http://blogs.chron.com/fulldisclosure/archives/2006/01/a_stern_warning.html
If you haven't already, it's worth reading former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's Op-Ed piece ($) in the Wall Street Journal. It would be easy to dismiss Rubin on partisan grounds, but that would be a mistake. When he ran Treasury, he was a staunch supporter of a balanced budget, and his piece today is a call for greater fiscal responsibility.
To move forward, serious policy advocates from all perspectives should start by agreeing on two basic bedrock principles: that there is no free lunch; and that a strong future requires incurring costs now for benefits later. We should then put everything on the table. Our strategy should have four components:
(1) We should re-establish sound fiscal conditions for the intermediate term (the 10-year federal budget window) and put in place a real plan to get entitlements on a sound footing for the long term. (2) We need a strong public investment program -- paid for, not funded by increased public borrowing -- to promote productivity growth, to help those dislocated by technology and trade, and to equip all citizens to share in our economic well-being and growth. (3) We must pursue an international economic policy that continues global integration, especially multilaterally, and proactively addresses our other international economic interests, including combating global poverty. (4) We should work toward a regulatory regime that meets our needs and sensibly weigh risks and rewards.
Our strategy should reaffirm market-based economics as the most effective organizing principle for economic activity, while recognizing the critical role of government in providing the many requisites for economic success that markets, by their very nature, will not provide.
Regardless of your political views, our current fiscal policy -- which basically amounts to borrow and spend -- is unsustainable. The longer we wait to address the problems, the harder the choices get.
DJHJD
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Technology Tuesday
Okay, so we’re having technology breakdowns here at the Office de Divo. The printer is back to its old ways of figuring that it’s got a paper jam. The bottom drawer of the filing cabinet has fallen down and it can’t get up, and now, the shredder has stopped working after many hours of valuable service today.
I shredded eight bags of old records – I felt like one of Enron’s financial staff. I had put everything to be shredded into a big box, which was full to overflowing. All kinds of paperwork from old lenders, old employers, old receipts, old bank statements. I got about forty files re-labeled and put in more suitable file drawers.
So, things in the office are looking pretty spiffy. Ish. And, I have some tax returns to do, some marketing to do, my homework to do, blah, blah, blah. And a busted printer. And a busted shredder. That’s working again. Apparently, I was overworking it.
Had dinner with David tonight – we always have such great conversations when we hang out. He was talking about some PBS show he had watched that showed a scientific connection between the genetic disposition of some people to die of bubonic plague, some to get it but not die, and others to be unaffected – the identical genetic mutuation also protects against HIV.
Already 8:37. Why do my lights come on (mentally speaking) at this hour and carry on into the night?
I shredded eight bags of old records – I felt like one of Enron’s financial staff. I had put everything to be shredded into a big box, which was full to overflowing. All kinds of paperwork from old lenders, old employers, old receipts, old bank statements. I got about forty files re-labeled and put in more suitable file drawers.
So, things in the office are looking pretty spiffy. Ish. And, I have some tax returns to do, some marketing to do, my homework to do, blah, blah, blah. And a busted printer. And a busted shredder. That’s working again. Apparently, I was overworking it.
Had dinner with David tonight – we always have such great conversations when we hang out. He was talking about some PBS show he had watched that showed a scientific connection between the genetic disposition of some people to die of bubonic plague, some to get it but not die, and others to be unaffected – the identical genetic mutuation also protects against HIV.
Already 8:37. Why do my lights come on (mentally speaking) at this hour and carry on into the night?
Mystery firm linked to US lobbyist scandal
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=12&art_id=10441&sid=6326812&con_type=3
US government investigators probing Washington's explosive Congressional bribery scandal centered on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff recently visited Hong Kong, according to a witness interviewed by the authorities.ZachColeman Saturday, January 21, 2006
(image placeholder)
US government investigators probing Washington's explosive Congressional bribery scandal centered on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff recently visited Hong Kong, according to a witness interviewed by the authorities.
The investigators reportedly are chasing convoluted money trails leading to Abramoff and government officials he sought to influence.
Among the likely subjects of interest here is a previously unknown company called Rose Garden Holdings. In May 2002, Abramoff notified the US Senate that Rose Garden had hired him and Greenberg Traurig, his firm at the time, to represent Rose Garden's "interests before federal agencies and [the] US Congress."
Abramoff recorded Rose Garden's address as a luxury flat in Tai Hang, above Causeway Bay, and its business as international trade. Over the next year and a half, the records show, Rose Garden paid Greenberg Traurig US$1.4 million (HK$10.92 million) for putting its case to the Senate, House of Representatives and US Department of Labor.
Hong Kong's Companies Registry has no record of Rose Garden Holdings; nor does the telephone directory. The apartment listed by Abramoff as Rose Garden's premises has been owned since 1992 by Luen Thai Shipping and Trading, according to the Land Registry.
Luen Thai Holdings and its controlling shareholders, the Tan family, were leading beneficiaries of Abramoff's Washington lobbying.
Luen Thai officials and spokesmen referred queries about Abramoff and Rose Garden to chief execut
(image placeholder)
ive Henry Tan, but Tan declined through his secretary to be interviewed, citing his travel schedule.
Luen Thai Holdings, which held a HK$669.4 million initial public stock offering in 2004, was built on the business of sewing together clothing for top US brand-names such as Liz Claiborne, with the assistance of young women from China and other Asian countries on the US-controlled Pacific island of Saipan.
The foundations of the company's profitable niche are loopholes in US law that allow free migration to the island, set its minimum wage below mainland US levels and allow clothing sewn there to carry the "Made in USA" label and be exempt from quotas and tariffs.
Before the Tan family had friends in Washington, they made enemies. In 1991, the US Labor Department sued six Tan companies for paying 1,350 mainly Chinese workers less than Saipan's minimum wage and forcing them to work up to 90 hours a week without required overtime pay.
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration levied more than US$240,000 in fines against the six Tan companies the following year for violations including locking and blocking factory and dormitory fire doors and other unsanitary and hazardous conditions in the factories and dorms.
After the charges were made public, clothing giant Levi Strauss & Co and retailer The Gap halted purchases from the Tans.
US Representative George Miller, a Democrat from California, launched committee hearings into labor abuses on the island and ways to close the loopholes surrounding Saipan.
The Tans settled the overtime suit without admitting any wrongdoing by agreeing to pay the workers US$9 million. They also settled the health and safety charges by pledging US$1.3 million in repairs and paying a US$76,000 penalty.
After this episode - and ones with other island manufacturers - Saipan's government hired Abramoff to fend off repeated threats to the island's status in Washington.
Abramoff took up the garment makers' cause enthusiastically, taking congressmen and their staff and families to Saipan to enjoy its tropical pleasures and hear the manufacturers' case for protection. Abramoff and his staff trumpeted the clothiers' agenda to administration officials, targeting unsympathetic ones for retribution. A syndicated US newspaper columnist last month admitted receiving payments from Abramoff for writing favorable stories about Saipan and other clients.
Between 1995 and 2002, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, centered on Saipan, paid Abramoff at least US$8 million, according to commonwealth audits and Senate records. But the high-priced help became a lightning rod for controversy on the cash-strapped islands. Twice the government dropped Abramoff's services.
Rose Garden's hiring of Abramoff came four months after the government, now under a new governor, ended his contract for the last time. During the previous suspension, four business organizations in Saipan joined to publicly form a new group that paid Abramoff US$2.4 million.
If Abramoff reported "Rose Garden Holdings" as his client, using its name as a front for Luen Thai or other Saipan business interests, he may have violated the US Lobbying Disclosure Act. Jan Witold Baran, a Washington lawyer specializing in lobbying law, said the law requires identification of the entity directing and funding lobbying activity.
Juan Babauta, who was succeeded on January 8 as Northern Marianas governor by a former Tan Holdings executive, told the Saipan Tribune just before he left office: "The Jack Abramoff investigation is obviously turning in the direction of the CNMI."
According to an investigation published by The Washington Post three weeks ago, records obtained by the newspaper reveal that Saipan garment makers, including Tan, contributed US$500,000 to an organization called the US Family Network between 1996 and 2001. Much of the organization's funding was spent supporting other groups linked to Abramoff or indicted Congressman Tom DeLay.
A series of e-mail messages between Abramoff and Willie Tan, Henry's brother who heads up the family's ventures on site in Saipan, recently obtained by Washington journalist Joshua Micah Marshall, appear to show another financial link. According to a copy posted on Marshall's Web site, Abramoff billed Tan US$223,679 in 2000 toward the annual rental of skyboxes in three Washington-area stadiums and arenas.
Abramoff made frequent use of the skyboxes to entertain congressmen. The e-mails indicate receipt of a first quarterly payment of US$55,919.75 and show Tan directing a company finance executive to make the second quarterly payment.
