January 31, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
George W. Bush to Raise Taxes
President George W. Bush plans to raise taxes this year, at least by his definitions. Or perhaps he is just playing Calvinball, you decide.
In his January 20 State of the Union Address, Mr. Bush said:
We must continue to pursue an aggressive, pro-growth economic agenda. Congress has some unfinished business on the issue of taxes. The tax reductions you passed are set to expire. Unless you act … the unfair tax on marriage will go back up. Unless you act, millions of families will be charged $300 more in federal taxes for every child. Unless you act, small businesses will pay higher taxes. Unless you act, the death tax will eventually come back to life. Unless you act, Americans face a tax increase. What Congress has given, the Congress should not take away. For the sake of job growth, the tax cuts you passed should be permanent.
Thus, for Mr. Bush, the failure to extend tax breaks is raising taxes. Fair enough.
Today’s New York Times reports on Mr. Bush’s efforts to control the deficit. Among his proposals we find the following:
Mr. Bush will oppose extending a temporary tax break that greatly accelerates the rate at which businesses can depreciate new equipment. The tax provision was enacted in 2002 to stimulate the economy and manufacturers want to retain it.
Now, by the logic Mr. Bush used in the State of the Union, the failure to extend the depreciation tax break is a tax increase. So Mr. Bush is really just another tax raiser unless….
Yes, I am so sorry. Before I wrote this post I should have consulted the Offical Calvinball Rule Book more carefully. Right there in paragraph 37(a) (ii) is the relevant provision:
Failure to extend tax breaks constitutes a tax increase only when advocated by Democrats. If Republicans do not extend tax breaks it is not raising taxes. It is making the tough decisions needed to fight the deficit.
Never mind.
Medical Malpractice Reform-- John Edwards’ Proposals
Opinions vary on the cause or causes of whatever level of medical malpractice insurance crisis may exist. Some people think that the root cause is frivolous lawsuits, other think that insurance reform is the solution while still others think that we need to reduce the incidence of injury due to medical negligence.
If you are in any of those camps, Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards has a policy proposal you may like. Edward thinks that all three contribute to the problem and he has reasonably specific proposals to deal with each.
To identify Edward’s proposals, I took information from an op-ed he wrote in the Washington Post as well as from the policy section of his web site.
Edwards identifies the problem as being one of rising premiums for malpractice coverage:
The rising cost of malpractice insurance for doctors is getting in the way of good health care. In rural areas, some specialists can no longer afford to practice, and patients can't get the care they need.
Secondly, he identifies the goals of his proposal:
We need a real solution that frees doctors from crippling insurance costs -- without preventing the most badly injured victims from receiving the compensation they deserve.
Third, he criticizes the President’s proposals:
Unfortunately, President Bush's proposed prescription comes straight off the insurance companies' wish list: a sharp limit on the compensation these companies have to pay children and parents who have been blinded, paralyzed or otherwise severely injured. The victims who make the least money will suffer the most under this plan. The harm to the kinds of families I represented as a lawyer for nearly 20 years will be enormous.What the president's proposal won't do is work. Insurance premiums have spiked recently because of insurance companies' losses on their investments, not their losses to victims. In fact, about half the states already have some limits on victim compensation, yet premiums in states with caps average about the same as premiums in states without caps. California finally controlled rates not by attacking victims -- that didn't work -- but by reforming the insurance industry and rolling back premium increases.
Finally, Edwards proposes some solutions. Do you think that frivolous lawsuits are the cause rising premiums? Edwards wants to reduce the number of frivolous suits by forcing lawyers to consult with experts (presumably doctors) before filing suit:
Most lawyers are responsible advocates for their clients, but the few who aren't hurt the real victims, undercut the credibility of the legal system, and clog our courts. Before a lawyer can bring a medical malpractice case to court, Edwards will require that he or she swear that an expert doctor is ready to testify that real malpractice has occurred. Lawyers who file frivolous cases should face tough, mandatory sanctions. Lawyers who file three frivolous cases should be forbidden from bringing another suit for the next 10 years — in other words, three strikes and you're out.
The idea of requiring lawyers, before filing suit, to locate a doctor who believes that medical negligence has caused injury and who is capable and willing to so testify has merit.
Plaintiffs can not win med mal cases without an expert to testify that the defendant’s acts or omissions violated the standard of care and I see nothing wrong with requiring that such an expert to be identified prior to the suit being filed. If the plaintiff can not locate such an expert, there is no reason to put the doctor through the trouble, expense and embarrassment the filing of a suit can cause. Similarly, if the plaintiff has identified such an expert, the chance that the suit is frivolous is small.
I do not think that Edwards’ proposal goes far enough in that regard. Georgia has experimented with a similar reform. In Georgia, a malpractice suit is subject to dismissal if the lawyer does not attach to the complaint a sworn affidavit from a doctor testifying that the defendant committed at least one act of negligence. See OCGA § 9-11-9.1.
It took a while for the Georgia system to get the bugs out. Issues such as the qualifications of the expert submitting the affidavit and the contents of the affidavit had to be determined. What happens if the expert has not reviewed the medical records or has reviewed only portions of the records? Believe it or not, the defense bar in Georgia spent many thousands of dollars litigating whether a faxed copy of the expert affidavit met the requirement. Frivolity exists on both sides of the vs.
Once such issues were decided, the system seems to work pretty well and as a result, very few medical malpractice suits are filed in Georgia without an expert affidavit attached. Those that are so filed are routinely dismissed at a very early stage of the litigation. Requiring expert testimony as a prerequisite for filing may not eliminate all frivolous medical malpractice suits, but it eliminates an entire class of such suits.
In sum, I think Edwards’ general idea is a good one but that Georgia has found a better way to achieve the result Edwards seeks.
To the extent that malpractice insurance premiums are rising because of payouts in meritorious cases, one way to slow that rise is to reduce the number of people injured by medical negligence. Edwards notes:
In medicine, as in law, a few people cause the most problems: Only 5 percent of doctors have paid malpractice claims more than once since 1990. This same 5 percent is responsible for over half of all claims paid.
If the incidence of malpractice could be significantly reduced, not only would patients have better results, but the cost of malpractice coverage would go down. In effect, Edwards is noting that the good doctors are forced to subsidize the bad ones. To reduce the incidence of malpractice, Edwards wants medical licensing boards to become stricter with doctors committing malpractice:
One part of the problem is state medical boards whose discipline is as lax as state bar associations'. We need to provide resources and incentives for boards to adopt real standards on the "three strikes" model. At the same time, we need to encourage doctors to report more medical errors voluntarily, so we can learn more about systemic problems.
While I am not sure about a three strikes and your out policy (what, for instance constitutes a “strike?”), the general idea of having doctors more aggressively police themselves seems like a good idea. Perhaps if the doctors and the medical boards could identify the worst offenders, offer education and training to improve performance and in the most egregious cases suspend or revoke licenses, the total number of injuries due to medical negligence and therefore malpractice premiums could be reduced.
One reason that state medical boards have not more aggressively disciplined doctors who repeatedly injure patients that that, ironically, doctors are some of the most litigious folks around when it comes to their licenses or hospital privileges. Perhaps we need some reform of the system by which doctors sue to retain their licenses and privileges.
Some people think that insurance reform would be useful in reducing the rise in malpractice premiums. Edwards agrees:
The most critical step is reforming the insurance industry. Today insurance companies use slow and burdensome processes to discourage both doctors and patients from filing legitimate claims. Worse still, these companies can fix prices and divvy up the country in order to drive up their profits. Even when companies don't explicitly collude, they set their rates based on a trade-group loss calculation that they know other companies will follow. In any other industry, this kind of conduct would be subject to scrutiny under the antitrust laws. But an obscure 1945 law gives insurance companies a broad antitrust exemption. Because of the insurance lobby's influence, Congress has even blocked the Federal Trade Commission from investigating insurance company rip-offs. These special privileges must go.
I do not know enough about the workings of the insurance industry to evaluate whether or not Edwards’ proposal would work, but I see no reason why the insurance industry should be exempt from antitrust laws or Federal Trade Commission investigations.
Edwards’ proposals seems like a balanced approach. Unlike the president’s proposal, Edwards seeks to address the issue of rising premiums without preventing innocent victims of medical negligence from receiving full compensation for their losses.
If only Nixon can go to China, perhaps only a trial lawyer can effectively reform the medical malpractice tort system.
Don't drink the water...
As a member of Maine's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Task Force and parent of a lead poisoned child, there was no way I could ignore this story on page one of the Washington Post this morning:
Water in D.C. Exceeds EPA Lead Limit
Random Tests Last Summer Found High Levels in 4,000 Homes Throughout CityBy David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 31, 2004; Page A01Tap water in thousands of District houses has recently tested above the federal limit for lead contamination, a new phenomenon that has baffled the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority and forced the agency to begin replacing service pipes.
Two-thirds of the 6,118 residences that WASA tested last summer, or 4,075 homes, had water that exceeded the lead limit of 15 parts per billion set by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1991. This is the first time the city's water has shown significant lead contamination since the late 1980s, officials said.
WASA officials said they are not sure what has caused the spike in lead levels. They are investigating whether changes in the way water is treated at the Washington Aqueduct could have a corrosive effect on lead pipes.
According to the Post, of the thousands of homes which exceeded the 15 pp/mil EPA action, over half had levels over 50 pp/mil, and more than a hundred registered over 300 pp/mil. It's important to note that the 15pp/mil is the EPA's action level, i.e., the level "set at 15 parts per billion (ppb) because EPA believes, given present technology and resources, this is the lowest level to which water systems can reasonably be required to control this contaminant should it occur in drinking water at their customers home taps." It is not the level the EPA has declared to be "safe" - that level is 0 pp/mil, as no level of lead has been proven to be safe in pregnant women and young children, again, according to the EPA.
My biggest beef with the DC Water and Sewer Authority is its obvious footdragging in the face of such a public health threat:
Although the extent of the water problem and its public health implications are just coming to light, WASA officials have been aware of the contamination since random tests on a small number of houses revealed a problem in 2002. Although agency officials discovered a more extensive problem last summer, they did not begin to notify homeowners about the results until November. WASA held a public meeting about the issue in December, but its advertisements did not reveal the lead problem. Instead, they simply stated that the purpose of the meeting was "to discuss and solicit public comments on WASA's Safe Drinking Water Act projects."
According to federal regulations passed in the mid-90s, the EPA requires drinking water providers to take action when 10% of the homes tested exceed the 15 pp/mil level. Although the Post doesn't address that specifically, it's highly likely that in light of the high percentage of contaminated residential water samples (over 66%) in last summer's expanded tests, that the tests from the summer of 2002 saw a failure rate higher than ten percent.
Which means that at the very least, homeowners in DC were exposed to excessively contaminated drinking water for at least three months, possibly eighteen months, with the full knowledge of WASA. At the very least, when lead levels exceed the threshold, EPA requires extensive testing every six months. It appears even those basic safety measures were ignored.
It's no surprise neither Mayor Williams or the DC city council were kept in the dark. WASA is an independent agency, overseen by the D.C. Council's Committee on Public Works and the Environment, headed by Republican Carol Schwartz. Schwartz is perhaps best known more recently for her adamant opposition to the DC Council's "Smokefree Workplaces Act".
The irony is that I suspect the vast majority of homes affected are in more well-to-do or "gentrified" areas. Historic single-family homes with lead pipes now vulnerable to corrosion by DC's reformulated water purification system. How many DC lawmakers and lobbyists will now be pounding down Ms. Schwartz' door. And how soon before we see an appropriations bill out of the House for replacement of DC's antiquated lead pipes.
But I'm most interested to see how far the pork will extend. As the Post noted, homeowners are responsible for replacing pipes in their own residences, just as homeowners are responsible for all other lead paint abatement costs. Here in Maine, the average per unit cost for lead abatement is now $20,000. While landlords can tap into various loans and grants, there has been no attempt by the federal government to help with these costs for moderate income homeowners.
Now that it's there own pockets which will feel the pinch, will Washington legislators suddenly discover the benefits of lead abatement?
January 30, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Autism Education and NCLB -- Collision Course
The New York Times has a report on the difficulty parents of autistic kids have in finding appropriate education programs.
The very best educational programs involved very intensive one on one teaching. Those programs are both rare and expensive:
Education — highly structured, virtually one-on-one and thus astronomically expensive — is the one proven treatment for autism, experts say. But it is no guarantee. Examples of exceptional success — and a narrow window of opportunity — have frantic parents trolling the Internet, visiting any school that sounds promising, winding up on waiting lists and often moving or suing their school district to get what they want.
I am worried about the future of education for autistic kids because of the confluence of three factors, anmely, the cost of a quality education, the increase in the number of autistic pupils and the perverse incentives of No Child Left Behind.
First, the programs that actually work are very expensive. As the Time’s notes, the gold standard for educating an autistic child is an intense, one on one learning program. That type of program, according the expert cited by the Times, can run to $60,000 per child per year. That is in line with my experience.
We spend about $7,200 per child per year on k-12 education. Thus, it costs almost nine times more to educate an autistic child than a typical child.
The second factor that causes me concern is the increase in the number of autistic kids in need of a quality education. The Times notes that in the last decade, the number of autistic kids seeking an education has increased from about 20,000 to about 120,000.
The cost of a good education plus the increase in the number of kids seeking services puts autism education on a collision course with political reality. The US Department of Education spends about $53 billion per year on k-12 education. If we provided a top drawer, $60,000 per year, education for each of the 120,000 autistic kids, the cost would be about $7.2 billion dollars per year or about 13.5% of the budget of the Department of Education.
There are about 47 million k-12 students, so the autistic population comprises about 0.2% of the students. Is it possible that the 99.8% of the population will permit 13.5% of the federal money to be spent on 0.2% of the students? I think not.
Of course, we do not now provide a top quality education for anything like all of the autistic kids. The Times’ expert estimates that only one-tenth of the autistic kids are in such programs. That is unlikely to change dramatically. The current situation in which some schools provide quality programs for autistic kids while others do not will continue.
Given that fact, what do POA’s do? They shop for the best programs for their kids, of course and they make almost any sacrifice to get their kids into good programs. The Times reports:
Some private schools that accommodate a mere 25 children have waiting lists with hundreds of names on them. The best public school programs are besieged. There are not enough certified behavioral therapists, so promising aides are trained in the classroom and then fought over, like prized nannies, by parents seeking after-school and weekend help. Dr. Fred R. Volkmar, an autism researcher and diagnostician at Yale University who has a three-year waiting list to see new patients, said even the wealthy are not protected. "I see mega-mega millionaires and movie star folks who can't find anything to tap into," he said.
The Times reports on the experience of the Lombardi family. They were willing to make many sacrifices to have their child in a quality program.
When Phyllis Lombardi lets her 6-year-old son, Joey, play in her yard here, she cannot take her eyes off him because he is autistic, barely speaks and might bolt into traffic.But a fence costs more than the Lombardis can afford since they moved to this Westchester County village last year. Ardsley has state-of-the-art autism programs, but also real estate prices that have forced the family into a rental just a block from the Saw Mill River Parkway.
It was desperation that brought the family here from Rockland County, when Mrs. Lombardi joined an army of parents, their frustration growing as their numbers increased, facing a crisis of supply and demand when their autistic children reach school age…
It took three years for Mrs. Lombardi to find Concord Road Elementary School here. She called hundreds of strangers seeking advice. She sent bouquets to school secretaries who parted with nuggets of information about teaching methods and staffing ratios. She sneaked into back-to-school nights to see if the special education students were hidden in the basement.
Eventually, Mrs. Lombardi decided that Ardsley had the best programs around, so good that districts from New York City to Rye Neck pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to place severely autistic children here. Joey would have his own aide to help him sit still, a classroom partitioned into quiet learning spaces with 10 adults supervising 11 children, private speech therapy four times a week and exposure to ordinary kindergartners at lunch and recess.
But to make it work, Joey's father, Nicholas, is working 15-hour days as a ticket broker and Mrs. Lombardi has had to take a part-time job as a receptionist. In addition to the costs of living here, there is Joey's out-of-school therapy, which sustains his fragile progress and can cost a family $20,000 to $40,000 a year.
My experience with POA’s suggests that the Lombardis are not atypical. POA’s will do almost anything to help their kids.
When limited resources guarantee that only a few schools will have good education programs for autistic kids, the parents of autistic kids will flock to those schools. Into that mix comes No Child Left Behind.
It is my understanding of NCLB (and I am no expert) that special needs students are one the sub-groups that NCLB requires to be tested. If acceptable progress towards academic achievement is not made within that subgroup, the school is labeled a “failure.” Most principals, teachers and parents do not want their school labeled a failure.
So, if a school is considering creating a top notch program for autistic kids, they will consider the NCLB consequences of that program.
If they build it, the POAs will come and bring their kids with them. Any school that decides to provide a quality program for autistic kids will, within a few years, be labeled a “failure” if the autistic kids are unable to make sufficient academic progress on standardized tests. Such progress seems unlikely.
My son, for instance, may be required to take tests next year for proficiency in writing and science. He can not talk, nor can he write, nor does he give a tinker’s damn about the NCLB requirements. He is far more likely to tear up the test and chew the pencil than to even attempt to answer any questions. Bobby will not raise the school’s average.
If they build it, we will come and then they will be called a failure for providing my son with a good education. From the point of view of the school, perhaps it would be better to just have a lousy autism education program. We will then flee and they can be deemed a success.
The better the program for autistic kids, the more likely that the school will be deemed a failure. The worse the program for autistic kids, the more likely the school will be deemed a success.
I do not anticipate a stampede to create really good education programs for autistic kids. That is one perverse way to run an education system
January 29, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
With Apologies To Paul Simon
Flip Floppin’ AwayFlip floppin’ away
Flip floppin’ away
You know the nearer the election
The more he’s flip floppin’ awayI know a man
He came from a Texas town
He wore his passion for his power
Like a royal crown
He said Laura
I live in fear
My love for power is so great
And I'm afraid that it will disappearFlip floppin’ away
Flip floppin’ away
You know the nearer the election
The more he’s flip floppin’ awayHe went to war
To disarm Saddam
They said we had to do it
Cause he was about to get the bomb
But now the CIA must take the blame
And 500 dead soldiers
Are his only claim to fameFlip floppin’ away
Flip floppin’ away
You know the nearer the election
The more he’s flip floppin’ awayWe lost our jobs
They went away
No health insurance
To let us sleep at night
He has no plan, it is not right
Tax cuts at the top will do nothing
To ease our plight
Flip floppin’ away
Flip floppin’ away
You know the nearer the election
The more he’s flip floppin’ awayGod only knows
We didn’t pick this man
His flight suit prancing
Was really just a sham
We love our kids
We kneel and pray
For a better life for them
But the deficit will not just go awayFlip floppin’ away
Flip floppin’ away
You know the nearer the election
The more he’s flip floppin’ awayCome November, let’s have our say
Send him back to Crawford
Put an end to his flip floppin’ away.
January 28, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Looking for the Koufax Awards?
A post linking to a list of finalists for each category of the Koufax Awards may be found here. To see the lists of finalists in each category, please click on the link above and then follow the links to the appropriate category. If you do not need to see the lists of finalists, you are welcome to vote by comment here.
Yet another awards ceremony...
Forget the Koufax Awards, it's time for the Grannies!
AKA, the Granite State Awards, handed out to the New Hampshire presidential primary campaigns.
And the 2004 winners are:
Most difficult to locate Manchester headquarters without a Blackberry and Mapquest:
Wesley Clark (protection against smart muntions perhaps?)
Volunteer operations most likely to ignore newcomers unless they're on fire (literally):
John Kerry (hence the need for all those firefighters)
Campaign volunteers most likely to be characterized as playground bullies:
Howard Dean
Best election day noshies:
Dennis Kucinich
Worst post-election party noshies:
John Edwards
Cleanest Headquarters:
Dennis Kucinich (Runner-up: Howard Dean)
Largest visibility contingent on primary day on Elm Street:
Wesley Clark
Loudest visibility contingent on Elm Street:
Howard Dean...no, now it's John Kerry....wait, now Howard Dean...
Largest number of campaign signs on Nashua Road in Merrimack:
Lyndon Larouche
Most creative campaign mascot:
The Carrot (oops, that was the candidate, not the mascot)
Most white middle-aged guys in a campaign headquarters:
Joe Lieberman
Campaign where the majority of paid staff can't get into a bar without an ID check:
John Edwards (yes, it's not just the candidate)
If I see the real thing in Nashua, should I tell you about it?...
I got a call from Nashua.
I'd examined and discarded the Kucinich campaign in September. The Maine campaign was headed by two people who never really worked a campaign, all the technology was either in Hollywood (and optimized for broadband) or in Cleveland (and a mystery), and the Native American contact was a non-Indian living in a hay-bale house on the Rosebud with weakness for "spirituals". My cost of entry "inside" the campaign, doing my State, doing technology, doing NDN policy and/or outreach, was simply too great. It was too much. I worked hard to make Dennis' entre into the blogosphere memorable, and the result was worth it. Dennis wrote Lights out on Deregulation. That was real, and obviously, Dennis worked harder.
I had another responsibility. The historic opportunity of transforming a modern State's governor's adverse record towards an Indian community with no out-of-state hooks, no Federal protection, into a political issue in the Democratic primaries -- putting the political futures of the "Indian fighters" who've risen through the ranks of the Demcratic Party in Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, New York, ... at risk. On January 11th and January 18th, my work made ABC's The Note. The acknowldegement of the 11th was an endorsement of a competing campaign (Clark's) by the Mississquoi (Vermont Abenaki) Tribal Council. The acknowledgement on the 18th (AfterNote) was even better. Campaigns were doing paid-calls in Iowa on the Vermont Abenaki record. That's issue advocacy success. The one good thing dating the Clark campaign got me was a line of poetry. Paula Gunn Allen wrote me, and I read her poem "Hoopdancer".
... soft stepping feet
praise water from the skies ...
Thats "pray for rain" in Laguna. True thirst. It is foreign now, here in the water-wealthy east.
My call came from someone I trust. Someone who got "inside" and saw and heard what I needed to see and hear . I asked "red-diaper babies, grown up?" The reply was "yes". I asked "in for the whole cycle?" The reply was "yes". So I've work to do.
My caller found her real thing in July in Senator Edwards. There is no one single real thing. Perhaps the most important thing is that members of that set play well with each other, and ourselves.
we want what is real, we want what is real
do not deceive us.
That was a good song. I'm glad my grandfather sang it.
January 27, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Waiting in Line
Last year I wrote about the difficulties of dining out with an autistic child in Restaurant Rules. That post provided a list of 12 Rules designed to make the experience tolerable for the autistic child, his or her family, the restaurant management and other diners.
Taking an autistic child to an amusement park has its own set of challenges. The noise, the crowds, the unfamiliar surrounding and, above all, the long lines make any such outing problematic.
