DeLong: Why Social Security Deals Are Not a Good Idea

Brad DeLong's Website: Social Security Deals: Why They Are Not a Good Idea

DeLong reacts to a seemingly reasonable proposal for social security reform that's been associated with Joe Lieberman. The bottom line is that Bush has shown, time and again, that he can't be trusted. Emphases mine

1.. A Social Security reform bill that uncaps FICA, uses half the new FICA money for sweetening the pot for a well-implemented forced-savings private account program, and that uses the other half of FICA money plus some benefit cuts/retirement age increases to bring Social Security itself into seventy-five year actuarial balance in a well-implemented way--that's a reform bill that is good for the country.

2. However, you cannot get there: whatever deals are struck between Graham and Lieberman will be undone in the conference committee.

3. And even if you could get there in the sense of having a deal on the major outlines of the reform bill, the devil is in the details--and everything we know about the Bush administration tells us that it is incapable of implementing anything well: something always goes wrong (due either to incompetence or malevolence or both) to make Bush-implemented policy initiative a bad idea.

4. So the only way to fix Social Security is to do so in a way that keeps the Bush administration's mitts off of the implementation, and the final form of the legislation out of the hands of a Republican-dominated conference committee.

5. Therefore, if Lieberman is going to bargain, he needs to bargain first for a special rule to govern the legislative process, second for the removal of drafting details from Republican-controlled staffs, and third for a separate--and non-Bush controlled--bureaucracy to implement the program.

What Josh is saying is that all that is simply not going to happen, so that (1) is irrelevant. But it is important not to lose sight of the fact that (1) is true.

Bottom line -- there's no real way to a bargain given the track records of the Bush administration and the GOP.

Journalism yet lives: The NYT exposes negligent care of prisoners

The New York Times > New York Region > Private Health Care in Jails Can Be a Death Sentence

This is old-style journalism, by Paul von Zielbauer and the NYT. There's still something left in our newspapers. It's a LONG article, an expose on the consequences of outsourcing the care of very vulnerable and often despised people to a for-profit corporation:

...In these two harrowing deaths, state investigators concluded, the culprit was a for-profit corporation, Prison Health Services, that had moved aggressively into New York State in the last decade, winning jail contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars with an enticing sales pitch: Take the messy and expensive job of providing medical care from overmatched government officials, and give it to an experienced nationwide outfit that could recruit doctors, battle lawsuits and keep costs down.

A yearlong examination of Prison Health by The New York Times reveals repeated instances of medical care that has been flawed and sometimes lethal. The company's performance around the nation has provoked criticism from judges and sheriffs, lawsuits from inmates' families and whistle-blowers, and condemnations by federal, state and local authorities. The company has paid millions of dollars in fines and settlements...

It's a long article, too long for most of us to read in these harried times. View it in full page and scan the middle.

Even if you don't care about prisoners (who does these days?), the lessons apply whenever a vulnerable population (nursing home, indigent, cognitively impaired, psychiatric, the poor, prisoners) has their care managed by a for-profit consolidated entity. In the absence of the human safeguards of intimacy, in the absence of powerful regulation and observation, driven by the ferocious natural selection of the marketplace, these entities will inevitably morph into a machine for disposing of the inconvenient. It is a progression as certain as the arc of a thrown rock.

An inside view of Google

men.style.com: GQ

Yes, this was written in GQ. I can't explain that!

Gmail - Inbox (47) - of which 2/3 are spam

We're losing the war on spam. Google's filters had been doing well, but now they're failing dismally. Today about 2/3 of the messages that passed Google's initial spam filter are in fact "obvious" (to a human) spam. I've not seen such a rotten screening rate in years.

Spam from SONY: thank you congress

Sony Media Software – Home for Vegas, Sound Forge and ACID

Congress gave us CAN SPAM. CAN SPAM gave us this:

The monthly newsletter for Sony Media Software product information, news, and tips...

