Pain of America's soldiers: at least five times the published fatality rate

The Lasting Wounds of War (washingtonpost.com)

While attention remains riveted on the rising count of Americans killed in action -- more than 100 so far in April -- doctors at the main combat support hospital in Iraq are reeling from a stream of young soldiers with wounds so devastating that they probably would have been fatal in any previous war.

More and more in Iraq, combat surgeons say, the wounds involve severe damage to the head and eyes -- injuries that leave soldiers brain damaged or blind, or both, and the doctors who see them first struggling against despair...

The neurosurgeons at the 31st Combat Support Hospital measure the damage in the number of skulls they remove to get to the injured brain inside, a procedure known as a craniotomy. 'We've done more in eight weeks than the previous neurosurgery team did in eight months,' Poffenbarger said. 'So there's been a change in the intensity level of the war.'

Numbers tell part of the story. So far in April, more than 900 soldiers and Marines have been wounded in Iraq, more than twice the number wounded in October, the previous high. With the tally still climbing, this month's injuries account for about a quarter of the 3,864 U.S. servicemen and women listed as wounded in action since the March 2003 invasion...

... "We're saving more people than should be saved, probably," Lt. Col. Robert Carroll said. "We're saving severely injured people. Legs. Eyes. Part of the brain."....

... Accurate statistics are not yet available on recovery from this new round of battlefield brain injuries, an obstacle that frustrates combat surgeons. But judging by medical literature and surgeons' experience with their own patients, "three or four months from now 50 to 60 percent will be functional and doing things," said Maj. Richard Gullick.

"Functional," he said, means "up and around, but with pretty significant disabilities," including paralysis.

The remaining 40 percent to 50 percent of patients include those whom the surgeons send to Europe, and on to the United States, with no prospect of regaining consciousness. The practice, subject to review after gathering feedback from families, assumes that loved ones will find value in holding the soldier's hand before confronting the decision to remove life support.

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For every one dead, about 9 are seriously wounded. Of the wounded, a large fraction (1/3?) will die within weeks. Most of the remaining survivors will have significant or severe lifelong disability. Some will never work again, some will never do anything again.

For the purposes of measuring the burden borne by US forces, including reservists and the National Guard, and comparing it to previous conflicts, we should probably multiply the published fatality rates at least fivefold. I suspect, after such an adjustment, we're in the range of Vietnam era combat intensity.

Why is this? How can a relatively modest insurgency inflict such suffering on US forces? I suspect it's the same reason a relatively small group of fanatics can inflict great pain on civilizations. Technology has made effective weapons, techniques, and military infrastructure very affordable. The cost of inflicting harm has fallen faster than the cost of providing defense.

A conservative brit is fed up with the vacuous grins of GWB

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | While Europe is a eunuch, America is our only shield

So much bad news turned up at Chequers over the weekend that the prime minister might be forgiven if he failed to spot the latest barrage of suicide bombings in Iraq. But Britain's 8,000 troops on the ground noticed, and are not happy. They are prisoners of an American command whose incompetence is manifest, whose soldiers are unsuited to their task, whose failures of policy have been laid bare...

... when Blair made his case about weapons of mass destruction, I believed him. By, say, October 2002, it became evident the Americans were determined to invade. If the Atlantic alliance was to survive, it seemed necessary that British troops should participate. I nursed a further delusion - that Britain might thus be able to exercise marginal influence on Washington's behaviour. We could press Bush to seek international legitimacy, to behave more even-handedly towards the Palestinians.

In all those things, I was wrong. To quote Berger again, the Bush administration believes the US "does not need to seek legitimacy from the approval of others. International institutions and international law are nothing more than a trap set by weaker nations to constrain us."

Yet the most likely outcome of the forthcoming presidential election is still a Bush victory. There is no reason to suppose this president will behave any differently in a second term. Unlike Clinton, the cynic and adulterer, Bush is a true believer. We are learning the hard way that, in power, true believers can be far more frightening and dangerous than cynics....

... If we are really fed up with Bush, if we recognise that no future US president is likely be entirely to our taste, we should surely get on with creating credible European armed forces. As it is, no European nation - with the possible exception of France - shows the smallest interest in spending money or displaying spine for this purpose.

Until we address this, and against the background of a struggle against international terrorism that is likely to grow more alarming rather than less, America remains the indispensable ally and shield. That means George Bush. At the very moment when most of us feel surfeited with the president's vacuous grin and impregnable moral conceit, we cannot walk away from his follies unless or until Europe makes itself something quite different from the eunuch it is today.