US government investigators probing Washington's explosive Congressional bribery scandal centered on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff recently visited Hong Kong, according to a witness interviewed by the authorities.ZachColeman Saturday, January 21, 2006
(image placeholder)
US government investigators probing Washington's explosive Congressional bribery scandal centered on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff recently visited Hong Kong, according to a witness interviewed by the authorities.
The investigators reportedly are chasing convoluted money trails leading to Abramoff and government officials he sought to influence.
Among the likely subjects of interest here is a previously unknown company called Rose Garden Holdings. In May 2002, Abramoff notified the US Senate that Rose Garden had hired him and Greenberg Traurig, his firm at the time, to represent Rose Garden's "interests before federal agencies and [the] US Congress."
Abramoff recorded Rose Garden's address as a luxury flat in Tai Hang, above Causeway Bay, and its business as international trade. Over the next year and a half, the records show, Rose Garden paid Greenberg Traurig US$1.4 million (HK$10.92 million) for putting its case to the Senate, House of Representatives and US Department of Labor.
Hong Kong's Companies Registry has no record of Rose Garden Holdings; nor does the telephone directory. The apartment listed by Abramoff as Rose Garden's premises has been owned since 1992 by Luen Thai Shipping and Trading, according to the Land Registry.
Luen Thai Holdings and its controlling shareholders, the Tan family, were leading beneficiaries of Abramoff's Washington lobbying.
Luen Thai officials and spokesmen referred queries about Abramoff and Rose Garden to chief execut
(image placeholder)
ive Henry Tan, but Tan declined through his secretary to be interviewed, citing his travel schedule.
Luen Thai Holdings, which held a HK$669.4 million initial public stock offering in 2004, was built on the business of sewing together clothing for top US brand-names such as Liz Claiborne, with the assistance of young women from China and other Asian countries on the US-controlled Pacific island of Saipan.
The foundations of the company's profitable niche are loopholes in US law that allow free migration to the island, set its minimum wage below mainland US levels and allow clothing sewn there to carry the "Made in USA" label and be exempt from quotas and tariffs.
Before the Tan family had friends in Washington, they made enemies. In 1991, the US Labor Department sued six Tan companies for paying 1,350 mainly Chinese workers less than Saipan's minimum wage and forcing them to work up to 90 hours a week without required overtime pay.
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration levied more than US$240,000 in fines against the six Tan companies the following year for violations including locking and blocking factory and dormitory fire doors and other unsanitary and hazardous conditions in the factories and dorms.
After the charges were made public, clothing giant Levi Strauss & Co and retailer The Gap halted purchases from the Tans.
US Representative George Miller, a Democrat from California, launched committee hearings into labor abuses on the island and ways to close the loopholes surrounding Saipan.
The Tans settled the overtime suit without admitting any wrongdoing by agreeing to pay the workers US$9 million. They also settled the health and safety charges by pledging US$1.3 million in repairs and paying a US$76,000 penalty.
After this episode - and ones with other island manufacturers - Saipan's government hired Abramoff to fend off repeated threats to the island's status in Washington.
Abramoff took up the garment makers' cause enthusiastically, taking congressmen and their staff and families to Saipan to enjoy its tropical pleasures and hear the manufacturers' case for protection. Abramoff and his staff trumpeted the clothiers' agenda to administration officials, targeting unsympathetic ones for retribution. A syndicated US newspaper columnist last month admitted receiving payments from Abramoff for writing favorable stories about Saipan and other clients.
Between 1995 and 2002, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, centered on Saipan, paid Abramoff at least US$8 million, according to commonwealth audits and Senate records. But the high-priced help became a lightning rod for controversy on the cash-strapped islands. Twice the government dropped Abramoff's services.
Rose Garden's hiring of Abramoff came four months after the government, now under a new governor, ended his contract for the last time. During the previous suspension, four business organizations in Saipan joined to publicly form a new group that paid Abramoff US$2.4 million.
If Abramoff reported "Rose Garden Holdings" as his client, using its name as a front for Luen Thai or other Saipan business interests, he may have violated the US Lobbying Disclosure Act. Jan Witold Baran, a Washington lawyer specializing in lobbying law, said the law requires identification of the entity directing and funding lobbying activity.
Juan Babauta, who was succeeded on January 8 as Northern Marianas governor by a former Tan Holdings executive, told the Saipan Tribune just before he left office: "The Jack Abramoff investigation is obviously turning in the direction of the CNMI."
According to an investigation published by The Washington Post three weeks ago, records obtained by the newspaper reveal that Saipan garment makers, including Tan, contributed US$500,000 to an organization called the US Family Network between 1996 and 2001. Much of the organization's funding was spent supporting other groups linked to Abramoff or indicted Congressman Tom DeLay.
A series of e-mail messages between Abramoff and Willie Tan, Henry's brother who heads up the family's ventures on site in Saipan, recently obtained by Washington journalist Joshua Micah Marshall, appear to show another financial link. According to a copy posted on Marshall's Web site, Abramoff billed Tan US$223,679 in 2000 toward the annual rental of skyboxes in three Washington-area stadiums and arenas.
Abramoff made frequent use of the skyboxes to entertain congressmen. The e-mails indicate receipt of a first quarterly payment of US$55,919.75 and show Tan directing a company finance executive to make the second quarterly payment.
A PRE-STATE OF THE UNION PRIMER
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2006/01/index.html#008934
Another day, another detailed preview of George W. Bush's State of the Union health care proposals. This morning's iteration comes from the LA Times’ Peter Gosselin, one of the best social policy reporters in the country. But even the best reporters are hamstrung and hogtied by demands for objectivity and spacial constraints, so though Gosselin's tour through the proposals is sure-footed and clearly-written, it doesn't offer much in the way of context or analysis. So we'll do that here.
Setting aside the miscellanea of medical malpractice and various portability tweaks, Bush's major proposals encourage the spread of Health Savings Accounts and render most out-of-pocket spending tax deductible (attentive news junkies will note the dissonance with the November recommendations of Bush's tax commission, which sought to limit health care deductions). This is a rethink of the entire health care system: no more risk pooling; instead, you sock away cash in tax-advantaged accounts, spending it only when you get sick. So no (or very low) premiums. But when you fall ill, there'll be no insurance company defraying the costs, not until you've spent $10,000 or so.
The idea here is simple. Conservatives believe Americans have too much health insurance, that they spend heedlessly and wastefully on care, procedures, and medications they would simply forego if insurance plans didn't pick up the tab. Ergo, HSA's, which end risk pooling, forcing care to come directly from pockets. Newly responsible for their medical bills, consumers will be spurred by the Magic of the Market to make smarter decisions, show more prudence, lead healthier lifestyles, smile more often, and smell springtime fresh. It's gonna be awesome.
At least if you're healthy. Because what HSA's really do is separate the young from the old, the well from the sick. Currently, insurance operates off of the concept of risk pooling. Since health costs tend to be unpredictable and illness isn't thought a moral failing, we all pay a bit more than we expect to use in order to subsidize those who end up needing much more than they ever thought possible. The well subsidize the sick, the young subsidize the old, and we all accept the arrangement because one day we will be old, and one day we will be sick, and no one wants to shoulder that alone.
But HSA's slice right through this intergenerational, redistributionist arrangement: they're a great deal for young, healthy folks because they don't force subsidization. Just don't get sick. And if you're already sick, don't think you can hide by remaining in traditional insurance plans: when the healthy rush towards HSA's, older plans will hold only the ill, and insurance companies will send premiums skyrocketing to recoup the difference.
Thankfully, when you're old, sick, poor, and bitter, schadenfreude will keep you warm. Eventually all those young bucks who left you for their HSA's will get sick, and when they do, it's all coming out of their pocket. And if, like most Americans, they're not terribly good savers and their HSA only has a couple thousand (or hundred) in it, it's all coming out of their bank accounts. Currently, more than half of all bankruptcies are due to medical costs. Post-HSA's, expect that number to rocket upwards. Lucky thing, then, that the financial industry, along with a compliant Congress, just made it harder and costlier to declare bankruptcy.
HSA's, also, will not solve, halt, or slow medical spending in this country. Health costs follows the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of the money goes towards 20 percent of the people. A healthy person spends virtually nothing in a year, but a cancer patient or car crash victim will lay down hundreds of thousands of dollars. And since each HSA is coupled with a high-deductible insurance policy, none of that care will be skipped; the patients will just be bankrupted en route to the limit.
Nor will HSA's cut down on unnecessary care. A famous RAND study looked into usage of these plans and found that patients did indeed use a bit less care, but they had no way to separate necessary care from unnecessary care. So instead of foregoing useless procedures, they simply neglected their hypertension (for example). Long-term, that means more strokes and heart attacks, which in turn cost the system orders of magnitude more than blood pressure medications and regular check-ups. Save a penny today, pay a pound tomorrow.