Sony Media Software
1617 Sherman Ave.
Madison, Wisconsin 53704
http://www.sony.com/mediasoftware
Customer Service and Sales: 1.800.577.6642
THIS IS NOT SPAM
You received this message because you requested to stay informed of products and promotions when you registered a product.

The Direct Mail Association paid off our corrupt congressperps (yeah, most of the CAN SPAM supporters were GOP) so they'd make this kind of spam legal. Sure I can tell SONY to remove me from the mailing list -- but I know from years of trying to get myself off paper junk mail lists that my name will just get added back on. There's an entire industry that develops in these situations; the "frontmen" like SONY insulate themselves from the guys doing the dirty work of adding addresses any way they can.

The one good news is that SONY is probably using a legitimate mailheader (CAN SPAM did require this). So when I submit them to various spam filtering services there's a better chance they'll get blocked.

The pain of CAN SPAM is that it did nothing to stop all the porn/phishing spam, but it legitimized the equivalent of paper junk mail -- without creating a "postal fee" to attach a cost to the marketing. This SONY junk is only the beginning, in the absence of a "postal fee" our mailboxes will finally collapse under a deluge of "legal SPAM". I'd place a hex on the GOP Congress, but it's clear my hexes are working.

The only bright spot is the certainty that marketers will overreach, and that eventually they'll have to pay a postal fee (tax) and join a certification program paid for by the tax. The certification program will require a "V-Chip" like tag identifying the type of email as determined by an independent group. My ISP will filter all those messages out at my request.

Or so I can dream. I just hope GOP voters get this stuff too.

Hey, all you black hat bad guy pirate hackers out there ... could you please plunder a SONY movie for me?

NYT discovers Africa and is intensely confused

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Thousands Died in Africa Yesterday

The NYT has a long and vacuous editorial today on poverty and death in Africa. In failing to express a plausible approach to the disaster of much of Africa, the NYT effectively came out in support of complacency.

Others have done better. Dismantling trade tariffs is a part of most solutions. Putting pressure on South Africa to stop supporting Zimbabwe's tyrant is another. Helping less vicious tyrants to replace more vicious tyrants is probably worth trying. Vaccination programs (thanks Bill and Melinda, at least there's an upside to the pain Microsoft has given me) and early infant nutrition programs will help; on this point the NYT's support of the Blair initiative is correct.

That which remains: Ken Kifer's bike pages

Years ago, before kids, I did quite a bit of bike commuting. I put up a web page on the topic. Back then Ken Kifer's site was a great resource. I came across his name again through a bio he wrote on Major Taylor; it was there I discovered that Ken was killed by an intoxicated driver at the end of 2003.

A friend now preserves and tends Ken Kifer's site including his bike pages. and his utopian visions.

This is the last entry on his "what's new" page:

August 30, 2003: I have returned from a 6,500 mile bicycle camping trip to the Pacific Ocean in Washington and back. I am preparing my trip report, and I have already revised my page on Touring with a Solar Laptop to reflect changes.

Here's to you Ken.

Hope -- the american talent for subversion

The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: Hollywood Bets on Chris Rock's 'Indecency'

I found this oddly encouraging:

Once the feds vowed to smite future 'wardrobe malfunctions,' the customers started bolting the annual TV franchises where those malfunctions and their verbal counterparts are apt to occur. An award show sanitized of vulgarity and encased in the prophylactic of tape delay is an oxymoron. And so the Golden Globes lost 40 percent of its audience in January on NBC, the Grammys lost 28 percent of its audience this month on CBS. The viewers turned up instead at the competing 'Desperate Housewives' on ABC, where S-and-M is the latest item on the carnal menu.

America has an odd genius at corruption, diversion and subversion. Perhaps more of our national anxiety attacks will be subverted.

I must confess though, that our family doesn't have a bone in this fight. We don't watch TV. I thought the V-Chip was a great idea, but Al Gore and I were the only two people who thought so. Label the content and let the family decide what to do with it ...

