Domain: prospect.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to prospect.org.
Comments · 150
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Re: Money is badSS is just another slight of hand. His proposal is not that different from the British system implemented under Margrett Thatcher. And look how well that turned out.
His plan is just an excuse to give more money to investment houses...
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Re:This whole "There is no crisis"Oh... and this whole privitization scheme concocted by Bush and Co. ISN'T a fraud? The administrative cost of SS is about 1% of every dollar taken in. The avearge administrative cost of a typical investment house? 10%. Not to mention that other countries that tried to privitize their govn pensions have, at best, broke even. Have a look at the UK.
Bush is clearly faning the flames of crisis to generate a windfall for his friends at the investment houses...
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Re:Clinton on the Social Security crisis
You just said it yourself why there's no crisis. In 1998, the system was going to be out of reserves in 2032. Now, seven years later, the date is 2042. So in seven years, the insolvency date has been pushed back *ten* years. Tell me again how that's a crisis?
The fact is, the trustees publish three models. Only two of them (called conservative and pessimistic, I think) show any problem. The third (optimistic) shows no problem at all. Historically, which has been the most accurate? The optimistic one!
Read more here -
Re:Banks and Suckers
That's why there's a surplus now. The above is *part of the plan*. Payroll taxes were raised in the '80s so that the trust would have enough of a surplus to cover the baby boomers. The surplus gets drawn down, as you mention, but once the boomers are gone, it shouldn't be a problem.
See here for more information -
Re:Please don't butcher this, please.Explain yourself. How is Bush not tettering on a totalitarian state.
Even Bob Barr, of the American Conservative Union (and a former rabid-dog House Manager during the Clinton Impeachment), has joined with the ACLU to criticize this administration's moves to hinder personal rights in this country. How in the world can you say this is not a government flirting with fascism?
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Re:Cathedral? Bizarre? Who cares?
What have you written ?
A better question is, how much of that software did ESR write? And the answer is almost none.. He maintains a bunch of packages none of which get much maintaining. (Check the last updates of a few).
I haven't written much either, but then I don't describe myself as "one of the senior technical cadre that makes the Internet work" -
Re:Time spans
Whats killing people today is not nuclear power. Its not using nuclear power thats killing people. Consider that a 2.7 mpg increase in the fuel efficiency of automobiles would eliminate the need for foreign oil. Considering that the average car has a fuel efficiency of about 22 mpg, and that oil accounts for about 7% of US energy production, if all the oil that was being used for electricity was nuclear instead, we would be independent of foreign oil. If that were the case, our interest in the Middle East would decline. Events like the first and second Iraqi war would not have occured. Instead, rabid environmentalists are causing people to be indirectly killed because of their failure to understand science and irrational fear of technologies that they don't control.
The importance of energy independence to national security cannot be underestimated. -
Gotta love that false balance...
BOTH parties you say? Nonsense. Show me anything even close to what the Republicans are currently doing.
The facts are (just a brief snippet really)
SPROUL & ASSOCIATES is directly financed by the RNC. Nathan Sproul is reported as the director of the Arizona Christian Coalitition.
The Charlston Gazette reported on 8/20 Sproul & Associates in West Virginia started a voter registration campaign where ONLY republicans were registered -- not Democrats -- apparently in violation of the West Virginia law. (The article is reported here).
There have been reports posted on the internet from Pennsylvania (on September 17) and Maryland (on September 16) of the the same organization -- Sproul & Associates -- pretending to be workers from the non-partisan America Votes, and registering ONLY Republicans. To obtain locations to set up shop, Sproul and Associates apparently lied to puiblic librarians about being non-partisan. (The internet postings, that took place on a librarian network, are reported here.
On September 22, Sproul and Associates did the same thing in Oregon. This is a plain violation of Oregon law, according to Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury in an interview with Northwest Cable News. See here. It also appears that another Republican group engaged in "bait and switch registration", at least according to the Daily Vanguard.
A few days ago, CBS reported that an organization in Nevada called Voters Outreach America was THROWING OUT registration forms filled out by people trying to register to vote as Democrats. The American Prospect has reported that Voters Outreach America is under contract with Sproul & Associates.
And then, of course, there is the widely-reported story from South Dakota, where the nephew of Thune, the Republican challenger to Tom Daschle, has been caught fraudulently obtaining absentee ballots for Republicans. A criminal investigation is pending. Top Republicans have been forced to resign.
What it appears here is that there are reliable reports of GOP operatives in at least SIX states engaging in sytematic and repeated attempts at voter fraud. From only registering republicans, to falsifying absentee ballot requests, to destroying democratic voter applications, this appears to be a coordinated effort at all levels to swing the election illegally to the Republicans. In fact, things are so bad that former SD goveror Janklow has issued a public statement saying that the national GOP is encouraging voter fraud.
So, sorry, it's not both parties. It's the Republicans. Show me anything comparable done by Democrats, and I'll eat my own shit and vote shit, err... Bush.
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washington post story corroborates
from TAPPED:
But it turns out that "the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush's reelection campaign had been heavily involved in drafting the speech given to Congress last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi." The same article notes that the official response to some negative data that USAID released a few days ago is going to be to stop releasing the data. The whole story's a must-read, revealing how the entire federal government has been mobilized to fight not the war on terrorism but the president's reelection campaign."
That last sentence is obviously partisan, as suggested by the source, but read the article it links to. -
article from the washington post
from TAPPED:
But it turns out that "the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush's reelection campaign had been heavily involved in drafting the speech given to Congress last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi." The same article notes that the official response to some negative data that USAID released a few days ago is going to be to stop releasing the data. The whole story's a must-read, revealing how the entire federal government has been mobilized to fight not the war on terrorism but the president's reelection campaign."
OK, that last sentence is partisan, but read the article. -
Re:Republicans vs. Free Speech
You remember the congressional hearings with Frank Zappa and Dee Snider? Tipper and Al Gore? Any of that ring a bell?
This might interest you. -
Some resource URLs on the economy (to save)
Job Crunch and Economics Inequality URLs - sorry if it is a little ragged, I'm just doing cut and paste...
Reality Check: Going Nowhere: Workers' Wages Since the Mid-1970s http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_nowhere.pdf
Economic Injustice for Most http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/cwlmorris813.pdf
Bush's War on the Middle Class: A Special Report http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7635
American Families at Risk http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7625
Middle Class and Going Broke http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/warren_prospect.pdf
Schools of Hard Knocks http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7637
Why Governors Are Seeing Red: A New Reality Check http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/hall_redstate.pdf
Reality Check- The New American Economy - A Rising Tide that Lifts Only Yachts http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_yachtrc.pdf
Reality Check: Life and Debt - Why American Families are Borrowing to the Hilt http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/baker_debt.pdf
Hidden Agenda- The convention trumpets compassion, but the real Bush agenda is clear: Use tax policy to starve the government even more.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewWeb&articleId=8449
The Great Tax Shift-The Bush administration claims that the guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been "lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need," as the White House Web site puts it. The reality is starkly different. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7641
RetirementSecurity http://www.tcf.org/Publications/RetirementSecurity /wasow_secure_ret.pdf
Diverting the Social Security Debate
Over the 75-year period for which the Social Security system's trustees are required to plan, Social Security in its present form will fall out of balance. We can restore balance with moderate changes to the program's revenues, its benefits, or the returns on its accumulated assets. But the longer the decision to do so is postponed, the greater the required adjustments.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7642
Setting the Record Straight: Social Security Works for Latinos-
Some sugge -
Some resource URLs on the economy (to save)
Job Crunch and Economics Inequality URLs - sorry if it is a little ragged, I'm just doing cut and paste...