But that's not to say HSA's are useless. They're not. What they achieve is massive, large-scale cost-shifting, generally from employer to employee. Where businesses used to pay for insurance (and thus for treatment), now they'll simply help employees found HSA's and let them pay their own health costs. And that's really what this push is about. Businesses don't like paying for health care. The Bush administration, as always, heard and heeded the corporate complaints, and is set to propose a policy agenda that'll help employers wiggle out of insurance costs. But someone, always, is left holding the bag, and if businesses let go of it, their employees will have to pick up the slack. For the lucky, healthy ones, the changeover won't affect them much; it may even leave them better off, at least for awhile. But for the old or the ill (all of us, eventually), costs will skyrocket.
Bush wants to bring about the end of risk pooling, the end of health security. The question voters will have to ask is if they think their lives, and bank accounts, need a massive infusion of instability.
--Ezra Klein
Another day, another detailed preview of George W. Bush's State of the Union health care proposals. This morning's iteration comes from the LA Times’ Peter Gosselin, one of the best social policy reporters in the country. But even the best reporters are hamstrung and hogtied by demands for objectivity and spacial constraints, so though Gosselin's tour through the proposals is sure-footed and clearly-written, it doesn't offer much in the way of context or analysis. So we'll do that here.
Setting aside the miscellanea of medical malpractice and various portability tweaks, Bush's major proposals encourage the spread of Health Savings Accounts and render most out-of-pocket spending tax deductible (attentive news junkies will note the dissonance with the November recommendations of Bush's tax commission, which sought to limit health care deductions). This is a rethink of the entire health care system: no more risk pooling; instead, you sock away cash in tax-advantaged accounts, spending it only when you get sick. So no (or very low) premiums. But when you fall ill, there'll be no insurance company defraying the costs, not until you've spent $10,000 or so.
The idea here is simple. Conservatives believe Americans have too much health insurance, that they spend heedlessly and wastefully on care, procedures, and medications they would simply forego if insurance plans didn't pick up the tab. Ergo, HSA's, which end risk pooling, forcing care to come directly from pockets. Newly responsible for their medical bills, consumers will be spurred by the Magic of the Market to make smarter decisions, show more prudence, lead healthier lifestyles, smile more often, and smell springtime fresh. It's gonna be awesome.
At least if you're healthy. Because what HSA's really do is separate the young from the old, the well from the sick. Currently, insurance operates off of the concept of risk pooling. Since health costs tend to be unpredictable and illness isn't thought a moral failing, we all pay a bit more than we expect to use in order to subsidize those who end up needing much more than they ever thought possible. The well subsidize the sick, the young subsidize the old, and we all accept the arrangement because one day we will be old, and one day we will be sick, and no one wants to shoulder that alone.
But HSA's slice right through this intergenerational, redistributionist arrangement: they're a great deal for young, healthy folks because they don't force subsidization. Just don't get sick. And if you're already sick, don't think you can hide by remaining in traditional insurance plans: when the healthy rush towards HSA's, older plans will hold only the ill, and insurance companies will send premiums skyrocketing to recoup the difference.
Thankfully, when you're old, sick, poor, and bitter, schadenfreude will keep you warm. Eventually all those young bucks who left you for their HSA's will get sick, and when they do, it's all coming out of their pocket. And if, like most Americans, they're not terribly good savers and their HSA only has a couple thousand (or hundred) in it, it's all coming out of their bank accounts. Currently, more than half of all bankruptcies are due to medical costs. Post-HSA's, expect that number to rocket upwards. Lucky thing, then, that the financial industry, along with a compliant Congress, just made it harder and costlier to declare bankruptcy.
HSA's, also, will not solve, halt, or slow medical spending in this country. Health costs follows the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of the money goes towards 20 percent of the people. A healthy person spends virtually nothing in a year, but a cancer patient or car crash victim will lay down hundreds of thousands of dollars. And since each HSA is coupled with a high-deductible insurance policy, none of that care will be skipped; the patients will just be bankrupted en route to the limit.
Nor will HSA's cut down on unnecessary care. A famous RAND study looked into usage of these plans and found that patients did indeed use a bit less care, but they had no way to separate necessary care from unnecessary care. So instead of foregoing useless procedures, they simply neglected their hypertension (for example). Long-term, that means more strokes and heart attacks, which in turn cost the system orders of magnitude more than blood pressure medications and regular check-ups. Save a penny today, pay a pound tomorrow.
But that's not to say HSA's are useless. They're not. What they achieve is massive, large-scale cost-shifting, generally from employer to employee. Where businesses used to pay for insurance (and thus for treatment), now they'll simply help employees found HSA's and let them pay their own health costs. And that's really what this push is about. Businesses don't like paying for health care. The Bush administration, as always, heard and heeded the corporate complaints, and is set to propose a policy agenda that'll help employers wiggle out of insurance costs. But someone, always, is left holding the bag, and if businesses let go of it, their employees will have to pick up the slack. For the lucky, healthy ones, the changeover won't affect them much; it may even leave them better off, at least for awhile. But for the old or the ill (all of us, eventually), costs will skyrocket.
Bush wants to bring about the end of risk pooling, the end of health security. The question voters will have to ask is if they think their lives, and bank accounts, need a massive infusion of instability.
--Ezra Klein
Ralph Reed, paying cash for supporters
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/6409.html
At some point in the not-too-distant future, we'll be able to look back at the Jack Abramoff scandal and see whose career was ruined most by their Abramoff ties. Tom DeLay and Bob Ney are clearly the early favorites, but let's not forget our friend down in Georgia, former Christian Coalition director and current Lt. Gov. candidate Ralph Reed.
Reed, who harbors presidential ambitions, has fallen so far, he's actually been reduced to using cash handouts to bolster his support. (thanks to reader J.C. for the tip)
Ralph Reed wants a good crowd at today's annual gathering of the Christian Coalition of Georgia. And he's willing to shell out cash for it.
His Republican campaign for lieutenant governor sent an e-mail to supporters this week offering to pay the $20 entrance fee and — for out-of-towners — an overnight stay in a hotel.
Reed campaign manager Jared Thomas characterized the offer as routine. "Certainly, we want our grass-roots people to be well-represented," he said.
Well, sure, every political candidate wants to see their activist supporters at a campaign event. But consider the context here: we're talking about a Christian Coalition of Georgia meeting. In a church. Reed, the religious-right golden boy, should be in a position in which he's turning away supporters at the door because there's just too many of them. Instead, he's sending out last-minute emails offering to pay people to show up.
What's more, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the crowd at the rally ended up drawing about 350 activists — who were "evenly divided" between Reed supporters and backers of Reed's primary opponent, state Sen. Casey Cagle.
And there's no indication that Cagle had to pay anyone.
At some point in the not-too-distant future, we'll be able to look back at the Jack Abramoff scandal and see whose career was ruined most by their Abramoff ties. Tom DeLay and Bob Ney are clearly the early favorites, but let's not forget our friend down in Georgia, former Christian Coalition director and current Lt. Gov. candidate Ralph Reed.
Reed, who harbors presidential ambitions, has fallen so far, he's actually been reduced to using cash handouts to bolster his support. (thanks to reader J.C. for the tip)
Ralph Reed wants a good crowd at today's annual gathering of the Christian Coalition of Georgia. And he's willing to shell out cash for it.
His Republican campaign for lieutenant governor sent an e-mail to supporters this week offering to pay the $20 entrance fee and — for out-of-towners — an overnight stay in a hotel.
Reed campaign manager Jared Thomas characterized the offer as routine. "Certainly, we want our grass-roots people to be well-represented," he said.
Well, sure, every political candidate wants to see their activist supporters at a campaign event. But consider the context here: we're talking about a Christian Coalition of Georgia meeting. In a church. Reed, the religious-right golden boy, should be in a position in which he's turning away supporters at the door because there's just too many of them. Instead, he's sending out last-minute emails offering to pay people to show up.
What's more, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the crowd at the rally ended up drawing about 350 activists — who were "evenly divided" between Reed supporters and backers of Reed's primary opponent, state Sen. Casey Cagle.
And there's no indication that Cagle had to pay anyone.
