Second goal of politics: Win re-election.
Final goal of politics: When all else fails, do something.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Privacy
They do it, too!
Surprise! Your phone logs are available to police and government. Anyone who watches the Law & Order TV series knows cops do this all the time, and can track how many calls were made from number X to number Y on any given day or week, and how long each call lasted. This is not to say they monitor the content, and listen in on who said what to whom. Such monitoring (supposedly) requires a warrant from a court. Even so, it's done, as is the hacking into email and other electronic communication. The defense is that such tactics are needed during investigations.
Similar arguments are used in defense of international tracking of communication logs of political leaders worldwide. The latest media storm is over allegations that the U.S. government is doing this to leaders of other governments, including Germany, France, Spain, Brazil and others.
This latest revelation comes after the news that Washington has been tracking the phone records of major American telecommunications companies for years., in the name of looking for patterns of communication among known or potential terrorists.
It seems that telecoms routinely allow investigators access to millions upon millions of communication records. Supposedly without listening in or monitoring the content, but only looking for patterns.
So far, such tracking has been legal, at least in the U.S. In other countries, however, privacy laws are much more strict, and such tactics are illegal. And legal in one country doesn't always mean legal in another.
The issue, then, is not whether communication monitoring is being done, but should it be done.
Surprise! Your phone logs are available to police and government. Anyone who watches the Law & Order TV series knows cops do this all the time, and can track how many calls were made from number X to number Y on any given day or week, and how long each call lasted. This is not to say they monitor the content, and listen in on who said what to whom. Such monitoring (supposedly) requires a warrant from a court. Even so, it's done, as is the hacking into email and other electronic communication. The defense is that such tactics are needed during investigations.
Similar arguments are used in defense of international tracking of communication logs of political leaders worldwide. The latest media storm is over allegations that the U.S. government is doing this to leaders of other governments, including Germany, France, Spain, Brazil and others.
This latest revelation comes after the news that Washington has been tracking the phone records of major American telecommunications companies for years., in the name of looking for patterns of communication among known or potential terrorists.
It seems that telecoms routinely allow investigators access to millions upon millions of communication records. Supposedly without listening in or monitoring the content, but only looking for patterns.
So far, such tracking has been legal, at least in the U.S. In other countries, however, privacy laws are much more strict, and such tactics are illegal. And legal in one country doesn't always mean legal in another.
The issue, then, is not whether communication monitoring is being done, but should it be done.
Eavesdropping
Even the walls have ears. -- Ancient Proverb
"You can't eavesdrop," said the lawyer on the street corner as he talked with his client.
"There are no eaves on the street," replied a bystander. "If you want privacy, go to a private place. Besides, what makes you think I care?"
A corporate executive let loose some stinging comments in the outer office, which were heard by a reporter who happened to be chatting with the staff.
When the reporter called later for context, the executive said, "You can't use that; I thought you were one of the secretaries."
"You thought wrong," said the reporter. "It was a public place, you said it, I heard it, and therefore I can use it."
What makes officials oblivious to the idea that loud conversation in a railway car, for example, can be heard five rows away?
That happened last week to a high government official whose comments were heard by another passenger, who then transmitted them to the world via his mobile device. What's more, one would expect that the official, formerly with the CIA and the National Security Agency, would know better, especially since many security operatives are borderline paranoid anyway.
Keep in mind that loud talking in a public place can be heard and forwarded by anyone. And with today's mobile devices, what is said can go worldwide instantly.
"You can't eavesdrop," said the lawyer on the street corner as he talked with his client.
"There are no eaves on the street," replied a bystander. "If you want privacy, go to a private place. Besides, what makes you think I care?"
A corporate executive let loose some stinging comments in the outer office, which were heard by a reporter who happened to be chatting with the staff.
When the reporter called later for context, the executive said, "You can't use that; I thought you were one of the secretaries."
"You thought wrong," said the reporter. "It was a public place, you said it, I heard it, and therefore I can use it."
What makes officials oblivious to the idea that loud conversation in a railway car, for example, can be heard five rows away?
That happened last week to a high government official whose comments were heard by another passenger, who then transmitted them to the world via his mobile device. What's more, one would expect that the official, formerly with the CIA and the National Security Agency, would know better, especially since many security operatives are borderline paranoid anyway.
Keep in mind that loud talking in a public place can be heard and forwarded by anyone. And with today's mobile devices, what is said can go worldwide instantly.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Hypocrisy
"See I told you it wouldn't work." -- Roddy Righteous, after sabotaging the health care rollout.