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This guy is a conservative brit, in the mold of the Economist. He's spitting mad and a bit frightened. As I wrote earlier, America the Arational is likely to reelect Bush. For the rest of the world, this means more incompetence and greater danger. How to deal with an America that's no longer susceptible to reason

His answer is that the rest of the world needs to reorganize for its own defense, and figure that America will be as much a hindrance as a help.

Bush strategy: abortion access = Democrat = al Qaeda lackey

CNN.com - Transcripts

BLITZER: There is a clear difference when it comes to abortion rights between the president and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry. In your opinion, Karen, how big of an issue will this abortion rights issue be in this campaign?

HUGHES: Well, Wolf, it's always an issue. And I frankly think it's changing somewhat. I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life.

And President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's try to reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions.

And I think those are the kind of policies that the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy, and really the fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life. It's the founding conviction of our country, that we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, the right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Unfortunately our enemies in the terror network, as we're seeing repeatedly in the headlines these days, don't value any life, not even the innocent and not even their own.

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Expect to see a lot of this. This is Willie Horton on steroids. Bush et al will consistently say in every possible way "a vote for Kerry is a vote for bin Laden" and "Democrats are terrorists".

Maybe it's time to drop the "Karen Hughes is a sweet innocent" masquerade.

Bushworld and America the Arational: Why Bush is likely to win.

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The Orwellian Olsens

The Orwellian Olsens
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: April 25, 2004

It's their reality. We just live and die in it.

In Bushworld, our troops go to war and get killed, but you never see the bodies coming home.

In Bushworld, flag-draped remains of the fallen are important to revere and show the nation, but only in political ads hawking the president's leadership against terror.

In Bushworld, we can create an exciting Iraqi democracy as long as it doesn't control its own military, pass any laws or have any power.

In Bushworld, we can win over Falluja by bulldozing it.

In Bushworld, it was worth going to war so Iraqis can express their feelings ("Down With America!") without having their tongues cut out, although we cannot yet allow them to express intemperate feelings in newspapers ("Down With America!") without shutting them down.

In Bushworld, it's fine to take $700 million that Congress provided for the war in Afghanistan and 9/11 recovery and divert it to the war in Iraq that you're insisting you're not planning.

In Bushworld, you don't consult your father, the expert in being president during a war with Iraq, but you do talk to your Higher Father, who can't talk back to warn you to get an exit strategy or chide you for using Him for political purposes.

In Bushworld, it's O.K. to run for re-election as the avenger of 9/11, even as you make secret deals with the Arab kingdom where most of the 9/11 hijackers came from.

In Bushworld, you get to strut around like a tough military guy and paint your rival as a chicken hawk, even though he's the one who won medals in combat and was praised by his superior officers for fulfilling all his obligations.

In Bushworld, it makes sense to press for transparency in Mr. and Mrs. Rival while cultivating your own opacity.

In Bushworld, you can reign as the antiterror president even after hearing an intelligence report about Al Qaeda's plans to attack America and then stepping outside to clear brush.

In Bushworld, those who dissemble about the troops and money it will take to get Iraq on its feet are patriots, while those who are honest are patronizingly marginalized.

In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq, even as they increasingly merge the two in America.

In Bushworld, you can claim to be the environmental president on Earth Day while being the industry president every other day.

In Bushworld, you brag about how well Afghanistan is going, even though soldiers like Pat Tillman are still dying and the Taliban are running freely around the border areas, hiding Osama and delaying elections.

In Bushworld, imperfect intelligence is good enough to knock over Iraq. But even better evidence that North Korea is building the weapons that Saddam could only dream about is hidden away.

In Bushworld, the C.I.A. says it can't find out whether there are W.M.D. in Iraq unless we invade on the grounds that there are W.M.D.

In Bushworld, there's no irony that so many who did so much to avoid the Vietnam draft have now strained the military so much that lawmakers are talking about bringing back the draft.

In Bushworld, we're making progress in the war on terror by fighting a war that creates terrorists.

In Bushworld, you don't need to bother asking your vice president and top Defense Department officials whether you should go to war in Iraq, because they've already maneuvered you into going to war.

In Bushworld, it's perfectly natural for the president and vice president to appear before the 9/11 commission like the Olsen twins.

