Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
Congress eyes funds for Iran dissidents
Spending bill includes provision for $1.5m
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 12/6/2003
WASHINGTON -- For the first time, Congress is set to approve government funds openly earmarked to help undermine the Islamic government of Iran by providing money for dissidents inside the country, according to US officials and specialists.
The program calls for an initial $1.5 million to be spent next year to support the efforts of Iranians and Iranian organizations seeking to replace the government in Tehran with a democracy.
Though a relatively small amount of money, the funding carries great symbolic weight. Past efforts to use US government money to support Iranian dissidents have been sidetracked before reaching a final vote because of concerns that they would violate sanctions prohibiting any money from going to Iran, as well as an agreement in 1981, shortly after the release of US hostages in Tehran, to refrain from actively opposing the Iranian government.
But this time, Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican with close ties to the Bush administration who has long called for more active US efforts to weaken the Iranian government, has appended the funding provision to the so-called omnibus spending bill. The provision has already gone through negotiations of a House-Senate conference committee and is due to be formally approved early next week.
A spokesman for Brownback said the Bush administration knew the senator was inserting the provision and did not oppose it.
On Nov. 6, Bush announced that US policy would be geared toward supporting democracy for Middle East countries, but his administration's policy on Iran has stopped short of providing direct support for opposition leaders. White House and State Department leaders were unavailable for comment yesterday.
"It is clear from the regime's treatment of its own people that Iran is no democracy," Brownback told a group of Iranian Americans in July, in a speech his office provided to explain his position. "I understand that the State Department's job is diplomacy and the search for common ground. But now is a time for moral clarity, not excuses."
Legislature Fails to Agree on Governor's Fiscal Proposals
The sticking point is Schwarzenegger's call for a spending cap. The GOP says it's needed, but Democrats insist it could lead to devastating cuts.
By Nancy Vogel, Gregg Jones and Evan Halper
Times Staff Writers
December 6, 2003
SACRAMENTO � Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged late Friday that the Legislature would probably not approve a pair of financial recovery proposals that he had hoped to place on the March ballot.
In a succession of votes, Senate Republicans and Democrats took turns shooting down the governor's plan and a Democratic alternative to borrow as much as $15 billion to patch a gaping hole in the state budget and prevent future fiscal crises.
The Senate adjourned for the week about 9:40 p.m. Debate continued in the Assembly.
GOP senators who met with the governor afterward emerged to say he was very disappointed.
Republicans and Democrats blamed each other for the failure to reach a deal.
The governor defined lawmakers as "overspending addicts during his campaign," said Rob Stutzman, Schwarzenegger's director of communications. "And as overspending addicts, they've been unable to bring themselves to a place tonight where they can truly recognize the ways of their overspending and reform themselves."
Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) and Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga) exchanged barbs on the Senate floor when Brulte threatened to put an even tougher constitutional spending cap before voters next November.
"The governor bent over backwards to try to meet you halfway," Brulte said.
"Halfway?" Burton responded. "Bending over backwards? You must have been in a different meeting than I was at."
Stutzman also suggested that the governor would turn to voters in November and request that they approve a ballot measure containing an even tougher constitutional spending cap.
But California will run into significant trouble long before then: If some kind of bond proposal is not approved by voters in March, the state could run out of cash in June, when $14 billion in short-term loans obtained last year is due.
Aware of this possibility, the Schwarzenegger administration took steps Friday to proceed with an existing $10.7-billion bond issue that was approved by lawmakers last summer but has been challenged in court as unconstitutional.
Army Will Face Dip in Readiness
4 Divisions Need to Regroup After Iraq
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 6, 2003; Page A01
Four Army divisions -- 40 percent of the active-duty force -- will not be fully combat-ready for up to six months next year, leaving the nation with relatively few ready troops in the event of a major conflict in North Korea or elsewhere, a senior Army official said yesterday.
The four divisions -- the 82nd Airborne, the 101st Airborne, the 1st Armored and the 4th Infantry -- are to return from Iraq next spring, to be replaced by three others, with a fourth rotating into Afghanistan. That would leave only two active-duty divisions available to fight in other parts of the world.
Briefing reporters at the Pentagon, the official said the four returning divisions will be rated either C-3 or C-4, the Army's two lowest readiness categories, for 120 to 180 days after they return as vehicles and helicopters are overhauled and troops are rested and retrained.
C-3 means a division is capable of performing only some of its combat missions, and C-4 means a division needs additional manpower, training or equipment to fight a major regional war.
A fifth division, the 3rd Infantry, which returned from Iraq in August, is still not fully ready to return to combat, the official said.
Employers Balk at New Hiring, Despite Growth
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
The nation's employers displayed an unexpected reluctance in November to hire more workers, despite the improving economy and rising demand for what they sell.
The work force grew by only 57,000 jobs last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday � only a third of what most forecasters had projected. The jobs report pushed down stock prices and interest rates. But for many economists, there was clear evidence, too, that the recovery has staying power: the unemployment rate dipped to 5.9 percent from 6 percent in October, and November was the fourth straight month of rising employment.
"Not every single indicator is going to look like a boom," said Richard Berner, chief domestic economist for Morgan Stanley. "Now we are getting down to a strong, but less spectacular, recovery."
The Bush administration greeted the jobs data cautiously. Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao noted that "many other economic indicators point toward continued job growth well into the new year." President Bush, in a speech in Baltimore, said the economy "is getting stronger."
"The productivity is high; investment is strong; the home industry is vibrant," he added.
The Democratic presidential candidates, meanwhile, were scornful. The weak jobs growth "is another link in the chain of President Bush's broken promises," said Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor. Senator John Edwards of North Carolina declared that "the jobs market has gone from bad to mediocre."
November was the second anniversary of the recovery from the 2001 recession, and for most of the period, jobs disappeared at an alarming rate � nearly 1.1 million in all through last July. In the turnaround since then, employers have added back 328,000 jobs, mostly in the lower-wage service sector. Higher-wage manufacturing jobs have continued to disappear, although at a slower rate than in the spring and summer.
"One can conclude that the jobless recovery is safely behind us," said Jared Bernstein, a senior labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, "but the number and quality of the jobs we are creating are still insufficient to sustain a truly robust recovery."
Heh.
Judge Tells SCO: No, *You* Have to Show the Code First
The big news from the hearing today is that Judge Wells told SCO that they have to go first. They have to show IBM what code they are alleging is infringing. All during discovery, SCO has been telling IBM they had to show all their code first, and then SCO would identify the alleged infringements. IBM kept telling SCO in reply that they had the burden, as plaintiffs, to at least tell IBM what code was involved. Today the judge told SCO that IBM was right. SCO has 30 days to comply. IBM doesn't have to turn over anything until they do it. The judge's order will be filed Wednesday, and SCO has a month to show the code. They can't force IBM to go first. That dance is over.
I decided to comment on Jeremy's other post individually (hey, you know blogs read backward…).
I was talking online to an old friend from HS the other day and she was telling me about people giving her a hard time about not going to her church service. She's involved in the church, goes to the sunday school classes, teaches a Bible study, and stays in regular fellowship with all of them there, but that seemingly still isn't enough for some of them. Her reasons for skipping out on the regular service seem valid enough... She has a hard time following the preacher, she thinks he's kinda convoluted and rarely uses scripture. So she spends that time reading and studying on her own time. So of course I told her i didn't think she was doing anything wrong, and as long as she was growing in her relationship with Christ, that she was on the right track... (sadly, her friends never even ask how her relationship with Christ is going, they are too caught up in legalistic details, but i don't want to get off on that.)
After a few minutes of making her feel confident about her actions i tell her that there is, of course, a "but" to this whole issue. She may not be wrong, but... is she ready to go deeper? Is she ready for the meat instead of the milk? Is she ready to move past being a spiritual baby and onto being of full age in Christ? Obviously, she is seeking a deeper relationship with Him, so i knew the answer was already yes. So i threw her the verse:
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Heb 5:12-14
Sounds wonderful doesn't it? Solid food belongs to those who are of full age and have their senses exercised to discern... and through deductive reasoning, you can also say that those who partake in solid food are skilled in the word of righteousness... and this should be exciting to someone who has found themselves moving past the milk, and to the meat.
But... (and finally here's the real 'but') if you have the meat, you ought to be teachers. This really makes you reflect. I dont think there is anyone that would say they only want milk, but are you willing to step up and teach someone?
I think the real "but" is not just whether one is willing to step up but whether or not they are capable.
There's a real problem with evangelicals fielding unqualified teachers, in my opinion. This is NOT a scriptural problem…the scripture tells you to spread the Gospel and that's fine…if you know what the Gospel is. Too damn much feel-good is taken to be Gospel, folks.
The Truth Shall Set You Free. But it might not make you comfortable. How do you know it's the truth? It's simple. The truth, that is.
Accepting the truth is the only way to be able to change the truth. Accepting the truth is difficult sometimes. We often want things to be other than what they are, and that desire makes us search for evidence that something hidden will come to light and prove things were the way we expected them to be all along.
Meanwhile, had we just accepted events as they happened, unpleasant as they may be, we would have been freed immediately to work on changing things.
Choosing which truth to accept and which to reject is just as bad as rejecting all the truth. We accept pleasant truths and deny unpleasant ones. Or we accept unpleasant truths and deny pleasant ones - you know people that do that, don't you? Go on, tell the truth.
How do you know what the truth is, though?
It's easy, really. Much easier than most would have you believe. The only reason anyone would have you think otherwise is so that they can think otherwise and not be exposed.
Be awake. Pay attention. Ignore nothing that happens to you. Instead of acting as though things will turn out as you expect, give your best effort to make it turn out as you choose. And watch to see how it actually turns out, each action. You'll be wrong at first, because by rejecting the truth in the past, you learned the wrong ideas about how the world works. And it will be painful sometimes. But pain is as much a part of life as joy is…that's the truth.
But as you remain alert, as you stay aware, as you stop explaining away the difference between your expectations and events, you learn. And as you learn, the truth becomes clearer. And you feel strong enough to handle whatever pain comes to you.
But you're actually no stronger than you ever were. You just stop wasting your strength on the imaginary, unnecessary battles that result from denying the truth.
Takes a while to burn off the fog. But if you haven't gone through the process, no matter how much joy you feel you ain't qualified to teach.
She Who Harasses Slacker Bloggers Into Posting should get no recognition here except that I spotted Jeremy in a comment on her blog and checked out his blog, around the house.
He's about as political as she is. But he's intelligent. Always a good sign.
