Earlier, I asked whether Canada would consider harmonising their immigration policy with ours in order to maintain open borders. Now from the New York Times, another reason to consider North American union: Canada's currency woes. Hmm. . . it's not exactly an original thought, but this is starting to sound like the world dominated by massive trading blocks about which we have intermittently heard for many years. Question is, would this make us more or less free?
"The extreme critics, like the Wall Street Journal, really pine for the days when there were few or no blacks at Harvard, when the undergraduates were largely stamped from the same upper-class and middle-class mold. That's the way it was when I was an undergraduate. Believe me, it is much better now."
OpinionJournal delivers a biting rejoinder:
"How does Lewis come up with such a tendentious interpretation? Well, consider the era in which he came of age. . . When Lewis was a freshly minted Harvard graduate, and for at least two decades thereafter, it was true that many people who rejected the liberal view of racial matters did so for invidious reasons.
"But the world has changed since 1948. Elite opinion is now unanimous, and popular opinion nearly so, that black Americans are entitled to equality. Today's racial conservatism holds that the government and other institutions should be colorblind--a liberal view by 1948 standards. Today's liberalism holds that remedial measures are necessary to compensate for past injustices. That's a defensible view, but one that should be defended on its own merits. Instead, people like Lewis invoke a moral authority that began to become obsolete sometime around 1970."
This is the most succinct statement I have ever seen of the problem with the debate over racial politics. Bravo.
From a Columbia journalism professor who shares Mr. Shales' admirable lack of bias comes this article arguing that the media's just too darn patriotic for its own good. From which I culled this treasure:
"The budget surplus has disappeared down a rabbit hole of tax cuts and post-Sept. 11 emergencies that sprung the lock on the lockbox of Social Security."
I assume this is because of the problem with the blogger servers. I tried to buy it the other day, but had some sort of a problem with PayPal. If I have a benefactor, thank you -- otherwise, look for the ad disappearance over the next week or so.
In his review of Bernard Golberg's Bias, Tom Shales doesn't just assert that there is no libral bias in th media -- he posits it, like one of Euclid's Five Axioms. "Goldberg has picked this moment in time to haul out the old canard about the media being "liberal" and the news being slanted leftward," he tells us. He doesn't actually refute the claim anywhere -- he simply acts as if its untruth were something so obvious that it needs no proof, like the shortest distance between two points. This frees up precious column inches for an unfettered personal attack on Bernard Goldberg.
But you decide how unbiased Mr. Shales' media is:
"It's the story of one man confronting awesome corporate forces and seeing his life all but destroyed for daring to come forward and tell the truth." -- Tom Shales, reviewingThe Insider, the Russell Crowe movie about a tobacco industry whistleblower.
"Bernard Goldberg, the one-time CBS News correspondent and full-time addlepated windbag who is trying to make a second career out of trashing his former employer." Tom Shales, reviewingBias, a book by a media industry whistleblower.
But don't let the quotes, or the title of this post, fool you: Shales' work is not Orwellian; it's adolescent.
"Obviously hoping to follow in the footsteps of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, two intellectual giants by comparison, Goldberg has fashioned his rantings into a book succinctly titled "Bias," which, appropriately enough, won the dubious honor of a commendatory editorial from The Wall Street Journal. And we all know how unbiased those Journal editorials are. Gosh it is soooo hard to figure out where they're coming from."
It feels like shooting ducks in a barrel, but I can't resist this next quote:
"Goldberg's specialty is conjuring vast, sweeping generalizations that fit in with his own very obvious bias and are based on the tiniest of specifics rather than well-researched evidence."
Generalizations like, for example, "Liberal bias in the media is a canard". Or his next attempt at biting commentary:
"Quoting Engberg as having referred to one aspect of the Forbes plan as being its "wackiest," Goldberg then asked in rhetorical high dudgeon, 'Can you imagine, in your wildest dreams, a network news reporter calling Hillary Clinton's health care plan 'wacky?' Can you imagine any editor allowing it?' Well, frankly, yes."
After seven paragraphs of Shales, I have a temptation to say "Call me when the shuttle lands, Tom." But I will sit very still until it passes.
"But Hillary Clinton and Steve Forbes were not on an equal plane. She was first lady of the land and he was a national non-entity trying desperately to draw attention to his failing bid for a presidential nomination."
