Lie Down with Dogs, Wake Up With Fleas

Remember that Medicare drug benefit bill? The one that the AARP supported? The one the AARP got in trouble with it’s members for supporting? (here’s what I said at the time, back before it turned out whole thing was going to cost more than planned.)

It turns out that since the bill passed, prescription drug prices have jumped an average of 3.4%, and in some cases 10%. Here’s the coverage so far: Reuters, CNN, Associated Press, Bloomberg, MSNBC, and Wired. I wonder if the venerable Alan Greenspan noticed this rather sizable rise in prices.

Really bad timing that Laura Bush is out there stumping for her husband on “the effectiveness of her husband’s tax cuts, improvements in the economy, education reforms and the Medicare prescription drug benefit for seniors.”

But I digress. The one thing that I think most people can agree on is that “Both the discount card available now and the drug coverage coming in 2006 are unnecessarily complex and too expensive.” The current “drug discount cards” are not in wide use because they are too complicated and finding people who know what is going on is difficult. Some people call the benefit such cards provide “a joke…. because the benefit there is so small.”

I don’t intend to spend much time discussing the impending feeding frenzy of the lottery for 50,000 spots in the drug coverage pilot program.

Back when this thing was passed, the AARP basically said that although it needed improvements, it was better than nothing. I submit that they were wrong; doing nothing would have been an improvement. No wonder Ernst & Young’s analysts think price controls for medications may be on the way.

Software All Stinks

I have been using computers for a long time now. I grew up around them in an era when “computer” meant a large bit of machinery in a raised-floor specially air-conditioned room. Back then, a “printer” was this gizmo almost as big as a compact car. In retrospect, people working in the computer room should probably have been wearing ear protection.

Because I have been using computers a long time, I have also used a lot of software, and it is my considered opinion that a lot of it is less than perfect. Don’t get me started on the flaws of Quicken, which I mostly use because there is no better solution. I gave you my opinion about Microsoft Office some time back. All email clients are fine if all you do is read and send nice, normal, plaintext emails, but they are all horrible, kludgy messes if your needs are any more complicated than that. The things that were supposed to make the more powerful modern email client simpler to use have instead made our computers — particularly those running windows — more vulnerable to malicious code and plain old fashioned user stupidity.

Browsers are even worse. At this very moment I have five web browsers installed on my computer. I am running two of them right now. In any given month I usually encounter at least one web site that only works properly with certain browsers; thus I need all five browsers. This is aside from web designer friends asking me to test their sites from outside their local network. Part of the problem with browsers is, in fact, web designers who put as many bells and whistles into a site as possible. Ad designers are also to blame, as they are continually trying to find ways to make web ads stand out. Here’s a thought for the fellow who invented that ad I saw a couple weeks ago that floated across my active window while I was trying to read the article, may your car break down in the middle lane of the freeway during rush hour.

Even icons stink. Two of those 5 browsers have the globe as part of their icon. I often run 3 or 4 programs at the same time with globe icons. Enough! Part of the point of an icon is so the end user can tell programs apart at a glance, without having to read the program name. When several programs use similar icons, that is no longer possible. Developers: please declare a moratorium on globe icons in your products.

And this brings me back to the reason it’s been a week since you have heard from me. No, I have not been at Apple’s WWDC. Nor do I necessarily agree with the Apple strategy of stomping on small developers in quest of the “insanely great.”

But, let me tell you, I recently started using GarageBand, and I love it. It is without a doubt the best cheap sequencer I have ever encountered.

This application has it’s limitations. This tool probably serves the needs of 90% of musicians with computers quite adequately. It is not MIDI, which means no General MIDI specification output, no SMPTE, and no export to scoring programs. It does not appear to support tempo and meter changes in the middle of a song. There are also a couple of little flaws which look like they can easily be changed in the upgrade cycle: for example, tempo is controlled by a slider, with no ability to directly enter a numerical metronome marking; adding a new track makes the new track active, but not automatically “solo,” or audible; I feel certain there are other minor annoyances I have not yet encountered.

