Category: The World

If I had time to write a half dozen commentaries today, I might, because there are a lot of important things going on. Luckily, there are a number of very excellent things to read by other people. Allow me to point out a few particularly good must-read items.

The New York Times offers this particularly good commentary on why the exchange rate — the price of dollars — is important to you. The important bits begin in the third paragraph. Need a little perspective on this? Try these items.

Didn’t catch the President on “Meet the Press” this morning? Here’s the transcript. Here’s somebody ripping it apart point by point. It’s worth reading the whole thing. If you haven’t had enough, this one is by former Speaker of the House Jim Wright.

From the “But that isn’t the important thing” important, we have this brilliant skewering of Federal investigatory priorities. In short, “Investigate Janet Jackson’s nipple? Do we have our priorities straight?” Maybe you’ll like this commentary better.

From Iraq, there is this item: the Japanese have arrived.

And finally, perhaps these two items are related. Now don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place to discuss religion. Thirty-thousand feet straight up somewhere between LA and NYC trapped in a thin metal tube going 500 miles per hour is not the right place. Unless maybe it’s crashing.

Rant One, wherein the ShortWoman lambasts Stupid Airliner Tricks

Today we are told that, once again, certain British Airways and Air France flights have been canceled due to security concerns. As you may recall — the CNN article points this out if you do not — similar flights have been canceled in the last five weeks. Indeed, one of the flights in question is the exact same flight number as one of the previously scrutinized flights.

Now then, imagine you have tickets on one of these flights. What do you do? You find another way to get where you need to go. This is true whether you are a businessman, a tourist, or a terrorist. If there is, as U.S. Intelligence claims, a valid threat to these flights, then the answer is improved screening of passengers and cargo on those flights. This appears to have been the case with some other flights. Canceling the flights moves the terrorists to an undisclosed location. Insert Dick Cheney joke here. Indeed, since it would appear that the forces of good are wise to the alleged plot against British Airways Flight #223, a terrorist with any functional brain cells whatsoever would have decided another — almost any other — flight would make an easier target.

According to the Washington Post, the decision to cancel these flights was made by the British and French respectively. United States officials had told them these flights would only be allowed in American airspace if armed marshals were aboard. Europeans have different ideas than Americans about security and firearms in general. Clearly they did not take well to the idea of being told how to run things, told to put men with guns on airplanes. Perhaps they determined that the supposed terrorist threat was less credible than the threat of putting a known gunman aboard, even one with a security clearance.

Speaking of targets, does anyone find it the least bit suspicious that of all the airlines that have Heathrow/Dulles flights, only Air France and British Airways are publicly known to be the subject of such concerns?

If you are planning international travel, you might want to have a couple of alternate arrangements in the back of your mind.

Rant Two, in which Employment Data is once more manipulated

Yesterday, I heard the audio clip of President Bush saying “People are finding work.” Today, Reuters is following up on that claim, and Treasury Secretary John Snow’s assertion that the job creation numbers must simply be wrong.

Today’s theory is that both job creation and employment numbers are undercounted because of the self-employed. In short, the employment numbers look worse than they really are because of all the Amway distributors, people selling furniture they make in the garage, people who “make up to $1000 per week in your spare time on your computer,” and one-person businesses doing everything from home repair to tax preparation. Oh yeah, the numbers are also skewed by all those people who are contractors, a subset of the self-employed whose clients — or all too often, singular client — may be flouting IRS rules in an attempt to avoid paying benefits and to sidestep certain other liabilities. Make no mistake, this is a group of people who may or may not be making a living wage, are unlikely to have health insurance, are unlikely to have anything in the way of retirement savings, are unlikely to ever create jobs and hire employees. A substantial number of self-employed people are a lingering cold away from economic ruin.

This excellent Slate article is perhaps the most comprehensive and best written item I have read recently on employment/unemployment statistics and reality. Here’s a little bit from the middle:

The payroll survey is less likely to capture the self-employed, newly formed businesses, or domestic employees. So it could be that the millions of Americans who have been laid off are busy starting companies, or working full-time as self-employed consultants. All of this entrepreneurial energy would show up in the Household Survey and be good news for the economy.

Alternatively, the millions of Americans who are self-employed could simply be frustrated in their efforts to find full-time, salary-and-benefits-paying work at established companies. In other words… they’re self-employed because they’re unemployed. That would be bad news for the economy, and it probably wouldn’t show up in the Household Survey.

I count myself in the camp that thinks a substantial number of the “self-employed” are that way because it’s better than nothing.