Okay, so we're supposed to take Hillary's health care plan seriously because she's the First Lady? Can I assume from this that Shales speaks equally respectfully of Nancy Reagan's astrologer? What the hell, I've already assumed there's no media bias.
The irony of Shales defending the 'wacky' quote by calling Steve Forbes a "national non-entity". . . it's the kind of quote that, were I to make it up, would have me laughed out of Freshman Creative Writing. Personally, I think Forbes is a wing-nut. Nonetheless, he owns one of the world's leading publications, and he staged a serious run for the presidency. On the "non-entity list", if such a thing is kept, movie critic for the Washington Post comes well before Steve Forbes.
But we're not quite done with the personal attacks. I'll skip the trivial whining about Goldberg's treatment of a review Shales wrote and skip straight to the vitriol:
"In his book, Goldberg bases his allegations of liberal slant not only on what he perceived as bias in pieces that aired, but also by jotting down small talk that he heard bandied about in the workplace -- or that we must take on faith that he heard bandied about -- and using these alleged remarks of individuals to paint the whole profession with his broad, broad brush.
"Goldberg was, let's face it, not a bright shining star in the firmament of CBS News. He usually looked disheveled and bleary-eyed on the air, and appearance does count in a visual medium."
So Shales is telling us that the small talk Goldberg reports isn't true because. . . he looked like a slob on air.
I can't go on. It's like playing pool with your four year old cousin -- you always win, but it's not something you can brag about. So I'll close with Shales' close:
"Goldberg is being assailed by former CBS News colleagues for failing so conspicuously (and for who knows how large a book advance) to be a 'team player.' Concludes the Journal. . . 'the TV networks could use a few more non-team players like Mr. Goldberg.'
"Oh really? Oh could they? And pray tell how many 'non-team players' such as Mr. Goldberg would [The Journal] like to have on the staff? How many would be richly praised and rewarded for, say, writing an op-ed piece in the Times complaining that the Journal's editorial about Bernard Goldberg was an embarrassingly transparent piece of corporate-dictated hogwash?
I do hope one tries. It could be such an inspiration to us all."
That Us presumably being Mr. Shales' famously unbiased media.
As Professor Reynolds says, "Not having read Bias, I have no idea if it's good. But after reading Shales' review, I still didn't. All I knew was that Shales didn't like it, and that I liked Shales a lot less than when I started."
Well, Justin Slotman disagrees with my assertion that the cartoon in the new Reason (the cartoon isn't online yet, but the site's great) is anti-redneck. Unfortunately, I can't find my #$%! copy. What struck me about the comic strip was not anything in particular that it said, but rather a tone with which I am all-too familiar as a child of Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Perhaps if I'd grown up in Alabama I would have found the cartoon deeply funny (as a dear friend said: "I'm not sure whether you're conservative or just ornery"). I confess, I know few people who listen to Christian Rock on a regular basis. I suppose I am hypersensitive not because I'm particularly religious, but because in the area I grew up, making fun of rednecks is the equivalent of Jewish jokes or minstrel humor in other times and places. People who would not dream of making any sort of an ethnic comment make shockingly ignorant assertions about rednecks (or, for a change, devout Catholics), whom they sneeringly regard as a formless, undifferentiated blob of horrible behaviors. That cartoon had the same tone to me. But I shall read it more carefully and see if I still agree.
UPDATE
I stick by my assertion: it's anti-redneck. Mildly so, anyway, though not as much as any other mildly hip publication.
Re-reading it, though, I realized that I was more struck by how out of place it seemed than anything else. Reason is usually a pretty one track magazine: they address issues of regulation and government intrusion. They do it in a thoughtful, informative, and interesting way, and I look forward to its arrival every month. But it's pretty focused on markets -- not usually a lot of commentary on what people choose to do in their private lives, unless the government is somehow threatening that privacy.
So why this cartoon? It was just a straight tale of a trek through the world of evangelical Christian products, might have been funny if I knew more people like that (unfortunately, Moscow-on-the-Hudson is diverse only in the University admissions sense of the word). But it didn't belong to my sense of what the magazine is about. Usually when Reason writes about people buying stuff they want with absolutely no government interference, they're in favor of it. The author of the cartoon is definitely not in favor of Christian publishing, music or otherwise. He thinks they're -- well, the mildest word is goofy. So I suppose my subconscious assumed that this was a case of coastal people making fun of the red states. Perhaps I'm wrong; perhaps this only represents a new editorial direction for the magazine -- but I don't think that the conclusion is necessarily unreasonable.
