn our most
talented young people into financial shenanigans, rather than into
creating real businesses, making real discoveries, providing real
services to others."
Last but not least, Richard Eskow invites us to consider
the
upside of taxes:
If You Can Read This...
"Public education probably helped you learn to read. And when you read
anything on the Internet, you're using technology invented with tax
dollars. Taxes bring other benefits too, too numerous to mention,
including the greatest one of all:
"You're alive. You haven't died of smallpox or any of the other
diseases that are restrained by tax-funded public health programs. You
haven't been crushed inside a collapsing building, mangled by a grain
[silo], or met any of the other grisly deaths prevented by tax-funded
safety programs.
"You didn't burn to death in a home that was never inspected for fire
hazards, trapped helplessly as the flames rose and knowing there were no
firefighters available to answer your call. You and your significant
other weren't shot down like Batman's parents on the streets of an
under-policed and lawless metropolis."
12.April 2013
A reasonable expectation of privacy abuse
There are plenty of stories to illustrate that employees of private
companies and government entities should have no expectation of privacy
for their use of email systems, even though the illusion of "writing
privately" while you type away is so strong. Post-cube farm, yes, I
rather did have some expectation that my private email was private.
Turns out
the
Internal Revenue Service's mileage may vary considerably.
"The documents the ACLU obtained make clear that, before [the 2010 Sixth
Circuit Court of Appeals decision in United States v.] Warshak, it was
the policy of the IRS to read people's email without getting a warrant.
Not only that, but the IRS believed that the Fourth Amendment did not
apply to email at all. A 2009 'Search Warrant Handbook' from the IRS
Criminal Tax Division’s Office of Chief Counsel baldly asserts that 'the
Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic
storage, such as email messages stored on a server, because internet
users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such
communications.' Again in 2010, a presentation by the IRS Office of
Chief Counsel asserts that the '4th Amendment Does Not Protect Emails
Stored on Server' and there is 'No Privacy Expectation' in those
emails."
Somehow, the age of messages makes them more ripe for unwarranted
scrutiny.
The
26½ year old Electronic Communications Privacy Act drew a
distinction between fresh messages and those sitting on a server for 180
days, "or [that have] been opened." Because... if you read your
email, the IRS should be able to too?! I'm not seeing how that made
sense back in 1986 when email was somewhat more exclusive, and now that
nearly everyone has it, it makes even less sense. Just because it's easy
to get at message repositories maintained by third parties does not mean
it should be permissible. This needs to be fixed.
10.April 2013
Reunited, and it feels so good
Probably should have seen this coming, but still, an unexpectedly rich
vein of irony ore to have the
Russian
Parliament moving ahead on anti-blasphemy. The godless Communists
are showing us the way to a glorious new church/state unification.
The first two comments on the
NPR
blog post are good, noting that concerns about vague wording
"lead[ing] to unjustified prosecutions" "seems to be precisely the
objective," and "because god is sooooo sensitive."
The Beeb infers that reference to "offences against religions that are
'an integral part of Russia's historical inheritance' would imply
protection for Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism."
I'm having a hard time altering my impressions of Vladimir P. to include
piety among his virtues. Even without including Buddhism, the law would
have nothing to do with protecting deities or their man-made
support organizations that I can see. "Offending" is an absurdly low bar
for state-sponsored prosecution. Never mind "disorderly conduct," we're
moving into "bad attitude" territory. A.k.a. "hooliganism motivated by
religious hatred," which is what took down two
of Pussy Riot to get this ball rolling.
8.April 2013
How the Grinch stole cookie sales
The cute little girls selling cookies met their match
when
they went up against the good old boys of the Idaho Legislature this
session. Sudeep Reddy had his fun for the Wall Street Journal,
writing things like "it was all very sweet."
"[Boise lobbyist Julie Hart] and several lawmakers blame a Senate
committee chairman, Republican Sen. Jeff Siddoway, and other GOP leaders
for keeping the legislation from coming to the floor. Mr. Siddoway
didn't respond to a request for comment.
"Ms. Hart, who steered the group's campaign as a volunteer, says she had
to explain to the girls how a bill with so much support could die so
quietly."
Something like... I don't know, "well sweetie, all it takes is one man
who's what they call the "chairman" of a committee who doesn't want it
to happen, and he can just tuck it away in his desk drawer, and that's
that."
Which leaves two states, the odd bedfellows of Idaho and Hawai'i as the
last two holdouts taxing Girl Scout cookie sales, at least until next
session.
Baroness departs
Since she had long receded from public view over here, and having
seen Meryl Streep's film portrayal some while after it was new, reports
of Margaret Thatcher's death today were a bit of a surprise, in that I
thought she was already gone. So, let the mythmaking begin,
or perhaps not:
Glenn
Greenwald makes a good argument that "death etiquette" is misapplied
to public figures if it's rewriting a history that never happened.