You really don't be linking around a person's diary blog in a site like this, but he's got a religion section there too, and since we've gone there recently I'll point out his two most recent posts; one because it makes a cogent point and one because it doesn't finish making a cogent point.
In his book Disciple Juan Carlos Ortiz tells about his church experience in Buenos Aires. He began with 184 members and after two years had grown to 600. In his words, his 'Sunday School was tops' and his follow-up system 'was one of the best.' His denomination was so impressed, they invited him to speak at two different conventions.
"Yet underneath it all," he wrote, "I sensed that something wasn't right. Things seemed to stay high so long as I worked sixteen hours a day. But when I relaxed, everything came down... I headed for the countryside and gave myself to meditation and prayer.
"The Holy Spirit began to break me down. The first thing He said was, 'Juan, that thing you have is not a church. It's a business.' I didn't understand what He meant. 'You are promoting the gospel the same way Coca-Cola sells Coke,' He said, 'the same way Reader's Digest sells books and magazines. You are using all the human tricks you learned in school. But where is My finger in all this?'
"I didn't know what to say. I had to admit that my congregation was more of a business enterprise than a spiritual body."Then the Lord told me a second thing. 'You are not growing,' He said. 'You think you are, because you've gone from 200 to 600. But you're not growing - you're just getting fat.' What did that mean? 'All you have is more people of the same quality as before. No one is maturing; the level remains the same. Before, you had 200 spiritual babies; now you have 600 spiritual babies.'" [P6: emphasis added…and all that need be added]
Al-M was also good enough to tell me how she found the Gaurdian piece mentioned below. Came from Freedom Rider, who signs her posts "Freedom Rider," but suspect you can find her name if you really want it by checking her article at The Black Commentator.
But I'm not talking about that stuff. I want to bring to your attention her World Aids Day post (I know it's over, but it's too damn much trouble to change the "A Good Cause" box daily, so it's up for the month).
First of all, props to those that find out things before I do and tell me about them. Al-Muhajabah told me about an article in The Guardian by Benjamin Zephaniah, a Black poet who is apparently refusing induction into the Order of the British Empire.
There's something very strange about receiving a letter from Tony Blair's office asking me if I want to accept this award. In the past couple of months I've been on Blair's doorstep a few times. I have begged him to come out and meet me; I have been longing for a conversation with him, but he won't come out, and now here he is asking me to meet him at the palace! I was there with a million people on February 15, and the last time I was there was just a couple of weeks ago. My cousin, Michael Powell, was arrested and taken to Thornhill Road police station in Birmingham where he died. Now, I know how he died. The whole of Birmingham knows how he died, but in order to get this article published and to be politically (or journalistically) correct, I have to say that he died in suspicious circumstances. The police will not give us any answers. We have not seen or heard anything of all the reports and investigations we were told were going to take place. Now, all that my family can do is join with all the other families who have lost members while in custody because no one in power is listening to us. Come on Mr Blair, I'll meet you anytime. Let's talk about your Home Office, let's talk about being tough on crime.
I'm pretty impressed with the guy who wrote the article. So I looked into just what he did that might cause him to be knighted. I found his website, read some of his work…I must say, I remain impressed with him as a person. I ain't feeling the poetry, though. Personal taste, I guess.
Last time I complained about snow, Terry at The Storm said I'd get more this weekend, so I blame him for this. 
From the Center for American Progress
The Labor Department's new monthly jobs report shows the job crisis is far from over. CNN reports, "U.S. employers remained cautious in November despite the economy's robust growth rate in late summer, adding meager numbers to their payrolls, according to a government report Friday that fell far short of Wall Street expectations." According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the unemployment rate remained "essentially unchanged." All told, "about 8.7 million people were unemployed in November, 2 million of whom have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer." The report follows yesterday's weekly update in which the government announced "jobless claims rose in the United States last week at a higher level than Wall Street forecasts."
WAGES, INCOME STILL A BIG PROBLEM: The U.S. Conference of Mayors yesterday released a [PDF] report showing new jobs created during the 2004-05 period are forecast to pay an average of $35,855, much lower than the $43,629 average pay of those jobs lost between 2001-03. That highlights the major problem American Progress economist Christian Weller says is now afflicting the economy. As Weller says, "wage growth has also been fairly anemic. Compared to previous recoveries, wages in inflation adjusted terms would usually rise by 2.3% over the first 23 months of a recovery. This time, though, wages increased by only 1.1%." He says "tentative employment growth, low employment, slow wage growth, and crawling increases in hours all essentially add up to one thing: low incomes for households."
At roughtly Dec 05 2003 7:49:29 am MST, sufficiently long before the caffeine made my brain settle down to significantly reduce my tolerance, a comment was left here that I decided needs a response.
You who feel SOOOOOOO good leaving silly-ass comments on old posts.
Hiding behind a Yahoo! email address is ineffective. Don't think you can't be found. I already know your cheap ass uses Juno as an ISP. And all the tools the Feds can use to track you down are actually available…though not as an integrated whole…to anyone on the net who knows how to use them.
Not that I'm frightened of anyone who doesn't have the balls to spell out "motherfucker". Or any of you mortals at all.
Repeat after me:
I'd call you a dick, but that would insult dicks worldwide.
Elle told me I been slacking, so I had to post a bunch of stuff.
Open Letter on Copyrights
From Darl McBride, CEO
December 4, 2003
An Open Letter:
Since last March The SCO Group (�SCO�) has been involved in an increasingly rancorous legal controversy over violations of our UNIX intellectual property contract, and what we assert is the widespread presence of our copyrighted UNIX code in Linux. These controversies will rage for at least another 18 months, until our original case comes to trial. Meanwhile, the facts SCO has raised have become one of the most important and hotly debated technology issues this year, and often our positions on these issues have been misunderstood or misrepresented. Starting with this letter, I'd like to explain our positions on the key issues. In the months ahead we'll post a series of letters on the SCO Web site ( www.sco.com ). Each of these letters will examine one of the many issues SCO has raised. In this letter, we'll provide our view on the key issue of U.S. copyright law versus the GNU GPL (General Public License).
SCO asserts that the GPL, under which Linux is distributed, violates the United States Constitution and the U.S. copyright and patent laws. Constitutional authority to enact patent and copyright laws was granted to Congress by the Founding Fathers under Article I, � 8 of the United States Constitution:
Congress shall have Power � [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
This Constitutional declaration gave rise to our system of copyrights and patents.
Do we all look that stupid?
Hip-Hop Dominates Grammy Nominations
By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY
AP Entertainment Writer
December 4, 2003, 11:14 PM CST
NEW YORK -- Rap and R&B have been consistent chart-toppers for the last few years, but in 2003 they took over pop music -- and the Grammy nominations on Thursday.
The year's top-selling artist: rapper 50 Cent. Two of the year's biggest hits came from R&B singer Beyonce. In October, every spot on Billboard's top 10 singles chart was held by a rap or R&B artist.
Grammy voters took notice, doling out six nominations each to Beyonce, Jay-Z, OutKast and Pharrell Williams.
"Hip-hop is at its most commercial point," Andre 3000 of the rap duo OutKast told The Associated Press. "It's pretty poppy, and it's popular this year."
Five nominations apiece went to Missy Elliott, Eminem, Evanescence, 50 Cent, Chad Hugo, Ricky Skaggs, Justin Timberlake, the ailing Luther Vandross and the late Warren Zevon.
Four of the five nominees for record of the year fell into the rap or R&B category: Beyonce's "Crazy in Love," "Where Is The Love," by The Black Eyed Peas & Justin Timberlake, "Lose Yourself," by Eminem and "Hey Ya!" from OutKast. The brooding rock group Coldplay's song "Clocks" was the only exception.
And rap and R&B also dominated the album of the year category: Missy Elliott's "Under Construction"; "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" by OutKast; and "Justified," from Timberlake, which had the former boy-band star reach into R&B for his first solo effort. The White Stripes' "Elephant" and "Fallen" from goth rockers Evanescence rounded out the category.
However, in somewhat of a surprise, 50 Cent's "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," which sold more than 6 million copies, was shut out of the major categories. It was nominated exclusively for rap awards, although 50 Cent himself was nominated for best new artist, along with Evanescence, R&B singer Heather Headley, the alt-pop group Fountains of Wayne and the dancehall artist Sean Paul.
Donations Pick Up for State GOP
Schwarzenegger's popularity helps loosen wallets -- some of them on the Democratic side.
By Dan Morain
Times Staff Writer
SACRAMENTO � Capitalizing on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's popularity and moderate profile, the California Republican Party is raising millions of dollars by tapping disaffected Democratic givers and donors the governor has shunned.
Nearly a year before the 2004 legislative elections, party executives say they have checks and commitments exceeding the $11 million they raised for all of last year's statewide contests.
Schwarzenegger himself has raised more than $1.5 million since taking office two months ago. And California Republican Party Chairman Duf Sundheim has told Capitol lobbyists that he has donations and pledges totaling at least another $9 million for the GOP's effort to wrest control of the Legislature from Democrats next year.
Since Schwarzenegger took over, California Republicans "have died and gone to heaven," said state Sen. Don Perata (D-Oakland). "For the foreseeable future, they have an enormously popular governor who has much broader appeal than any Republican I can think of, including the president."
Republican stalwarts such as Alex Spanos, a Stockton developer who owns the San Diego Chargers football team, and companies such as ChevronTexaco account for much of the money. But Sundheim also is tapping some entities that Schwarzenegger has shunned as "special interests," including an Indian tribe, a union of public employees and several trade organizations.
Republicans also have wooed one of the Democrats' largest donors, mortgage lender Ameriquest Capital Corp., and its principals, Roland and Dawn Arnall. Ameriquest and the Arnalls have donated or promised $2 million to the California GOP, according to information Sundheim gave prospective donors in Sacramento this week.
Israel Shares Blame on Iraq Intelligence, Report Says
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page A18
JERUSALEM, Dec. 4 -- Israel was a "full partner" in U.S. and British intelligence failures that exaggerated former president Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a report by an Israeli military research center has charged.
"The failures of this war indicate weaknesses and inherent flaws within Israeli intelligence and among Israeli decision-makers," Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom wrote in an analysis for Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.
Israeli intelligence services and political leaders provided "an exaggerated assessment of Iraqi capabilities," raising "the possibility that the intelligence picture was manipulated," wrote Brom, former deputy commander of the Israeli military's planning division.
David Baker, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, declined to comment on the report.