Consider the evidence: both dark forces that seek dominion over the entire earth. Both willing to accept any amount of carnage in pursuit of that goal. Both have immense power deriving from. . . a ring!
The ongoing saga of Verizon: my parents' phone lines aren't working, a fact which I discovered on Saturday, when I spent a seven frustrating hours wiring the house so all the computers could get high-speed internet access, and setting up various electronic components, including the TiVo I purchased for my mother. I called Verizon to attempt to get a service call, resulting in the voicemail message I reported earlier.
Well, we finally scheduled a call for yesterday afternoon, with my mother taking the afternoon off to wait for the repairmen. No repairman. I called Verizon last night (no, my mother's not infirm -- she just has an extreme distaste for all things electrical.) They told me they'd already fixed the line on Monday night at 6:00. No one came to the apartment at six, I told them. Quickly did the girl on the other end of the phone backtrack -- they didn't come to the house you see, they just "cleared the line" from outside the house. I've never heard of this procedure, although my knowlege of telecomm technology is by no means encyclopedic. Regardless, since I had already diagnosed the problem as stemming from the cables inside the apartment -- a fact which my invariably honest mother swears she relayed to them when she called for the repair -- there was no reason for anyone to do anything other than come into our apartment with a sniffer and figure out where the break in the line was. Moreover, even if they had fixed the problem, it seems reasonable to assume that they would call to check that it worked -- and to cancel the appointment for the following day. I freely admit that I may have gotten a little loud as I pointed this out -- somehow neither my mother's gentle lessons on manners, nor my conflict resolution classes, ever quite prepared me for The Ordeal of The Utility Help Line. The girl perkily offered to send someone tomorrow, requiring my mother to take another half-day off work, or Saturday, when the apartment would have been without phones for a week and a half. All right, I got more than a little loud.
Two supervisors and one hour later, I was presented with the following options: I could schedule that impossibly inconvenient four hour block, or I could have a foreman call my mother before 10:00 tomorrow (today, now) to schedule a slightly more convenient appointment, but at a time that could not be specified. I reached into my conflict resolution manual and tried to paraphrase what he was saying. "So if I'm hearing you right," I said slowly, "we have the choice of my mother taking another half day off work, at her expense, and hoping that you show up, or we can schedule a foreman to call, and hope that he can schedule something before the next time the comet Kehoutek is in the solar system. And the reason that we have to take one of these two expensive and inconvenient options is that you screwed up."
"That's about it," he agreed.
I was a very, very good girl. I did not swear or throw the phone.
The worst thing about it is that this is absolutely typical. I mean, I get better customer service than this from Microsoft. There, they charge rates that loan sharks would consider extortionate, but at least they're helpful and polite. When the cable company doesn't show up, I get a free month. When my mattress wasn't delivered on time, they gave me $100 off. When Verizon doesn't deliver they. . . schedule another appointment. Classic monopoly behavior, which as I said before, is another reason I'm almost a libertarian.
But now the bright light of competition is breaking into the marketplace! Slaves, you need suffer no more under Verizon's lash! There's an alternative. Now, the other company may suck too -- I won't know until we try. But there's comfort in knowing that they can't suck worse than this.
MERRILL LYNCH is laying off another 9,000 workers, perhaps because the economy isn't looking quite as perky as the media has been reporting. In an excellent column, Robert Samuelson points out that the forecasters are predicting the end of this recession based on previous post-WWII recessions, which don't necessarily have anything to do with this one:
"Truth be told, most economists don't understand this peculiar recession especially well. We know this because most of them didn't predict it, which wasn't surprising, because most didn't understand the preceding boom, either.
" . . . The standard post-World War II recession has followed a familiar pattern: (a) While the economy is expanding, inflation rises; (b) to dampen inflation, the Federal Reserve increases interest rates; (c) as the economy slows, businesses accumulate unwanted inventories (excess supplies of unsold goods); (d) to reduce inventories, companies cut production and lay off workers; (e) higher inventories and unemployment cause price and wage increases -- aka inflation -- to subside; (f) the Fed then trims interest rates, and the economy recovers. The process usually takes less than a year. Since World War II, the average recession has lasted 11 months.
