The social security crisis: it's political, not fiscal

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Inventing a Crisis

... But since the politics of privatization depend on convincing the public that there is a Social Security crisis, the privatizers have done their best to invent one.

My favorite example of their three-card-monte logic goes like this: first, they insist that the Social Security system's current surplus and the trust fund it has been accumulating with that surplus are meaningless. Social Security, they say, isn't really an independent entity - it's just part of the federal government.

If the trust fund is meaningless, by the way, that Greenspan-sponsored tax increase in the 1980's was nothing but an exercise in class warfare: taxes on working-class Americans went up, taxes on the affluent went down, and the workers have nothing to show for their sacrifice.

But never mind: the same people who claim that Social Security isn't an independent entity when it runs surpluses also insist that late next decade, when the benefit payments start to exceed the payroll tax receipts, this will represent a crisis - you see, Social Security has its own dedicated financing, and therefore must stand on its own.

There's no honest way anyone can hold both these positions, but very little about the privatizers' position is honest. They come to bury Social Security, not to save it. They aren't sincerely concerned about the possibility that the system will someday fail; they're disturbed by the system's historic success.

For Social Security is a government program that works, a demonstration that a modest amount of taxing and spending can make people's lives better and more secure. And that's why the right wants to destroy it.

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Social security is ground zero in a debate about the role of government in american life. This is not a fight about financing social security, it's a fight about the role of government.

Since we Democrats lie bloodied and defeated on the field of battle, while our enemies wax triumphant about us, we might as well speak honestly. Krugman does a fine job here. All we can do is speak clearly and do our best to ensure that Americans know what's going to happen to them, and why it's going to happen. Unfortunately, this message will not be carried on Republican TV/radio/newspapers, etc.

Multiple sclerosis, birth month and sun exposure

BBC NEWS | Health | MS risk 'linked to birth month'

The team said other studies had suggested exposure to the sun or seasonal variations in a mother's vitamin D levels during pregnancy may have an impact on brain development.

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Children born in November & December in northern countries had a lower risk of developing MS as adults, May was a bad month. This suggests the disease may have a quite early onset, but only manifest later in life.

I like the sunlight theory myself. Twenty years ago I speculated about this as a medical student. It's the obvious explanation for the correlation between latitude and disease incidence; the theory must have occurred to thousands of students over the past forty years. I thought then that it might be related to cutanous immune cells. There is a lot of curious immunology that appears to go on in the skin and it makes sense that it could be affected by radiation exposure and by the adaptations to radiation exposure.

Research anyone, anywhere

Background Check, Phone Number Lookup, Trace email, Criminal record, Find People, cell phone number search, License Plate Search

Nothing surprising here -- only the expansion and integration of longstanding services for researching individuals. Yahoo's offered similar services for years. I wonder if they're offshore -- best place to avoid any pesky privacy laws.

Memory loss: middle-aged and more

The New York Times > Magazine > In Search of Lost Time

Every brain has an intrinsic aging rate. Based on data on human lifespan and inferred aging rates (natural lifespan: 60-120 years, mean 90*) the range is +/- 33%, with aging starting around age 20. So by age 40 some lucky people have a brain similar to that of the average 33 yo, others resemble the average 47 yo. That's a significant enough span that we begin to notice winners and losers in the aging lottery. I have not read anything, by the way, that tells me that this aging rate can be significantly improved upon (though severe dietary restriction might help if started at age 20 -- note, however, than anorexics have fairly severe acceleration of brain aging, possibly due to the direct toxic effects of stress hormones).

Now add disease. Even a relatively mild concussion ages the brain significantly. Vascular disorders, infections, neurologic disorders, persistent stress, substance abuse, even social standing all come into play. Some primary dementing disorders, such as Parkinson's, begin to manifest. (It's unclear to me if Alzheimer's is a primary disorder, or a disorders of accelerated aging of the brain. The distinction may be subtle.)

The result is that by our 40s many of us worry about our cognitive capacities. This is particularly true of "knowledge workers", and probably less true of managers, CEOs, or politicians (political skills seem to be far more resilient than mere IQ).

This NYT Magazine article provides a fascinating summary of recent thinking about these cognitive disorders, and about the consequences of an aging brain in a post-industrial world.

It has an important message for those who blithely assume that extended life expectancy means we can work longer. They confuse life expectancy with functional cognitive skills. They'd never assume that brick layer would be laying bricks at 60, but they imagine the brain is less vulnerable to age than the spine. (Ok, so the spine is a pretty crummy device, and is a strong argument against "intelligent design", but you get the idea.)

So, yes, we'll be working when we're 75. We won't, however, be devising new implementations of cutting edge nanotech. We'll be doing the 2030 equivalent of bagging groceries -- except for politicians and the lucky few who will have the brains of a 55 yo at age 70.