The allegations parallel those raised in the United States and Britain. Officials have combed Iraq and interrogated former authorities for months, but have turned up little evidence to support the prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs.
"In the questioning of the picture painted by coalition intelligence, the third party in this intelligence failure, Israel, has remained in the shadows," the report said. "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities."
The report added, "A critical question to be answered is whether governmental bodies falsely manipulated the intelligence information in order to gain support for their decision to go to war in Iraq, while the real reasons for this decision were obfuscated or concealed."
I wasn't going to blog the sniper trials at all. But this…
By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page A01
CHESAPEAKE, Va., Dec. 4 -- Lee Boyd Malvo had a plan to save the world. And it was going to start after he and John Allen Muhammad collected a $10 million payment to stop last fall's sniper shootings, an investigator for Malvo's defense team testified Thursday.
The plan involved setting up a compound for 70 boys and 70 girls. "Seventy boys and 70 girls were going to be made into super-people," Carmeta V. Albarus, an investigator and social worker, said Malvo told her. "They were going to be trained and sent out to different parts of the world and bring about a just system."
Albarus testified Thursday that she pointed out "how ludicrous" the idea was. She said Malvo "felt very confident that this could be done, because we have to start with the children." The $10 million payment from the government "was to purchase land and equipment and whatever else he needed for this compound," Albarus said.
I suppose just saying what actually happened the first time would set a bad precident.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House offered its third version Thursday of a pilot who spotted Air Force One while it flew to Iraq -- a sighting that if publicly disclosed would have scrubbed President Bush's Thanksgiving Day visit to U.S. troops in Baghdad.
Partisan Hacking in Congress
It sounds like a Beltway episode of "The Pink Panther": Congressional detectives have seized computers from the Senate Judiciary Committee in an investigation of how suspected Republican mischief-makers leaked minority Democrats' confidential memos to sympathetic media outlets. The sergeant-at-arms has called in espionage experts to help in grilling dozens of Capitol staff members. But the affair is hardly comical; in fact, it is further sad evidence � as if any were needed � of the blood-sport level of partisanship in Washington.
At first, the Republican majority denied any G.O.P. complicity after the memos were leaked and published. The documents detailed how Democratic senators had strategized and consulted outside interest groups dedicated to opposing some of President Bush's more extreme judicial nominees. But after the police moved in last week, Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who is the Judiciary Committee's chairman, reversed himself and announced that he had been "shocked" to find out that it was a member of his own staff who had hacked into the minority's computer files.
"I am mortified," he said in acknowledging the breach of confidentiality. "There's no excuse that can justify these improper actions."
In practice, though, partisan zealotry has often been the justification for much of the workings on Capitol Hill. Republicans, long under the heel of Democrats, waxed triumphalist in finally gaining majority control of both houses. Democrats have been largely ignored in the making of major legislation and have even been denied a share in hometown pork projects for voting against the G.O.P. budget.
Vindictive politicking was regularly practiced by Democrats in their majority, too. But what is happening now is nothing short of a ratcheting up toward self-satire. The parties view the nation as so microscopically divided that no initiative should be overlooked in approaching the power struggle in next year's elections. Nonetheless, stooping to Senate pilferage is hardly a clarion call to victory.
A Lynching Memorial Unveiled in Duluth
Nations deal with nightmares the same way people do � by trying to forget them. Among the nightmares that had faded from public memory in the United States until recently, none are more ghastly than the campaign of racial terror that gripped this country from the 1880's to the 1930's, when thousands of black Americans were hanged, mutilated, burned alive or dragged to death while huge crowds looked on.
Sometimes called "lynching bees" or "Negro barbecues," these events were cast as macabre carnivals, which drew crowds with children and picnic baskets from miles around. The victims' bodies were sometimes photographed for postcards, which were used as instruments of terror until mailing such postcards was barred in the early 20th century. Lynching was not always just random violence. It was sometimes semiofficial violence, directed by whites who feared business competition from emerging black entrepreneurs and who hated the crusading newspapers of the Negro press, which began pressing aggressively for full citizenship for black people around World War I. [P6: emphasis added]
Americans who know of the violence of this period at all tend to believe that it was confined to the segregationist South. But the fact that lynchings took place in many parts of the country was underscored recently in the northern Minnesota city of Duluth when the city unveiled a moving memorial commemorating the deaths of Elmer Jackson, Elias Clayton and Isaac McGhie, three young black men who were lynched in Duluth in 1920 while a mob of 10,000 looked on.
The dedication drew thousands of people from all over the area. The emotional high point came with a speech by Warren Read, a fourth-grade teacher from Kingston, Wash., who had learned while researching his family that his great-grandfather had helped lead the mob that stormed the local jail and took the three men, who were circus workers, from their cells. His voice choking with emotion, he apologized to the victims and their families.
The memorial in Duluth is part of a national journey that began in the 1990's, when scholars and museums began to pull back the covers on a shameful and horrific period. After nearly a half-century of turning away, the country now seems more ready to look its nightmare squarely in the eye.
Um, Clarence? Ward?
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is analyzing several hate-mail letters received by prominent African-American men, including N.F.L. players, civic leaders and entertainers, The Palm Beach Post reported yesterday. The contents of the article were confirmed yesterday in an interview with a special agent from the Cleveland office of the F.B.I.
In the past year, about six N.F.L. players have received the letters, which threaten violence and instruct the players not to date white women. The F.B.I. did not reveal the names of the players, but two people with knowledge of the situation said one of them had since retired.
The Palm Beach Post reported Wednesday that a prominent Miami Dolphins player received a letter in September.
The Associated Press reported yesterday that a Columbus, Ohio, police report said the mother of the suspended Ohio State tailback Maurice Clarett received a death threat addressed to her son. Clarett's mother, Michelle, said Clarett received the letter, which had no return address, at her home on Oct. 2. The typed message was from "O.S.U. cheerleaders" and said that "black men should stay away from white women," and included other racial remarks and ended with a message that the writer would "kill and bomb the place," The A.P. reported.
Robert Hawk, a special agent in the F.B.I. office in Cleveland, said in a telephone interview yesterday that the letters to the N.F.L. players were a small part of a spate of hate mail directed at notable African-American men over the past two years. He said dozens of other "racially hateful letters" had been sent to other high-profile entertainers, civic leaders and organizations. "The letters directly ask the males to stop dating white females or they will be castrated, shot or set on fire," Hawk said. "And they are all signed either angry white women or angry Caucasian women."
At Many Stores, Early Numbers Disappoint
By TRACIE ROZHON
Published: December 5, 2003
Retail sales in November, including the bellwether Thanksgiving weekend, failed to rise to analysts' expectations, suggesting that the Christmas season may not be as good as some retailers hoped a month or two ago.
But for luxury retailers, the season still looks upbeat. [P6: emphasis added] Shoppers tended to buy higher-priced, higher-profit items last month, even at discount stores
Pentagon and Bogus News: All Is Denied
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 � Early last year Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disbanded the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence after it became known that the office was considering plans to provide false news items to unwitting foreign journalists to influence policymakers and public sentiment abroad.
But a couple of months ago, the Pentagon quietly awarded a $300,000 contract to SAIC, a major defense consultant, to study how the Defense Department could design an "effective strategic influence" campaign to combat global terror, according to an internal Pentagon document.
Sound familiar?
Senior Pentagon officials said Thursday that they were caught unawares by the contract and insisted its language was a "poor choice of words" by a low-level staffer. They said the work did not reflect any backdoor effort to resurrect the discredited office and was merely a study to understand Al Qaeda better and find ways to combat it.
"We are not recreating that office," said Thomas O'Connell, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, the policy arm of the Pentagon that deals with the military's most secretive operators and whose staff wrote the document.
But some critics of the former office voiced skepticism, saying that the contract amounted to a veiled attempt to create a low-budget copy of its ill-fated predecessor. A spokesman for SAIC referred all questions to the Pentagon.
Over the last week or so my thought piece to news flash ratio has shifted a bit and the posting volume has decreased somewhat, largely because my personal situation has improved such that I can pursue a number of things I'd had on hold for a long time. For instance, my economics studies can actually proceed (The things I study fall into two categories: things I want to know…which I pursue obsessively…and things I need to know…which I learn as much as I need to know and stop, but will work on before the things that are purely desire-inspired. Economics is in the second category).
My list of need-to-knows is growing. My sense of things is that the ground beneath our society is shifting, and most of us don't know enough about what we're ACTUALLY doing to judge how this shifting will affect our institutions. I think that needs to change. There's a lot of things I feel need to be understood from the perspective of your standard human and presented as such. I happen to think I have decent analytical and writing skills. I happen to think I can do this for a couple of subjects. Setting up to better enable the presentation of that perspective is one of my self-assigned tasks.
The trick is, though your standard human can understand just about anything that's presented clearly, even an exceptional human can't absorb and analyze everything that need be understood…that means a guy like me isn't going to be able to cover all those bases. So starting early next year, I'm going to be looking for folks capable of helping me.
I'm not talking a group blog; this is where I flex my ego. It's mineminemine. I'm talking about helping talented folks set up their own "practice"—web space is cheap and I may just lend people some to play with until the get their approach and/or subject nailed down because I don't intend to get nuts with this. And to be truthful, I'll be looking largely for Black folks (Black folks, I might add, who share my feeling that the term "blogfather" is absurd). I feel regular ol' Black folks' perspective is underrepresented in editorial space.
There's some technical and design things I have to think through, and I have to figure out where to look and how to make folks understand I'm not looking for thought clones.
Tensions on Governor's Staff
Scorching rhetoric from one camp and soothing words from the other confuse legislators.
By Peter Nicholas and Joe Mathews
Times Staff Writers
December 4, 2003
SACRAMENTO � Tensions have begun to emerge between two camps within the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, threatening to complicate his efforts to win over state lawmakers who are considering his controversial budget recovery plan.
An especially revealing episode occurred in recent days when an aide's routine effort to build support for the governor's financial package grew into something else: an aggressive series of statewide campaign rallies that appeared to target wavering lawmakers.
Schwarzenegger's legislative secretary, Richard Costigan, had drawn up a list of Democratic lawmakers whose backing could decide the fate of the governor's plan. The idea was for Schwarzenegger to court these legislators in hopes of getting the votes to put his spending cap and bond measure of up to $15 billion on the March ballot. Schwarzenegger is pressing the Legislature to act by Friday.
Two people who have spoken to Costigan about the matter said they were told the governor's political team had used the list to arrange rallies that stoked fears of Schwarzenegger's wielding his celebrity to intimidate legislators into voting for his plan.
