Copyright, Commodification, and Culture: Locating the Public Domain

Byt Julie Cohen, Georgetown Law, via SSRN: "The paper offers a different organizing metaphor for the relationship between the public and the proprietary that matches the theory and practice of creativity more accurately: The common in culture is the cultural landscape within which creative practice takes place. This in turn suggests a need to recalibrate the doctrines that determine the scope of a copyright owner’s rights during the copyright term, particularly those that establish the right to control the preparation and exploitation of copies and derivative works."

Tags: Law Copyright

Open-source board eyes fewer licenses

via CNET News.com: "Incompatible licenses among different products prevent people from sharing code from different open-source projects. Having too many licenses complicates potential sales to corporate customers, which may have to do extensive legal reviews and manage multiple kinds of open-source contracts.

"It's confusing as hell to explain to customers," said Michael Olson, CEO of open-source database company Sleepycat Software. "It's confusing…because we are just wrapping our heads around what (different licenses) mean to us as businesspeople." "

Tags: Open Source Law

Mergers and The Future of the Law Firm Business Model

Bruce at the Adam Smith, Esq. Blog sees the recent spate of mergers as supporting those who view that mid-size firms (which are defined as between 100-400 lawyers), especially those without solid footholds in several of key large cities, are an endangered species.

On the other hand, Reid, of Reid My Blog, sees terrific opportunities in the shakeout resulting from recent mergers.

Tags: Law Practice

Have Those Seeking SS's Downfall Bothered To Think Things Through?

via Matthew Yglesias's blog: "So I've now gone on for a very long time about this, but I think it's important. Not just for Social Security but because it tells us a lot about the operations of the contemporary right. It's no shame that the vast majority of conservatives haven't thought through the detailed economic questions here. Doing that sort of thing simply isn't the job of 'most people.' It's outsourced to a small community of specialists. But what's telling is how hollow the small community of specialists is at its core. The rank-and-file are deferring to talk radio hosts and the like who are, in turn, deferring to more highbrow pundits (this is, I think, the sort of role I play in my small way on the left). The pundits think they're deferring to a bunch of trusted experts somewhere who've run the numbers. But it turns out that no one has run the numbers. It's a systemic breakdown throughout the movement with regard to the single largest program the federal government runs."

Tags: Political Media

ABA 20th Annual Intellectual Property Law Conference

In D.C. (actually in Arlington, VA -- USPTO-adjacent), April 13-16. The ABA IPL site: "Now in its 20th year, the Annual Intellectual Property Law Conference of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law promises to provide a gathering of the foremost authorities on the state of intellectual property law. It is the one conference of the year that you as an IP law practitioner should not miss. The conference is recognized for its preeminence in covering IP law topics, both nationally and internationally, and in recent years has received over 600 attendees annually."

Tags: Law Practice Intellectual Property

The Hotline, the Cowed and Lazy Journos and Bulls**t Sanctimony

John at AmericaBlog laying into The Hotline: Oh, gee, the Hotline warns, this might establish a precedent. Really? You mean the GOP might respond by using our sex lives against us as a weapon to destroy us and curry votes with bigots?

I don't like this battle, I don't enjoy this battle. I hate this battle. But the battle began years ago, and until now, we sat back and watched and waited and hoped it would go away. Well it's not going away. We have a choice. We can sit back and watch the GOP sex police destroy us. Or we can fight back. And I can think of nothing more poetic, nothing more just, than fighting back by simply holding them to their own standards.

This same could be said for all the other disingenuous hand-wringing from the MSM cropping up all over.

Tags: Political Media

Moron is an Interesting Word

via Reuters.com: "'Benefit cuts is an interesting word,' Bush was quoted as saying in the Quad-City Times, a Davenport, Iowa newspaper.

'Benefits are scheduled to grow at a certain rate, and one of the suggestions, for example ... was they grow ...they grow, but not at a rate as fast as projected. You can call it anything you want. I would call it an adjustment to reality,' he said."

Tags: Political Bush

MGM Studios v Grokster Briefs

All ot the briefs may be found conveniently all in one place, courtesy of the fine folks at the U.S. Copyright Office.

Tags: Law Intellectual Property Copyright P2P

Don't like software patents? Learn to deal

via CNET: "Open-source programmers might not like the idea of software patents, but those critics would be better off adapting to the fact that they're not going away, Hewlett-Packard's top Linux executive said Tuesday.

'At the end of the day, software patents are a way of life. To ignore them is a little bit naive,' Martin Fink, HP's vice president of Linux, said here at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. It's fine to object to software patents, but it's foolhardy not to try to acquire them, he said.

'Refusing to patent one's ideas is leaving oneself exposed for absolutely no good reason,' Fink said. 'For some, (getting patents) may seem like selling out. You can comfort yourself that it's what you do with the patent that matters, not the fact that you have one.'"

Tags: Law Intellectual Property Patent

Reviews of David Bollier's Brand Name Bullies

Wired's' Amit Asaravala asserts that the book's real value is in its numerous case studies of copyright and trademark battles.

Tags: Brands Intellectual Property Law Copyright Trademark

High Cost of Living Goes Beyond Ridiculous

Too depressing to blog about.

SFGate: Bay Area home prices increase 20%, sales skyrocket;
Low interest rates, overseas buyers lift market even higher:

Though the start of the year is typically the slowest time in the real estate market, abnormally strong demand, relatively short supply of properties and an influx of international buyers pushed the median price for a single- family home in the nine counties to $556,000, just below the record of $560, 000 set in November but a whopping 20 percent more than the year-ago price of $463,000. It was the strongest year-over-year appreciation rate in four years.

The housing market's continued robust performance defies well-worn predictions of a slowdown. Following the technology meltdown and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, many economists expected the region's real estate sector to suffer. But after a decline in sales of high-end homes in 2001, the market rebounded -- and then some -- driven by low interest rates, consumers' reluctance to plow money into stocks and newly flush trade- up buyers.

More good news. SF Business Times: Income-to-housing gap widens in California

Want to buy a house in California? Get a job. Make that two jobs. Or maybe three.

California households, with a median household income of $53,240, are $56,070 short of the $109,320 qualifying income needed to purchase a median-priced home at $470,920 in the state, according to figures compiled by the California Association of Realtors and released Tuesday.

Tags: Bay Area Housing Economy

Great Summary of U.S. Import Exclusion Proceedings

via I/P Updates: "In essence, so-called "Section 337 investigations" are administrative proceedings before the U.S. International Trade Commission to determine whether the Customs Service should be directed to excluded infringing goods from importation into the U.S. Most trademark and copyright infringing imports can be stopped by working directly with the Custom Service, without having to obtain an exclusion order from the ITC, as discussed at http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/import/commercial_enforcement/ipr/. Consequently, most of the unfair import investigations before the U.S. International Trade Commission involve patent infringement allegations.

The law and administrative procedures for these investigations are very similar to the "civil procedures" that are used to decide patent infringement allegations in the federal courts. However, parties to these investigations include "complainants," "respondents," and the ITC "staff" attorney representing the public interest. Section 337 investigation also tend to proceed more quickly than civil lawsuits."

Tags: Law Intellectual Property Trademark Copyright

Dennis Kennedy Answers Your Questions

My current favorite post via his eponymously titled blog: "What three things would you tell your younger self, if you could go back in time, or your daughter in the future, to resolve about themselves when trying to decide whether law is the right career?"

Where's The Bill

via TAPPED: "Appearing yesterday on Tim Russert's Meet The Press, Charlie Rangel got asked the question that's on the lips of every member of the Beltway media elite. 'If you oppose the president's plan, what is your plan? What would you do?' Rangel's answer was just right: 'What a question. What president's plan? The president has not presented us a plan.'

The president has been earning plaudits both publicly and (based on some emails I've seen) privately from journalists and others for showing the courage to tackle Social Security reform. The reality, however, is that he's tackled nothing. He's been running around the country talking about his ginned-up crisis, how wonderful it would be if you had a private account, and how he'll never raise taxes on anyone ever for any reason. Reading between the lines, we can all tell what that means -- benefit cuts. But without the president putting an actual plan on the table, no one can say exactly whose benefits will be cut and by how much. And that, of course, is the point of keeping the Republican plan secret. Publicly releasing it would subject it to criticism and Social Security's friends could point out the particular weaknesses in the proposal."

