Category: The World

Poverty isn’t new. But it is new for 1.3 million Americans — including 800,000 children — that entered the ranks of the poor in 2003. Here’s coverage from The Associated Press, CNN, and Reuters. Oh, and here’s the Official Census Bureau Highlights, and the Census Bureau Press Release.

The short version: there are 35.9 million poor people in the United States, 12.9 million of them children; that works out to 12.5% of the general population and 17.6% of children; it is the third annual increase in a row and the highest level since 1998; even more people — 45 million, or 15.6% — had no health insurance. Although this data is usually not released until September, it has been put out a little earlier. Some people already see this as part of a political agenda to bury the data, as the last week of August is typically a slow news, Wall-Street-on-vacation, Congress out of session sort of time.

I realize some of you are saying “Tell me something I don’t know,” and others are saying “So what? There’s been poverty as long as there’s been civilization.” This is more serious than you might think. And not merely because it is evidence that “Compassionate Conservative” measures are not working. Believe it or not, this is a public health issue.

When more than one out of every 8 Americans does not have health insurance — and by extension does not have adequate access to timely medical care — that is a public health issue. Particularly if you throw communicable diseases into the mix. Or maybe the possibility of a flu pandemic, three of which have occurred in the last century.

For a variety of reasons, poor people and people without health insurance have a tendency to use Hospital Emergency Departments. This is particularly true when there are not public health clinics — and such clinics have long been squeezed between a rising population that needs them and shrinking funds with which to provide treatment. The result is that Emergency Departments are under great pressure, causing some to close, which in turn creates pressure on other hospitals (Here’s the No Registration Required version).

The answer to “What does this have to do with me?” is provided by a county official: “Whether you have insurance or not, if there’s not a bed for you, you’re not going to get in.” If the ER is clogged with people for whatever reason, if the hospital is full of people whose upper respiratory infection turned into pneumonia, your medical emergency is going to have to wait. And if those people can’t pay, you will eventually pay in the form of higher taxes, higher insurance premiums, or fewer hospitals.

In a story already making international headlines, United States District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has held five reporters in contempt of court for refusing to reveal sources in the news coverage of now-cleared scientist Wen Ho Lee. Here’s the Associated Press version, here’s Reuters. If that’s not enough, here’s Washington Post, L. A. Times, The International Herald Times as adapted from the New York Times, and Reporters Without Borders. Nor is this the first time this month that a judge has ordered reporters to cough up the names of sources. This is a bigger story than the fact that, as I write, Google has begun trading, and is around $100 per share.

Does the judge’s name sound familiar to you? You probably remember him as the Judge in the Microsoft Trial, where his Findings of Fact included the “Fact” that Microsoft is a monopoly, and web clients are not operating systems. Alright, the guy is already controversial.

Pro: these reporters did — we must assume inadvertently — contribute to a media storm of inaccurate, libelous information being disseminated against one scientist. Wen Ho Lee is going to have to explain himself on every job interview he gets for the rest of his life. He spent time in a jail cell in solitary confinement despite the fact that he had been convicted of nothing. He did plead guilty to one count of “improper handling” of data. His case was so egregious that he got an apology from the President of the United States. You cannot blame Mr. Lee for being unhappy. Frankly, these reporters should be unhappy they were told lies and manipulated into regurgitating them.

Con: these reporters gave their solemn word that sources would be confidential. If they go back on that, they can kiss credibility and future confidential sources goodbye. This is true both personally and for reporters in general. That means fewer whistle-blowers will come forward in general, which in turn will make it harder to get information out of any company or government entity beyond the prepared press statements. This is bad for democracy, and bad for free markets.

Make your own opinion.

This morning, I thought the big news was that the economy added 32,000 jobs in July, over 200,000 fewer than expected, a whopping average of 640 per state. And according to the people who are paid to research these things, more layoffs are coming. Add to this the fact that even the IRS admits Americans are making less money, the fact that record oil prices make inflation likely, and strangely enough you might get the idea that the economy isn’t very good for most Americans.

However, then I was sidetracked by two biometric passport stories. Here in the states, we are moving forward with a system whose failure rate can be as high as 50%. “Across the pond,” British passport applicants are being asked not to smile for their passport pictures, as it interferes with the accuracy of the biometric picture readers.

Pardon me, but a system with a failure rate of half is worse than useless — fingerprint scans have a failure rate of more like 2% (one in 50), and even that is overwhelming when you are doing thousands of scans daily. A system that can be foiled by a smile is likewise, worse than useless. None of us want to be detained over a biometric reader deciding that our passport pictures don’t look enough like us. If a simple smile can throw it off, I can only imagine what sleeping on an airplane seat might do to it. This is over and above a new pair of glasses, a little thinner hair, botox, or any of a dozen other innocent things that might change about your appearance between getting a passport photo and going overseas. The even greater risk is that, because the failure rate is so high, security officials will simply ignore the warnings of the device, allowing even obvious mismatches to pass. It is a waste of both taxpayer’s time and taxpayer’s money.