However, the program does support a variety of time signatures, including 5/4 and 12/8. All “12” keys are available, although no distinction is made between major, minor, or modes. This actually makes things very flexible. Hit a wrong note? Just drag the note to the correct pitch in the Track Editor window! Hit it too hard, or too soft? Edit the velocity (numerically. Go figure). Individual lines can be brought into beat down to the 32nd note automatically. And if you just plain hit it at the wrong time, drag it to the right place.

But the loop browser is the pure genius of this program. This almost completely circumvents the hassle of figuring out how to enter a great drum line using a keyboard. Anybody can point and click their way to serious personal grooves, both rhythmic and harmonic, and add personal touches by attaching a keyboard, guitar, or microphone. Yes, that’s right, you can record real instruments and voices using GarageBand and the appropriate accessories. Put that in your MIDI pipe and smoke it. It won’t be Abbey Road, but what do you want from a program that comes free with a new computer?

If the virtual musical instruments and preloaded loops that come with the program aren’t enough for you, a cottage industry has cropped up that produces after-market materials for your purchase. Not only are loops and instruments available for several musical genres, there are opportunities to share your music and listen to what others can do. Keep in mind, GarageBand users range from rank amateurs to pro musicians who want to sell you an album.

Speaking of selling an album, GarageBand tracks are easily exported to iTunes, where they can be easily burned to an audio CD and shared with anyone.

Now if you don’t mind, the keyboard beckons.

It just occurred to me: did you know I’ve been at this over a year now?

False Estate

New house sales are at a record high. That is today’s word from the Government, and that means people who own stock in house builders are happy. The report takes care to point out that rising mortgage rates don’t seem to be slowing home sales. I think it would be more accurate to say everyone is rushing to get the mortgage papers signed before rates go higher.

That last link points out that in some areas of the country, new home sales rose 53%. While that is clearly unsustainable, the Federal Reserve says there’s no housing bubble. Oh yeah, and they go on to say that it isn’t a big deal if there is. Everything is alright, even if we are wrong, unless we are also wrong about that. This study concedes that housing prices have been rising at double what was considered a high rate in the past, but reassures us by using what appears to be a very narrow definition of a bubble:

That definition says a bubble exists “if the reason the price is high today is only because investors believe that the selling price will be high tomorrow — when ‘fundamental’ factors do not seem to justify such a price.”

Don’t you feel better now?

Since housing prices are rising rapidly — but not alarmingly, the Fed tells us — and salaries are not, something’s got to give. For example, people are going to have to accept buying homes in previously undesirable urban neighborhoods. Like maybe Newark. Or maybe people will resort to housing assistance. Or just spending too much. In some areas of the country, we are already at the point where people are buying just because they fear they will not be able to afford to later, and if that isn’t a bubble I don’t know what is. It bodes ill for future prices.

The fact of the matter is that the Bush Administration is doing everything they can think of to encourage home ownership, particularly among minorities. It is a core Conservative belief that owning real estate is the cornerstone of financial stability: it is more than a home; it is an appreciating asset; it is potential collateral for loans to send kids to college or start a business; it is the American Dream.

Unfortunately, they must have slept through all those disclaimers about how no one investment is for everyone. Saying everyone should own a house is like saying everyone should like chocolate ice cream, or everyone should drive an American car. It just isn’t true. The truth is that it can be tough to own a home, and many people are spending too much of their income to say they own one. This is even a bigger problem among minority homeowners. Nor is this particularly “news.” Complicating the matter is a variety of alternative mortgages which bring down the initial payments, but may result in unpleasant surprises years down the road. Since it is clear that mortgage rates are going up, this may be the last chance most homeowners have to read the fine print and refinance ARMs and other “creative alternatives.”

At least apartment prices are reasonable.

Googley Eyes

In the movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Captain Kirk asks the “entity” hijacking the Enterprise “What does God need with a spaceship?” Likewise, I ask myself “What does Google need with an IPO?”

An amended form S-1 was filed with the SEC today (here’s a handy guide to reading such filings), and still two key questions are unanswered: What does Google plan to do with the $2.7 Billion they are expected to extract from the deal compared (with approximately $455 Million cash-on-hand, and growing since they are profitable); and exactly how many shares are they planning on offering? Between these two variables, experts think it’s very hard to figure out what Google shares should be worth. In the absence of such estimates, “investing” in Google is based on nothing more than It’s the next hot IPO! You’ve got to get a piece of this action! You don’t want to miss out on the next EBAY or Microsoft or Critical Path, do you??

