Weep for the CEO’s

This Politico article on the sad plight of Big Business in the coming year almost reads like sarcasm.

Corporate bosses from across the spectrum are pressing Congress and the White House for action on a host of problems, ranging from soaring gasoline prices to health care reform.

But with Democrats poised to gain greater majorities in the House and Senate and possibly recapture the White House, the solutions unveiled next year may not be the market-based antidotes envisioned in boardrooms.

Yeah, they will have to get used to not getting the “market-based” solution of “shutting up, not asking questions, and handing us big piles of money every couple years,” of which the Republicans were so fond. I mean where exactly did Adam Smith talk about anything like the K Street Project? The idea that anyone still has the balls to throw around terms like “market-based” after one of the most crony-ridden, pro-corporate, anti-competitive Presidential Administrations in modern American history is laughable.

“The unions’ agenda really turns the clock back 40 or 50 years,” said R. Bruce Josten of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “And if you were one of the companies that played in those political spaces on tort reform, you’ve got to be concerned as hell.”

“Play in the political spaces on tort reform” has got to be one of the most chilling euphemisms I’ve heard since “stress positions.” In plain English that means “one of those companies whose business model depended on being able to hurt lots of people — in ways that are already illegal — without having to pay for it.” Those mean old Democrats might actually make you pay more!

My big problem with articles like these isn’t the fact that they’re written with such a corporate slant. It’s that they fail to put all of these position in context. The whole tone of the article seems to be “Holy Shit, the Democrats are coming to whisk us back to 1940!” Very little mention of the pressure that our “mental recession” is putting on government budgets, and the fairly high likelihood that ANY future President will have to raise the tax rate even to sustain our existing crappy safety net (and I really doubt you could cut it much more without incurring major political fallout — look what’s happened with SCHIP and Medicare reimbursements). A single throwaway line on the healthcare and housing crises, nothing on the banking crisis, nothing on food inflation (let them eat cake!), all of which will virtually demand new spending. Certainly no analysis of how Bush’s crony capitalism, inept financial regulation, and loose access to credit likely provoked this recession. I think it’s fair to expect any article on economic regulation to include at least some of that context.

 

Washington DC: All the shallow starfucking of Los Angeles, with nukes!

And now the whole world will know it.

DC is not so terrible all the time. But it definitely attracts its share of douchebags and starfuckers. Who formed a social club. That’s getting a reality show.

Have I mentioned that I miss Chicago?

 

Not a good sign…

Oof.

The endorsement could hardly have been stronger. On Monday, John McCain’s campaign released a statement signed by 300 economists who “enthusiastically support” his “Jobs for America” economic plan, providing a heavyweight testimonial to the presumptive Republican nominee’s “broad and powerful economic agenda.”

There’s just one problem. Upon closer inspection, it seems a good many of those economists don’t actually support the whole of McCain’s economic agenda. And at least one doesn’t even support McCain for president.

The economists who later decided they didn’t actually support it were mostly upset about the gas tax holiday and McCain’s plan to balance the budget (while ALSO cutting taxes and keeping benefits the same) in his first term. Given how poorly each of those policies have been received by virtually all economists, it’s actually a little embarrassing to see what the expert support of his plan consists of:

For that reason, Gary Becker, a Nobel prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, said he definitely supports the plan, even if he is not completely familiar with its specifics.

“I like the main thrust of the plan,” he said. “I felt that I could support it without knowing every detail.”

Likewise, William Albrecht, professor emeritus at the University of Iowa, viewed the plan in general terms. “Overall, I thought [McCain's] economics was better than Obama’s,” he said.

While he favors McCain’s overall outlook on the economy, Albrecht said he is not sure that he would agree with all the individual measures in the Arizona senator’s economic platform. He sounded a particularly skeptical note when asked about McCain’s pledge to balance the federal budget within four years.

“He’s not going to balance the budget,” Albrecht said. “Nobody’s going to balance the budget.”

I’m no economist, so the fact that these are Guys I’ve Heard Of tells me that they’re probably really intelligent, or at least say things that are beneficial to some political ideologies. But how much good do these “expert” endorsements do when they’re not supposed to be seen as endorsements of any of McCain’s actual economic policies? How much good does an expert endorsement do when the experts admit up front that they haven’t actually studied the plan?

 

Gujarati Gothic

My extended family is pretty big by modern American standards, so at any given moment Family Stuff has been a subject of discussion, frustration, worry, or happiness. My family also mostly comes from small towns in rural India, the kind of places full of folk traditions and intensely local stories, often of a pretty creepy nature.

This was the flipside to the endless lectures about the moral and intellectual superiority of the Desh — a sort of Gujarati Gothic. My mother’s family is especially fond of these creepy stories, full of fiery suicides by shamed relatives or ghost-borne madness acquired from walking under the wrong tree or lingering too long near the well.