"By this schedule, the recession must nearly be over. It started almost a year ago. Time for recovery. Unfortunately, this recession didn't follow the familiar pattern. True, inflation did rise (very slightly) in 1999 and 2000, and the Fed did increase interest rates beginning in mid-1999. But the economy's main problems weren't -- and aren't -- inflation and excess inventories, which could be speedily remedied."
He goes on to trace the roots of this recession to the speculative bubble in the late 90's, in which I absolutely concur. A speculative boom followed by a bust was also the cause of the Great Depression, Japan's current troubles, and many more. There is no reason to think that this recession will follow the Fed-driven recessions we're used to. Interestingly, the only other post-war recession which did not follow the normal pattern is the 73-74 recession, which was deeper, characterized by "stagflation", and lasted longer than other recessions. My Macro professor convincingly argued that the cause of that recession was caused by the oil shock, which caused a real decline in productivity.
Meanwhile, the empirical evidence rolls in: the Fed chiefs are much less sanguine about the prospects for recovery than the media, predicting that we won't rally until mid-year or later. Of course, since this agrees with my earlier predictions, I'll be vindicated if they're right -- but not too vindicated, as I'm still looking for that job.
JOSHUA MARSHALL questions Larry Lindsay's economic credentials based upon his appearance on Brit Hume's Special Report. Specifically, he takes him to task for denying that unemployment insurance helps the economy to grow during this exchange (as quoted on Talking Points):
* * * * * *
HUME: I want to ask you about something else Senator Daschle said . . ."We included unemployment and health benefits for laidoff workers in our plan because, as any objective economist will tell you, it's one of the most effective ways to boost demand and pump money into the economy quickly."
Setting aside "objective," can you think of any economist who would make that argument?
LINDSEY: Well, I think the president, as you know, is very much for health benefits and for unemployment, but not necessarily for the reason the senator said. He's there because these people need help, and that's why we...
HUME: Can you talk about the economic theory, if there is one -- do you know of any economic theory under which health care benefits and unemployment benefits are used to stimulate the economy?
LINDSEY: Our view is that paychecks are what the objective should be here and not simply bigger unemployment checks.
HUME: And the reason for that is what?
LINDSEY: Well, paychecks are what grow the economy. People who are unemployed need help and we're all for that. But unemployment checks don't grow the economy; paychecks do.
* * * * * * *
Marshall's response:
"Now, Talking Points is no economist, but he had always understood that unemployment checks not only create demand and stimulate the economy (which only stands to reason since you're putting money directly into the hands of people who immediately have to spend it) but that this is the point. Unemployment insurance is intended to be counter-cyclical.
"Exactly when the economy is contracting and people are getting laid off you have a roughly proportional, if lesser, amount of money being injected back into the economy. It's a bit like macro-economic shock absorbers. This isn't 'some economic theory', it's Macro-Economics 101. "
Er, no it's not. That is, it used to be Macro 101, before Kennedy et. al. proved in excruciating detail why Keynsian economics doesn't work.*(long explanation at bottom for those who are interested.) Larry Lindsay is apparently considered a lackluster scholar by the economics community (disclaimer: I'm a lowly MBA with a concentration in economics, not an economist) but he was right on this one. Of course, he didn't make himself look any smarter by dancing around with sound bites rather than trying to explain the issue, but if you look at the lengthy explanation I'm about to offer for why it isn't true, you'll see that it would have been impossible for him to explain on an interview show. Since the press corps largely took their one or two economics courses during the reign of Keynsian theory, and on very liberal campuses to boot, it's not surprising that Marshall should think this: the consumer spending theory of economic stimulus appears all the time in the media, used to trumpet everything from increased unemployment benefits to the Gore tax plan.
So why is this wrong? The basic media understanding of how unemployment insurance works is that it puts money into the hands of needy people who spend it immediately instead of rich people or corporations. This was also Gore's favorite argument against tax cuts for the rich. But as Rand Simberg points out, rich people and corporations don't stick all their money in a vault so they can swim around in it. Either they spend it, or they put it into some sort of financial asset (bank, stock, whatever) where it goes to someone else who spends it. Spending money on new shoes for the kids, groceries, or a car stereo creates no more wealth for society than spending on concrete mixers or luxury yachts. (I'm talking GDP, not social justice.)