Even CNN has posted the opinion that more information is needed before anyone sane should consider this an “investment.” The LA Times tells us there are “many reasons” to not get involved with the Google IPO. The Motley Fool just says “no thanks.” They at least speculate about what Google might do with the money: buy stuff. Maybe they are being pressured by their venture capitalist investors to “cash out” — an aim which could be accomplished better through paying dividends and retaining close control. There is also the theory that stock options (and therefore stock shares) are needed for employee retention — although these days treating employees well has the same effect, particularly among computer professionals. Or maybe they have simply turned to the Dark Side.

Today’s interesting reading: can you prove you are a United States citizen; are the Saudis doing everything they can to catch terrorists; who’s reading your website; and the effect of Government regulation on the economy (I particularly like what is said about health insurance and rent controls).

Ok, This Scares Me

Buried in a British medical journal is an article entitled Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness. There is some blog coverage of this rather sweeping proposal, including from the nice people at Boing Boing. As nearly as I can tell, there is no American media coverage of this proposal.

Now, it is a laudable thing to say “Mental health is important, and should be checked right along with your blood pressure and cholesterol levels.” It is another thing to propose putting an unknown percentage of the American population on expensive, mind altering medication. The BMJ article points out that the Bush family has some financial interest in the companies that make these drugs.

The first problem, as I see it, is who exactly is going to pay for this? Just this week a bill that would have required health plans to cover mental health problems at the same levels as physical health problems was tabled without a vote in Congress. Add to that this week’s report that 82 million Americans lacked health insurance at some point in the last 2 years, some of them even among the nice, stable folk of the middle class.

The second problem — and pardon me while I adjust my aluminum foil hat — is that I am old enough to remember instances of psychiatric fraud resulting in young people having involuntary stays in mental hospitals at insurance company expense. (This is one reason why “insurance parity” is a hard pill for insurers to swallow.) What is to stop this program from being used to control the populace? There are already cases of parents in legal trouble for not giving their children ritalin. Will there be cases of people forced to take medication? Cases of people involuntarily committed — no pesky arrest warrants or fair-and-speedy trials necessary? It isn’t just something that happens in “fiction” novels.

Let’s hope this is another proposal from President Bush that lacks substance. Like the idea of going to Mars. Failing that, let’s hope he fails to budget nearly enough money for it, an “unfunded mandate” like No Child Left Behind.

Leavin’ On a Jet Plane

The pilot program of a Trusted Traveller System has now been announced. Some 5000-10000 frequent fliers will have the opportunity to participate in a program the TSA’s spokesman admits offers “limited features and limited benefits.” Make no mistake: this is not a get out of the security line free card. From the article:

Registered travelers will have to pass through the same basic security as all other travelers, and like everyone else, will be encouraged to remove their shoes and their outer garments, said Yolanda Clark, a spokeswoman for the agency.

But Ms. Clark said those approved for the program would not face the more careful inspection known as secondary screening unless they set off an alarm as they passed through the metal detectors. Under the current system, some passengers are chosen for secondary screening at random and some because they meet a set of criteria that are secret but are believed to include factors like paying cash for a ticket or booking travel at the last minute, or flying one way.

So, these people will voluntarily give personal information to the TSA, and still have to stand in the security line in socks. Such a deal. I can certainly think of better ways to spend $5 Million of taxpayer dollars.

For that matter, how do we get the idea that cash purchases, one way tickets, or traveling on short notice makes one a potential terrorist? Doesn’t knowing that these things might be suspicious mean that a halfway intelligent terrorist might avoid them? I seem to recall that Mohammed Atta and his collaborators bought round trip tickets with a credit card in advance, and there is some evidence to suggest they made test runs — making them regular if not frequent fliers. I can think of lots of legitimate reasons someone might pay cash for a ticket, or fly one-way, or fly on short notice. Family or business emergencies happen. People without credit sometimes need to fly. College students might only need to fly to campus in fall, or home from campus in summer.