Living the religious life of a none
Growing numbers shed organized church for loose spiritual sensibility
Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer
Kellee Hom was raised in the Roman Catholic Church but never imagined she'd become a religious none.
No, not "nun." That's "none," as in "none of the above."
Hom is among a growing number of Americans who simply answer "none" or "no religion" when pollsters ask them their religious affiliation. Some "nones" identify themselves as atheists or agnostics, but the vast majority believe in God, pray and often describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious."
"My sense of God transcends all the different religions,'' said Hom, a clinical supervisor at Asian American Recovery Services in San Francisco, which helps people with substance-abuse problems. "It's an energy."
Nones are one of the fastest growing religious categories in the United States.
According to a recent survey, their ranks have more than doubled in a decade and include about 29 million Americans.
Checking Your Bill for a New Charge Called 'Oops'
By DAVID POGUE
EVERY few years, economists identify another mutant variation of inflation to keep them awake at night. In the 1980's, it was stagflation. Three years ago, it was deflation. And now, meet the economic specter of the new millennium: stealth inflation.
That's when phone companies and just about anybody else who sends you a bill manages to extract more money from you without actually raising their rates.
Phase 1 of this program was the proliferation of miscellaneous fees - for "regulatory assessment," "handling," "restocking," and so on. According to Business Week, newly concocted fees will generate $100 million for hotels this year, $2 billion for banks, $11 billion for credit-card companies - and an average of 20 percent extra on every phone bill.
Recently I may have stumbled upon Phase 2.
Attracted by the superior coverage of Verizon's wireless network, I signed up for a new cellphone. The $60 package included unlimited night and weekend calling and 800 anytime minutes.
A few days later, a welcome letter congratulated me on my new 700-minute plan. I called customer service. It was supposed to be 800 minutes, yes?
The phone representative explained that what I signed up for was the 700-minute plan, with a 100-minute bonus. The welcome letter didn't reflect the bonus, but I would see it on my monthly statements.
All right, no problem. All I'd lost was the 25 minutes on the phone with Verizon.
Yet when the first statement arrived, Verizon had charged me 25 cents for every minute over 700.
I called the 800 number again; the representative apologetically credited me the 100 minutes. Cost to me: another 25 minutes.
When the same error cropped up on the next month's statement, my wife mentioned that she had gone through precisely the same ritual with MCI long distance a few months earlier. In fact, after reviewing our records, we discovered at least seven cases in the last few years when a service company (including at least three phone companies) overbilled us and didn't correct the mistake until we turned ourselves into human pit bulls.
All right, mistakes happen. But over and over and over again?
Now, I'm not much on conspiracy theories. But in the weekly Circuits e-mail newsletter (nytimes.com/circuits) I floated a theory that all this might be part of a pattern of passive-aggressive robbery perpetrated on the premise that a certain percentage of customers won't notice, or won't bother to protest. Almost immediately, my copy of Microsoft Outlook turned into Microsoft Look Out. A tidal wave of responses poured in - over 1,200 in the first four days.
Because the comments were made by e-mail or as online postings, many of the correspondents did not respond to requests for elaboration or fuller identification. But the volume of the responses made it clear that I had struck a chord.
"My experience with cellphone companies, airlines, and Internet providers has been so overwhelmingly dominated by 'mistakes' that I can't believe that it amounts to anything less than an insidious new business model developed to prey upon busy lives," said Jeremy Cohen, a 25-year-old music student in Cambridge, Mass.
A posting on nytimes.com offered a similar lament: "They've cut to the bone to increase their bottom line. They train their front lines to blow people off, and give them no authority to make amends for problems. In previous eras, this was known as thievery. Now it's just the way things are done."
Not surprisingly, the companies in question deny that there's anything fishy going on. "We're not in business to part people from their money for a service that they don't get," said Mark Siegel, an AT&T Wireless spokesman. "Are there mistakes from time to time? Yes. But is it the conscious act of some cabal, a secret group of people sitting in a smoke-filled room (O.K., not in New York City)? No way."
On the other hand, would P.R. people even know about such a program? The people who would really know what's going on are the actual phone representatives - and I heard from them, too.
"I can't speak for all the cell companies,'' wrote a two-year customer-service veteran at one of the big carriers, "but the idea that we would intentionally overcharge customers is just plain wrong. Any time someone calls an 800 number, the company is charged, staff has to be paid and call centers have to be maintained. Where I work, we try to find ways to prevent customers from calling in. It would not make financial sense to do things that would purposely cause customers to call in."
That's a convincing argument; in fact, a Cingular spokeswoman told me that the industry-average cost per customer-service call is about $7. Yet the whole idea behind stealth inflation is that customers don't call in, that the overbilling will go unnoticed, perhaps masked by the dizzying complexity of the modern monthly statement. Verizon Wireless, for example, doesn't even provide an itemized list of calls with your statement (unless you pay - what else? - an additional monthly fee).
Verizon's spokeswoman brought up another point, which I call the Theory of Statistical Inevitability. She pointed out that Verizon Wireless has 40 million customers. "Even though we strive to get it right the first time, all the time, there are, unfortunately, times when we fall short," she said.
But there is a hole in that defense, as one reader wrote: "If these were truly random errors, one would expect that some of them would work in our favor. I know of no one who ever got extra minutes, extra money or extra anything else."
And sure enough, in 1,200 tales of billing errors, only two people described ever being underbilled. (Of course, most customers who find errors made in their favor are smart enough to keep their mouths shut. Only Abe Lincoln would spend 25 minutes on the phone trying to give his cellphone company its $1.75 back.)
In the end, the idea of a scheme to bilk millions of people by tiny amounts sounds preposterous, even silly. After all, wasn't that the villain's master plan in "Superman III"?
If you ask people on the receiving end of the complaints, you'll hear other theories to explain the explosion of customer accusations. Sprint executives, for example, assign part of the blame to the consumers themselves.
"Consumers, the press and others get caught up in the perception of overbilling," a spokeswoman said, but "if a customer changes her wireless calling plan and she doesn't read the terms and conditions of the contract, she might perceive a larger bill to be the result of overbilling, when in fact she never understood the terms of the contract."
Several carriers seconded Sprint's additional contention that "so many government taxes and federally mandated programs are being tacked on to phone bills in recent years. Consumers do benefit from these relatively recent government regulations, but at a cost that's not easily understood or explained."
Meanwhile, a number of call-center employees suggested that what's really going on may have more to do with dim-witted corporate officers than evil ones.
"I see dozens of accounts every month where we have made a mistake," wrote an 800-number agent for retail-store credit cards. "But because the way our jobs are structured, we are basically encouraged to ignore the mistakes and make the customer go away.
"When it takes several minutes to unravel a mess but we are only given 156 seconds to handle the call, most customer service reps look for the quickest way to dispense with the call. Extra minutes are very costly to the C.S.R. With the millions of dollars we are getting from those who are not catching us, it more than makes up for the lost business."
In any case, there is some cause for optimism. In the cellphone arena, at least, the new era of number portability means that companies have an enhanced incentive to improve. For example, Verizon Wireless says it is adding a number of satisfaction-improvement programs, including customer-service software that has been redesigned to prevent errors - "using drop-down menus to choose items rather than relying on a rep's ability to remember some of our changing promotions/procedures."
A customer backlash is taking shape, too. Verizon agreed this year to a $20 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit that accused it of having overcharged hundreds of thousands of California customers on their long-distance bills. (The plaintiff's law firm is now pursuing the matter on a nationwide basis.) Sprint, Qwest, SBC, AT&T and MCI have also recently settled class-action lawsuits related to fees and overbilling.
The more customers catch the errors and push back, the more it will cost the service companies to handle them - and the more likely such problems will be prevented.
At that point, Americans will encounter a form of inflation that will be worth celebrating: reverse stealth inflation.
Rumsfeld Meets Warlords in Afghanistan
By REUTERS
Published: December 4, 2003
Filed at 9:54 a.m. ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed suggestions on Thursday that Taliban rebels would disrupt Afghan elections next year, even as a guerrilla ambush killed a worker with a U.N.-backed project.
Rumsfeld, who met warlords in the north of the country to promote a disarmament drive, said NATO could eventually take on a wider role in post-war Afghanistan, the Western alliance's first mission outside Europe.
Prometheus isn't even an option 
Athena
?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla
While I was at it, I got some other books, just in case it gets colder and I don't want to go out.
I got The Elegant Universe : Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory because I'm not feeling all that clear on superstring theory and a recent Scientific American article on a theory that described the universe essentially as a hologram whetted my appetite. And I picked up A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius because the title cracked me up, and it, like The Elegant Universe, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Those Pulitzer guys tend to have pretty good judgement about that sort of thing.
And about two pounds of comic books and I am good to go for a while.
I really don't like talking about things I don't have a good grip on. Batting around concepts in purely logical terms is fine, but in reality every system has its Tao, the natural way its component parts hang together and interact. For instance an automatic transmission doesn't operate logically and no amount of boolean logic will explain its function.
So, having had a really good salmon teriyaki in the Village, I hit Barnes and Noble and picked up Economics Explained: Everything You Need to Know About How the Economy Works and Where It's Going by Robert Heilbroner and Lester Thurow. When I'm done I'll see if I need to get deeper to talk rational shit.
I also got The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto. The subtitle, "Why Capitalism Triumphs In The West And Fails Everywhere Else," indicates it covers some important material. It was an impulse buy, though, having never heard of the book before. Lots of props from conservative types, but that's not necessarily a flaw.
My boy Cobb wrote up something on the Thernstroms a little while back. I ain't say nothing at that point other than giving a high-five to a brother I hadn't heard from in long years, because I know Cobb handles his business.
The thread has picked up some traffic, it seems. But you know, I STILL can't say anything because Cobb has seriously given the best explanation of why the Thernstroms have no credibility with me.
Two years and 500 pages later he comes up with a stunning indictment of white culture and his own prescriptions. All of his evidence points to the fact that there is a huge problem with drugs in America and that if you look closely enough at white youth, you will find that they have maintained all across the country some culturally specific weaknesses that replicates the problem of addiction over and over and over. In fact, it is not just a stereotype that white fraternities and sororities binge drink themselves into oblivion, it is a scientifically demonstrable statistical inevitability. It's not just a racist joke that white kids are Meth-heads. There is no PC conspiracy to force them to pierce their tongues, wear flannel and tattoo their bodies. They have volunteered to drop out of society into a counterculture of degeneracy. Their families have imploded and they turn to Unsafe Sex, Illicit Drugs & Loud Obscene Music to foolishly compensate for this horrible, horrible failure in the home. Mr. Thomas is, in this matter, an unimpeachable source. He is simply outraged, and so should you be Mr. White America.