Radical conservatives ranted on the problems in setting up the federal health insurance exchange after doing all they could to block, hinder, damage, interfere with and sabotage the program from the beginning.
The irony is that these guys come from the party of Big Business. The new federal law requires that everyone have health insurance. It doesn't matter where you get it, but you must have it, and there are now minimum requirements for a plan.
But the federal law -- the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare -- is not itself an insurance program but a marketplace intended to help you buy an insurance policy from private companies. It's not like Social Security or unemployment compensation, which are government-run insurance programs. And if you already have health insurance, through your job, privately, or you're on Medicare or Medicaid, you're covered and the new program doesn't affect you. The current media and political firestorm is just background noise.
Reality check: This is a major business opportunity for insurance companies, and in some regions where there is little or no competition, policy premiums are high. Moreover, the law mandates that everyone -- even the young and healthy, who feel they don't need it -- have coverage.
Basic to the concept of insurance is that the more people buy into it, the better it works, because the risk of payout is more widespread. If only sick people pay into the pool, the pay-out and therefore the pay-in will be higher.
So why are Republicans so down on Obamacare? Because they're not getting the political credit for setting up national health insurance. The federal government in Washington has been trying for nearly 80 years to put in place health insurance for everyone. But each time, it was blocked by the opposing party. Until now. And they're still trying to block it, even though it was passed by Congress, signed by the President, and approved by the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the people who most need health insurance can't afford it.
Historically, what happens to people in situations like this?
They die a lot.
Radical conservatives ranted on the problems in setting up the federal health insurance exchange after doing all they could to block, hinder, damage, interfere with and sabotage the program from the beginning.
The irony is that these guys come from the party of Big Business. The new federal law requires that everyone have health insurance. It doesn't matter where you get it, but you must have it, and there are now minimum requirements for a plan.
But the federal law -- the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare -- is not itself an insurance program but a marketplace intended to help you buy an insurance policy from private companies. It's not like Social Security or unemployment compensation, which are government-run insurance programs. And if you already have health insurance, through your job, privately, or you're on Medicare or Medicaid, you're covered and the new program doesn't affect you. The current media and political firestorm is just background noise.
Reality check: This is a major business opportunity for insurance companies, and in some regions where there is little or no competition, policy premiums are high. Moreover, the law mandates that everyone -- even the young and healthy, who feel they don't need it -- have coverage.
Basic to the concept of insurance is that the more people buy into it, the better it works, because the risk of payout is more widespread. If only sick people pay into the pool, the pay-out and therefore the pay-in will be higher.
So why are Republicans so down on Obamacare? Because they're not getting the political credit for setting up national health insurance. The federal government in Washington has been trying for nearly 80 years to put in place health insurance for everyone. But each time, it was blocked by the opposing party. Until now. And they're still trying to block it, even though it was passed by Congress, signed by the President, and approved by the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the people who most need health insurance can't afford it.
Historically, what happens to people in situations like this?
They die a lot.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Relapse
Economic recovery is being stalled by aftershocks of the American government shutdown as well as continuing efforts by arch-conservatives to block all things Demobama.
Job growth in the U.S. is still slow, according to the latest figures -- delayed by the shutdown -- and unemployment, while marginally lower -- it's down one-tenth of one percent, to 7.2 percent -- is still too high to be encouraging.
Home sales are off, said the National Association of Realtors, and other economic indicators are not reassuring.
Wall Street investors, however, like the idea that the Federal Reserve will likely continue to pump money into the financial system in its continuing effort to heal economic sickness.
And worldwide, other nations are feeling the fallout from the American storm.
The diagnosis was right. Big banks got sick from overindulgence in risky investments and heavy doses of liquidity brought them back to health. However, many of them held onto the medicine to keep up their own vital statistics, without passing on the benefits of available funds to customers and consumers, thus slowing the general economic recovery.
Then came the shutdown, which cut off salary cash flow to 800,000 federal employees, as well as blocking funds that would otherwise have been spent by millions of others.
Experts have estimated that this episode canceled out what would have been a big chunk of production (GDP) for the 16 days of the shutdown.
Meanwhile, that hiccup in American GDP will amplify so that the rest of the world will hit an economic sour note.
Add to that the Federal Reserve Board's latest move to strengthen its rules on liquidity for large, "internationally active banking organizations and systemically important non-bank financial companies." This is good, in that it would help prevent another meltdown such as happened five years ago. But if banks are forced to keep more cash on hand, that will mean less going out in loans to finance business operations.
So does all this mean an economic relapse for the U.S.? Consider these items:
* Housing sales fell 1.9 percent in September, due to rising prices and higher mortgage rates.