The idea that government spending could somehow create wealth was based on a concept called the "money multiplier". This was the idea that when the government spent money on, say, Hoover Dam, that money turned into concrete mixers and executive salaries that rapidly turned into luxury yachts. The luxury yacht and concrete mixer spending was translated into spending on labor and raw materials, which spending turned into shoes and groceries and car stereos, creating a little extra demand as it went -- the multiplier effect. Well, let's think about that. Where does the money the government spends come from? George W. doesn't have a money farm he harvests when the need arises; he has to raise taxes, cut spending, or borrow money -- in short, take the money from somewhere else, where it therefore does not turn into salaries, luxury yachts, etc. Zero sum game. (Unless we sell off assets to the Japanese or another foreign nation, increasing our financial capital at the expense of our real assets. I don't think that this is what Mr. Marshall is advocating.) As a matter of fact, most economists would agree that government spending destroys wealth, because government is inherently less efficient than the free market.
Of course, there is one other source of that money -- the printing press. Which is one of the reasons that Keynsian policies are so inflationary.
In fact, unemployment insurance has some measurable negative effect on the economy, because it makes the labor market more rigid; the higher the benefit, the more it costs employers to hire each new person (because of the taxes), and the longer people tend to stay unemployed, seeking the perfect job instead of something to pay the bills. Think of it this way: some number of those people could be paid to do something that someone, somewhere wants; instead they're being paid to to breathe. But they don't want to work at McDonalds or dig ditches; they want to write a novel. No one wants a novel about refrigerator magnets. Labor input decreases; GDP shrinks. The argument in favor of unemployment is the one Lindsay in fact made: those people need help.
There are only two ways for economies to grow. The first is to increase the inputs: labor, via immigration, birthrate, or involuntary servitude; or capital, via aggressive savings (which temporarily shrinks the economy -- it's one of the problems with Japan) or the aforementioned asset sale to foreign nations. The second is to increase productivity via technology, deregulation or trade. This is, I think, what Larry Lindsay was trying to say, although as you can see from the transcript, he didn't say it very well.
* It doesn't have anything to do with John Kenneth Galbraith's explanation that while Keynes expected governments to run deficits during recessions, he expected them to pay down the deficits during boom years. Deficits are certainly a drag on the economy -- they divert investments from highly valued assets like metal pressing machines to less valued projects like the Trent Lott Memorial Hogback Research Center at the University of Georgia. But they are not the problem with Keynsian economics. The problem is that Keynesian theory is -- ahem, somewhat incomplete -- while Keynsian policy is madly inflationary. Keynes was scrupulously disinterested in the long run effects of his policies; "in the long run, we'll all be dead," he said, and how right he was, except that the long run in Keynsian economics turns out to be roughly eighteen months, which leaves most of us ample time to contemplate his folly. The one model he is still widely credited for -- the famous Liquidity Trap which brought you the Great Depression and Japan's current dire straits -- turns out to be immune to his spend, spend, spend! remedy. FDR enthusiasts will tell you different, of course, but while his spending may or may not have averted a revolution, it certainly didn't end the Great Depression, which didn't give up until WWII radically transformed the world's economy. It has proven similarly ineffective in Japan.
EXCELLENT ANALYSIS of the technical hole Apple has worked itself into by single-sourcing its chips from USS Clueless. There's a little technical jargon, but not much, and it highlights the behavior which has gotten Apple into trouble over and over. Which is to say, Steve Jobs. Without him, the company rapidly runs off track; with him, it is beset by the endless problems created by his monomaniacal obsession with controlling every single piece of the computer. Yes, they're easy to use and reliable as hell -- but they're expensive, underpowered (except for graphics design), almost unexpendable, severely lacking software due to Apple's lack of market share and extortionate negotiating strategies, and God help you if something does go wrong!
I love the Mac concept, but I wish the company could get it together on the business side well enough to keep from plowing into disaster every few years.
IF YOU PREDICT IT, they will come. In an earlier post, I asked how long it would be before we had calls for plane control. Even as I wrote, USA Todayhad already kicked off the campaign.
PRICELESS takedown of homelessness activists from Arnold Ahlert. The whole column expertly skewers the platitudes mouthed by New York liberals on the subject. I wish I could print the whole thing here, but here's a taste:
"If the only thing these "homeless" people truly lack is shelter, why don't New York liberals start a "Spend the Night at My House" movement? Give someone a cot or a couch. Let them sleep in your house, next to you and your family. Isn't that what real compassion is all about?"