"[T]hose who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics)
aren't silent at all. They are aggressively exploiting the emotions
generated by the person's death to create hagiography. ... Those
gushing depictions can be quite consequential, as it was for the
week-long tidal wave of unbroken reverence that was heaped on Ronald
Reagan upon his death, an episode that to this day shapes how Americans
view him and the political ideas he symbolized. ... When a political
leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only
praise be permitted but not criticisms."
He also notes that "tellingly, few people have trouble understanding the
need for balanced commentary when the political leaders disliked by the
west pass away." No false etiquette was invoked on Hugo Chavez' behalf
last month.
The
Lede blog's collection of reactions included a 1976 quote that
supposedly led to Krasnaya Zvezda's (Red Star) labeling her an
"Iron Lady," with this:
"The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring
the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has
seen. The men in the Soviet politburo don’t have to worry about the ebb
and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put
just about everything before guns."
I can't speak for the U.K., but in this here most powerful imperial
nation the world has seen, with the benefit of 37 years' hindsight, "how
interesting an idea."
As one would expect (and with plenty of time to prepare),
her
obituary from the New York Times covers fair depth and
multiple angles of a figure about whom "indifference was not an
option."
Count Paul Routledge among the unenamored, an anti-hagiographer even,
calling for
the
inquest on her life and influence.
"She enthroned the profit motive, and unleashed the spivs and speculators
in the City of London. She surrendered economic policy to the mysterious
dark forces of 'the market', which led UK plc into one recession after
another that led to the mess where we are today."
(And that's one of the nicer parts.)
6.April 2013
When "no" means "maybe"
I've done some image editing (a.k.a. "photoshopping") over the years,
always on the up and up in financial matters (and no worse than an
occasional parody otherwise), but with the occasional passing thought
of how easy it would be to manufacture something fraudulent. It would
be, you know.
I've also signed my share of electronic tablets for this, that and the
other thing, but hadn't given that much thought until reading
this
story about rental car counter chicanery, upselling "loss damage
waivers" to unwary travelers.
The added profit from selling insurance you don't need has been around a
long time, but the electronic tablet signature adds two new twists:
(1) no connection whatsoever between "sign here" and the document
(not that you're going to read all that fine print, but still); and (2)
this (with my emphasis):
"Consumer advocates say any effort should start with a letter to the
company, and, if that doesn’t work (it didn't here) to try lodging a
dispute with the credit card issuer. But some Dollar customers tried
that with little success: Dollar sent the credit card companies receipts
with their signatures. A spokeswoman for Bank of America said it was
bound by Visa and MasterCard regulations on disputed chargebacks, and,
if the merchant has the customer signature accepting a charge,
there's not much more it can do."
If the counter agent "clickety-clickety-clicks" you into a deal you
didn't ask for, and gets your digitized John Hancock to apply as needed,
you're kind of up the creek without a legal paddle. The company "denied
allegations," naturally. Two lawsuits against Dollar Thrifty, possibly
rising to class-action status will help sort out the obvious question,
posed by the plaintiff's attorney:
"In my business, one incident can be written off as a mistake, two is a
little too coincidental, and when you see three, you say, 'Hey, what's
going on here?'"
5.April 2013
An unlikely place
It's off to the chihuahua dome today, and the first two rubbers of the
USA v. Serbia quarterfinal Davis Cup tie! Thanks mostly to BSU coach
Greg Patton, the NYT has
a
reason to write about the ends of the earth, our little Podunk:
"Now the U.S. team's desire for novelty and any whiff of an edge has
brought Djokovic to Boise, Idaho: a pleasant city of about 210,000 that
most foreigners and even a few Americans would struggle to place on a
map."
Not sure where Christopher Clarey sits, but if they'd called on Timothy
Egan to write the story, he wouldn't have missed the altitude by
a hundred feet. In New York, that would've been the difference between
swimming in Sandy surge and staying cozy and dry. Here, it's the
difference between a view lot, and down along the river, where
BSU and the tennis venue are. Not that an extra hundred feet will
affect the players this weekend, but still.
And here we are, big time tennis in our town. The local paper has
even
been covering the event, spilling more ink on the sport in the last
week than they have in years.
USA Today has a
nice
feature about coach Patton. And a better estimate of the elevation.
"Patton likens this weekend to the Super Bowl, World Cup and NBA Finals
all wrapped into one."
4.April 2013
Oh oh
Something that behaves well enough until it can have its own way in
satisfying nonhuman desires? Hmm. What if
the
Singularity already happened, and we got corporations?
"Pretty much the only thing that the left and right in America can agree
on is that moneyed influence has corrupted American politics and yet
neither side seems able to do much of anything about it.