Reality Check: Going Nowhere: Workers' Wages Since the Mid-1970s http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_nowhere.pdf
Economic Injustice for Most http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/cwlmorris813.pdf
Bush's War on the Middle Class: A Special Report http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7635
American Families at Risk http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7625
Middle Class and Going Broke http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/warren_prospect.pdf
Schools of Hard Knocks http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7637
Why Governors Are Seeing Red: A New Reality Check http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/hall_redstate.pdf
Reality Check- The New American Economy - A Rising Tide that Lifts Only Yachts http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_yachtrc.pdf
Reality Check: Life and Debt - Why American Families are Borrowing to the Hilt http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/baker_debt.pdf
Hidden Agenda- The convention trumpets compassion, but the real Bush agenda is clear: Use tax policy to starve the government even more.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewWeb&articleId=8449
The Great Tax Shift-The Bush administration claims that the guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been "lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need," as the White House Web site puts it. The reality is starkly different. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7641
RetirementSecurity http://www.tcf.org/Publications/RetirementSecurity /wasow_secure_ret.pdf
Diverting the Social Security Debate
Over the 75-year period for which the Social Security system's trustees are required to plan, Social Security in its present form will fall out of balance. We can restore balance with moderate changes to the program's revenues, its benefits, or the returns on its accumulated assets. But the longer the decision to do so is postponed, the greater the required adjustments.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7642
Setting the Record Straight: Social Security Works for Latinos-
Some sugge -
Some resource URLs on the economy (to save)
Job Crunch and Economics Inequality URLs - sorry if it is a little ragged, I'm just doing cut and paste...
Reality Check: Going Nowhere: Workers' Wages Since the Mid-1970s http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_nowhere.pdf
Economic Injustice for Most http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/cwlmorris813.pdf
Bush's War on the Middle Class: A Special Report http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7635
American Families at Risk http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7625
Middle Class and Going Broke http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/warren_prospect.pdf
Schools of Hard Knocks http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7637
Why Governors Are Seeing Red: A New Reality Check http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/hall_redstate.pdf
Reality Check- The New American Economy - A Rising Tide that Lifts Only Yachts http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_yachtrc.pdf
Reality Check: Life and Debt - Why American Families are Borrowing to the Hilt http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/baker_debt.pdf
Hidden Agenda- The convention trumpets compassion, but the real Bush agenda is clear: Use tax policy to starve the government even more.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewWeb&articleId=8449
The Great Tax Shift-The Bush administration claims that the guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been "lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need," as the White House Web site puts it. The reality is starkly different. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7641
RetirementSecurity http://www.tcf.org/Publications/RetirementSecurity /wasow_secure_ret.pdf
Diverting the Social Security Debate
Over the 75-year period for which the Social Security system's trustees are required to plan, Social Security in its present form will fall out of balance. We can restore balance with moderate changes to the program's revenues, its benefits, or the returns on its accumulated assets. But the longer the decision to do so is postponed, the greater the required adjustments.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7642
Setting the Record Straight: Social Security Works for Latinos-
Some sugge -
Some resource URLs on the economy (to save)
Job Crunch and Economics Inequality URLs - sorry if it is a little ragged, I'm just doing cut and paste...
Reality Check: Going Nowhere: Workers' Wages Since the Mid-1970s http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_nowhere.pdf
Economic Injustice for Most http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/cwlmorris813.pdf
Bush's War on the Middle Class: A Special Report http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7635
American Families at Risk http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7625
Middle Class and Going Broke http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/warren_prospect.pdf
Schools of Hard Knocks http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7637
Why Governors Are Seeing Red: A New Reality Check http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/hall_redstate.pdf
Reality Check- The New American Economy - A Rising Tide that Lifts Only Yachts http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_yachtrc.pdf
Reality Check: Life and Debt - Why American Families are Borrowing to the Hilt http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/baker_debt.pdf
Hidden Agenda- The convention trumpets compassion, but the real Bush agenda is clear: Use tax policy to starve the government even more.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewWeb&articleId=8449
The Great Tax Shift-The Bush administration claims that the guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been "lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need," as the White House Web site puts it. The reality is starkly different. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7641
RetirementSecurity http://www.tcf.org/Publications/RetirementSecurity /wasow_secure_ret.pdf
Diverting the Social Security Debate
Over the 75-year period for which the Social Security system's trustees are required to plan, Social Security in its present form will fall out of balance. We can restore balance with moderate changes to the program's revenues, its benefits, or the returns on its accumulated assets. But the longer the decision to do so is postponed, the greater the required adjustments.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7642
Setting the Record Straight: Social Security Works for Latinos-
Some sugge -
Some resource URLs on the economy (to save)
Job Crunch and Economics Inequality URLs - sorry if it is a little ragged, I'm just doing cut and paste...
Reality Check: Going Nowhere: Workers' Wages Since the Mid-1970s http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_nowhere.pdf
Economic Injustice for Most http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/cwlmorris813.pdf
Bush's War on the Middle Class: A Special Report http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7635
American Families at Risk http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7625
Middle Class and Going Broke http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/warren_prospect.pdf
Schools of Hard Knocks http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7637
Why Governors Are Seeing Red: A New Reality Check http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/hall_redstate.pdf
Reality Check- The New American Economy - A Rising Tide that Lifts Only Yachts http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_yachtrc.pdf
Reality Check: Life and Debt - Why American Families are Borrowing to the Hilt http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/baker_debt.pdf
Hidden Agenda- The convention trumpets compassion, but the real Bush agenda is clear: Use tax policy to starve the government even more.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewWeb&articleId=8449
The Great Tax Shift-The Bush administration claims that the guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been "lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need," as the White House Web site puts it. The reality is starkly different. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7641
RetirementSecurity http://www.tcf.org/Publications/RetirementSecurity /wasow_secure_ret.pdf
Diverting the Social Security Debate
Over the 75-year period for which the Social Security system's trustees are required to plan, Social Security in its present form will fall out of balance. We can restore balance with moderate changes to the program's revenues, its benefits, or the returns on its accumulated assets. But the longer the decision to do so is postponed, the greater the required adjustments.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7642
Setting the Record Straight: Social Security Works for Latinos-
Some sugge -
Some resource URLs on the economy (to save)
Job Crunch and Economics Inequality URLs - sorry if it is a little ragged, I'm just doing cut and paste...
Reality Check: Going Nowhere: Workers' Wages Since the Mid-1970s http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_nowhere.pdf
Economic Injustice for Most http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/cwlmorris813.pdf
Bush's War on the Middle Class: A Special Report http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7635
American Families at Risk http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7625
Middle Class and Going Broke http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/warren_prospect.pdf
Schools of Hard Knocks http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7637
Why Governors Are Seeing Red: A New Reality Check http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/hall_redstate.pdf
Reality Check- The New American Economy - A Rising Tide that Lifts Only Yachts http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_yachtrc.pdf
Reality Check: Life and Debt - Why American Families are Borrowing to the Hilt http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/baker_debt.pdf
Hidden Agenda- The convention trumpets compassion, but the real Bush agenda is clear: Use tax policy to starve the government even more.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewWeb&articleId=8449
The Great Tax Shift-The Bush administration claims that the guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been "lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need," as the White House Web site puts it. The reality is starkly different. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7641
RetirementSecurity http://www.tcf.org/Publications/RetirementSecurity /wasow_secure_ret.pdf
Diverting the Social Security Debate
Over the 75-year period for which the Social Security system's trustees are required to plan, Social Security in its present form will fall out of balance. We can restore balance with moderate changes to the program's revenues, its benefits, or the returns on its accumulated assets. But the longer the decision to do so is postponed, the greater the required adjustments.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7642
Setting the Record Straight: Social Security Works for Latinos-
Some sugge -
Political blogsI try to read a wide variety of political blogs, hitting all the major political angles, as none of the parties quite fit my weird political views. I mean, how many atheistic, anti-abortion libertarian libertine hawks can their possibly be?
;)Here's a sampling of the best I've found:
Vodkapundit. Stephen Green's blog. Probably the best match for my own political views. Hawkish libertarian and consumer of fine ethanol-based beverages.
Instapundit Glenn Reynold's blog. Another decent match for my own viewpoint. Glenn's more of a linker than a commentator, but he's one of the best about linking to all sides of the blogosphere. When he does extended bits (such as at his MSNBC site or his TCS columns), he's quite cogent. Has a lot of outside interests (electronic music, space policy, nano-tech, constitutional law) that dovetail into my own and make his site more interesting than the politics-only blogs. Frequently mentions Slashdot and links to relevant discussions.
Reason's Hit and Run Another libertarian blog, run by Reason magazine. Much more in tune to the Libertarian Party than the above.
Virginia Postrel YALB (Yet Another Libertarian Blog). Postrel is a former editor of Reason. More of a social commentator these days and has written some fascinating books recently. Seems to have become ever-so-slightly more hawkish since 9/11.