Just about all of Generation X can recite this, but not without hearing that song in their heads:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

This week there have been events pertinent to most of the line items in that paragraph. Let’s start with establishing justice. This week an appeals court ruled that the Bill of Rights applies to everyone, and not even the President has the authority to arbitrarily declare that certain people do not get due process of law. Specifically, Jose Padilla has the right to a speedy, public trial with lawyers and everything. Furthermore, a different appeals court declared that those folks held at Guantanamo Bay for the last year and a half deserve lawyers too. Even if you think all these people should be executed and burn in hell, they deserve the same rights of due process that you deserve, mister law abiding citizen. If they can pick up some random guy who happens to be Muslim at the airport and lock him up incommunicado for 18 months on skimpy evidence, what is there stopping them from doing the same to you?

Moving on to domestic tranquility and the common defense, we have another “look out!” warning that doesn’t rate an increase in the terrorist warning system to orange. All we are allowed to know is that we should be alert but don’t panic in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. Oh, and be wary at the airport too. Never mind that Bush’s hand picked Chairman of the 9/11 Probe Committee says the whole thing could have and should have been prevented. Let’s not forget the nutcase shooting at passing cars and school busses in Ohio. Things don’t sound very tranquil on the domestic front.

The general welfare isn’t looking too good either. As I have discussed before, poverty is up, bankruptcies are at record levels, consumer debt is high, the trade deficit is funneling money out of the country, and the dollar is at historical lows.

Christmas is just a few days away, and retailers are still waiting for the register to ring. It seems that the luxury and electronic retailers are doing fine, but the discounters and clothiers are not. My theory is that the typical discount store shopper has run out of money and finally maxed out the credit cards. They are waiting for the December 23 “Oh please get it off our shelves” sale.

Let’s not forget this item: experts tell us that “Structural change in the economy means many jobs are never going to come back.” Not just manufacturing jobs that are being done by machines and cheap foreign labor, but good jobs in finance, computers, and the courts. Make no mistake, Generation X now has a history of making jobs where there have been none. We were told when we graduated college that we were pathetic, apathetic slobs who would be the first generation to not do as well as their parents. Left unsaid was “…and you should be ashamed of yourselves.” We shrugged, exhaled loudly, and created the internet bubble. There was no such thing as a “web designer” when we were in high school. I don’t know if we are prepared to do it again.

California is no closer to ending the grocery workers strike. They are still wrangling about health care costs. Interestingly enough, the Congressional Budget Office is also concerned about health care costs, saying that we’d better make serious changes to Medicaid and Medicare, or accept that taxes will be really high in a decade when the Baby Boomers start to retire. So much for the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

Here’s wishing a happy 2004 for the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

I am confused.

There is at least one person shooting at cars on an Ohio Interstate freeway. There also may be at least one copycat shooter. There have been 12 reported shootings, and one fatality. This has made national and international news. People are afraid to let their kids play outside at recess, and afraid to let them ride the bus to school. Drivers are doing everything within their meager power to feel safe on the road.

Why doesn’t Ohio have an Orange Alert, or maybe even a Red Alert? Why exactly is this not terrorism? Because nobody has claimed credit and published a list of demands yet? I don’t recall Mohammed Atta’s list of demands. Would it be considered terrorism if a minority neighborhood were targeted? If it happened near Jerusalem instead of near Columbus? What if it were Dearborn?

Speaking of terrorism, I have been informed that if you are planning on bringing Christmas gifts with you when you travel by airplane, do not wrap them. They will have to be unwrapped by the TSA if they are in a bag they decide to search (checked or carry-on). You will need to plan on wrapping gifts at your destination — don’t forget that the scissors need to be in your checked baggage.

How is a wrapped gift in your luggage — in the same plane as you yourself — a greater security risk than a wrapped gift sent by the United States Post Office and placed on a passenger plane? I am not trying to make trouble, I just want to know.

There are several things I considered for today’s missive. For one thing, I thought about the fact that the headline “Housing Construction Hits 17 Year High” hides the fact that although housing starts were up 17.7% in the West and up 4.9% in the South, they dived 18% in the Northeast and 8% in the Midwest. Clearly, whether or not there is a lot of new housing going up near you depends on where you live. By extension, whether or not the economy is good enough that people are buying new houses depends on where you live.

Another thing I considered is that both Reuters and the Associated Press felt it important to note that unemployment among high tech types such as engineers and computer programmers is up. Over half a million such jobs vanished last year alone, with another quarter of a million expected this year. These were good paying, skilled, college-degree-required jobs.