"What if the private pursuit of profit was—for a long
time—proximate to improving the lot of humans but not identical to
it? What if capitalism has gone feral, and started making moves that are
obviously insane, but also inevitable?"
Did you make the list?
If I'm reading this correctly, it sounds like the wealthiest quarter million
offshore companies, trusts, and individuals with stashes of money in the
B.V.I., Cook Islands and Singapore. The
"Secrecy for Sale" project is
a collaboration between "the International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists, a 15-year-old Washington-based group that obtained the
secret records [and] The Guardian, Asahi Shimbun, Le
Monde, The Washington Post and more than 40 other news
organizations." And yes, with the potential for "acute embarrassments
and political reverberations" if not outright "political shock
waves."
By "vast
hidden wealth," they mean "as much as $32 trillion in
undisclosed wealth stashed in overseas havens." Among the "key findings"
bullet points, this, that made me think of our most recent G.O.P.
candidate for president:
"The mega-rich use complex offshore structures to own mansions, yachts,
art masterpieces and other assets, gaining tax advantages and anonymity
not available to average people."
Not happening (anytime soon), but what it would look like
We have a neighbor who likes his lights on at night. Yesterday, when we
came home from choir practice I noticed one of the two side lights on
his garage had burned out, and my thought was "one down, two to go." Not
counting the footlights along the front walk, anyway.
But it's not like any city streets are going to go dark (any more than
country lanes will go devoid of yard lights), so you'll just have to use
your imagination as to what major world cities would look like at night,
minus the light pollution... or, you could go to Danziger Gallery's
exhibition of
Thierry
Cohen's beautiful composite images of big cities and night
skies.
(H/t to
Smithsonian
Magazine, and
Ran Prieur.)
I like image 9, looking from Yerba Buena Island over the Bay Bridge,
the marine layer making a backdrop for the San Francisco skyline. Images
13, Shanghai, and 14, Los Angeles, add another layer of imagination:
clear air.
Sold and bought
The Lewiston Tribune's political reporter, William L. Spence, has
an
excellent piece on the nuts and bolts of how lobbyists play
government. (Link to the Idaho Statesman, who ran it in this
week's "Business Insider" magazine.) His focus was Idaho, but the
observations are do doubt general.
"[T]he Statehouse is more like a dealer's showroom [than a sausage
factory]: It's less a place where things are made than a place where
things are sold. And like all good salesmen, lobbyists know how to play
on their customers' psychological vulnerabilities."
Since Spence's writing, one of his main examples, the Idaho Farm
Bureau's remodeling of the state's initiative process (a.k.a.
SB1108)
was
signed into law by our governor, blessing the deal with content-free
phatic: "I thought it was the right thing to do," he said. Hook, line,
and sinker. April Fools!
Before this new law, signatures from 6% of registered voters statewide
were needed to qualify an initiative or referendum for the ballot, and
only 35 measures did so in the past 77 years.
"In the past 15 years, the success rate has been about one in seven.
Nevertheless, by dangling fears of an urban-liberal ballot hijacking,
the Farm Bureau may well succeed in imposing a new geographic hurdle,
one that requires the 6% threshold to be met in 18 of Idaho's 35
legislative districts.
"It would take just over 21% of registered voters in Ada County
to get to 6% statewide," notes Farm Bureau lobbyist Russ
Hendricks. "If you add in Canyon County, just over 15% of voters
in the two counties would be able to qualify a ballot measure."
Never mind that 100% of registered voters statewide have the
opportunity to vote on any initiative or referendum that qualifies fo
the ballot. Nine of the state's 35 districts are in Ada County,
because that's where the population is, don't you know.
But Otter says he "agreed with the arguments that it's an issue for all
Idaho-why shouldn't all of Idaho be included in it?" Nominee for best
legislative non sequitur of the session.)
Why shouldn't some voters in Idaho be more equal than others?
3.April 2013
The price of stupid
The story of Meridian's new City Hall is a sordid adventure. The crazy
big numbers in
Cynthia
Sewell's report for the Idaho Statesman left me wondering
about underlying facts, for which
the Idaho Supreme
Court's judgment handed down this week is amply forthcoming. To
wit:
The projected started in 2006, and was "not to exceed" $12.2
million.
Trouble ensued. Not sure what the "contaminated soil" was, but "an
unanticipated groundwater issue" added a basement that wasn't in the
original plans, and "upgraded offices and council chambers from those
contemplated in the parties' original agreement; re-design of the
Mayor’s office suite; better than standard exterior stone and brick;
high tech mechanical and electrical systems; and an upgraded public
plaza and amphitheater" jacked the price up past $20 million, which the
city approved.
The construction manager, Petra Inc. asked for 4.7% of the cost of the
project in excess of the original $12.2 million, which worked out to
$367,808 as of April, 2008. (Its original fee was based on that
percentage of the job.)
The city took occupancy in October, 2008, and the final project cost
was $21,395,962.13.