If it were only for politics
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060122/NEWS/601220394/1013/EDITORIAL2
TOMMY STEVENSON: DeLay, others use Alabama to send money elsewhereThink of each of the hundreds of Political Action Committees set up in PAC-friendly Alabama over the years as barrels of varying sizes.Then think of the money from individuals, businesses, corporations and even other PACs as water poured into those barrels.Finally, think of the money in those PACs being dispersed by dippers to candidates, political organizations and even other PACs.The instruction, “Follow the money," that Deep Throat gave Robert Redford and Bob Woodward in the movie “All the President’s Men" (but which Woodward said was never given in the real-life investigation that brought down President Richard Nixon), would be impossible under such circumstances, wouldn’t it?Maybe that’s why former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, now fighting for his freedom in a Texas money- laundering trial, set up an Americans for a Republican Majority State Account PAC in Alabama in 1998.He then used the more than $750,000 – all of it coming from sources outside Alabama -- that was funneled into that PAC to help him finance the redistricting of Texas in 2002.That redistricting created more GOP House seats and, among other things, helped his party remain in control of Congress in the 2004 elections.The Americans for a Republican Majority State Account, as the PAC is sometimes identified on contributions and expenditures documents filed with the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office, also dispersed just a pittance of the money it collected in its Alabama PAC outside the state.According to the records that our Montgomery Bureau Chief Dana Beyerle and I accessed on the secretary of state’s Web site, the only money that stayed in Alabama was $11,000 that went to Gov. Bob Riley’s 2002 campaign for governor, and $5,000 that was tossed the PAC’s way when the fund was first set up in 1998.Even though the papers setting up the Americans for a Republican Majority State Account listed its address as 1155 21st Street, NW, Suite 300, Washington, D.C., Janice McDonald, an election specialist in the Secretary of State’s Office, said the scheme was all perfectly legal under existing Alabama campaign finance laws.“We have a lot of out-of-state PACs registered in Alabama and a lot of them that collect money from out of state and turn around and send it out of state," she said.That’s one reason to overhaul/sAlabama’s campaign finance laws, especially the loophole that allows PACs to contribute to other PACs, effectively disguising (some might say laundering) the true source of money that flows into our campaigns.A look at the contributions and expenditures forms of DeLay’s Alabama PAC is enlightening, perplexing and infuriating, all at the same time.Many of the contributions came from big law firms in New York, Washington and Texas, telecommunication and pharmaceutical firms and various single-interest companies like R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Inc., which contributed $30,000 on Oct. 21, 2002. Two weeks earlier, General Cigar Holdings (DeLay is known to enjoy a fine cigar now and then) also contributed $10,000.But what’s up with the $5,000 contribution from the Sam Katz for Mayor Campaign Committee in Mechanicsburg, Pa., that was received on Jan. 12, 2000? Or the $5,000 from The Scooter Store in New Braunfels, Texas, that came in on May 24, 2002?The Lexington, Ky.-based National Thoroughbred Racing Association, where Michael Brown presumably was doing “a heck of a job" before being tapped as FEMA director by President George W. Bush, also chipped in $15,000 on Aug. 23, 2002.The expenditures were heavily weighted toward the various organizations in Texas working for redistricting, although many of them simply went to pay off five-figure credit card bills from American Express, Discover and MasterCard.But there is evidence that things weren’t just all work and no play for recipients of DeLay’s Alabama PAC.On Nov. 7, 2002, the PAC sent a $24,580 check to the ESPN Zone in Washington, D.C., a glitzy sports bar. The purpose of the expense was “food" and “fundraising," according to the document on file in Montgomery.The Champions Gate Golf Resort (The Hammer does love him some golf, doesn’t he?) in Champions Gate, Fla., got $2,351 on Jan. 31, 2002, while the elegant Greenbrier resort in Sulphur Springs, W.V., got $7,819 on Nov. 19, 2002, and Occasions Catering, of Washington, D.C., got $13,027 on Oct. 21, 2002.But again, much of the money from the Alabama ARMPA went to Texas, to such organizations as Texas Victory 2002 ($50,000), Texans for a Republican Majority ($25,000), Texans Against Gerrymandering ($20,000), and the Republican Party of Texas (a measly $1,000.)A lot of money also went back to Washington to the main political organization working on behalf of Republicans. The NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) got a whopping $122,000 in three separate donations from DeLay’s Alabama PAC leading up to the 2002 elections.I don’t know how common it is to set up PACs for the sole purpose of raising and dispersing hard-to-trace money. it could be going on in other states like ours where the campaign finance laws are a joke.But it already has resulted in a call for Attorney General Troy King to look into whether DeLay’s PAC broke any Alabama laws. And it should give impetus to legislators like state Rep. Randy Hinshaw, D-Meridianville, who is pushing for the attorney general’s investigation and Rep. Jeff McLaughlin, D-Guntersville, who has legislation reforming campaign financing laws in the current session of the Alabama Legislature.
TOMMY STEVENSON: DeLay, others use Alabama to send money elsewhereThink of each of the hundreds of Political Action Committees set up in PAC-friendly Alabama over the years as barrels of varying sizes.Then think of the money from individuals, businesses, corporations and even other PACs as water poured into those barrels.Finally, think of the money in those PACs being dispersed by dippers to candidates, political organizations and even other PACs.The instruction, “Follow the money," that Deep Throat gave Robert Redford and Bob Woodward in the movie “All the President’s Men" (but which Woodward said was never given in the real-life investigation that brought down President Richard Nixon), would be impossible under such circumstances, wouldn’t it?Maybe that’s why former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, now fighting for his freedom in a Texas money- laundering trial, set up an Americans for a Republican Majority State Account PAC in Alabama in 1998.He then used the more than $750,000 – all of it coming from sources outside Alabama -- that was funneled into that PAC to help him finance the redistricting of Texas in 2002.That redistricting created more GOP House seats and, among other things, helped his party remain in control of Congress in the 2004 elections.The Americans for a Republican Majority State Account, as the PAC is sometimes identified on contributions and expenditures documents filed with the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office, also dispersed just a pittance of the money it collected in its Alabama PAC outside the state.According to the records that our Montgomery Bureau Chief Dana Beyerle and I accessed on the secretary of state’s Web site, the only money that stayed in Alabama was $11,000 that went to Gov. Bob Riley’s 2002 campaign for governor, and $5,000 that was tossed the PAC’s way when the fund was first set up in 1998.Even though the papers setting up the Americans for a Republican Majority State Account listed its address as 1155 21st Street, NW, Suite 300, Washington, D.C., Janice McDonald, an election specialist in the Secretary of State’s Office, said the scheme was all perfectly legal under existing Alabama campaign finance laws.“We have a lot of out-of-state PACs registered in Alabama and a lot of them that collect money from out of state and turn around and send it out of state," she said.That’s one reason to overhaul/sAlabama’s campaign finance laws, especially the loophole that allows PACs to contribute to other PACs, effectively disguising (some might say laundering) the true source of money that flows into our campaigns.A look at the contributions and expenditures forms of DeLay’s Alabama PAC is enlightening, perplexing and infuriating, all at the same time.Many of the contributions came from big law firms in New York, Washington and Texas, telecommunication and pharmaceutical firms and various single-interest companies like R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Inc., which contributed $30,000 on Oct. 21, 2002. Two weeks earlier, General Cigar Holdings (DeLay is known to enjoy a fine cigar now and then) also contributed $10,000.But what’s up with the $5,000 contribution from the Sam Katz for Mayor Campaign Committee in Mechanicsburg, Pa., that was received on Jan. 12, 2000? Or the $5,000 from The Scooter Store in New Braunfels, Texas, that came in on May 24, 2002?The Lexington, Ky.-based National Thoroughbred Racing Association, where Michael Brown presumably was doing “a heck of a job" before being tapped as FEMA director by President George W. Bush, also chipped in $15,000 on Aug. 23, 2002.The expenditures were heavily weighted toward the various organizations in Texas working for redistricting, although many of them simply went to pay off five-figure credit card bills from American Express, Discover and MasterCard.But there is evidence that things weren’t just all work and no play for recipients of DeLay’s Alabama PAC.On Nov. 7, 2002, the PAC sent a $24,580 check to the ESPN Zone in Washington, D.C., a glitzy sports bar. The purpose of the expense was “food" and “fundraising," according to the document on file in Montgomery.The Champions Gate Golf Resort (The Hammer does love him some golf, doesn’t he?) in Champions Gate, Fla., got $2,351 on Jan. 31, 2002, while the elegant Greenbrier resort in Sulphur Springs, W.V., got $7,819 on Nov. 19, 2002, and Occasions Catering, of Washington, D.C., got $13,027 on Oct. 21, 2002.But again, much of the money from the Alabama ARMPA went to Texas, to such organizations as Texas Victory 2002 ($50,000), Texans for a Republican Majority ($25,000), Texans Against Gerrymandering ($20,000), and the Republican Party of Texas (a measly $1,000.)A lot of money also went back to Washington to the main political organization working on behalf of Republicans. The NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) got a whopping $122,000 in three separate donations from DeLay’s Alabama PAC leading up to the 2002 elections.I don’t know how common it is to set up PACs for the sole purpose of raising and dispersing hard-to-trace money. it could be going on in other states like ours where the campaign finance laws are a joke.But it already has resulted in a call for Attorney General Troy King to look into whether DeLay’s PAC broke any Alabama laws. And it should give impetus to legislators like state Rep. Randy Hinshaw, D-Meridianville, who is pushing for the attorney general’s investigation and Rep. Jeff McLaughlin, D-Guntersville, who has legislation reforming campaign financing laws in the current session of the Alabama Legislature.
