Parallelogram

Last night, I was listening to the late-night guy on Air America when he took at call from a lady who began by saying “I still have the ID card the Nazis gave me” when they over-ran Austria. The caller was very concerned that she saw distinct parallels between what happened to her homeland as a child, and what was happening in America today. She did not elaborate in detail, but a good history book can fill in the blanks.

Under skillful questioning by Mr. Malloy, she described having to present her card at every checkpoint she passed in the city. These checkpoints were fortified with machine-gun turrets. Finally, she was asked to describe the cards. She said they had her name, picture, address, thumbprint, the name of her school, and physical description, including distinguishing marks. This sounds to me like it’s a Social Security Number short of the Real ID requirements. If you haven’t written your Congresscritters and State officials, do that now, mmkay?

Of course, your Representatives in the House have been too busy to repeal Real ID. Fixing Social Security? Finding money for unfunded Federal mandates? Getting the Federal Budget ready for fiscal year 2006? Figuring out how to get Iraq stable enough that we can bring our soldiers home? No, nothing like that. They’ve been working on a Constitutional Amendment that would allow Congress to prohibit “Flag Desecration.”

Now then, unless my grasp of symbolism is totally astray, in which case the wine falling off the wagons at the beginning of “A Tale of Two Cities” is nothing more than wine and “A Separate Peace” was actually a good book, the Flag is a symbol. Once we start venerating symbols, we veer into a realm of idolatry. The reasoning is that by “Desecrating” a flag you are harming the country. Countless times I have heard veterans speak of how they fought for their flag. Personally, I’d like to think they fought for their country, represented by the flag, rather than killing other human beings over a bit of fabric.

Now think about this for a minute. Which would you rather a group of protesters did, burn a flag, or burn a courthouse? Those are two different things, right?

Dictators have known for decades that once you regulate what one can say and do regarding a symbol, you can regulate what one can say and do regarding what that symbol represents. The whole thing seems silly, until people start getting punished.

As if this stuff wasn’t scary enough all by itself, the Supreme Court has now ruled that municipalities can now seize any land they chose to allow “economic development.” The case in question concerns a middle-class residential community on the river. Such land is just too valuable to let mere single-family homes stand. Although I imagine this case would never have gotten to the Supreme Court if multi-million dollar homes were involved. This case should scare the pants off residents of mobile homes in metropolitan areas. For that matter, anyone who owns property now stands to lose it at the whim of some city council that receives sufficient bribes — excuse me, I meant to say incentives — from some developer.

Yet when I read this, it sounded strangely familiar. Ah yes, here it is. In Zimbabwe, the government has ordered poor areas of town bulldozed for economic development. Of course the United States has officially proclaimed that “bad.” I guess American companies aren’t making any money off the deal.

Controlling Interest

Today I was reading an article about a PBS documentary called “The Education of Shelby Knox.” The show, to air tonight, documents the transformation of Miss Knox, Bible-Believing, chastity pledge taking girl, into a remarkably wise young woman who — while still a devout Christian — believes in tolerance and comprehensive reproductive education.*

Comprehensive reproductive education, as contrasted with “abstinence only” reproductive education, teaches about contraception and disease prevention, along with basic biological facts about human reproduction. Abstinence only programs are the only kind for which a school can get Federal funding, meaning our tax dollars pay for a semester of “just say no.” Furthermore, in Texas and some other states, abstinence only is the only thing schools are allowed to teach. Miss Knox began to see the problems with abstinence only programs when she found that her school district had very high rates of teen pregnancy and STDs. Make no mistake, abstinence is a very effective form of disease and pregnancy prevention, but only if you do it — um, don’t do it — every time.

I support comprehensive reproductive education too, but for different reasons than many people. I find the philosophy of “they are going to do it anyway; they should at least have protection” to be unsatisfying. If that is our yardstick, then we should take down speed limit signs, since most people exceed the speed limit anyway. Instead, I begin with one basic premise: adults have a right to medically accurate information about contraception. Notice that I am speaking of adults. If you cannot agree with me on this statement, then we truly have no middle ground to start on. Enjoy your theocratic utopia.