Monbiot summarizes the 'Left Behind' series

George Monbiot � Apocalypse Please

I got to this one via the Moyers speech. The 'Left Behind' delusions are fairly typical of the kinds of delusions that have circulated in American subcultures since the founding of the nation. Monbiot has a pretty good summary of the overall belief system. I don't think Bush himself actually believes he's fighting the Antichrist, but many of his acolytes very much believe he is.

...In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to earth when certain preconditions have been met.(4) The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel’s occupation of the rest of its “Biblical lands” (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the Antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to earth...

In this article Monbiot says the Rapture Index is 144, "just one point below the critical threshold, beyond which the sky will be filled with floating nudists". Today I see it's hit 153. It's risky for prophets to be so specific; wise prophets never make numeric statements.

Bill Moyers all but despairs of our leadership, and our citizens

Drunk and Disorderly � Blog Archive � There Is No Tomorrow

Moyers gave a speech in the last few months. A version of the speech was published on AlterNet, then copied to this blog. So much for copyright!

Moyer all but despairs of our government and our citizenship -- but he still has hope.

HyperCard: My past is ancient history ...

Smackerel: When multimedia was black and white

This site was written to introduce HyperCard and the days before color screens to an audience raised on the web. For me this stuff is just the day before today, I still have dusty old books with black and white HyperCard screenshots.

Heck, I even remember Gopher.

So what happened in Fallujah?

This is story alleges brutal war crimes by US forces during the assault on Fallujah:Iraq Dispatches: Stories from Fallujah.

I suspect the stories are not entirely true or complete, but I suspect most hellish urban battles have similar stories -- so they are not entirely implausible either.

We don't hear much about what happened in Fallujah. Just silence.

Suffer the children

A man kills his two children and wounds three others. A surgeon and blogger tells his side of the story: A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure.

He visits one of the survivors a day after surgery:

As I was rounding on them today one told me, 'I was bad.'

The baby name voyager and the science of epidemics

The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager

This Java app actually works -- even in OS X. It takes a long time to load and get going, but then it's quite responsive. Brinna has never been in the top 1000. Ben is popular now. But check out "Emily". It has an explosive growth from about 1960 and is still on a rapid growth path. Alma and Alfred show a terrific crash between 1900 and 1950.

My guess is that this represents a true nonlinear ("chaos", butterfly wing, epidemic, etc) pattern. It would be interesting to do similar chart for various infectious diseases.

ChoicePoint owns you

Shifting sands in data leak (SFgate)

ChoicePoint knows quite a bit about you. If you're unlucky, you're one of the people who's identity has been stolen through the misuse ChoicePoint's data. So who are they?

...ChoicePoint, based outside Atlanta, was created in 1997 as a spin-off from Equifax, one of the leading credit-reporting agencies. Its original purpose was to analyze claims on behalf of the insurance industry.

That mission evolved and expanded as ChoicePoint went on a buying spree, acquiring about 60 other firms with businesses ranging from data collection and background checks to DNA analysis and direct marketing.

ChoicePoint is now one of the leading data brokers in the country, acting as a sort of private intelligence service for both corporate and government clients (including the FBI).

The company had about $900 million in sales last year and is believed to have more government clients than its two main rivals, LexisNexis and Acxiom.

'Any interaction where you give up personal information can create an opportunity for them to obtain it and put it in their database,' said Chris Hoofnagle, who heads the San Francisco office of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

'You get arrested, you get married, you have a child -- ChoicePoint can get copies of the records and sell it,' he said. 'If you've ever had dealings with the government, they have information about you.'

From a consumer's point of view, one of the biggest problems about ChoicePoint is that there's no way to opt out or otherwise prohibit the company from circulating your personal info.

..Jones said the company's services range from $5 overviews of new employees to in-depth profiles of individuals costing clients thousands of dollars.

...To be sure, not everything ChoicePoint does is a potential threat to consumers. For example, the company offers its vast resources free of charge when children are missing or abducted...

They're an unregulated industry and they're overdue for regulation. Interestingly even the CEO is quoted as welcoming more oversight. "Stop me before I kill again ...".

Orwell figured this kind of thing would be the provice of governments. He really didn't understand capitalism all that well.