At the other end of the flying public spectrum, we have the Do Not Fly list. A judge has ordered the Government to reconsider what information to release about how that list was compiled. From the article:

Government lawyers refused to turn over much of the material sought by the A.C.L.U. because they said it involved sensitive security information or other material exempted from public disclosure.

But Judge Breyer said the withheld material included “innocuous information” about aviation protocols, publicly available information from newspapers and the names of senior transportation officials.

This is an important case. The TSA Do Not Fly list is effectively a black box; nobody knows how a person gets on the list; nobody knows how to get someone off the list; there is evidence that some people are on the list for politically motivated reasons. This is not as simple as “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t worry about it.” And remember, the courts aren’t even close to ruling on the matter. This is just ruling about what information must be released under the Freedom Of Information Act.

Somewhere in the middle we have a judge who has ruled that a “Privacy Policy” is not a “Contract.” In short, he said that if you don’t read it and you don’t sign it, you can’t act surprised when it changes, or doesn’t say what you thought it did, or it gets superseded by something else. In this case, it was a Government request for information. We are not talking about saying data is private and then selling it to telemarketers. More commentary than you want to shake a stick at here.

This brings me to my last point. The suit claims the release of information — at the Government’s request — violates the “Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Minnesota’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act.” It seems to me that the War On Terror has consistently ignored the Rule Of Law when the Law is inconvenient. For example, the memos asserting that we can use torture in Iraq as long as it’s really necessary because there’s a War on. To heck with international law, and treaties, and the Geneva Convention. Never mind what might happen to American Prisoners Of War in the future.

The United States also intends to ignore international law at the end of the month, when we hand “Sovereignty” over to the interim Government of Iraq. The International Committee of the Red Cross insists we must release or charge all prisoners before then. The last paragraph of that link specifically says “The US has made clear it will continue to detain some Iraqis after the transfer of sovereignty as part of its security operations.” Saddam might be a special case. After all, people will notice if he isn’t handed over.

I am deeply worried about the philosophy of “The Law doesn’t apply because we are at War.”

Here is a very interesting article about Anti-Terror Cyber-Vigilantes. They are “Unencumbered by bureaucracy or by laws requiring warrants or prohibiting entrapment….” That’s right, “bureaucracy” like the 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution. An expert points out “But remember, you are still being a spy, and that carries risks. People might try to kill you. You might violate the law. You might screw things up.” Yeah yeah. It’s all for the greater good, right?

Defining Moment

When I was in school, way back in the Reagan Administration, we were taught that a Conservative was somebody who thought things were just fine as they were (or, as they used to be in the “good old days”) and that a Liberal was someone who thought there were things that could change for the better. That being the case, I would like to know where this idea of “Liberals Hate America” comes from.

Liberals do not hate America, but they think there are things that can be better. Liberals know that such issues as drug abuse, poverty, and homelessness cannot be fixed with platitudes and blaming the victim. They don’t think most people “were asking for it” when they became an addict, or a crime victim, or mentally ill, or a teenage single mother.

Liberals know that good jobs are important for everyone. They also know that a “good job” includes making enough money to live on, being as safe as possible at work, and certain expected benefits — including insurance and retirement assistance. Liberals believe that two people who do the same job — and do it just as well — should be paid the same. It shouldn’t matter what race, sex, nationality, or religion either of them is.

Liberals also understand that as important as continuing economic prosperity is, we only have one environment. We cannot live without it, and therefore we must be good stewards of it. They do not believe that the vast majority of industries will consistently do what is right for the good of the environment or for the good of mankind without rules that make them.

Liberals do not hate the Government, but they do not blindly follow the President just because he’s the President. They’re not into the whole “my country right or wrong” thing, but rather “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Liberals agree that Terrorism Is Bad. But they are not entirely sure how checking for home buyers’ names on lists of terrorists or pawing through commuter’s briefcases or absurd prosecutions help prevent terrorism. You might as well claim that terrorists were scared away by John Ashcroft’s uplifting song of praise, “Let the Eagles Soar.”

Which brings me to one final point. Liberals are not all a bunch of anti-Christian hedonists. They recognize that the same First Amendment that gives Christians of all sects the right to practice their religion more or less as they please — as long as they do not infringe on anybody else’s rights — is the same First Amendment that protects the rights of Jews, and Muslims, and Buddhists, and Hindus, and Sufis, and Zoroastrians, and yes, Wiccans. If you don’t like it, join the separatists. But don’t come crying to me if religious rule under Christians is almost as brutal as Muslim Sharia law.