This is the real life equivalent of Elmer Fudd asking what is obviously Bugs Bunny in a pair of sunglasses “Have you seen a little gray rabbit about your size, with long ears like yours, and a little cotton tail like yours?”

I think by now everybody who is not hypnotized by Donald Rumsfeld knows that things are not perfect in Iraq. At this writing there are 914 dead American soldiers. Since a battle between Al-Sadr’s militia and the United States Marines is underway, this number could rise any minute. Religiously motivated attacks occurred over the weekend. Democracy is still a lofty goal. There is still infrastructure in desperate need of repair, and the money that was to have made this happen was poorly allocated. The best thing to happen to the whole nation in the last week is normalization of relations with Kuwait. Retired General Tommy Franks, a smart military man who has seen events in Iraq first hand says we need a 5 year plan for putting that nation back together. We broke it; we should fix it. There is little point debating whether we should have been there in the first place. Good thing the United States has those permanent bases that Rumsfeld said weren’t being planned, because it seems we will need them.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, my friend Plunge is having a problem getting toys and medical supplies to little kids in Iraq. There has been a disagreement with a shipping company involving $30,000 and 3 shipping containers that have made it as far as Kuwait. Since the shipping company failed to do what they said they would, Operation Give wants it’s money back. This will help them send more toys to kids who have absolutely nothing. Read about what happened. And remember, the only thing the kids did was get born in the wrong country. If you are in a position to do anything to help — call the shipper, send donations, offer prayers and happy thoughts — I am sure they will be appreciated.

The Bill of Rights is a wonderful thing. It gives me the right to say what I like, and it gives you the right to say you disagree. It gives Ann Coulter the right to write what she wishes, and USA Today the right to say they won’t print it. And Americans have a fine heritage of disagreeing in word and deed. The history of protest in America goes back at least to the Boston Tea Party — which of course predates the Bill of Rights. Perhaps this incident is why the First Amendment specifically protects the right to assemble “peaceably.”

In my lifetime, protest has not always been peaceable. In fact, sometimes protest becomes very much like civil unrest. It is my personal opinion that many protests-turned-violent have a great deal to do with police “preacting” to problems: because protest is expected, police show in force; protesters feel oppressed, cops feel threatened; a small incident occurs somewhere and is met with overreaction; tear gas, beat-downs, and property destruction ensues. Scenes like this are undoubtedly the inspiration for segregated protest areas, sometimes called “demonstration areas” or “free speech zones.” This last euphemism disturbs me, as the First Amendment makes it clear that our entire nation is a free speech zone. Nevertheless, such zones have become all the rage in crowd control, and the issue of mind control must be left to the reader.

This week’s Democratic Convention in Boston has been marred by the existence of a free speech zone that is little more than a cage for protesters. This travesty, not the first of it’s kind, will likely be emulated at the Republican convention next month. There will be clear controls on where dissenting opinions may be voiced en masse. You have the right to say what you want, and you have the right to peaceably assemble, but apparently you don’t have the right to do both at once.

My fellow Americans, protest as we know it is dead.

Your views cannot be heard from inside a cage, whether that cage is in back of the convention center or in the county jail. Do not think that your views are so exalted that, like Nelson Mandela, Amnesty International will take up your cause. There is no point in getting thrown into the pokey for protesting in the wrong spot. There is no point in making a police office want to use tear gas or something worse on you. There are better ways of being heard.

Luckily, America has another fine tradition of dissent, policital prose. For examples, browse this list of documents. You can write down your thoughts. You can send a letter to the editor of any newspaper you like. You can sell bumper stickers and t-shirts with your message on them. You can send a mass mailer. You can ask to put up a poster at the local grocery store. You can rent space on a billboard. You can blog. Heck, you can send your opinion as spam and more people will hear it than if you were in a cage.

Remember, the Bill of Rights was written by people who overthrew the government.

The 9-11 Commission has released their report. Here’s information on how to get your own copy and come to your own conclusions.

So how did 9-11 happen? From what I have read, the Commission feels there is plenty of blame for everyone. It isn’t all Bush’s fault; it isn’t all Clinton’s fault; it isn’t all Ashcroft’s or American Airlines’s or the guy manning the metal detector that morning or anybody else’s fault that 9-11 happened. It’s everyone’s fault. Like a thousand fictional tragedies, little mistakes happened, snowballing, allowing if not causing big mistakes. Here’s CNN, the BBC, Reuters twice, Bloomberg (one of my favorite news sources, even before Mr. Bloomberg became Mayor), MSNBC, even MTV is reporting on this.

Yeah, it’s the Modern Day Warren Commission.