Instead, I would like to alert you to a potential boondoggle. Biometrics, at its most simple, is identifying people based on their body: fingerprints; retina scans; voice matching. It has also been hyped as the up and coming thing in security, and is expected to have a $7 Billion market by 2007. US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is behind it, and is trying to get Europe to join him on the bandwagon. The Chinese think it’s a good idea too. Biometric data will be required in many passports by 2004.

Proponents say it is the best security device ever: no more forgotten passwords; no more forged identification; no more identity theft. But best of all, they say, biometric identification will allow frequent fliers to speed by that long security line at the airport.

That is just not going to happen.

First, experts admit that biometrics have “limited accuracy,” “would not stop people obtaining multiple personas,” and is “only part of the solution.” Indeed, a recent press release admits “Face recognition biometrics is striving to overcome performance inefficiencies and dispel skepticism regarding its ability to meet the demands posed by emerging applications.” In otherwords, they would like to make a product that works. USA Today quotes an expert as saying that “At best, fingerprint scanners are about 98% accurate.” That sounds pretty good until you realize that means it will fail 2% of the time. A minor annoyance if you have a hundred scans a day, a big mess if you have several thousand scans a day. For a tech-centric commentary on this article, click here.

Accuracy is further impaired by many things. Will a voice recognition system recongnize you if you have a cold? Can you use a thumb scanner if you have had an accident and injured your thumb? Will eyedrops effect your retinal scan? Do you dare risk a change in hair color or facial hair if your office uses face recognition? Will you still be recognised in a year, or if something about you changes, or if something around you is different?

As if the accuracy concerns were not enough to declare biometrics a not ready for prime time technology, there are privacy concerns. That same USA Today article says “Biometric systems store huge amounts of personal data. Some systems record the data on a computer inside the store. Others record it on computers at the biometric company’s headquarters. Critics say data will always be at risk.” What can you do if your fingerprint or retina scan is hacked? You can always get a new credit card number or a reissued drivers license number; but you can’t just replace your fingers and eyes.

Linked to but separate from privacy concerns are civil liberties concerns. That stored data in the previous paragraph may be shared with just about anybody, and at this moment there is no law to stop it. Maybe it doesn’t matter that you bought a bag of cat food, but is it really necessary to share that information? And share it with whom? Why? And what about that CIA project to identify people with biometric data at a distance? That isn’t from some bunch of tin-foil hat crackpots, that’s from the Australian Broadcasting Company. How much data about your travels and purchasing habits will end up stored with your biometric-enhanced passport?

And this last question brings us back to the airport security line. Americans want this to work, really. Americans are willing to pay a modest sum and have their privacy invaded for a bit of laminated plastic saying “NOT A TERRORIST” that will speed them past all the security lines. It will not happen. As long as people have luggage, it will need to be inspected. As long as people get on airplanes, they will need to go through metal detectors. As long as people have carry on bags, they will need to be x-rayed. Yesterday’s USA Today cites an expert who “predicts that within a decade or two, the technology will be sophisticated enough to monitor passengers at each step of the airport process — when they arrive, when they check their bags, when they pass through security and when they enter the plane. But he is less optimistic about the technology’s potential for slashing airport waiting times, saying the challenge for airports is to deploy the systems without increasing the wait for passengers.” That’s right. Experts think biometrics may well slow down the airport security lines.

Biometrics is not the end-all answer to identification and security. It is a whole new set of questions. Expensive questions.

Happy Veterans Day. For my foriegn readers, this is a day when we remember and show respect for the veterans of our armed forces who have served our country. Many schoolchildren, government workers, and some lucky folks in private industry get the day off.

But this year, the parades are scant. The vast majority of our servicemen are too busy defending the country’s interests to march parades in their honor.

Reservists have been called up, and more are being called up to serve full time. These troops are at higher risk of being injured on duty. They leave behind jobs that need to be done and families that need to be fed. Medical personnel are among those whose short term plans are being rewritten by the military. It has been said before but bears repeating: “So much for one weekend a month and two weeks a year.”

These reservists may not even be sufficient. There is loose talk of reinstating the draft. This should be enough to make young men aged 18-26 sit up and vote. Oh, and I did mention medical personnel in the last paragraph: Doctors can be drafted until age 35. In the 2004 elections, will Bush will be so eager to make sure all those no-postmark military absentee votes are counted?

Remember, every young man called up artificially creates a job, making it seem like the economy is in better shape than it really is.

When our troops get to Iraq, they face unknown enemies on every side, aided and abetted by a 70% unemployment rate and contracts with American companies that effectively funnel money out of the country. As I write, 398 American troops have been killed in Iraq, 37 of them in the first week of November. The sobering truth is that we are almost certain to celebrate Thanksgiving knowing over 400 of our soldiers have died in Iraq.