Now then. Adults have a right to this information. Indeed, in 1965 the Supreme Court ruled that adults have a right to more than information: they have a right to contraceptives. Is it realistic to expect every adult of childbearing age to make an appointment to consult their doctor about contraceptives? In this age of managed care, in a country where 15% of the population has no medical insurance? No.

Alright, so we have a right to medical information and we aren’t getting it from our doctors. Nor is it reasonable to expect every citizen to go to college and find out about it there. And since at least 99% of the population has genitals of one flavor or another, this is hardly a special interest topic that concerned parties should look up online.

Now, in this nation, a young person legally becomes an adult when they turn 18 for most purposes. Most high school graduates are 18, making them legally adults. Not only are most high school seniors adults with the moral and legal right to this information, but high school is the last realistic place where such information can be mass-distributed, with professionals on hand to answer questions as they arise.

Parallel to this topic, I would like to repeat that pharmacists who refuse to dispense prescription contraceptives and “morning after pills” for moral reasons are skating on thin ice indeed. Not only will these same people gladly fill prescriptions for male performance and lifestyle drugs, they forget that prescription contraceptives have other medical uses. Furthermore, just like when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that any judge who was against the death penalty should resign, any pharmacist who is against dispensing legal, medically indicated prescriptions should resign. To do less is to follow their morals only when they inconvenience others.

Gosh, it feels good to use a conservative argument against conservatives.

* In order to not be flagged as a naughty-naughty site by various filters, I am specifically not using “the S word.” I don’t have to spell it out, do I?

Shorties Too

Follow up:

“But for [talks] to happen, the DPRK (North Korea) must do its part by returning to the table without preconditions and abandoning its pursuit of nuclear weapons,” said Chris Ford, a senior U.S. official and member of the U.S. delegation to the IAEA.

Translation: “We can talk about disarming after you’ve disarmed.”

Anti-Terror Follies: The best commentary about current House of Representatives action to make the FBI get a good old fashioned search warrant before browbeating your local librarian, contrasted with wanting to make your ISP keep records on everything that all their clients do on the off chance there may be an investigation someday — and I guess your ISP will pay for the additional storage space by raising your rates. If that isn’t enough, the Homeland Security Privacy Czar (I bet you didn’t know there was one) is trying to find out if the TSA is expanding the scope of Secure Flight (CAPPS III, if you prefer) and amending documentation after the fact.

Missing Persons: It turns out even the news media has started to notice that cute white girls vanishing get lots of press, but tough luck if a missing person is male or black, as the majority of missing persons happen to be. Of course the very sources covering this could fix the problem by changing their coverage and quitting the “missing white girl of the week club.”

Follow up on the housing bubble: even the New York Times admits that just maybe people are overextending to buy houses, using products like adjustable rate mortgages and interest only mortgages that have the potential to put home”owners” seriously behind the 8 ball a few years from now.

A wise man points out the heretical reality that more education does not translate into higher pay, and until such time as we all have household robots, there will always be a lot of unskilled labor needed in our economy.

A millionaire asks Why is Hollywood paying big money for something that doesn’t work?

And finally, how can it not be a top story plastered across the front page of every newspaper and dominating every newscast that a half-dozen Congressmen — backed by over a hundred more — hand carried a letter with a half million signatories to the White House asking Bush to explain himself regarding the Downing Street Memo?

The Sabre Rattles

By way of disclaimer, I am not an expert on Far East cultures, history, and politics. Nor am I an expert in Korean affairs, despite the fact that in any given week I converse (in English!) with several native Korean speakers. When all is said and done, I plan to run this post past my friend Plunge, who is an expert (and a humanitarian, but that’s another issue).