The Corner National Review's blog. Conservative and largely Catholic, it's best feature is Jonah Goldberg (the token non-Catholic), who has a pleasantly snarky, pop-cultural laden view of current events. Least pleasant on the blog in John Derbyshire, who is quite the math geek but is way out there on the borderline-racist right (quite pleasant in email, though).
Andrew Sullivan. Classical liberal, Oakeshott conservative. A very incisive and passionate writer, he has an infuriating habit of demonizing the opposition. Originally very pro-war (and spent much time fulminating against the "fifth columnist" element on the left), he's now got a new enemy (those opposed to gay marriage/gay rights), so all those who were the enemy last year (the Democrats/John Kerry) are friends, and all those who were friends last year (the Republicans/George Bush) are enemies who can now do no right. When his emotions are not ruling his thinking, though, he's very, very good.
Mickey Kaus Slate's resident blogger, Mickey is a DLC "New" Democrat. He's one of the more honest of the bloggers (zings his own side often, recognizes good arguments on the other side) and a good source of insider media stuff.
Josh Marshall Establishment Democrat. I found his stuff to be really good a few years back, but recently he's spending more time rooting for the team (DNC/Kerry) than being objective. Also, darkly hints at constant "breaking soon" scoops that either never appear or completely underwhelm. Very bright guy, though, and insightful when not attempting to spin too obviously.
Kevin Drum Another Establishment Democrat. Kevin tends to be more self-reflective than Josh, which stands him in good stead. Great place to capture the mood of the DNC political types.
New Republic They have a couple of blogs (&c. and Campaign Journal). &c. is by far the better of the two. Skews left, but a sort of rationalist left (understands that while America may suck at times, other places suck more).
Tapped This used to be a great blog back in the
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Re:Who Gets the Profit?Diebold is one animator away from being a cartoon villian. Gerrymandering is at least equally destructive to democracy. From America as a One Party State:
"... We are at risk of becoming an autocracy in three key respects. First, Republican parliamentary gimmickry has emasculated legislative opposition in the House of Representatives (the Senate has other problems). House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas has both intimidated moderate Republicans and reduced the minority party to window dressing, rather like the token opposition parties in Mexico during the six-decade dominance of the PRI.
Second, electoral rules have been rigged to make it increasingly difficult for the incumbent party to be ejected by the voters, absent a Depression-scale disaster, Watergate-class scandal or Teddy Roosevelt-style ruling party split. After two decades of bipartisan collusion in the creation of safe House seats, there are now perhaps just 25 truly contestable House seats in any given election year (and that's before the recent Republican super gerrymandering). What once was a slender and precarious majority -- 229 Republicans to 205 Democrats (including Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who votes with Democrats) -- now looks like a Republican lock. In the Senate, the dynamics are different but equally daunting for Democrats. As the Florida debacle of 2000 showed, the Republicans are also able to hold down the number of opposition votes, with complicity from Republican courts. Reform legislation, the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), may actually facilitate Republican intimidation of minority voters and reduce Democratic turnout. And the latest money-and-politics regime, nominally a reform, may give the right more of a financial advantage than ever.
Third, the federal courts, which have slowed some executive-branch efforts to destroy liberties, will be a complete rubber stamp if the right wins one more presidential election.
Those federal courts? They have a little something to do with copyright law (see other stories on Slashdot today). -
zerg
Aside from the fact that China doesn't give a fuck about economic concerns, there isn't much chance of a war happening.
As unlikely as more people looking to China than the U.S. for hopes for a better future. -
Sad, sad, sad...You know, Barry Bonds once claimed that certain ratial groups have genetics suited for sports. Jimmy the Greek also made the same claim and was forced to resign over it. Ditto Al Campanis.
Then there's the case of a Washington staffer forced to resign for saying "niggardly", because it sounded like a racial slur, but actually meant "miserly".
Using "kill the Hatians" in the game was probably over the top, but I can't help but look at this and think that if the phrase used was "kill the whites", we'd not have even noticed.
Before you mod me off for trying to troll, I'll just ask you what is more offensive: not paying attention to a "racial slur" because you think people are above the touchiness, or constantly spending your life looking at a certain race as your oppressors without first looking for motivations, or even correct word definitions?
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Re:Err...
Burglars have successfully sued homeowners for falling through a roof and injuring themselves whilst breaking into said house.
I believe this is a pseudo-urban-legend. Check this article. Scroll down to where it says "Tales of the Absurd". It says:
Ronald Reagan recounted how a cat burglar sued a homeowner for injuries incurred while falling through the homeowner's skylight. When the real case was identified, it turned out that the plaintiff was not a cat burglar at all. He was a high school student who had been sent to retrieve athletic equipment stored on the roof of the school and had fallen through a skylight that had been painted black.
And in a similar vein, this page says:
This particularly news story pointed out that the burglars were mere children, which made it even worse. The facts were these: a group of high school students were playing soccer (or whatever) near their school gym on a weekend. The gym --the entire school -- was closed. They managed to kick the ball up on the roof of the gym. Enterprising boys, they climbed up on the roof, which was clearly forbidden by posted signs. On the roof was a skylight, which had been painted over in the same color as the rest of the roof. The boys didn't notice the skylight, walked on it, and fell through it. THey were injured. The school was held liable for creating a hazard by painting over the skylight: even one of the maintenance staff who had walked on it during school hours would have risked the boys' fate.
A google search on the subject turns up MANY references to a case like this in California where a cat burglar fell through a painted skylight and won. Depending on which item you read he won either because the insurance company settled or because the jury felt the school had failed to make itself safe to burgle. Nobody, not even the article I linked to, provides specifics so one could verify that facts independently. I didn't even get a hit on snopes.
Another interesting hit a I did get is here. An analysis of california's 1996 prop 213 which refers, vaguely, to this court case. Again no specifics are given.
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At least *someone* has their number...
From near the end of the article:
"It raises a lot of serious concerns and is troubling as a generic matter that they have gotten this far along and tell people that there is nothing in the works. What that suggests is that they're waiting for a propitious time to introduce it, which might well be when a war is begun. At that time there would be less opportunity for discussion and they'll have a much stronger hand in saying that they need these right away."
This has been the tactic of the Bush administration from the very beginning - control and timing of information to maximize spin and reduce adverse effects on the administration's goals. Yes, other administrations have done this, but this one has an incredible mastery of it. Or are we just not paying attention? The author of this article "gets it."
I've got a hundred dollar bill that says that, even though we've already seen the first drafts of what they propose, it won't be sent to lawmakers until the war starts... or ends. And there is going to be a war, Bush needs it to prop up his approval ratings. And he has to have it now, Next year will be too close to the election.
If it started next year and dragged on into the time of the elections, it could be a benefit for him as the people don't usually like to change administrations in the middle of a war. But if it went badly, there wouldn't be enough time to spin it positively before the election. But this year is perfect. If it goes well, he will be "the war-time president that kept us safe from those dirty terrorists." If it goes badly, the people will forget or at least the emotional intensity about it will fade by election time. (BTW, regards the 'dirty terrorists' issue, there was a poll conducted (not by salon, but by the Princeton Survey Research Associates) that said that 50% of the American public believed that one or more of the 9/11 hijackers was an Iraqi, 33% didn't answer and only 17% knew the truth that none were. - That's how well the spin and disinformation works.)
The chief architect of the administration's PR, spin and disinformation organization is Karl Rove, one of the members of Richard Nixon's dirty tricks squad and a long-time political strategist who has been a consultant on many campaigns over the years. There is a good article here that describes Rove's tactics.
The key points of this strategy are:
Use whatever excuse is available at the time to justify the administration's long-term ideological agenda. That's what we're talking about here.
Count on the American public's (and the media's) inability to remember anything from one year to the next. Ok, pop quiz. Who remembers that in the debates Bush said that the military should not be used for 'nation building'? Sort of like what we're doing in Afghanistan and about to do in Iraq?