We thoughtful folks at the American Fellowship Institute have provided the proof. We didn't realize that white Americans were so pathetic and destitute. Don't they realize that their own youth are dying needlessly? Don't they understand why drugs are illegal? What is so wrong with white people that they don't recognize that we are trying to help, and why are they saying nasty things about Clarence Thomas?
Get off your lazy white asses and do something before you self-destruct, and take us with you! Oh, by the way, we're backing political candidates who back the Thomas Plan, and you will hear about the Thomas Scenario anytime white issues are discussed. Just doing our patriotic bit you know.
Not like I intended this to be a series or anything, but if you start looking at this you can find snowjobs creating six foot drifts.
The increase in productivity -- the amount an employee produces per hour of work -- reported by the Labor Department on Wednesday was even stronger than the 8.1 percent pace initially estimated for the July-to-September quarter a month ago and was up from a 7 percent growth rate posted in the second quarter of this year.
The third quarter was prior to the WONderful employment stats of the past few months. Basically, this says people were worked even harder than we thought. Proof?
More hours…but not more workers. Remember, we're talking third quarter here.
CAN pay workers more…but when was the last labor negotiation you heard of that didn't call for givebacks? Isn't that a significant method of achieving reportable productivity gains?
Of course,
I ask again: How well does The Economy track with the quality of life around these parts?
I'm really not suggesting we stop using statistics bcause we do, without question, need a way of understanding trends. I'm a real big proponent of detecting and using patterns in time as well as space.
The problem is when we're given statistics without context as the sole support for some position or decision.
Today's NY Times has another article about the "miracle" of the Dallas, TX school system's statistical gains, exposing what looks more and more like a scam.
These graphs compare Dallas' results on the Stanford Achievement Tests with Los Angeles' and those of the nation as a whole. The national comparison in particular strikes me as problematic…not only does it show that a passing grade (70) on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills would put you in a pretty low percentile on the Stanford Achievement Tests, but that the percentile you'd fall into has gotten lower over the past few years.
Of course they leave no child behind. They're backing up over them. And this is in addition to the scandal of their false reporting on the dropout rate.
And Dallas isn't alone in this. California, or San Francisco at minimum, has institutionalized the practice of getting kids they consider problematic to "test out" of high school rather than graduate.
Now, one may choose to dispute theses statistics. But doesn't that further my point, that context is vital?
I'm not going to be able to catch up with every well written thing I missed overthe last two weeks, even if I confine myself to my blogroll, am I?
In the comments to What was that unemployment figure again?, buermann of Flagrancy to Reason said:
The thing is, historical unemployment figures HAVE been adjusted. This past summer. The whole method of calculating them was changed, and comparisions have been made against them since that time as if the figures lay immutable since the birth of the nation.
And the past isn't the only used to make today sound better. On Dec 1, the NY Times reported Manufacturing at Highest Level in Two Decades. What a turnaround from the gloom of the last few months, eh? Well, it's orders being reported.
And they say
Readiness. No hiring yet.
The very nature of manufacturing has changed such that there is a world-wide reduction in manufacturing jobs. And they got all these orders…of course there's a wide readiness to hire. If it become necessary. And if automation and productivity increases can handle it, it won't be necessary.
But The Economy, it'll look better and better.
Let's be real. How well does The Economy track with the quality of life around these parts?
It's snowing in NYC and I don't like snow. Especially when I have no option but to go out in it.
Or is it?
I'm just lifting this from Slashdot:
"With all of the furor over the Patriot Act a truly scary bill that expands the rights of corporations at the expense of individuals was quietly introduced into congress in October. In Feist v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co. the Supreme Court ruled that a mere collection of facts can't be copyrighted. But H.R. 3261, the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act neatly sidesteps the copyright question and allows treble damages to be levied against anyone who uses information that's in a database that a corporation asserts it owns. This is an issue that crosses the political spectrum. Left-leaning organizations like the American Library Association oppose the bill and so do arch-conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly, who wrote an impassioned column exposing the bill for what it is the week after it was introduced."
I haven't read the linked editorials because I KNOW this sucks.
Governor Is Willing to Bend on Budget
Schwarzenegger says of what he was told about the pain of cutbacks: 'Now I understand.'
…In a reference to the nearly $4 billion in cuts he proposed over the next 19 months � taking money from health-care programs, higher education and the developmentally disabled � Schwarzenegger said: "I hate making cuts. Because it hurts me�. And now I understand when past governors said to me, 'Arnold, it will be tough decisions you'll have to make that are painful. We all make them.' I understood last week what that meant for the first time. Because I didn't quite understand what that meant. Those are painful decisions, to take money away from people."
Housing Case to Consider Possible Bias
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BALTIMORE, Nov. 30 (AP) � It has been nearly nine years since Baltimore housing tenants filed a lawsuit accusing city and federal officials of creating a system of racially segregated rental units.
On Monday, the tenants' case goes to federal court, where they will argue that officials have consigned the neediest residents to the most distressed neighborhoods.
The tenants say the city housing authority and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development have perpetuated a bias over the last 50 years.
Experts say the lawsuit is one of the most important housing cases in 20 years. Should Judge Marvin J. Garbis of Federal District Court find that the tenants' civil rights were violated, he could specify changes in housing policy. A result could be judicial oversight of housing decisions.
The tenants say the city and HUD preserved the segregated system put in place in the 1930's and 1940's by continuing to build public housing in poor, mostly black areas.
But the city and HUD say concentrations of public housing residents in poor black neighborhoods are a result of demographics and broad policy decisions, not discrimination. [P6: Ahem. What "demographics" were used to determine the placement, hm?? Isn't it a coincidence that "demographics and broad policy decisions" would result in the exact same placement that was decided on in the 30's and 40's? Is it a stretch to say that racism is a broad policy decision based on demographics?]
Good idea
Avedon Carol notes that the anniversary of Bush v. Gore happens to fall a day after the National Institute of Standards holds a symposium on voting machines, making one of those days -- December 11 or 12 -- a perfect opportunity to fill the blogosphere with posts about electronic voting.
LATER: I'm late, Krugman is early.
John Constantine at Hellblazer keeps finding the most interesting things. Ya ought read the whole report he found--an Australian newspaper got it from a French news service so you can go into denial now if you like-- (LATER: The NY Times reports the discrepancy too, but they might as well be French, right?)
THE US military has said it believes 54 insurgents were killed in intense exchanges in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra on Sunday but commanders admitted they had no bodies.
The only corpses at the city's hospital were those of ordinary civilians, including two elderly Iranian pilgrims and a child.
US Brigadier General Mark Kimmit told a Baghdad press conference 54 militants were killed, 22 wounded and one arrested.
…A few hours earlier, Colonel Fredrick Rudesheim, who heads the 3rd Combat Brigades that was involved in Sunday's bloody clashes, told reporters his troops had killed 46 and captured another 11.
"Are you asking me to produce (them)?" he asked, when asked by reporters about the absence of any militants' bodies at Samarra's single hospital or on the city's streets.
…The mystery, which borders on solving a mathematics equation, further deepened with Col Gonsalves' report.
According to him, a total of 60 militants, divided into two groups, attacked two convoys escorting new Iraqi currency to banks in the city.
Another four assailants in a BMW attacked a separate engineering convoy.
If the US troops killed 46 and captured 11 of them, only three of the survivors would have been left to pick up the corpses.
…Salaheddin Mawlud, a colonel in the former Iraqi army, who now heads Samarra city council's complaints office, said the American toll does not work.
"If there had been so many dead, we would have seen people rushing to the hospital, the police station or here, and it just didn't happen."
Abdelrizek Jadwa, who owns a grocery 50m from the scene of one of the attacks, said he did not have the shadow of a doubt.
"After the firing, I went out of my shop. There were no wounded, no killed on the streets. Where could they have disappeared?"
Well, I had some good news and felt like celebrating. And I couldn't do that when people keep finding all this kind of crap I'm responsible for:
A U.S. military official tells Time that at least 140 detainees--"the easiest 20%"--are scheduled for release. The processing of these men has sped up since the Supreme Court announced it would take the case, said the source, who believes the military is "waiting for a politically propitious time to release them." U.S. officials concluded that some detainees were there because they had been kidnapped by Afghan warlords and sold for the bounty the U.S. was offering for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. "Many would not have been detained under the normal rules of engagement," the source concedes. "We're dealing with some very, very dangerous people, but the pendulum is swinging too far in the wrong direction."
Okay, I voted against the Shrub so I can claim innocence.
But every last damn one of you that vote for this…person, knowing this crap goes on, is an accomplice.
And I still get to be angry and disgusted.
Could you keep this layout, on accounta I can read it? Thanks.
I wasn't going to do this yet. But you start reading and listening and thinking…
My gay community ain't as big as it used to be. Not like it was ever that vast, and a significant chunk of it was lipstick lesbians anyway. It's more like I went this way and they went that way. So most of the people I've lost to AIDS weren't gay. The gay folks I knew established some discipline, fast.
And actually, if you don't care about gay folks getting AIDS, you wouldn't much care about the other folks I lost either. Hangout crew, street people, ex-junkies that cleaned up too late, but didn't find out for a couple of years.
I would say it doesn't matter WHAT you think. But it does. I know a guy who's HIV positive that didn't tell anyone for years. He didn't want to deal with the exile status. His girl found out later, and that sucks to the point I wanted to smack him.
He should have told her. But we all could have made it easier.
You don't have to be afraid of people who are HIV positive. You don't have to be afraid of people with AIDS. If you could catch it from just being around them, we'd all have it.
People with AIDS aren't evil. Some have been foolish, or unknowledgeable or just lied to. But they're not evil, and AIDS is no more a punishment than the flu…and a lot harder to catch than the flu.
I don't know if there's a lot of good biochemical news about AIDS. But I do know if we all weren't so stupid, frightened or closed-minded, there could be a lot less bad news on the personal tip.
First thing I read is Ronn at A Burst of Light pointing to a brother I should have known about before, forcing me to add yet another feed.