United States policy on North Korea has been called “incoherent” and “a comic opera” by people who are in a position to know. But that was before it became clear that there were real live nukes involved — not that evidence of possible nuclear based research stuff that was all we could ever prove about Saddam Hussein. To say this is straining regional relationships is an understatement. Knowing that your next door neighbor is in a position to blow stuff up will make anybody nervous.

The United States, mostly in the person of a Mr. Christopher Hill, is trying to add fuel to the fire by saying stuff like there are “‘increasing doubts’ that President Kim Jong Il’s government was ready to give up its nuclear weapons program in return for security guarantees and economic incentives,” and China isn’t putting enough pressure on North Korea but far be it from us to tell China it’s business and my favorite line, North Korea will give up it’s nuclear weapons “one way or another.” Now, where I come from, those are fighting words.

This kind of rhetoric leads some Democratic Senators to question our current policies and flat out say what Hill implies: Are we looking for “regime change”? Because it sure sounds that way. Why don’t you guys figure out what you are going to do before you go threatening sovereign nations, mmkay?

The United States military already has substantial forces committed in Afghanistan and Iraq for the foreseeable future. And Mr. Hill sounds like he wants to start war on a third front. We already have serious problems recruiting for the military, meaning that news sources around the world are reporting that we may need to reinstate the draft. And let’s not forget that unlike Iraq, North Korea actually has nuclear weapons and more mouths than they can feed. Losing a few citizens might not be such a bad deal to North Korea. They also have a “Dear Leader” who has been described as “obsessed” and a “megalomaniac.”

Yeah, let’s go ahead and stick our hand in that hornet’s next. Where would you like that mushroom cloud?

In closing, I bring you common sense on identity theft, coming to our senses about what we can require of foreign passports, and “follow the money” on potential Presidential hopefuls. From the lighter side, an eagle delivers dinner, something for those of you without air conditioning, and brilliant satire on Big Media News.

News, or Not?

It seems like the “news” has been dominated by things that are at best of local interest. Now, it is one thing for your local news to cover local stories, it is alright for industry news to be covered in the appropriate forum, it is fine to have a minute dedicated to fluffy items like entertainment news. But as I write, the top stories from the Associated Press and Reuters include things that are just not of national relevance. Top stories should be important, darn-it.

So which item is more important?

Jury deliberates fate of washed-up pop star, or banking information on almost 4 million people lost and potentially available for identity theft?

Under-supervised teenage girl on international trip vanishes after being seen on the dance floor with strange men at 1:30 AM a week ago, or Supreme Court affirms that Federal drug laws supersede state medical marijuana laws?

Some movie star allegedly slugs some guy you don’t know or changes to Federal housing assistance programs may result in thousands more homeless families, some of them in a community near you?

Missing woman turns out not to have been abducted, and has been working under her own name and Social Security Number for years, or large bank buys large credit card issuer — what’s in your wallet?

Some actress wonders why tabloids care about her life at all, (oh, the irony that this is a top news item on CNN), or the mounting trail of evidence that the Bush Administration was trying to get us to war in Iraq despite scant grounds. (Think that stinks? Read this and add your own signature)

Randi put it most succinctly: The News has been cancelled.

Finally, I bring you all that needs to be said about Mark Felt, and not one, but two brokerages downgrade the company that owns Olive Garden and Red Lobster and Smokey Bones and Bahama Breeze restaurants because, among other reasons, “traditional economic drivers of the restaurant industry, such as employment levels, interest rates, wages and consumer sentiment, may be poised to ‘become a drag by the end of 2005’….” Maybe the economy is great in Larry Kudlow’s world, but here in reality-land, we are talking about whether or not Joe and Jane Average will have enough money for dinner at Olive Garden in December.

Shorties

Follow up on signs of a housing bubble.

Follow up on Real ID, which will make us less secure, create more data about us in large databases that will result in less privacy, and make us more vulnerable to identity theft. This last bit is why it is a big deal that even the best biometrics have a 2% fail rate; if we really give a hoot about “security” and “identification,” then biometric failure means some security guy has to go make sure you are really John Doe, and not some guy with John Doe’s severed thumb.