Keep everything under wraps. J. H. Hatfield's book Fortunate Son - The Making of an American President (70,000+ copies of the uncomplimentary biography suggesting Bush's cocaine conviction were recalled by the publisher and shredded at the reqest of the Bush campaign. Hatfield himself turned up dead a few months later. I had a helluva time finding any information on that. The book is still available here but it's not on the newsstands or in bookstores.) Dick Cheney's energy task force - the court has ordered him to turn over the list of the attendees (not even the notes) and the administration is still fighting it. Not a document has been produced yet. Just the list of attendees eems sort of innocuous, doesn't it? Jose Padilla, the 'dirty bomber'? (See more below on this.)
Cut embarrassing players loose and pretend they're exceptions. Harvey Pitt resigning on the eve of the election. Trent Lott stepping down as Senate majority leader after failing to get the backing of the White House.
And as an example of the biggest threat to our hard-fought constitutional rights, does anyone remember the "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla? He had been in custody for some time before Ashcroft announced his alleged activities and his arrest. Ashcroft made the announcement on the day that FBI agent Coleen Rowley was scheduled to give a press conference to discuss her observation of failures in intelligence analysis that might have helped the FBI uncover the 9/11 hijacking plan. Without question, this was timed to steal the media attention from her press conference.
On the same day, the administration labeled Padilla an "enemy combatant" and had him moved from the civillian justice system (a New Jersey jail) to a military brig in North Carolina where he remains to this day with no contact from his attorney. His attorney has attempted to file a writ of habeus corpus on his behalf, but has been prevented from doing so because the writ must be signed by the defendent who she can't get in to see! (Sorry, it's realaudio but worth the listen) In effect, the administration has suspended habeus corpus, a 700 year legal tradition and one of the foundations (some say *the foundation*) of modern jurisprudence.
Many noble and honorable people have died to protect the freedoms that this administration is removing wholesale. The oft repeated Ben Franklin quote is right on the mark: The examples of Israel and Ireland have long proved that you can not "win a war on terrorism." And removing the very freedoms that the administration claims are the reason that the terrorists "hate us so much" results in a win for the terrorists. How about removing instead the real reasons that many in the Islamic world are opposed to the United States; forced exportation of our culture, religion and business interests to other countries through globalization and our interference in their affairs. The path we are on can only reduce our freedoms and turn more people of this Islamic world against us.
We need PATRIOT II like we need a damn hole in the head. I'm really concerned about the state of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms in this country and I'm not sure who I should be more afraid of, George Bush, John Ashcroft or Karl Rove. I'm certainly more afraid of them than I am of terrorists.
Ok, I've got my Nomex undies on, flame away. But if you must, don't just label me a liberal, commie, pinko hippie, counter my logic or refute my facts. I'm not trying to be a troll, just covering my ass. :) -
Re:My gut reaction:Considering how many trillions of dollars pharmaceutical companies spend designing drugs to relieve the suffering of others, I'm inclined to side in favour of their being able to take advantage of their discoveries.
Actually, according to some reports drug companies spend more on marketing existing drugs than on research. See this article for instance.
It is us, the taxpayers, who still fund large amount of the basic research needed to create new drugs.
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Re:Bowling for Columbine
I would add to this a couple more:
The American Prospect, which says that, "Though Moore claims to have made a documentary, his examination of American gun culture presents viewers with a more heavily edited fiction than producer Brian Grazer's attempt to clean up Eminem. Whereas the rapper's movie reaches for the sort of truth mere facts cannot convey, Moore's film grabs viewers with the old demagogue's trick of using just as much factual information as is necessary to lead people toward false conclusions."
Additionally, the New York Times review was negative. The review is no longer available on their web site unless you pay to access their archives, but I saved an excerpt from it, "The slippery logic, tendentious grandstanding and outright demagoguery on display in 'Bowling for Columbine' should be enough to give pause to its most ardent partisans...though he seems to be hunting for a specific historical cause for events like Columbine, Mr. Moore, when it serves his purposes, is happy to generalize in the absence of empirical evidence and to make much of connections that seem spurious on close examination."
Neither of these, I'd like to point out, could be called right-wing. The New York Times is center-left, and the American Prospect is left-wing. They are hardly allies of the NRA.
Additionally, NPR, another organization that could hardly be called right-wing or a friend of the NRA, severely criticized Moore yesterday in its program On the Media. The lead-in to the report said:
""Armed with a rifle he got for opening a bank account, and shocking statistics like the ones you just heard, Moore had plenty of fodder. But still, he was not satisfied. To properly emphasize the point that our country is a veritable shooting gallery, Moore embellishes, grandstands, and ignores inconvenient facts. Fine, fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, provocateurs gotta provoke. For the purposes of this story, a lack of countervailing viewpoints will not be faulted. The use of cliched, happy songs over images of war crimes, not once but twice, will be unremarked upon. As will the point that Michael Moore would have no career if he just called ahead for an appointment. This is a fact check, an accounting of distortions that would give pause to even the most enthusiastic fans of the movie."
Anyway, I don't know the answers to the gun violence question. Personally, I lean towards gun control, but am neither an expert nor speak with dogmatic certainty. However, I would point the original questioner the following routes:
First of all, do not trust Michael Moore's statistics. Moore makes a big deal out of the fact that Canada has as many guns as we do in the US, yet has a much lower crime rate. This is not really true. First of all, in Canada, there is 0.26 guns per capita. In the US, there is 0.62 guns per capita. Secondly, in Canada, there are much stricter gun licensing laws, particularly when it comes to personal handguns. As a result, 6.25% of Canada's guns are handguns - the kind of gun used overwhelmingly in gun violence. In America, 22.9% of guns are handguns. And as someone else noted in this thread, "Another interesting statistic is that in Canada's largest city, Toronto, it is estimated that 3 out of 4 hand guns involved in a crime are imported illegally from the US."
Additionally, I would suggest looking at the relationship between unintegrated minority groups and crime. American whites are twice as likely to be murdered than European whites - but American blacks are 14 times as likely to be murdered as European whites! Blacks, despite accounting for about 13% of the American population, account for 53% of Americans who are murdered. And there is a scale in the US - the more integrated an minority, the lower its crime rate. So Asians have a much lower crime rate than Hispanics, who have a lower crime rate than blacks.
The same pattern appears in Europe - the prisons are being filled with immigrants from Northern Africa, just like American prisons are being filled by African-Americans.
Please note that I am not saying that blacks or other minorities are inherently violent! I am merely saying that there is a natural sociological correlation between groups that are not integrated into society and groups that are more violent.
So, given this, let me propose an explanation. The difference in murder rates is due to a mix of three factors: culture, gun control policies, and immigration/social policies.
I do not know enough about the cultural explanation, but it would not surprise me if American culture were a factor.
Having easy access to guns and having far more guns than other countries is going to make a difference.
Immigration/Social Policies - America's crime rate has gone through a huge drop in the past 10 years, while Europe's has gone through a huge rise. It so happens that Europe is dealing with a large, unintegrated minority for the first time in centuries - and has done an awful job of it so far. Meanwhile, the integration of blacks and Hispanics into America, while far from complete, is progressing. I expect that we will see further drops in crime in the US, the more African-Americans are integrated into society.
But Canada has as high a percentage of immigrants as does the US. So what explains its lower crime rate? Perhaps they do a better job of integrating immigrants. And Canada does have a much more generous social welfare system. I would be very surprised if there were not a correlation between social welfare and crime.
So let's put it together. American whites have twice as high a murder rate as European whites. Couldn't much of that be attributable to the massively easier availability of handguns in the US?
On the other hand, American blacks have 7 times as high a murder rate as American whites. Couldn't much of that be attributable to America's history of slavery and Jim Crow, leading to a poverty-stricken, unintegrated black minority? Meanwhile, Canada has a much less racist history, and many fewer blacks - Canada's population is 2% black, of whom many are recent immigrants from the Caribbean, whereas America's population is 13% black, of whom most are the descendants of slaves.
Again, I am not saying that African-Americans are inherently violent. I am saying that African-Americans went through a terrible history that has made them poor and unintegrated into society. And without a good social welfare system like Canada's, some turn to crime. -
Re:Article contains no actual quantitative evidenc
I believe you are not aware of the whole picture about the big drug companies. Drugs companies at least spend twice as much money on marketing than they do on actually R&D. Also, to cut costs, they tend to take an existing patented drug that is about to expire, modify a bit so a new patent can be obtained, and then market it as a new improved version of the older drug.