Autistic kids have a hard time seeing things from the perspective of others. They find it difficult to learn to share. Often, autistic kids are not good at taking turns or waiting. My son finds it impossible to stand still for even 15 seconds in the familiar environment of his own house. Waiting his turn by standing in line for half an hour or more is out of the question.
The inability to wait his turn does not result from a lack of parental discipline or from pure selfishness. The way an autistic brain works just makes certain things difficult. One would not expect a blind child to know and obey rules written on a sign. Similarly, it is often just not realistic to expect an autistic child to wait patiently in a long line.
Until today, had I chosen to write rules for taking an autistic child to an amusement park, instead of the twelve Restaurant Rules, I would have boiled it down to one simple rule. Make it a Disney vacation.
The reason is very simple. Disney has long had a policy of accommodating autistic kids at its theme parks. The parents of an autistic child could just go to “City Hall” at the park, present a letter from a doctor or a copy of a school IEP and receive a Special Needs Pass. The pass allowed the child and the child’s group (up to five members) to bypass the lines at the rides. A Special Needs Pass made it possible for many families with autistic kids to enjoy a vacation in Orlando or Anaheim.
Today I received an email from Nancy Bea Miller of Genre Cookshop. It seems that Disney has revoked its policy of providing Special Needs Passes for autistic kids.
Apparently, Disney will now provide a Special Needs Pass only for those with a physical/mobility disability or with a terminal illness. Autistic kids, perhaps because they “look normal,” no longer qualify for accommodation.
I could understand a policy of not issuing Special Needs Passes at all. Having someone cut in front of a long line can cause some consternation among those who remain waiting. My family deals with many situations in which my son’s disability is not accommodated. We avoid those situations if we don’t think they are manageable. We do not, for instance, go to movies or concerts or other places that require the audience to remain quiet. We just can not yet do “Quiet.”
If Disney chose not to accommodate children with disabilities by issuing Special Needs Passes, I would accept that and we would choose not to attend Disney parks until we thought we could manage the waiting.
What I have a difficult time accepting is that that Disney has chosen to issue Special Needs Passes to some but not all children with disabilities. The basis for issuing a Special Needs Pass does not appear to be related to whether or not the disability prevents the child from waiting in line. The disabilities caused by autism, including the inability to wait in line, are no less real (but very different) than an orthopedic disability. The fact that one can not see the disability when glancing at an autistic child makes autism no less real.
A petition is circulating asking Disney to reconsider its decision. If you are of a mind to do so, you may see and sign the petition here. I did.
The joy of disinformation...
Today's Note points to Adam Nagourney's article in the Times on Dean's ill-fated volunteer effort in Iowa and the purported changes made for the New Hampshire campaign:
Karen Hicks, the New Hampshire state director for Dr. Dean, said Monday that she would prefer to rely on people who actually lived in New Hampshire.I suspect Mr Nagourney could not actually be in New Hampshire, as all one has to do it walk out onto any street and find a few dozen out-of-town Dean volunteers. I myself have spoken with many, none of them driving shuttle busses, however many carrying canvassing bags and waving signs at street corners."The core of our organization is in-state people who have been working in their community to get out the vote," said Ms. Hicks, who has methodically organized more than 1,000 house meetings to build a base of support that Dr. Dean's advisers believe may be their best hope for turning around the election.
Ms. Hicks diplomatically demurred when asked if she thought the use of out-of-state volunteers in Iowa contributed to Dr. Dean's 20-point loss to Mr. Kerry.
But, she said, "it is much more effective for people to talk to people they know about why they are supporting Howard Dean. I believe you need a corps of in-state people, and they are in the best position to deliver the message of this campaign."
Ms. Hicks said she did not want to discourage out-of-state people who turn up at the door, bright orange caps in hand — there were two Monday afternoon. "We welcome their help," she said.
But they should not expect the choice assignments. The out-of-staters, another official said, had been put to work driving the shuttle between a parking lot downtown and the campaign headquarters.
I find this bothersome because it's fits into the pattern of disinformation that seems to have become part and parcel of the Dean campaign's modus operandi over the past 48 hours. I, for one, expect Dean to do very well tonight, probably a well-placed second. And while many can argue that they're merely playing the media's own game, spinning a momentum which may or may not be there, putting out the message that the campaign has headed it's BFA commentors and "changed", for those us on the ground, sadly, much of it's smoke and mirrors. There is a genuine outpouring of grassroots support for Dean, both in New Hampshire, and through the country. As I mentioned previoiusly, effectively nurturing that support is the current and future challenge for Dean. Spinning in this manner the first step in the wrong direction.
A Chain of Logic
The war in Iraq and the toppling of Saddam is supposed to change the behavior of other leaders in the region. While I have little doubt that the war will have some effect, I wonder what that effect will be. Is it possible that someone might reason as follows?
1. The USA accused Saddam of having WMD;2. President Bush offered to allow Saddam to remain in power if he disarmed by destroying WMD;
3. Saddam had no WMD to destroy;
4. The USA then invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam’s regime;
5. If Saddam had had WMD and renounced them, he could have stayed in power;
6. I wish to stay in power;
7. If the USA turns its sights on me, I better have some WMD to destroy.
Just wondering.
Change of Venue...
This morning, I'm posting from Kucinich Headquarters.
While I was posting from the Manchester Library yesterday afternoon, Brian dropped in on the Kucinich campaign, also located on Elm Street, a block down from the Edwards office. He met me in the library, practically glowing from his experience. We headed on down to the local Mexican waterhole, a welcome break prior to the next Edwards event at the Palace Theater in Manchester, where we ran into three of Kucinich's senior staff. An hour and a couple margueritas later, we were all fast friends, invited to freely use the office's wireless connection to post today.
While most of the campaigns, particularly Senator Edwards, have been very hospitable, the Kucinich staff takes this to another level. There is no restriction to our access here - no "secure" areas closed to the media. We've been invited in on a conference call between the Congressman and student activists (the Apollo Alliance). In fact, Congressman Kucinich is now standing two feet behind me as I type, having blown into the office like a whirling dervish of unharnessed energy, shaking hands, bolstering his volunteers, then out again to another event.
It's also been fun here as the majority of the staff are actually adults. Okay, that's not particularly fair to the other campaigns as the energy level of the early-twenty-something staff is contagious, and there are definitely a number of younger staffers running around the office. But the staff here are seasoned, and it shows in both the organization and the level of composure in the midst of D-day activities.
The campaign is also incredibly upbeat. Poll ratings mean nothing here, they are in for the long run. They continuously challenge people to vote from their heart, not to give in to the cynical "electibility" meme. Like the Edwards message, the talk around here in Kucinich HQs is positive, emphasizing the hope inherent in the campaign. When the Congressman appears with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, the staff and volunteers yell and cheer as though they were watching the NCAA finals.
As I've noted in Maine, there is a level of comradery here between many of the different camps; voters with Edwards bumperstickers wave and beep for Kucinich and Kerry and Kucinich supporters speak fondly of Elizabeth Edwards. Unfortunately, not all campaigns get the "plays well with others" stickers. Kucinich volunteers running visibility on Elm Street were apparently harrassed yesterday by Dean supporters, and a staff member described being accosted last evening by Deaniacs demanding to know why Dennis "stabbed Dean in the back" in Iowa.
Brian the Intern is off checking out the GOTV/volunteer efforts of Clark and Kerry, and later we'll post our summary of all the operations.
(Sidenote: The Kucinich Headquarters are the cleanest we've visited so far. The carpet obviously was recently vacuumed.)
Update: Two Kucinich supporters just called into headquarters. Apparently each were polled by the Clark and Kerry campaigns on candidate preference: Dean, Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards, or Clark. Kucinich was left off the list, and when the supporters responded their support for the Congressman, the calls were disconnected prematurely.
January 26, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
More on volunteers...
A lot has been made of Dean's massive grassroots volunteer GOTV organization, and I'm the first to admit the numbers are in fact impressive. However, as we saw in Iowa, numbers are not everything. The criticism which emanated from politicos after the disappointment in Iowa ran namely along the lines of "too many, too green, too little organization". Burlington vowed to make changes, and some of those changes are evident here on Elm Street in Manchester, with the opening of the Dean Volunteer Operations Center. Josh Marshall also visited the site a few days back, and I share many of his impressions, although during my visit, there were only about a dozen volunteers, and five or six "facilitators".
The idea behind the volunteer center is certainly justifiable; it addresses the criticism that the Iowa volunteer organization was anything but organized. As my press "facilitator" guide assured me during my tour, volunteers are processed as efficiently and quickly as possible from the time they cross through the double doors. Brian, Wampum's new intern, reported during his visit that the line for volunteers spilled out onto the sidewalk, and yet when we both stopped in a half hour later, the crowds were gone, sent out to canvas or wave signs.
I don't believe, however, that the new center will solve the problem it attempts to address, a better, more effecient, more capable, volunteer GOVT effort.
Case and point is the Edwards volunteer effort, lead as I mentioned yesterday, by Kinsey Casey. Half frozen volunteers climb the two long flights of stairs to the third floor headquarters, and are mostly organized for canvassing, lit-dropping and visibility in the cramped hallway. Phone banking and refreshments are located in the middle of staff offices, and oftentimes it's difficult to tell who is paid and who flew in to volunteer for a few days.
And that's the beauty of it, from my point of view. As I sat in the end of the hallway writing last evening, five college-aged individuals sat down, pulled out stacks of literature, DVDs, stickers and started putting together canvassing packs. I asked them where they were from - North Carolina, Chicago, Albany. Then I asked when they'd arrived, expecting, from the confidence in which they moved about their tasks, to hear they been in NH for weeks. They all had arrived on Friday, a mere two days previously.
While often "messy", the benefits of integrating staff and volunteers is immeasurable. It's follows the same principles of "mainstreaming" special needs kids; there is no substitute for "peer modelling". Separating volunteers from professional staff denies them the opportunities to learn the skills critical to run an effective campaign. As the campaign grows from primary effort to a general election race, those volunteers who have mastered those skills can be called upon to help educate and break in a whole new class of volunteers, and may often graduate to paid staff in smaller campaigns. It's part of the evolution of political "hackery" (in the positive sense of the word.)
While it's great to have a launching ground for GOTV election day activities separate from central campaign offices, it should be a one day affair. While talk of empowerment is heady, instilling volunteers with the nuts and bolts of organizing a campaign is truly empowering, as I saw from the young Edwards volunteers.
Looking for the Koufax Awards?
If you are here to vote for your favorite lefties in the Koufax Awards, you may start here and scroll down. If you are looking for a specific category in which to vote, try one of the following:
Finalists Best Blog
Finalists Best Writing
Finalists for Best Post
Finalists Best Series
Finalists Best Single Issue Blog
Finalists Most Humorous Blog
Finalists Most Humorous Post
Finalists, Most Deserving of Wider Recognition
Finalists Best New Blog
Finalists Best Expert Blog
Finalists Best Non-Liberal Blog
Finalists, Best Design
Finalists Best Special Effects
If you are looking for MB’s on-the-ground coverage of the New Hampshire Primary try here and here.
Chasing a Ghost
What are we to make of the news about David Kay, the chief WMD hunter in Iraq? He has resigned his position. In an interview, Kay expressed the view that no substantial stockpiles of WMD are in Iraq. Mr. Kay has also noted that:
the C.I.A. and other agencies failed to recognize that Iraq had all but abandoned its efforts to produce large quantities of chemical or biological weapons after the first Persian Gulf war, in 1991.and that there has been no substantial production of WMD since the first Gulf war in 1991.
These days, it seems difficult to find anyone who based his or her support for the war on the urgency of disarming Saddam. Many folks justify the war on the basis that Saddam was a brutal dictator who oppressed the Iraqi people with rape rooms, mass graves and other techniques.
Others justify the war as a means of showing that we are serious about terrorism and that by striking in the heart of the Arab world we provide a powerful symbol of American strength. Still others hope that Iraq emerges as a democratic nation, marking a different path for the Arab world. Finally, some see the war in Iraq as a first step in a series of confrontations between Islam and the West.
For one person, however, the war was about the WMD. For that person, had it been known that Saddam had no WMD, the war would not have been necessary. That person is George W. Bush.
President Bush made clear in the run up to the invasion that war could be avoided if Saddam disposed of his WMD. George W. Bush would have permitted Saddam to remain in power free to oppress the Iraqi people, sending them in countless numbers to rape rooms and mass graves if it had been known that Saddam possessed no WMD. In the absence of WMD, George Bush did not feel that the establishment of a free and democratic Iraq was worth the price in blood and treasure. It now appears that George W, Bush went to war chasing a ghost.
Those are strong words. The evidence to back up those assertions is contained in the words of George W. Bush and administration officials in the run up to the war.
On October 21, 2002, President Bush made some remarks after meeting with Congressional leaders. He said:
Of course, I haven't made up my mind we're going to war with Iraq. I've made up my mind we need to disarm the man. .. I'm suggesting that the same old stuff isn't going to work, John. And we won't accept the status quo. There needs to be a strong new resolution in order for us to make it clear to the world -- and to Saddam Hussein, more importantly -- that you must disarm.
The decision to go to war had not been made but the President was determined that Saddam would be disarmed. Does that not imply that it was possible that disarmament could avoid a war? If disarmament would not avoid the war, why was it important that our position on disarmament be made clear to Saddam?
Two weeks later at a campaign speech in South Dakota on November 3, 2002, President Bush said:
And my message to Saddam Hussein is that, for the sake of peace, for the sake of freedom, you must disarm like you said you would do.
It is hard to understand a call for Saddam to disarm “for the sake of peace” as anything other than suggesting that war could be avoided if Saddam disarmed. The President did not say, “for the sake of peace, resign.” He did not say, “for the sake of peace, liberate your people” and he did not say “for the sake of peace, establish a democracy.” The requirement for peace was disarmament. According to David Kay, that requirement was met.
Eleven days later on November 12, 2002 at the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department Operations Center the President said:
It's over, we're through negotiations, there's no more time. The man must disarm. He said he would disarm, he now must disarm. And, you know, this kind of deception and delay -- all that is over with. The country is committed to making the world more peaceful by disarming Saddam Hussein, it's just as simple as that.
Two days later, on November 14, Deputy Press Secretary Scott McClellan noted what the confrontation was really about:
Saddam Hussein needs to cooperate and he needs to comply. And he needs to move to disarm. We are very serious about this. I think that's very clear. And the international community is speaking with one voice. The United States is speaking with one voice. And this is about disarmament and he better not start playing games.
It was not about Iraqi kids having schools. It was not about rape rooms. It was not about a grand neocon idea of remaking the Middle East. It was about disarmament and, according to David Kay, Saddam was disarmed.
On November 23, 2002, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer squared the circle of disarmament and regime change:
MR. FLEISCHER: The President's position is that Saddam Hussein needs to live up to the resolution and disarm. If he does not, he will be disarmed. So that's the President's position, to be clear about what the President is saying.QUESTION: The President has never said that we want to remove Saddam Hussein from office.
MR. FLEISCHER: The President has said that he hopes that Saddam Hussein and Iraq will comply with the resolution. If they don't, we will disarm them.
QUESTION: In the press conference with Tony Blair, the President didn't say, "We want to remove Saddam Hussein from office"?
MR. FLEISCHER: The President's position is either he will disarm or we will remove him so Iraq is disarmed.
QUESTION: Did he or did he not say that he wants to remove Saddam Hussein, in that press conference with Tony Blair? I mean, is that his position or not?
MR. FLEISCHER: Look, this is an age-old issue and we've gone through this a month ago about can Saddam Hussein disarm.
QUESTION: No, but do we want to remove him from office or not?
MR. FLEISCHER: If he doesn't disarm, yes.
QUESTION: If he does disarm?
MR. FLEISCHER: If Iraq disarms and you have all the other products of the U.N. resolution obeyed and what President Bush called for in New York obeyed, then the regime will have effectively changed. ..This is not very complicated. The objective is to disarm Saddam Hussein and have Saddam Hussein live up to everything that he committed to, that the President called on him to do in his September 12 speech.
As Fleischer said, it was not really very complicated. If Saddam disposed of his WMD, war could be avoided. Saddam had no WMD and George W. Bush was intent on chasing the ghost.
In his December 7, 2002 radio address the President described disarming Saddam of his WMD as “a central commitment of the war on terror” necessary to “prevent terrorist groups and outlaw regimes from threatening the American people with catastrophic harm.”
We now know that even before the war began, we had achieved a “central commitment of the on terror” and that it was not necessary to go to war with Iraq “to prevent terrorist groups and outlaw regimes from threatening the American people with catastrophic harm.” Of course, the specter of the ghost remained so we went to war.
On January 2, 2003 the President spoke to the press. He said:
First of all, you know, I'm hopeful we won't have to go war, and let's leave it at that…Until Saddam Hussein makes up his mind to disarm -- see, it's his choice to make. See, you need to ask him that question, not me…. He is a man who likes to play games and charades. The question is, will Saddam Hussein disarm. The world has asked him to disarm from weapons of mass destruction. The first indication isn't very positive that he will voluntarily disarm….You know, Saddam Hussein -- hopefully he realizes we're serious, and hopefully he disarms peacefully. He's a danger to the American people, he's a danger to our friends and allies. For 11 long years, the world has dealt with him. And now he's got to understand, his day of reckoning is coming. And therefore, he must disarm voluntarily, I hope he does. All right, let's go get a coffee.
Having no weapons of mass destruction, disarming was not a choice available to Saddam. It is deeply ironic that Saddam could have prevented war and remained in power if he had taken the precaution of acquiring some WMD so that he could disarm. Having acquired no WMD, Saddam could not disarm and therefore could not avoid war and ouster.
On January 14, 2003 at a photo-op with Polish President Kwasniewski, the President told us what he had in mind:
What I have in mind for Saddam Hussein is to disarm. The United Nations spoke with one voice. We said, we expect Saddam Hussein, for the sake of peace, to disarm. That's the question: Is Saddam Hussein disarming? … Time is running out on Saddam Hussein. He must disarm.
How clear was President’s Bush’s message that Saddam could avoid war by disarming? In Saint Louis on January 22, 2003, the President said:
He's a dangerous, dangerous man with dangerous, dangerous weapons. And that's why the world came together at the United Nations Security Council and said, Mr. Saddam Hussein must disarm. The message was as clear as can possibly be delivered -- Mr. Saddam Hussein must disarm.My hope is that Saddam Hussein will disarm voluntarily; that's my hope. I take seriously the commitment of any troop into combat. I desire peace. But in the name of peace, in the name of securing our future, if Saddam Hussein will not disarm, the United States of America and friends of freedom will disarm Saddam Hussein.
On January 29, 2003 President Bush noted that if Saddam disarmed, the horrors of war could be avoided:
I'm convinced that this still can be done peacefully. I certainly hope so. The idea of committing troops is my last option, not my first. I understand the terrible price of war. I understand what it means to put somebody into combat. I know what it means to hug mothers and wives. But I've got to tell you something. I've thought long and hard about this. The risks of doing nothing, the risks of assuming the best from Saddam Hussein, it's just not a risk worth taking.So I call upon the world to come together and insist that this dangerous man disarm.
The last two statements can only be understood as stating the President’s position that if Saddam disarmed, he could remain in power. If he disarmed, there would be peace. Peace in that context means that Saddam, the brutal and evil dictator, would have remained in power free to oppress the Iraqi people..
Had it been apparent that Iraq possessed no WMD, Mr. Bush’s position on the war would have been no different that of Howard Dean. Mr. Bush did not think that liberating the Iraqi people was sufficient reason to go to war. He did not think that establishing a democracy in the heart of Arabic speaking nations was sufficient cause to go to war. He did not think the opportunity to remake the Middle East in Tom Friedman’s image was sufficient cause to go to war.
Mr. Bush thought that Saddam’s failure to disarm WMD was sufficient cause to go to war. Saddam had no WMD to renounce, so war was inevitable. Many people now believe that the war was justified by reasons other than Iraq’s possession of WMD. I expect that President Bush shares that view today.
Before the invasion, disarmament was Mr. Bush’s reason for the war. We had achieved that goal before a shot was fired. We went to war chasing a ghost.
January 25, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
The Manchester miracle...
Well, perhaps that's overstating it.
However, one of the key things which wins elections is enthusiastic, happy, organized volunteers. And while, as we saw in Iowa, it's not the be-all-and-end-all, without a strong volunteer corps to staff and election day GOTV effort, a potential win can disintegrate into a stunning loss.
Most political types knew that while Senator Edwards was spending considerable time in New Hampshire (just completing his 100th town hall meeting since this summer), his on-the-ground effort lagged behind the other New Englanders, and more recently, Clark. Eight paid staff ran the eight local offices, with the help of sundry committed interns and volunteers.
This is where Kinsey Casey came in.
Ms. Casey, a veteran from Gov. Shaheen's campaign, coordinates the Edwards' statewide volunteer effort. She was gracious enough to take some time out of her ridiculously busy day to provide me with an overview of that effort.
Ensconced in an office out of the main traffic pattern, Ms. Casey's workspace is remarkably quiet and non-hectic. Besides the cheers emanating from the Dean visibility crew on the street below, there are few interruptions to our meeting.
But what is stunning is Ms. Casey's walls; the entire 12 foot vertical space of two adjoining walls are covered with multicolored 3"x5" post-it cards, each with the names and other critical information of Edwards' out of state volunteer force. They're organized by location and dates. There appear to be upwards of two hundred, although I didn't count. Ms. Casey, though, admits that the wall is no longer up to date. She had to abandon the system after Iowa, when hundreds of new volunteers called immediately following Edwards' shocking second-place finish.
But the "miracle" lies in part with Edward's appeal, and in part with the hard work of Kinsey Casey. Ms. Casey confided that the campaign had gotten a late start in securing accommodations for volunteers; by the time she called the traditional places, meeting halls and the like, all the space was reserved by the other campaigns. Surprisingly, Ms. Casey found sufficient Edwards' supporters happy to house a volunteer or two. But that was when the numbers were still modest. The barrage after Iowa offered the real challenge.
Anyone who has run a campaign volunteer effort knows how difficult it can be to convince local families to open up their home to complete strangers. Complete strangers who work long, hard hours, and whom you may never see other than to hand them sheets and towels and point out the guest bathroom. The fact that hundreds of New Hampshire supporters of Senator Edwards took it on good faith that these volunteers were truly upstanding, their only recommendation that they too were Edwards fans, is a testament to the depth of feeling the Senator instills in these people.
I know that other campaigns also put up volunteers with locals. But the fact that every Edwards volunteer who needed a place to stay is in the home of a supporter. None are camped out in church basements or on the floors of the Goodfellows hall. And none are put up in tents in freezing temps, as I heard tell of in Iowa.
So maybe not a real miracle, but a damn good accomplishment. Congrats to both the Senator and Ms. Casey.