On education, an interesting way to figure out what is known and how bits of knowledge relate to one another. Also, useful for finding glaring gaps in our understanding.

On jobs, not only does the CEO make more than you, he makes 300 times more than you and the fact that so few jobs have been created means there is intense competition for “entry level” jobs, and in a nation where there are plenty short sticks to go around, the young urban poor get the shortest one of all.

And finally, something for those of you who feel like you’ve been fighting for one entry level job after another for the last few years, a friend of mine has a shirt for you: it says I had a job during the Clinton administration.

The Big Score

Remember 2000? I remember seeing CNBC on the TV at fast food joints, auto mechanics telling me about their stock holdings, and overhearing people discussing the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the next table over dinner. Shortly thereafter, the Dow and Nasdaq began to drop. The Nasdaq is still only at about 40% of the highs hit in 2000.

Here we are five years later. Nobody talks much about their stock portfolio anymore, but we sure do talk about real estate. And no wonder! Broad ownership of real estate is a stated goal of the Bush Administration, and a very successful one at that. It is accepted that home ownership is in general a Good Thing, and I promise to address whether or not it truly is at a later date. However, there is something going on that is not a Good Thing: there are signs that too many people are too heavily leveraged to the housing market.

You may see anecdotal evidence of this in your neighborhood and among people you know. A quarter says you know at least two real estate agents — even if you aren’t in the process of buying a house. Odds are even better that you personally know people who own investment property. And you almost certainly know someone who has either a second mortgage or some kind of special mortgage product that lowers their actual payment to something they can afford to spend every month. At least most of the time.

Now we have people like Paul Krugman telling us that (gulp) it was necessary to create a housing bubble — using the abnormally low interest rates that the Federal Reserve told us would create jobs — to mitigate stock market losses and sustain American spending. Sustaining spending is important because it makes up 2/3 of Gross Domestic Product, the official measure of whether or not the economy is growing and whether or not there is a recession. And there is no question that consumer spending continues to rise. Theoretically, Mr. Krugman points out, this created jobs, or at least meant fewer jobs were lost when the stock bubble burst. Allow me to excerpt a couple of paragraphs, inserting a couple of linked references lest anyone accuse him of misusing statistics:

But although the housing boom has lasted longer than anyone could have imagined, the economy would still be in big trouble if it came to an end. That is, if the hectic pace of home construction were to cool, and consumers were to stop borrowing against their houses, the economy would slow down sharply. If housing prices actually started falling, we’d be looking at a very nasty scene, in which both construction and consumer spending would plunge, pushing the economy right back into recession.

That’s why it’s so ominous to see signs that America’s housing market, like the stock market at the end of the last decade, is approaching the final, feverish stages of a speculative bubble….

Many home purchases are speculative; the National Association of Realtors estimates that 23 percent of the homes sold last year were bought for investment, not to live in. According to Business Week, 31 percent of new mortgages are interest only, a sign that people are stretching to their financial limits.

Both the New York Times and L.A. Times wonder if maybe — just maybe — there might not be at least regional housing bubbles, regardless of whether they will burst. Although Alan Greenspan says there are signs of regional froth — but no bubble! — he admits that there is “an unsustainable underlying pattern.” This article about how the bubble won’t burst because interest rates aren’t going up points out that the median home price has risen 7% since March.

Remember when 7% was a good annual rate of return?

I am not saying it is time for everyone to sell their houses and find decent apartments. I am saying that you need to seriously reconsider overextending yourself in the name of “owning your own house.”

In closing, a thoughtful piece about healthcare, a not quite as thoughtful study about how our surroundings effect our lives, and Memorial Day: remember our most recently fallen soldiers, battles happening now, and those caught in the crossfire. And don’t forget to remember the women who helped us win the wars of the past, including “Rosie the Riveter.”