The more important question is how we can say “never again” and mean it. The official stance of “More Homeland Security” and “One Information Czar to Rule Them All” seems weak. After all, the DHS was mired in bureaucracy from its very inception. From the standpoint of Joe Average, they have said little more than Look Out and have emergency supplies of canned food and plastic sheeting. Don’t get me wrong, having emergency food is a good idea for any disaster, from terrorism to storms to unemployment. But I think everyone was hoping for more.

As for a Cabinet Level Spook Supervisor, I remind everyone that the biggest reason the CIA has never been under the same auspices as the FBI for a reason. Officials at the time didn’t think it was a good idea for one man to control that much intelligence information. Heck, the CIA was created because of the “intelligence failures” leading up to Pearl Harbor. We already have one cabinet level agency set up because of 9-11, the DHS. How many bureaucrats does it take to make us feel safe?

It’s just as well that pretty much nothing will happen with these recommendations until after the elections.

In the meantime, lets remember that the ticket-holding men of middle eastern decent may be less of a risk than some nut being able to steal a baggage tractor and drive it onto a runway at a big, hub airport. I bet they didn’t re-screen any luggage that might have been aboard, either.

“A moderate facade is necessary to win elections in a generally tolerant nation.”
— Paul Krugman

We do live in a “generally tolerant nation.” Even so, we keep hearing about how Hate Fuels The Terrorist Agenda and The Terrorists Hate Us and The Terrorists Hate What We Stand For. This philosophy is patently silly. To say that terrorism is nothing more than a large scale hate-crime is disingenuous.

However, because “they hate” our freedoms and our democracy, to say nothing of “credible information” that the Department of Homeland Security has but we do not, we are told the Fall elections are at risk. No, I’m not saying the DHS should spill everything they know, but they do rather seem to be The Boy That Cried Wolf. We are told there should be a contingency plan. This has even made the international headlines.

So we “know” roughly when and where an attack will be, but we are unable to stop it? And the terror alert level isn’t red? Don’t get me wrong, even Congress is tired of warnings that say nothing more than LOOK OUT! but doesn’t this warrant upgrading the terror risk level? For that matter, this situation is supposed to make us trust President Bush to keep on task with the War on Terror? Many good things have been said by many smart people about this situation, and I encourage you to read and come to your own conclusion.

But apparently disrupting the election isn’t the only goal of terrorists. The political conventions are at risk too, mostly from domestic anarchists. However, New York City is determined not to allow any incidents. In fact, apartment dwellers near the convention are encouraged not to leave their homes during the convention. They should lay in extra food, carry a government approved photo ID card, use the servants’ entrance — er, I mean the back exit — and not schedule deliveries. I shudder to think what might happen should anyone from these 3000 families need to go to work or have a medical emergency. I’m sorry, this sounds more like a scheme to keep “undesirables” under wraps than a security measure.

Heaven knows apartment dwellers couldn’t possibly want to observe the political process in motion. Right? That doesn’t sound very moderate, let alone tolerant.

In unrelated news, this item at Forbes discusses the fact that over 99% of employers are small businesses, and they generate half our GDP. What is the official Bush Administration prescription for helping small business? Deregulation. Pardon me for pointing out that deregulation allowed mega-banks to form, allowed mega-mergers that left thousands of people unemployed, put multiple airlines out of business, and allowed Enron to happen. If you can figure out how any of these things benefitted small businesses, let me know.

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?

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.

I’d like to tell you about a very unusual company today. Their prospects are looking up. Granted, they had some troubles after 9/11 — they did lose people and facilities — but their finances are in good order. Core management has been reduced by about half since then, and the remaining middle managers have successfully implemented a decentralized management plan, allowing them to quickly move on a regional or local basis without having to get the CEO to sign off on every small detail. They have 18,000 employees and contractors, and recruiting for open positions is going exceptionally well.

Unfortunately, this “company” is Al Qaeda.

Let’s face it, pictures like this are not helping the War on Terror™, and they are not helping America. The idea that the commander who allowed this to occur is shocked, just shocked I tell you that she is being sent elsewhere is, well, just shocking. Alright, I grant you that she should not have found out on the evening news.

But back to the topic of Al Qaeda. We invaded Afghanistan to get them, if you will recall. Then we left the job half finished. Then we got distracted by Iraq, and managed to mess up everything we could think of to mess up in the process. Even our plan for returning Iraqis to self-rule is flawed.

And that brings us to this week’s missive, brought to us jointly from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice: Look Out. Al Qaeda might be planning to attack. They won’t tell us what they plan to do, they won’t tell us where, they won’t tell us when except to say “summer,” but they will at least tell us who might be involved. Maybe they can get these guys to help out. Oh yeah, it’s credible or they wouldn’t bother to mention it. But it isn’t a big enough deal to be worth raising the alert level. If you are skeptical of the whole deal, you aren’t alone.

The War On Terror™ was supposed to make us safer. Instead, it has made the terrorists stronger.