In Bushworld, you expound on remaking the Middle East and spreading pro-American sentiments even as you expand anti-American sentiments by ineptly occupying Iraq and unstintingly backing Ariel Sharon on West Bank settlements.

In Bushworld, we went to war to give Iraq a democratic process, yet we disdain the democratic process that causes allies to pull out troops.

In Bushworld, you pride yourself on the fact that your administration does not leak to the press, while you flood the best-known journalist in Washington with inside information.

In Bushworld, you list Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack" as recommended reading on your campaign Web site, even though it makes you seem divorced from reality. That is, unless you live in Bushworld.

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I thought this was a pretty long list, until I realized she omitted economics, the environment, civil rights, health care, etc.

The comprehensive list would be at least 3 times as long.

Yet Bush will likey be reelected -- despite what "people like me" consider one of the worst records in the history of the presidency. Only Bush II could make the first term Reagan look good. (Second term Reagan, when his dementia was inescapable, was really Howard Baker -- a good middle-of-the-road president).

Maybe it's time for "people like me" to step back and think about why this is so. Bottom line -- it's the role of rationalism. Rationalists (of which Star Trek's Spock is the mythic paradigm), even when they are not scientists, respect science and logic. We have models and beliefs, but we test them. When they fail, we at least consider the possibility that the models are no longer making useful predictions. This doesn't mean rationalists agree on everything -- scientific disputes are often vicious. Very few rationalists are atheists, but we may speculate widely about the nature of deity/deities. Many rationalists have conventional religious beliefs, but they rarely expect God to intervene directly in the material world. Rationalists (at least the human ones) have feelings, emotions and intuitions, but we recognize them and balance them with logic and reason.

Rationalism, the respect for logic, empiricism, and science, is a distinct worldview. Rationalism came to fruition in the enlightenment. The "founding fathers" were extraordinary rationalists. Jefferson and Madison agreed on little, but their arguments referenced "reason".

Rationalism is not the only way of looking at the world. Faith and intuition are also powerful. Many very effective people have combined faith, intuition and rationalism in various parts. Faith is not my strong suite, but I think it's fundamentally advantageous; even in the purely material world a capacity for faith an adaptive trait. Many successful CEOs (and even more failed CEOs) seem to have an extraordinary faith in their own correctness -- despite making as many mistakes are most people.

Bush is not a rationalist; he is arational. He's not "irrational" or "stupid" or "insane", he is something far more effective. He operates on intuition unbridled by science and its burden of logic, analysis, and internal consistency.

Evangelical conservatives are also arationalists; this is not a matter of their faith -- it's that their stated beliefs are internally inconsistent. It's the ability to function happily with profound internal inconsistency throughout one's belief structure that marks the arational. Bush is likewise internally inconsistent, yet he is superficially effective in the exercise of power. (GWB is fundamentally ineffective -- unless his true goal is to bring on the apocalypse. Of course if God is speaking with Bush, then apparently God also wants the end-time to come, in which case I have an eternity in Hell to look forward to.)

Why will Bush get reelected? Because 21st century America has a strong arational streak, as does, the middle East, Africa, Russia and eastern europe. It's strong in politics, in the media, in battles over the definition of science education, and in the rise of non-science based healthcare.

Conversely, I think rationalism may be rising in China and India. If we were living in the 19th century this would result in a turbulent but survivable transition in power and influence from arational to rational nations. Unfortunately, we live in the 21st century, with weapons that can annihilate humanity a dozen different ways all at once.

If I were Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Warren Buffett, rationalists all, I'd be pouring every billion I had into trying to change the outcome of the near-term election, then trying to rebalance America. Only 10-15% of Americans will be strong rationalists, and I suspect it's wise to have 10-15% be strong arationalists. Now, however, the ratio is more like 10% to 50%. That's a threat not just to the American future, but to the future of humanity.

Recruiting for Iraq -- reminescent of a zillion science fiction stories

The New York Times > Business > World Business > Halliburton, in Iraq for the Long Haul, Recruits Employees Eager for Work

Is Iraq the right destination for a 48-year-old with eight grandchildren? Cynthia Johnson, the grandmother in question, laughed at the query as she tried on an airtight yellow jumpsuit that might protect her from a chemical weapons attack.

Ms. Johnson and hundreds of others hired by the Halliburton Company packed into what used to be a J. C. Penney store at the Greenspoint Mall here this week to prepare to go to Iraq. She said her job there, serving food to American troops, was more promising than her previous occupation, cooking on an offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico.