Scalp Collecting and Hand-wringing: The Right Takes The Cake, Every Time

via Digbys blog: "Kevin is right that scalp collecting benefits the right, but it has nothing to do with bloggers or liberals' willingness to engage in the game. It has to do with the fact that character assasination has been the political combat weapon of choice on the right for a long, long time. Hounding people from their jobs is one of their favorite tools of intimidation.

Remember Webb Hubbel, Bernie Nussbaum, Mike Espy, Henry Cisneros, Roger Altman blah, blah, blah? And let's not forget that they spent 70 million taxpayer dollars trying to hound Clinton out of office. He just refused to go. The only difference now is that the target is the long-hated liberal media and bloggers have joined the assassination squad.

If liberal bloggers' record of scalps is Trent Lott losing the leadership post that Bush wanted him out of anyway then we aren't even in the same league. The Right Wing Noise machine is a group seasoned professionals made up of bloggers, newspapers, FOX, talk radio, and a direct pipeline to powerful Republicans in the government. We are Kos and Atrios et al. We are not equivalent."

Federal Circuit Addresses Experimental Use

In Lisle Corp. v AJ Mfg, the panel upheld the lower court's denial of summary judgment sought on grounds that the patent was invalid on public use grounds. The court agreed that the evidence was sufficient to show that any disclosure fit within the experimental use exception.

Publication As Preemptive Move to Foreclose Competitor's Potential Patent Claims

via Anything Under the Sun Made By Man: "if a business is afraid that a stronger or more aggressive competitor may develop a similar technology, the business may attempt to dump as much of the technology into the public domain before the competitor may develop and patent the same technology. If the aggressive competitor were to obtain patents in the area, it may attempt to enforce the patents against the first business.

In this strategy, the technology is made known in the art before anyone else can develop and patent the technology. This benefits a business because an aggressive competitor cannot patent the technology and sue the first business.

On the down side, the technology that was disclosed could have been secret, proprietary, and otherwise a trade secret. In essence, the cat is being let out of the bag.

There are several ways to get technology into the public domain, and some are better than others. Publishing papers, including publishing research on the Internet, is one way to get the information in to the public domain.

However, one of the best ways to ensure that the information will prevent the stronger competitor from obtaining patents on the technology is to make sure that the patent examiner uncovers the first business’s disclosure.

Since the examiner spends a vast majority of his or her time searching patent archives over any other searchable resource, the best way to get the information publicly disclosed is to file a patent application that is published.

For a patent application to serve as a roadblock for a competitor’s patent, it merely has to be published, and never needs to be issued. This means that a defensive patent application could be filed with a request for early publication. For a small entity in the US, this cost is currently about $800. If no further action is taken, no patent will issue, but the disclosure will be in the patent system, classified in the classification system, and instantly searchable by the examiners against all future patent applications in that field."

More on the Privatization Tax; The Transparency of the Scam is Amazing

Noam Scheiber's &c. via The New Republic Online: "Matt [Yglesias is] obviously right. (It's not a particularly controversial statement.**) In fact, I think you can go further. The first point to make is, given that the risk-adjusted returns on stock are the same as the risk-adjusted returns on bonds, you don't need a privatization scheme to accomplish what we'll end up accomplishing with private accounts. That is, under privatization, some people will earn more than the 3 percent return they'll have to pay back, other people will earn less than the three percent return they'll have to pay back. On average, there will be no net benefit (i.e., no new wealth created; it's just getting redistributed). But, of course, the government could do that on its own, without privatization. It would just have to pick a certain group of people who would do better than they would under the current system, and a certain group of people who would do worse, taking care to make sure that the numbers exactly offset. The only difference between this government-run system and the privatized system is who gets to pick the winners and losers (i.e., the market versus the government); there would still be the same number of winners and losers, and the size of their gains and losses would be the same. (Assuming that's what the government set out to do.)

But we can go even further than that. Under privatization, it's a safe bet that the winners would mostly be affluent people and the losers would mostly be poor people. Why? Because affluent people typically have more experience and knowledge about investing, and access to superior investing advice, and they're more likely to exploit this experience/knowledge/advice to make above-average returns. By contrast, poor people with little experience/knowledge/advice would be the ones most likely to get burned. So, in effect, privatization is a scheme in which we don't create any new wealth, we just take from less affluent people and give to more affluent people. (Again, this is in the aggregate--there will obviously be individual exceptions).

But, of course, this is pretty morally-arbitrary. As long as you're not creating new wealth, why not a system which takes from the more affluent and gives to the less affluent (which, as we've established, we could pull off just as easily)? The answer, obviously, is that, unlike the poor, rich people know when they're getting screwed, and they'd never let it happen. So the final question is, if a system in which group A gets screwed by group B could never fly because group B would point out its fundamental unfairness, why should we impose the exact same arrangement on group A, simply because group A can't defend itself? If you can't answer that question in good conscience--and I don't think you can--I'm not sure how you defend privatization.

Social Security Privatization: The Retirement Savings Gamble

Center for American Progress Special Report: "These numbers show that privatization amounts to a retirement savings gamble, where the winnings are unevenly distributed. Some generations will do poorly, while others could do fine. This asymmetry is also reflected in the government's finances. The government would face the costs if the privatization gamble fails, while it would see few benefits in the years when the privatization gamble's payout is larger than expected."

More on the Scam: Privatization Tax

via TAPPED: "It's worth pointing out that this isn't some kind of goofy coincidence. The 3 percent 'privatization tax' (nice framing!) represents the interest rate on the bonds the government is going to need to sell in order to loan you the money to start your private account. The only way you can make money under those circumstances is to invest your money in vehicles -- either corporate bonds or stocks -- that have a higher rate of return than do Treasury bills. These other assets offer higher returns specifically because they're riskier. The CBO believes that the expected value of your account should be adjusted downward ('risk-adjusted,' as the Senate Dems' document says) to reflect this greater risk. But by how much should it be adjusted downward?

The CBO follows the orthodox economic view that the market for investment commodities is efficient and that stocks' higher rate of return when compared to bonds (the 'equity premium') precisely reflects a rational assessment of their greater riskiness. If it were otherwise, the orthodox view suggests, demand for bonds would drop (because people could make more money investing in stocks), causing interest rates to rise, thus bringing the equity premium in line with the appropriate risk adjustment. As a result, it's impossible by definition to increase the risk-adjusted value of your portfolio by taking out a loan at bond interest rates (which is functionally equivalent to what Bush's proposal would let you do, even if it's arranged differently as an accounting matter) and using the money to buy stocks.

The logic of the Bush proposal rests on the notion that there's quite literally a free lunch to be had by engaging in a massive arbitrage operation where the government sells bonds and uses the money to let people buy stocks. Some economists really do think this is correct -- that the equity premium is too high. I'm not in any position to adjudicate that dispute beyond noting that it's a bit odd for a conservative economic policy proposa"

Pastor Mark to Baptists: Keep 'em coming

via World O'Crap: "In an attempt to stay true to our roots (poking good-natured fun at wingnuts and other assorted loons) even though we've left the farm of obscurity for the gay Paree of MSNBC, the Washington Post, and Salon, we offer to you some selections from a Baptist Press 'First Person' essay:"

Whiskey Bar Has The Story

Anatomy of a Scam

Bush Keeps Getting Caught Up in His Own Lies

But do the people care? cai washingtonpost.com: Bush's Social Security Plan Assumes Much From Stocks: "To conclude that Social Security is careening toward a crisis in 2042, President Bush is relying on projections that an aging society will drag down economic growth. Yet his proposal to establish personal accounts is counting on strong investment gains in financial markets that would be coping with the same demographic head wind.

That seeming contradiction has become fodder for a heated debate among economists, who divide sharply between those who believe the stock market cannot meet the president's expectations and those who say investor demand from a faster-growing developing world will keep stock prices rising.

'If economic growth is slow enough that we've got a problem with Social Security, then we are also going to have problems with the stock market. It's as simple as that,' said Douglas Fore, director of investment analytics for TIAA-CREF Investment Management Group. A spokeswoman said the company has not taken a position on the Social Security debate."