As Elections Near, Officials Challenge Balloting Security
source article
By Zachary Goldfarb
The Washington Post
Sunday 22 January 2006
In controlled test, results are manipulated in Florida system.
As the Leon County supervisor of elections, Ion Sancho's job is to make sure voting is free of fraud. But the most brazen effort lately to manipulate election results in this Florida locality was carried out by Sancho himself.
Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.
Sancho's most recent demonstration was last month. Harri Hursti, a computer security expert from Finland, manipulated the "memory card" that records the votes of ballots run through an optical scanning machine.
Then, in a warehouse a few blocks from his office in downtown Tallahassee, Sancho and seven other people held a referendum. The question on the ballot:
"Can the votes of this Diebold system be hacked using the memory card?"
Two people marked yes on their ballots, and six no. The optical scan machine read the ballots, and the data were transmitted to a final tabulator. The result? Seven yes, one no.
"Was it possible for a disgruntled employee to do this and not have the elections administrator find out?" Sancho asked. "The answer was yes."
Diebold and some officials have criticized Sancho's experiments and said his conclusions about the vulnerability of electronic voting systems are unfounded.
What Sancho did "is analogous to if I gave you the keys to my house and told you when I was gone," said David Bear, a Diebold spokesman. As Bear sees it, Sancho's experiment involved giving hackers "complete unfettered access" to the equipment, something a responsible elections administrator would never allow.
Questions about the security of electronic voting machines have been circulating widely in recent years. But many of the concerns have been dismissed as the fantasies of Internet conspiracy theorists or sore-loser partisans who could not accept that their candidates simply got fewer votes. Critics have not demonstrated that any real elections have had returns altered by the manipulation of electronic voting systems.
But the questions raised by Sancho, who has held his post since 1989, show how the concerns are being taken more seriously among elections professionals.
"While electronic voting systems hold promise for improving the election process," the Government Accountability Office said in a report to Congress last year, there are still pressing concerns about "security and reliability . . . design flaws" and other issues.
The questions about electronic balloting have become widespread as states and counties move to upgrade equipment, as required by the 2002 Help America Vote Act. The law and new state regulations were enacted to make voting more accessible and more accurate, a response to the controversy generated by the contested outcome in Florida in the 2000 presidential election.
Since the federal law was passed, though, a hodgepodge of federal and state requirements and debates over the best technology have complicated the task of upgrading. In a recent survey by the National Association of Secretaries of State, 17 of 43 states that responded said they expected to miss a congressionally imposed Jan. 1, 2006, deadline to upgrade voting systems. Election officials have repeatedly clashed with voting-machine manufacturers.
In Connecticut, for example, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz said she would scrap her plans to replace her state's lever machines after the company she planned to buy from "misrepresented" itself in negotiations about how accessible the machines would be for people with disabilities.
In Miami-Dade County, Fla., the elections chief - the third in five years - is thinking about tossing out touch-screen systems installed after 2000. The concern is that they do not leave a paper trail that auditors could examine in a disputed election and are expensive to use.
In California, the secretary of state recently asked Hursti to investigate whether Diebold machines the state was considering had similar vulnerabilities.
The events that set in motion Hursti and Sancho meeting, and a new wave of concern over today's voting technologies, started in 2003, when a Seattle-based activist named Bev Harris released thousands of Diebold documents she said she found on an unsecured portion of the company's Web site. Some computer scientists said the documents showed Diebold's systems were vulnerable to attack. Today, more than 800 jurisdictions use their technology, Harris said.
She wanted to find a way to test whether those vulnerabilities could be exploited. Sancho volunteered his equipment to be tested by experts Harris would select.
Harris recruited computer expert Herbert Thompson, and on Feb. 14, 2005, in Tallahassee, Thompson met with Sancho and tried to crack the Diebold system remotely. The first attempt failed. On a second attempt, by directly accessing a computer where the votes are counted in a final tally, he manipulated returns. They used a local high school election for the experiment.
In May, two more tests were held, this time with Hursti present. Using a device bought for about $200, he was able to easily alter the final vote by changing the program stored on the memory card.
"You have to admit these systems are vulnerable and act accordingly," Hursti said.
Diebold took a dim view of the experiments. On June 8, a senior company lawyer faxed Sancho: "You have willfully and intentionally allowed the manipulation of memory cards related to your elections. . . . We believe this to have been a very foolish and irresponsible act."
The response frustrated Sancho. "More troubling than the test itself was the manner in which Diebold simply failed to respond to my concerns or the concerns of citizens who believe in American elections," he said. "I really think they're not engaged in this discussion of how to make elections safer."
He is also critical of state officials who he believes should have caught the vulnerabilities earlier. He said that vendors such as Diebold have too much influence in the administration of elections, a view that resonated with Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, the founder of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition. Sancho is "truly an advocate for voters," she said. "What he is doing in Leon County goes completely against the grain of county election commissioners elsewhere, who are allowing vendors to dictate how to run their own elections."
Johns Hopkins University computer sciences professor Avi Rubin, who is leading a group that has received a $7.5 million grant from the National Academy of Sciences to research election technology, said the vulnerabilities of electronic systems - including new touch-screen voting machines - point to the need for a paper trail in any election. "The more I see, I say we need voting to rely on paper," he said. About 26 states require paper ballots, according to Verified Voting, an advocacy group.
Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Florida's secretary of state, said in the end the integrity of any voting system must be protected by the local officials who administer elections. "Machines are designed and certified to operate in a secure environment and under secure procedures that each supervisor puts in place and follows directly," she said.
By Zachary Goldfarb
The Washington Post
Sunday 22 January 2006
In controlled test, results are manipulated in Florida system.
As the Leon County supervisor of elections, Ion Sancho's job is to make sure voting is free of fraud. But the most brazen effort lately to manipulate election results in this Florida locality was carried out by Sancho himself.
Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.
Sancho's most recent demonstration was last month. Harri Hursti, a computer security expert from Finland, manipulated the "memory card" that records the votes of ballots run through an optical scanning machine.
Then, in a warehouse a few blocks from his office in downtown Tallahassee, Sancho and seven other people held a referendum. The question on the ballot:
"Can the votes of this Diebold system be hacked using the memory card?"
Two people marked yes on their ballots, and six no. The optical scan machine read the ballots, and the data were transmitted to a final tabulator. The result? Seven yes, one no.
"Was it possible for a disgruntled employee to do this and not have the elections administrator find out?" Sancho asked. "The answer was yes."
Diebold and some officials have criticized Sancho's experiments and said his conclusions about the vulnerability of electronic voting systems are unfounded.
What Sancho did "is analogous to if I gave you the keys to my house and told you when I was gone," said David Bear, a Diebold spokesman. As Bear sees it, Sancho's experiment involved giving hackers "complete unfettered access" to the equipment, something a responsible elections administrator would never allow.
Questions about the security of electronic voting machines have been circulating widely in recent years. But many of the concerns have been dismissed as the fantasies of Internet conspiracy theorists or sore-loser partisans who could not accept that their candidates simply got fewer votes. Critics have not demonstrated that any real elections have had returns altered by the manipulation of electronic voting systems.
But the questions raised by Sancho, who has held his post since 1989, show how the concerns are being taken more seriously among elections professionals.
"While electronic voting systems hold promise for improving the election process," the Government Accountability Office said in a report to Congress last year, there are still pressing concerns about "security and reliability . . . design flaws" and other issues.
The questions about electronic balloting have become widespread as states and counties move to upgrade equipment, as required by the 2002 Help America Vote Act. The law and new state regulations were enacted to make voting more accessible and more accurate, a response to the controversy generated by the contested outcome in Florida in the 2000 presidential election.
Since the federal law was passed, though, a hodgepodge of federal and state requirements and debates over the best technology have complicated the task of upgrading. In a recent survey by the National Association of Secretaries of State, 17 of 43 states that responded said they expected to miss a congressionally imposed Jan. 1, 2006, deadline to upgrade voting systems. Election officials have repeatedly clashed with voting-machine manufacturers.
In Connecticut, for example, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz said she would scrap her plans to replace her state's lever machines after the company she planned to buy from "misrepresented" itself in negotiations about how accessible the machines would be for people with disabilities.
In Miami-Dade County, Fla., the elections chief - the third in five years - is thinking about tossing out touch-screen systems installed after 2000. The concern is that they do not leave a paper trail that auditors could examine in a disputed election and are expensive to use.
In California, the secretary of state recently asked Hursti to investigate whether Diebold machines the state was considering had similar vulnerabilities.
The events that set in motion Hursti and Sancho meeting, and a new wave of concern over today's voting technologies, started in 2003, when a Seattle-based activist named Bev Harris released thousands of Diebold documents she said she found on an unsecured portion of the company's Web site. Some computer scientists said the documents showed Diebold's systems were vulnerable to attack. Today, more than 800 jurisdictions use their technology, Harris said.
