A Memorial for my Refrigerator

When she was born, I was a boy.  I walked three blocks to my neighborhood school every day to attend the sixth grade.  My teacher's name was Ms. Skaros.  The Rubik's Cube had just been invented, and the hot new teen fashion style was "preppy."  My voice hadn't broken yet.  My "girlfriend" was Anne Schultz.
"The Wall" was still hugely popular, although "That Wall" had not yet been torn down.   The military action of the day in Afghanistan involved the U.S.S.R., not the United States.  Rambo had just tasted his First Blood.  The Officer was just becoming a Gentleman.
James Rockford could have put his $0.79/lb steak in this refrigerator.  The Muppet Show could have had one of these refrigerators in their green room.  The Talking Heads hadn't started making Stop Making Sense yet.
A handful of computers existed on the "Internet," although the web was still a decade to come.  The hot new computers were from IBM and the software was from Wordstar.  Microsoft Word hadn't been invented.  Pac Man was the video game craze.  Apple's new Lisa computers were a flop.
The big Packer's "B" was Bart, not Brett.  The Milwaukee Brewers took their only trip to the World Series.
Pioneer 11 had encountered Saturn three years before, paving the way for Voyager 2's first real close-up and color pictures of this ringed planet and its moons.  The controversy over how fast our universe was flying apart was starting to rage.
This is the world my refrigerator was born to in the year 1982.  Someone else purchased this refrigerator then to keep their vittles cold, and I inherited it.  Now it is time to move on to a more efficient and useful one.  May she rest in pieces at the landfill.

Double Whammy

Imagine that you are a young person that had a file sharing application on your computer, and that you shared 24 songs with other people.

Now we can debate if song sharing is bad or not, but basically it's against the law, and there are penalties for breaking the law. And there's a civil lawsuit brought against you by the music industry, and you lose. Twice actually.

You might imagine that the penalty is somehow related to the cost of the songs, maybe the number of files shared. How much is that, 99 cents per song on iTunes? Oh wait, maybe because of iTunes shenanigans, most of those tracks cost $1.29 now. So what is that, $31? OK, so even with treble damages, the total penalty should be less than $100, right?

Could you imagine that the penalty is actually $80,000 PER SONG? So that your actual total penalty for all 24 songs is close to $2 million!!!

You, the poor defendant, argue that the penalty is so unconsionably high that it could not be constitutional. After all, you are but a poor individual, not a money making song pirating outfit. $2 million is nowhere near the value of the songs shared, nor the amount of damages, nor what you could even pay.

But guess which administration has just filed a legal brief that $2 million is absolutely constitutional. In fact it is "carefully crafted." Yes, you guessed it, the Obama administration Department of Justice. This is a government agency intervening in a civil trial on behalf of the music corporations, against an individual, claiming that a $2 million damage award is just fine.

Sigh.

In reality, these penalties were established by Congress, at the urging of the music industry, to prevent industrial-scale music "piracy." The large fines were intended to deter business enterprises from entering the illegal music copying business. And yet, here this law is being used to destroy a young person.

The young person in question, Jammie Thomas, admitted she did share the songs, and her trial is part of a larger strategy by the music industry to file lawsuits against their own customers because file-sharing. Thomas definitely was not a saint. But there's no way that $2 million is in any way comparable to the amount of actual damage done. Or that she deserves her own government to go to bat for the other team.

It's a double whammy really. The law with an $80,000 penalty was "crafted" at the urging of music industry lobbyists, and Congress and the (then) president were happy to sign off on it. So already the deck is stacked once against the little guy. But then -- and here is the second whammy -- the government's lawyers intervene on behalf of the music industry during the trial to say that this law is great. Indeed it was finely crafted! How can Ms. Thomas have any chance at all? I don't doubt that this intervention is actually more payback for political contributions. Department of Justice lawyers know who butters their bosses' bread.

If music file sharing were a rare and extremely damaging thing, there might be a point to having extraordinary penalties. But in fact, there are tens of millions of file sharers, and in surveys, most people considering some file sharing to be morally acceptable. The actual damage is small. As noted above, sharing a few songs with others would cost the music companies at most a few hundred dollars in lost sales. The actual punishment, $80,000 per song, is so usurious it is absurd. The fact that tens of millions of people may be liable for such huge penalties just shows how arbitrary the whole process is. Whether you get caught in the music industry's dragnet or not is the difference between sharing a few songs and sure bankruptcy. The fact that the administration's "Justice" department is intervening in favor of wreaking such personal destruction is very dismaying.