The U.S. is the only major country that allows a private company to obtain exclusive rights on a patent where research received funding from public dollars. Hence, people pay up to twice as much for prescription drugs than in countries like Britain, Japan, and Australia.
Big pharma is now just a big marketing engine, where only the real innovative research is mainly being done by public funds.
Some articles worth reading:
http://www.namiscc.org/newsletters/July01/DrugPric es.htm
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/apr01/scrip0204 0101.asp
http://bernie.house.gov/documents/articles/2001-07 -21-nat_journal-Rx_Drugs.asp
http://abcnews.go.com/onair/ABCNEWSSpecials/pharma ceuticals_020529_pjr_feature.html
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/3240359.ht ml
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=5 34&u=/ap/20021001/ap_on_go_co/drug_wars&printe r=1
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=5 34&u=/ap/20021002/ap_on_he_me/pharmaceutical_marke ting&printer=1
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/showthread.php?thread id=420
http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/17/elliott-c.htm l
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/showthread.php?thread id=638
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename= article&node=&contentId=A1208-2001Jul15¬Found=t rue -
Microsoft has always done thisHere is an article that quotes Gates in 1998:
"They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
1.) Get user's addicted to our software
2.) ????
3.) Profit!!! -
Written in conjunction with Junk Bond KingInterestingly enough, the M$ word rebuttal on the ISC site contains some strings that the author probably didn't intend to publish. In particular, the name of Peter Passell, archconservative economist, and the name "Milken Institute" -- home of the Junk Bond King himself -- who did time in federal prison for his own shady business practices in the 1980s.
If only he were using an open-source format for his letters....
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Re:Government competitionLarge companies like Microsoft do *not*
pay much in tax.
Government projects are paid for by taxpayers, mostly individuals and small-to-medium sized companies, and it would be in their interest to have an alternative to Microsoft.
Look at it this way, with their monopoly Microsoft is about the only entity that can reliably squeeze money out of large corporations.
My 2 cents,
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Re:Is there any chinese slashdotters?
A lot of tax ?
Read this :
"Microsoft enjoyed more than $12 billion in total tax breaks over the past five years. Microsoft, in fact, actually paid no tax at all in 1999, despite $12.3 billion in reported U.S. profits. Microsoft's tax rate for the past two years was only 1.8 percent on $21.9 billion in pre-tax U.S. profits."
Never underestimate GwB's close friends. -
Re:Non-thinkers call the thoughtful center "biased
Indeed,if you tried to describe the broadcast networks as `center' or `mainstream' to most Americans, they would laugh at you
I'd laugh because describing megacorp-owned media as anything but rightist is ridiculous. The whole notion of a vast left-wing conspiracy in control of the media is a wonderfully effective strawman for conservatives, but has no basis in fact.
there's a reason Bernard Goldberg's book Bias is a nationwide best-seller while the broadcast networks are losing viewers hand-over-fist to Fox.
Fox is just more proof that catering to the lowest common denominator is the path to success.
As for Goldberg's Bias, since when has being a best-seller had anything to do with quality? His claim about labeling has http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/8/nunberg-g.htm
l already been debunked (with a follow-up here). -
Re:Non-thinkers call the thoughtful center "biased
Indeed,if you tried to describe the broadcast networks as `center' or `mainstream' to most Americans, they would laugh at you
I'd laugh because describing megacorp-owned media as anything but rightist is ridiculous. The whole notion of a vast left-wing conspiracy in control of the media is a wonderfully effective strawman for conservatives, but has no basis in fact.
there's a reason Bernard Goldberg's book Bias is a nationwide best-seller while the broadcast networks are losing viewers hand-over-fist to Fox.
Fox is just more proof that catering to the lowest common denominator is the path to success.
As for Goldberg's Bias, since when has being a best-seller had anything to do with quality? His claim about labeling has http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/8/nunberg-g.htm
l already been debunked (with a follow-up here). -
Re:Blogs (and /.) are most definitely journalism!
Indeed, after reading news reports over the last few years, I've grown weary of the much-overused "senior administration official" or other source-naming cop-outs. It seems like half of what we're supposed to take seriously in the news media is anonymously spoken. I hate it on several fronts, the two most important being the requisite level of trust we must have in order to believe these vindictive and lying bastards and the distressing conclusion that far too many people in positions of power would rather speak their mind from the shadows rather than be honest and open about it. Yeah, there are occasions when source secrecy is very important and essential to the story being reported...but it's gone way, way too far.
As for the opinons of some who believe weblogs don't create news, I totally disagree. See the current turmoil created by Eric Alterman's recent foray into blogging (after commenting on the phenomenon negatively for some time), the community of readers who disseminate and discuss what Mickey Kaus and Glenn Reynolds have to say, Andrew Sullivan's staunch stance on the Catholic scandals, the rise of the American Prospect's and National Review's reporting and commentary and other cases where the bloggers themselves created news by commenting on something else. And let's be honest here, just because the news they created wasn't reported on by the AP or UPI and didn't make Nightline or Good Morning America doesn't lessen its news status, for it is news to the community they are part of. -
Re:Funded by who?
These claims are circumstantial, arising primarily from the slew of pro-MS memos among their publications, and the testimony ADTI submitted on Microsoft's behalf at the Dept. of Justice trial. To quote another source:
I have not found a specific link between Microsoft and ADTI... but Microsoft is known to be funding similar conservative organizations. See:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cti306.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cth989.htm
http://www.prospect.org/print/V11/16/marshall-j.ht ml http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/public/29 / tc-00028697.htm -
1st amendment considerations
I can't believe that
/. as such a huge promoter of 1st amendment rights, doesn't see the relationship that limiting or banning soft money has to limiting the freedom of speech.
Here's the deal. If I pay for an advert in support of electing Jimmy Schlessenbaum, that money is counted as a soft money donation to Mr Schlessenbaum. If I give him the money for the ad, and his campaign pays for it, that's a hard contribution and it gets handled under the existing rules and limitations.
This is the problem. I have a right to express my opinion of who to vote for. If we start saying that there are limits on soft money contributions, then we're volunteering for legalized limits of individuals to express their opinions.
For a better description of this, see This article.
I don't like the fact that corporations can buy elections. But I'd rather have an undamaged 1st amendment, than limits on soft contributions. -
Oversight committee waste of Satchell's time?Is the oversight committee is a waste of Satchell time? It does nothing to change the status quo of the Microsoft monopoly.
<wishful thinking> Put him in-charge of a government program like quote below from Nathan Newman's
While such government restrictions are likely necessary, none of them speaks to the issue of creating a strong viable alternative to Microsoft. The federal government already spends billions of dollars on software research, purchases, and implementation. If it consolidated those resources in support of open-source solutions, it would not only expand many of the clear advantages that open-source software delivers, but it would also simultaneously undermine the Microsoft monopoly. If the government revived its collaboration with top programming talent to define the best standards and used its purchasing power to require that those standards be met in government contracts, this would go a long way toward challenging the Microsoft monopoly and preventing fragmentation of standards throughout the open-source universe.
</wishful thinking>
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Why FBI came out with this news NOW
Why were they honest about it now? Simple: this is the best political climate the FBI could have asked for to reveal something like this.
Surveys show that most people, given the 9-11 attacks, are more than willing to trade freedom for security.
"A recent ABC/Post survey found two out of three people expressing willingness to surrender 'some of the liberties we have in this country to crack down on terrorism.' Cole attributes this not only to a heightened concern for safety, but to the fact that the majority are not generally affected--that is, it's not their relatives being detained and questioned." (Taking Liberties: Fear and the Constitution)
"At times like this, a democracy must balance its need to protect itself with the freedoms that define it. Last week's terrorist attacks have raised the debate pitting homeland defense against civil liberties to a level not seen since World War II." (For now, security trumps liberties)
"From the very first surveys after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, most Americans told pollsters that the country would have to give up some rights to fight terrorism (79 percent in a CBS/New York Times poll in September). A Gallup survey conducted Nov. 26-27 found six in 10 Americans who said the Bush administration has been 'about right' in its limits on civil liberties, as opposed to 10 percent who said the administration had gone too far and 26 percent who think it hasn't gone far enough." (Public Supports Domestic Crackdown on Terror)
After all, if you're innocent, what do you have to worry about anyway? :grin: -
Re:surprised?