I used to work for a homelessness organization, and the problem was not about unlucky people who had one bad break too many. For one thing, the people actually out on the street are usually people who aren't allowed into the shelters because they are violent, abusing drugs or alchohol, or stealing. For another, most of the "homeless" aren't people on the street -- they're people occupying temporary shelters, public or private. My organization mostly catered to the latter sort. Both groups have tremendous problems which they will probably only overcome with expensive help -- but most of those problems are behavior based. To wit: the largest problem that our job counselors had in placing women in the work force was not day care, transportation, job skills, or any other classical barrier quoted by activists, but (I swear, I'm not making this up) the refusal of the women to seek or accept work at the same time their soap operas were on. They had become so acclimated to the welfare system that they couldn't stop thinking of a job as optional, something to do if it didn't interfere with more important things. So theoretically, a large part of New York's homelessness problem could have been solved by giving them VCR's.
Personally, I think it will take time, money, and a lot of work to overcome the legacy of the old welfare regime. I am not unwilling to give it -- but only as long as its accompanied by a tough dose of common sense.
HOW LONG UNTIL THE PLANE-CONTROL advocates come out of the woodwork to condemn the lax laws that allowed the Bishop kid to smack a plane into a building? Or, for that matter, the gun control advocates who tried to use Columbine to push through gun control laws that wouldn't have prevented the tragedy?
When I saw the news story, I wondered why the pilot had crashed the plane on a weekend, when there was no one around. The answer, I guess, is that grandma couldn't drive him to flying lessons on a weekday. Alienated, suicidal teenage kids are dangerous, and the media and the internet seem to be an excellent source of ideas for venting their rage on others. As a friend pointed out, if Dylan Klebold hadn't been able to get guns, his backup plan was to blow up the school -- and he apparently would have been able to do it. There is no easy solution for any of this (although I think that if the media adamantly refused to publish the names of any of these kids, it would help). Nonetheless, I suspect we'll hear a raft of ideas for quick fixes in the days ahead.
THIS MONTH'S REASON has a curious anti-redneck tone. Not against people trying to make laws favoring the religious right, etc, mind you -- against the rednecks themselves. There's a long cartoon sequence bashing Christian Rock (okay, I don't listen to it, but to each his own), and then a Jesse Walker piece on Charlie Daniels that's pretty harsh, until it closes by celebrating the fact that we live in a country that tolerates such wing-nuts. It just struck me as a little odd -- Reason usually confines itself to making fun of people pushing regulations in favor of their wing-nut ideas -- they like wing-nuts.
WE MIGHT ALL BE being slowly poisoned here at the site. Or we might not. Article makes reference to Gulf War Syndrome, which as I know from Michael Fumento is not, to put it delicately, supported by any scientific study. Fumento, where are you now?
Ralph Nader is suing Microsoft for not paying dividends (WSJ.COM subscription required). Because capital gains are tax favored over dividends, rapidly growing companies like Microsoft often choose to let the cash accumulate inside the company's coffers instead of distributing it to shareholders, which would force them to a) pay taxes immediately (bad because as any economist will tell you, except in the case of deflation a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow) b) pay taxes at a higher rate. Ralph Nader doesn't like this:
"It's a tax-avoidance scheme for the big shareholders," Mr. Nader said in an interview. He added: "This thing is out of control. Has any company in history ever accumulated so much cash?"
He has seized on an obscure law designed to punish companies who accumulate "excess earnings" in lieu of paying dividends, and is suing, although as far as I can tell he hasn't any standing to do so.
Where to start? With the personal hatred of Ralph Nader I nurtured after a 4-month stint working for PIRG, one of Nader's organizations, perhaps. The organization I worked for was one of the many -- Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Public Citizen, Clean Water Action, Citizen Action, etc. -- that send hordes of ignorant and untrained college students onto the streets each summer to "canvass" (solicit money) for the organization. A partial list of the dubious practices these groups embrace includes:
-- Lying to the people who give money about where the money will go (over half will go to pay the canvasser; the rest to pay the field managers, directors, and associated people who put the canvassers in the field, plus a big office in Washington with a lot of lobbyists. Any research they tell you they do is of the variety done by eighth graders for science reports -- culling of secondary sources, plus some simple and usually pointless arithmetic. They do NOT perform double-blind studies, regression analysis, or any other scientifically standard research.)
-- Calling the canvassers "volunteers" despite the fact that they are paid more than half of any money they get from you
-- Bizarre financial schemes designed to trick their employees into forfeiting part of their pay
-- Relentless discussions on how best to fleece potential members that would make a direct marketer blush
-- Total disinterest in teaching those college students ANYTHING about the project for which they are demanding money.