So I was pretty excited when I found The Anomaly Report while randomly web-surfing the other day. The site is modeled on PostSecret and I am neurotic, as a place where people can submit old family stories and legends. The kind of stuff that doesn’t even rise to the level of an “urban legend,” because it’s not even confined to a city — just a family, or even a single individual.

It’s weird, wholly unscientific, and will probably make you scream and rip out your hair if you’re a fan of Richard Dawkins. But it’s a lot of fun.

 

Why law school is worth it

Finally, the case I was born to take!

 

Sucks to be anyone who’s ever seen any copyrighted work on YouTube

One of the interesting things about the YouTube - Viacom battle of the (digital) Millenium is that even the discovery requests seem like they could do a lot of damage:

Next up is a 12TB database containing logging information on every video ever watched at YouTube. Viacom wants to see just how often infringing clips were viewed, then compare this against noninfringing ones to prove its contention that YouTube, in the early days, was an engine powered mostly by the gasoline of illegal content. The database will also show which username and IP address watched every video, a move with potential privacy implications.

It seems to me that the award of this kind of potentially incriminatory private data is a much, much bigger coup than the ultimate relief they’re seeking. I mean doesn’t this basically give Viacom (and other media companies) the ability to launch huge legal actions against literally millions of Americans?

Presumably YouTube could be indemnified for most of these (HOPEFULLY — although I’m sure they have some perfunctory “uh, don’t watch copyrighted stuff guys” in their EULA that might shield them). But given that many of the big Internet-age media lawsuits have been more about intimidation and punishment than actual recovery, I’m not so sure that it would matter.

I’m not an expert on copyright law or anything, but it seems like this gives Viacom a HUGE asset they can use for future litigation. And, frankly, virtually everyone I know has accessed SOME copyrighted work on YouTube at some time in their life. This could be a bigger deal than the RIAA lawsuits.

 

You’re the first thing I want to see when I get up

One of my friends is a big fan of wacky alarm clocks.

I have to wonder what she would think of this monstrosity:

Buyers looking to round out their evil toy collection should make room on the shelf for Mr. Clock Radio, “The Talking Robotic Clock Radio.” Coughed up by one of the upper levels of Dante’s Inferno and distributed by the otherwise good folks at Geewiz Entertainment, Mr. Clock Radio doesn’t just talk you into grim consciousness, he “performs” for you with 50 variations of soul-crushing banter and music. You can experience it all for yourself here.

Look at this thing:

Does anyone else get chills at that hoarse mechanical giggle followed by, “Waking up will never be the same with me around!”  I think that thing is controlled by Skynet.

And they’re already replicating!

Apparently you can plug in MP3 players too.  That should provide some awesome hilarity, considering we are living in the Golden Age of Musical Robot Hacking:

 

59 Million

59,000,000 Americans did not get healthcare when they were sick last year.  That’s up from a (mere) 39,000,000 in 2003.  The biggest percentage increase was actually in insured patients, as skyrocketing out-of-pocket costs led people to decide that getting treatment would be too much of  a financial burden (I’m sure charming new hospital collections techniques like demanding cash payment up front helped).

It’s really frustrating to read blithe, morally uncomplicated descriptions about the great “cost-control” features of high deductible or otherwise “consumer directed” plans in light of data like this.  When we talk about “consumer directed cost-control,” this is really the kind of decision we’re talking about:

Peter Koerner, a store owner in Carbondale, Pa., didn’t have insurance when he accidentally sliced off half his thumb with a hydraulic wood splitter in late 2006.

When he as told that he would have to be flown by helicopter to another hospital to have it reattached, Mr. Koerner said that he knew “there’s no way I could be responsible for that kind of a price tag” for the flight.

Airborne medical transports can range from several thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on factors such as distance traveled and the severity of the medical case, according to the Association of Air Medical Services.

Instead, Mr. Koerner said, “they basically cleaned up the wound a little bit, pulled some skin across the open wound and stitched it up.” The family has so far paid nearly $1,400 of about $5,100 in bills.

Update: I realize Mr. Koerner is uninsured.  But, as the original report notes, plenty of insured people still face very large out of pocket costs.  The balancing act in this example is definitely one that insured people go through, and the $5,100 cost he incurred is still well under the deductible of many consumer-directed plans.

That’s not to say that cost control isn’t important.  But the moral dimension is equally important.  We as a society should recognize that there’s a pretty disconcerting moral quality to a view of cost control that sees the most pressing driver of cost inflation being greedy patients who demand too much care.  Real cost control will require compromises all around, but I would say a system that routinely asks people to choose between body parts and bankruptcy is not ideal.

 

Huh-bama?

So I’m kind of at a loss as to what Barack Obama’s game plan has been over the past week or two.  I cringed a little when he decided to forgo public financing (although I think it’s the right choice because the current system — like any system that could ever make it through Congress — is designed to maximize influence for the wealthy).  I was disappointed that he didn’t show more leadership on FISA, but I think it may have been a little unrealistic to expect Obama to break with most of the Congressional Dems on the issue.