Why were they honest about it now? Simple: this is the best political climate the FBI could have asked for to reveal something like this. Surveys show that most people, given the 9-11 attacks, are more than willing to trade freedom for security.
"A recent ABC/Post survey found two out of three people expressing willingness to surrender "some of the liberties we have in this country to crack down on terrorism." Cole attributes this not only to a heightened concern for safety, but to the fact that the majority are not generally affected--that is, it's not their relatives being detained and questioned." (Taking Liberties: Fear and the Constitution)
After all, if you're innocent, what do you have to worry about anyway? :grin: -
Government belongs to the public or to business?
There is a huge amount of information on the net about the increasing corporatization of America. From the WTO protests (and presidential primary demonstrations), to activism around Biotechnology, copyright extensions, trademark and trade secrets litigation, patents on software, and on DNA.
I think that this will be the predominant political issue in the coming decade or two (and I think John McCain's showing in the republican presidential primary was in large part an effect of his stance on campaign finance reform, which is closely tied to all of these issues.)
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Re:Teaching SocialismInterestingly, Paul Starr, a liberal commentator, has criticized Sim games on the ground that their hidden premises are too conservative:
While playing SimCity with my eleven-year-old daughter, I railed against what I thought was a built-in bias of the program against mixed-use development. "It's just the way the game works," she said a bit impatiently.
My daughter's words seemed oddly familiar. A few months earlier someone had said virtually the same thing to me, but where? It suddenly flashed back: the earlier conversation had taken place while I was working at the White House on the development of the Clinton health plan. We were discussing the simulation model likely to be used by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to "score" proposals for health care reform. When I criticized one assumption, a colleague said to me, "Don't waste your breath," warning that it was hopeless to get CBO to change. Policy would have to adjust.
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The New Science of Character Assassination
The New Science of Character Assassination
Phil Agre
15 October 2000You are welcome to forward this article electronically to anyone for any noncommercial purpose.
The past ten days will go down as a turning point in American history. This is what it's like when the far right is taking over your country: the people support Al Gore's policies, but the polls are shifting toward George W. Bush because the media is filled with false attacks on Al Gore's character. A story in today's (10/15/00) New York Times states openly what has been clear all along, that this campaign of character assassination has been planned and executed over a long period by the Republicans.
--Story Link--Character assassination is, of course, nothing new for Republicans, who mastered the art in the days of Richard Nixon. What's new is that the press constantly repeats the lies. Not just once or twice, not just the occasional slip, but over and over and over.
Let us consider the New York Times story in detail. Written by Alison Mitchell, it describes Al Gore's abject apology for two trivial and much-exaggerated errors in the first debate as "the culmination of a skillful and sustained 18-month campaign by Republicans to portray the vice president as flawed and untrustworthy".
The New York Times discerns four landmarks in this campaign, and they are as follows:
- Landmark number one:
... in December 1997
... the [Republican National] committee announced it had started a contest to come up with a slogan for Mr. Gore after he told reporters that the hero and heroine in the novel "Love Story" were modeled after him and his wife, Tipper. (Erich Segal, the author, soon said that his protagonist, Oliver Barrett IV, was only partly based on Mr. Gore, while Jenny Cavilleri had nothing to do with Tipper Gore.)In this case, the RNC's claim was false. Gore had not told anyone that Love Story was based on him and his wife. Rather, he had mentioned a newspaper article that had inaccurately said that, and was carefully to say that he only had the article's word to go on. Observe that Mitchell repeats the RNC's false account, and then (following the longstanding convention) makes it sound as though Segal was contradicting Gore, when in fact he was defending him. The false "Love Story" store continues to be repeated to the present day.
--Story Link--- Landmark number two:
So when Mr. Gore said in an interview with CNN in March 1999 that "during my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet", Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, issued this mocking statement: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the paper clip".
The problem, of course, was that Gore's claim was correct. As the Internet's scientific leaders attest, often heatedly, Gore recognized the significance of the Internet very early, and took the initiative in doing the political work and articulating the public vision that made the Internet possible. His sentence, which is often not quoted in its entirety, makes perfectly clear that he was talking about the work he did in the context of his Congressional service, and that he is not claiming, ridiculously, to have done the technical work as well. Mitchell shades the story by omitting the Republicans' (and media's) most common distortion of the matter, that Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. This falsehood has been repeated on literally hundreds of occasions, and George W. Bush routinely uses it in his speeches.
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
--Story Link--- Landmark number three:
On the day Mr. Gore announced his candidacy in Carthage, Tenn., his family's hometown, Jim Nicholson, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, had a more elaborate stunt. He rode in a wagon pulled by mules to the hotel on Embassy Row in Washington where Mr. Gore lived for much of his youth.
"He has tried to pass himself off as this hardscrabble, homespun central Tennessee farm boy and that is not what he is", said Mr. Nicholson, playing off the fact that Mr. Gore had told The Des Moines Register that he had learned to slop hogs and clear land on the family farm. Friends later told reporters that Mr. Gore's father had kept him on a backbreaking work schedule during summers on the family farm.
The problem, again, is that Gore's claim was true. He did work on his family farm as a child. This time, Mitchell admits that the Republicans were making it up. But she still shades the story by making it sound as though the truth hadn't come out until later, and as though the contrary view rests solely on the word of Gore's friends. In fact the childhood farm chores had been extensively reported for a decade. The false claim that Gore had lied about the chores was repeated on many occasions in the press.
--Story Link--
--Story Link--- Landmark number four:
The Republicans got help as well from an unexpected source. When the Democratic primary fight became bitter, former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey insisted that Mr. Gore had deliberately distorted his policy positions in what he called a "pattern of misrepresentation". At one point, Mr. Bradley spat out, "Why should we believe that you will tell the truth as president if you don't tell the truth as a candidate?"
The problem is that Bradley is endlessly quoted to this effect without any attempt to determine whether he is right. In fact Bradley often wrongly accused Gore of distorting his positions.
And that's it. That, according to the New York Times, is the story of the Republicans' campaign to paint Al Gore as an embellisher. The New York Times cites four accusations, all of them false, and in every case the New York Times either repeats the false accusations as truth or else provides misleading accounts of them.
The New York Times' article is not an aberration. The list of false attacks on Al Gore's character that have been circulated in the media for the last two years is extraordinary. In some cases, as in the ones (mis)cited by the New York Times, Gore is accused of lying when he was actually telling the truth:
- Several publications have called Gore a liar in very harsh terms because he claimed that his father was a pioneer in the civil rights movement. It is true that his father lost his nerve on the Civil Rights Act, but that does not change the overwhelming and (until recently) universally accepted evidence of his leadership on civil rights. Gore's assertion is perfectly accurate.
--Story Link--- In probably the single most vicious attack of the entire campaign, several publications have suggested that Gore lied when claiming to have been present at his sister's death. The only evidence they offer is that he also made a political speech the same day, and Gore's driver has explained his schedule for that day in detail.
--Story Link--
In other cases, Gore's words are twisted, misquoted, or simply made up to make him sound as though he were making a claim that he was not making. For example, some publications have even claimed, falsely, that Gore literally uttered the words "inventing the Internet".
--Story Link--There are many others:
- In the closing moments of Gore's second debate with George W. Bush, Jim Lehrer falsely accused Gore of having called Bush a "bumbler" in one of his campaign commercials.
--Story Link--Was this simply a mistake on Lehrer's part? Okay, but Lehrer made his "mistake" in the context of rebuking Gore for his own miniscule mistakes in the first debate.
- Gore told a a union audience that his mother had sung the "union label" song to him as a child. Gore's comment was obviously a joke and the audience took it as a joke. Yet, incredibly, numerous supposed journalists have asserted that he meant it seriously, or else tried (on no evidence) to cast doubt on Gore's obviously-true claim that it was a joke.
--Story Link--- When Gore spoke of his proposal to put Social Security and Medicare in a "lockbox", some "journalists" accused him of dissembling on the astonishing grounds that he was not actually proposing to put the money into a physical box.
--Story Link--- When the Washington Post finally gave up on the "Love Story" story, pretending that it had only recently been disproven, they moved to another falsehood. Gore had claimed that his sister was the first volunteer for the Peace Corps. This claim was accurate, inasmuch as his sister had in fact worked for the Corps without pay from its earliest days, only later joining its paid staff. But the Post called Gore's claim a "lie", on the grounds that she had not worked as a volunteer *overseas*, which Gore had never claimed; they did not mention that she worked without pay.