Ten years ago it was obvious that the best way to dodge the demographic bullet would be to throw great resources into identifying specific interventions that might slow the aging of the human brain. We didn't do that. Too bad.

* Update: being middle-aged myself, I naturally flubbed the trivial arithmetic here.

21st century propaganda: outsourced, distributed, malignant

Advocacy Groups Blur Media Lines (washingtonpost.com)

washingtonpost.com
Advocacy Groups Blur Media Lines
Some Push Agendas By Producing Movies, Owning Newspapers

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 6, 2004; Page A01

The Madison County Record, an Illinois weekly newspaper launched in September that bills itself as the county's legal journal, reports on one subject: the state courts in southern Illinois. A recent front page carried an assortment of stories about lawsuits against businesses. In one, a woman sought $15,000 in damages for breaking her nose at a haunted house. In another, a woman sued a restaurant for $50,000 after she hurt her teeth on a chicken breast.

Nowhere was it reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce created the Record as a weapon in its multimillion-dollar campaign against lawyers who file those kinds of suits....

... The National Rifle Association, which already has a national radio show, is thinking about buying its own radio stations...

... The National Rifle Association believes more lobbying groups will mimic traditional media formats or buy them outright to disseminate their viewpoints. If the NRA buys radio stations it won't bother to label them with its name. "We wouldn't need to any more than NBC needs a disclaimer that it's General Electric-produced or than ABC needs a disclaimer saying it's Disney-produced," said Wayne LaPierre Jr., the NRA's executive director.

"I hope everybody gets into the media business and, I think, many interest groups will," LaPierre said. "We have as much right to be at the table delivering news and information to the American public as anyone else does."

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Caveat emptor is the catchprase of the libertarian century.

Killing the leaders: an age-old ploy

Generals See Gains From Iraq Offensives (washingtonpost.com)

A total of 338 Iraqis associated with the new governing structures or with the Americans have been assassinated since Oct. 1, according to U.S. military figures. This includes 35 police chiefs, mayors and middle-ranking officials. In Mosul, where 136 bodies have been found in the past month, U.S. officers suspect a particularly brutal and extensive campaign by fighters from the once-ruling Baath Party to target members of the Iraqi security forces.

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This does not include the murders of civic leaders, academics, physicians, scientists and others. I have the impression, from partial reports, that they too have been targeted.

The Khmer Rouge, Stalin, and the Red Guard followed similar policies. I hope the Iraqi "insurgents" are not able to equal the record of these three. It seems to take 2+ generations to recover from an effective program of murdering the leadership.

Preserving damaged spinal nerves with polyethylene glycol

Dogs with paralyzed hind legs walk again with lab injection

[68% of] Dogs with paralyzed hind legs walked again after getting a shot of a chemical cousin of antifreeze [antifreeze is usually ethylene glycol - they used polyethylene glycol] that helped repair nerve cells in their damaged spinal cords, scientists reported.

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When I read this I thought it was rather a cruel sort of dog study, but actually these were injured pets that were enrolled in a clinical trial. Times do change.

Canines have a 25% recovery rate with standard intervention, this doubled the recovery. Hard to know if the results are real -- even in dogs. In guinea pigs the intervention has a 90% success rate.

Ethyelene glycol is very poisonous to animals - it's a neurotoxin that acts like a toxic form of alcohol. Perhaps PEG acts in a similar fashion on nerve endings, but is reversible?

Unsurprisingly it's been studied in stroke.

If it turned out to be effective for stroke it would have a huge impact on healthcare.

Real news: oil prices fall

BBC NEWS | Business | Price drop prompts oil quota call

Opec officially likes the average price of a "basket" of its oil products to stay between $22 and $28 a barrel.

... The recent gains in oil prices - the record for US light crude was $55.67 in October - have left that far behind.

Opec president Purnomo Yusgiantoro suggested on Friday that a more realistic band would be $28-32, while some members have advocated an even higher range.

Sheikh Ahmed, for instance, suggests $32-35 - barely below the basket price on Thursday of $35.42, which was 10% down from the previous day.

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Sounds like the "official" target price was more a matter of necessity than of true preference. Shocked we are.

Iraq is leading the call for higher prices -- that's a good sign of independence.

This is real news, rather than the usual speculation. If oil prices are falling, is this a vote of confidence in the future of Iraq? That seems the only near term event that could make a real difference -- other than global warming reducing winter demand.

It's significant if people risking real money think Iraq will recover in the near term.

Target zaps the Salvation Army: was it the lawyers, or the "moral values"?