She wanted to find a way to test whether those vulnerabilities could be exploited. Sancho volunteered his equipment to be tested by experts Harris would select.
Harris recruited computer expert Herbert Thompson, and on Feb. 14, 2005, in Tallahassee, Thompson met with Sancho and tried to crack the Diebold system remotely. The first attempt failed. On a second attempt, by directly accessing a computer where the votes are counted in a final tally, he manipulated returns. They used a local high school election for the experiment.
In May, two more tests were held, this time with Hursti present. Using a device bought for about $200, he was able to easily alter the final vote by changing the program stored on the memory card.
"You have to admit these systems are vulnerable and act accordingly," Hursti said.
Diebold took a dim view of the experiments. On June 8, a senior company lawyer faxed Sancho: "You have willfully and intentionally allowed the manipulation of memory cards related to your elections. . . . We believe this to have been a very foolish and irresponsible act."
The response frustrated Sancho. "More troubling than the test itself was the manner in which Diebold simply failed to respond to my concerns or the concerns of citizens who believe in American elections," he said. "I really think they're not engaged in this discussion of how to make elections safer."
He is also critical of state officials who he believes should have caught the vulnerabilities earlier. He said that vendors such as Diebold have too much influence in the administration of elections, a view that resonated with Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, the founder of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition. Sancho is "truly an advocate for voters," she said. "What he is doing in Leon County goes completely against the grain of county election commissioners elsewhere, who are allowing vendors to dictate how to run their own elections."
Johns Hopkins University computer sciences professor Avi Rubin, who is leading a group that has received a $7.5 million grant from the National Academy of Sciences to research election technology, said the vulnerabilities of electronic systems - including new touch-screen voting machines - point to the need for a paper trail in any election. "The more I see, I say we need voting to rely on paper," he said. About 26 states require paper ballots, according to Verified Voting, an advocacy group.
Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Florida's secretary of state, said in the end the integrity of any voting system must be protected by the local officials who administer elections. "Machines are designed and certified to operate in a secure environment and under secure procedures that each supervisor puts in place and follows directly," she said.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Fighting Iran Is a Losing Battle
source article
Never pick a fight you know you cannot win. Or so I was told. Pick an argument if you must, but not a fight.
Nothing I have read or heard in recent weeks suggests that fighting Iran over its nuclear enrichment programme makes any sense at all. The very talk of it -- macho phrases about "all options open" -- suggests an international community so crazed with video-game enforcement as to have lost the power of coherent thought.
Iran is a serious country, not another two-bit post-imperial rogue waiting to be slapped about the head by a white man. It is the fourth largest oil producer in the world. Its population is heading towards 80m by 2010. Its capital, Tehran, is a mighty metropolis half as big again as London. Its culture is ancient and its political life is, to put it mildly, fluid.
All the following statements about Iran are true. There are powerful Iranians who want to build a nuclear bomb. There are powerful ones who do not. There are people in Iran who would like Israel to disappear. There are people who would not. There are people who would like Islamist rule throughout western Asia. There are people who would not. There are people who long for some idiot western politician to declare war on them. There are people appalled at the prospect. The only serious question for western strategists is which of these people do they want to help.
Of all the treaties passed in my lifetime the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty always seemed the most implausible. It was an insiders' club which any outsider could defy with a modicum of guile. So it has proved. America, sitting armed to the teeth across Korea's demilitarised zone, has let North Korea become a nuclear power despite a 1994 promise that it would not. America supported Israel in going nuclear. Britain and America did not balk at India doing so, nor Pakistan when it not only built a bomb but deceitfully disseminated its technology in defiance of sanctions. Three flagrant dissenters from the NPT are thus regarded by America as friends.
I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say such a country has "no right" to nuclear defence?
None the less this month's reopening of the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant and two others, though purportedly for peaceful uses, was a clear act of defiance by Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) remain unsure whether it implies a secret weapons programme but the evidence for this is far stronger than, for instance, against Saddam Hussein. To have infuriated the IAEA's Mohamed ElBaradei takes some doing. As Saddam found, deviousness in nuclear matters is bound to arouse suspicion. Either way, the reopening yielded a strong diplomatic coalition of Europe, America, Russia and China in pleading with Ahmadinejad to desist.
On Monday of this week Washington's knee-jerk belligerence in hinting at an attack on Iran put this coalition under immediate strain. In two weeks the IAEA must decide whether to report Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. There seems little point in doing this if China and Russia veto them or if there is no plan B for what to do if such pressure fails to halt enrichment, which seems certain. A clear sign of western floundering is speeches and editorials concluding that Iran "should not take international concern lightly," the West should "be on its guard" and everyone "should think carefully." It means nobody has a clue.
I cannot see how all this confrontation will stop Iran doing whatever it likes with its nuclear enrichment, which is reportedly years away from producing weapons-grade material. The bombing of carefully dispersed and buried sites might delay deployment. But given the inaccuracy of American bombers, the death and destruction caused to Iran's cities would be a gift to anti-western extremists and have every world terrorist reporting for duty. It will reinforce the case for building a nuclear weapon.
Nor would the "coward's war" of economic sanctions be any more effective. Refusing to play against Iranian footballers (hated by the clerics), boycotting artists, ostracising academics, embargoing commerce, freezing foreign bank accounts -- so-called smart sanctions -- are as counterproductive as could be imagined. Such feel-good gestures drive the enemies of any embattled regime into silence, poverty or exile. As Tim Garton-Ash wrote in these pages after a recent visit, western aggression "would drain overnight its still large reservoir of anti-regime, mildly pro-Western sentiment." Why set Ahmadinejad up for such a triumph?
By all accounts this president is by no means secure. He is subject to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini. His wily foe, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, retains a degree of power. Tehran is not a Saddamist dictatorship or a Taliban autocracy. It is a shambolic oligarchy with bureaucrats and technocrats jostling for power with clerics. Despite a quarter century of effort, the latter have not succeeded in creating a truly fundamentalist islamic state. Iran is a classic candidate for the politics of subtle engagement.
This means strengthening every argument in the hands of those Iranians who do not want nuclear weapons and do not want Israel eliminated, who crave a secular state and good relations with the west. No such argument embraces name-calling, sabre-rattling, sanctions or bombs.
At this very moment American officials in Baghdad are on their knees begging Iran-backed Shiite politicians and militias to help them get out of Iraq. From Basra to the suburbs of Baghdad, Iranian influence is dominant. Iranian posters adorned last month's elections. Whatever Bush and Blair thought they were doing by invading Iraq, they must have known the chief beneficiary from toppling the Sunni ascendancy would be Shiite Iran. They cannot now deny the logic of their own policy. Democracy itself is putting half Iraq in thrall to its powerful neighbour.
Iran is the regional super-state. If ever there were a realpolitik demanding to be "hugged close" it is this one, however distasteful its leader and his centrifuges. If you cannot stop a man buying a gun, the next best bet is to make him your friend, not your enemy.
Never pick a fight you know you cannot win. Or so I was told. Pick an argument if you must, but not a fight.
Nothing I have read or heard in recent weeks suggests that fighting Iran over its nuclear enrichment programme makes any sense at all. The very talk of it -- macho phrases about "all options open" -- suggests an international community so crazed with video-game enforcement as to have lost the power of coherent thought.
Iran is a serious country, not another two-bit post-imperial rogue waiting to be slapped about the head by a white man. It is the fourth largest oil producer in the world. Its population is heading towards 80m by 2010. Its capital, Tehran, is a mighty metropolis half as big again as London. Its culture is ancient and its political life is, to put it mildly, fluid.
All the following statements about Iran are true. There are powerful Iranians who want to build a nuclear bomb. There are powerful ones who do not. There are people in Iran who would like Israel to disappear. There are people who would not. There are people who would like Islamist rule throughout western Asia. There are people who would not. There are people who long for some idiot western politician to declare war on them. There are people appalled at the prospect. The only serious question for western strategists is which of these people do they want to help.
Of all the treaties passed in my lifetime the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty always seemed the most implausible. It was an insiders' club which any outsider could defy with a modicum of guile. So it has proved. America, sitting armed to the teeth across Korea's demilitarised zone, has let North Korea become a nuclear power despite a 1994 promise that it would not. America supported Israel in going nuclear. Britain and America did not balk at India doing so, nor Pakistan when it not only built a bomb but deceitfully disseminated its technology in defiance of sanctions. Three flagrant dissenters from the NPT are thus regarded by America as friends.
I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say such a country has "no right" to nuclear defence?
None the less this month's reopening of the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant and two others, though purportedly for peaceful uses, was a clear act of defiance by Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) remain unsure whether it implies a secret weapons programme but the evidence for this is far stronger than, for instance, against Saddam Hussein. To have infuriated the IAEA's Mohamed ElBaradei takes some doing. As Saddam found, deviousness in nuclear matters is bound to arouse suspicion. Either way, the reopening yielded a strong diplomatic coalition of Europe, America, Russia and China in pleading with Ahmadinejad to desist.