Manchester HQ
Posting from Edwards New Hampshire Headquarters on this bitterly cold Sunday afternoon. When I arrived this morning, fifteen frozen but enthusiastic volunteers were waving and cheering on the street below the third floor Elm Street office. Located in a Victorian office building in this former mill town-turned-high-tech-wannabe, the space is cramped but buzzing. Three small rooms house phone banks, computers and volunteer activities. The space, which was probably comfortable for the New Hampshire activities a month ago, is now clearly strained as an influx of volunteers from around the country stream in to participant in what has all the look and feel of a genuine "movement".
Earlier this afternoon, I travelled to Nashua, to see the Senator speak in a local middle school. The crowd in the gym reached capacity a half hour before Edwards arrived, and from what I heard from Eric afterwards, C-Span estimated over 1700 attendees.
I'll be writing a full account of those event later this evening, and while I planned on spending today attending other events of other campaigns, I'm finding much of the interesting story is here.
Now a volunteer needs this computer, so I'm off until later.
January 24, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
2003 Koufax Awards –Finalists
In a series of posts immediately below, we have narrowed the nominees for each of the fifteen categories of the 2003 Koufax Awards to a list of seven to nine finalists. The competition was fierce in each category and there were many nominees who deserved to make the finals. Narrowing the list down was not an easy task.
Please vote for one finalist in each category by comment or email. The voting will remain open for about a week and we will then announce the winners. [update: email voters please use koufax@abenaki.wabanaki.net, mail to {MB/Dwight/Eric} works also. E.] Typo corrected, either address works. E.
We have long wanted to provide some token of recognition for the finalists. Kevin Hayden was kind enough to prepare and provide an icon for the purpose Each finalist is welcome, if they wish, to copy the icon and post it on your blog. The icon should be modified to identify the category in which you have been honored.
Our thanks go out to each of the finalists for the enjoyment, insight and information you have provided us over the last year. You have been recognized by your readers and peers for the quality of your work. We would also like to thank all those who provided nominations and who helped us to narrow the list of nominees. Please vote for your favorites.
2003 Koufax Award Finalists Best Blog
The seven finalists for the 2003 Koufax Award for Best Blog are listed below.
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email.
2003 Koufax Award Finalists Best Writing
The nine finalists for the 2003 Koufax Award for Best Writing are listed below.
Body and Soul by Jeanne D’Arc
Calpundit by Kevin Drum
Hullabaloo by Digby
Making Light by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Orcinus by David Neiwert
The Rittenhouse Review by Jim Capozzola
Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall
Whiskey Bar by Billmon
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email.
2003 Koufax Award Finalists for Best Post
The nine finalists for the 2003 Koufax Award for Best Post are listed below.
Alas, A Blog for Pink Dream Poppies’ post A Comment on Rape and "She Asked For It”
Body and Soul by Jeanne D’Arc for Mr. Byron Goes to Sacramento
Calpundit by Kevin Drum for An Interview with Paul Krugman
Eschaton for Atrios’ Preznit Give Me Turkee
Making Light by Teresa Nielsen Hayden for The Fabric of the City
Open Source Politics for Susie Madrak’s A Matter of Trust
Orcinus by David Neiwert for The Political and the Personal
Prometheus 6 for Where We Stand
Whiskey Bar by Billmon for What a Tangled Web We Weave (The WMD quote post).
Please vote for one finalist by email or comment.
2003 Koufax Award Finalists Best Series
There are eight finalists for the 2003 Koufax Award for Best Series
Ted Barlow, formerly at his own site and now at Crooked Timber has been nominated for his series of light bulb jokes. The light bulb warehouse is here.
Busy, Busy, Busy by Elton Beard for his Shorter Series. I do not link to any specific post because you can just go to the site and begin reading.
Calpundit by Kevin Drum for his coverage of the Valerie Plame story.
Mark Kleiman is nominated for his series of Valerie Plame posts both on his own site and on Open Source Politics.
Making Light byTeresa Nielsen Hayden for her series on the missing or destroyed Iraqi Antiquities. That series consists of seven posts, Loss, Reading comprehension and other problems, And this is evidence of ..., Why it's a bad idea to burn old libraries,
Excellent good news, Recursive museum updates, and Baghdad museum: corrected corrections re-corrected.
Off the Kuff by Charles Kuffner for his exhaustive coverage of the Texas redistricting saga.
Orcinus by David Neiwert for his series Rush, Newspeak and Facism. That series can also be located at Cursor and in pdf ($5 donation requested) here.
Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall for his coverage of the Valerie Plame matter (search for “Valerie Plame” at the link).
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email.
2003 Koufax Award Finalists Best Single Issue Blog
The eight finalists for Best single issue blog are listed below.
Confined Space for Workplace Health and Safety Issues
Daily Howler for Media Coverage
Daily Kos for Politics and Elections
Brad DeLong for Economics Issues
Informed Comment by Juan Cole for Middle East Policy
Maxspeak by Max Sawicky for Economics
Orcinus by David Neiwert for Domestic Terrorism Issues
Talk Left by Jeralyn Merritt for Criminal Law Issues.
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email.
2003 Koufax Award Finalists Best Group Blog
The seven finalists for the Best Group Blog Award are listed below. A group is defined as two or more regular contributors.
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email.
2003 Koufax Award Finalists Most Humorous Blog
The nine finalists for the 2003 Koufax Award for Most Humorous Blog are listed below.
Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email.
2003 Koufax Award Finalists Most Humorous Post
The eight finalists for Most Humorous Post are listed below:
Light Bulb Joke Warehouse by Ted Barlow
Preznit give me turkee by Atrios of Eschaton.
MC Dick Cheney by Noho-Missives.
Twenty Most Annoying Conservatives of 2003 by Jesse Taylor of Pandagon
Shorter Right-Wing Punditry’s Reaction to the Valerie Plame Affair: In Internal Dialogue by Andrew Northrup, the The Poor Man.
The Dickification of the Western Female by Sadly, No
The Horror of Blimps by Scylla posted at Teeming Extras
Nicotrol For Right Wing Blog Addicts by The Mighty Reason Man of Very, Very Happy.
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email
2003 Koufax Award Finalists, Most Deserving of Wider Recognition
We have narrowed the nominees for the 2003 Koufax Award for Most Deserving of Wider Recognition to nine finalists. Some of the blogs listed below are already widely read. That does not disqualify them from the category as they may be so interesting and so insightful as to deserve even greater visibility.
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email.
2003 Koufax Award Finalists Best New Blog
The nine finalists for the 2003 Koufax Award for Best New Blog are listed below.
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email.
2003 Koufax Award Finalists Best Expert Blog
The seven finalist for the 2003 Koufax Award for Best Expert Blog are below.
Balkinization by Prof. Jack Balkin for expertise in constitutional law
The Bloviator for public health issues
Informed Comment by Professor Juan Cole for expertise in the history of the Middle East and South Asia
Maxspeak by Max Sawicky for expertise in economics
Semi- Daily Journal by Brad DeLong for expertise in economics
Talk Left by Jeralyn Merritt for expertise in criminal law
Trish Wilson’s Blog for expertise in father’s rights and child custody issues.
Please vote for one finalist by comment or by email.
2003 Koufax Award Finalists Best Commenter
The eight finalists for Best Commenter are listed below.
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email.
2003 Koufax Awards Finalists Best Non-Liberal Blog
The nine finalists for the 2003 Koufax Award for the Best Non-Liberal Blog (the “Drysdale”) are listed below.
An Unsealed Room by Allison Kaplan Sommer
Just One Minute by Tom McGuire
The Light of Reason by Arthur Silber
Unqualified Offerings by Jim Henley
The Volokh Conspiracy.
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email.
2003 Koufax Award Finalists, Best Design
We have narrowed the nominees for Best Design to a group of eight finalists. Which of the finalists has the design that you find most useful and esthetically pleasing? The finalists are:
Not Geniuses
Open Source Politics
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email.
2003 Koufax Awards Finalists Best Special Effects
There are eight finalists in the Best Special Effects category. The effects include pictures, flash movies, charts and more.
Please vote for one finalist by comment or email.
January 23, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Two Years (internet-tyme) Before the Mast
Having collectively spent way too much time on the internet properties of three campaigns, and some high-traffic unofficial campaign properties, there's something I'd like to share, er, get off my chest. They are not effective tools.
Each is filled in the center with flows of momentary gook, puncuated by "look at thats" and "here's my letter to foo", trolls, and monkeys pounding on ratings buttons, trying to submerge or suface some skiff of fools or another. A few issue-nexii manage to retain longer-term coherency, e.g., committed-scientists-4-foo, and policy-wonks-4-bar, but that's about it. Each property that attempts political geography -- an Iowa caucus nexus, a New Hampshire nexus, a ... Maine nexus, fills it with "first" and "Foo Rules, Bar Drooles" contributions, leavened by some nice first-hand experiential writing "I met Foo and he said a bunch of wicked good things ...", but the overwhelming bulk of internet textual contributions to these properties is refried horse-racing, pundit- or candidate-haigography (plus or minus an order of haggis), and unsollicited-advice-to-candidates-lacking-staff.
If the intent of these internet properties is to provide some sort of auto-stroke machine for couch potatos, sort of a sink for a inverse pop-ups, the political pop-backs, an indifferent bed pan for all the urine streams on the net, incidental to putting PayPal buttons and credit card friendly dialoge boxen next to some fairly static content and whatever staff tosses to communications to get rid of, then these things are working. Campaign has internet face, content is dynamic, contribution flows are sunk consistent with FEC compliance requirements, and the rubes pretend they are carnies and part of the show.
If the intent is to end with functioning caucus and GOTV organizations, the bread and butter of politics before the invention of highly asymetrical unicast (broadcast) and mostly asymetrical multicast (web), and you know, winning, these DotCom political bubbles are not working as planned.
The bboard doesn't scale, netnews has passed, poli-spam does moveon well, but moveon hasn't won a single precinct, though it is as effective as the NRA's direct mailings.
In the IETF we have a basic test for "good" ideas -- does it scale? References to fish are allowed, but when you are asking "will foo work when every cell phone does bar?" or "what is the limits behavior of the system as the number of nodes grows linearly? if growth is exponential?" the space of allowed answers does not include a reference to tuna. You can tune a fish, you cannot tune a system with poorer than log response to linear or greater growth.
If that seems hard to get your head around, put a gym coach's whistle in between your lips, stick your head in a beehive, and start blowing as loud as you can. Refreshing, neh?
Reading Atrios' "I'm going to be in the talkies" post link brought this on. The right answer is Ve-R-Changink-de-Welt-Ja-Sure. The wrong answer is that grabbing the B2B flotsam and jetsam that the retreating DotCom seas have left to dry, which managed to work for some long floundered vessel of petty e-com looks pretty bad right now, appears to have no roll in the win/place/show problem space right now, and will explode long before the first Tuesday in November, when 50,996,116 state-machines executing a "vote" program may be attempting to augment the paid and free media outlets for that last bit of state that toggles them to complete their programs -- and all that is going through a bboard implemented in perl, Akamized for throughput performance.
This problem, or rather, a scalable resource allocation system that supports the semantic of political geography has been solved. The words replicated, distributed, database, consistent and hierarchical, are a sufficiently unique identifier for the technology.
But I digress. The campaigns this cycle are run by people who think Windows works for some non-zero value of "work", that "open source" sounds cool, and actually have honest-to-god experience in IT. People who's resumes don't even make it to my desk or the desks of my peers who run the businesses that look most like political campaigns -- national ISPs and NSPs who wholesale backbone to local access providers.
Burger flippers at the edge-devices. Not my first choice for a new model. Maybe Atrios and the other content digeratti have a better answer. I guess I'll have to tune in and listen to the fish.
Thank heaven for npr
Just heard on NPR: T"he power grid is less uniform than the highway system, and since a car only goes 50 miles an hour, and electricity goes 186,000 miles per second, the rules for the grid should be more uniform than ..." I'm so sorry. I can't do the quote justice. Somewhere in the skein of mental ducks landing on surreal ice is Reddy Kilo Watt as a crash test dummy in a Jetta.
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I'm getting my monies worth out of NPR this morning. A few minutes before, as a furious hunt-for-keys-in-every-month-including-october was executing in the kitchen and mudroom, the eerie electoplasmic "music" from Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks" filled our local ether -- and I knew what happened in Iowa.
We pause now to worry about the stay-at-homes today (3), while a small commercial van stops where our mailman stops to walk up to the door, to catch fire and burn ... "Hello 911, I've a vehicle fire at Forest and Wall" ... a surprisingly large production of plastic-roof-on-fire black smoke -- Ohio has moved to a distance of 25 feet from my front door -- and rugs too -- aren't fire fighters wonderful! I've spoiled the fun of watching firetrucks for the boys, all are at the other entry, ready, though they don't know it, to go for a drive, er, down the street. The clasic image of the Ako ronin has them in the black-and-white kimonos of Edo fire fighters. Ours are black-and-yellow. And we are saved, with a slight odeure de plastique enflamé to brighten up our day. A man with a morning interrupted is on our lawn surrounded by the remains of his day. Time to offer help now that flight isn't an option.
[update: the engine and the truck just pulled away, leaving only a damp spot on the street, and a city works truck sowing salt on our little bit of Carthage. I'm still trying to figure out how much better than the rules-of-the-road the rules-of-the-electrical-road need to be to keep that comparison humming. A car goes 73.3333333 feet in a second, an electron goes 9.8 x 10^^8 feet in a second, so the electrical grid specification should be roughly 10 million times more accurate or or thicker maybe than the road system specification, generally. Now I know where the spin in politics comes from. Electrons!]
US v Lara
While all the candidates to be the nominee of the Democratic Party are marking time in New Hampshire, staging no foray's into Vermont, say to Mississquoi, to unsettle an unsettled candidate, or jumping ahead to South Carolina, where 1st and 4th place finishes aren't already known, something grand and important is happening some where else tomorrow.
The American Indian Law Review at the OU College of Law will host a symposium featuring the lawyers arguing the landmark case of United States v. Billy Jo Lara. The issue, falling in the Rehnquist line of judicial termination cases, also known as the Christian Supremacy cases (Oliphant, Duro, Hicks), is whether tribes have criminal jurisdiction over non-member Indians (Indians enrolled in another tribe) , for offenses not covered by the Major Crimes Act, within the territorial jurisdiction of the court.
Some commentors write to the effect that this case may turn the question on whether the Supreme Court or Congress has the constitutional power to determine the scope of inherent tribal sovereign power, and that it may be the most important Indian law case of our generation. This is one way of looking at it. I see Rehnquist on trial. Marshall and Burger dissented in Oliphant, and Rehnquist's odd ediface has reached its sell-by date. The Congress discarded Termination as the policy of the United States. Rehnquist's agenda of Termination by Judicial Means, whether an exercise in misplaced Christian zeal, itself a violation of the establishment clause, or an expression of cultural superiority, a violation of something more important than the Constitution, something that law is only a dim reflection of, the unwritten basis of social peace, or a generations' adventure in Judicial Supremacy, it really doesn't matter. Rehnquist is old, and he must die.
The symposium runs from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Friday at the OU Law Center, with both the lawyers who argued the case before the Supreme Court this week, Alexander Reichert, counsel for Lara, and Edwin Kneedler, who works for the U.S. Solicitor General's Office and represents the United States.
Putting on the political hat, the symposium is at OU Law, in OK, a wide-open 2/3 primary state with 52 delegates. Also on 2/3 are AZ with 47, NM with 35, and ND with 22. 156 delegates from four wide-open early primary states with substantially higher than average enrolled Indian voter populations. It is possible to be in four places simultaniously, and at the cost of a half-day, back by 3 jaunt, on an otherwise perfectly wasted, post-debate spin-day.
The other political hat has a wider rim, a higher crown. On December 12, 2000, a Rehnquist majority suspended the Florida recount, and appointed the President-elect. No Democratic candidate for the Presidency who both believes that the November 2004 election will be close, and that the next President should not be determined by a Rehnquist majority, should sit this one out. It just encourages DeLay to staff the mob, and Rehnquist to uphold the mob, for larger and larger margins of ballot error. Rehnquist is old, and he must die.
January 22, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Managing the Debate
Minute 1: Fox graphics flashes confuse producers, who loose track of who's on-camera.
Peter Jennings is taking a minute for a moment of complexity, and with each succeeding question manages to run the current candidate against the answer of the previous candidate.
- Kerry manages to mention that he supported cutting capital-gains.
- Dean manages to blame/attribute the shriek to his kids-in-need.
- Lieberman manages to mumble.
Tom Mumble-Creature asks really long self-indulgent questions.
- Clark manages to mention that there are non-Democrats out there.
- Kucinich manages to take control of the question, standing out completely from the prior Punditory-onanism and gets the only applause thus far.
- Edwards gets a clear response on the two votes (initial authorization and 87bil suplementary), and applause.
- Sharpton states the Sharpton Doctrine, aid, development, UN.
Round 2
- Kerry does not go for the draft.
- Lieberman recycled Edwards health care for children up to age 25.
- Kucinich tried to recover from having voted for NCLB, I didn't know that.
- Dean manages to-hoot-is-human and he-means-what-he-means, against NCLB, against Iraq.
- Clark sort of muddles about on "guarantee".
- Edwards manages to humanize the Axis of Islam, and manages to mention foreign "people".
- Sharpton gets the ignorant person-of-color question -- his Federal Reserve Board appointment, and manages to make a memorable moment of humor, Dean's pain at spending so much for 18%, but missed the opportunity to talk about red-lining and economic racism. Peter Jennings when prepared can ask a sharper question than Al Sharpton can answer off-the-cuff. Score that Whites 1, Blacks 0.
- Kerry manages to turn medal-throw-away into the VFW-in-the-Mall-vs-Nixon and ties DeLay to Nixon.
- Lieberman manages to get applause on an Iraq question, whacks Halliburton.
- Kucinich manages to run an attractive domestic shopping list as an alternative to pentagon waste, and any balanced budge date to how deep the hole Bush digs.
- Clark manages to defend Michael Moore's 1st Amendment right to call W a deserter and run a list of other endorsees.
- Edwards manages to endorse Kerry's position on the "Defense of Marriage" bill, and segue to GLTG people and respect.
- Dean declined to go beyond civil-unions, leaving everything else JRE mentioned, manages to mention that he's a Doctor and something about health care.
- Sharpton manages to turn gay rights into human rights, and the dangers of leaving civil rights in the hands of states.
- Dean manages to distinguish his fiscal conservate and gun rights record from the mainstream of the party, and reference Bush, quotas, and a one-way bus ticket.
- Kerry manages to fill a minute on social values that I can't summarize (type behind is a problem)
- Lieberman manages to talk about talking about values and faith and poverty and values, and blows Peter Jennings away, nice touch JL!
- Clark manages to to mention former attorney general john ashcroft as a witness on the abuses of the sneak-and-peak bits of the patriot act. the audience got the joke.
- Kucinich manages to keep on message, UN in, US out, and his friendship with John Edwards for delegates in Iowa.
- Edwards manages to defeat Jesse Helms and the use of AK-47s for hunting. Extend the Brady Bill, close the gun show loop-hole, trigger-locks, and retain the 2nd Amendment.
- Sharpton manages to decline to become Republican to defeat Republicans and asked Kucinich also for delegate courtesy in SC.
Round 3
- Kerry manages to advocate banning MBTE (for those outside of New England, see Erin Brockovich).
- Lieberman manages to mention drugs and Canada.
- Sharpton manages to blop about abit before starting an energy-independence rap. (Lead paint is a two word answer. Heavy metals. Urban Asthma. missed opportunities)
- Dean manages to mention that Al Q and WMD weren't in Iraq, that Joe, John, and John voted to send 500 troops to die and thousands to be wounded.
- Lieberman rebuts, John and John don't bother.
- Clark and Axion a minute of clarification.
- Edwards mentions that 32% of Iowa thinks he's old enough to drive and tall enough to reach the steering wheel, and takes that to lobbyists, insiders, and disclosure, and gets an extended minute.
- Sharpton manages better on Iran than on the Federal Reserve.
- Kerry manages to to turn a small business question into a postive reference to busta caps and the Hollins endorse in SC and the RNC's pending air-war.
- Lieberman manages to mention that he lives in Manchester.
- Lieberman manages to wring humor out of the favorite mark on the wall (calendar), the NH date.
- Clark manages to take a sculpted moment of humor (when did you notice you were a Democrat), and since the journal was foreign, the lady is dead (london, war approval essay).
- Edwards manages to cut off a Defense of Fucksage Act question and run a minute on the 35 million Americans living in poverty.
[John slapped Brit Hume down. A moment of script-broken huddle by the Vixens.]
- Kucinich manages to stay on message and cancel NAFTA and the WTO, and slap down the Vixens too.
- Dean (the Vixen goes on for 30 seconds about his relative in the audience from New Jersey) and does something surprising, he points to John Edwards slap-aside of the nuisance question DMA for poverty and education
- Sharpton manages to mention that cop-killings doesn't make guilty all the non-guilty facing execution due to pervasive prosecutorial error.
- Dean manages a minute of recitation, showing that he leads with his head, if he'd lead with his heart he'd have said something memorable, or at least heart-felt.
- Kerry manages to give the war vote question well in one minute. He does well in the follow-up minute, and gets in the reckless, inept, ideological line.
- Lieberman a final minute that wasn't sumarizable.
The Vixens took up just under half the wall-clock time with their artsy questions. Very boring. The Vixens are dumb. This is the worst debate we've seen (I don't think we've missed any either). The other bad one was also a Fox debate, the one in WDC that Sharpton offered to provide security.
JRE got the best of the Vixens, and its Vixens all the way down from now to November.
Remembering the Cow
In February 1988 my routine workday was interrupted. I was asked to look at some 9-track tapes that the local PD had seized, in connection with the arrests of three people either working at, or previously working at, my place of employ. SRI. Stanford Research International, Engineering Division, Building 3. Home of the CSL, the AI Lab, and the ISTD, home to part of the Army's HTRD, to the Navy's SPAWAR, and some other less public projects. My job was to manage the ISTD's computing assets, local and remote, and the SAC SCIF in the basement. It was a good job, I ran the largest set of ARPA and MIL nets routing assets outside of BBN, but it didn't pay enough to fund a child custody fight, so eventually I went adrift.
The tapes themselves were banal, Menlo Park PD, "aided by" PacTel's legion of weenies, couldn't read them. That was because they were (surprise) in Unix tar format, contained my prior subordinate's home directory and the usual rubbish people collect, and about .01% of actually encrypted data.