Off Target with the Salvation Army by Joseph M. Knippenberg

Well, we’ll have to get the hint somewhere else now, because Target wants us to have a "distraction-free shopping environment in which to shop," as someone from customer relations wrote (not very elegantly) in response to my impassioned protest email. Target wants me to concentrate on spending money in their stores, not on "the reason for the season."

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So the Salvation Army ringers will soon be history. Why?

I can come up with only two reasons. One is the law. The ringers were always in violation of anti-solicitation rules and statutes; lawyers may have determined it was no longer feasible to overlook this. Maybe. Good excuse anyway.

The other is "moral values". A good percentage of the "moral values" group like to keep poverty, discomfort, misfortune and misery at a distance. A great distance. These are, after all, people whom Yahweh is unhappy with. Why should one have to see that which God would remove? The bell ringers, scruffy and clearly not of the blessed, smell of poverty. Now they need be seen no longer.

Exhibit A in the judgment of humanity

infernal device

Examples of human evil, by no means complete. Should anything sit in judgment upon humanity they will find this a useful exhibit.

China funds US housing bubble

The New York Times > Business > World Business > Dollar's Fall Tests Nerve of Asia's Central Bankers

... officials at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange in Beijing have been seeking higher yields by plowing billions of dollars a month into bonds backed by mortgages on houses across the United States, according to bankers who help Beijing manage the money. By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom.

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So, is this an evil conspiracy to destroy the US economy? No. It's a desperate attempt to keep the US economy afloat. A recession in America is bad news, a recession in China is a potential worldwide catastrophe. An American recession might mean a Chinese recession.

I'd be more willing to invest if Bush were not our President.

What a ridiculous nation: shock and steroids

CBS News | Top Stars Named In Steroid Reports | December 4, 2004 07:51:31

This is absolutely absurd. When the "scandal" first broke, I assumed it would be completely ignored. Instead it's being treated as though this were news. I think I really do live on another planet.

It's been very well understood for several years that drugs were used very extensively throughout all of baseball to enhance athletic performance. It's also understood that they have been used very widely in olympic events where muscle strength is critical (eg. most of them). Female atheletes in particular will gain an enormous advantage from the use of androgenic substances.

The next step is gene doping. The only interesting part of this discussion is the yet-to-appear recognition that there's nothing fair in the universe -- some people are born with the endocrine systems that others replicate through drugs.

If "fans" wanted a relatively drug free sport we'd have it.

Bono plans lifelong poverty fight

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Bono plans lifelong poverty fight

Rock singer Bono has pledged to spend the rest of his life trying to help the impoverished around the world.

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I actually believe he'll give it a good shot. We do have some reasonable ideas about what it would take to fight poverty on a world scale. What we lack is courage, compassion, wisdom and desire. Perhaps a desire for self-preservation, which we may have, will be an adequate substitute.

When I was young, the Internet was open to all

Tenet calls for Internet security -- The Washington Times

Former CIA Director George J. Tenet yesterday called for new security measures to guard against attacks on the United States that use the Internet, which he called "a potential Achilles' heel."
...The Internet "represents a potential Achilles' heel for our financial stability and physical security if the networks we are creating are not protected," Mr. Tenet said.
He said known adversaries, including "intelligence services, military organizations and non-state actors," are researching information attacks against the United States
... Access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they take security seriously, he said.
Mr. Tenet called for industry to lead the way by "establishing and enforcing" security standards. Products need to be delivered to government and private-sector customers "with a new level of security and risk management already built in."
The national press, including United Press International (UPI), were excluded from yesterday's event, at Mr. Tenet's request, organizers said.

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Once upon a time there was a thing called freedom.

What is Tenet calling for? Nothing new. He means:

1. a strong chain of authentication.
2. regulated encryption
3. the elimination of open source solutions
4. the regulation of computer hardware

Palladium, hardware authentication, encryption across the computer, biometric authentication, authorized-only access to the internet, regulated encryption with government held keys, etc. None of this is new, all of it has surfaced in one form or another since the 1980s. There was a big push for regulated encryption with private key registration back when Al Gore was a senator.

Microsoft is a major supporter of the "authenticated internet" and of this solution set. It's the ultimate way to lock out all other solutions. I suspect Tenet will shortly be on the board of Microsoft -- if he isn't already.

It will be ironic if, 10 years from now, the only "free" internets will be run out of central Africa.

Bush believes in the purity of the markets?

Theoretically, Tax Reform Should Fly (washingtonpost.com)

WaPo claims Bush's policies, including removal of tax breaks for employer purchased healthcare, are based on an enthusiasm for market solutions.

I wonder. Bush has not demonstrated much understanding of economics in the past four years. Assuming it's true however, does Bush understand that markets say some disturbing things about how the disabled should be cared for?

Perhaps Bush's solution to the pension obligations is liberal application of ice floes.