On Monday of this week Washington's knee-jerk belligerence in hinting at an attack on Iran put this coalition under immediate strain. In two weeks the IAEA must decide whether to report Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. There seems little point in doing this if China and Russia veto them or if there is no plan B for what to do if such pressure fails to halt enrichment, which seems certain. A clear sign of western floundering is speeches and editorials concluding that Iran "should not take international concern lightly," the West should "be on its guard" and everyone "should think carefully." It means nobody has a clue.
I cannot see how all this confrontation will stop Iran doing whatever it likes with its nuclear enrichment, which is reportedly years away from producing weapons-grade material. The bombing of carefully dispersed and buried sites might delay deployment. But given the inaccuracy of American bombers, the death and destruction caused to Iran's cities would be a gift to anti-western extremists and have every world terrorist reporting for duty. It will reinforce the case for building a nuclear weapon.
Nor would the "coward's war" of economic sanctions be any more effective. Refusing to play against Iranian footballers (hated by the clerics), boycotting artists, ostracising academics, embargoing commerce, freezing foreign bank accounts -- so-called smart sanctions -- are as counterproductive as could be imagined. Such feel-good gestures drive the enemies of any embattled regime into silence, poverty or exile. As Tim Garton-Ash wrote in these pages after a recent visit, western aggression "would drain overnight its still large reservoir of anti-regime, mildly pro-Western sentiment." Why set Ahmadinejad up for such a triumph?
By all accounts this president is by no means secure. He is subject to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini. His wily foe, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, retains a degree of power. Tehran is not a Saddamist dictatorship or a Taliban autocracy. It is a shambolic oligarchy with bureaucrats and technocrats jostling for power with clerics. Despite a quarter century of effort, the latter have not succeeded in creating a truly fundamentalist islamic state. Iran is a classic candidate for the politics of subtle engagement.
This means strengthening every argument in the hands of those Iranians who do not want nuclear weapons and do not want Israel eliminated, who crave a secular state and good relations with the west. No such argument embraces name-calling, sabre-rattling, sanctions or bombs.
At this very moment American officials in Baghdad are on their knees begging Iran-backed Shiite politicians and militias to help them get out of Iraq. From Basra to the suburbs of Baghdad, Iranian influence is dominant. Iranian posters adorned last month's elections. Whatever Bush and Blair thought they were doing by invading Iraq, they must have known the chief beneficiary from toppling the Sunni ascendancy would be Shiite Iran. They cannot now deny the logic of their own policy. Democracy itself is putting half Iraq in thrall to its powerful neighbour.
Iran is the regional super-state. If ever there were a realpolitik demanding to be "hugged close" it is this one, however distasteful its leader and his centrifuges. If you cannot stop a man buying a gun, the next best bet is to make him your friend, not your enemy.
Monday, Monday ver. 667.01
We begin today with BIG [non] gay drama - my friend Mitch had his car "borrowed" by an itinerant gentleman who was staying with him - who wrecked it. Mitch was uninsured. One of the wheels is bent over at an angle. This man also took checks from Mitch and wrote them against his account.
So, boy howdy, did I dodge bullets with Nick and Michael both. This guy who stayed with Mitch stayed OVERNIGHT! Urk.
Fiddled with my printer today for HOURS trying to convince it that there was no paper jam. "There is no spoon." Does mental treatment work on a mechanical device? E suggested that I tip it upside down to shake out whatever was in it - and that seemed to have jolted it loose.
Sorted through six years of old tax records, and have them ready to shred. Worked on New Vision stuff today for about four hours. All in all, it's good.
So, boy howdy, did I dodge bullets with Nick and Michael both. This guy who stayed with Mitch stayed OVERNIGHT! Urk.
Fiddled with my printer today for HOURS trying to convince it that there was no paper jam. "There is no spoon." Does mental treatment work on a mechanical device? E suggested that I tip it upside down to shake out whatever was in it - and that seemed to have jolted it loose.
Sorted through six years of old tax records, and have them ready to shred. Worked on New Vision stuff today for about four hours. All in all, it's good.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Sunday evening
Having a DVD sort of an evening. Watched "Valentine," with my dream man David Boreanaz. Stupid movie, the only redeeming value was the eye candy, including said David B.
Church today was great - outstanding, in fact. Chuck went with me. We had another good crowd. Someone had bought new coffee .. from the dollar store. It was dreadful. I'm going to buy some Community and take it down there on Tuesday. The new pedestal is very nice, and the new table cloths in the front are a big improvement.
Had fun with Jarred last night; he and I were bantering again about him going to LA with me; he asked where we could stay while there, and I was thinking about all of the hotels in Century City.
Another week in the real estate business coming up. One lender has DENIED a loan; the hag. Speaking of hags, I was talking to a friend tonight who did a bunch of work for a Century City realtor (alison winston) who isn't paying him. I watched him do the work! Completely consistent with my thinking about realtors. Bleh. I have one here in town who's chasing me around, wanting me to work with him. I have to do a LOT of clean up and organization work this week.
Chuck was working on our calendar; he kept remarking "who knew there were so many women's events?" It's like there's www.lesbian.com or something.
I have to work on my other stuff this week also. And, see if I can figure out why Ruby's battery was deader than a doornail. And manifest a bunch of cash.
Other than that, I think I'm done here. Later!
Church today was great - outstanding, in fact. Chuck went with me. We had another good crowd. Someone had bought new coffee .. from the dollar store. It was dreadful. I'm going to buy some Community and take it down there on Tuesday. The new pedestal is very nice, and the new table cloths in the front are a big improvement.
Had fun with Jarred last night; he and I were bantering again about him going to LA with me; he asked where we could stay while there, and I was thinking about all of the hotels in Century City.
Another week in the real estate business coming up. One lender has DENIED a loan; the hag. Speaking of hags, I was talking to a friend tonight who did a bunch of work for a Century City realtor (alison winston) who isn't paying him. I watched him do the work! Completely consistent with my thinking about realtors. Bleh. I have one here in town who's chasing me around, wanting me to work with him. I have to do a LOT of clean up and organization work this week.
Chuck was working on our calendar; he kept remarking "who knew there were so many women's events?" It's like there's www.lesbian.com or something.
I have to work on my other stuff this week also. And, see if I can figure out why Ruby's battery was deader than a doornail. And manifest a bunch of cash.
Other than that, I think I'm done here. Later!
World Traveller
Flying home from Tampa – CO 1807 Seat 16A 40,000 feet
I was fully expecting to spend my flight home IMing with Lisa, Mikey, Carlos and whoever else was online. However, this aircraft is one of those that they’ve taken the airfones out of – since no one was really using them, they figured it was added weight they didn’t need.
I have my little study book to prepare for tomorrow’s talk at New Vision – I have to go through it, and do some prep work – also get ready for my class on Thursday, for which I’m behind, and start getting ready for classes on Tuesday nights at NV. I am going to probably head straight from the airport to EJ’s to have a cocktail; then, home to get some more sleep.
Tomorrow after church, I’ll be shredding seven years’ worth of receipts supporting tax returns that I no longer need to keep. I’m sure the shredder will be burning up by the end of it.
Helped my parents get themselves a new car; we spent nearly a full day working on it, and went to four dealerships. Mary wanted something that sat up high, like an SUV, and my Dad wanted something that would ride well, and was a large car for long distance travel. They bought a 2005 Ford 500 Limited with 10,000 miles on it. The car is nice, and is more fully equipped than any my dad has had since his 1972 Olds 98 LS. Hopefully, this will be more reliable than that car was. My sister and my aunt Roxanne both were extremely critical of the choice; my sister wanted them to buy a Honda Accord and my aunt a Toyota Avalon. Both of those cars were significantly more expensive than this one. My folks are quite happy, and that’s what matters in my mind.
This aircraft is barely loaded – only about 60% of the seats are full. I’m in an exit row, but I’m mashed up against the window wall and the seat is too narrow. I need to do some more work on my self-belief structure about body and appearance, and get this weight off of me. This particular aircraft is one that they use to fly to Dublin, Hamburg, Berlin, Brussels, Iceland and Scotland from Newark. I’ve read so many internet conversations belaboring that this aircraft is too small for such service; it’s true that it’s narrower than a larger aircraft, but it feels taller, and more spacious than a 737. The seat is narrow, but it is the same size seat that I’d be using if I were on a 767 or 777. Being in this exit row gives me nearly four more inches of legroom. It comes down to my body size that’s making me uncomfortable on this airplane. So, before I buzz off to Berlin to celebrate the end of my oral boards this summer, I’ll have to drop the weight.