The fun came later. When I saw the indictments. Kevin was hit with about 20 counts, Rob and Mark with lesser hits, and most of the Federal dog pile was actually dog poop. One count had that the boys having an ATM (yes, several hundred pounds of electro-mechanical and 8-bit digital rubbish) was proof positive of some horrific crime. The ATM had been bought at auction. Those things don't self-distruct any more than old Chevys do. Another count had that the boys (begin scary voice) trafficed in access codes to a Government Interest Computer (shoot scary voice guy twice behind ear). The evidence for this horrific crime was a screen-shot of a "keep out fool" banner on some Army box on the (unclassified) net, which at the time was rather novel, annotated with "hey, would you look at that!" commentary. The photo-of-the-no-tresspass-sign was offered as proof that the boys hopped the fence and had carnal knowledge of the farmer's cow.
It went on and on and on. In those days, PacTel pretty much ran any local PD operation it wanted to by simply claiming that they were chasing toll-fraud. The boys were committing toll-fraud. PacTel pretty much ran the local EFF-BEE-EYE operation as well, and the US AG for the district, so toll-fraud got an automatic promotion to Government Interest. It was a world of armed, dumb, arrogant, corrupt men, protected by badges, taking orders from corporate suits, oh so very, very different from today.
I stopped looking at the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 1986 (US) 18 USC 1030 after Rob and Mark made reasonable deals, and Kevin's case degenerated into hoplessness and flight (he should have gone to Paraguay and operated their phone system), but somethings made a lasting impression.
You can find this on the NSA's notice page. It lives on boatloads of federal boxen, more than I have time or interest to jiggle the handles of. Time hasn't stood still since 1988, Patrick Leahy contributed to this body of law in 1996 with the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act (NIIPA). I'll look into that tomorrow.
Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on this service are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.
How does this song begin?
18 USC 1030 (a) Whoever-- (1) knowingly accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct obtains information that has been determined by the United States Government pursuant to an Executive order or statute to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national defense or foreign relations,
or
(3) intentionally, without authorization to access any computer of a department or agency of the United States, accesses such a computer of that department or agency that is exclusively for the use of the Government of the United States,
or
(4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a Federal interest computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer;
or
(6) knowingly and with intent to defraud traffics (as defined in section 1029) in any password or similar information through which a computer may be accessed without authorization, if--(B) such computer is used by or for the Government of the United States;
shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
(c) The punishment for an offense under subsection (a) or (b) of this
section is -(1)(A) a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than ten years or
both, in the case of an offense under subsection (a)(1) of this section
which does not occur after a conviction for another offense under such
subsection, or an attempt to commit an offense punishable under this
subparagraph; and
(B) a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than twenty years,
or both, in the case of an offense under subsection (a)(1) of this
section which occurs after a conviction for another offense under such
subsection, or an attempt to commit an offense punishable under this
subparagraph; and...
The language for (a)(3) or (a)(6) is a fine or one to ten. The language for (a)(5) is fine and no more than five. Both double for a second offense, the (B) para above repeats with the appropriate duration.
The net of this is, looking at the story in today's Globe, if the same standards apply, toe-tags will be handed out by summer to federal employees. Then there is everybody's favorite piece of legislation (begin really scary voice, Alien and Sedition Act scary voice), das Patriot Act. I don't read historically bad legislation, I guess I'll have to make an exception this weekend.
Oblig Note: Assume your assets are targets. Harden them. Partition. Go black end-to-end. Invest in real mirrors, hot-stand-by, and replicated archival store. Every IETF/NANOG/RIPE/... meeting has a PGP key reading, we work in a hostile environment. If you're not operating at the level of the Red Player, the hostile foreign power, you may not get in power.
The text of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 1986 (US) 18 USC 1030 follows.
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 1986 (US) 18 USC 1030
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 1986 (US) 18 USC 1030(a)
1030. Fraud and related activity in connection with computers
(a) Whoever--
(1) knowingly accesses a computer without authorization or
exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct obtains
information that has been determined by the United States Government
pursuant to an Executive order or statute to require protection against
unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national defense or foreign
relations, or any restricted data, as defined in paragraph r. of
section 11 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, with the intent or reason to
believe that such information so obtained is to be used to the injury of
the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation;
(2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds
authorized access, and thereby obtains information contained in a financial
record of a financial institution, or of a card issuer as defined in
section 1602(n) of title 15, or contained in a file of a consumer reporting
agency on a consumer, as such terms are defined in the Fair Credit
Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.);
(3) intentionally, without authorization to access any computer of a
department or agency of the United States, accesses such a computer of
that department or agency that is exclusively for the use of the
Government of the United States or, in the case of a computer not
exclusively for such use, is used by or for the Government of the United
States and such conduct affects the use of the Government's operation of
such computer;
(4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a Federal interest computer
without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means
of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value,
unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the
use of the computer;
(5) intentionally accesses a Federal interest computer without authorization
and by means of one or more instances of such conduct alters, damages, or
destroys information in any such Federal interest computer, or prevents
authorized use of any such computer or information, and thereby--
(A) causes loss to one or more others of a value aggregating $1,000 or
more during any one year period; or
(B) modifies or impairs, or potentially modifies or impairs the medical
examination, medical diagnosis, medical treatment, or medical care of
one or more individuals; or
(6) knowingly and with intent to defraud traffics (as defined in section 1029)
in any password or similar information through which a computer may be
accessed without authorization, if--
(A) such trafficking affects interstate or foreign commerce; or
(B) such computer is used by or for the Government of the United States;
shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 1986 (US) 18 USC 1030(b)
(b) Whoever attempts to commit an offense under subsection (a) of this section
shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 1986 (US) 18 USC 1030(c)
(c) The punishment for an offense under subsection (a) or (b) of this
section is -
(1)(A) a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than ten years or
both, in the case of an offense under subsection (a)(1) of this section
which does not occur after a conviction for another offense under such
subsection, or an attempt to commit an offense punishable under this
subparagraph; and
(B) a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than twenty years,
or both, in the case of an offense under subsection (a)(1) of this
section which occurs after a conviction for another offense under such
subsection, or an attempt to commit an offense punishable under this
subparagraph; and
(2)(A) a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than one year, or
both, in the case of an offense under subsection (a)(2), (a)(3) or
(a)(6) of this section which does not occur after a conviction for
another offense under such subsection, or an attempt to commit an
offense punishable under this subparagraph; and
(B) a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than ten years,
or both, in the case of an offense under subsection (a)(2), (a)(3) or
(a)(6) of this section which occurs after a conviction for another
offense under such subsection, or an attempt to commit an offense
punishable under this subparagraph; and
(3)(A) a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than five years or
both, in the case of an offense under subsection (a)(4) or (a)(5) of
this section which does not occur after a conviction for another
offense under such subsection, or an attempt to commit an offense
punishable under this subparagraph; and
(B) a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than ten years, or
both, in the case of an offense under subsection (a)(4) or (a)(5) of
this section which occurs after a conviction for another offense under
such subsection, or an attempt to commit an offense punishable under
this subparagraph.
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 1986 (US) 18 USC 1030(d)
(d) The United States Secret Service shall, in addition to any other agency
having such authority, have the authority to investigate offenses under this
section. Such authority of the United States Secret Service shall be exercised
in accordance with an agreement which shall be entered into by the Secretary
of the Treasury and the Attorney General.
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 1986 (US) 18 USC 1030(e)
(e) As used in this section--
(1) the term "computer" means an electronic, magnetic, optical,
electrochemical, or other high speed data processing device performing
logical, arithmetic, or storage functions, and includes any data storage
facility or communications facility directly related to or operating in
conjunction with such device, but such term does not include an automated
typewriter or typesetter, a portable hand held calculator, or other
similar device;
(2) the term "Federal interest computer" means a computer--
(A) exclusively for the use of a financial institution or the United States
Government, or, in the case of a computer not exclusively for such use,
used by or for a financial institution or the United States Government
and the conduct constituting the offense affects the use of the
financial institution's operation or the Government's operation of
such computer; or
(B) which is one of two or more computers used in committing the offense,
not all of which are located in the same State;
(3) the term "State" includes the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of
Puerto Rico, and any other possession or territory of the United States;
(4) the term "financial institution" means--
(A) an institution with deposits insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation;
(B) the Federal Reserve or a member of the Federal Reserve including
any Federal Reserve Bank;
(C) a credit union with accounts insured by the National Credit Union
Administration;
(D) a member of the Federal home loan bank system and any home loan
bank;
(E) any institution of the Farm Credit System under the Farm Credit Act
of 1971;
(F) a broker-dealer registered with the Securities and Exchange
Commission pursuant to section 15 of the Securities Exchange Act
of 1934; and
(G) the Securities Investor Protection Corporation;
(5) the term "financial record" means information derived from any record
held by a financial institution pertaining to a customer's relationship
with the financial institution;
(6) the term "exceeds authorized access" means to access a computer with
authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the
computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter; and
(7) the term "department of the United States" means the legislative or
judicial branch of the government or one of the executive departments
enumerated in section 101 of title 5.
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 1986 (US) 18 USC 1030(f)
(f) This section does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative,
protective, or intelligence activity of a law enforcement agency of the
United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State, or of an
intelligence agency of the United States.
January 21, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
The Ultimate Justification for the War
Patrick at Electrolite has a hilarious post on the administration’s ever shifting position entitled Weapons of Mass Destruction-Related Program Activites:
This isn’t just moving the goalposts, it’s attaching the goalposts to a booster rocket and shooting them into the Sun. Look, a revitalized space program after all!
Does the failure to find WMD or even active WMD programs harm the case for war? Of course not. As Jordan Kare notes in Patrick’s comment section:
It’s a good thing we invaded Iraq; if we hadn’t, the proof of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction-related program activities might have come in the form of a reference to a drawing of a mushroom cloud over an American city!
I think that says it all.
Update: You should also take Norbizness' quiz on the subject.
Scare Tactics Update -- Defense Costs
In Scare Tactics and Scare Tactics II, I bemoaned the fact that the debate surrounding tort reform is held without knowledge of basic information. When discussing tort reform, advocates and the media tend to use anecdotes, many of which are untrue, as a substitute for data.
At one point, I noted that the total of all medical malpractice judgments and settlements was about $4.2 billion. Some commenters noted that the $4.2 billion figure does not include defense costs and that knowledge of those costs would be helpful in discussing the issue. I agreed.
For instance, Sebastian Holsclaw commented that:
I think you are ignoring the most important (and probably most costly) part of the equation: cost of defense.
Sebastian went on, in a later comment, to estimate the size of the omission:
Hidden costs--I am suggesting that the cost of defense is MORE than the cost of settlements+judgments. I am suggesting that a debunking ought to at the very minimum focus on the majority of costs... The cost of defense is at least equal to the cost of settlements. I suspect it is more like 5-10 times the cost of settlements but at the very least it is equal to them. (Emphasis in original).
Medical malpractice settlements in 2002 totaled about $3.9 billion so Sebastian’s estimate for med mal defense costs is about $19.5 billion to $39 billion per year.
I promised to look into the matter and report back. Other things intervened and the task remained on my to-do list. Yesterday, the Bloviator pointed us to a Congressional Budget office report (PDF) on medical malpractice reform.
That report notes that the payment of claims constitutes about two-thirds of the total costs while defense costs, administrative costs and underwriting costs make up the remaining third. Thus, defense costs and the costs of administration and underwriting combine to be about one half of the cost of paying claims.
For 2002, the payment of claims was $4.2 billion. Thus, the other costs, including defense costs, would be around $2.1 billion.
Even a cursory look at Sebastian’s blog or any familiarity with his comments on the sites of others will convince you that he is smart and well informed. He also, apparently, works in the legal field. The debate around tort reform is so anecdotally based and data-free that his estimate of defense costs can be off by a factor of 10 to20. The lack of widely disseminated information about the subject is also shown by the fact that after Sebastian posted his estimate, I did not know the correct figure and no commenter posted the correct figure.
If we are going to arrive at sensible ways to improve the tort system, we need to know basic information about the subject. That data has largely been unreported with the effect that the discussions are often dominated by anecdotes, many of which are simply untrue. Is that really the way to debate an issue or to make public policy?
Pride In Your Work
Regardless of your field, one of the keys to success is to take pride in your work. If you do not, your lack of pride will show because your work will be slipshod. No one will respect either you or your product if you do not show respect yourself.
It does not matter what endeavor you choose. Doctors, plumbers, policemen and teachers all need to take pride in their work. For instance, if you decide to be an internet con artist, please put some time, thought and effort into making your scam at least slightly plausible. Create a persona as the long lost illegitimate child of a deposed African leader trying to smuggle $40,000,000 worth of jewels out of the country or something. I recently received multiple copies of the following email:
Dear_ OnlineCitibank Member,
This LETTER was seent by the_ _citibank sevrer to veerify your_ _email_ adress_.You must cteplmoe this peroscs by clicking on_the_link_below_ and enttering in the litlle winndow your citibank__ATM_ full card nummber and CARD PIN that you use on Atm machine.That is done for-your petroction -b- becaurse some of our_members_ no lneogr have accses to their email adedresss and we must verify it.
To veerify your E_MAIL adress and access _your_ CITI_bank account, clik on_the_link below_.
Show a little creativity and pride. It is pretty likely that Citibank can afford to spring for a spell checker so you should, too. If you can not address me by name in the email, at least use my email address in the salutation. Surely you can think up a better excuse than “some of our_members_ no lneogr have accses to their email adedresss and we must verify it.”
These crooks today, they just don't take pride in their work.
January 20, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Shorter State of the Union Address, Fiscal Policy
A boy leaves home for his first semester at college. His father gives him some money for books and incidental expenses. The money is intended to last the entire semester. Within a month, the son calls the father, informs his Dad that he is broke and asks for additional money.
“What did you do with all the money I gave you last month?” asks Dad?
“Well,” the son replies, “ninety percent of it I spent chasing women and drinking beer. The rest I just wasted.”
Iowa Thoughts
When a lawyer objects to the other side introducing a piece of damaging evidence, does he or she wish the judge to sustain or overrule the objection? Leaving aside issues of tactics, the intuitive answer is that the lawyer wishes the judge to sustain the objection. That is why the objection was made. The real answer depends entirely on whether you ask the question before or after the jury reaches a verdict.
During the trial, the objecting lawyer clearly wishes the judge to sustain it so that the jury never gets to see or hear the damaging information. Immediately upon the jury reaching a verdict, however, that changes and the objecting lawyer would prefer the judge to have overruled the objection. Regardless of the jury’s verdict, the lawyer is in a better position if he lost every objection.
If the jury finds in favor of the objecting lawyer, having an objection overruled has the effect of denying the other side grounds for appeal. If the jury found against the objecting lawyer, the judge’s decision overruling an objection of the losing lawyer may provide grounds for appeal.
I was reminded of that anomaly by the results of the Iowa caucus. To see why, let's look at the Iowa campaigns of Dr. Howard Dean and Senator John Edwards.
Dr. Dean had a massive ground organization in Iowa. He had more than 3,500 volunteers in the state to ensure that Dean’s supporters would actually get to the caucus sites. Before the results, nearly every pundit remarked that the edge in organization would turn out a higher percentage of Dean’s supporters than candidates with lesser organizations.
John Edwards, on the other hand, did not have massive organization. Instead, he had a message. Before the results, Dr. Dean must have been very happy about the advantages provided by his organization while John Edwards must have looked at the Dean organization with envy.
The issue of federal financing is similar. If a candidate takes federal funding, he has to agree to strict limits on the amount that can be spent in each state. Dr. Dean, due to his fund raising prowess, opted out of the matching funds system and was not limited in the amount he could spend in Iowa. John Edwards was not in a position to opt out of matching funds. Thus, before the caucuses, Edwards was limited in the amount he could spend while Dean was not. In fact, Dean outspent Edwards by a substantial amount in Iowa. Before the caucus results, Dean must have been happy that he was able to spend as much as necessary to maximize his result while Edwards must have chafed at the limits.
As soon as the results from Iowa became known, everything changed. It now appears that the 18% of the delegates garnered by Dr. Dean was a ceiling. I presume that his massive organization in fact turned out a high percentage of his supporters. Further, without spending limits, Dr. Dean was able to put sufficient resources into getting his message out. It appears that about 18% of Iowa caucus goers liked the message Dr. Dean was selling.
Some have suggested that the Dean organization, while large, was amateurish and ineffective in the maneuvering at he caucus. That may be true, but that sort of thing matters only at the margin. If Dr. Dean had delivered on a hard count of 40,000 attendees or more, whether or not he captured a stray Gepardt or Kucinich delegate or two would have been irrelevant.
Other Deaniacs, including Joe Trippi have argued that Dean’s ship was sunk by Dick Gephardt’s attack ads. There may be some truth in that but lets face facts. If Dick Gephardt (Dick Gephardt!!!) can push up Dr. Dean’s negatives so as to sink his Iowa campaign, the GOP, in the immortal words of Bob Kerrey, will open Dr. Dean up like a boiled peanut in the fall.
The electorate in Iowa was almost 75% against the Iraq war which should have played to Dean’s strength. Despite a favorable electorate, and advantages in money and organization, Dean could produce only 18% of the delegates. When considering the advantages Dr. Dean had in Iowa, his 18% looks to be closer to a ceiling than a floor.
For Edwards, the view is the mirror image. Facing an electorate overwhelmingly against a war Edwards voted to authorize, and being limited in the amounts he could spend, and not having a massive organization to turn out his supporters, John Edwards cleaned Howard Dean’s clock. Edward’s 32% looks much more like a floor than a ceiling.
Now, of course, the issue is not longer Iowa. It is New Hampshire. There, Dr. Dean again appears to have advantages. He is from a neighboring state. He has spend a great deal of time and effort in New Hampshire. Before Iowa, at least, Dean was leading in the polls. Once again, Dean will organize a Perfect Storm of ground game volunteers to turn out the vote. Dean’s money raising machine remains formidable and he does not have spending limits. The issue is whether the voters will like the dog food.
For Edwards, he once again looks to be at a significant disadvantage. Not until South Carolina will John Edwards be the candidate without an accent. At last look, he was in single digits in the New Hampshire polls. He is limited in the money he has and the money he can spend. He has no Perfect Storm at his disposal. Edwards does however, have three major advantages. First, he has a superb message. His riff on the Two Americas is the best of any candidate. His emphasis on rewarding work and merit instead of wealth, privilege and influence is inspiring. He also has the most complete and most well thought out policy positions. If you do not believe me, go to his web site and check out his education policy, his economic policy, his health care proposals and other policy positions. Finally, John Edwards is one of the five best public speakers I have ever heard.
I suspect that the voters of New Hampshire and elsewhere will find Edwards’ dog food quite tasty. The question is whether he can get enough people to sample it.
It will be an interesting week. I am very pleased that Mary Beth will be in New Hampshire to report from the ground. Stayed Tuned.
Onward to New Hamster...
Today is a day of great rejoicing in my home. Well, at least in the part of the home which includes my study and my keyboard.
Nearly two years ago, I met with my former boss and ED of the Maine Democratic Party in our favorite coffee shop in Portland. A hep-lock allowed me two hours of freedom off my home IV for pregnancy-induced hyperemesis, and I relished the chance to talk shop with one another poli-hack. After covering the local dirt, she told me how she was looking into Senator Edwards' potential campaign. I'd honestly never heard of the guy, but if Barb thought he was decent, I figured I'd take a gander.
Being trapped in bed with a laptop provided ample time for that research. I read everything I could on Edwards, including his proposed legislation and press releases. I was particularly heartened to learn of his efforts to provide quality daycare for special needs kids, increased funding for Fragile X research and full federal recognition for the Lumbee. Less than a day later, I was onboard the Breck Express.
Over the last two years, the ride has been a rough one, and recently only got rougher. See, during the first eighteen months of "dating" my candidate, I still wasn't fully smitten. Then I went to Portsmouth one summer evening and everything changed. I fell head over heels. I, a seasoned, cynical operative, made the mistake of really falling for my candidate, something you're never supposed to do. Nine times out of ten, you just end up with a broken heart. In order to live to fight another battle (every couple of years), you just don't do it - you should like and respect your candidate, but they shouldn't tug at your heart strings. I knew then I was in trouble. The month of December was particularly tough, with Dean gaining MO and Edwards seemingly slipping into obscurity. I walked around with heart growing ever heavier.
What a difference a month makes.
I actually had butterflies in my stomach all day yesterday. While I chatted up customers, enticing them to buy another pair of flannel-lined jeans, I hoped a call would come in from Iowa. I drove home with a pair of bottles of [French] wine, hoping they'd be used to celebrate victory, not drown our sorrows.
I truly believed, though, that Senator Edwards' field plan of visiting each and every county in Iowa, talking to rural folks as well as those in cities and suburbs, would pay off in the end. And because it did, I'm equally heartened for his chances in New Hampshire. I saw John Edwards speak a second time in New Hampshire in the fall (his staff even arranged the opportunity for me to talk with him about IDEA reauthorization.) The Senator's campaign has spent months and months running town hall-style meetings, where Edwards would spend hours answering questions, not leaving until the last one was answered. They've cultivated the ground and sown the seeds. All that's now necessary is the warm, sunny news out of Iowa.
I'll be heading down to New Hampshire this weekend, up until Tuesday, to cover the events leading up to the primary. While I plan on spotlighting Senator Edward's events, I'll be dropping in on other candidates whom I like and respect; Clark, Kerry, Kucinich, to see how the MO out of Iowa has effected their campaigns as well. The Kossacks will be covering Dean (and kudos to Tom Shaler for excellent coverage in the last 36 hours), so don't expect much from me there, unless it impacts the Breck Girl.
January 19, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Poor Candidates
It is rare for me to agree with Newsmax and even rarer that I agree with a right wing radio talk show host. Both occurred today. Via the Talking Dog, I located this Newsmax article which quotes Iowa right wing radio talk show host Jan Mickelson as follows:
Democrats in Iowa are a "minority of the minority" – there are 577,461 registered Dems, compared with 622,540 registered Republicans and 783,285 registered Independents.
I assume his numbers are correct. The question then becomes, if Democrats are a minority in Iowa, why is Iowa such a reliably Democratic state in Presidential elections? All Gore won Iowa in 2000, Bill Clinton won Iowa in both 1992 and 1996. Even Michael Dukakis carried Iowa in 1988.
Given that Iowa has fewer Democrats than either Republicans or Independents, what accounts for that record?
According to Mickelson:
Despite having an edge on registration rolls, Republicans often lose in Iowa because the GOP offers up "poor candidates."
I could not agree more. For the record, those “poor candidates” are George W. Bush, Bob Dole and George H. W. Bush (twice). I think the GOP will offer up an equally poor candidate this year.
January 18, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
The joy of urban living...
I spent much of this evening at Democratic functions. First a training for caucus conveners, then the county committee, and finally an abbreviated city committee meeting. All very useful and, since I'm tentatively running for the State House (determinate on the incumbent's decision to sit out his final term before limits take effect), time well spent, from a political standpoint. In fact, I had a good discussion with a Portland House Rep and the state AG bemoaning Portland's lack of diversity when it comes to our representation in the Legislature, and how my potential candidacy would help reverse that trend. In all, a productive night.