J. Bernard Jones at Edge of Night got one of those over-preachy spams about how 9/11 happened because we turned our back on God. Now, I ain't the one to talk about religion (we can go there all day about spirituality, but that's for the other blog I never made). But if I was to talk religion, I'd be saying stuff like:
and
It has always been the collective spiritual narcissim of this country, especially after the end of the Cold War, that Americans assumed that we were immune to the kind of trials and tribulations that affect the rest of the world, that we as a so-called "Christian nation" would not have to deal with the traumas of a complex world. It has always been the height of religious arrogance that allowed many Americans assume that God's dispensation of protection was reserved for us with a "Prayed in the U.S.A." patch, where all He had to do was look for the Christian union label. But now that the so-called hammer has dropped, startled folk who've been napping in the pews are now trying to find all kinds of nonsense to "blame" for "what's happening in the world today."
Dare I say it, too many Christains and believers put their faith in the wrong things and their energies in the wrong places. What good is prayer in schools when families aren't praying together at home? What good is having the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse (where they have no place anyway) when most Christians confine their Biblical study to the Verse-of-the-Day at Sunday service..if they make to church at all? What good is jumping up and down and stomping ecclesiastical feet about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket when so many Christians contribute to the basket weaving with their sour attitudes, lack of Christian charity toward the sick & afflicted, and their superior judgement of others?
…only I'd be a whole lot pissy-er about it.
Supreme Court Considers Foreign Arrests
Decision Will Determine if Federal Agents Can Sneak Into Foreign Countries to Make Arrests
By Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 1, 2003; 1:38 PM
The Supreme Court said today it would consider whether the government has authority to go into another country to make an arrest without the permission of that country's government.
The justices acted at the request of the Justice Department, which argued that denial of that authority would have "profound consequences" on efforts to combat terrorism and illegal drug traffic.
The Justice Department asked the court to overturn an appeals court holding that such seizures exceed the government's legal authority and violate international law.
In theory, the lower court holding could conceivably interfere with the prosecution of al Qaeda suspects -- such as Osama bin Laden -- should they be captured overseas by U.S. agents or at the behest of U.S. agents without the cooperation of the nation harboring them.
The case presents the court with its second important terrorism-related case for the term. Last month, the justices said they would consider the government's denial of traditional legal rights to anti-terrorism detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Today's case involved a Mexican doctor who was indicted in the United States in 1990 in connection with the abduction and murder five years earlier of Enrique Camarena-Salazar, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent operating in Mexico.
After failing using conventional means to get the accused man, Humberto Alvarez-Machain, sent to the United States, the DEA had him kidnapped by Mexican nationals and brought to the United States.
Ultimately, a trial court threw out the charges against Alvarez-Machain. He then sued the government and its agents for false arrest, demanding money damages.
Colorado Court Says Redistricting Is Unconstitutional
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:53 a.m. ET
DENVER (AP) -- In a decision with national implications, the Colorado Supreme Court threw out the state's new congressional districts Monday saying the GOP-led Legislature redrew the maps in violation of the state constitution.
The General Assembly is required to redraw the maps only after each Census and before the ensuing general election -- not at any other time, the court said in a closely watched 5-2 decision that followed party lines. A similar court battle is being waged in Texas.
Under the ruling, Colorado's seven congressional districts revert to boundaries drawn up by a Denver judge last year after lawmakers failed to agree.
The issue before the court was whether the redistricting map pushed through the Legislature by Republicans this year was illegal. Colorado's constitution calls for redistricting only once a decade and Democrats contended that task was completed by the judge.
Republicans said the map drawn by the judge was temporary and the law requires redistricting work to be done by the Legislature.
The court rejected that argument, saying: ``Because the General Assembly failed to redistrict during this constitutional window, it relinquished its authority to redistrict until after the 2010 census. There is no language empowering the General Assembly to redistrict more frequently or at any other time.''
The justices chastised the lawmakers for claiming they should be able to redraw the maps ``two, or even 10 times in a single decade.''
I think I'll start reading other folks' blogs again tomorrow. Might do some more structured writing too. We'll see...
(You decide who I'm less pleased with. I can't.)
Snowballing Debt Awaits Tomorrow's Taxpayers
Ronald Brownstein
December 1, 2003
Seniors with big prescription drug bills, health maintenance organizations awaiting lucrative new subsidies, upper-middle-class families anticipating a fat tax refund, and Iraqi cities expecting new schools or hospitals all have reason to be thankful about President Bush's extraordinary success at pushing his agenda through the Republican-controlled Congress this year.
There may be less celebration among the young people who will inherit the tab for these initiatives. Bush is funding every penny of every one of these goodies by increasing the national debt. Which is another way of saying that he's sticking the bill to the next generation.
The scale of the transfer is dizzying.
Va. Adultery Case Roils Divorce Industry
Conviction Draws Attention to Little-Used Law
By John F. Kelly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 1, 2003; Page B01
When John Raymond Bushey Jr. became the first person in as long as anyone can remember to be convicted of adultery in Virginia, several things happened:
He resigned his position as attorney for the Shenandoah Valley town of Luray, Va., a job he'd held for 32 years.
People who heard of his situation scratched their heads and said, "You mean, adultery is actually a crime?"
And those who wade into the messy aftermath of alleged infidelity -- divorce lawyers and private investigators -- started pondering what impact the ruling would have on their jobs.
As for the folks in Luray, they're just curious about what the snowy-haired Bushey -- 65 years old, married for 18 years to the town clerk and the very model of a courtly Southern lawyer -- was up to.
…Because the charges were filed in Virginia's lowest court, there are no records that reveal exactly what Bushey did, with whom he did it or why prosecutors would pluck such a rarely used statute from Virginia's criminal code and apply it to him. Bushey declined to be interviewed about the case. And the prosecutor wouldn't give many details of Bushey's Oct. 23 guilty plea, the result of a plea agreement.
"There's nobody peeping in a window saying, 'Mr. Bushey did this,' " said Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Glenn R. Williamson, when asked how authorities found out about the indiscretion. The complainant, he said, was the woman involved with Bushey. She has not been charged.
Although he pleaded guilty in District Court, Bushey is allowed to appeal to Circuit Court. On Halloween, that's what he did. More details might come out when the case goes before a judge Jan. 27. Until then, Williamson isn't discussing the case, beyond saying, "I think that the state has an interest in protecting the sanctity of marriage.[P6: and what is the value of that sanctity?]
Like other Class 4 misdemeanors in Virginia, adultery carries a maximum penalty of a $250 fine. Bushey paid half that, plus $36 in court costs. Adultery is also against the law in Maryland, where the penalty is a fine of $10, about the cost of a pecan bar and two large caramel macchiatos at Starbucks. The District will soon join about half of the states in the country by repealing its adultery statute.
All you marriage protectors, look after your own. Too damn many of you care more about the sanctity of what someone else does than about what you do.
Not like I've been paying attention to anyone else's blog over the last week, but I'm pretty sure this bit of news is making the rounds.
Has it dawned on anyone yet that having the mightiest military machine in the history of the planet doesn't make you invulnerable? That a little economic jiu-jitsu from will stop you faster than killing a couple of thousand of your guys? And what makes it jiu-jitsu is that you don't have to be strong enough to stop your opponent, just strong enough to redirect them into the nearest wall?
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 1, 2003; Page A01
The Bush administration has decided to repeal most of its 20-month-old tariffs on imported steel to head off a trade war that would have included foreign retaliation against products exported from politically crucial states, administration and industry sources said yesterday.
The officials would not say when President Bush will announce the decision but said it is likely to be this week. The officials said they had to allow for the possibility that he would make some change in the plan, but a source close to the White House said it was "all but set in stone."
European countries had vowed to respond to the tariffs, which were ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization, by imposing sanctions on up to $2.2 billion in exports from the United States, beginning as soon as Dec. 15. Japan issued a similar threat Wednesday. The sources said Bush's aides concluded they could not run the risk that the European Union would carry out its threat to impose sanctions on orange juice and other citrus products from Florida, motorcycles, farm machinery, textiles, shoes, and other products.
Bush advisers said they were aware the reversal could produce a backlash against him in several steel-producing states of the Rust Belt -- including Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. That arc of states has been hit severely by losses in manufacturing jobs and will be among the most closely contested in his reelection race.
W.H.O. Aims to Treat 3 Million for AIDS
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
The World Health Organization called on developing countries yesterday to train and organize 100,000 health care and nonprofessional workers to carry out its plan to begin delivering antiretroviral drugs to three million AIDS patients by the end of 2005.
The organization, a United Nations agency, said 6 million of the 40 million people infected with the AIDS virus were in immediate need of antiretroviral treatment, but that only about 480,000 were receiving it.
The new program, which the organization said would cost at least $5.5 billion, is intended to reach half those in need by the end of 2005 � two million more than would be reached by then without such a program.
In issuing a more detailed framework for its program, to coincide with World AIDS Day today, the organization also recommended four combinations of antiretroviral drugs that countries could use to start treatment. The list was vastly simplified from the 35 possible combinations the organization had recommended previously. All four combinations have been proved effective, though none include the powerful protease inhibitor drugs that are often prescribed in the United States and other wealthy countries.
Liberal Radio Group Says It Is Close to Acquiring 5 Stations
By JIM RUTENBERG
A Democratic investment group planning to start a liberal radio network to counterbalance conservative radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh says it is close to buying radio stations in five major cities.
The acquisitions would represent a major move toward making the network real. After its conception was announced in February, many radio analysts and even some Democratic activists predicted that the network would face too many challenges to get off the ground, including finding stations to run its programming and bucking a historical record replete with failed liberal radio attempts.
But executives with the newly formed company, Progress Media, said late last week that if all went as planned they would have the network running by early spring, in time to be part of the public dialogue during the presidential campaign season.
The executives said the stations they were acquiring reached all radios in 5 of the 10 largest media markets: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston. They said they would buy stations in other markets in the near future.
"We're steady as she goes to have a broadcast debut in early 2004, which gives us time to be part of the election year," said Mark Walsh, the company's chief executive and an Internet entrepreneur formerly with VerticalNet and America Online.
SUDAN: OIL COMPANIES COMPLICIT IN RIGHTS ABUSES
Sudan: Oil Companies Complicit in Rights Abuses
(London, November 25, 2003) � The Sudanese government�s efforts to control oilfields in the war-torn south have resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Foreign oil companies operating in Sudan have been complicit in this displacement, and the death and destruction that have accompanied it.
The report, "Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights," investigates the role that oil has played in Sudan�s civil war. This 754-page report is the most comprehensive examination yet published of the links between natural-resource exploitation and human rights abuses.