* The unemployment rate has barely moved all summer, sitting at 7.2 percent in September. The only good perspective is to say it has been ticking down by one-tenth of a point each month this year.
* Job growth has been disappointing. The nation added just 148,000 jobs in September.
* Exports of goods and services plateaued, even before the shutdown. The Commerce Department reported a total value of $189.2 billion in exports in August, slightly lower than the $189.3 billion in July; and that was lower than the June figure of $190.5 billion.
* That meant a rise in the trade deficit to $38.8 billion in August, compared to $38.6 billion in July.
* On the whole, exports were off by 0.1 percent, and imports were virtually unchanged, the government said.
* American adults rank third in literacy, numeracy and problem solving, behind Japan and Finland, according to a Census Bureau report.
* Inflation -- a standard measure of rising prices -- slowed to 1.5 percent in August, down from 2.0 percent, according to a survey by the International Monetary Fund.
* Worldwide, in the 20 largest industrialized countries, inflation slowed to an annual rate of 3.0 percent in August, the IMF said, down from 3.2 percent the month before.
So with trade slowing, production static, job growth crawling, and consumer prices dipping -- a common phenomenon during recessions -- there's a good chance that America is facing a bumpy economic road.
And with the austerity drumbeat getting louder, those on the high road to prosperity may be detoured to an economic swamp.
Job growth in the U.S. is still slow, according to the latest figures -- delayed by the shutdown -- and unemployment, while marginally lower -- it's down one-tenth of one percent, to 7.2 percent -- is still too high to be encouraging.
Home sales are off, said the National Association of Realtors, and other economic indicators are not reassuring.
Wall Street investors, however, like the idea that the Federal Reserve will likely continue to pump money into the financial system in its continuing effort to heal economic sickness.
And worldwide, other nations are feeling the fallout from the American storm.
The diagnosis was right. Big banks got sick from overindulgence in risky investments and heavy doses of liquidity brought them back to health. However, many of them held onto the medicine to keep up their own vital statistics, without passing on the benefits of available funds to customers and consumers, thus slowing the general economic recovery.
Then came the shutdown, which cut off salary cash flow to 800,000 federal employees, as well as blocking funds that would otherwise have been spent by millions of others.
Experts have estimated that this episode canceled out what would have been a big chunk of production (GDP) for the 16 days of the shutdown.
Meanwhile, that hiccup in American GDP will amplify so that the rest of the world will hit an economic sour note.
Add to that the Federal Reserve Board's latest move to strengthen its rules on liquidity for large, "internationally active banking organizations and systemically important non-bank financial companies." This is good, in that it would help prevent another meltdown such as happened five years ago. But if banks are forced to keep more cash on hand, that will mean less going out in loans to finance business operations.
So does all this mean an economic relapse for the U.S.? Consider these items:
* Housing sales fell 1.9 percent in September, due to rising prices and higher mortgage rates.
* The unemployment rate has barely moved all summer, sitting at 7.2 percent in September. The only good perspective is to say it has been ticking down by one-tenth of a point each month this year.
* Job growth has been disappointing. The nation added just 148,000 jobs in September.
* Exports of goods and services plateaued, even before the shutdown. The Commerce Department reported a total value of $189.2 billion in exports in August, slightly lower than the $189.3 billion in July; and that was lower than the June figure of $190.5 billion.
* That meant a rise in the trade deficit to $38.8 billion in August, compared to $38.6 billion in July.
* On the whole, exports were off by 0.1 percent, and imports were virtually unchanged, the government said.
* American adults rank third in literacy, numeracy and problem solving, behind Japan and Finland, according to a Census Bureau report.
* Inflation -- a standard measure of rising prices -- slowed to 1.5 percent in August, down from 2.0 percent, according to a survey by the International Monetary Fund.
* Worldwide, in the 20 largest industrialized countries, inflation slowed to an annual rate of 3.0 percent in August, the IMF said, down from 3.2 percent the month before.
So with trade slowing, production static, job growth crawling, and consumer prices dipping -- a common phenomenon during recessions -- there's a good chance that America is facing a bumpy economic road.
And with the austerity drumbeat getting louder, those on the high road to prosperity may be detoured to an economic swamp.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Glitch Bypass
With all the noise about the online blockage for the new health care marketplace, you'd think that using a computer for access to the Internet was the only way to sign up. It's not.
From Day One there were, and are, alternate -- if old-fashioned -- ways to get information on affordable health care plans. And we can fault the media for not pointing out the other ways.