But I have to say that the most illuminating conversation I've participated in all day just occurred between myself, my spouse (aka Eric) and my seven year-old daughter, Grace. It all began when Eric reminded Grace that there was no school tomorrow.
Grace (in the living room with her father): That's because it's Martin Luther King's birthday. I wish he was still alive.
Eric: Yes, me too. But he was murdered.
Grace: I know. I hope the person who killed him stays in prison for a very long time. (No, capital punishment is not an option in this house.)
Eric: I think he died recently.
MB (from the nearby study): James Earl Jones, er, Ray...
Grace: Well, I'm glad he died there rather than at work (perhaps I should be concerned that only work is the alternative to prison?)
Grace: (after a minute) I'm happy that woman is still alive...she's ninety two. She was a very brave woman.
MB: Rosa Parks? Who wouldn't move from the front of the bus?
Grace: That's just what I was about to say! You stole the words right out of my mouth.
MB (to Eric): I'm glad we live in a city.
Of course, what that means is live in a school district which promotes diversity seriously, rather than merely as an afterthought.
Better Questions
Each week, the New York Times Magazine runs a column by Randy Cohen called The Ethicist. In the column, readers pose questions about ethics and Cohen attempts to provide some guidance. It appears that Cohen is in need of better questions.
This week, Cohen deals with a question about the purchase of foreclosed property:
My partner and I are considering buying our first home. An acquaintance purchased a house from a bank that had foreclosed on it, acquiring it for half its value with no down payment. Some foreclosures result from investment firms making poor decisions -- I have no problem with that -- but others are the result of an individual's misfortune. The idea of profiting from a family's losing its home gnaws at my conscience. Is it ethical to buy such a house? David W. Machacek, Avon, Conn.
That does not seem like much of an ethical dilemma to me. Perhaps the party foreclosing on the property faces an ethical dilemma in some circumstances. Once the foreclosure has occurred and the lender is reselling it, I see no ethical issue for the buyer. In the interest of full disclosure, I must note that I have often purchased foreclosed property and made substantial profits on resell.
Randy Cohen agrees with me:
It is not just that you didn't cause any family to lose its home -- you did not -- but that foreclosure can be an acceptable part of a financial system. No bank lends money unless it is confident of being repaid. Using the home itself to back a mortgage allows people to buy one who otherwise could not, albeit with the risk that they may fail to make their payments and, sadly, could lose their homes.What is necessary is that the borrower be given every opportunity to repay.
Exactly right. The clarity of the ethics of that situation suggests that Cohen is in need of better questions from readers. Perhaps some can be suggested:
Dear Ethicist:I am a judge in the Federal system. I am also an avid hunter. I have the opportunity to go duck hunting in Louisiana with a group of friends. One of the friends is a very high profile government official. It is fair to say that without me, my friend would not have his current job.
My friend also happens to the defendant in a law suit. That suit also happens to be on my docket.
If I go on the hunting trip, my friend may have the opportunity to talk to me about the case without the other party being present. I find such discussions to be invaluable because they are not inhibited by the rules of evidence, the legal record or other technicalities. My friend and I can talk openly and freely on a hunting trip whereas in the courtroom, far too many people are listening, lawyers do all the talking and everything gets taken down by a court reporter.
Some people seem to think that going on the hunting trip creates the appearance of favoritism. The discussions we will have on the trip will not make any difference in my decision because I decided to rule in favor of my friend long before the case reached my court and long before the hunting trip was even planned. Can I ethically go on the hunting trip?
Sincerely,
Fat Tony, Washington D.C.
As the Ethicist usually runs two questions per week, let’s suggest another:
Dear Ethicist:In my job I get to appoint people to be Federal Judges. Usually I have to get approval of the Senate but I found out that under certain circumstances, I can just do it and no one can stop me. Is that cool or what?
Anyway, I decided to appoint a good old boy to the Federal Bench down South. In the past, the good old boy belonged to some racist organizations and he favored segregation. In his previous job, he went out of his way to make sure that a guy who burned a cross in the yard of a black Mississippi family got off lighter than the law says he should. He also probably lied under oath about his ties to racist organizations.
I have already decided to appoint the guy, so that is not my question. The problem is that I need to find a way to send a signal to the racists that I am really on their side while not being hurt with swing voters. Do you see any ethical problem if I announce the appointment of the good old boy on Martin Luther King’s birthday?
Sincerely,
Junior, Crawford, Texas
I look forward to reading Mr. Cohen's answers.
Balmy Today
Its positivly balmy today, warm enough even to snow. Friday I took three out of four of the kidz (Jonah's theraputic nursery school did not have a half-day) out to "our Island". Mackworth Island really isn't "ours" (Richmond Island off the coast of Cape Elizabth really is), it is the home of the Maine School for the Deaf, and for a while, early in Sam's diagnostic trajectory, he was "deaf". That provided us with an opportunity to work out where we were on implants-and-hearing vs deff-and-signing. It also has a path around that runs along the shore, a small beach, just right for a dad, a dog, and four splisher-spasher pebble-tossers. The car managed to float across the causeway from the mainland to the island just if there was a road there.
One more "there" there in that there last sentance and we'd be there in Oakland.
The sea was beginning to ice. Grace and I discussed which animals could walk across the ice to our island. Chipmunk, rabbit, skunk, fox ... even Aziz, the trickster, ole Rory Racoon, but not the deer people, especially Moz, who prefers to swim anyway. We agreed that Duck was safest on the ice, though she rarely knows where she is going for more than a few minutes at a time.
Raising the Greenland coast is the best part of flying from Europe to North America. You see what the Icelander's saw, the impossible mountains of the Eastern Settlements, a landfall impossible to miss, the white wall. Ice. The Great White Bear in archaic Abenaki.
January 17, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Lackluster...
Well, it's now mid-January, and many of December's economic indicators are now part of the historic record. Since these numbers tend to dribble in over the course of the month, I thought it might be interesting to look at them all together, comparing them with November and October results.
| Indicator | December | November | October |
| Unemployment rate | 5.7% | 5.9% | 6.0% |
| Nonfarm Payrolls | +1K | +43K | +100K |
| CPI | 0.2% | -0.2% | 0.0% |
| PPI | 0.3% | -0.3% | 0.8% |
| Durable Goods Orders | - - | -3.1% | 4.0% |
| Factory Orders | - - | -1.4% | 2.4% |
| Industrial Production | 0.1% | 1.0% | 0.4% |
| Capacity Utilization | 75.8% | 75.8% | 75.1% |
| Existing Home Sales | - - | 6.06M | 6.35M |
| New Home Sales | - - | 1082K | 1109K |
| Retail Sales | 0.5% | 1.2% | 0.0% |
| Retail Sales excl. Auto | 0.1% | 0.7% | 0.4% |
| Personal Spending | - - | 0.5% | 0.2% |
| Personal Income | - - | 0.4% | 0.1% |
| Hourly Earnings | 0.2% | 0.1% | 0.1% |
Now, I know we're all supposed to be falling over ourselves because GDP topped 8% in the 3rd quarter and the stock market is approaching Clinton Era levels, but to me, admittedly an armchair economist, these numbers, while they don't exactly suck, do not cry out "mother-of-all-recoveries" on the way. In fact, they're down right anemic. But for the Bush hand-fed media machine, consumer confidence would still be in free fall, versus the ridiculous jump we saw last week.
Do I even need to mention the havoc the frigid temperatures (and yes, even this Mainiac complained) will have wreaked on heating fuel prices (oil, natural gas). The EIA was already predicting natural gas prices would be significantly higher than last year's checkbook busters, with the stipulation that if cold weather hit the US, all bets were off on prices spiralling out of control. And don't be fooled that this is just a consumer "thang"... Even EIA placed the blame for decreased usage by industry firmly on higher prices. And with low crude oil reserves, cold weather in the heating oil-dependent Northeast has seen oil prices jump to over $34/barrel, well above the $29/barrel threshold "favored" by OPEC. Last year, pundit after pundit warned that oil surpassing the $35 mark would spell disaster for any economic recovery. With natural gas prices at near record levels and oil prices increasing rapidly, just when will the buffalo poo hit the proverbial fan?
I generally am a rather positive person (with two autistic kids, anything else would see me landed in a funny farm), but between the lackluster economic news of the last two months, and prospects of out-of-control energy prices, I'd sooner place money on my beloved Patriots taking the Superbowl than Bush's "recovery" gaining steam.
2003 Koufax Awards – Best New Blog Nominations
One of the most welcome developments of 2003 was the explosion of good lefty blogs. There was a time when I could read most all of the good lefty bloggers each day. That day is long gone. It is now impossible to keep up with all of the smart and insightful writers even on a weekly basis. One of the joys of hosting the Koufax Awards is that I gain exposure to some of those new voices.
More than fifty blogs have received nominations for Best New Blog. I apologize for the delay in listing those nominations. It would have been relatively straightforward to just post links to each nominee. Instead, I decided to try to include a brief description of the blog, recite its tag line or link to some of the better posts. That was a lot of work. I hope you enjoy it. Make some more room on your blogrolls. The nominees for the 2003 Koufax Award for Best New Blog are:
Alicublog is the work of Roy Edroso. Among his many fine posts you may want to read Dear Diary, These Kids Today, The Mother of All Photo Ops and Tremors.
Back Pages is the blog of Australian writer Christopher Sheil. Sheil is a teacher of economics, law and social policy at The University of New South Wales, the University of Sydney and Boston University. His blog focuses on “current affairs, history and other matters of special or momentary interest.”
Baghdad Burning is a new blog by an Iraqi writing from Baghdad. Riverbend writes about Iraq the war and the occupation from a perspective unique to the blog world.
Berry’s World is the domain of Keith Berry. Among his notable posts are Why Does the Rest of The World Hate America, Flash Forward to Election Night, Hardball Style, I’m Not that Old, I Tell Ya, and My Interview with Kevin McCullouch.
Big, Left, Outside is “Al Giordano’s Countercoup for authentic journalism and a free press.”
The Blogging of the President is a blog designed to “document the role of the blog in the presidential campaign of 2004.” The site is dedicated to Teddy White, author of the Making of the President series.
Brian’s Study Break is the work of Brian Ulrich. Brian is a Ph.D. Candidate in Islamic history at the University of Wisconsin. The main focus of Brian’s Study break is the “Islamic world, defined in its broadest sense.”
Broken Windows is a new blog covering all things New Orleans. It includes “prose and poetry, photos and rants.”
Carpe Datum is the work of Observer, a science teacher.His take on global warming, Stupid Conservative Myth # 5 is not to be missed. Fossil Fuel Alternatives is also excellent.
Cereffusion is the work of Chris Simpson. According to his blog, Chris is “an independent hip-hop loving, Dean voting, hipster with a goatee (okay, so he shaved it off ) & a Triple 5 Soul record bag trying to make his way on the mean streets of New Hampshire.”
Margaret Cho is an actor and comedian. When I emailed asking for a good post to link to, I received a reply from her agent. How many bloggers have agents? I want one too. Her agent informed by that all the posts are “masterpieces.” She is not far from right. I was sent a link to this one.
Chun The Unavoidable has been nominated in this category. A representative post from Chun is The Parmenides.
Colorado Luis provides “political and social commentary with altitude”, the altitude being the Rocky Mountains. Among Luis’s notable posts are Red Meat for the Tancredistas and Gale Norton Under Fire. Luis also is fond of beer blogging.
Corrente is the group effort of Lambert, Leah, Tresy and the Farmer. They did an admirable job willing in for Atrios last summer and have continued the good work at Corrente.
Crooked Timber is a group blog created by Henry Farrell. Henry gathered together twelve very smart people, mostly from the academy, including a number who were already blogging stars in their own right to form Crooked Timber. Politics, philosophy, sociology, economics and other matters are discussed at a high level on a daily basis.
Damfacrats began publishing last August. In a short time, it produced enough quality material to have received nominations for Best Post for three separate entries. Links to those posts may be found here.
The Decembrist is a fine new blog by Mark Schmitt. Mark is Director of Policy and Research at the Open Society Institute and was formerly the policy director for Senator Bill Bradley. One of Mark’s excellent posts is The Grand Bargain.
Dohiyi Mir is where NTodd says his piece. His piece is often hilarious. See, for instance Queer Eye for the Deposed Guy. NTodd also addresses issues in a serious way. See for instance So What Now.
The Dolphin is a Santa Barbara blog that invites contributions of original articles “on issues of local or national importance.” It is run by a Wes Clark supporter but is not affiliated with his campaign. The entries appear to be divided into the categories of the Body Politic, the Arts, Clark Notes, Santa Barbara notes and Apercus.
En Banc is a group law blog. Law students or soon to be law students Chris Geidner, Greg Goelzhauser, Jeremy Blachman, Nick Morgan, PG, and Unlearned Hand provide insight into the legal issues of the day.
Drug War Rant is the work of Pete Guither. Pete “looks at the front lines of the drug war, with news, analysis, and the occasional rant.”
The Early Days of a Better Nation is Ken MacLeod’s blog. Ken is a Scotsman, a novelist, a programmer and has a master’s degree in biomechanics. His writings have won the Prometheus Award and he has been a finalist for both the Arthur C. Clark Award and the Nebula Award.
ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES contains the opinions of a minor Greek Goddess. For instance, I thought the recent post entitled Fighting Fat—The Bush Administration Approach was particularly good.
A Fistful of Euros is a group blog with eleven contributors (plus guest bloggers). The blog focuses on economics and culture from a European perspective.
The Fulcrum is “tilting the world a little more to the left.” Among the posts doing the tilting is The Cause of the Decline of American Morality and Conflicted Shopping.
Steve Gilliard's News Blog hs been nominated in this and a number of other categories. Steve is a Daily Kos alumnus who eschews permanent links. His post I’m A Fighting Liberal from December 3, 2003 has been nominated for Best Post.
Matthew Holt is the man behind the Health Care Blog. Matthew has long experience in the health care sector. Among his more notable posts are QUALITY: Why doesn't evidence-based medicine happen in practice?, POLICY: More on uninsurance, TECHNOLOGY: Dump the stent, have a by-pass, Why Wall Street hates health care services but doesn't know it, and POLICY: Oh Canada.
It’s Still the Economy Stupid is an econoblog started by Mary Beth, Matt Stoller and Angry Bear, but now run by Teddy. A recent excellent post of Teddy’s Ten Rules of Investing in the New New Era.
Jar of Pencils is the work of Claire Ann and Marijka, two women sharing the same office and blog. It is an eclectic mix that works.
Just a Bump in the Beltway by Melanie Mattson provides “politics and culture from the left side of the page.” Among Melanie’s notable posts is Language, Religion and Politics, which was nominated for Best Post.
Patriot Boy holds forth at Jesus’ General. One example of his humor is My own deck of Bush [holy] cards.
Luz Paz, Musings From the Heart of Aztlan, by my favorite anonymous Californian labor attorney/Metiza activist. Luz Paz is nominated for best post as well, but there's so much good stuff not often addressed in the white-male dominated blogosphere. Settle in with a marguerita and an Indian taco and open up the archives from the last five months.
Kicking Ass is the blog of the Democratic National Committee. It is manned mostly by Jesse Berney with backup from the DNC Research folks. Kicking Ass represents an opportunity to discuss issues directly with the party. Jesse also makes it a lot of fun.
Killing Goliath is a group blog with five authors.
The Left Coaster is “an outside-the-Beltway perspective on current events, politics, media, and the arts.” It is a group effort by produced by Steve Soto, Mary, Duckman GR, Cal Pol Junkie, Matt Davis, Paradox and Pessimist.
Left I on the News is “a leftwing view of the day’s news and the way it is presented in the media.” It is produced by Eli.
Lotus – Surviving A Dark Time consists of “thoughts, commentary, and a nonviolent, radical left perspective on the news from an ordinary individual struggling to keep hope alive." That individual is Larry. I particularly like the idea of Larry’s quote of the week. This week’s quote is from Joseph Comstock, MD, “Commerce carries, commerce brings, commerce exchanges, but labor produces.”
Chris Mooney is a freelance writer living in New Orleans. He was one of the originators of TAPPED When he worked at The American Prospect. Chris often writes about the intersection of science and politics.
Obsidian Wings is a group effort that spans the ideological spectrum. From right to left, you may want to read one of Moe’s posts, I have No Idea, one of Von’s posts, So I Sit in Snuffy’s Diner and Katherine’s superb post, The Disappeared.
Open Source Politics is a group effort that was the brain child of the Cowboy, Kevin Hayden. OSP’s mission statement says that it “was founded to promote active discourse among progressives. We firmly believe that the strength of every democratic nation comes from government of, by, and for its people.” In order to do that, Kevin has brought together more than forty excellent writers who bring insight, skill and perspective to the dialogue. It is presented in a daily magazine format.
Passenger Pachyderms is the work of Nichole. Her tag line is “What I see, when I feel like telling you about it. Observations from a sometimes writer and usual lefter.”
Rodger Payne is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Louisville. Among his notable posts is Howard Dean and the progressives.
A Perfectly Cromulent Blog is produced by Pete Vonder Haar. It focuses on “pop culture related smart-assery.” An example is his post entitled Soon, “Gay Divorcee” May Take On a Whole New Meaning.
Poison Kitchen is Patrick Taylor’s blog. The name “Poison Kitchen” refers to "the nickname Adolf Hitler gave to the muckraking journalists of the Munich Post. Sadly they have been almost forgotten.” A few of Patrick’s notable posts may be found here,
here and here.
Political Aims is the blog of Amy Sullivan. Amy is a writer based in Princeton, NJ and Washington, DC. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Harvard Divinity School, and she is currently pursuing a doctorate in sociology at Princeton University. Among her notable posts are A Liberal Call to Arms, Can Public Policy Save Teenage Girls?, and The Liberal Reaction.
Procrastinating Since 1970 is the work of T.J. Griffin and Dagwood Reeves (who has been procrastinating since 1971). An example of TJ’s writing is I Am An Idiot… Let me Prove it to You. An example from Dagwood is The difference between calling for action and actual action.
Random Thoughts is Susan Nunes’s blog. Susan provides short posts linking to lots of very good stuff. I must say, however, that her thoughts do not appear to be random at all. Susan also has an excellent set of newspaper links (including some smaller papers) that I often use for surfing.
The Right Christians is the work of reverend Allen Brill. He writes on a number of topics many which seem to be at the intersection of religion, politics and law. Among his notable posts are his discussions of the Lochner era jurisprudence, the Bible and estate taxes, The Progressive’s Theory of Everything, Religion in America and his Survivor post.
The Rude Pundit is “proudly lowering the level ofpolitical discourse.” Among the posts generating the Rude One’s pride are here and here.
Sadly, No is a satirical examination of daily events. A couple examples of Sadly, No’s writing are Apparently, Ronald Isn’t The Only One Experiencing Memory Loss and The Trouble with Paul Johnson.
The Talent Show is an eye-pleasing new blog run. The talent may be appreciated by reading Biased Against Bullshit, Agricultural Technophobia, A slippery slope toward tyranny and Reason Triumphs Over Superstition.
ThinkingPeace “is the creation of writer, editor, and peace activist Michael Sky.” Here is one example of his writing.
Tikun Olam is Richard Silverstein’s blog. Richard is interested in the Middle east with a particular interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some of his more notable posts include The War in Iraq: Why It's Going Badly, After the Fall: Sadaam's Capture and Where We Go from Here and the more lighthearted Tom DeLay: from Termite Terminator to Middle East Expert.
Today In Iraq is quite aptly named. It provides daily coverage of what is happening in Iraq with lots of very good links, many of which are to sources I would not otherwise find.
Trogwatch brings you critical thinking “from our cave to yours.” An example is the post Fox vs. Satire.
Trish Wilson’s Blog is another example of the new crop of excellent sites. Her posts entitled Mass. Court Strikes Down Gay Marriage Ban and That AWOL "Mom" In The News Is The STEP-Mom are particularly noteworthy. Also see the Trish's nomination for Best expert blog.
The View From the Basement provides “independent news commentary from the US and Israel.” It is the work of Tamar Ron a “25-year-old native Israeli who grew up mostly on the east and west coasts of the US and currently resides in New York City.” She is currently a master's degree candidate in Medieval Jewish Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Whiskey Bar is where Billmon serves the drinks. Billmon is a Daily Kos alum who needs no introduction from me. For some of his better posts see the nominations for Best Post where eight(!) of his posts are listed.
World O’Crap has been nominated in a number of categories. One example of WOC’s work is Rock- Worshipping Cults Support Roy Moore.
[Note: I, MB, added a few which had come into my mailbox, with my own comments, just in case you notice a different voice introducing some new blogs.]
[Note: I corrected a bunch of html errors. DAM]
January 16, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
More Conflicts of Interest on the 9/11 Commission
Last summer, I called upon Jamie Gorelick to resign as a Commissioner on the 9/11 Commission due to a conflict of interest.
Gorelick, formerly the number two person in the Clinton Justice Department is a Democratic appointee to the Commission charged with preparing a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Gorelick was an inappropriate choice for that position because she is a partner in the Washington law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. According to Newsweek, Wilmer, Cutler represents Prince Mohammed al Faisal in the suit by the 9/11 families. The families contend that al Faisal has legal responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.
Given that the findings of the commission, to be prepared at least in part by Gorelick, could impact the outcome of litigation in which Gorelick’s firm has an interest, Gorelick remaining on the Commission posed a clear conflict of interest.
Gorelick failed to heed my advice and remained a 9/11 Commissioner. Now a second, even more egregious conflict of interest has arisen requiring Gorelick to resign. The Executive Director of the Commission, Phillip Zelikow, must also resign for the same reasons.
Via Julia, I located this UPI story. UPI reports that Gorelick, as well as Zelikow have been called as witnesses before Commission investigators. Gorelick’s testimony appears to relate to her position in the Clinton Justice Department while Zelikow’s testimony appears to relate to his position on the Bush-Cheney transition team.
Gorelick is charged with preparing a complete account of the events leading up to 9/11. To prepare that report, Gorelick will have to assess the credibility of the evidence. Part of that evidence is her own testimony. Gorelick, therefore, is in the position of deciding whether or not her own testimony is to be believed.
Further, it is possible that Gorelick’s decision as to whether or not to credit her own testimony will impact a civil suit being defended by Gorelick’s firm. Is it possible for the relationship to become more incestuous? Lewis Carroll would have rejected that scenario as unbelievable. Gorelick must resign immediately.
Phillip Zelikow must resign as Executive Director of the Commission. Zelikow, a history professor at the University of Virginia, has also been called as a witness. UPI reports:
The panel set up to investigate why the United States failed to prevent the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, faced angry questions Thursday after revelations that two of its own senior officials were so closely involved in the events under investigation that they have been interviewed as part of the inquiry.Philip Zelikow, the commission's executive director, worked on the Bush-Cheney transition team as the new administration took power, advising his longtime associate and former boss, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, on the incoming National Security Council…
The families have said for many months that they are not happy with Zelikow's role, which they argue creates at least an appearance of a conflict of interest. They were furious Thursday that they learned from the newspapers he had given evidence.