�Oil development in southern Sudan should have been a cause of rejoicing for Sudan�s people,� said Jemera Rone, Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch. �Instead, it has brought them nothing but woe.�
The report documents how the government has used the roads, bridges and airfields built by the oil companies as a means for it to launch attacks on civilians in the southern oil region of Western Upper Nile (also known as Unity state). In addition to its regular army, the government has deployed militant Islamist militias to prosecute the war, and has armed southern factions in a policy of ethnic manipulation and destabilization.
Human Rights Watch urged that the current peace negotiations deal comprehensively with the legacy of Sudan�s oil war, particularly the ethnic divisions that persist in oilfields of the south and threaten the long-term peace.
The report provides evidence of the complicity of oil companies in the human rights abuses. Oil company executives turned a blind eye to well-reported government attacks on civilian targets, including aerial bombing of hospitals, churches, relief operations and schools.
�Oil companies operating in Sudan were aware of the killing, bombing, and looting that took place in the south, all in the name of opening up the oilfields,� said Rone. �These facts were repeatedly brought to their attention in public and private meetings, but they continued to operate and make a profit as the devastation went on.�
Conditions for civilians in the oilfields actually worsened when the Canadian company Talisman Energy Inc. and the Swedish company Lundin Oil AB were lead partners in two concessions in southern Sudan. Amid mounting pressure from rights groups, Talisman sold its interest in its Sudanese concessions in late 2002, and Lundin followed in June.
These Western-based corporations were replaced by the state-owned oil companies of China and Malaysia� CNPC, or China National Petroleum Corp., and Petronas, or Petrolium Nasional Berhad�which had already been partners with Talisman and Lundin. Following CNPC and Petronas, a third state-owned Asian oil company, India�s ONGC Videsh Ltd., began operations in Sudan.
Statistics from the Sudanese government and the oil companies show how the major share (60 percent) of the US$580 million received in oil revenue by this poverty-stricken country in 2001 was absorbed by its military, both for foreign weapons purchases and for the development of a domestic arms industry.
�The Sudanese government has used the oil money in conducting scorched-earth campaigns to drive hundreds of thousands of farmers and pastoralists from their homes atop the oil fields,� said Rone. �These civilians have not been compensated nor relocated peacefully�far from it. Instead, government forces have looted their cattle and grain, and destroyed their homes and villages, killed and injured their relatives, and even prevented emergency relief agencies from bringing any assistance to them.�
The 20-year civil war in Sudan has been fought between the Islamist, northern-based Arab-speaking government and the vast marginalized African populations of southern Sudan, where the Sudan People�s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) has been the largest rebel group. The war spread to eastern and central Sudan, and while the parties signed a cease-fire agreement in October 2002 western Sudan remains engulfed in war.
The report also covers the SPLM/A�s role in the struggle over oilfields. The regular SPLM/A forces have carried out serious human rights abuses, including summary execution of captured combatants. Commanding officers of the SPLM/A have taken no steps to investigate or punish these crimes.
Peace talks promoted by a troika of the United States, Britain and Norway have been underway in Kenya since June 2002. However, the Sudanese government and the SPLM/A, the only parties to the talks, have yet to agree on how to share revenue from the oil reserves, most of which lie in the south. The northern-based government has agreed to a self-determination referendum for the south, but not until 6 1/2 years after the peace agreement is signed.
�The hundreds of thousands of persons displaced from the oilfields should be allowed to return, with guarantees of safety and compensation for their losses,� Rone said. �This needs to be a central part of the peace agreement.�
Let's see if anyone gets the title.
The Nation (Nairobi)
NEWS
November 24, 2003
Posted to the web November 24, 2003
By Ngumbao Kithi
Nairobi
A US-based organisation has called for the dissolution of the African Union and the establishment of a new continental body strictly for democratically elected governments.
The Free Africa Foundation president, Mr George Ayittey, from Ghana, said the AU could not solve conflicts because its leadership comprises "mafia states" practising politics of exclusion.
He suggested that the new body to take over from the AU should ensure independent and free Press in member states, independent Judiciary and electoral commission.
The new body, said Mr Ayittey, must also promote independent central banks and neutral and professional armed forces.
"Africans must stop putting too much faith in leaders but institutions that can make the countries develop and create wealth for all instead of few individuals who use their positions to steal," he said.
Mr Ayittey, an associate professor at American University, said there were 14 civil wars in Africa at the moment and none of the countries could explain why they were fighting.
The Free Africa Foundation boss was speaking at Whitesands Beach Hotel, Mombasa, when he presented a paper on "Why Africa is poor" at the Africa Resource Bank workshop that ended on Saturday.
He said civil wars had devastated the continent's agriculture leaving Africans poorer by the day.
"What I do not agree with is the way African leaders blame colonialists for their woes. We know that African governments got independence many years ago. What have they done with that independence for their people?" he asked.
He appealed to the continent's youth to salvage Africa by taking a new approach to leadership that would promote democracy, investment and free trade.
The Unemployment Myth
By AUSTAN GOOLSBEE
CHICAGO
The government's announcement on Tuesday that the economy grew even faster than expected makes the current "jobless recovery" even more puzzling. To give some perspective, unemployment normally falls significantly in such economic boom times. The last time growth was this good, in 1983, unemployment fell 2.5 percentage points and another full percentage point the next year. That's what happens in a typical recovery. So why not this time? Because we have more to recover from than we've been told.
The reality is that we didn't have a mild recession. Jobs-wise, we had a deep one.
The government reported that annual unemployment during this recession peaked at only around 6 percent, compared with more than 7 percent in 1992 and more than 9 percent in 1982. But the unemployment rate has been low only because government programs, especially Social Security disability, have effectively been buying people off the unemployment rolls and reclassifying them as "not in the labor force."
In other words, the government has cooked the books. It has been a more subtle manipulation than the one during the Reagan administration, when people serving in the military were reclassified from "not in the labor force" to "employed" in order to reduce the unemployment rate. Nonetheless, the impact has been the same.
Research by the economists David Autor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Mark Duggan at the University of Maryland shows that once Congress began loosening the standards to qualify for disability payments in the late 1980's and early 1990's, people who would normally be counted as unemployed started moving in record numbers into the disability system � a kind of invisible unemployment. Almost all of the increase came from hard-to-verify disabilities like back pain and mental disorders. As the rolls swelled, the meaning of the official unemployment rate changed as millions of people were left out.
By the end of the 1990's boom, this invisible unemployment seemed to have stabilized. With the arrival of this recession, it has exploded. From 1999 to 2003, applications for disability payments rose more than 50 percent and the number of people enrolled has grown by one million. Therefore, if you correctly accounted for all of these people, the peak unemployment rate in this recession would have probably pushed 8 percent.
The point is not whether every person on disability deserves payments. The point is that in previous recessions these people would have been called unemployed. They would have filed for unemployment insurance. They would have shown up in the statistics. They would have helped create a more accurate picture of national unemployment, a crucial barometer we use to measure the performance of the economy, the likelihood of inflation and the state of the job market.
Unfortunately, underreporting unemployment has served the interests of both political parties. Democrats were able to claim unemployment fell in the 1990's to the lowest level in 40 years, happy to ignore the invisible unemployed. Republicans have eagerly embraced the view that the recession of 2001 was the mildest on record.
The situation has grown so dire, though, that we can't even tell whether the job market is recovering. The time has come to correct the official unemployment statistics to account for those left out. The government agencies that can give us a more detailed and accurate picture of the nation's employment situation � the Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis � need additional funds and resources from Congress to do their jobs.
Otherwise, announcements about a rebounding economy will continue to show only half the picture. Take the revised numbers released by the Commerce Department on Tuesday. They showed that output in the third quarter grew at a rate of 8.2 percent, an extraordinary pace, and productivity grew even faster. Almost no one noted, though, that Social Security also announced the latest data on disability applications. Almost 200,000 people applied in October � up 20 percent from the previous month � tying the highest level ever. Despite the blistering growth of the economy, the invisible unemployment problem continues.
We didn't have a mild recession and a jobless recovery. We covered up a deep recession and will need a sizable bit of recovery just to get us back to the point the unemployment rate suggested we already were. As the Red Queen said to Alice in "Through the Looking Glass": "Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
Austan Goolsbee is professor of economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
The Productivity Paradox
By STEPHEN S. ROACH
Despite the economy's stunning 8.2 percent surge in the third quarter, the staying power of this economic recovery remains a matter of debate. But there is one aspect of the economy on which agreement is nearly unanimous: America's miraculous productivity. In the third quarter, productivity grew by 8.1 percent in the nonfarm business sector � a figure likely to be revised upwards � and it has grown at an average rate of 5.4 percent in the last two years.
This surge is not simply a byproduct of the business cycle, even accounting for the usual uptick in productivity after a recession. In the first two years of the six most recent recoveries, productivity gains averaged only 3.5 percent. The favored explanation is that improved productivity is yet another benefit of the so-called New Economy. American business has reinvented itself. Manufacturing and services companies have figured out how to get more from less. By using information technologies, they can squeeze ever increasing value out of the average worker.
It's a great story, and if correct, it could lead to a new and lasting prosperity in the United States. But it may be wide of the mark.
First of all, productivity measurement is more art than science � especially in America's vast services sector, which employs fully 80 percent of the nation's private work force, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Productivity is calculated as the ratio of output per unit of work time. How do we measure value added in the amorphous services sector?
Very poorly, is the answer. The numerator of the productivity equation, output, is hopelessly vague for services. For many years, government statisticians have used worker compensation to approximate output in many service industries, which makes little or no intuitive sense. The denominator of the productivity equation � units of work time � is even more spurious. Government data on work schedules are woefully out of touch with reality � especially in America's largest occupational group, the professional and managerial segments, which together account for 35 percent of the total work force.
For example, in financial services, the Labor Department tells us that the average workweek has been unchanged, at 35.5 hours, since 1988. That's patently absurd. Courtesy of a profusion of portable information appliances (laptops, cell phones, personal digital assistants, etc.), along with near ubiquitous connectivity (hard-wired and now increasingly wireless), most information workers can toil around the clock. The official data don't come close to capturing this cultural shift.
As a result, we are woefully underestimating the time actually spent on the job. It follows, therefore, that we are equally guilty of overestimating white-collar productivity. Productivity is not about working longer. It's about getting more value from each unit of work time. The official productivity numbers are, in effect, mistaking work time for leisure time.
This is not a sustainable outcome � for the American worker or the American economy. To the extent productivity miracles are driven more by perspiration than by inspiration, there are limits to gains in efficiency based on sheer physical effort.