AARP to Bush: No Way

via Reuters.com: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. retirement system does not need a major overhaul or private accounts and can be stabilized through a series of smaller fixes, the nation's largest lobby group for the elderly said on Wednesday.

The AARP, formerly known as the American Association for Retired Persons, said the amount of wages that can be taxed for Social Security should be raised from $90,000 to $140,000. The change could be phased in over about 10 years and would cut the projected shortfall by 43 percent.

The government should also diversify investments for the fund that pays out the benefit to include a total market index fund that would yield a higher return, according to the group. That could reduce the shortfall by about 15 percent."

Senate Democrats Shine a Bright Light on Bush "Privatization Tax"

via Harry Reid: "With the new 'privatization tax,' the Republicans are going to give with one hand and take away with the other. Their plan will allow individuals to take money from the Social Security Trust Fund and put it into private accounts. But to recoup this money and lost interest for the Trust Fund, the Republicans will issue the new privatization tax, which will eliminate benefits by up to 70 percent or more.

'The notion of private accounts in Social Security mentioned by the President as part of a reform package is not all that it seems,' Baucus said. 'At the same time that the private accounts are adding to retirees' income, much, if not of all of this additional income is being offset dollar for dollar through reductions in their Social Security benefits. Moreover, if the investments in retirees' private accounts do poorly, the retirees' could end up worse off financially than they would have without the private accounts at all.'"

Why Does Anyone Believe Anything They Say?

Matt Yglesias at TAPPED: "UP, UP, AND AWAY. I remember those innocent days when you could get worked up about how the Bush administration lied to Congress and lowballed the cost estimate for the Medicare prescription drug bill by over $100 billion dollars. Now it comes out that costs were actually being understated by something more like $300 to $800 billion.

Beyond the obvious outrages, I think the interested under-covered angle here was House Republicans' eagerness to swallow the deceptions they were being told. They were the ones, you'll recall, who were insisting they wouldn't vote for anything that cost more than $400 billion. So the White House told them what they wanted to hear. Even at the time, everyone who was following the policy issue thought that was a substantial underestimate. One of the changes that's produced this new cost estimate, for example, is that the ten-year price tag now covers the first ten years of the program's existence rather than the first eight years of the program added to two earlier years when costs were projected to be lower due to the program's non-existence."

Homeland Security Czar as Pharoah

Jeffrey Dubner via TAPPED: "WAIVE GOODBYE. A few months back I worried about Congress developing a taste for legislation that strips federal courts of jurisdiction over any old subject. It's a common tactic on hot-button issues; liberals used it to safeguard the Reconstruction Acts after the Civil War and labor issues before the Supreme Court gave its blessing, while House Republicans have recently brought it out for show on the Pledge of Allegiance and same-sex marriage. But since when is it standard practice to slip such provisions into construction projects?

Section 102(c) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 … is amended to read as follows:

“(c) Waiver. —

“(1) In general. — Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.

“(2) No judicial review. — Notwithstanding any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory), no court shall have jurisdiction —

“(A) to hear any cause or claim arising from any action undertaken, or any decision made, by the Secretary of Homeland Security pursuant to paragraph (1); or

“(B) to order compensatory, declaratory, injunctive, equitable, or any other relief for damage alleged to arise from any such action or decision.”

Unbelievable. Or, sadly, too believable.

Letter From One of Josh's Readers

via Talking Points Memo:: "Dear Josh-

Thank you for everything you are doing to shatter and dispel the falsehoods coming out of the administration about Social Security. I'm a 53 year old who began working at age 16. My mom, widowed at age 36 with 3 young kids, brought us up to believe that in America, you could strive toward your dreams and carve out your own future. She returned to work, of course, but could not have kept our family together without the benefits she received from Social Security and my Dad's veteran's benefits - he was a U.S. Marine who fought on the beaches of Iwo Jima.

I chose a path that allowed me independence in my life. I've been an independent contractor in my profession throughout my career, as has my husband. We pay our own health insurance premiums (currently $967 / month Oxford Health Plans, dig that!) make yearly contributions to our own IRA's, own our house, pay our taxes, and willingly pay our SSA contributions.

Mr. Bush wants to denigrate the service and the sacrifices of my father and my mother by saying their children don't deserve to have the social contract America made with us honored. I know deeply and personally how life can change in an instant, and if anyone wants to talk to me about it, I'll be glad to give them my two cents.

We are facing a galvanizing moment in America as we decide if we are to be a country that understands and lives the humanistic concept of being one's brother's keeper, or if we decide instead to adopt a ruthless, me first, sink or swim approach to dealing with our citizenry.

I pray with all my heart we choose the former."

The Right-Wing Express

via AlterNet: "Consider that the conservative political movement, which now has a hammerlock on every aspect of federal government, has a media message machine fed by more than 80 large non-profit organizations – let's call them the Big 80 – funded by a gaggle of right-wing family foundations and wealthy individuals to the tune of $400 million a year.

And the Big 80 groups are just the "non-partisan" 501(c)(3) groups. These do not include groups like the NRA, the anti-gay and anti-abortion groups, nor do they include the political action committees (PACs) or the "527" groups (so named for the section of the tax code they fall under), like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which so effectively slammed John Kerry's campaign in 2004.

To get their message out, the conservatives have a powerful media empire, which churns out and amplifies the message of the day - or the week - through a wide network of outlets and individuals, including Fox News, talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, Oliver North, Ann Coulter, as well as religious broadcasters like Pat Robertson and his 700 Club. On the web, it starts with TownHall.com

Fueling the conservative message machine with a steady flow of cash is a large group of wealthy individuals, including many who serve on the boards of the Big 80.

Rob Stein has brilliantly documented all of the above in "The Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix," a PowerPoint presentation he has taken on the road across the country, preaching to progressives about the lessons that can be learned and the challenges that need to be overcome."

Outlicensing IP Drives P&G Growth

via IP Law & Business: "In recent years Cincinnati-based P&G has taken an approach to intellectual property management that tears down the walls of that fortress mentality. Often described as 'open innovation,' P&G's strategy is now taking hold at a number of leading companies. None are more closely associated with the concept than P&G, which is now regarded as a leader in the field, selling such successful products as Olay Regenerist (a face cream made with a peptide molecule licensed from Sederma SAS) and Glad Press 'n Seal (a food wrap produced in a joint venture with Clorox Co.)."

Noted by I/P Updates.

Beyond the Tipping Point by Leesa Klepper

via ACSBlog: "Lost amidst the recent press about potential judicial nominations battles and the Republican’s “nuclear” strategy are the true facts about the federal judiciary today.

The fact is that our federal courts are, both quantitatively and ideologically, beyond the tipping point. Already, more than three-quarters of the federal appellate courts in our country are dominated by Republican appointees. This is a dramatic difference from 2000, when Democratic and Republican appointees were represented in almost equal number on the circuit courts. The difference will become even starker over the next four years as this President’s nominations agenda continues on its divisive path.

Although Republicans talk of obstruction, the fact is that President Bush had more of his judges confirmed in his first term than either President Reagan, the first President Bush, or President Clinton had confirmed in their first four years."

Ask Jeeves buys Bloglines

via CNET News.com: "The draw for all the search engines is potential new advertising revenue that could come from expanding paid links to RSS feeds and blogs. Search engines are also interested in bolstering search technologies for the expanding universe of blogs."

Somehow Its the Democrats Fault

via The Washington Monthly: "For the love of God, can we stop this? Democrats would be delighted to rescue Social Security by keeping the inheritance tax or undoing Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. It's Republicans who won't hear of it. Democrats are also happy to support add-on private accounts. You can hardly swing a dead cat without hearing some Democrat saying so. But that's not what George Bush is proposing. And I imagine Democrats would be open to the idea of reducing the payroll tax and replacing it with something more progressive, too. But Bush's plan contains nothing of the kind.

As happens so often, the journalistic community has decided that they're required to say that both sides are being equally irresponsible, regardless of the facts. The way to do this, apparently, is to (a) condemn Democrats for opposing a plan they all acknowledge is a bad one, and (b) then condemn them further for not supporting their own favored alternatives, even though they know perfectly well that the obstacle to these alternatives is not Democrats but Republicans.