Just maybe Liberals aren’t as evil as some people would have you believe.

I hear there are jobs as scientists….

Before I get started, here’s a couple of items as follow-up from last week. First, we have some scientists who found that consuming lots of sugar makes you want more food. And here we have some other scientists who almost started to laugh when they heard details of how Jose Padilla allegedly wanted to make his “dirty bomb.”

Meanwhile, back at the Federal Reserve….

Alan Greenspan has once more telegraphed his intention to begin raising interest rates. The only thing missing is a big sign with flashing lights. This colossal turn signal theoretically prevents the financial markets from panicking. Make no mistake, the rate hike is necessary: not only can we realistically stay at four decade lows for a limited period of time, but there is definite evidence that inflation is with us once more. Of course that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the abnormally low exchange rate and the price of oil, but the FOMC can’t do much about those; their mandate says they should control inflation, and the tool for that job is interest rates.

Not everybody agrees, however, that there even is inflation. Or that raising interest rates would fix it without negative impact to other areas of the economy. After all, raising interest rates will mean it is harder to pay off debts. This is true of everything from your credit card and adjustable rate mortgage (call your mortgage company and lock in that rate now!) up to and including the National Debt.

As if that weren’t problematic enough, we are told by pundits that raising interest rates might cause fewer jobs to be created, and you don’t want that, do you? This arguement loses some steam when the government’s own figures show almost a million jobs created in the last 3 months, and 9 straight months of job growth. Of course there is some question about the accuracy of those numbers, and the impact of those jobs (some of them are not what you would call a “career”).

Math time! Something between 1.9 million and 3.4 million jobs were lost in the Bush Administration. In the interest of fairness, let’s do a simple average and call it 2.65 million. Here are the jobs “created” by month: May, 248,000; April, 288,000; March, 337,000; February, 21,000; January, 97,000; December, 8000; November, 43,000; October, 126,000; September, 57,000. That adds up to 1,225,000 new jobs in the last 9 months (by the way, according to these figures, only 873,000 jobs were added in the last 3 months, far less than a million. Maybe the nice people at the P-I were adding to the beginning of the year, which gets you 991,000). That still leaves 1,425,000 people who had full time jobs at the beginning of the Bush Administration that do not have them now.

But wait! There’s more! Economists believe we need to add 150,000 to 200,000 jobs to the economy each month just to keep up with people entering the labor force. That means we needed at least 1,350,000-1,800,000 jobs in the last 9 months — and we fell short. Over the 40 months (so far) of the Bush Administration we needed 6-8 million jobs added; instead we have a net loss of 1.5 million jobs. It is ironic that attempts to make the figures seem as if the job market is finally recovering are giving Greenspan exactly the cover he needs to raise interest rates.

The job market stinks, plain and simple. Nevertheless, inflation is here, and therefore interest rates are going up. At least there was somebody who knew how to deal with similar problems. Right?

Told Ya So.

Back around the beginning of the year, I told you that if you wanted to lose weight, you were going to have to cut refined sugar out of your diet. And I mean all of it: sugar, sucrose, dextrose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup; all of it. In fact, I think you should think twice about products with “alcohol sugars” like malitol and sorbitol in them. Such products are added to certain low-carb foods to make them appear lower in carbohydrates than they really are. Frankly, if a product needs alcohol sugars, it is probably something with more calories than a person trying to lose weight should be eating. I realize this point of view is mildly controversial and strictly my personal opinion.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported that a third of the American diet is junk food, the vast majority of it sugary stuff. As much as 7.1% of the calories was soda alone — by extension these people could reduce caloric intake by 7% just by switching to diet soda, or better yet water. A researcher was quoted as saying “It’s no wonder there’s an obesity epidemic in this country.”

Meanwhile, a school principal in Georgia was so inspired by her own experience cutting sweets out of her diet — not a low-carb diet, merely cutting out sweets — that she made her campus sugar free. She made Coke put only Dasani water in the vending machines. She reworked the school lunch menus. She made the bus drivers keep the kids from eating sugary snacks on the way to and from school. She invited the skeptical parents to nutrition seminars.