The same is true for corporate America, where increased productivity is now showing up on the bottom line in the form of increased profits. When better earnings stem from cost cutting (and the jobless recovery that engenders), there are limits to future improvements in productivity. Strategies that rely primarily on cost cutting will lead eventually to "hollow" companies � businesses that have been stripped bare of once valuable labor. That's hardly the way to sustained prosperity.
Many economists say that strong productivity growth goes hand in hand with a jobless recovery. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the 1960's, both productivity and employment surged at an annual rate of close to 3 percent. In the latter half of the 1990's, accelerating productivity also coincided with rapid job creation.
In fact, there is no precedent for sustained productivity enhancement through downsizing. That would result in an increasingly barren economy that will ultimately lose market share in an ever-expanding world.
That underscores another aspect of America's recent productivity miracle: the growing use of overseas labor. While this may increase the profits of American business � help-desk employees or customer-service representatives in India earn a fraction of what their counterparts in the United States do � the American worker does not directly share the benefits. The result is a clash between the owners of capital and the providers of labor � a clash that has resulted in heightened trade frictions and growing protectionist risks. There's nothing sustainable about this plan for productivity enhancement, either.
In the end, America's productivity revival may be nothing more than a transition from one way of doing business to another � a change in operating systems, as it were. Aided by the stock market bubble and the Y2K frenzy, corporate America led the world in spending on new information technology and telecommunications in the latter half of the 1990's.
This resulted in an increase of the portion of gross domestic product that went to capital spending. With the share of capital going up, it follows that the share of labor went down. Thus national output was produced with less labor in relative terms � resulting in a windfall of higher productivity. Once the migration from the old technology to the new starts to peak, this transitional productivity dividend can then be expected to wane.
No one wants to see that. For all their wishful thinking, believers in the productivity miracle are right about one critical point: productivity is the key to prosperity.
Have we finally found the key? It's doubtful. Productivity growth is sustainable when driven by creativity, risk-taking, innovation and, yes, new technology. It is fleeting when it is driven simply by downsizing and longer hours. With cost cutting still the credo and workers starting to reach physical limits, America's so-called productivity renaissance may be over before Americans even have a chance to enjoy it.
Stephen S. Roach is chief economist for Morgan Stanley.
A two-passenger powered unicycle that hits 35 mph in learning mode?
The really sad thing is, you can start a movement that is totally principled, and have it undercut by demagogues.
In this case, it's Israel, which is NOT what those with the original dream intended:
Just picture Sharon's people even considering this.
Kibbutzim Fall, Settlements Rise -- and Israel Loses
By Jo-Ann Mort
Jo-Ann Mort is co-author (with Gary Brenner) of "Our Hearts Invented a Place: Can Kibbutzim Survive in Today's Israel?"
November 30, 2003
Here's a disturbing fact: There are now in Israel twice as many settlers as there are people living on kibbutzim. And that says a lot about the country's trajectory in recent years.
The Jewish settlers who live outside the pre-1967 Israeli borders like to compare their mission to that of the earlier generation of Jews who founded and fostered the kibbutz movement. But although it's true that both groups represent strains of Zionism and that each has had influence beyond its numbers on the direction of Israel, the missions of the settlers and those who established the collective settlements known as kibbutzim couldn't be further apart.
From the founding of the first kibbutz, Degania, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in 1910, the kibbutzim formed the nucleus of a socialist-Jewish state. Kibbutzniks were committed to a Zionism that would alter the social and economic pyramid of the Jewish people, elevating farmers and laborers to positions as esteemed by society as medicine, law and business. The kibbutzim became a refuge for Jews fleeing pogroms and later the Holocaust.
The kibbutz movement's vision of a just Israel was considered much more important than a specific plot of land. Kibbutz members never saw land as a divine right. One of the early missions of the movement was to settle the area, but once the 1948 boundary was agreed on as part of the U.N. partition plan, several kibbutzim that found themselves outside the international lines disbanded and reformed inside the recognized borders.
The kibbutz movement, widely embraced by the Israeli public, was a vehicle for transformation. The settlement movement, on the other hand, began outside the law, has never been embraced by the society as a whole and has often built settlements by illegal means. At their best, the settlements are low-cost bedroom communities for Israeli citizens; at their worst, they are impediments to peace. And even though the movement is endorsed by the present Israeli government, a majority of Israelis have consistently said they would trade land for peace and disband settlements.
So why has the number of kibbutzniks declined from 4% to 2% of the population while the settler population has swelled to 4%?
Government policies have in part driven the shift. As the country has turned away from the socialist vision of its founders, kibbutzim have been increasingly seen as irrelevant. Farming subsidies for them dried up decades ago. The government now spends its money on expansion instead, with billions of shekels that might have gone into supporting kibbutzim being spent on the settlements, supporting education, building infrastructure and providing tax subsidies to drive Jewish settlement into the occupied territories.
With the shift has come a great loss. As Israel prospered in its early decades, the kibbutzim were integral to its economy, national spirit and national identity. Although they were always a minority population, until the early 1980s the kibbutzim and their members were perceived to be the vanguard of Israeli society in agriculture, politics and the military. The kibbutzim were, in a sense, the public face of Israel, drawing thousands of volunteers from around the world, particularly Europe and North America. A significant portion of the country's labor-oriented leadership was drawn from the kibbutzim, as was the military elite. Even as late as July 2000, 42% of the air force, considered the elite of Israel's defense forces, came from kibbutzim and other Israeli collectives.
Back when there was a consensus among social elites and the banks regarding the importance of the kibbutz movement, there was a national will to sustain them economically. When the kibbutzim got into financial trouble, the government or the banks bailed them out. These bailouts allowed the collectives to continue to fulfill their mission. But the compact between the kibbutzim and the state began to rupture as national priorities and demographics changed. Without as much assistance, debt piled up. By the late 1980s, the kibbutzim debt was a staggering $6 billion, enough to seriously threaten the stability of the Israeli banking system. In 1992, a committee of bankers, government officials and kibbutzniks crafted a debt-settlement arrangement to avoid catastrophe.
Even under these dire constraints, though, the kibbutzim have continued to serve the broader Israeli society, and their legacy can continue to influence Israel's future. The kibbutzim used to be focused on agriculture. But as agriculture has become less important to the country, many kibbutzim have shifted to industry as a way to support themselves. By 2001, kibbutzim had formed 11 regional corporations, comprising some 50 industrial facilities and accounting for 8.5% of Israel's total industrial income. Many kibbutzim are privatizing and modernizing, experimenting with ways to hold on to their original mission of a more caring community while accepting global realities.
Today, the kibbutz movement is officially opposed to Israeli settlement outside the pre-1967 borders, and its members constitute a crucial component of the peace movement in Israel. Residents of the handful of kibbutzim that do exist beyond the pre-1967 borders (most are in the Golan Heights) have said that they would be willing to move inside a renegotiated border.
The hard-core among the settlers seek to return Israel to the shtetl. Their Jewishness is a deliberate parochialism, informed more by their belief in God than in government. The effect of the settlement drive has been to turn Israel into a kind of ghetto with an inward, defensive stance. The settlers' stance now imperils the original Zionist project.
With the Labor Zionist movement in crisis and the settlers holding significantly more sway than their numbers represent, the notion of Israel as a liberating force for the Jewish people is threatened. Martin Buber, a secular prophet to the early kibbutz movement, predicted that the new state of Israel could be "involved in the development of humanity." But in 1942, six years before the founding of the state, Buber warned: "If it decides in favor of national egoism, it too will suffer the fate which will soon befall all shallow nationalism, i.e., nationalism which does not set the nation a true supernational task. If it decides in favor of Hebrew humanism, it will be strong and effective long after shallow nationalism has lost all meaning and justification."
You want the truth? I really don't care that much about the war in Iraq. At least as compared to my concern about police state tactics here.
November 30, 2003
WASHINGTON � The Justice Department's war on terrorism has drawn intense scrutiny from the left and the right. Now, a chief architect of the USA Patriot Act and a former top assistant to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft are joining the fray, voicing concern about aspects of the administration's anti-terrorism policy.
At issue is the government's power to designate and detain "enemy combatants," in particular in the case of "dirty bomb" plot suspect Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born former gang member who was picked up at a Chicago airport 18 months ago by the FBI and locked in a military brig without access to a lawyer.
Civil liberties groups and others contend that Padilla � as an American citizen arrested in the U.S. � is being denied due process of law under the Constitution.
Viet Dinh, who until May headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, said in a series of recent speeches and in an interview with The Times that he thought the government's detention of Padilla was flawed and unlikely to survive court review.
The principal intellectual force behind the Patriot Act, the terror-fighting law enacted by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Dinh has steadfastly defended the Justice Department's anti-terrorism efforts against charges that they have led to civil-rights abuses of immigrants and others. While the Patriot Act does not speak to the issue of enemy combatants, his remarks still caught some observers by surprise.
In an interview, Dinh, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said the Padilla case was not within his line of authority when he was in the department, but that he began to think about the issue later, and came to the conclusion that the administration's case was "unsustainable."
GOP Puts Its Mark on Congress and Deficit
By Janet Hook
Times Staff Writer
November 30, 2003
WASHINGTON � A full year of Republican dominance of government has left a legacy rich in conservative triumphs: cutting taxes, building a muscular defense, restricting abortion.
But the year has also brought an extraordinary expansion of government power and spending that showed Republicans were willing to deep-six their party's traditional commitment to fiscal conservatism and limited government.
The Republican-controlled Congress has passed the third tax cut in as many years, an enormous Pentagon budget, a costly experiment in nation-building in Iraq and a vast expansion of Medicare � all at the request of President Bush. Their actions have left the federal budget swimming in the largest deficits in history.
As one lawmaker heard from a Republican friend, "Democrats are the party of 'tax and spend'; Republicans are the party of 'don't tax � and spend.' " That is the ironic product of the first full year since 1954 that Republicans have controlled the White House and Congress.
The site was down most of the day yesterday. I meant to post some more stuff, argue some more (who would have thought that folks would get so intense about FDA regs when that wasn't even the point of the post they were commenting on?), and generally make up for blowing off everyone's concerns but my own for a couple of days.
By the time the site came back, I was in a lengthy conversation you'd have needed a crowbar to get me away from. And you'd have had to hit me over the head with the crowbar—attempts to pry me away would have come up short.
So, all of you (with a single exception) should pretend yesterday didn't happen.