It's George Bush who's insisting on a private account plan that even his own people admit won't do anything to shore up Social Security's finances. It's George Bush who's insisting that the only cures he'll consider are ones that include huge — but quiet — benefit cuts. It's George Bush who has publicly refused to even consider proposals to increase Social Security revenue in any way. It's George Bush who has run up the unconscionable deficits that are far more responsible for our deterioriating finances than anything in the Social Security system.

The facts: Social Security has modest problems that are many decades out. They could be easily solved with small benefit cuts combined with small tax increases. A bipartisan solution could be hammered out in a few days if it weren't for one person: George Bush.

The problem isn't that Democrats aren't willing to negotiate. The problem is that Democrats don't have anyone to negotiate with. That ought to be the story."

Through The Looking Glass (Again)

It just boggles the mind. The best friend of Death Squads throughout the hemisphere is now put in charge of "Bush's strategy for advancing democracy." Orwell is laughing his ass off somewhere.

Iran-Contra Figure to Lead Democracy Efforts Abroad
(via washingtonpost.com):

Elliott Abrams, who pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information from Congress in the Iran-contra affair, was promoted to deputy national security adviser to President Bush.

Abrams, who previously was in charge of Middle East affairs, will be responsible for pushing Bush's strategy for advancing democracy.

I guess using Abrams as Freedom's Bully makes sense given that, for Bush, exporting democracy means grand, unprovoked invasions resuling in tens of thousands wounded, maimed or killed and our troops bogged down in another guerilla conflict. Do not expect a charm offensive from Elliot (I put the A in A-hole) Abrams:

"He is relentless in pursuit of his agenda," said someone who has clashed with him in internal administration debates. "If that means pushing people out of the way who disagree with him, then that is what he will do."

Plus, he fits in well with the Bush penchant for historical revisionism, informally known as the "Black is White" device:

In an exchange with the human rights activist Aryeh Neier on ABC's "Nightline" in 1984, Abrams insisted that widely reported massacres by right-wing death squads in El Salvador "never happened."

* * *

Abrams also had problems with Congress over the Iran-contra scandal. In 1991, he was forced to admit in court that he had not disclosed his knowledge of a secret contra supply network and his solicitation of a $10 million contribution for the contras from the sultan of Brunei. He received a pardon from President George H.W. Bush in December 1992.

An administration official brushed aside questions about the plea bargain, noting that Abrams had received a full pardon. In a 1993 book, "Undue Process," Abrams forcefully defended his actions, describing the legal proceedings against him as "Kafkaesque" and his prosecutors as "filthy bastards."

Class.

I'm not vouching for the following source, but you will find a whole bunch more info on the guy who puts the mock back into Democracy. Link

Quote of the Day

"Last night, in his artful attempt to sell Social Security privatization, President Bush invoked the names of five Democrats and not a single Republican. He did so for one simple reason - the American people trust the Democratic Party on Social Security.

"Democrats created Social Security. Democrats defended it against Republican raids. And it will be Democrats who lead the way in strengthening Social Security for future generations."

-- Nancy Pelosi

Reality Check on the SOTU

via Moving Ideas.org "On February 2, 2005, President Bush addressed the nation asking each of us to support his second term agenda. He talked about privatizing Social Security, the war in Iraq, and his other priorities for the upcoming year. Now it’s time for a reality check courtesy of Moving Ideas."

But first read the brilliant fact checking at the Think Progress blog.

Who Owns Blog Content?

via InformationWeek: "As more professionals create Weblogs, those opinion-filled Web sites where a mix of anecdote and insight can stir interest in one person's observations or an entire company's strategy, the complexities and questions are beginning to surface. Who owns Weblog content? What are the risks? And how far should employees go in sharing their thoughts?"

Europeans Take Another Whack at Software Patents

via ACSBlog: "With this unsettled background, the European Union is embarking upon its own effort to bring patent protection to software. Although the EU process for approving this directive may have the same democratic deficiencies as the Supreme Court's ruling, it more than makes up for it with procedure.

* * *

Open source proponents fear that extending patent protection will result in a complete lockout for interoperability. If Microsoft patents the connection protocol and charges a licensing fee to any software manufacture who wishes to connect to a Microsoft product, open source development would effectively ground to a halt because its model does not generate the kind of revenue necessary to pay royalties. Worse yet, if IBM patents a new way of scheduling processes, Linux would be unable to incorporate the development until the patent expired... even if it was developed completely independently of IBM or the issued patent."

Administration Expected To Propose New Budget Rule That Could Adversely Affect Social Security

A Special Report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

The Administration’s forthcoming budget is likely to propose a new budget rule that would affect Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ disability compensation, the Supplemental Security Income program for the elderly and disabled poor, health and retirement programs for federal civilian and military personnel, and ultimately Medicaid and some other entitlements. The new rule was proposed in the Administration’s budget last year but was not considered by Congress. It is expected to be proposed again this year and may receive significant Congressional consideration this time around.

* * *

While the nation faces significant long-term fiscal challenges that need to be addressed, this proposal would not represent sound policy. It rests upon long-term cost estimates that would often be unreliable and arbitrary. In addition, careful examination shows the proposal to be unbalanced and highly ideological in nature; it would skew policy debates on matters such as health care in deleterious ways and tilt the playing field in favor of regressive policy approaches even when doing so would produce more costly or less efficient policy outcomes. Finally, adoption of the new rule would decrease the likelihood of a major, bi-partisan deficit reduction agreement in which all parts of the budget are on the table. As a result, approval of this rule could well turn out to do more to retard the goal of long-term fiscal responsibility than to advance it."

Open-source honchos trash software patents

via CNET News.com: "Recent events have drawn attention to the intersecting realms of patents and open-source software. IBM has donated 500 patents for use in open-source software, Sun plans to liberate 1,600 for use with its open-source Solaris operating system, and a Hewlett-Packard executive believed in 2002 that Microsoft planned to attack rival open-source projects with its patents. And the European Union is debating the issue.

In recent months, Microsoft has stepped up efforts to expand its patent portfolio.

One fear is that a patent attack against an open-source programmer or customer could cripple the programming project--in particular, one without financial or legal resources. Linux, a well-protected project, potentially infringes 283 patents, according to one study funded by a company that sells insurance to customers worried about such attacks."

Rewriting History

CIA Corrects Itself on Arms, via LA Times.com: "In what may be a formal acknowledgment of the obvious, the CIA has issued a classified report revising its prewar assessments on Iraq and concluding that Baghdad abandoned its chemical weapons programs in 1991, intelligence officials familiar with the document said.

The report marks the first time the CIA has officially disavowed its prewar judgments and is one in a series of updated assessments the agency is producing as part of an effort to correct its record on Iraq's alleged weapons programs, officials said."

The Evil Left

Reaction to this infantile Prager piece, via Pandagon: "The study of evil would be a great thing if Prager were actually studying evil in a serious and real way (leaving aside the amusing notion of adolescent males studying evil instead of the girl sitting next to him in class). You know, studying Arendt or Nietzsche or Adorno or Hegel or SOMETHING. Instead, Prager is the most superficial and foolish hater himself.

As it is, Prager's 'evil' is really the evil that exists inside himself, the evil that he himself most deeply wants to avoid facing. That is, Prager's 'evil' is really that the fanaticism that he sees in others is fundamental to Prager's own being as well.

Prager makes the basic error of pretending to ascribe 'evil' only to the level of ideas. I.E., what's really bad is that people believe in various bad ideas (whether 'Muslim terrorism' or 'Leftism'). On a superficial level, everybody has already noted how ludicrously vague Prager is about 'Leftism'. Beyond that Prager is not adept enough at actually defining what 'Leftist' ideas he likes or dislikes, there's a real reason why he's not able to be specific.

The reason is that Prager cannot admit to himself the real reason WHY he opposes 'Leftism'. If he could, he would merely aim all his fire-power (such as he has) upon particular 'Leftist' ideas or policies. After all, if the really bad 'Leftist' idea is X, why vaguely criticize 'Leftists' instead of blow apart X? Instead, he actively prefers to be absolutely vague in a completly free-floating hatred of 'Leftism'.