In response to the allegations…. isn’t that a Red Herring over there?

Tom DeLay (R- TX) has a problem. No, not the problem about one of his “allies” breaking fundraising law. No, not the ethics violations, or even about the changes to the House Ethics Committee rules. No, not even about how he took his wife and daughter to tour sweatshops and brothels in Saipan, then decided that even though it was a protectorate of the United States he wasn’t going to do anything about what he saw there. No, this problem is not outlined in his copious Wikipedia entry.

His problem is that he was mentioned in passing on a fictional TV crime-drama. A choice quote from the producer of the show in question:

Every week, approximately 100 million people see an episode of the branded ‘Law & Order’ series. Up until today, it was my impression that all of our viewers understood that these shows are works of fiction as is stated in each episode. But I do congratulate Congressman DeLay for switching the spotlight from his own problems to an episode of a TV show.

Mr. Wolf certainly has that assessment right: Mr. Delay would like us to not pay attention to what is going on; he would rather we look not at Congress, but at Hollywood. Which is more relevant to your life? Capitol Hill or Beverly Hills?

It is bad enough that national news attention is being focused on stories of at best regional interest, such as a murder suspect spending a few days on a crane threatening to jump. No, alleged pop-star pedophiles and “runaway brides” are distracting us from closing military bases in a time of “war” and whether or not we are going to send a guy with serious diplomatic problems to be our UN Ambassador. Yes, the news is being dumbed down, and no it’s not just because sleazy-but-irrelevant stories sell. It’s getting harder and harder to get enough actual information about what is going on in the world to develop an independent opinion.

In closing, I bring you “When kitchen knives are outlawed, only outlaws will have kitchen knives,” and — Happy Memorial Day! — this disabled veteran.

Fashionably Late Commentary

Certain people would like you to believe that the riot of Afghanis in Pakistan resulting in multiple deaths was caused by a Newsweek article about alleged “Quran abuse” by American torturers. Logic defies this explanation.

First, they want you to think Newsweek, an American publication written in English, is widely read in Afghanistan. Think about that. I haven’t read a Newsweek outside a Dentist’s office in over a decade, but they want you to think Afghanis read it regularly enough to catch one sentence in a story.

Next, they want you to believe that this is a new accusation, which The World is just now hearing about. The truth is this has been known about and reported by various sources for 2 years. When Newsweek retracted the story, they merely said they could no longer confirm their source, not that it hadn’t happened. The Washington Post confirmed today that at almost a dozen former detainees claim this happened. How many sources does Newsweek need?

They would like you to believe that the Afghanis have nothing better to riot about. No, no problems in their homeland! Never mind the occupying army to whom the local government can’t even make suggestions, despite a “strategic partnership” between the occupied and occupying nations. Strategic partnership? Did I slip through a time rift into the Dot-Com boom? Oh, and never mind the fact that they aren’t even being allowed to rebuild their own nation.

No, they are too busy worrying about somebody peeing on a book halfway across the world. Yeah, right. Indeed, the Department of Defense said the riots had nothing to do with Newsweek. Olbermann is right.

This isn’t about Afghanistan, and it’s only barely about Newsweek. It’s about control of the media.

Update 5/26/2005: follow up

Told you so.

Way back when I said that the airport security situation was bad enough that companies were going to increase teleconferencing and corporate jet use. Today, SEC documents confirm it. In fact, “Citigroup and CVS Corp. (Research), which both require their executives to use company transportation at all times — even for personal matters — also cited security concerns as reasons for allowing senior officers to use corporate transportation, the report said.”

These are not small operations. Citigroup is component of 5 different stock indices, including both the DJIA and the S&P 500. CVS is “only” a member of two indices. These are only two companies specifically mentioned as having such a policy. There may be others that were not cited.

There are multiple, large companies that do not want their executives using commercial aircraft for any reason. That’s fascinating.