'The money's better and there's the feeling I'm doing something useful,' said Ms. Johnson, a native of Deridder, La. 'My daughters and grandchildren worry for me, but a job like this doesn't come up every day'...

... until passing background checks and absorbing the description of the risks associated with working in Iraq, which include graphic photos of wounded employees returning home.

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Everyday life continues to turn into science fiction. It's a cliche of a zillion space operas that barren and lethal "postings" run by brutal corporations are staffed by hardy desperados with few prospects. The cliche, of course, is rooted in myth and history -- the move to the frontier in the hope of a better life.

I hope they know what they're getting into. I suspect many of them actually do understand the risks; it sounds like Halliburton wants them to be well informed.

ADHD: We don't know how to treat it

National Institute of Mental Health Multimodal Treatment Study of ADHD follow-up: 24-month outcomes of treatment strategies for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.


I've not read the study, but I've read commentaries that in some ways may be more illuminating. The bottom line -- we don't know how to manage severe ADHD/ODD. It looked like stimulant meds were a cost-effective approach, but their efficacy seems to decline over time. The best results seemed to come from very intensive interventions, but there's no money for them and even their efficacy is not clear over extended periods.

The other result of the study is that growth limitation from stimulants is real -- 1/2" at least. Since many of these kids are very short to begin 1/2" to 1" is significant -- it's not the difference between 5'11" and 6'.

Overall, humility is indicated all around. Maybe everyone will stop beating up on the "bumbling" primary care docs who get stuck managing so much of this problem (not likely).

For physicians and patients I think the take home will be that the stimulants appear to work and they also have significant side-effects. Parents and teachers like behavioral interventions, even though they don't seem to change school outcomes. Stimulant efficacy decreases over time and doses rise.

I suspect we'll now see the "consensus" move towards more intermittent use of stimulants, with higher doses during critical times and lower or no doses on weekends, summers, etc. This is partly a return to old habits, but I think the prn dosing is something we need to learn to accept -- or at least study. We do need to train and incent psychologists to learn how to work with these kids and their parents and teachers. Maybe more school based psychologists? I have a hunch much of what we've learned with autism therapy can carry over to these kids.

And it's very clear we need more basic research and clinical research. I'm intrigued by recent studies of short-term and very-short-term working memory.

The Vest memo: what's happening in Iraq

A Report from Iraq: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

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This memo, posted by DeLong and a zillion other sites, is getting some attention. It's from a fan of Chalabi's who is no fan of Bremer's. Chalabi sounds rather more complex than the usual cartoon description. A fascinating insight into what's happening, and not happening in Iraq.

Politically it's hard to place. The author is a Pentagon insider, but neither classic neo-con nor classic conservative. He is deeply suspicious of Iran but says little about Syria. I wonder who leaked this and why.

It's getting enough circulation that either WaPo or the NYT will need to comment.

NYT Op-Ed Contributor: The Last Iraqi Insurgency - brutal force or quick exit?

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: The Last Iraqi Insurgency

This NYT OpEd article was written by a historian. He points out some seemingly uncanny resemblances to the 1920 Iraqi revolt against British rule.

The article starts out well, but it degenerates quickly. In a somewhat vague and incoherent conclusion he seems to favor repeating the 1920s British approach -- brutal mass murder. Given population growth, I assume he's talking about killing 100,000 or so Iraqis. Faluja is said to hold about 200,000, so maybe he favors eliminating the city?

This is why intellectuals should not be allowed to determine military action. He's as bad as Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al.

On the other hand NPR featured an active service general today. The general complained of mission creep (the interviewer did not press the obvious point -- was the general complaining about Rumsfeld or Bush -- or did he think someone else defined his mission?). He presented what is likely to be Bush's exit strategy: "We went to Iraq to depose a dictator and to give the Iraqi people a chance at a decent future. It's not our fault that they didn't rise to the occasion ...".

I've always felt Rumsfeld planned to partition Iraq -- why else would he have put so few troops in play?

How common are false convictions?

The New York Times > National > Study Suspects Thousands of False Convictions

A Comprehensive study of 328 criminal cases over the last 15 years in which the convicted person was exonerated suggests that there are thousands of innocent people in prison today.