"Did he interview himself about his own role in the failures that left us defenseless?" asked Lori Van Auken, the widow of Kenneth. "This is bizarre."
Zelikow -- an historian based at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia -- has also come under fire from some critics for his close ties to senior administration officials. He has had a longstanding relationship with Rice, who hired him to work for her when she was a White House official in the first Bush administration. The two have written a book together.
More recently, some relatives have accused him of being in touch with White House political supreme Karl Rove -- the man widely believed to be the most powerful figure in the administration.
Zelikow was not available to answer questions Thursday, but Felzenberg did not deny the allegation.
Zelikow’s role on the transition team is critical. UPI reports:
The question of the transition is a significant one, because critics of President Bush contend that the incoming administration "dropped the ball" on the fight against Osama bin Laden, which had been ramping up under President Clinton, especially after a suicide attack by his al-Qaida network nearly destroyed the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.According to one former Bush White House official, the incoming administration downgraded the interagency committee that handles the nation's counter-terrorism policy and operations on a day-to-day basis.
The Counter-Terrorism Security Group had, under Clinton, reported directly to the so-called Principles' Committee, the meeting of Cabinet-level officials that sets policy for presidential consideration.
"They stopped it reporting directly," the former official told UPI on condition of anonymity. "It had to report to deputies. ... It slowed down consideration of policy initiatives quite a bit."
The recusal rules of the 9/11 commission provide that:
Where a commissioner or staff member has a close personal relationship with an individual, or either supervised or was supervised by an individual, the commissioner or staff member should not play a primary role in the Commission interview of that person.
Both Gorelick and Zelikow have violated that rule.
It is harder to get a more “primary role” in an interview than that of the person providing the answers. The "close personal relationship" test is presumably satisfied as Gorelick and Zelikow can each be assumed to have a close personal relationship with themselves.
Perhaps a Chinese wall could prevent Zelikow from participating in the portion of the investigation surrounding the transition team as it relates to others. It is impossible, however, for a Chinese wall to prevent either the “primary role” or the “close personal relationship” requirements from being satisfied when the staffer and/or commissioner is also the witness. The only course is for both Gorelick and Zeilkow to resign.
The credibility of the Commission is central to its mission. Having Gorelick act as both judge and witness at the same time her firm is defending a person the families charge with legal responsibility for the attacks simply destroys the credibility of whatever report emerges. Similarly, having an executive director who used to work for Condi Rice, was part of the transition team being investigated for dropping the ball on terrorism, has chats with Karl Rove, and is both the chief investigator and a witness undermines the credibility of the Commission. It is just not right.
While the credibility of the Commission is important to all Americans, it is critical to the families of the 9/11 victims. How do they view the news of the conflicts?
UPI reports:
"This is beginning to look like a whitewash," Kristen Breitweizer, who lost her husband Ron in tower two of the World Trade Center, told United Press International.
I am very sorry to have to agree.
Update: The New York Times has now confirmed that Gorelick and Zelikow are the two officials of the Commission with the greatest access to highly classified White House documents:
Mr. Zelikow and Ms. Gorelick are the sole commission officials known to have been interviewed. They are also the only two commission officials with wide access to highly classified White House documents.
It is imperative not only that Gorelick and Zelikow resign but that the other Commission members be provided access to those documents. For any part of the information to be availabe only to the persons with conflicts of interests is simply unacceptable.
Around the Econoblogs
There are a number of excellent posts up at Angry Bear. AB proposes a science experiment on Mars that bears an uncanny resemblance to the ethanol program here at home.
Meanwhile, Kash dispels some myths about real estate and calls the top of the housing market.
Atrios notes that those who really believe in a strong dollar policy work at the central banks of Japan and China.
Brad DeLong discusses broadening the tax base by closing loopholes and eliminating the cap on wages subject to FICA taxes. He also sees nothing wrong with raising the marginal rate for the top bracket.
Max lists the ways the current administration is pursuing a policy of “government by time bomb.”
Closer to home (my home that is) the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that in December, Georgia experienced a 65% increase in jobless claims with new claims returning to recession levels:
The December unemployment report for Georgia echoes last week's news that the nation's payrolls barely expanded during the month. But it contrasts with months of reports showing metro Atlanta as a jobs leader.Claims for unemployment benefits surged in some of Georgia's largest metro areas: up 46 percent in metro Atlanta; 60 percent in Macon; 112 percent in Athens; 130 percent in Savannah; and 112 percent in Albany.
More ominously, December's claims did not include the impact of a number of plant closings that have been announced, said Thurmond. "The big layoffs are in the next 60 to 90 days," he said.
Supply Your Own Punch Line
Some news stories are so good that they need no comment. The Associated Press carried one such story:
Three men streaking through the warmth of a Denny's restaurant were chilled and chagrined when they spotted a thief driving away in their getaway car, their clothing inside…The trio, wearing only shoes and hats, entered the restaurant in north Spokane at about 5 a.m. Wednesday. They left their car running outside so they could make a quick exit.
But a man eating inside the restaurant saw the running vehicle and stole it, along with the streakers' clothes, (Police Spokesman) Dick Cottam said.The streakers watched through the windows as their car drove away, Cottam said. They ran outside but could not catch it.
It appears that Mr. Cottam was aware of the humor inherent in the situation:
Naked in the 20-degree weather, the three young men huddled behind cars in an adjacent parking lot until police arrived."I don't think they were hiding. I think they were just concealing themselves," police spokesman Dick Cottam said.
You can supply your own punch line here.
January 15, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
On the Importance of Remaining Silent
Everyone who has watched police dramas on television knows that when the police ask questions of a suspect, the best policy is for the suspect to keep his mouth firmly shut.
Early in his legal career, a former law partner of mine was appointed to represent Joey, a young West Virginian accused of arson. Joey was charged with setting fire to a high school.
The police found Joey standing in front of the blazing school house. He was dressed in black pants and a black sweatshirt. He wore a black ski mask. In each hand, he carried an empty five gallon kerosene can.
Upon apprehending Joey and reading him his Miranda rights, the police asked Joey what he was doing at the school. Joey was not the sharpest knife in the drawer but he was experienced in interactions with law enforcement and he was not about to confess. He just blurted out the first thing that came into his head.
He explained his presence at the scene by saying that “I needed to make a phone call.” That was not a persuasive response as it was 2:00 a.m., the school was closed and there was no public phone on the premises. That answer helped convince the people of West Virginia to assume the burden of providing for Joey’s room and board for the next decade or so. Several recent events reminded me of Joey’s story.
Via Chris Mooney by way of Kevin Drum, I learned that the administration changed the wording of a HHS draft report on racial disparities in health care. The Washington Post:
The National Healthcare Disparities Report was intended by HHS to be a comprehensive look at the scope and reasons for inequalities in health care. A number of studies have shown that even among people with identical diseases and the same income level, minorities are less likely to be diagnosed promptly and more likely to receive sub-optimal care. Documented disparities exist in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, heart disease, AIDS, diabetes, pediatric illness, mental disorders and other conditions. They also exist in surgical procedures and nursing home services.The report was based on an earlier study by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, an independent institution that advises the government on scientific questions.
An IOM report suggested last year that widespread racial differences in health care "are rooted in historic and contemporary inequities" and asserted that stereotyping and bias by doctors, hospitals and other care providers may be at fault...
"The final [HHS] report was much more positive and upbeat" than the draft, said Donald Steinwachs, a member of the IOM committee. The final version, he said, "does not really help people focus on the major problem areas."
Congressman Henry Waxman charged that the administration was white washing the report. He called the changes a “case study in politics and science." The Post also quotes Waxman as follows:
"In effect, they whitewashed the issue away, even though they were told that health care disparities are a national problem and pervasive and carry a significant personal and societal price," he said. "It's hard not to reach the obvious result that HHS is wishing the problem away."
The changes in the report are important in how the problem will be perceived and addressed by the Congress. As UPI reports:
The differences vary from subtle to direct but the positive tone of the final summary does raise concerns about how the report might be received by lawmakers in a position to influence funding for research on or solutions to disparity problems. Optimistically stipulating that lawmakers read the entire report and not just the summary, the question is whether such a beginning in any way softens the impact of the actual data so whatever problems are addressed appear less severe.A legislative staffer told UPI the changes made to the final summary were "significant" and could "influence what the top priorities will be in healthcare policy."
In effect, Waxman is charging the administration with using politics to trump science in order to down play very real problems of racial disparity in healthcare.
How did the administration respond to those charges? Did they lawyer up and refuse to comment? Did they blurt out a non-denial like Joey? Nope, in effect, they confessed.
They admitted that the draft report was changed at the direction of top administration officials. They also admitted that the purpose was to “change the tone” of the report. They acknowledge that they wanted the report to seem “half full” instead of “half empty.” As noted, the effect of “changing the tone” would tend to lower the profile of the problem and reduce the pressure to fund changes to correct the problem. It is hard to understand the administration’s response to Waxman’s charges as anything other than having blurted out a confession.
Sometimes even those much more sophisticated than Joey from West Virginia take the route of blurting out information that, while short of an actual confession, still proves to be harmful.
Josh Marshall points us to a transcript of a discussion of the Paul O’Neill matter on CNN.
Wolf Blitzer had Peter Beinart of The New Republic and Deborah Perry of the Independent Women’s Forum on to discuss the issue. Blitzer turned the discussion to the Treasury Department’s investigation of whether or not O’Neill disclosed classified documents.
Beinart then charged that the administration was being hypocritical in investigating O’Neill for the alleged disclosure of confidential documents because the President and other administration officials had disclosed classified information to Bob Woodward when he was writing a book highly favorable to the administration.
BEINART: … What we do know is that the Bush administration agreed to release similar documents to Bob Woodward for a very flattering book about the way the process of the Iraq war was decided. So I think there could be something of hypocrisy here in going after O'Neill for what seems to be the same thing.
Now perhaps Perry, in her role as Bush defender and O’Neill attacker, was not prepared for the hypocrisy charge. Perhaps it was just not in her talking points. Perhaps, like Joey from West Virginia, she just blurted out the first thing that came into her head. At any rate, what Perry said was:
PERRY: But there is a difference here, because some of those documents were marked secret that were shared to "60 Minutes."(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: In Woodward's book, he cited all sorts of secret, classified information in his book that people were making available to him.
PERRY: But, again, that was the Bush administration working with Bob Woodward in terms of what they were willing to...
The “distinction” Perry “drew” to rebut the charge of hypocrisy was that the administration was willing to provide classfied information to the reporter writing a favorable book. And exactly where is the phone you planed to use to make the call, Joey?
My final example has to do with Rush Limbaugh. After news reports charged him with illegally obtaining prescription drugs, he decided to lawyer up. He went on his radio program and announced that, on the advice of his lawyer, he could not tell his side of the story although he really, really wished he could.
That move may have been smart but it was not necessarily effective. After consulting with his lawyer, Rush emerged with a carefully thought out explanation of his conduct. As World O’Crap has put it, Rush’s explanation is that:
While cleaning his house, Wilma learned that poor Rush had undergone all these unsuccessful medical procedures and was taking lots of pain medication. So, she and husband obtained the security access codes to his Palm Beach studio and cornered him in the parking garage to his studio, where they demanded 4 million dollars or they would tell the Enquirer about Rush's completely legal use of medication prescribed for legitimate medical conditions.
So what is the lesson to be drawn from those examples? Simply put, if the police catch you at 2:00 a.m. in front of a burning school, dressed all in black and carrying two empty kerosene cans, it doesn’t really much matter what you say.
Kanadehon Chushingura
Saturdays, when mom is out of the house, I share jidai-geki(period/costume film) with Grace, courtesy of IFC, and the fact that I can run a DVD player with Winnie the Pooh in screening room A (my downstairs sort-of-office), and a VHS player with Spot or Little Bear in screening room B (my upstairs bedroom). When we watched Kurasawa's The Hidden Fortress (Kakushi Toride No San-Akunin) we talked about not just the two comic peasants, but of things hidden in plain sight -- gold in sticks, the princess as a mute, the servant as princess, and the general as peasant. Hidding in plain sight is how Abenakis survived from the 5th Abenaki War into the 1960s. But what sticks is the presence of a piety that is unchristian, the peasants' fire festival:
The life of a man / Burn it with fire / The life of an insect / Throw it into the fire / Ponder and you will see / The world is dark / and this floating world / is a dream.
Someday she will see Macbeth, but the archery sequence of Throne of Blood (Kumonosu-Jo) is where memory begins -- in flights of arrows.
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Which brings me to Kanadehon Chushingura, the Treasury of the Loyal Retainers, written in 1748 about the events of 1701-1703. Until the Meiji Restoration in 1868, puppet and kabuki playwrights changed the time, location, and character names in order to avoid offending the Tokugawa shogun.
On a snowy evening in December 1703, forty-seven (or forty-six) samurai burst into the mansion of the powerful nobleman responsible for the wrongful death of their former master, the lord of Ako. After waiting two long years to satisfy their vengeance, the loyal samurai killed the nobleman and later surrendered themselves to the priests of a Buddhist temple. This vendetta served as the basis for the most famous work of the traditional Japanese theater, and film versions were made in 1941/1942 by Mizoguchi Kenji and again in 1962 by Inagaki Hiroshi. The story of the Ako Ronin became the most famous of all Japanese revenge tales.
In 1703, during the course of the Third Abenaki War (Queen Anne's War), Eastern Abenakis wiped out the Massachusetts-Bay settlements north of the Merrimack, for the third time, and in February 1704, Abenaki militia from the Kennebek River town of Norridgewok staged a forced march to the middle Connecticut River town of Deerfield, surprising the garrison and killing fifty and taking a hundred prisoners, halting Boston's enroachment on upper Connecticut Abenaki towns. The Deerfield Raid.
The Ako Ronin continue to live in the aesthetic consciousness in Japan. To Americans, colonial 1703 seems impossibly distant, closer to the Middle Ages than Faneuil Hall (1742), not the mid-point in the series of conflicts, most of which began in Europe -- The Second War of Puritan Conquest (1675), King William's War -- The War of the League of Augsburg (1689-1697), Queen Ann's War -- the War of Spanish Succession (1702-1713), Drummer's War (1722-1727), and King George's War -- The War of Austrian Succession (1744-48), the five Abenaki Wars against the Bostonaki (Massachusetts-Bay), and finally, the real first world war -- The Seven Years War (1754-1763), fought in Europe and India between France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, and (after 1762) Spain on the one side and Prussia, Great Britain, and Hanover on the other, and in North America as the "French and Indians War".
In Japan, discussion of the issues presented by the Ako Ronin raid is lively. In the United States, discussion of the issues presented by the Norridgewok Militia raid, is not.
This came to mind when I tried to explain to a paid staffer in Clark's Little Rock office why I'd set up a principals meet between his employer and an upper Connecticut Abenaki Chief. For one of us, Deerfield is the accessible past, and Grace's grandmother Pat, a Chief, spoke of Norridgewok as "home". I know he didn't understand, but he was eager to steal the offered gift.
Grace and I will continue to watch film. The costume play can visualize the way of living of old Japanese before some influence from Europe as a kind of lost beauty of life and feeling. It can also attempt to express some social vision, even if just a moment away from Christians.
Written during a child's sleep disorder event, midnight to 5am. It is only -5 degrees outside, with the wind -24 degrees. Today the sea was smoking. Tomorrow it will be colder. There will be sea ice.
Please Welcome
Please provide a warm welcome to Nancy Bea Miller of Genre Cookshop. Nancy is an artist. Her paintings may be found here. Nancy is also the mother of an autistic son. She has some wonderful photos of her son Henry posted on her blog. Here at Wampum, we are always happy to learn of other POA’s who have chosen to write about autism. Pay a visit Nancy and Henry.
Call me Ishmael
[the full, long, working, version of this is at triballaw.]
I don't know how I missed this. One of Dean's first acts after Snelling's death was to reverse his position on Hydro-Quebec's Great Whale project -- a project that was known at the time to be the sole cause for a five-fold increase in neo-natal and ante-natal methylmercury uptake in children in Cree and Innu villages located in the roadless area of northern Quebec. He could have killed The Great Whale.
We joke in Maine that all a person needs to take the temprature in the woods is a trout, a reference to Houlter-Chem and down-wind fall-out from dirty coal plants in Ohio (I'll have an order of acid rain with a side of methylmercury please). But we don't have five-fold above "safe", we're just above "safe". For fish eaters who are not nursing mothers, mothers-to-be, and children under age 5, who uh, don't eat local fish more than once a week or something.
January 13, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Weather in Maine...
Today has been a rather tough day in the PoA (Parent of Autistics) department, and I'll write more on that tomorrow. But tonight, in light of the plunging temperatures, I'll close the evening with a bit of humor forwarded from the spouse of a "Mainiac-in-Exile" (terrible situation, that is...)
COLD ENOUGH?
60 above zero:
Floridians turn on the heat.
People in Maine plant gardens.
50 above zero:
Californians shiver uncontrollably.
People in Biddeford sunbathe.
40 above zero:
Italian & English cars won't start.
People in Portland drive with the windows down.
32 above zero:
Distilled water freezes.
Ends swimming season in Maine.
20 above zero:
Floridians put on coats, thermal underwear, gloves, wool hats.
People in Maine throw on a flannel shirt.
15 above zero:
NC landlords finally turn up the heat.
People in Kennebunk have the last cookout before it gets cold.
Zero:
People in Miami all die.
People in Maine close the windows.
10 below zero:
Californians fly away to Mexico.
People in Maine get out their winter coats.
25 below zero:
Hollywood disintegrates.
The Girl Scouts in Maine are selling cookies door to door.
40 below zero: (Note: tonight's anticipated wind chills)
Washington, DC runs out of hot air.
People in Maine let the dogs sleep indoors.
100 below zero:
Santa Claus abandons the North Pole.
Mainers get frustrated because they can't start the pickup truck on the first try.
460 below zero:
ALL atomic motion stops (absolute zero on the Kelvin scale).
Maine public schools may close.
500 below zero:
Hell freezes over.
People in Maine start saying..."Cold 'nuff fer ya?"
2003 Koufax Nominations: Best Expert Blog
This category honors those who bring a high degree of expertise to a particular subject and share it with us on their blog. Perhaps, in imitation of certain people on the right, we should name it the “I used to like him when he wrote about ____, but now he is so shrill” award. The nominees for the 2003 Koufax Award for Best Expert Blog are:
About Last Night by Terry Teachout for expertise in the arts.
Angry Bear by Angry Bear and Kash for expertise in economics.
Balkinization by Prof. Jack Balkin for expertise in constitutional law.
The Bloviator for Public health issues.
Confined Space by Jordan Barab on workplace health and safety.
How Appealing by Howard Bashman on appellate litigation.
Informed Comment by Professor Juan Cole for expertise in the history of the Middle East and South Asia.
Derek Lowe's In the Pipeline for expertise in pharmaceutical research.
Maxspeak by Max Sawicky for expertise in economics.
Narco News for reporting on the Drug War.
John Quiggin for expertise in economics.
Semi Daily Journal by Brad DeLong for expertise in economics.
Talk Left by Jeralyn Merritt for expertise in criminal law.
Trish Wilson for expertise in father’s rights and child custody issues. See for example Fathers' Rights Activists Linked To Bomb Hoaxes.
Hope, Buzz and Secretin
The autism community received some bad news last week when it was announced that the clinical trials of secretin as a treatment for autism produced no greater benefit than a placebo.
That news was not particularly surprising as previous studies had failed to show any benefit to from secretin therapy (links via Derek Lowe who has an excellent post on the subject).
With regard to the story of secretin in the autism community, the Times knows the words but does not have the melody:
In 1996, Parker Beck, an autistic boy in New Hampshire, was given secretin to help diagnose gastrointestinal problems, which afflict many children with autism. His mother, Victoria Beck, soon noticed an improvement in his development and began to suspect the secretin.When the Becks tried to obtain more treatments for Parker and his medical records from the University of Maryland, where he had the diagnostic procedure, they were rebuffed, Mrs. Beck said. The family then learned that the university was applying for a patent on using secretin in autism. When the Becks told the university their history, the university listed her as an inventor and assigned her the patent rights. She in turn licensed them to Repligen, whose president, Walter C. Herlihy, has two autistic daughters.
The news was reported on television and in newspapers in 1998 and 1999 and led to a flurry of interest in secretin. Some parents obtained the version for pancreatic disorders. Some ordered it from overseas.
A “flurry of interest in secretin” does not do justice to the reaction of the autism community to the news reports about secretin.
My son was diagnosed in 1997. At that time, all I knew about autism I had learned from Rainman, and I had never heard of secretin. That quickly changed.
By 1997, secretin had taken the autism community by storm. It was the miracle that was going to save our kids. The vendor sections of various autism conferences were filled with people selling secretin in vials, secretin in lotions, videotapes about secretin therapy, books about it, advice on the dosages and number of treatments and various other items. Numerous people were claiming complete cures. Children who had never spoken before, were said to have been given a shot of secretin and on the way home had calmly said, “Mother, what are we having for dinner tonight? I may be in the mood of pizza.” No claim of the effectiveness of secretin was too outrageous to be believed.
At an autism conference I attended, a researcher noted that the evidence to support the buzz did not yet exist. He was booed as roundly as a stock analyst in 1998 suggesting that dotcoms be avoided until they had earnings.
I do not have the words to adequately describe the buzz that surrounded secretin within the autism community. Remember the buzz about Segway before it was revealed to be a scooter too complex for George W. Bush to operate? That was a slight murmur compared to the buzz generated within the autism community by reports about secretin.
Human secretin, swine secretin, herbal secretin (which as far as I can tell is an oxymoron) and synthetic secretin were all hawked relentlessly to the parents of autistic children. The price of secretin skyrocketed. People were paying $2,000 for an amount of secretin that before the buzz had cost about $30. It is not an exaggeration to say that parents were mortgaging their homes to purchase secretin for their kids. We now know that a sugar pill would have been equally effective.
Please note that all of that buzz was generated by the fact that a few autistic children had improved after being given secretin for digestive problems. The autism community could not wait for double blind and placebo tested trials. We wanted our miracle and we wanted it now.
How could so many people be so willing to believe in a miracle cure based on so little evidence? I know some of those people. They are not stupid or ignorant. They are bright people with advanced degrees, good jobs and an understanding of the scientific method. They also have autistic children.
They bought the buzz and, in some cases, bought the secretin at exorbitant prices because secretin represented hope. They desperately needed hope and they had no other place to turn to find it. The hucksters were selling hope and were willing to charge all the market would bear.