The city disputed Petra's bill, filed suit in April, 2009, "seeking a
declaratory judgment that Petra was not entitled to an increased fee."
(Nothing? For a project that ran 75% over the NTE amount?!)
"During the pre-trial phase, myriad motions were filed by both
parties."
They had a 59 day (!) trial, spanning fourth months from Dec. 2010 to
April 2011, and the court ruled against the city on all but one of its
claims. They "offset" Petra's claim by $52k, to $324,808... and added on
$595,896.17 in court costs and $1,275,416.50 in attorney
fees.
Sewell's report says the city spent
"$895,402 for an outside attorney the city hired to handle the case;
$842,474 to expert witnesses; and $316,518 in other costs."
If you're keeping score, that's $4,250,487.67, and counting.
But some good news for the City of Meridian:
"The attorney representing the city agreed not to charge the city for
the Supreme Court appeal if the city lost."
Petra and its attorneys are unlikely to be so generous, and by the time
they add up their costs and fees, call it $5 million, well over ten
times the bill the city thought was way too high. (And that doesn't
include the $1.1 million worth of repairs the city says it's spent on
"reconstructing" the HVAC, and a new roof.)
The city's attorney appears to have been fairly unpaid for the appeal,
going by Justice Jim Jones' narrative. Regarding Petra's breaches
(deemed "not material") and the city's notion of liquidated damages:
"Although the City is obligated to support its contentions with
propositions of law, authority, and argument, here it achieves the
somewhat dubious trifecta of lacking all three. ...
"At one point in its briefing, the City expressed its familiarity with
'the more than 160,000 pages' that [this case's record comprises]. One
can only presume, then, that if points of authority are conspicuously
missing from its argument, they must simply not exist. In any event,
this Court is not required to go fishing through the record on counsel's
behalf."
And from the newspaper report, something truly magical:
"The city said Monday it set aside enough money to cover the judgment,
and residents will not see any changes in services or tax
increases."
Because... they planted money trees for the landscaping? Maybe that has
to do with Monday being April Fool's Day. Speaking of which, an
amendment to the "LESSON LEARNED?" section, wherein the city "updated
its construction management practices to ensure proper checks and
balances are in place to protect the city on future construction
projects," may I suggest a slightly different lesson:
PAY YOUR BILLS ON TIME AND STAY OUT OF COURT.
2.April 2013
Gnarly ride
When is a 5 foot sidewalk not five feet wide? When there's a utility
pole plunked down in the middle of it, and overgrown landscaping
encroaching from the other side. I've been thinking about that
and the many other roadway and sidewalk hazards while using N. Cole Road
on my bicycle lately. Went out for a walk-and-ride today and zoomed in
on some of the badly done transitions, stray concrete, bad maintenance
and one ugly manhole cover that I normally dodge along with traffic,
to send an email to the Ada County Highway District, including a pointer
to my little slide show of
roadway problems on N
Cole Rd in Boise.
The northbound side is really horrific for bicycling, but it also
happens to be the most direct means from point A to point B that I visit
regularly. (For a variety of reasons, but mostly because it's only a
single lane half the way, the southbound side is relatively safe, at
least down to Ustick.)
Now that I have a rearview mirror mounted on my helmet, it amazes me to
contemplate the days I used to ride without that, and just hoped
that no one clipped me while racing in the right lane to the next
stoplight. Now I at least know what's coming, when to bail on to the
sidewalk if need be, and whether I can steer around the obstacle course
without taking a hit.
1.April 2013
The new abnormal
No joke,
almost
20% of high school boys (and 11% of all school-age children)
diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? I'm with James
Swanson, professor of psychiatry and ADHD researcher: "There's no way
that one in five high-school boys has A.D.H.D." And no way one in ten
high-school girls has it, either.
More than three million prescriptions (mostly for Ritalin, Adderall,
Concerta and Vyvanse)... to $9 billion in sales last year, and
more than doubled in the last five years. The "epidemic" has been
awfully good for drug companies' health, at least.
O wad some Pow'r
Here's
how
we looked to the Guardian as Google's choice of how to commemorate
Cesar Chavez' birthday interfered with... well, my goodness, it's the
"intention to de-Christianization of our culture." It will eventually
cease to be latent, or minor, people.
On a more positive note of cultural reflection,
the
remarkable obituary of Yvonne Brill, "believed to have been the only
woman in the United States who was actually doing rocket science in the
mid-1940s," and her advice on equanimity, after
the University of Manitoba in Canada refused to let her major in
engineering because there were no accommodations for women at an outdoor
engineering camp, which students were required to attend.
"You just have to be cheerful about it and not get upset when you get
insulted."
And her father was a carpenter, too.
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
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Wednesday, 01-May-2013 14:57:36 MDT
http://fortboise.org/blog/201304.html