In turn, the real reason Prager opposes 'Leftism' is NOT that he disagrees with 'Leftist' ideas. Instead, Prager is really looking for someone to hate. Due to random reasons, right now it's 'Leftists'. In another era, Prager would be hating 'bourgeoisie pigs' or 'damned Bourbon royalist scum' or 'the infidel Turk' or 'the barbaroi' or 'the Spaniards'. Prager doesn't want to realize (though I think at some level he actually does know this)that his fanaticism and hatre"

Apple restricting DVD region-changes -- voluntarily!

Sad, and disappointing.
voa BoingBoing.net: "Apple restricting DVD region-changes -- voluntarily! -- UPDATED
Apple's DVD players are subject to restrictive rules laid out by greedy Hollywood studios that don't really care if they piss off Apple's customers, since that's Apple's lookout. However, I've just discovered, to my amazement, that Apple imposes its very own restrictions on its DVD players over and above those imposed by the studios: that's right, Apple voluntarily treats its customers worse than the studios say it has to."

Lawyers ride shotgun for open source

via CNET News.com: "Eben Moglen, a Columbia University law professor who has represented the Free Software Foundation in legal cases, said that he will help run the new Software Freedom Law Center, which is set to be announced on Tuesday.

The center said in a statement that it will employ two full-time intellectual property attorneys, who will help provide consulting services to nonprofit open-source organizations. The staff count is expected to expand to four later in 2005. The help they provide could include training lawyers, supporting litigation, dealing with licensing problems and keeping managing contributions to open-source projects, the center said."

Quote of the Day . . .

goes to Kos: "But at the end of the day, whether they'll ever admit it or not -- we were right, they were wrong. Reality isn't being too kind to their side. "

With links.

Quote of the Day (Option 2)

via Daily Howler: "The state of our discourse is weak, very weak, and the academics and journalists who steward that discourse are, routinely, deeply dysfunctional. And by the way: In such a world, it’s easy for spinners to confuse and mislead us about the current state of [Social Security]."

Quote of the Day

via NYT Editorial, The Wrong Attorney General: "The attorney general does not merely head up the Justice Department. He is responsible for ensuring that America is a nation in which justice prevails. Mr. Gonzales's record makes him unqualified to take on this role or to represent the American justice system to the rest of the world. The Senate should reject his nomination."

Sam Rosenfeld: Idiots (and Jackals) Have Taken Over the Asylum, er, House

via American Prospect Online: "The insurgent energy of the conservative movement still undergirds the ruthlessness and tenacity of the GOP leadership, while the party’s pro-business ideology ensures a far more holistic and thoroughgoing marriage of K Street and Congress than was ever the case under the Democrats, who always had countervailing ideological impulses and interest-group pressures to mitigate their corporate cronyist tendencies. All in all, it really is a whole new ballgame in Congress, a level -- and a quality -- of institutional abuse, cronyism, and corporate looting that recalls the Gilded Age far more than the Foley Era. Republicans haven’t fallen from grace, and they haven’t lost touch with their roots; they are governing as they are wont to govern. If Democrats want to cast themselves as a reform party, this is a point they’ll need to press upon the public. It’s best not to get distracted with misplaced apologies."

Dissecting Mac Mini

photo travelog on the journey to the center of the mini. via modyourmac.com.

Man receives Mac Mini. Immediately goes to pieces. Photos of same.

More Unoriginality on SS

My quick synopsis of today's Blumenthal Guardian column, featuring a guest appearance from Our Man on Wall Street, Robert Rubin.

The math: Bush Administration times 2 = Regime change here at home. Sid tells the lefty Brits (G readers) who might not already know, that Bush is taking the juice he earned from the "accountability moment" and launching in earnest "an assault on the social contract" embedded in the the New Deal reforms, "seeking to blast away at its cornerstone, social security." Achieving this requires, as the now-infamous Wehner memo gleefully acknowledged, hoodwinking the American people into believing that the system is bust, bankrupt, flat broke.

But wait.

Stay tuned for reaction from the reality-based community in . . . 1 . . . 2 . . 3 . . .

"It's a badly, badly flawed plan," Robert Rubin, the former secretary of the treasury and current Citigroup director told [Sid.]

Okay, rather subdued reaction, but it no doubt conceals a fire of contempt for the intellectual primates now running things in the District.

"From a fiscal point of view it's horrendous. It adds to deficits and federal debt in very large numbers until 2060."

That's more like it, Bob.

So then he dazzles Sid with a bunch of insanely complex calculations, involving algorithims and some shit, and, like a zen master, calmly notes that the Bush plan would cost at least $2 trillion (with a T as in Too Effing Much) for just the first 10 years, and another $4.5 trillion for the ten years after that.

Moving to the whiteboard, Bob shows Sid what happens next: an exploding deficit, rocketing interest rates, tanking consumption, with overall productivity and growth going into the crapper. This while crowding out debt capital necessary for private sector investment. Then the really exciting part: markets lose confidence in fiscal policy and then the economy in general, and, hey, guess what? Mission Accomplished. The New Deal undone. Or at least America will once again look like like the pre-New Deal era; soup lines and woooden barrel overalls for everyone, well, except some.

So what is Sid's takeaway from this. It's "Hey, Democrats, stay tight and disciplined, like the kids in Drumline (at the end, not at first when that one kid is a big slacker), and don't play along. Let the Republicans go it alone in convincing the bluehairs, et al., that attacking the one thing that keeps the heat on or pays the mortgage is actually a really a good thing." Blumie expects major backlash. Except he calls it the "unleashing of political furies" like the wonky wordsmith he is. And so we come back around to the theme with which he starts the piece (his 9th grade English teacher would be proud):

Bush appears intent on regime change at home. In his first term, he promised "compassionate conservatism." In his second term, he pledges casino conservatism, the restoration of boom and bust, which he calls "the ownership society." He has gambled his presidency on it.

Straight Shooter

Quote of the day:

The biggest regret is that we didn't stop 9/11. And then in the wake of 9/11, instead of redoubling what is our traditional export of hope and optimism, we exported our fear and our anger. And presented a very intense and angry face to the world. I regret that a lot.

Richard Armitage, outgoing Deputy Secretary of State, in an interview with The Australian newspaper, on his regrets from the past four years.

How Patents Work

A neat introduction to Patents from the fine folks at Howstuffworks .com: "Patents are a palpable, legally-binding manifestation of a person's genius and innovation; they allow a person to actually own an idea."

With a nod to the Patentability Blog for the heads up.

Brass Tacks and Social Security . . .

and why trying to find a "third way" or even remotely looking to compromise with Bush or outfox him politically will only result in misery.

Josh Marshall offers a brilliant piece on strategy in the looming Social Security fight and why the doomed-to-failure angle exemplified by Rahm Emanuel's appearance on Russert cannot work. (Yeah, I know that's redundant).

What Emanuel (and Gene Sperling) don't get, according to Marshall, is that they can't do politics in this fight, like they could in the Clinton administration.

But when you hold the White House, [reliance on tactical positioning, using small rhetorical or policy distinctions] really can work -- because you have three levers of power, the executive branch, the bully pulpit and the veto pen. That power gives you control over the terms and pace of the debate. And those let you bring clever tactics and fancy footwork into play.

But the Democrats don't have any of that today. They're completely excluded from power in Washington. The only effective power they have is the ability to deny the president the cover of bipartisanship in enacting his agenda when his agenda conflicts with their fundamental principles.

Marshall sounds a bit harsh (tough love) when he says it sounded a little sad when Emanuel told Russert (a la Bush) that he would not "negotiate with himself" over specifics, as if he or any House Democrats will get to negotiate anything.

So I say again (to myself, softly but with firm resolve), the key takeaway is that Democrats must be fighting the good fight as the Opposition. Sure this is obvious, and oft-repeated. But you still hear our leaders talking as if they are at the table. WE ARE COMPLETELY SHUT OUT OF GOVERNMENT. We cannot pretend that we are partners with our brethren across the aisle. At least not in the SS debate. I am virtually the last to say so, but it still needs saying, Dems are currently a minority, opposition party (at least at the national level); all strategy must flow from that knowledge. Let's not kid ourselves. Because you know . . . there's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.


So Marshall, no fool, concludes:

Should the Democrats have an alternative beyond just saying 'no'. Yes, they should. And they have a very good one. But it is very much the secondary part of the strategy. And their alternative can only be comprehensible and effective if the primary part is made sufficiently clear: that Democrats don't believe Social Security is in crisis and that whatever long-term funding challenges it faces do not require a fundamental revision of the structure of the program, let alone phasing it out as President Bush wants to do.