The study sounds very interesting, but the news report is quite weak. In medical terms a conviction is a "positive test result". Like every other "test", conviction is imperfect; the legal system will always acquit the guilty and convict the innocent. This study gives us some insight into the prevalence of false convictions, unfortunately the journalist provided only a rough number ("thousands"). The study also suggests the causes of false conviction in rape and murder cases. The most frequent cause of false conviction in rape is the misidentification of black men by white women, the most common cause of false conviction in murder cases is deception by "witnesses" (often in return for some advantage) and false confession (often by emotionally or cognitively disabled persons).

The lessons of the study may be:

1. Identification across ethnic groups as not as strong as within ethnic groups. "They all look alike" may not be mere slur, but an accurate statement about how recognition works. This should be relatively easy to research; I suspect the work has been done. The justice system should then relatively devalue identifications where the source and target are of different ethnic groups.

2. Confessions by persons with low IQ or psychiatric problems must be highly suspect.

3. Evidence obtained by persons who have something to gain is highly tainted.

I suspect the study also suggests endemic weaknesses in our system of criminal defense -- but the failure of the journalists or his editor to provide useful data limits that conclusion. I doubt we'll see any reform coming from our current regime. We need a Dickens for the 21st century.

The New York Times > Magazine > The healthcare policy issue

The New York Times > Magazine > Now Can We Talk About Health Care?

The NYT Magazine focused on healthcare policy this week. The articles were so vapid I only scanned them. I was left with these probably unfair impressions:

1. Hilary doesn't like "Consumer-driven healthcare" (aka "defined contributions", "medical savings accounts", etc). She favors managed care. I though her objections to "defined contributions" were very weak, but they were political objections, not thoughtful objections. (There are thoughtful objections, but they require thinking about unpleasant things -- like rationing.)

2. A fairly healthy couple complained about their inability to get cheap coverage. They seemed to think it was fine for sick people to pay a lot -- just not healthy people.

3. A primary care doc blamed the implosion of primary care on the gatekeeper fiasco. She seemed to miss the effect of employer-driven care plan switching; that alone would have destroyed a care system based on longterm relationships.

I guess things aren't bad enough yet to trigger a real discussion. Let's try again in three years.

Amazon A9 search engine: The Net is getting less boring - or NOT?

A9.com Search: American politics was famously corrupt in the Gilded Age jfaughnan

A9 is Amazon's new search engine. It's very much influenced by Google, with some interesting touches. One can login, and thereby, I assume, ensure that Amazon knows ABSOLUTELY everything about one. Of course I signed in, based on the recommendations Amazon sends me they don't have a clue who I am anyway.

I tested by searching on a string in a quite recent blog post along with my "jfaughnan" universal semi-unique ID string. A9 had indeed indexed it. Very impressive.

Nice to have some competition. Between RSS feeds, Blogs, search innovations and GMail the net is getting less boring again. It got pretty darned dull between 1996 and 2003.

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UPDATE: They are actually licensing Google's search engine! No wonder they returned blogspot searches well.

So this is technically much less interesting, but politically fascinating. Google and Amazon were rumored to be lethal enemies. Are they joining forces in anticipation of Redmond's attack?

Baboon cultural transformaton: hope and human evolution

The New York Times > Science > No Time for Bullies: Baboons Retool Their Culture

Among a troop of savanna baboons in Kenya, a terrible outbreak of tuberculosis 20 years ago selectively killed off the biggest, nastiest and most despotic males, setting the stage for a social and behavioral transformation unlike any seen in this notoriously truculent primate.

In a study appearing today in the journal PloS Biology (online at www.plosbiology.org), researchers describe the drastic temperamental and tonal shift that occurred in a troop of 62 baboons when its most belligerent members vanished from the scene. The victims were all dominant adult males that had been strong and snarly enough to fight with a neighboring baboon troop over the spoils at a tourist lodge garbage dump, and were exposed there to meat tainted with bovine tuberculosis, which soon killed them. Left behind in the troop, designated the Forest Troop, were the 50 percent of males that had been too subordinate to try dump brawling, as well as all the females and their young. With that change in demographics came a cultural swing toward pacifism, a relaxing of the usually parlous baboon hierarchy, and a willingness to use affection and mutual grooming rather than threats, swipes and bites to foster a patriotic spirit.

Remarkably, the Forest Troop has maintained its genial style over two decades, even though the male survivors of the epidemic have since died or disappeared and been replaced by males from the outside.

Non-human culture has been demonstrated for many years, both in other primates and in non-primates. This is still an astounding discovery and natural experiment. Even though one expects the baboons to revert to "kind", it's easy to imagine how a reinforcing change in the evironment could reinforce the transformation and make it persistent.