My Dark Little Secret

All these years I've been trying to keep my true citizenship a secret.


Darn you, kenyanbirthcertificategenerator.com for finding my birth certificate!

Pick a Side, Any Side

Does it matter what we believe, as long as we believe something? That's what a television news commentator would urge us to do:

Believe in something! Even if it's wrong! Believe in it!

-- Glenn Beck, Mar 2009

The video is in this Comedy Central clip, around time 3:10:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
IndigNation! Populist Uprising '09 - The Enragening
comedycentral.com

OK, you might argue, this is just a typical opinion
entertainer on one of the several "news" networks, trying to
fill up on of the 24 hours the network is on the air, every day.
Let's even excuse the fact that Beck seems to believe all of what
he is saying, down to the teary-eyed professions of love for his
country and the little guy (see video above). Is there something
to what he says?

As it turns out, perhaps. A recent survey by Anthony Leiserowitz asked television viewers which of several "news" shows they watched before the general election in 2008, and about their general beliefs. Of those who watched the specific shows of interest, they broke down approximately evenly between left-leaning (such as Olberman, Colbert and Stewart), and right-leaning shows (such as O'Reilly, Hannity and Limbaugh).

What fascinated me was this question,

We should always be willing to fight
for our country, whether our country is right or wrong.

A whopping 70% of those who watch right-leaning shows agree
with this statement. Which means if our country is wrong, no
matter how egregiously wrong, 70% of these viewers would still
support military action? The left-leaning shows are really not
much better, with 30-40% of viewers responding that they agree
with the statement. Of the respondants that didn't watch any of
the specific shows, about half agreed that we should be willing
to fight no matter what.

Note that the question was not about whether we
should "support the troups," although that phrase has it's own
moral ambiguities. No, the question was whether we should
support our country, in military action, even when that action is
something we know to be wrong. I wonder if the right-leaning
watchers still agree with this statement, now that a Democrat
holds the presidency.

I'm a little taken aback by this philosophy. It basically
says that a large number of citizens place country above
morality. Or rather, that our nation creates its own
morality by virtue of its existence. These respondants are
willing to hold and support beliefs that they know to be wrong,
simply because the name of their country is attached to it. I
guess I would prefer it to go the other way: that our country
earns the respect of the righteous by actually doing the right
thing in the first place.

When Good Democracy Goes Silly

Voting is such a joke. Well, it must have seemed that way, for some people as they made their way to the Minnesota polls. I've watched a little of the Minnesota Canvas Review Board webcast at theuptake.org, and in the space of a few minutes some crazy ballots came up, reflecting our dear Minnesotans' sense of humor.


The first one thought it would be fun to change the name of candidate Franken, to Frankenstein, but I bet they didn't expect their mischief to appear on state-wide TV! [ Especially since they spelled it wrong. ] The Coleman campaign advocate was brazen enough to suppose that the voter was voting for someone else named Frankenstin, and definitely not candidate Franken!


The second ballot voted legitimately for Senate, but on lower level offices, our voter clearly subscribes to Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. All hail to His Noodly Appendage!

I'm glad for my Minnesota brethrens' senses of humor, but perhaps the voting booth is not the place to express it.

Update: Here's one more. I for one welcome our new Lizard People overlords.

Multiplier Effect - some results

My previous post, "Multiplier Effect," outlined the economic impact of various possible stimulus packages. On the top of the list -- those stimuli that provide the greatest productivity improvement per dollar spent -- were capital infrastructure improvements.

President-elect Obama's new plans include:

Save one million jobs through immediate investments to rebuild America's roads and bridges and repair our schools: The Obama-Biden emergency plan would make $25 billion immediately available in a Jobs and Growth Fund to help ensure that in-progress and fast-tracked infrastructure projects are not sidelined, and to ensure that schools can meet their energy costs and undertake key repairs starting this fall.

and...

Create a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will address the infrastructure challenge by creating a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to expand and enhance, not supplant, existing federal transportation investments.