This is what opposition parties do. State their contrary vision where they have one, vote their principles on matters of fundamental political difference, and build a clear contrast on key issues which they can take to the voters in the next election. All the more so when the facts and the people's values are on their side. That's democracy.

Target Iran?

On occasion I find that the comments section of Kevin Drum's Political Animal blog offers the most compelling thoughts on the topic at hand. Such is the case in today's discussion headed by Drum's take on the Seymour Hersh New Yorker piece about ongoing U.S. covert operations in Iran and the administration's purported plans of overt confrontation with the Mighty Mullahs.

For instance, one reader notes:

There are actually quite a number of Bush positions (private accounts, changing SS, torture, environmental policies, Patriot Act, Iraq, etc, etc) that I could be swayed on if I felt like there was an open, honest debate. What I reject most is the subterfuge. That THEY don't trust the American people enough to discuss issues and defend their arguments honestly.

Personally, I am not likely to be swayed, but it touches on the administrations's unvarnished contempt of "the people" that has always pissed me off and causes confusion as to why no one else seems to be as bothered. Except my mom. She knows the score.

This next one presents a very plausible doomsday scenario (wherein US air strikes precipitate hundreds of thousands of volunteer jihadists crossing over the border into Iraq in a classic pincer movement) and concludes with this insightful, if awkwardly stated prescription:

One thing is certain. Democrats should be piling on the Republicans that they are incompentants. They should be open in stating that Bush is a slip shod regime, the neocons are a rogue, even criminal ideology, that neither they nor Bush know what they are doing, and the more they do, the more they invite ruin. This is clearly the case. And it positions the Democrats to take advantage of Republican's mistakes, when they make them as surely they will, when the republicans actions prove the Democrats correct, Democrats will have credibility.

That kind of piling on was what the Kerry campaign should have been doing. They made an effort, but Kerry's wildly ill-advised assertion that he would have invaded anyway, despite what we knew about WMDs, made the case for his own greater competence that much more strained.

Moreover, Dems can't just wait patiently for administration overreach to present opportunities. Loyal, but highly aggressive opposition must be the party's default footing. I mean, jeez, too much more overreach and we may be beyond reversing the mistakes of this President.

Here's a good summary from Crooked Timber of a World Affairs Council "presentation by Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations, on Iran’s nuclear ambitions."

More Reality-Based Information About Social Security

A rundown of recent SS articles:

The American Prospect hosts a comprehensive survey on the issue they call BUSH'S HOUSE OF CARDS: The Privatization Fraud, A Prospect Special Report.

As noted earlier, Roger Lowenstein actually dissects facts in his NYT magazine piece.

And, of course, Krugman lays it out plainly again:

White House officials themselves concede - or maybe boast - that their plan to sell Social Security privatization is modeled on their selling of the Iraq war. In fact, the parallels are remarkably exact.

Everyone has noticed the use, once again, of crisis-mongering. Three years ago, the supposed threat from Saddam somehow became more important than catching the people who actually attacked America on 9/11. Today, the mild, possibly nonexistent long-run financial problems of Social Security have somehow become more important than dealing with the huge deficit we already have, which has nothing to do with Social Security.

But there's another parallel, which I haven't seen pointed out: the politicization of the agencies and the intimidation of the analysts. Bush loyalists begin frothing at the mouth when anyone points out that the White House pressured intelligence analysts to overstate the threat from Iraq, while neocons in the Pentagon pressured the military to understate the costs and risks of war. But that is what happened, and it's happening again.

Kevin Drum takes a look at the recent Washington Post poll, noting that a majority of those polled apparently buy Bush's fearmongering and lies, but they still trust Democrats to do a better job handling Social Security.

Time dips its toes in the scary waters of calling out the Wartime President on his dissembling. And even Fox News gets into the act. No, really. Chris Wallace. Fox News. He dareth to contradict shameless shill of all shills, Dan Bartlett. (Shout out to the Daily Howler who must read every newspaper and catch every news commentary program to bring the righteous bitterness. And I mean that in a good way.)

Wiki war born out of Walt Disney deal

via MercuryNews.com: "The battle between the two Silicon Valley wiki companies began in earnest this week. The outcome could say something about Silicon Valley's model of turbo-charged venture capital, and when it's a good time to take money and grow quickly -- or hold off.

A wiki, in its simplest form, is a single Web page that can be written upon, and edited, by multiple users at once. Companies are beginning to use wiki software to help their employees coordinate on team projects.

A few years ago, Ross Mayfield, chief executive at Palo Alto's Socialtext, staked out prime wiki territory as an early player in the space.

His company has since signed up 75 customers, 15 of which are among the 500 largest U.S. companies -- and he'll be announcing two more shortly, he says. Until recently, all appeared to be smooth sailing: Silicon Valley angels invested more than $500,000 in his start-up. He has stayed hunkered down, employing only 10 people, even after getting angel money. His team all work from their homes. He still takes all his own calls."

Social Security: A Question of Numbers

vit The NYT Magazine: "The campaign to privatize has not only been about ideology; it has also focused on Social Security's supposed insolvency. Moore's book calls Social Security a ''Titanic . . . headed toward the iceberg'' and a program ''on the verge of collapse.'' A stream of other conservatives have bombarded the public, over years and decades, with prophecies of trillion-dollar liabilities and with metaphors intended to frighten -- ''train wreck,'' ''bankruptcy,'' ''cancer'' and so forth. Recently, a White House political deputy wrote a strategy note in which he said that Social Security is ''on an unsustainable course. That reality needs to be seared into the public consciousness.''

The campaign is potentially self-fulfilling: persuade enough people that Social Security is going bankrupt, and it will lose public support. Then Congress will be forced to act. And thanks to such unceasing alarums, many, and perhaps most, people today think the program is in serious financial trouble.

But is it? After Bush's re-election, I carefully read the 225-page annual report of the Social Security trustees. I also talked to actuaries and economists, inside and outside the agency, who are expert in the peculiar science of long-term Social Security forecasting. The actuarial view is that the system is probably in need of a small adjustment of the sort that Congress has approved in the past. But there is a strong argument, which the agency acknowledges as a possibility, that the system is solvent as is.

Although prudence argues for making a fix sooner rather than later, the program is not in crisis, nor is its potential shortfall irresolvable. Ideology aside, the scale of the fixes would not require Social Security to abandon the role that was conceived for it in 1935, and that it still performs today -- as an insurance fail-safe for the aged"

The Open Source Future

via The Tao of Mac: "Ten Open Source Projects Worth Keeping Track Of"

Paul O'Neill Wants Us All To Retire As Millionaires

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, in a NYT op-ed, offers a plan which appears to turn Social Security from a "tax to fund entitlements" program to a mandatory retirement savings one. Here are some snippets:

My answer is that we should establish a process that will produce a substantial annuity for every American at retirement age. By substantial, I mean at least $1 million. In order to create a real, fully financed annuity of this size, people must begin saving when they enter the work force. The saving needs to be continuous, and it needs to be left intact so that compound interest can work its magic.

* * *

Let me define what I mean by financial security. Financial security begins with ownership of real assets; so the money saved each year in this plan would be the property of the person who saved it. I would use the existing Social Security collection process because it is already in place, everyone understands it and its costs are relatively low.

The money would then be invested in broad-based index funds with an objective of matching the overall rate of return for all investments in the United States. These funds typically have very low costs because they're not actively managed. That means there would be no windfall profit for stockbrokers in this system.

Further to the definition of financial security: it means enough money in retirement for all needs - food, clothing, shelter - and including medical needs like prescription drugs.

Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly says that trying to fund O'Neill's plan with the 12.4% tax on income that currently funds Social Security won't get close. A comment thereto notes an interesting proposals:

If you check out the section on Social Security reform at "Build a Better Mousetrap" you will see a proposal which takes the privatization issue away from Republicans and puts them on the defensive. In brief, the suggestion is to take the cap off earned income (currently about $87,000), tax all dividends and capital gains (currently completely tax free for FICA purposes), and use the additional revenue to lower tax rates for everybody. Then allow the saved percentage to be invested in a private IRA. The whole program will be revenue neutral- no borrowing up front as Bush's proposal would require.

and another interesting comment:

Social Security reform is extremely easy to do, actually. Only a two-step process.
1. Remove the $87,000 (guesstimating here, but it's somewhere around that) cap. Tax all income at that rate. There is no reason Ross Perot can't help out a few small people.
2. Make it illegal for the government to 'borrow' from the Social Security accounts to cover for budget shortfalls in other places. This is the single thing that puts Social Security at risk. Note that the government doesn't have a good track record at the moment of paying off debt.
With these two simple steps, Social Security will be solvent way beyond my lifespan (and I am 24).

This post reminds me, I need a better template.

Frank Rich: All the President's Newsmen

via nyt online: "But perhaps the most fascinating Williams TV appearance took place in December 2003, the same month that he was first contracted by the government to receive his payoffs. At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all 'journalists,' was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced 'cheap shot journalism' in which 'the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective.'

This is a scenario out of 'The Manchurian Candidate.' Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel's 'Nightline' recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, 'Stolen Honor,' under the rubric of 'news' in prime time just before Election Day. (After fierce criticism, Sinclair retreated from that plan.) Thus the Williams interview with the vice president, implicitly presented as an example of the kind of 'objective' news Mr. Cheney endorses, was in reality a completely subjective, bought-and-paid-for fake news event for a broadcast company that barely bothers to fake objectivity and both of whose chief executives were major contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Soviets couldn't have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry."

Politics

Bush exaggerates a few facts about Social Security

via CBS Marketwatch: "Bush vs. The Facts:

Bush: 'As a matter of fact, by the time today's workers who are in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt. So if you're 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you're beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now.'

The facts: The Social Security system cannot go 'bankrupt,' for it has no creditors. By law, the trustees will continue to pay reduced benefits even if the trust fund is exhausted. Payroll taxes will continue to come in and benefits will continue to be paid.

According to the trustees' intermediate economic forecast (neither doom nor boom), the trust fund will be able to pay about 73 percent of scheduled benefits in 2042 and about 68 percent of scheduled benefits in 2078.

Future presidents and Congresses could also choose to fully fund scheduled retirement benefits from general tax revenue.

Bush: "In the year 2018, in order to take care of baby boomers like me and -- (laughter) -- some others I see out there -- (laughter) -- the money going out is going to exceed the money coming in."

The facts: According to the SSA, costs are projected to exceed income, including tax revenues and interest income from the trust funds' bonds, starting in 2028, not 2018. The 2018 date is when tax revenues alone no longer meet costs; workers have been paying extra taxes since 1983 to build up the trust funds' assets for just this eventuality.

Bush: "The problem is, is that times have changed since 1935. Then, most women did not work outside the house, and the average life expectancy was about 60 years old -- which for a guy 58 years old, must have been a little discouraging. Today, Americans, fortunately, are living longer and longer. I mean, we're living way beyond 60 years old, and most women are working outside the house. Things have shifted."

The facts: According to the SSA, the life expectancy for a 65-year-old man in 1940 was 76.9 years. Today, a man aged 65 can be expected to live to 81. Most of the increase in life expectancy in the past half century has been for infants, not for the elderly.

The increase in the percentage of women working outside the home has boosted Social Security's resources, rather than depleted them. Today, many women who worked receive a widow's pension rather than their own earned benefits. All the payroll taxes they paid are funding someone else's retirement.

The Daily Howler's take on the piece: "Nutting wrote the kind of report that should have appeared in every newspaper–and on every TV channel as well. When a president convenes a major forum and proceeds to make outrageous misstatements, that is the biggest news of the day. And the American people need to be told that this event has occurred. They deserve to be shown the actual facts. And they deserve to be told, quite directly, that their 'president' has been misstating facts."

Kennedy Policy Speech at National Press Club, Jan. 12, 2005

via his Senate web site: "I categorically reject the deceptive and dangerous claim that the outcome last November was somehow a sweeping, or a modest, or even a miniature mandate for reactionary measures like privatizing Social Security, redistributing the tax burden in the wrong direction, or packing the federal courts with reactionary judges. Those proposals were barely mentioned - or voted on - in an election dominated by memories of 9/11, fear of terrorism, the quagmire in Iraq, and relentlessly negative attacks on our Presidential candidate.

In an election so close, defeat has a thousand causes - and it is too easy to blame it on particular issues or tactics, or on the larger debate about values. In truth, we do not shrink from that debate.

There's no doubt we must do a better job of looking within ourselves and speaking out for the principles we believe in, and for the values that are the foundation of our actions. Americans need to hear more, not less, about those values. We were remiss in not talking more directly about them - about the fundamental ideals that guide our progressive policies. In the words of Martin Luther King, 'we must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.'

Unlike the Republican Party, we believe our values unite us as Americans, instead of dividing us. If the White House's idea of bipartisanship is that we have to buy whatever partisan ideas they send us, we're not interested.

In fact, our values are still our greatest strength. Despite resistance, setbacks, and periods of backlash over the years, our values have moved us closer to the ideal with which America began - that all people are created equal. And when Democrats say 'all,' we mean 'all.'

We have an Administration that falsely hypes almost every issue as a crisis. They did it on Iraq, and they are doing it now on Social Security. They exploit the politics of fear and division, while ours is a politics of hope and unity.

In the face of their tactics, we cannot move our party or our nation forward under pale colors and timid voices. We cannot become Republican clones. If we do, we will lose again, and deserve to lose. As I have said on other occasions, the last thing this country needs is two Republican parties."

At the heart of the open-source revolution

via CNET News.com: "Although his latest effort is unfolding in comparative obscurity, many in the open-source world are hoping, along with Kapor, that he gets this one right and that the results once again rearrange the dynamics of the computer industry.

Having made his fortune during the heyday of proprietary software, the 54-year-old Kapor finds himself at the forefront of two foundations devoted to open-source software development. He is both president and chair of the OSAF and chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, the group founded by Netscape Communications to develop its browser and later spun off by Netscape acquirer AOL Time Warner.

The goal of the foundations isn't to create a new killer app but rather to use the open-source development model to dislodge Microsoft's Web-browsing and e-mail software titles from their dominant market positions."

Electronic Discovery: Huzzahs to PGE . . .

. . . for starting an excellent blog on the subject. Here's an example from recent case summaries:

In re Telxon Corp. Sec. Litig., No. 5:98CV2876 and No. 1:01CV1078 (N.D. Ohio July 2, 2004) (unsealed January 11, 2005)

Magistrate Recommends Default Judgment Against “Big Four” Accounting Firm for Electronic Discovery Abuses: Recommending that default judgment on liability be entered against third party defendant, PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, the judge stated “it would be difficult for anyone to argue that PWC’s conduct over the course of the litigation, particularly its repeated assurances to the court and to the parties that it had fully disclosed all relevant information, was not due to willfulness, bad faith or fault.” The judge criticized PWC for, among other things: failing at the start of discovery to check thoroughly its local servers and its archives for relevant documents, failing to produce documents as they were kept in the ordinary course of business, failing to reproduce thoroughly and accurately all documents and their attachments, and, prior to litigation, permitting the destruction of documents despite committing to their preservation. The court stated the only conclusion it can reach “is that PWC and/or its counsel engaged in deliberate fraud or was so recklessly indifferent to their responsibilities as a party to litigation that they failed to take the most basic steps to fulfill those responsibilities.”

Plus, they maintian an E-Discovery Case Database.

See also, Eight Simple Steps for Doing Effective E-Discovery from DiscoveryResources.org.

Test post

I am doing 43 things.

And They Really Expect America To Believe These Lies?

via Reuters: "President Bush launched his plan to revamp Social Security with a push to convince the public and Congress that it faces a crisis, even though supporters of the government-run retirement program say he is exaggerating its financial problems.

"By the time today's workers who are in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt," Bush said on Tuesday as he launched what the White House says will be a big push to build support for revamping the program.

While nearly everyone agrees the retirement program faces a long term financial shortfall, private account opponents say Bush is exaggerating its problems in order to make a case for private investment accounts."