--Story Link--- Gore told some students in New Hampshire the story of a Tennessee community activist who brought his attention to a toxic dump, whereupon he looked for other examples, found Love Canal, and held the first hearings on the issue. "Journalists" first misquoted him as having claimed to to have started the issue, when in fact he was giving credit to the activists. Even when the misquotation was grudgingly corrected, they continued to distort his words, as if he were claiming to have discovered the toxic pollution at Love Canal.
In yet other cases, Gore made a trivial error that has been exaggerated by his critics, and the exaggeration has been falsely attributed to him. Such is the case with the school in Florida that Gore cited in the first of his debates with George W. Bush.
--Story Link--These are just a few examples among many. People make mistakes all the time. Al Gore is one of them, and it's surprising that an army of opposition researchers hasn't come up with more substantive errors after fact-checking a whole life of public statements. So is George W. Bush, whose errors during the two debates so far have been dramatically worse than those of Gore. To start with, Bush falsely implied that the Europeans have no troops in Kosovo, when in fact they have tens of thousands, and that the United States has significant numbers of troops in Haiti, when it does not. And he made numerous false statements:
- that Gore was outspending him, when the opposite was true;
- that the rate of uninsured people was falling in Texas and rising nationally, when the opposite was true;
- that the men who killed James Byrd would be put to death, when only two had been sentenced to death and their appeals had not been exhausted;
- that middle-income seniors would get drug coverage immediately under his Medicare plan;
- that Gore had lied about this;
- that the new spending in his budget plan is equal to the tax cuts;
- that "most of the tax reductions [in his plan] go to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder";
- that the president is unable to influence the actions of the Food and Drug Administration;
- that Hillary Clinton's 1993 national health insurance initiative would have entailed nationalizing health care; and
- that Gore had claimed to be the author of the Earned Income Tax Credit law.
That is just a partial list of Bush's "mistakes" in two ninety-minute debates, and it doesn't include the dubious numbers he quoted from Republicans in the Senate or the mess he made of education, taxes, Social Security, and the Middle East. Nor does it include the "mistakes" that littered his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, or the especially egregious "mistakes" of his brutal campaign against John McCain in South Carolina, and so on.
--Story Link--With only a few exceptions (like the one just cited), the press has gone to great lengths to cover up or minimize Bush's false statements. Press coverage of the first debate focused overwhelmingly on Gore's two comparatively trivial errors and on endless suggestions that Gore was rude for having sighed several times.
--Story Link--Of course, the sighs were often exaggerated by turning the volume up. (Falsely calling someone a liar, as Bush did several times, is not rude?) Pundits bizarrely praised Bush for his command of the issues after the first debate despite his lengthy catalog of errors:
--Catalog Link--And the 10/5/00 Washington Post buried the Democrats' list of Bush errors at the end of a long story about Bush's accusations against Gore.
The problem is systemic. A reporter for a British newspaper, the Observer, was struck at the completely different approaches of the reporters covering Gore and Bush, and reported a disturbing incident in which a Washington Post reporter well-known for her open hostility to Gore held a toy gun to his head.
--Story Link--Indeed, press coverage of Gore has been spun in a strongly negative fashion for a long time.
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
--Story Link--The press, following the lead of Republican "investigators", has repeatedly falsified and spun the famous Buddhist temple event, among others.
--Story Link--They have also falsified and exaggerated Gore's performance in earlier debates, thereby creating a caricuture of him as a vicious attacker.
--Story Link--Yes, the press has suggested that Bush is not mentally competent to run the country. But it has not fabricated huge amounts of evidence to support this charge, and it has not routinely used vocabulary that is remotely as harsh as that used against Gore. You have rarely seen the media call Bush a "moron" or "idiot", but Gore has routinely been called much worse. Here is a very partial list:
- "evil"
- "imperious&qu ot;, "repellent"
- "lethal", "ruthless", "liar"
- "ruthless", "relentless", "bully", "maniacal"
- "manipulative", "dishonest"
(I am citing the Daily Howler for most of these examples so that you can read some analysis of them. But the Howler provides precise citations for the originals, which should be easy to look up.)
Indeed, Bush's alleged mental incompetence is often tacitly used to excuse his falsehoods -- he doesn't know what he's talking about, so he can't be lying. Or Gore is accused of a "pattern" of false and exaggerated statements, but then Bush escapes the same accusation for the simple reason that nobody bothers to gather Bush's false and exaggerated statements in one place.
This is just the press. We're not even talking about the conservatives on the Internet that have been circulating long lists of Gore's supposed lies and exaggerations -- most of which are, of course, themselves lies or exaggerations, including garbled and embellished versions of the already false versions in the press. Some of these lists are credited to the RNC, but of course it is hard to know for sure.
The new science of character assassination, then, has several components:
- It starts with a strategy: a conscious choice by a political party that it is going to position its opponent in a certain way. The 10/15/00 Washington Post quotes a Republican consultant as saying that "PR 101 is define your opponent before he tries to define himself", and the whole campaign is clearly organized by the principles of PR.
- It requires a clearinghouse to distribute "facts" that fit the strategy. In this case the burden has been carried by the Republican National Committee and by the office of House majority leader Dick Armey, which got its start by circulating the original fraudulent charges from Wired News about Gore's Internet statement.
- It requires rank-and-file supporters who are willing to pass along any junk that fits the party line.
- But above all, it requires a press corps that has decided to go along with it. Part of the problem is that the press operates in packs -- an echo chamber of lazy pundits in which every "fact" that fits a prevailing stereotype gets endlessly repeated.
But it's not just that. It is not surprising that Rupert Murdoch's media properties, such as Fox and the New York Post, publish smears against people who disagree with Murdoch's far-right views. But it can hardly be an accident that the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press have all assigned reporters to the Gore campaign who write, day in and day out, the same sorts of exaggerated smears. To be sure, the press is not unanimous in spreading Republican lies as truth; the contrast between the NYT/Post/AP axis and the calm reporting of the Los Angeles Times could hardly be greater. But the Post, Times, and AP, all well-connected and widely syndicated, set the tone for the press as a whole. The fix is clearly in, and these establishment media operations are clearly down with it. They see which way the wind is blowing, and they don't want to get left behind.
A kind of coup is in effect, continuing the pattern of the Whitewater hoax and impeachment. If the far right succeeds in its campaign, then the incoming government will be staffed by people who are trained in the new science of character assassination. It's all they know. And having destroyed Al Gore, they will come after the rest of us.
Copyright (c) 2000 by Philip E. Agre.
All rights reserved.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness." -
Re:contradiction?
Before you start pointing out the contradictions in ESR's position perhaps you should take the time to actually read his position. You can choose to agree or disagree with ESR, but he is quite consistent.
I have included a quote from round two of the discussion that shows that ESR is firmly against the DOJ anti-trust action.
The open-source community famously despises Microsoft, and for good reason; none of Judge Penfield Jackson's findings of fact came as any surprise to us. Indeed, we think the government and trade press still seriously underestimate the pernicious effects of Microsoft's "embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy. There is no doubt among us that Microsoft's behavior has been destructive, sleazy, and frequently unethical by any reasonable standard.
Nevertheless, it is notable that not a single major influence leader of the open-source community has stepped forward to endorse the DOJ [Department of Justice] antitrust action. Those like myself who have spoken out have tended to be vocally critical of its underlying law and premises. There are good reasons for this; even when open-source developers are not explicitly among Nathan Newman's "techno-libertarians," we share a gut-level sense, born of experience, that handing governments more power is more likely in the long term to injure the Internet (and all its potentials for human freedom and property) than to help it grow.
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Re:Laissez-Faire
Linux has got along fine so far with only word-of-mouth advertising (for both customers and programmers) so why should things change?
Read the debate this story linked to. Read the articles that provoked the debate. (Lessig's in particular.) And learn your history.
Linux got where it is by copying the implementation of Unix. Unix got where it was through heavy government involvement, funding, and forced standardization. Unix then became a quagmire of incompatible proprietary forks when the government stopped promoting Unix and enforcing open Unix standards, and instead left Unix development to the wonders of the free market.