Back home, soldiers’ families face certain grim realities. Even soldiers who get leave might not make it home to see their loved ones. Combat pay may be reduced. Commissaries (low cost on-base stores which make it possible to raise a family on an enlisted man’s salary) are being closed in “remote areas” — places there are few stores to begin with. Schools on military bases risk closure. Apparently the Administration feels “No Child Left Behind” doesn’t apply to the children of the very men who makes their rule possible. Veterans Administration health benefits are underfunded.

Finally, dissent within the military is not tolerated. We are not talking about disobeying legal orders, we are talking about thinking on one’s own time.

Every true Patriot, if you will excuse the pun, should read what Al Gore had to say over the weekend. Agree or disagree as you like. He is not running for any office, and thus has little to gain or lose by saying what he thinks. Or, to use his words, “So, is that fine with everyone?”

Support our troops: pray for peace.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, a Federal agency charged with making sure products you buy are safe, came out with an important ruling today. They have decided not to ban the use of arsenic in the manufacture of pressure treated lumber. They claim this decision is based on the fact that few manufacturers use arsenic anymore.

Pressure treated lumber is used in many outdoor applications. That’s because it is resistant to rot and insect damage. But one of the major uses for treated lumber is children’s playground equipment: it’s softer than plastic or metal, and doesn’t get as hot or cold either. Even the CPSC admits that arsenic treated lumber poses a hazard to children when used in playground equipment, citing “an increased risk of lung or bladder cancer for people who played on such playground equipment as children.” Furthermore, the stuff has become an ongoing headache for communities both as they try to determine how much contaminated playground equipment they have, and as they attempt to dispose of arsenic tainted wood.

So lets make sure we understand the CPSC’s position: arsenic treated lumber is dangerous, but it’s okay to continue making it because almost nobody makes it anymore.

Granted, the EPA has already said it cannot be made after the end of the year, but sellers are allowed to deplete their stock, and frankly I fail to see where the EPA has outlawed importing the stuff. What possible reason could the CPSA have for not keeping in line with the EPA decision? For pity sake, the EPA decided it was bad, and this is the same EPA that decided it was alright to relax sewage treatment rules and approves thousands of untested chemicals for household use.

This isn’t the only government agency that has said we need not change the rules because nobody uses them. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice is playing the same semantic game with respect to Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. Section 215 is the portion which (among other things) allows the FBI to check your library records, with reduced warrant requirements, and without anybody being allowed to tell you.

Ashcroft claims there is no need to fix this egregious breech of 4th Amendment rights because after all, Section 215 has never been used. Most of America replies “Good! Then you won’t miss it if we take it away!” Ashcroft counters “But I might need it someday.”

Right, just like those roller blades you bought 5 years ago thinking you would get in shape, but all they do is gather dust in a closet. Get rid of them now: just like Ashcroft’s pet legislation, you will only get hurt if you use them. Just ask Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, and Valerie Plame about the importance of privacy.

The debate over who will pay to fix all the stuff broken in the war with Iraq is heating up. Europe would like to contribute what amounts to a token sum, Japanese sentiment is not exactly feeling generous on the issue, and the United States Senate would like to shift half the burden to Iraq. This would amount to roughly 17% of Iraq’s 2002 Gross Domestic Product — 17% of every dinar spent in the whole country last year. This does not reflect debts Iraq owed before the war. By way of comparison, the entire national debt of the United States amounts to roughly 66% of the GDP.

However much we believe in self-reliance, telling Iraq to pay for the reconstruction of their country themselves is like telling a child to go earn money for his own dinner. Since we broke it in the first place, it’s like having to pay to repair your car after being hit by an uninsured driver. And some of the things we wanted to implement were esoteric to say the least: Zip codes; state of the art garbage trucks; one month courses in how to be a businessman. And that’s just some of the stuff that was taken out.

Now that we are giving the people of Iraq the dubious gift of an American style national debt, we would also like to give them a Western style central bank. They do have a central bank, of course — where else would the Husseins have kept their money? But as it stands, the Central Bank of Iraq is more like a Treasury Department and Mint. This makes them very different from our Fed, which buys and sells bits of the national debt, controls interest rates, and controls reserve rates — the amount of actual assets your bank or brokerage has to have on hand. You remember, like in George Bailey’s speech about how the cash wasn’t in the bank, but in all the houses they helped people buy.