(Side note: GIVE THOSE CANVASSERS WATER. I passed out one hot day when my turf was deserted and the few people I talked to refused me not only money, but water. So offer them a paper cup, or a drink out of the hose. But don't give them any money -- any money you give them goes straight into their pockets, or the pockets of their bosses. This is -- as far as I have been able to ascertain -- true of every group that sends people door-to-door, and certainly of the big names like Greenpeace and Sierra club.)
These organizations pass themselves off as grassroots volunteer organizations doing valuable research, when in fact they are massive fundraising machines, with the sole purpose of the funds being to perpetuate the organization so that it can come back and ask for more money. All of these practices Nader is assuredly aware of, since they are standard at every group he has founded. Nader's suing Microsoft for avoiding taxes?
Let's go to the tape. "Tax avoidance" is legal -- it's tax evasion that's against the law. Avoidance is what you did last year when you closed on your house sale two weeks early so you could take the deduction in FY1999, or delayed a bonus payment to take advantage of the new lower tax brackets. And I'm sure that Nader knew this, and chose his words carefully -- it conveys to the uneducated that Microsoft is doing something illegal, but it is not libelous, because every corporation (and almost everyone else) avoids taxes. Yet if Ralph really though that they were doing something illegal, why didn't he call it evasion?
Because it's not illegal, and Nader knows it. "Paul Sax, a partner with the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe in San Francisco, said the tax is levied very rarely, usually against closely held companies that obviously have tried to avoid shareholder payouts by over-reimbursing employees for expenses or making lavish purchases, such as buying yachts. He said it was 'almost inconceivable" that Microsoft could face the tax.' " In other words, the law is designed to go after companies with a few owners who help those owners to avoid taxes by purchasing them lavish lifestyles with company funds instead of paying them income, on which they would have to pay taxes. The law is not designed to go after firms that are simply accumulating cash.
Yes, it benefits the shareholders. But companies are supposed to do things that benefit the shareholders -- and if they didn't, the shareholders would sue. Moreover, all that nonsense about "big shareholders" is just nonsense. Most of Microsoft's shareholders, big and small, are probably at LEAST in the 20% bracket -- the income point at which long term capital gains are a better deal, tax-wise, than dividend income. Finally, who cares whether or not other companies have accumulated this much cash? Most companies in history haven't created this much value, either. There isn't some historical baseline of cash accumulation on which the tax law is based.
If Nader consulted a tax lawyer before he initiated the suit, he knew this. If he didn't, he's an idiot -- or playing idiot so that he can look bewildered and hurt when he gets his ass handed to him in court. Because this isn't about winning -- it's about getting more famous tilting at windmills. The ignorant will applaud as Ralph Nader Quixote will paint himself as a good guy hamstrung by the system -- rather than the unethical, power-hungry opportunist that he is. (I give you that he lives a fairly modest lifestyle -- but I think that what Nader craves is not money, but power, fame, and adulation, all of which he gets in spades. Personally, I prefer nice clean money to that trio.) Meanwhile, shareholders suffer as the lawsuit causes a decline in the value of their stock, Microsoft pays some outrageous sum to defend this, and we tie up a civil court with a frivolous lawsuit. I think this would be an excellent place for Professor Reynolds' loser pays system -- especially if we could rig it to take away Nader's fame, power, and adulation instead of his money.
". . . the fact is, Virginians will cut you but so much slack before they hang you, and if Moussaoui is guilty, he's got as much chance of surviving in Virginia as a poinsettia has of surviving on the plains of Mars. We understand that killing him can hardly atone for the enormity of this crime, which is why one visionary has suggested we clone him 3,000 times and kill all his descendants. That's not going to happen, however. We don't believe in cloning down here."
OUTSTANDING ANALYSIS of the Argentinian Crisis from the Washington Times which correctly (IMHO) traces Argentina's problems not to currency woes, but to its politics:
"Since the end of World War II, when Argentina's treasury had accumulated an unprecedented amount of gold from agricultural exports, the government has routinely used public money to obtain political support from various constituencies".