But his reversal of position on the DC gun law is lame.  Worse, it’s unnecessary and it’s dumb politics.  In a nutshell, last year the Chicago Tribune quoted Obama as saying the DC gun ban was “Constitutional.”  Now that the Supreme Court has ruled against it, he’s saying that characterization was “inartful” and didn’t represent his real views.  The GOP is already hitting him on the gun law, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that tiresome fucking “flip flop” meme started to rear its head again.

Now this is really politically dumb in a couple different ways.  First of all, if he really disagreed with the framing of his position back then, he should have corrected the story back then.  This isn’t some obscure topic — it’s a story about a major political wedge issue (one that the giant city you represent really cares about) appearing in your hometown paper.  And it says you’re taking a position on a Supreme Court case exactly contrary to the way most people were expecting it to come out.  If it’s really misquoting you, that’s really the kind of thing you or your staff should catch.

But second, and more importantly, there is nothing controversial about Obama’s original statement.  Note that he doesn’t say “I support the DC gun ban.”  He doesn’t imply that he would make it his policy.  He doesn’t even say he wants to see something like it in Chicago.  He just says he thinks it’s Constitutional.  As in, it’s allowed by the Constitution.  But that doesn’t mean it’s mandated by the Constitution.  He could have responded with something as simple as, “This is an ambiguous area of the law, and I believed DC’s law was allowable under the court’s previous decisions.  The Supreme Court has provided better guidance now, and I accept its decision.  I’m glad it still allows some reasonable local regulation, and I look forward to making policy that’s a good fit for both urban and rural communities.”  That would have made the pro-gun control groups grumble, but it would have been consistent with his previous statements and he would likely get some good media out of it.

But as it stands, his reversal is going to become more of a story than his actual position on the issue.  It’ll hurt him because a) the media loves a good contrarian story and b) it really strongly undermines his branding as a Politician Who’s Not Like The Others, especially given his other recent problems with campaign finance and FISA.

I was never one who thought Obama was some political Messiah who would fundamentally change Washington.  I think he’s something of an organizational genius, and I think his positions on a lot of different issues are very good for both the Democratic Party and the country as a whole.  But he’s a pol.  He’s always been a pol (contrary to Clinton’s assertions, usually a pretty skilled one too).  But when all of that organizational power is fueled by a certain perception that you’re particularly reliable and clean, you’ve got to be super extra careful to preserve that perception.  I feel like he’s lost a lot of political capital over the last week alone, and I really hope he has something up his sleeve to get it back.

 

Southland Tales

So, I finally saw this movie.

It was Richard Kelley’s highly anticipated followup to Donnie Darko, and it was not particularly well-received. Richard Roeper called it “abstract crap” and Rotten Tomatoes gives it an anemic 34%. I always kind of found the cult around Donnie Darko to be kind of undeserved, so I didn’t rush out and see this movie for the week or so it was in theaters around me when it came out. But after seeing a few trippy scenes on YouTube I Netflixed it.

And y’know, it’s actually pretty funny. While it wasn’t great, it wasn’t nearly as disjointed and nonsensical as the critics make it out to be. It’s pretty comparable to El Topo or a lot of other “avant garde” midnight movies. Yeah, it’s abstract and it’s not really clear what’s going on at all points. But the goofy casting and the (almost certainly intentional) silly dialogue actually gets quite entertaining at times. If you just let the clunky political commentary slide (and I’m actually sure a lot THAT was a joke too), it’s a fun little dark comedy.

What do I mean by goofy casting? For starters there’s The Rock as a politically connected actor with a strangely prescient screenplay about a mysterious power source. He’s married to a Republican Presidential candidate’s daughter (played by Mandy Moore), but is in an affair with a porn star/talk show host (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Meanwhile, neo-Marxist terrorists played by (among others) Amy Poehler and Cheri Oteri plot against the new right wing state by capturing Sean William Scott (of all people), an amnesiac cop. John Lovitz plays a hardass amoral cop (!) helping them. And Justin Timberlake plays this mystical burnout soldier/drug dealer who knows more than he should. On the other side are a group of scientists played by That Guy from The Princess Bride, That Chick from Poltergeist, Booger, and Bai Ling.

Just to give you an idea of how crazy this is, here’s a clip (uhm… NSFW):

If you think watching Jon Lovitz reduce The Rock to a simpering mess after blowing away Amy Poehler and Avon Barksdale (both wearing prosthetic noses and engaging in some terrible improv-fighting) isn’t awesome then I… I just don’t know what to say to you.

So yeah, I realize “hey you guys this three year old movie is actually not awful” is not the most exciting way to break my long blog hiatus. More real updates soon though!