The Daily Howler retorts: "Has there ever been a bald-faced liar to match George W. Bush? At yesterday’s forum on Social Security, the president told a series of dumb, stupid jokes for an audience of perfectly decent Americans.

What is wrong with Bush’s statement? Workers who are in their mid-20s will, by and large, begin to retire shortly after the year 2040. And will Social Security be “bankrupt—flat bust,” as their joke-cracking president said? Sorry. According to the CBO, the system will still pay full scheduled benefits until the year 2052. After that, will SS be “flat bust?” No, it will not, as Bush knows. After 2052, the system will be able to pay 81 percent of scheduled benefits. Even adjusted for inflation, those benefits will be far more than SS recipients are getting today.

Understand: If no changes are made to the system, recipients will get substantially more in 2052 than recipients are getting today! But incredibly, your lying president tells decent citizens that the system will instead be “flat bust!” And by the way: Even according to the pessimistic forecasts of the SS trustees, the system won’t be “bankrupt, flat bust” when young workers start to retire. According to the trustees’ gloomy projections, the system will pay full benefits until 2042. It will then pay 73 percent of scheduled benefits, more than recipients get today.

No, Social Security won’t be “flat bust”—or anything like it—when young workers start to retire. But George Bush lies the way other men breathe.

George Bush, a gut-bucket liar, has lied to the public for the past five years. But so what? Timid, store-bought, thigh-rubbing pundits have stared into air as the lying has grown. Tomorrow, we’ll start to look at the press corps’ accounts of Bush’s astounding remarks on SS. But the time has finally come to insist that Big Major Pundits stand up and speak. Five years ago, the press corps pretended to be upset by ginned-up “lies” from Candidate Gore. Now, a president lies right in their faces, about the day’s most pressing issue. It’s time for the press corps’ conclave of cowards to be battered about their group silence.

US gives up search for Iraq WMD

via Washington Post: "Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring.

"The September 30 report is really pretty much the picture," the intelligence official said.

"We've talked to so many people that someone would have said something. We received nothing that contradicts the picture we've put forward. It's possible there is a supply someplace, but what is much more likely is that [as time goes by] we will find a greater substantiation of the picture that we've already put forward."

via Metafilter on same: "Don't you get it? Being wrong doesn't matter anymore. I'm not sure when the switch flipped, but above a certain level, the idea of being held accountable just doesn't apply.

Download free music, cheat on your taxes, try to marry someone of the same sex, sure, they'll come after you. But once you get above the new glass floor, you just can't fall back through."

and more:

"In complete seriousness, I expect him to resign, after apologising to the world, and the American people, specifically those whose loved ones are dead as a result of his error. Make no mistake, either: it most assuredly is his error. It doesn't matter what the source is. The troops aren't going to move unless the President gives the "ok" for it, and in this case, it was most definitely an "ok" that he gave that night before all hell broke loose.

It boils down to a simple question: If starting a war on false grounds isn't reason enough to say you're sorry; isn't reason enough for -someone- to lose their job, what is? Seriously, what is? I want to hear some options.

Instead, he's giving out fucking freedom medals to the masterminds of this disaster. This is hubris at its best (or most horrible, depending)."

and from the Rude Pundit: "But, you know, there's something interesting that happens whenever you engage anyone who believes these things in a conversation: they get really, really defensive about Bush. And not in a coherent way. And not even in the knee-jerk-"I-support-my-President" kind of way. No, it's more of an "I don't wanna talk about it - shutupshutupshutup" kind of way, with ears covered and eyes clenched shut. In other words, they know. They know it's all been a huge failure. But they don't wanna know. And it's just easier to pretend that everything's fantabulous than face that horror, that abyss, of mistrust, of awareness of one's own complicity in the voting booth."

The President's case for war, Oct. 2002:

"While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone -- because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. This same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States.

By its past and present actions, by its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is unique. As a former chief weapons inspector of the U.N. has said, "The fundamental problem with Iraq remains the nature of the regime, itself. Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction."

Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?"

* * *

Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.

Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary; confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror. When I spoke to Congress more than a year ago, I said that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves. Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction. And he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them, or provide them to a terror network.

* * *

The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists.

* * *

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

* * *

After eleven years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.

* * *

Some worry that a change of leadership in Iraq could create instability and make the situation worse. The situation could hardly get worse, for world security and for the people of Iraq. The lives of Iraqi citizens would improve dramatically if Saddam Hussein were no longer in power, just as the lives of Afghanistan's citizens improved after the Taliban.

* * *

Members of Congress are nearing an historic vote. I'm confident they will fully consider the facts, and their duties."

A cowed Congress can't say no. Not wanting to sound like a bumper sticker, but Bush lied and thousands died. Big time.

More on same, from Matt Yglesias at the American Prospect: "Let me just reiterate for about the millionth time that, contrary to the ex post rationalizations from the right, it's simply not the case that "everyone" -- or even almost everyone -- thought Saddam Hussein had WMD at the time the war started. That was a period when this really was the consensus judgment of the international intelligence community, and that's one of the reasons it was possible to gain UN support for a resolution demanding the re-introduction of inspectors.

Then the inspectors came back to Iraq and went searching around. They didn't find any WMD stockpiles or evidence of advanced WMD programs. They did find some banned missiles with ranges beyond what was permitted by the Gulf War cease-fire. Those missiles were duly destroyed. At that point, rational people began to think that the intelligence consensus was, perhaps, mistaken. It already became clear that several of the specific charges the Bush administration had raised were false, and that despite repeated statements from administration officials that they were sure Saddam had WMD, they couldn't provide the inspectors with any useful clues to their whereabouts. But the United States wasn't being governered by rational people, so they, along with their cheerleaders in the press, proclaimed that if inspections weren't finding the weapons, that wasn't because the weapons weren't there but because the inspectors were corrupt, incompetent, or something like that. Therefore, an invasion was necessary.

This judgment -- the judgment that took us to war, the judgment that's led to all the many American casualties and the many more Iraqi casualties, didn't reflect any sort of international consensus whatsoever. If people aren't aware of that fact (which they largely aren't) it's because the "liberal media" was so busy gearing up to "embed" reporters and put on a show of patriotic pomp when the shooting started that they couldn't be bothered to tell anyone what was going on. Needless to say, unlike with the Killian memo story, no one has been held accountable for this and no one ever will be."

Should Old People Have Plumbing?

Matthew Yglesias via American Prospect Online: "Last week, Peter H. Wehner -- Karl Rove's deputy inside the White House -- shared with us, in a leaked memo, his view that 'no one on this planet can tell you why a 25-year-old person today is entitled to a 40 percent increase in Social Security benefits (in real terms) compared to what a person retiring today receives.' This was part of his explanation of why the forthcoming Bush plan should solve the phony Social Security 'crisis' by freezing the growth in benefits -- thus offering the retirees of the future a 40 percent cut in promised benefits.

One's suspicions that the Bush economic policy is being crafted in the Gamma Quadrant are only bolstered by talk of this sort, since, on the planet where I live, Earth, plenty of people can tell you why this should be so. As a member of the About to Be Screwed Generation at the tender age of 23, however, a special obligation rests on me to explain why we shouldn't pay for the fiscal profligacy of the Bush era by slashing my Social Security benefits. The underlying issue here is what's known in the business as shifting the program from its current 'wage index' system to a 'price index' system. Right now, a retiree's initial benefit level is linked to, among other things, the growth in average wages rather than the growth in the Consumer Price Index.

The most basic reason why I'm entitled to wage-indexed benefits is, simply: That's what the law says. Since wages normally grow faster than prices, this means benefits get more generous in real terms over time. Just as 2004's wages are more generous than the wages paid in 1974, so, too are the benefits paid in 2004 more generous than those of 1974. And every month, my tax dollars are paying for those more generous benefits. This is OK for two reasons. First, since 2004's wages are more generous than 1974's, I can afford to pay more tax in absolute terms than could the young journalists of 1974. Second, the prog"

U.S. Tells D.C. to Pay Inaugural Expenses

via washingtonpost.com and TPM: "D.C. officials said yesterday that the Bush administration is refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects.

Federal officials have told the District that it should cover the expenses by using some of the $240 million in federal homeland security grants it has received in the past three years -- money awarded to the city because it is among the places at highest risk of a terrorist attack."