It sounds promising, but of course the devil is in the details. As this Washington Post article points out, many of the actual projects will be more maintenance-type activities, rather than huge monorail systems. But if the goal is to improve the job situation at the same time as improving national infrastructure, these types of projects will certainly help. The big risk, when spending large amounts of money quickly, is of fraud, theft and corruption. In that case, the money will still have a stimulative effect -- even the thief spends his swag -- but the national will not get the full benefit.

"A goodbye kiss from the Iraqi People"

From the BBC, Shoes thrown at Bush on Iraq trip (click link for video):

A surprise visit by US President George Bush to Iraq has been overshadowed by an incident in which two shoes were thrown at him during a news conference.
...
In the middle of the news conference with Mr Maliki, a reporter stood up and shouted "this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog," before hurtling his shoes at Mr Bush, narrowly missing him.

Around the world, American leaders are now welcomed with open arms and bare feet! Who knew that in Iraq, it was a sign of endearment to play doggy-fetch with your slippers?

Multiplier Effect

Because of the developing economic crisis, I've been reading more economics blogs. My favorites are Econbrowser, hosted by Profs. Hamilton and Chinn; Macro-Man an anonymous but extremely incisive and hilarious day-trader^*; and Follow the Money by Brad Setser. Any other reader favorites?

One excellent post by Prof. Chinn has direct relevance to governmental policy initiatives to deal with the economic problems. Her post is based on work by Mark Zandi of Economy.com. The question is: given that the economy needs to be stimulated, what method of stimulation yields the largest economic benefit. The benefit here is expressed as the stimulus multiplier, which is the amount of increase in GDP per unit of stimulus. For example, if we simply gave every person in the country $1, each could go out and buy a McDonald's value menu item. But the benefit doesn't stop there because with the increased consumption, McDonald's has to hire more workers, who in turn consume more; purchase more supplies from its suppliers, who in turn hire more workers, etc. So in principle, a $1 stimulus package can have more than $1 benefit to overall production.

So which economic stimuli had the greatest benefit? The top three were:

• Temporarily Increase Food-stamps (multiplier 1.73)
• Extend Unemployment Insurance Benefits (multiplier 1.64)
• Increase Infrastructure Spending (multiplier 1.59)

The first two items have the obvious benefits of keeping people on their feet, but also provide an extra 64-73% advantage beyond the direct stimulus. Of course these benefits can only be temporary. On the other hand, the third item has the advantage of improving neglected infrastructure -- a long term "capital gain" -- while at the same time providing an extra 60% bang for our buck.

Now for the worst stimulus concepts:

• Make Bush Tax Cuts Permanent (multiplier 0.29)
• Cut Corporate Tax Rate (multiplier 0.30)
• Make Dividend Tax Cuts Permanent (multiplier 0.37)

Since these multipliers are less than unity, it means that for every dollar of tax break, the country's production actually goes down. Of course some small segment of the population may benefit from such tax cuts, but in hard economic times, it's not clear why they would deserve a benefit when the broad population and the overall economy do not. To be fair, a few of the tax cut concepts do a little bit better, most most are break-even at best.

Note that these tax cuts that are discussed most readily as the solution to the economic problems have some of the worst possible effects on the economy. In fact, a tax cut actually hinders production, compared to other stimuli. Dr. Chinn discusses some reasons this may be true.

What fascinates me is the question of whether the multipliers work in reverse. If reducing corporate taxes by $1.00 hobbles the economy by $0.70, then would raising taxes by $1.00 improve the economy by $0.30? As heretical as that sounds, it seems that while raising taxes will withdraw $1.00 from corporate coffers and hence from the economy, it enables the government to spend $1.00 on more needful and worthy areas (say, on stimuli that have a large multiplier!).

The situation is somewhat more complicated because each of the stimulus concepts have different time scales, so it would require a more delicate touch than brute force. But it would be nice if, in the political dialog about what to do next, actual economic data would be used rather than mindless rhetoric with zero substantiation.

Pardon Me, I'd Like to Cash in My Constitution

Recently the ACLU has been making a big deal about the US Government's declaration of a "constitution-free zone" around the perimeter of the country. The government has assumed that within 100 miles of the "external border" of the United States, border patrol personnel may detain and search any person or vehicle, including U.S. citizens, for the purposes of border enforcement activities. Get that? Even though you might never have crossed the border, you may be stopped and subject to being searched if you are within that zone, without a warrant. The ACLU site opines that this assumption places up to 2/3rds of the population within the so-called constitution free zone. My part of the country looks like this.