A year later she found out that not only had many students lost weight, but there were almost a third fewer visits to the school nurse, substantially fewer disciplinary problems, and higher test scores. She accidentally found a cheap way to improver her school. Of course I bet there’s a positive impact on the community as a whole, too. Here’s another school trying to go junk food free.

The bottom line is that cutting sugar works, and it has unexpected benefits.

Why it wouldn’t work

I know a thing or two about apartments.

You can’t just walk into the office of a big apartment building, say “I’ll take 2 please. I’m not in a hurry, the weekend will do.”

Apparently, nobody in the Justice Department has rented an apartment since that room over Mrs. MacPherson’s garage in college. They would like you to believe that Jose Padilla and some unnamed colleague (who is still on the loose so Look Out!) planned to rent multiple apartments in multiple high-rise apartment buildings with natural gas fittings. They furthermore planned to seal all the vents — perhaps where Tom Ridge got his plastic sheeting and duct tape idea — open the gas and set timers to blow the place up. Oh yeah, and maybe work radiation into the blast somehow. Although it is possible to blow up an apartment with natural gas, it doesn’t work like in the movies. Padilla having lived in the Chicago area, he probably remembers a few years back when some poor soul blew up several apartments and a member of management staff who had gone to check on him in a suicide attempt. Sorry, no luck finding a link to that, folks.

Remember, we are talking about big apartment complexes. This is not a duplex, or a quad that the owner lives in one unit, but a multi-million dollar piece of real estate. Let us begin with the basic premise that the people who own such apartment buildings want to make money. Radical thinking, I know. So how do they make money? The two major ways an apartment building owner makes rent are as follows: collect enough rent money each month to cover and exceed the expenses; or sell the place at a profit. Both of these plans are predicated on the idea that the property remains in good condition.

Sticklers for detail will point out that you can also make money through vending deals, tax breaks, kickbacks, and insurance settlements. All but the last item still assume the property is rentable or salable at the end of the day. And maybe you’d better ask Larry Silverman about collecting insurance settlements. It’s a really tough way to make money. It’s much easier to just rent the property for more than it costs to run it.

So, keeping in mind that because the management wants to keep the property in good condition, and because a number of the management staff of such a property may well be paid at least in part with a rental unit, they want to do a good job of screening possible residents. They don’t want drug dealers as neighbors, let alone terrorists.

So, if you were to go look for an apartment at a reputable complex, you should expect to show your driver’s license, have it copied, answer a lot of questions about where you live now and where you lived before, answer some questions about your job (including your salary — they want to make sure you can afford rent and food), and sign an application which allows the apartment management to verify your application. As part of that process, they will run a credit check. They will call your current landlord, specifically asking if you have given proper notice that you are moving, and they will call your previous landlord. They will call your office and talk to the HR manager. They will probably even do a criminal background check.

In short, I am willing to believe Padilla and his unnamed coconspirator could have rented units in one large apartment complex. I am not willing to believe they could repeat the process in other complexes without somebody saying “How strange! This guy was just approved for an apartment across town last week!”

This is to say nothing of the merits or lack thereof of the case against Mr. Padilla. The most telling part of this is in the transcript of the Justice Department Press Conference (see CNN link above): the first question is as follows:

QUESTION: Why don’t you bring criminal charges against him now?

COMEY: Well, what we’re going to do is use all legal tools available to protect the American people from Jose Padilla. I’m not ruling out that criminal charges might not be an option some day. We, obviously, can’t use any of the statements he’s made in military custody, which will make that option challenging.

Why aren’t there criminal charges? Why weren’t there criminal charges 2 years ago, when the man was arrested? They admit that they have trampled this man’s rights under the Constitution. I’m terribly sorry, but “He’s a really bad man, trust us” doesn’t make this okay. At the time, they said Brandon Mayfield was a really bad man, trust us, too. The only thing that will prove Mr. Padilla’s “bad man” status is a clean, open trial, where all the evidence is clearly and convincingly laid out and cross-examined.

Sure, maybe he is a bad man. Prove it in court. Good luck finding an unbiased jury.