Islamic banking is hampered by the Qur’an’s prohibition against charging interest. So our theoretical Iraq Fed will not necessarily have interest rates to tamper with. This also means there will be little to regulate in the way of reserve requirements — certainly nothing that requires regular non-legislative meddling. So the theoretical Iraq Fed will have nothing to do but muck about with the national debt, see above. Critics call it “prone to fiscal abuse from a provisional government and future Iraqi governments with more proposals for expenditure than probable sources of revenue.” Iraq needs a Fed like a diabetic needs a donut.

However, it is now clear that we can stop looking for Saddam Hussein. Yes, that’s right, neither he nor Osama are the real enemy. Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin informs us that the real enemy is none other than Satan himself.

Whatever your views on the General’s theology, applying it to the War on Terror poses a very serious problem. Under his world-view there are only 3 possible ends for the War on Terror: the annihilation of the “Christian” world; troops marching into hell to personally kill Satan; or Armageddon.

Even winning is losing. Maybe we ought to keep looking for the proverbial “devil you know.”

“The person who is in charge is me.” — President George W. Bush

Not since the famous declaration of Alexander Haig that “I am in charge” have such words been so elequently spoken, indeed not since Truman proclaimed that “The buck stops here.”

The President’s remarks were largely in reply to critics who maintain that he needs to assert more control over things in Iraq. Even Republican Senator Bob Lugar stated that “The President has to be President” in an equal show of oratory splendor. Democrat and presidential hopeful John Kerry was less conciliatory, refering to Bush policies as “haphazard, shotgun, shoot-from-the-hip diplomacy.”

And which policies are they upset about? What seems to them to be loss of control?

Is it that we have been averaging about 22 attacks on American soldiers each day for the last week? That 320 American soldiers have died in this conflict, over 90 of them after hostilities were declared over? That suicide bombers, guerilla attacks, and other random acts of violence are now common? Is it that Iraq has become a terrorist Mecca?

Is it the American soldiers who, while not being attacked, are bulldozing farmers’ fields in an attempt to force them to become informants? Or maybe it’s the soldiers’ letters ghost-written by the Administration and sent to hometown newspapers saying how great things are in Iraq, how proud they are to serve there. Wow, that’s the way to bring peace and stability to the region.

Maybe it’s the fact that various American officials can’t make up their minds whether Saddam Hussein is or is not anywhere near his hometown of Tikrit?

Oh, no, it must be that public opinion of the war has soured, particularly in Iraq.

Speaking of which, there are some rather large hurdles to getting Americans out of the country, since almost everyone agrees that now that we’ve gone and removed the government and destroyed the infrastructure we can’t just pack up our tanks, say what a lovely time we had, so sorry about the mess, and go home. There is a lot ofreconstruction to be done. Something like $87 billion dollars worth of reconstruction. That’s a enough money that people are paying attention. Of course, if we just put Iraqis to work and give them paychecks for this, it would probably cost more like $87 million — partly because we would not be lining the pockets of American corporations, partly because wages are lower there, partly because the locals would be building it instead of trying to blow it up.

The UN would like to set a deadline of December 15 for getting started on a Constitution and an interim government. This is unquestionably another prerequisite for American forces leaving Iraq. Unfortunately, the same diversity we claim to cherish here in the States makes it difficult to even decide who should have a voice in writing the Constitution and how much power various ethnic and religious groups should have. They could spend until December 15 just arguing about who should bring coffee and donuts for their first meeting. More than one person has suggested just giving them a finished document — perhaps one from their own past — and letting them improve upon it. Retired Colonel John Warden has written some excellent thoughts on Iraq exit strategy.

Here at home, prepare to have your winter coats scrutinized, and warn the kids that the nice TSA officer might have to inspect their teddy bears more closely than usual. It seems that Homeland Security has decided the Bad Guys can use a nice fluffy explosive called “nitrocellulose.”

The War on Terror has certainly not made me feel more secure.

Today is the anniversary of what is debatably the single saddest day in my lifetime.

Two years ago today, 19 nut-cases hijacked 4 airliners full of people and fuel. They destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, killed about 3000 people — an astonishingly low number considering the time and place — and took away our innate sense of security.

The occasion was commemorated in New York City as well as other places with moments of silence.

Around the world wreathes were laid, prayers were said, names of the dead were spoken, commemorative gardens and art exhibits were opened, blood drives were conducted, parades were marched, school children sang patriotic songs, heads of state gave speeches denouncing terrorism. In addition, nations were put on alert, and there were calls for curtailing civil liberties in the name of the War on Terror.

Closer to home, a local mini-mart chain was giving away free deluxe car washes.

Clearly that’s what it’s all about. Moments of silence and car washes.