My folks are moving out of their house on Tuesday- I helped them pack up a number of things, including the stereo and the computer. They had jerry rigged the stereo so badly that I was about to gasp – so, I volunteered to come to Ocala in March and help them set it all up.
Using the lappy with my Treo as the modem worked just fine; had I had a decent signal out on my folk’s island, it would have worked even better. No Wi-Fi at the Tampa airport, and no internet connection on this aircraft. Strange. Sooner or later, we’re going to be surrounded by wifi signal, and our computers will be connected all the time, even as we fly.
My sister was here during my stay, and we had a very short but fun interaction. She went home Friday morning EARLY, and had to work today. Most of my family (other than Liz, whom I talk to quite a bit) were shocked that I have some official capacity with NV and that I’m taking on more studies and licensing with them. They had quite the squint going.
My folks gave me some money, but it’s done in such a way that I can only use it for my licensing this summer. Blarg. I was hoping for something I could use to bridge some other obligations and choices, but this will do. I have been working on my thinking in that regard today; they gave me the gift last night. It’s sitting in my wallet, unusable until the right time.
The testing for this license is seeming more difficult the closer to it that I come. I’ll be spending some months preparing, have the oral boards and the written tests, and then I hop straight into ministerial school. I assume. I’ll be spending the entire year of 2006 studying, testing, licensing and being examined. Interesting. It should be quite the challenge.
I still think that Florida is an ugly state, people wise. Bad hair, damaged skin, bad make up, and bad clothing choices. Houston is a much more attractive place; at least the part I’m in.
It’s amazing that I just spent nearly a day with my entire living family, save my mother’s sister, and there were no hiccups nor hurts on any part. What a transformation that has occurred there; this idea itself used to just terrorize me.
I guess this stuff works.
I’ve had Travis on the mind, still..
I had a dream last night about a black Boeing 707-320 that was somehow associated with Fabulair. I also had an email from the saleswoman that I had visited with a few months ago – she who represented the townhouses near EJ’s that I liked so much. They have designed their homes for the front of that project – four patio homes that have back yards. She gave me some direction as to their floorplans, but I couldn’t examine them on the Treo connection with one bar of signal. I’ll look later tonight. They won’t be ready for occupancy until the end of 2006, and will have about 2600 square feet, which is somewhat larger than the patio home that I had originally discussed with her.
Overall, this has been a very interesting trip – my entire life just ceased to exist, and all I was doing was hanging out with my family. I slept a lot at night, and just existed. I didn’t do a whole lot of thinking, good or bad, and hardly talked to anyone from my reality. I had a nice conversation with Rosita last night, and we talked about the new pedestal that they bought for the church, and the latest folderol with the ex-minister.
I have eight “sermons” planned for March and April – the seven deadly sins, followed by the mechanics of forgiveness. I have to plan those out on the calendar, actually – I think I may start in February.
We’re planning an arrival in Houston that will be nearly fifteen minutes early; that could put me at home before 8:45 tonight. I may just stop at the apartment first, and unload my stuff before heading out for a cocktail.
I wish I had had the internet connection here onboard. But, thanks to my friend Buhz for getting me the exit row seat!
I hate losing a bunch of free cell games in a row. It makes me feel stupid. Sometimes, though, I think it’s a gauge of how well my brain is working. I haven’t had to do much critical thinking in the last few days, and maybe I’m out of practice. Or I’m tired. Or, I haven’t had enough vitamin “V,” as E calls it.
I was fully expecting to spend my flight home IMing with Lisa, Mikey, Carlos and whoever else was online. However, this aircraft is one of those that they’ve taken the airfones out of – since no one was really using them, they figured it was added weight they didn’t need.
I have my little study book to prepare for tomorrow’s talk at New Vision – I have to go through it, and do some prep work – also get ready for my class on Thursday, for which I’m behind, and start getting ready for classes on Tuesday nights at NV. I am going to probably head straight from the airport to EJ’s to have a cocktail; then, home to get some more sleep.
Tomorrow after church, I’ll be shredding seven years’ worth of receipts supporting tax returns that I no longer need to keep. I’m sure the shredder will be burning up by the end of it.
Helped my parents get themselves a new car; we spent nearly a full day working on it, and went to four dealerships. Mary wanted something that sat up high, like an SUV, and my Dad wanted something that would ride well, and was a large car for long distance travel. They bought a 2005 Ford 500 Limited with 10,000 miles on it. The car is nice, and is more fully equipped than any my dad has had since his 1972 Olds 98 LS. Hopefully, this will be more reliable than that car was. My sister and my aunt Roxanne both were extremely critical of the choice; my sister wanted them to buy a Honda Accord and my aunt a Toyota Avalon. Both of those cars were significantly more expensive than this one. My folks are quite happy, and that’s what matters in my mind.
This aircraft is barely loaded – only about 60% of the seats are full. I’m in an exit row, but I’m mashed up against the window wall and the seat is too narrow. I need to do some more work on my self-belief structure about body and appearance, and get this weight off of me. This particular aircraft is one that they use to fly to Dublin, Hamburg, Berlin, Brussels, Iceland and Scotland from Newark. I’ve read so many internet conversations belaboring that this aircraft is too small for such service; it’s true that it’s narrower than a larger aircraft, but it feels taller, and more spacious than a 737. The seat is narrow, but it is the same size seat that I’d be using if I were on a 767 or 777. Being in this exit row gives me nearly four more inches of legroom. It comes down to my body size that’s making me uncomfortable on this airplane. So, before I buzz off to Berlin to celebrate the end of my oral boards this summer, I’ll have to drop the weight.
My folks are moving out of their house on Tuesday- I helped them pack up a number of things, including the stereo and the computer. They had jerry rigged the stereo so badly that I was about to gasp – so, I volunteered to come to Ocala in March and help them set it all up.
Using the lappy with my Treo as the modem worked just fine; had I had a decent signal out on my folk’s island, it would have worked even better. No Wi-Fi at the Tampa airport, and no internet connection on this aircraft. Strange. Sooner or later, we’re going to be surrounded by wifi signal, and our computers will be connected all the time, even as we fly.
My sister was here during my stay, and we had a very short but fun interaction. She went home Friday morning EARLY, and had to work today. Most of my family (other than Liz, whom I talk to quite a bit) were shocked that I have some official capacity with NV and that I’m taking on more studies and licensing with them. They had quite the squint going.
My folks gave me some money, but it’s done in such a way that I can only use it for my licensing this summer. Blarg. I was hoping for something I could use to bridge some other obligations and choices, but this will do. I have been working on my thinking in that regard today; they gave me the gift last night. It’s sitting in my wallet, unusable until the right time.
The testing for this license is seeming more difficult the closer to it that I come. I’ll be spending some months preparing, have the oral boards and the written tests, and then I hop straight into ministerial school. I assume. I’ll be spending the entire year of 2006 studying, testing, licensing and being examined. Interesting. It should be quite the challenge.
I still think that Florida is an ugly state, people wise. Bad hair, damaged skin, bad make up, and bad clothing choices. Houston is a much more attractive place; at least the part I’m in.
It’s amazing that I just spent nearly a day with my entire living family, save my mother’s sister, and there were no hiccups nor hurts on any part. What a transformation that has occurred there; this idea itself used to just terrorize me.
I guess this stuff works.
I’ve had Travis on the mind, still..
I had a dream last night about a black Boeing 707-320 that was somehow associated with Fabulair. I also had an email from the saleswoman that I had visited with a few months ago – she who represented the townhouses near EJ’s that I liked so much. They have designed their homes for the front of that project – four patio homes that have back yards. She gave me some direction as to their floorplans, but I couldn’t examine them on the Treo connection with one bar of signal. I’ll look later tonight. They won’t be ready for occupancy until the end of 2006, and will have about 2600 square feet, which is somewhat larger than the patio home that I had originally discussed with her.
Overall, this has been a very interesting trip – my entire life just ceased to exist, and all I was doing was hanging out with my family. I slept a lot at night, and just existed. I didn’t do a whole lot of thinking, good or bad, and hardly talked to anyone from my reality. I had a nice conversation with Rosita last night, and we talked about the new pedestal that they bought for the church, and the latest folderol with the ex-minister.
I have eight “sermons” planned for March and April – the seven deadly sins, followed by the mechanics of forgiveness. I have to plan those out on the calendar, actually – I think I may start in February.
We’re planning an arrival in Houston that will be nearly fifteen minutes early; that could put me at home before 8:45 tonight. I may just stop at the apartment first, and unload my stuff before heading out for a cocktail.
I wish I had had the internet connection here onboard. But, thanks to my friend Buhz for getting me the exit row seat!
I hate losing a bunch of free cell games in a row. It makes me feel stupid. Sometimes, though, I think it’s a gauge of how well my brain is working. I haven’t had to do much critical thinking in the last few days, and maybe I’m out of practice. Or I’m tired. Or, I haven’t had enough vitamin “V,” as E calls it.
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