Outstanding among all the bad practices they target is something I didn't know:
"more than half of Argentina's current foreign debt comes from a federal government decision in the mid-1980s to assume the foreign debt of inefficient private enterprises in response to pressure from an increasingly protectionist local business community — in return for political support. Moreover, Argentina also had acquired a reputation of failing to meet its obligations. Creditors grew impatient with the country's noncompliance. In addition, tax evasion became "just another national sport, like soccer," said one Argentine economist."
Blaming the US currency is silly. With its history of hyperinflation, horrible debt levels, and inefficient economy; having tried any number of "works once" tricks along the lines of seizing bank accounts and nationalizing industries-- the only thing that could save Argentina was growth. MASSIVE growth. Politically, however, the government couldn't or wouldn't enact the kind of massive reforms necessary to bring on that tidal wave of growth. Of course it was possible, with luck, that half-assed measures would work -- but Argentina was in the position of a man who, faced with losing his house, bets his remaining savings on the roulette wheel in the hopes of forestalling his loss. Either Mercosur needed the Asian-Tiger type growth levels that supported Hong Kong's dollarization (and Brazil had to play very, very nice to boot), or the American economy had to move exactly in tandem with the Argentinian. Anything else spelled eventual disaster, which the government encouraged by continuing to borrow. Short of getting in their with some marines, a whisk broom and the extra-large sized bottle of Lysol -- exactly the kind of thing people criticising the role of the US in all of this don't want -- I find it hard to imagine what we could have done to prevent this.
This is the message (verbatim) I received from Verizon, upon attempting to call for repairs:
"Thank you for calling Verizon. Due to excessive volume, your call cannot be answered at this time. Our repair line can be called 24 hours a day, seven days a week."
This was immediately followed by a busy signal as the Verizon voicemail system hung up on me. Does anyone believe that the local phone companies would behave this way if they didn't have a government sponsored monopoly? Even Microsoft treats their customers better.
THIS OTHERWISE EXCELLENT editorial on the Enron debacle in the Washington Post just can't resist getting a dig in at Bush while refusing to take down the Democratic juggernaut preparing to sling mud at the administration:
"But its focus must remain on the regulatory failures that allowed the company to defraud shareholders and workers. Enron's links to the Bush administration, a tempting target for Democrat-controlled committees in the Senate, appear less salient for the moment."
Appear less salient for the moment? How about, appear to be totally unfounded, and concocted solely for the purpose of gaining political advantage? Don't get me wrong -- if you can find one iota of proof that the administration leaned on the SEC or otherwise attempted to use its influence to help Enron get away with this crap, I'll be among the first calling for their heads. But the two major accusations levied against the firm -- that it, and its auditors, conspired to cook the books; and that it encouraged its employees to invest an unhealthy amount of their 401(k)'s in company stock -- began years before Bush took office, and have little to do with the office of the president in any case. Unlike Whitewater, where the Republicans at least had a hope that the appearance of impropriety would turn out to be actual impropriety, the Democrats can't even realistically hope that they're pinning something on Bush that he did -- they're just hoping against hope that we're stupid enough not to understand what happened.
LOOKS LIKE Argentinians are preparing for hyperinflation. They Post admirably captures their firm belief that the government will inflate the hell out of their currency the minute they can. Not so admirable is the stupid economics espoused therein, such as this treasure: "Inflation -- and especially hyperinflation -- tend to hurt the poor the most. They are less likely to have banks accounts, which can somewhat shield the impact of inflation through adjusted interest rates. In Argentina, those living in poverty -- now a record 44 percent of the population -- are the least prepared for inflation's return, having less access to hard currency and no extra cash to stock up on goods whose prices might increase." Now it is fair to argue that the poor are hurt most by hyperinflation because the poor are usually hurt most by any prolonged economic trouble. But their lack of access to bank accounts is hardly the problem -- there's a reason that they're freezing the bank accounts, sweetie, and that's that they're a terrible hedge against inflation, and the Argentinos would vote with their passbooks if they were allowed.. Much better are hard assets, which the article gives a nod to, but like the Argentinos, who are buying record numbers of expensive appliances, the Washington Post identifies things like computers as hard assets. Repeat after me: rapidly depreciating electronics goods may be better than bank accounts for hedging inflation, but they are not hard assets. Practically no Argentinos have the cash to stock up on a little real estate or precious metal, which are the real inflation hedges. If anecdotal reports are to be believed, the Argentinos who do have that kind of cash are moving it out of the country as fast as possible -- if they haven't already.
Those hurt most by hyperinflation are pensioners -- people living off financial assets. The poor generally do not fall into this