Yes, I live in the zone, and could be subject to searches. In fact, I am subject to such a zone every time enter or leave the security of my place of work. But these "border searches" are taking place far from any real border, on public roads, and are practiced on the general public.

I appreciate that the ACLU is resisting these types of actions, but I wanted to understand from where exactly this authority derives. After a little research, I found some answers. The authority comes in two parts, one from the law, and another from administrative regulation. The law is 8 USC 1357, whose crucial part reads,

1357 (a) Powers without warrant
Any [authorized] officer ... shall have power without warrant—...
(3) within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States, to board and search for aliens any vessel within the territorial waters of the United States and any railway car, aircraft, conveyance, or vehicle

So there you have it, within a "reasonable distance," border agents may search any vehicle without a warrant. But what distance is reasonable? Well, that's where we need to turn to the administrative regulation, as encoded in the Code of Federal Regulations (8 CFR 287.1 specifically), which specifies,

287.1 Definitions.
(2) Reasonable distance. The term reasonable distance, as used in section 287(a) (3) of the Act, means within 100 air miles from any external boundary of the United States or any shorter distance ...

These regulations are written by the executive agencies, as a way of codifying and interpreting how the law will actually be implemented. In this case, 100 miles is seen as "reasonable" by definition, rather than by any other claimed rationale.

But is this anything new? No, in fact. The definition of a 100-mile wide border has existed for at least several decades, and does not begin with the current administration. I found that the 100-mile limit was specified in the CFR as early as 1953 (Fernandez v. United States; 321 F.2d 283). The appeals court in that case found that a search 70 miles from the Mexican border was reasonable -- given the specific geographical and immigration situation. As of the date of that case in 1963, the "border" checkpoint 70 miles from Mexico had been in operation for 31 years, so this practice has existed for at least 75 years!

However, it is clear that the practice of unwarranted border searches is expanding, and it's a troubling sign. The truly scary part is that the search for illegal immigrants is being used as a pretext for other searches, such as for contraband. For law enforcement, it's a no-brainer. Why send "regular" police to do inspections if they need complicated stuff like warrants, when it's easier to send "border protection agents," who don't really need anything to start tearing through your personal belongings. As various agencies, including the border patrol, immigration and customs have been consolidated into the Department of Homeland Security, it is even easier to designate an everyday enforcement activity to be a warrantless border patrol activity. As more "border crossing" inspection sites are instituted, the more more we become a police society.



As a postscript, there are some daring people challenging new inspection sites. Consider Mr. checkpointusa.org, who has been documenting the increase of the interior "border" checkpoints in the southwestern U.S. for the past few years. You can see some of his encounters here and href. He routinely approaches the checkpoints and takes control of the situation. Dude has balls of granite.

We'll Tell You How Much Democracy You Can Have

Slashdot Headline: In MN, Massive Police Raids On Suspected Protestors

I have no doubt these people were planning some kind of disruption, but is disruption necessarily illegal? No, but it would be embarassing during the convention. Unfortunately there is no such thing as embarassment in the first degree, so the police and FBI went for bogus fire code violations instead. I would think that the house I live in is a "free speech zone." Yay for democracy.

My friend Tod says it more forcefully. And Glenn Greenwald is all over the issue. It's very disturbing.

A Whole Lotta Libido Goin' On

Would you run for president? I probably wouldn't, but if I did, it would probably be for reasons like saving the world, or some other altruistic B.S. like that. But not Lee L. Mercer, Jr.. No, he has much bigger fish to fry. Here is one of the many reasons he is running for president:

49. To Prove the United States Government killed my sex life, my wife sex life, my daughter-in -laws sex life both may sons and other of my family members sex life with Espionage Experimentation and Espionage Exploitation sex killing. (sic)

I'm glad that someone has the courage to use the presidential pulpit to air his dirty laundry about his dirty dancing. And his wife's. And his sons'. And their wifes'. (How he has all of this in-depth knowledge about his family's intimate lives... is not something I want to know).

I suspect Mr. Mercer's problems run deeper than his sex life, but it's clear he's running for almost purely personal reasons. Which, strangely, makes me think of our current president.

Thanks to Swing State Project for the link.