Linux (and, more to the point, all the Open Source software that actually runs things, like Apache, BIND, and Sendmail) got where it is by harnessing the open nature of the Internet. The Internet is open because the government developed TCP/IP to be content-agnostic, and forced open access laws on the telecommunications network which currently "is" the Internet. As the Internet evolves to cable/wireless networds which currently don't operate under the same open access laws, the environment which fostered the growth of OSS like Linux will instead be owned by corporations like AOL/TW to do with as they please. This is not because of an absence of government regulation, but rather because the type of government regulation that currently applies to cable networks is different from the type that applies to phone networks. All networks in this country are and will continue to be regulated by the government. The only question is how.
That's the point Lessig makes, and ESR so conveniently avoids, instead arguing that "open-source developers...share a gut-level sense, born of experience, that handing governments more power is more likely in the long term to injure the Internet (and all its potentials for human freedom and property) than to help it grow." What's his evidence for this? Laws like CDA, UCITA, and DMCA--laws passed by politicians who are ignorant of the open-source heritage of the Internet and instead fed propaganda by corporate lobbyists.
Ok, fine. So what's the solution, Eric? Fight to put open access and OSS back on the government agenda? Hire our own lobbyists to teach lawmakers the truth? Use the government's power to redress the harm they've caused by abondoning the development of computing standards to proprietary closed-source corporations like MS?
No, silly. The solution is to ignore the problem, since it will go away. After all, the government doesn't have anything to do with technology or the operations of the "free" market anyways. -
Read Lessig's piece
Read Lessig's piece
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It is better than the sound bite. -
Let me explain...
Umm... can you give me an example of a software company that doesn't play hardball like MS?
Software companies, just like any other type, are free to play hardball if they want, unless they are a monopoly, at which point they play by a different set of rules. There is good reason for this. The US, more than any other nation I can think of, demands that its companies compete. Many other nations are much more protective of their "champion" corporations. They do what they can to shield them from competition. That's one reason why our economy is so strong and we are a major center of innovation. We don't let our corporations get so fat and happy that they lose their edge, or at least if they do get that way, we don't try to protect them from the consequences (usually, although there have been some significant exceptions where corps have been bailed out by the government).
Microsoft has a monopoly on desktop operating systems. While that is not illegal, it is not considered to be beneficial to competition or our economy in general. That is why we have anti-trust laws. Under those laws, Microsoft is not allowed to use its monopoly power to prevent competitors from entering and competing in that market. They are not allowed to create artificial barriers to entry. They are not allowed to leverage their monopoly in one market to try to dominate another market. They are not allowed to "play hardball" like non-monopoly companies. This is for the good of competition. We assume that competition is good for innovation and for consumers because it helps produce the best products at the best prices.
I'd suggest that a new set of rules was in order, but govt. restraint of the software industry will only slow the economy and the progress of technology.
I don't see how people can go throwing these kinds of assumptions around when history shows us exactly the opposite. Go read this article and get back to me. It's not specifically about Microsoft, or even anti-trust in general. It's about open access to infrastructure, namely phone and cable networks, but it does help to illustrate why regulation is often the best way to keep innovation alive rather than leaving it up to a single corp or handful of corps. We make the rules based on what serves the country best, not what serves the big corporations best. These corporations have no deity-given rights to protection from our government. We decided to give them certain protections and privileges, but it is done on our terms. The terms that serve the country. Now, it hasn't always worked, but we've gotten this far and we're doing better than most. I don't think that anti-trust laws or regulation in general should be chucked out the window just because people don't want to offend the country's biggest... err second biggest corporation. Yes they've been wildly successful. They also broke many laws to keep themselves on top and to get rid of the competition. That doesn't fly here, or at least it shouldn't. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft can buy a political fix for its legal problems.
Yet here we all are reading Slashdot, using an OS(Linux) we got for free that is eating at Microsofts share.
Saying that we shouldn't use Linux because its getting in the way of profits that should rightfully belong to Microsoft is like saying we should all stop breathing because nobody is getting rich even though we are consuming oxygen. Ok, so it's not exactly the same. The point is that if it can be made or had for free, or very cheaply, then it will be hard to make money on it. In this case, distributed effort has helped to produce a very good operating system that can be had for very little cost. Operating systems aren't the only products affected by this. Try selling ice to an eskimo sometime.
The best thing we could do to solve the MS problem is to ignore them.
Ignoring them would be foolish in the extreme. Doing so would simply allow them to build more and more artificial dependency into their products and raise the cost more and more for a company to switch to something else. If we stand idly by while Microsoft works even harder to achieve a stronger customer lock-in, we will end up losing a lot of ground. If Microsoft is allowed to own the standards, how can anyone else compete?
By going to the government and asking them to solve this, we are inviting the government in to regulate everything, including Linux and Open Source.
You talk like the DOJ is moving into new territory here or something. Anti-trust laws have been on the books for over 100 years. This is nothing new. It's not opening any new doors or creating any new type of regulation. They are simply enforcing the law. As I said before, the US bases its laws on the assumption that competition is good. Therefore, a lack of competition is bad, and attempting to use monopoly power to maintain that lack of competition is illegal.
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Rosy picture... darksome pictureI've just finished reading it, and I think Cluetrain paints the rosy, optimistic side of the Internet, provided that the Internet continues as we now know it (and as many of "us" would like it to continue to be). But as reported here about a week ago, Lawrence Lessig suggests that there may be problems (in http://www.prospect.org/a rchives/V11-10/lessig-l.html, "Innovation, Regulation, and The Internet ",
This is Washington's version of the Internet. There isn't a problem so long as the big guys can buy access... Our political culture would in time transform the Internet into the shape of everything else.
Cluetrain gives us another reason to be scared of the media establishment, and of Washington. -
Distributed publishing defeats them!
Calling it "the beginning of regulation" is ridiculous. Clearly you haven't read Lessig's article yet.
As long as IP still works the same way, and the telcos aren't corrupted to the point where they start doing content filtering (VERY unlikely, as it runs counter to the decades of heavy FCC regulation), then no one can stop people from using the net however they want. Sure, the evil cartels can sue individual web sites, get injunctions at the drop of a hat, and completely trump individual liberties even in places like Norway (which still baffles me!). But that says more about our "justice" system than it does about the future of the net.
Even if the dying-industry cartels like RIAA totally corrupt our justice system (as if they haven't already) so they can knock down any web site they want to, what will they do when something like Freenet becomes widespread???
As long as IP remains the same, distributed publishing technologies like Napster and Freenet will continue to be possible. The more successful the cartels/courts are at suppressing speech on the web, the more motivation we will all have to adopt and improve these technologies.
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -
Re:New concept in Amercian Justice.
``If you want to fine them you make it much larger than a couple billion. Then you take the money and pump it into the competitors or perhaps some really nice OSS projects.''
For a nice discussion of what the Fed. Govt. could do in this area see Lawrence Lessig's article in The American Prospect Online . Excellent article. Highly recommended. I found his ideas very interesting and, IMHO, a much better way for the govt. to be attempting to set policy instead of their favorite means (i.e., taxes on what they want to discourage and tax breaks for things they want to encourage -- which usually turns into tax breaks for big campaign contributors).
Lessig's comments about his experience with the FCC `good ol' boys' saddened me, though. (I had to wonder if the movie ``The President's Analyst'' wasn't right on the money after all.)
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Re:New concept in Amercian Justice.
``If you want to fine them you make it much larger than a couple billion. Then you take the money and pump it into the competitors or perhaps some really nice OSS projects.''
For a nice discussion of what the Fed. Govt. could do in this area see Lawrence Lessig's article in The American Prospect Online . Excellent article. Highly recommended. I found his ideas very interesting and, IMHO, a much better way for the govt. to be attempting to set policy instead of their favorite means (i.e., taxes on what they want to discourage and tax breaks for things they want to encourage -- which usually turns into tax breaks for big campaign contributors).
Lessig's comments about his experience with the FCC `good ol' boys' saddened me, though. (I had to wonder if the movie ``The President's Analyst'' wasn't right on the money after all.)
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Is the AOL-Time Warner merger safe for democracy?Is the AOL-Time Warner merger safe for democracy?
Click this link to hear some what some policy-type-people have to say.
Courtesy of The American Prospect, the magazine that I work for.