More later ...

MujMac - Tatra Mac G4: There are hackers and then the are uber-Hackers.

MujMac - Tatra Mac G4 - fastest Mac on the four wheels?

Hackers everywhere must bend their knees. There is a new king.

TaxCut & (probably) TurboTax: Bad beyond salvation

TaxCut - Home - TaxCut Federal

This year I purchased TaxCut Home (Federal and State) and TaxCut Business (LLC Partnership). I normally use an accountant to prepare my taxes, but for various reasons this year it made sense to try using software, with later review by an accountant.

So I had extensive exposure to one of two non-professional tax preparation packages. I chose TaxCut because of past poor experiences with Intuit software in general and with TurboTax in particular. Intuit's reputation for poor quality products has been well deserved.

I can say two things with some confidence:

1. TaxCut is no worse than TurboTax. If you have a relatively simple personal return it will probably work and may be worth the bother.
2. My experience was miserable and a great waste of time.

For my purposes personal tax preparation software is fundamentally broken and is likely to stay broken. It's broken in terms of

1. Defect rate.
2. Missing functionality (grossly incomplete help functions).
3. Missing interview components (esp. in the AMT domain)
4. Missing documentation, manuals, orientation, etc.
5. Gross errors in the application "model", in particular linkages between data entry fields and calculation fields.

So, it's broken for my purposes. It's probably broken forever.

But why?

That's the interesting question. On the face it, this is yet another market failure. But why has the market failed to deliver a working product at an any price? (The "deeper why".) Ten years ago this software worked reasonably well. Here's my best guess -- all of the following working together:

1. The AMT: The tax code has become cruftier and more complex every year. The AMT, however, is a quantum jump in complexity. Personal tax software couldn't keep up without a large investment in additional coding and documentation.

2. Piracy: Tax software is routinely pirated. One copy serves dozens of users. This does not incent publishers to produce a quality product. We're in a vicious circle though -- poor quality software angers those who buy the software; sharing/stealing it is cheap revenge. When Intuit tried to insert copy protection in 2003, they added a buggy copy protection scheme to buggy software --- and thoroughly enraged their customers.

3. Market shrinkage: My gut feeling is that a lot of people who used financial software have given up on the entire domain. Each year fewer of the people I know use Quicken or Microsoft Money. The reasons are complex, but usability, quality, and poor customer service are common themes. This shrinking base spills over into the tax software domain. Stock options and the AMT factor drove many users to accountants in the 1990s, and they're not returning now.

4. An unhealthy industry? I wonder, without any evidence at all, if the publishers of this software have a business model that serves customers. Does H&R Block make money on TaxCut, or is it a loss-leader to feed their tax preparation service? Does Intuit make a good profit on TurboTax, or are they squeezing the dollars on a failing revenue stream?

The last bit of sad commentary -- will any president ever have the right mixture of courage, idealism, and desire for personal annihilation required to reform the US tax system? I'm not talking about paying LESS in tax, rather about removing the bizarre AMT kludge while closing loopholes and raising upper income tax rates to compensate. I'm ok with paying more taxes (assuming a government that would use the money wisely, as in NOT the current regime), but there are MANY ways our tax code could be made cleaner and simpler even without radical revisions.

The more things change ...

Molly Ivins, Star-Telegram.com

An unprecedented coordination between the Republican administration and big corporate interests held the country tightly in its grip. In most instances, the machine simply enjoyed the exercise of raw power with little effort to justify its actions. Come election time, though, the party of privilege and its moneyed patrons drowned out opponents with the sheer volume of their propaganda. Never before had so many dollars been spent to mass-market a political image. Above all, the machine pushed the message that it was the true guardian of patriotism, indistinguishable from the Stars and Stripes. Then, once in power, it opened the public treasury to a rapacious corporate elite. …

'Business lobbyists dictated the law at every level. Legislation was cooked behind the closed doors of private clubs and then passed into law. While the lobby fought ferociously against any check on its prerogatives, it had a special distaste for corporate taxes. Aided by its legislative enablers, the corporate elite indulged in a natural inclination toward monopoly -- especially when it came to media and transportation.'

That was Texas in 1905.

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American politics was famously corrupt in the Gilded Age and extending into the time of Teddy Roosevelt. By 1905 the tide was turning. Not until the beginning of the 21st century did endemic corruption again extend from local to federal levels ...