What are these ways? Telephone, the U.S. Mail, and in person at a government office. But for all the drumbeat from Obamaphobes and their opposition to the Affordable Care Act -- aided and abetted by TV talk show hosts and news shows -- many potential consumers didn't even bother. Moreover, the computer blockage was to the federal website. Computer marketplaces operated by several states worked quite well, and while there was a flood of applicants, the systems were not overwhelmed.
But as an editor we once knew would put it, "The system is clogged. That's a great story."
Reporter's reply: "There are three other ways to get information, telephone, in person and by mail. We should report that."
Editor: "I know, but that's not a story. A story is that the system's broken, not how to work around it."
Now, three weeks after the health care marketplace opened, news media are finally reporting alternate ways to cope with a troubled but legal and obligatory system. That should have been done in the beginning. Instead, television news shows became megaphones for the opposition.
Political activists are very good at manipulating the media system, so that whoever shouts loudest gets the most exposure for their views, no matter how far out they are.
Too often, in the name of providing "balanced" coverage, news editors and reporters give equal time and space to every side of an issue, even to those holding discredited views whose only qualification is a loud mouth.
From Day One there were, and are, alternate -- if old-fashioned -- ways to get information on affordable health care plans. And we can fault the media for not pointing out the other ways.
What are these ways? Telephone, the U.S. Mail, and in person at a government office. But for all the drumbeat from Obamaphobes and their opposition to the Affordable Care Act -- aided and abetted by TV talk show hosts and news shows -- many potential consumers didn't even bother. Moreover, the computer blockage was to the federal website. Computer marketplaces operated by several states worked quite well, and while there was a flood of applicants, the systems were not overwhelmed.
But as an editor we once knew would put it, "The system is clogged. That's a great story."
Reporter's reply: "There are three other ways to get information, telephone, in person and by mail. We should report that."
Editor: "I know, but that's not a story. A story is that the system's broken, not how to work around it."
Now, three weeks after the health care marketplace opened, news media are finally reporting alternate ways to cope with a troubled but legal and obligatory system. That should have been done in the beginning. Instead, television news shows became megaphones for the opposition.
Political activists are very good at manipulating the media system, so that whoever shouts loudest gets the most exposure for their views, no matter how far out they are.
Too often, in the name of providing "balanced" coverage, news editors and reporters give equal time and space to every side of an issue, even to those holding discredited views whose only qualification is a loud mouth.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Mood Conditions
"If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas." -- John Boehner
If ifs and ans were pots and pans, we'd have no need of tinkers. -- Old Irish Saying
"An it be so, it were a grievous fault, and grievously hath Caesar answered it." -- Shakespeare.
Many claim not to understand the subjunctive, and maintain they don't use it. But they do use it, even when they are not aware that they are. Among fluent and native speakers, it's almost instinctive, a mode of speech acquired along with the language at an early age.
Experts have long known that people internalize the rules of grammar of their native language by the age of six, and from there they learn the exceptions. When they get to school and are told the rules in a classroom setting, they are really only given labels for things they already know. One of these is the subjunctive, and the reason so many don't understand the rules is that they were poorly taught.
In two of the above italicized examples, the word "an" is no more than an early form of "if." Knowing that brings sense to the entire sentence.
But to the point: The term "subjunctive" is derived from two elements meaning "joined under," and refers to the necessity that one part is conditional to another, usually designated by the word "if." Not always, however. Would it were so. (There, that's a short sentence in the subjunctive.) Attentive readers will find the subjunctive mode often in these postings.
Enjoy the search.
If ifs and ans were pots and pans, we'd have no need of tinkers. -- Old Irish Saying
"An it be so, it were a grievous fault, and grievously hath Caesar answered it." -- Shakespeare.
Many claim not to understand the subjunctive, and maintain they don't use it. But they do use it, even when they are not aware that they are. Among fluent and native speakers, it's almost instinctive, a mode of speech acquired along with the language at an early age.
Experts have long known that people internalize the rules of grammar of their native language by the age of six, and from there they learn the exceptions. When they get to school and are told the rules in a classroom setting, they are really only given labels for things they already know. One of these is the subjunctive, and the reason so many don't understand the rules is that they were poorly taught.
In two of the above italicized examples, the word "an" is no more than an early form of "if." Knowing that brings sense to the entire sentence.
But to the point: The term "subjunctive" is derived from two elements meaning "joined under," and refers to the necessity that one part is conditional to another, usually designated by the word "if." Not always, however. Would it were so. (There, that's a short sentence in the subjunctive.) Attentive readers will find the subjunctive mode often in these postings.
Enjoy the search.
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