It is not just secretin that is sold as a proxy for hope. From where I sit writing this, I can look at part of a bookcase. From here, I can see literature about secretin, ABA, holding therapy, Son Rise, play therapy, sensory integration therapy, horseback riding therapy, auditory integration therapy, glutton/casein free diets, the TEACHH program, the picture exchange communication system, vitamin therapy and Lovaas. A lamp blocks my view of the rest of the literature. I think some of those therapies are useful and others are shams. Secretin may yet be shown to help a sub-group of autistics. None are miracle cures. The one common characteristic of those therapies is that they offer some measure of hope to a desperate group of people.
Last summer, Pat Cooper, the mother of Torrance Cantrell, helped members of her church hold down her eight year old autistic son during an exorcism. The exorcism was supposed to drive the autism demons from his body. The church members sat on Torrance, compressing his chest until he was no longer able to draw breath. He died during the "service."
Ms. Cooper did not want to harm her child. She permitted and participated in the the exorcism because it offered hope, she needed hope and hope was not available from any other source.
The secretin story is really no different.
January 12, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
The Note
I made The Note today. With all the swirling rush of fast-paced postings and hundreds of comments on the poliblogs -- eschaton and kos in particular, my quiet little project bore fruit today. The first Noted principal-chiefs meet in the East. The first Noted tribal council candidate endorsement in the East. The first (and necessarily the only) Noted endorsement by a tribe of a candidate other than the governor of the state surrounding the tribe. Please Note: Working with primary campaigns and tribal councils is like herding cats. Pole cats.
More importantly, I had to sign papers today, taking on the awful responsibility of fiduciary duty for an untold number of boxes of Girl Scout cookies, and ensuring the adult supervision of a child embarked on a temporary career of commerce in the public interest. It is a good thing I like cookies.
Best Commentor
This category is back by request of the readers. It honors those whose comments animate many of the lefty blogs. Indeed, the comments on many blogs are as interesting and lively as the main page. The nominees for the 2003 Koufax Award for Best Commentor are:
Agitpropre who posts at Crooked Timber, MaxSpeak, Poorman, Whiskey Bar and Oliver Willis
Baal Shem Ra, who says very smart things at Matt Yglesias
Conrad Barwa who posts at Head Heeb. See this thread for instance
Chris Bowers who comments at Daily Kos
cosmic grappler who posts at Cal Pundit, the Agitator, the Poorman and other splaces.
Demetrios who posts many places including Not Geniuses and Oliver Willis
David Ehrenstein who can often be found at Atrios
Dr. Pedant who comments at Calpundit, MaxSpeak, TalkLeft and other places
John M. Ford who posts at Electrolite, Making Light, and Neil Gaiman's Journal
The Ghost of Bill Hicks who comments at Pandagon, Whiskey Bar, Calpundit and other places
Hunter who appears to comment at Whiskey Bar, Fanatical Apathy and perhaps other places
John Isbell who comments in any number of places including Body and Soul and recently began posting at Open Source Politics
Donald Johnson who posts at many places including Body and Soul
MattB who comments at Matt Yglesias, Pandagon, Not Geniuses and other places
Steve Plonk who posts at South Knox Bubba, Classless Warfare and North Georgia Dogma among other places
praktile who comments at Calpundit, Matthew Ygelasias and elsewhere
Rea who posts nearly everywhere and whose comments about the law I find particularly insightful
Ikraam Saeed of Path of the Paddle who comments frequently at Yglesias and Calpundit
Stef who comments many places including at MedRants
T Chris who posts at Talk Left and other places
Thumb did an admirable job guesting for Atrios and comments there as well as at Calpundit and elsewhere. Thumb’s guest post at Hullabaloo entitled Are psychopaths running our government? was nominated for Best Post and through my mistake was not included on the list. My apologies to Thumb
Woot who is often on the comment board at Atrios.
Zizka, formerly of Vanity Site now posting at Seeing the Forest and who can be found commenting many places including at Atrios and Mathew Yglesias.
Senômoziimlases
There was a moment missed in yesterday's debate, but before I cut the bead from the shell, a short cultural detour.
Long ago, the Creator made and gave many gifts to man to help him during his life. The Creator made the lives of the Abenaki very good, with plenty of food to gather, grow, and hunt. The Maple tree at that time was one of these very wonderful and special gifts from the Creator. The sap was as thick and sweet as honey. All you had to do was to break the end off of a branch and the syrup would flow out.In these days Gluskabe would go from village to village to keep an eye on the Abenaki for the Creator. One day Gluskabe came to an abandoned village. The village was in disrepair, the fields were over-grown, and the fires had gone cold. He wondered what had happened to the Abenaki.
He looked around and around, until he heard a stange sound. As he went towards the sound he could tell that it was the sound of many Abenakis moaning. The moaning did not sound like people in pain but more like the sound of contentment. As he got closer he saw a large stand of beautiful maple trees. As he got closer still he saw that all the Abenakis were lying on their backs under the trees with the end of a branch broken off and dripping maple syrup into their mouths.
The maple syrup had fattened them up so much and made them so lazy that they could barely move. Gluskabe told them to get up and go back to their village to re-kindle the fires and to repair the village. But the Abenaki did not listen. They told him that they were content to lie there and to enjoy the maple syrup.
When Gluskabe reported this to the Creator, it was decided that it was again time that man needed another lesson to understand the Creator's ways. The Creator instructed Gluskabe to fill the maple trees with water. So Glukabe made a large bucket from birch bark and went to the river to get water. He added water, and added more water until the sap was that like water. Some say he added a measure of water for each day between moons, or nearly 30 times what it was as thick syrup. After a while the Abenaki began to get up because the sap was no longer so thick and sweet.
They asked Gluskabe "where has our sweet drink gone?" He told them that this is the way it will be from now on. Gluskabe told them that if they wanted the syrup again that they would have to work hard to get it. The sap would flow sweet only once a year before the new year of spring.
The Abenaki were shown that making syrup would take much work. Birch bark buckets would need to be made to collect the sap. Wood would need to be gathered to make fires to heat rocks, and the rocks would need to be put into the sap to boil the water out to make the thick sweet syrup that they once were so fond of. He also told them that they could get the sap for only a short time each year so that they would remember the error of their ways.
And so it is still to this day, each spring Abenakis remember Gluskabe's lesson in honoring Creator's gifts and work hard to gather the maple syrup we love so much.
OK, now to the political shell midden, with our hooked knife, the little hammer, and the bone drill.
Reverend Al Sharpton likes his sap thick. In September I spent 20 minutes briefing Frankie Watkins, then his campaign manager, on Dean's program of political extermination of (Western) Abenaki in Vermont, the Willie Horten campaign against a really inoculous, in fact completely ridiculous folkloric "recognition" bill, which he claimed would cloud title to all land in Vermont, and cause casinos to spring up anywhere in Vermont, along with their attendant criminality. Whether that was supposed to parse as Mafia or Tribal criminality was left to Vermont's troubled White voters. Frankie got it. His penny dropped. He knew we'd a history of "strange fruit", odd trips to the State's Women's Correctional Medical facilities, unsolved murders, and lots and lots of DWI (driving while indian). The phrase "Woods Nigger" sounded right to his cultured ear as the two word summation of what it was, and is, to be at the sharp end of the White Stick. His client however, is comfortable with leaving instutional racism something that only affects blacks and hispanics who Howard Dean didn't appoint to any governmental administrative positions of note. The fat sap for the ones who aren't willing, or compelled, to work. I'm sure there are other reasons than this for Frankie firing his client, but this one works for me.
From the time of the New Deal, Black scholarship in the United States has articulated a theory of racism. This is a work of social anthropology or political science or sociology or history that is vast. The hard work of hundreds and hundreds of scholars, degreed or not, in and out of the NAACP, the SCLC, the UFW, the CP-USA, and on and on. Al Sharpton has passed on the opportunity to extend the political discussion of power, privilege, exclusion and race from the (absurd in the context of Vermont) spy vs spy simplicity of white vs black, ammended by the addition of (equally absurd in the context of Vermont) white vs black and/or Spanish-speaking. He couldn't be bothered to cut and tote the wood through the snow and boil the sap down to the real brown sugar. Senômoziimlases.
To be sure, there is a study anyone honestly interested in the dynamics of race and crime in Howard Dean's Vermont should read, the Final Report (Jan 2003) of the Vermont Center for Justice Research, "Exploring the Dynamics of Race and Crime using Vermont's NIBRS Data". The study uses Census 2000 data to define the Abenaki population in Vermont, which misses the non-radicalized who prefer to continue the tradition of hiding in plain sight (non-declaration), so half of the actual population is missed. Howard's Vermont does have an unwritten DWB (driving while black) statute. It has an even more rigerous DWI (driving while indian) statute. It was wicked clever of Ho Ho to run a Confederate rabbit in front of the oppo research hounds, he got 100% mindshare on race-means-black, and a free-ride on Northern Racism.
I know who lost the debate last night. Intellectualism. Indians. The faltering coalition of immigrant minorities and natives. Whitie won last night, with an assist from the colored bench. Ho Ho Rah.
Update: The Note finally gets a clue:
12:45 pm: Gen. Clark receives the endorsement of the Abenaki tribe at the Museum of Natural History, Concord, N.H.
January 09, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
2003 Koufax Award Nominees: Best Blog Design
The category is pretty much self explanatory, and if you note the lack of serious design elements here at Wampum, you won't ask us to try and provide any pointers on good design.
This year's nominees are:
Some quick thoughts on the Employment Report...
I have to be at work at 10 this morning, so can only give some cursory thoughts on December's Employment Situation report released this morning.
Good news? The unemployment rate dropped to 5.7%
The bad news? Just about everything else in the report, at least from what I can see in my [very] brief once-over.
New jobs created: 1,000. Market expected 148K.
Job losses in manufacturing (26,000), retail (38,000), and finance (not specified). There were gains in professional services, two thirds of which were temporary workers, and in construction.
Hundreds of thousands (309K) of workers left the civilian labor force, and the total number of individuals not in the labor force increased by over a half a million, meaning even some new graduates and immigrants aren't actively looking for work. According to the BLS, there were "433,000 discouraged workers in December, also about the same as in December 2002." Well, actually, there were 398,000, an increase of 35,000, or 8.8%. But whose counting (unless you're one of the discouraged workers.) The number of people "marginally" attached to the labor force is now 1.5 million, which the BLS also claims is that same as the 1.4 million last year. Picky, picky, I know. A hundred thousand here, a hundred thousand there.
Hourly earnings are still relatively stagnant, only increasing $.03 over the month. Since July, worker bee hourly wages are up only seven cents, well below the annual increases seen in the 1990s of 40-50 cents. And as I mentioned the other day, food and fuel prices are well outpacing worker salary increases. In addition, worker hours decreased, pulling down weekly earnings, another hit to the average Joe and Jane's wallet.
I'm sure there's more here, but I need to jump in the shower, in order to keep my own underpaying worker bee job, at least for a few more weeks.
January 08, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
2003 Koufax Awards – Most Deserving of Wider Recognition
This is another new category suggested in comments by readers. I have changed the name from “Most Unappreciated” to “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” as that far more accurately expresses the idea (thanks David for suggesting the change). Some of the blogs listed below must already be greatly appreciated as they have been nominated in other categories. Nonetheless, they may well be deserving of even wider recognition. Make some more room on your blogroll for the Nominees for the 2003 Koufax Award for Most Deserving of Wider Recognition:
Best of the Blogs
Beyond Corporate
The Head Heeb
How to Learn Swedish
Update:
Due to my error, The Bloviator was ommitred from the list of nominees in this category. My apologies to Ross at the The Bloviator for the error.
Consumer priorities
The paragraphs below were buried deep in a Reuter's piece on how last minute retails sales "saved" the critical selling season for some retailers. Now, ignoring the fact that retailers had to lure in those last minute consumers with deep discounts, the item "demographics" are intriguing:
Kohl's said its December same-store sales slipped 1.2 percent, matching Wall Street expectations, but slashed its fourth-quarter forecast to a range of 68 cents to 70 cents per share. Analysts had expected 88 cents, according to Reuters Research. Most analysts had already lowered their forecasts amid expectations for a poor December performance."The trend that we're seeing is, the retailers with expertise in fashion ... had strong sales," said Bill Dreher, retail analyst with Deutsche Bank.
"It's the women's fashion in the moderate channel that really seemed to miss this holiday," he said. "We are seeing sales under pressure and even greater pressure on the gross margin side."
I noticed this trend at Bean this season; women calling and buying presents for others, but holding off on purchases for themselves. In light of Walmart's pre-holiday warnings that they saw a trend of "payday shopping", I'm still not getting the warm recovery-fuzzies.
Update: After hearing a similar report on NPR just a minute ago, I'm thinking more about the demographics of this holiday shopping. Jewelry store sales were robust, as were other luxury goods. I obviously can't escape my years as an anthropologist on gender, as I'm wondering if there's currently a gender-gap in consumer confidence. Are men, believing their finances will only get better under the current "recovery" willing to buy their SOs and families frivolous luxury items, whereas women, still watching grocery and heating bills climb, are still spending with caution?
Guess it's time to see if consumer confidence numbers break down by gender.
Seasonal worker bees and unemployment stats
Unemployment claims are up by 14,000 this week, adding a touch more uncertainty to the Bush Administration's claims that all is right with the economy. Now, before anyone gets hot and bothered my reporting what might amount to a one week blip, and "of course new claims will rise due to post-holiday season layoffs", let's remember that the DOL already compensates for such factors in it's seasonal adjustments. In fact, from what I remember from previous delvings back into the DOL archives, the factor is generally always 190+ or more in early January, meaning that the number of claims included in the statistics are nearly half as much as actually reported, due to the "seasonal adjustment." Although the topic of seasonal adjustment of uninsurance claims was broached a few weeks ago by Dave Johnson on Seeing the Forest, I'm pretty comfortable that the seasonal adjustments are not being rigged. Not that I think upper level Bushies are incapable of stooping to such actions, but, to be honest, they really don't need to at this point. A number of labor-related factors which play into the UI claims numbers are breaking the Administration's way already, namely long-term unemployment in relation to seasonal higher, the latter factor the general reason for the high statistical factor during January.
See, most states have employment tenure requirements for eligibility for unemployment insurance; essentially, you need to have worked a set number of hours and or made a base income, generally in the four out of five quarters prior to and including the quarter of layoff. During periods of low long-term unemployment, even workers in seasonal jobs may have enough hours or income from previous jobs in those relevant quarters. However, in periods of high long-term employment, many of those taking seasonal work haven't worked for some time, or only part-time, and so may not meet the income eligibility requirements.
In addition, most employers of seasonal workers know how the systems works, and will make sure their hiring and layoffs do not carry over to more than one quarter, hence, the large surge of layoffs just before the New Year, e.g., start of a new quarter. If they want to be really cruel, they'll give those workers just a few hours in the new quarter, but not enough to reach the necessary base amount.
Since we are currently in a period with the highest long-term unemployment in many decades, a significant number of the seasonal workers currently being laid off will never even apply for unemployment benefits. In addition, these untold numbers dilute the seasonal factors for unemployment claims, since in previous low long-term unemployment years, these workers would have been counted, and are part of the rationale behind the high January factor.
Ironically, these seasonal workers who will never submit first time claims will have been counted in Decembers household and industry surveys, and thus will factor into what one might suspect to be a decrease in the month's unemployment rate and increase in jobs, all due out tomorrow. On the other hand, however, their numbers may also show up in the January report. By then, however, I suspect the BLS will have figured out some way of "adjusting" the numbers.
Update: Amazing how AP is happy to inject haphard speculation into it's news report:
Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported new claims for unemployment benefits increased last week following three straight weeks of declines. New applications filed for unemployment insurance rose to 353,000, an increase of 14,000 for the week ending Jan. 3. That compared to 339,000 new applications in the previous week, when claims were at their lowest level since January 2001.The increase could have resulted in part from filings by people who took temporary holiday season jobs, but the Labor Department did not cite any special factors.
Clearly, whoever AP has working the DOL desk this morning doesn't have a clue as to fact that the goverment already adjusts for season factors; hence the reason that only an increase of 14,000 was reported, versus the actual increase of 30,431 new lucky duckies.
2003 Koufax Awards nominations: Best Group Blog
This is a new category for the Koufax awards this year. A group is defined as two or more regular contributors.
January 07, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
2003 Koufax Awards – Best Writing Nominees
I have to admit that Best Writing is my favorite of all the Koufax Award categories. The depth of the quality writers on the left is simply staggering. This year we have about forty nominees for the category. Each of the nominees is worthy of recognition. Almost all are on my regular reading list. As a reader, I am thankful for all the great writing. As a writer, I am envious of their talent.
The nominees for the 2003 Koufax Award for Best writing are:
Roger Ailes (the one we like)
The Antic Muse (now on hiatus)
Blogorrhoea
Body and Soul by Jeanne D’Arc
Busy Busy Busy (or in the shorter form, “Busy”) by Elton Beard
Calpundit by Kevin Drum
Crooked Timber has no fewer than four members of the group nominated for Best Writing. Those four are Ted Barlow, Daniel Davies, Keiran Healy and Henry Farrell
David E.’s Fablog by David Ehrenstein
Semi Daily Journal by Brad DeLong
Hullabaloo by Digby
Late Night Thoughts by Emma (who, by the way, is back)
Short Story; Long Pier
MaxSpeak by Max Sawicky
Making Light by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Notes On the Atrocities
Orcinus by David Neiwert
Pandagon By Jesse Taylor and Ezra Klein
The Rittenhouse Review by Jim Capozzola
The Road To Surfdom by Tim Dunlop
The Sideshow by Avedon Carol
The Slacktivist by Fred Clark
SnarkSpot by Jennifer Weiner
Suburban Guerilla by Susan Madrak
Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall
Whiskey Bar by Billmon
World O’Crap
January 06, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
The Further Adventures of Bat Boy, half-bat, half-boy
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This week's episode has Bat Boy responsible for finding Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole. Several thoughts collided in sequence, like geese landing on ice -- is the straight story (4th ID G2 targets ad-Dawr outhouse pit-toilet and bingo) really any more credible than Bat Boy? The NYTimes ran a Kurds-get-Way story, Syria and Turkey are suddenly bent out of shape about ... their eligibility for commodity cheese maybe (nah, too NDN a reference), and then all the stories on all the tabloids seemed to speak at once. In tongues naturally.
It was a moment of epiphany, there at the checkout asile was Eric Alterman's answer to the media captive to party, a parallel political culture that answers Bush/Rove/Chenny/Ridge/Ashcroft "press opportunities" with news of equal weight and import -- Belgium destroyed by meteor, Bush sends 3,000 fire hydrants for the relief of sled dogs in the frozen north, al Qaeda breeds killer mosquitos. And Bat Boy. Bat Boy le hero. Our problem is that we think too much and laugh too little. Is Nedra actually worth all the froth and bother? Is she better than the Epic of Bat Boy?
In the last cycle Bat Boy endorsed Al Gore. If Trippi had a sense of humor he'd post a "Bat" for Bat Boy to endorse, or stage the musical, with his client doing a cameo as ... a uniformed police officer. The checkout asile is not to be missed.
2003 Koufax Award Nominations -- Best Conservative, or Non-Liberal, Blog
This is the first year we have included a Best Conservative Blog category. This category is, of course, informally known as the Drysdale. Inclusion of this category was suggested in comments.
So, who is your favorite right of center blogger. We need to narrow the list below to 7 or so. Help us out with a comment. The blogs nominated for the 2003 Drysdale Award are:
Asymmetrical Information, home of Jane Galt and Mindles H. Dreck;
Balloon Juice by John Cole;
Jay Caruso and Jane Finch used to run the Daily Rant. They now hold forth at Classless Warfare. Jane, being sensible, is ineligible in this category;
Just One Minute by Tom McGuire;
Ricky West and company at North Georgia Dogma;
The Light of Reason by Arthur Silber;
Unqualified Offerings by Jim Henley;
An Unsealed Room by Allison Kaplan Sommer;
VodkaPundit by Stephen Green; and
Eugene Volokh of The Conspiracy.
[Note: due to popular outcry, the title of this category has been moderated (literally) somewhat]
2003 Koufax Award Nominations – Best Series
There were a lot of really good series posted in 2003. Below is a list of the nominations for the 2003 Koufax Award for Best Series. Let us know which ones you think should be the 7-10 finalists in this category.
The 2003 Koufax Award nominees for Best Series are:
Alas, A Blog for Ampersand’s series Constitutionality and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban located here, here, and here. Amersand has also been nominated for his series on The Wage Gap.
Hope Morrison writes at Appalachia Alumni Association as well as at Open Source Politics. Her series on Medicare has been nominated for Best Series.
A Skeptical Blog by Dominion has been nominated for his series Jim Bomford: Live in Fear of Homosexuals!. That series is in nine parts and may be located at one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine.
Ted Barlow, formerly at his own site and now at Crooked Timber has been nominated for his series of light bulb jokes. The light bulb warehouse is here.
The Bloviator is nominated for his posts constituting Cover the Unisured Week (scroll up).
The incomparable Jeanne D’Arc of Body and Soul is nominated for her series Looking for Alternatives located here, here, and here.
Chris Brooke of The Virtual Stoa is nominated for his Dead Socialist Watch series. The three most recent entries in that series, numbers 62, 63 and 64 are located here, here, and here, respectively.
Elton Beard’s Busy, Busy, Busy is nominated for his Shorter Series. I do not link to any specific post because you can just go to the site and begin reading.
Kevin Drum of Calpundit is nominated for his coverage of the Valerie Plame story as well as for his regular Friday Cat Blogging feature, the last entry of which is here.
Hesiod of Counterspin Central is nominated for his series The Bush Fedayeen Watch.
Damn Foreigner is nominated for the series on Maher Arar.
The Daily Kos is nominated for his How They Can Win series. That series includes entries on the campaigns of Lieberman, Dean, Edwards, Graham, Kerry, and Gephardt.
Daniel Davies, formerly of the D-Squared Digest is nominated for his Shorter Stephen den Beste posts (scroll up).
Gen Foods and Emma of Notes on The Atrocities are nominated for the Dossiers Project.
Sam Heldman of the dormant Ignatz is nominated for his series of posts on the judicial nomination of William Pryor.
Mark Kleiman is nominated for his series of Valerie Plame posts both on his own site and on Open Source Politics.
Deltoid by Tim Lambert is nominated for his series on John Lott.
Liberal Oasis is nominated for his weekly feature Sunday Talkshow Breakdown. A sampling of those entries are here, here, here, here, and here.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Making Light is nominated for her series on the missing or destroyed Iraqi Antiquities.
David Neiwert of Orcinus is nominated for his series Rush, Newspeak and Facism. That series can also be located at Cursor and in pdf ($5 donation requested) here.
Nathan Newman has three nominations in this category. He has been nominated for his series on the minimum wage, his series asking Is Growth Real? (located here, here, and here), as well as his series Why Unions?
Swopa of Needlenose is nominated for his coverage of the Valerie Plame scandal.
Charles Kuffner is the proprietor of Off the Kuff. Charles has been nominated for his exhaustive coverage of the Texas redistricting saga and for his series on the K-Mart Kiddie Roundup.
Pedantry is nominated for the series An Alternative To Normative Liberal Political Theory located here, here, and here.
Prometheus 6 is nominated for the series Startin' Stuff about reparations.
Jim Capazzola of The Rittenhouse Review is mominated for his series on former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt entitled Bye Bye Harvey. Those posts may be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.
The Slacktivist is nominated for Best Series for his Left Behind posts.
Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall is nominated for his coverage of the Valerie Plame matter.
Rev. Allen H. Brill of The Right Christians has two nominations in this category. First, he is nominated for his posts on The Bible and Economics. Those posts are here, here, and here. Allen is also nominated for his series The Gospel According to Adam Smith found here, here, and here.
Mac Thomason of War Liberal is nominated for his coverage of Roy Moore and the Ten Commandments.
That is a lot of great stuff. Which of those series stands above the others?
2003 Koufax Awards nominations: Most Humorous Blog
Though many of the authors of the nominees for Most Humorous Post are also nominated below, this category seeks to recognize blogs which are consistently humorous while still being thoughful. Once again, we do need to narrow the field, but grap some popcorn and a beer, put your feet up, cover your keyboard with plastic, and expect to pop a rib or three laughing.
How relevant is CPI anyway?
During my recent ponderings on stagnant worker bee hourly wages, I found myself knee-deep in the archives of a related economic indicator, CPI (Consumer Price Index.) Most Americans, myself included, probably think of CPI mostly as an "inflation" index used to adjust Social Security and other income. And no doubt this is an important use of CPI. However, a closer look at the details of CPI is very helpful when determining general "pain index" trends, something I've been thinking a great deal about as Bush's purported recovery remains jobless and otherwise troubled.
According to the BLS website, CPI program "produces monthly data on changes in the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of goods and services." And not all good and services are weighted equally; some, like food and shelter, rate higher than such categories as recreation and apparel. However, while useful as an overall gauge of price trends within the economy, the current weights used by the BLS struck me as not particularly useful when calculating an average American family's "pain index".
For example, while housing costs are weighted highest (40.8 out of 100), transportation (17.3) is weighted higher than food (14.6). Recreation (5.96) is weighted the same as medical care (5.94), with education and communication (5.8) not far behind both.
Now, perhaps I don't run a typical American household, but I certainly rate putting food on my kitchen table (8.3) significantly over buying new car (8.2). And if money was tight, I think that my video rentals (1.6) would suffer far more than my prescription drugs (1.4). In fact, for the past couple of years of less-than-infrequent unemployment, at least a third of the BLS's "market basket" was truly extraneous in our household.
So what does this all mean in compiling a useful "pain index"?
Well, the BLS asserts that it's market basket of goods and services increased only 1.8% in 12 months from November 2002 to November 2003. However, I decided to pull out a few of the "commodities" in the basket which I consider particularly important for more detailed scrutiny, particularly in light of the stagnation of wages for non-exempt workers over the past year.
| Goods or Service | Relative Importance (December 2002) | % Change Nov 02 - Nov 03 |
| All Food | 14.554 | 3.2 |
| Meat, Poultry, Fish | 2.222 | 10.6 |
| Veggies and Fruit | 1.234 | 3.5 |
| Food at home | 8.338 | 3.9 |
| Food out of home | 6.216 | 2.2 |
| Rent | 6.467 | 2.7 |
| Mortgage | 22.243 | 2.1 |
| Fuel Oil | 0.205 | 10.7 |
| Natural Gas & Electric | 3.399 | 6.7 |
| Gasoline | 3.091 | 5.5 |
| Medical Care | 5.961 | 3.5 |
| Telephone | 2.273 | -2.6 |
| Apparel | 4.220 | -1.9 |
So in what categories did prices decrease, besides apparel and telephones services? Well, nonalcoholic beverages (-0.9%), household furnishings (-2.3%), new (-2.1%) and used (-11.3%) cars, ISP/DSL/Cable (-11.0%), PCs (-18.5%), tobacco (-0.3%), and personal care products (-0.6%). These categories were deemed important enough by the BLS to counter the price increases noted above of somewhat more "basic" needs.
I'm in the process of synthesizing this into some form of index which will also include other factors, such as unemployment insurance limits and regional differences, wage trends, property and sales tax increases, etc. Probably won't be ready until after December's CPI figures are released next week. But stay tuned and feel free to suggest other "pain index" factors in comments below.
Quick addendum: With the recent rapid devaluation of the US dollar, will we see some of those categories which have "deflated" in price, namely apparel, electronics/PCs and household goods, increase substantially, since most are now imported?
Oliphant (the other one) for Bloggies
Apparently no one other than Indians were looking, back in 1978, when Bill Rehnquist, formerly a Hispanic voter hazer for the Arizona Republican Party and then Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and now its Chief Justice, decided to overthrow three hundred years of political accomodation and co-existance, and deny the jurisdictional authority of an Indian tribe to arrest and criminally prosecute a non-Indian United States citizen.
Aside from the fact that Oliphant is the end-point of the fiction that Indians are co-celebrants in the forward progressive march of the law, along with women, blacks, hispanics, jews, the poor, gays and lesbians, what is really interesting about Oliphant is what isn't in it -- the stuff that Rehnquist believed in, but had to elide to isolate Warren Burger and Thurgood Marshall.
Rehnquist reasoned that by virtue of their dependent status, the poisoned fruit of the Marshall Trilogy, that Indian tribes impliedly lacked the ability to "try non-Indians according to their own customs and procedures." In support of this (revolutionary) reading of the jurisdictional sense of the Marshall Trilogy, Rehnquist cited the 1883 opinion of the Court, Ex Parte Crow Dog, which held that in the absence of an express federal statute to the contrary, federal courts lacked jurisdiction to try Indians who had offended against fellow Indians on reservation land.
The passage from Crow Dog Rehnquist quoted in Oliphant is set out below in its entirety. Words in bold are in the original Crow Dog passage which Rehnquist tastefully elided from his opinion in Oliphant:
it is a case where, against an express exception in the law itself that law, by argument and inference only is sought to be extended over aliens and strangers; over the members of a community, separated by race, by tradition, by the instincts of a free though savage life, from the authority and power which seeks to impose upon them the restraints of an external and unknown code, and to subject them to the responsibilities of civil conduct according to rules and penalties of which they could have no previous warning, which judges them by a standard made by others, and not for them, which takes no account of the conditions which should except them from its exactions, and makes no allowance for their inability to understand it. It tries them not by their peers, nor by the customs of their people, nor the law of their land, but by superiors of a different race, according to the law of a social state of which they have a imperfect conception, and which is opposed to the traditions of their history, to the habits of their lives, to the strongest prejudices of their savage nature; one which measures the red man's revenge by the maxims of the white man's morality.
The reason Crow Dog went to the Supreme Court in the first place was that a killing of one Indian by another, when tried in an Indian Court, did not result in a hanging. The Theory of Justice of the Indian Court diverged from that norm. It is worth keeping this in mind when contrasting the Healing Circle Sentencing that Alaskan Tribal Courts have pioneered, with the application of manditory-minimum sentancing for (addictive) substance abuse cases. The legislative sequela of Crow Dog was the passage of the Major Crimes Act, which is why the FBI, easily the most political para-military force operating north of Tegucigalpa, has the run of Indian Country every time a "serious felony" puts them in play.
So why "Oliphant for Bloggies"? Two reasons. Primus, Wampumpeag is an Abenaki corporation. It hosts this blog (and others). Abenaki law governs. Recently a blog lord wrote to inform us that highly acerbic "gang" commentary, a norm prevailing elsewhere, should be the norm here. We differ. We are not surprised to meet friends of Chief Justice Rehnquist -- for his is the voice that says "no special rights for Indians", and in particular "no jurisdiction save that of the States" -- among well-educated, progressive non-Indians. Secundus, we'd like readers to help strike down Oliphant, like Dred Scott, Plessey, and Korematsu. Drop us a note to put your (real) name on a statement. Those committed to a particular candidate in this cycle won't have to give up their man, just Bill Rehnquist's ideal of supremacy, which casts a long, dim shadow on a surprisingly large expanse of this winter's landscape.
The interested reader will want to look at Duro v Reina, Nevada v Hicks and US v Lara to see the reach of Bill Rehnquist's mind.
Credits: Rob WIlliams' "The Algebra of Federal Indian Law: The Hard Trail of Decolonizing and Americanizing the White Man's Jurisprudenc"e, 1986, WIS. L. REV. A really good read.
January 05, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
2003 Koufax nominations: Best Single Issue Blog
This category covers both blogs devoted to only one issue as well as blogs writing about a number of issues that nonetheless had particularly good in depth coverage of some specific issue.
Alas a Blog : Feminism
The Bloviator: Health Care Policy
Brad DeLong: Economics
Colorado Luis: Latino/Chicano Issues
Confined Space : Workplace health and safety
Daily Howler: Media
Daily Kos: Politics and elections
Drug WarRant: The Drug War
En Banc: Law
Ex-Gay Watch: Ex-Gay politics
George W. Bush, Will You Please Go Now?!: George W. Bush
Juan Cole: Informed Comment : Mid East Policy
Last One Speaks: The Drug War
Lessig's BlogIntellectual property
Liberal Oasis: Politics
Like Father, Like Sun: The NY Sun
Max Speak: Economics
Media Whores Online: Media watch
Nathan Newman : Labor
Orcinus: Domestic terrorism
Political Aims: Politics
The Right Christians : Politics and Religion
Ruminate This: Media consolidation
Riverbend: Iraq
Slugger O'Toole: Northern Ireland politics
SullyWatch: Andrew Sullivan (it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it).
Talk Left: Criminal Law
Tim Lambert's Deltoid: John Lott
Verified Voting: Electronic voting
January 04, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
2003 Koufax Awards Best Post Nominations
There are more than 80 nominations for best post. A number of blogs have received multiple nominations. For convenience, I have grouped the nominations by blog.
We have to somehow reduce the list below to about 7-10 finalists. I do not look forward to that prospect as there are a lot of great posts. Help us out by leaving a comment or sending an email letting us know which posts of 2003 were the very best of the best. Click "More" to see the list of nominees.
The 2003 nominees for the Koufax Award for Best Post are:
A Burst of Light by Ronn Taylor is nominated for Linda Fairstein, Lying Coward.
Alas, A Blog has multiple nominations. Those nominations include:
A Comment on Rape and "She Asked For It" by Pink Dream Poppies;Where are the Feminists? by Bean;
The Absent Fatso by Ampersand; and
Why does the Republican Party oppose banning late-term abortions? by Ampersand.
All Facts and Opinion by Natalie Davis is nominated for One World, One Race.
Are You Outraged is nominated for Matthew Holt’s post I Don’t Understand Republicans.
A Skeptical Blog by Dominion has two nominations including The Lawsuit Abuse Tax and The Myth of the Separation between Church and State!.
Aspasia by Jonathan Dworkin is nominated for his remembrance of Edward Said.
Body and Soul by Jeanne D’Arc has multiple nominations in this category. Her nominated posts are:
Resistance;
Mr. Byron Goes to Sacramento;Images of a Kinder, Gentler War;
A Long and Rambling Post about Women and War and
An untitled March 26, 2003 post about truths one can not tell an eight year old child.
Bitch Has Word is nominated for Don’t Cry For Me America.
Calpundit by Kevin Drum is nominated for The New Model Republican Party and for An Interview with Paul Krugman.
The Cogent Provacateur is nominated for Operation Desert Snipe.
Corante is nominated for Dana Blankenhorn ‘s Everybody Wants to Rule the World.
Corrente is nominated for Tresy’s The Chickenhawks Come Home to Roost.
Counterspin Central by Hesiod is nominated for The Agony of Defeat.
Crooked Timber received a nomination for for Ted Barlow’s MECHA post, entitled Stories.
Damfacrats has been nominated for Real Juju, Immense Speculation and Jeff Sessions is a Lying Jackass, which, if you have been paying attention, you already knew.
D-Squared Digest by Daniel Davies (now at Crooked Timber) has been nominated for The Economics of Pounds Canto 45, High Noon in Cancun and Log Books - an Impudent Suggestion.
Eschaton has been nominated for Atrios’ Preznit Give Me Turkee bit of whimsy as well as for a guest post by Thumb entitled Lovely.
Feministe is nominated for Ms. Lauren’s Whiteness, As I Know It.
First Draft by Tim Porter is nominated for Citizen’s Journalism.
The Head Heeb by Jonathan Edelstein is nominated for Torture, Drugs and Terror: a history, a comparison and a declaration and for Krio and the Courts.
Hullabaloo by Digby has received nominations for Friends In High Places, Ich Bin Ein Neoconer, and Virtual Democracy.
Ignatz by Sam Heldman, now, alas, on hiatus, is nominated for Beware the Untruths About the Estrada Nomination.
Informed Comment by Juan Cole is nominated for US Using Israeli Military to Train Special Ops to fight Iraqis.
The Infernal Press is nominated for How George W. Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election by Sandeep S. Atwal.
Just a Bump in the Beltway by Melanie Mattson is nominated for Language, Religion, Politics.
Lady Sisyphus is nominated for So Great a Cloud of Witnesses.
Lady Who Loves Insects is nominated for her post entitled Sex.
Emma’s Late Night Thoughts is nominated for The Attractions of the Isms.
Liberal Oasis has a number of nominated posts including:
Is It Our Party Now?;It’s Not A Conspiracy If It’s All Out in the Open;
Do You Have To Be For the War to Win?;
Kip of Long Story; Short Pier has been nominated for Radio Free Portland.
Luz Paz is nominated for About Aztlan.
Making Light by Teresa Nielsen Hayden is nominated for The Fabric of the City.
Matthew Holt is nominated for Policy: Oh Canada.
MaxSpeak by Max Sawicky is nominated for UN-Tenable.
Nathan Newman is nominated for his post In Defense of Al Sharpton.
Needlenose by Swopa is nominated for Why the Passion Against Bush? and So, what was (is) this war about? (Part IV).
Notes on the Atrocities by Emma has been nominated for “Support the troops”—but why?, Symbolism, and Bush Said To Be Unconvincing As 'Real Self;' Will Be Played By Stand-In.
Open Source Politics is nominated for Susie Madrak’s A Matter of Trust.
Orcinus by David Neiwert is nominated for The Political and the Personal.
Pandagon has been nominated for Jesse Taylor’s Twenty Most Annoying Conservatives of 2003 (link broken, someone please help).
Pedantry has been nominated for A different kind of language policy and for Why Israel and Palestine are not morally equivalent.
Prometheus 6 has been nominated for Where We Stand.
See Why is nominated for the parody of Mark Medish’s Make Baghdad Pay.
Semi-Daily Journal by Brad DeLong is nominated for I Really Cannot Understand Why Anyone Would Do This.
SouthKnoxBubba is nominated for Voter's Guide to GOP Bizarro World Politics.
Steve Gilliard’s News Blog is nominated for his I’m A Fighting Liberal post from December 3, 2003 (no permanent links available, what’s up with that?).
The Talent Show is nominated for Bubbling Bliss & Beautiful Science.
Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall is nominated for Josh's interview with Amb. Joseph Wilson (pdf).
The Furious Spinner by Kim Antieau is nominated for Harvest of Women.
The Left Hook is nominated for The Lawless Bush Administration.
The Right Christians by Allen Brill is nominated for The Sources of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Dream.
The Road To Surfdom by Tim Dunlop is nominated for War Torn. Veilled4Allah is nominated for Muslims and Anti-Semitism. Whiskey Bar by Billmon has multiple nominations including:
Very, Very Happy by the Mighty Reason Man is very, very pleased to be nominated for My dislike of the French is independent of any facts about the world and for The Corner Unleashed
What a Tangled Web We Weave (the WMD quotes post);
The Shape of Things to Come (posted at Daily Kos);
2003 Koufax nominations: Best Blog
Unlike other awards which seek to manipulate it's audience by building up to the "Bestest of the Best" title, we're going to cut to the chase and start at the top. Once again, the purpose here is to trim the field to seven to ten finalists, but as someone out there deemed each of these to be their favorite, each is worthy of a visit by Lefty readers.
The category seeks to recognize the best overall work across the entire year, in writing, focus, relevance, accessibility, etc. In other word, who do you consider indispensable?
The nominees this year are:
January 03, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Koufax Award Update
The nominations for the Koufax Awards closed at the end of last year. The response has been overwhelming with more than 600 comments or emails providing nominations. Many of those communications contained nominations for many or all of the 15 categories and some contained multiple nominations within each category. There have been thousands of nominations.
Mary Beth and I have sorted through all of the nominations. We are committed to a policy of linking to every blog, post or series that received a nomination. In the next couple of days, we will post a list of nominees for each category. With the huge response, it will be a minor miracle if I have not made an error and omitted someone. If you were nominated but are not on listed in the post, please let me know and I will try to fix it.
I have excluded the nominations for Wampum and PLA. Your efforts to sway the judges with shameful flattery have been duly noted and greatly appreciated.
After posting the list of nominees, Mary Beth and I will winnow the nominations to a group of finalists. There should be 7-10 finalists in each category. To decide on the finalists, we will consider the number of nominations, our sense of the consensus of the community, the natural break points in each category, and the comments accompanying the nominations. Comments (or email) left to this post and to the posts listing the nominations will also be considered. In close cases, we will consider whether or not a particular blog will be a finalist in another category with the intent to have as many different finalists as possible.
In the categories of Best Post, Best Series, and Most Humorous Post, some people have multiple nominations. It has been suggested that we limit entries in those categories to one per blogger so as to avoid having support for a particular blogger divided over a number of entries. That makes sense. We will consider the support for all nominated posts (or series) by a blogger when determining the finalists for those categories. Once the finalists have been selected, we will email any finalists with multiple nominations to permit him or her to select the post or series to be included.
Should you not be one of the finalists, you are encouraged to strike an attitude closer to “Wait until next year” than to “We wuz robbed.” There are many worthy nominees in each category and it is unwieldy to try to include them all as finalists. That is one reason we are linking to every nominee.
The winner in each category will be selected by the votes left in comments to the post naming the finalists (or by email if you prefer). We have contracted with Diebold to count the votes so there will be no audit trail. Motions for a recount are hereby preemptively denied. We hope to be able to announce winners in a couple of weeks.
Please remember that this is supposed to be fun for you and for us. Do not take winning too seriously. The idea is simply to recognize the good work of a lot of people. Posting of the lists of nominees should begin soon.
January 02, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Scare Tactics Part II
In Scare Tactics, I argued that the media and the tort reform lobby had used scare tactics to blow the issue of tort reform way out of perspective. Those tactics include the use of inaccurate anecdotes and outright misrepresentation to present a picture of the tort system that is downright scary. It is little wonder that many people think the civil justice system is out of control when they are constantly bombarded with inaccurate information about the results of that system.
In comments, Jane Galt of Asymmetrical Information took exception to my post. I am always pleased to receive a comment from Jane. I was particularly pleased on this occasion because her comment proves my point.
When discussing tort reform, and particularly medical malpractice reform, it is helpful to know the size of the problem. How much money is paid out each year in medical malpractice judgments and settlements? That would seem to be a basic fact that needs to be established at the beginning of a public policy debate. After all, if we do not know the size of a problem, how can we ever decide on a solution?
The tort reform lobby and the scare tactic media almost never report that basic fact. If you do not believe me, go to Google News or Google and try to find the answer.
In my post, I noted that medical malpractice payments total a little over $4.2 billion per year. As I have previously noted, the total of all sums paid out in medical malpractice settlements and judgments is approximately the same as Estee Lauder’s sales of makeup. The total of payments in 2002 would have paid interest on the national debt for about eight days.
Jane Galt thought that I was spinning that number by including payments made pursuant to judgments but not including settlements. Jane wrote:
It's much like, for example, choosing a dollar figure for litigation costs that includes only verdicts, when something like 95% of cases settle out of court.
Jane, apparently, thinks that $4.2 billion per year is the amount paid out in medical malpractice judgments and that additional amounts are paid out in settlements.
The amount of money paid out in medical malpractice cases is not a matter of opinion. It is a fact. Was my figure of $4.2 billion accurate or is Jane correct that I was just trying to spin the debate by failing to include the amounts paid in settlements?
Federal law requires that payments in medical malpractice cases be reported to the National Practitioners Data Bank. Let me emphasis that the NPDB collects data on all payments in medical malpractice cases including both judgments and settlements.
Last summer, Kevin Drum posted the NPDB information on payments for the period from 1990 through 2002. (Thanks Kevin). That data can be found here.
For the year 2002, the total of all payments (in 2002 dollars) made pursuant to medical malpractice judgments was $228,726,987. Jane thought that number was approximately $4 billion. She was off in her reckoning by more than a factor of sixteen.
The total of all payments made in 2002 pursuant to med mal settlements was $3,981,304,551. The total of both judgments and settlements was $4,210,031,538 which, of course, is where the reference in my post to “a little over $4 billion per year” came from.
Jane thought that the total figure might represent only 5% of cases in which payments were made. That suggests that Jane believed it plausible that total med mal payments for 2002 (from both settlements and judgments) was on the order of $80 billion.
Please note that in constant 2002 dollars, the total payments from both judgments and settlements in med mal cases for the entire twelve year period from 1990 through 2002 was about $44 billion or about one-half of what Jane thought was plausible for a single year.
Jane Galt is very smart, has a very good education, reads a lot and is well informed. How can it be that she was off by a factor of 16 or 20 on such a basic point as the total payouts for medical malpractice cases?
It is not like this debate is just staring and we are all gathering information. Tort reform has been an issue for two decades. There has been an enormous amount of discussion of tort reform. Time Magazine ran a cover story on it last year. Newsweek had the story I linked in my post. The President has traveled the country calling for a cap on non-economic damages in med mal cases. The Congress has debated and voted on legislation. Despite all of that discussion, a central fact about the amount of med mal payments remains largely unreported or incorrectly reported.
It is understandable that the tort reform lobby has not publicized the amount of medical malpractice payments. If the public knew that the payouts in medical malpractice suits is about one tenth of the cost to the public of farm subsidies (including both direct payments and higher food prices), the tort reform movement could lose a lot of steam.
It is less understandable with regard to the media. It should be the business of the news media to provide people with accurate information about the issues of the day. We are well along in the debate over tort reform and the media has not yet widely reported a basic fact like the amount of the payouts in medical malpractice cases. If a smart, well read, highly education person like Jane Galt can not estimate the size of the problem within an order of magnitude, the media has not done its job.
Instead of informing the public of the facts, the media uses scare tactics to obfuscate. That Jane could be so far off the mark in estimating the amount of the payouts proves my point about media coverage of the tort reform issue.