October 30, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Professional jealousy
I hate it when someone says something I was trying to say better than I said it. But credit where credit is due:
If the United States were to "bring the boys home" now, Iraq would implode, America would be seen as not merely a bully (which is not always bad, but rarely good) but also a bully with a glass jaw — which, as every thinking person must understand, would be an invitation to disaster of precisely the sort that left the World Trade Center in ruins.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Editor's notice
There's a double post below. I left it up because there are comments on both posts, and because the comments are good. If the commenters from the bottom post, which doesn't have the update, would care to repeat their comments in the upper post, I'll delete the duplicate.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Break out the bubbly
The US economy grew at a blistering 7.2% annualized rate in the 2nd Quarter.
It won't last, of course; such growth rates aren't sustainable for developed countries. But it's an awfully good sign.
What does that mean for the election? It's obviously good for Bush, although one can't tell how good. Not that it should be, in the fairest of all possible worlds, since his economic policies have had, at best, marginal effect. But knowing that the economy is growing makes people feel optimistic, and makes worries about the situation in Iraq less pressing; if economic growth is strong, maybe we can afford that $87 billion, or even a little more, after all.
Articles like this one by Daniel Gross strike me as more hope and hype than hard-hitting analysis. I suspect we'll see a lot of it in the months ahead (just as Republicans kept waiting, ever so hopefully, for Americans to discover that they were really getting poorer all the time under Clinton.) Gross trots out every possible argument for how Bush hasn't done any real good for the economy, even when they're mutually contradictory; first he claims that the Bush tax cuts haven't really helped the economy (an assertion with which I agree), and then he claims that we're only having all this stupid growth because Bush spiked the punch with tax cuts, and it will all go away next quarter. He complains that we haven't yet had two consecutive quarters of robust growth since Bush took office, which is unsurprising given that he took office right at the beginning of a recession; all the forecasters I've seen expect robust growth to continue through 2004, barring a big external shock. While I'm as concerned as the next guy about the potential problem represented by our massive overhang of consumer, corporate, and government debt, the undertone of hope that it will all come crashing down in time to put a Democrat into the White House is, I think, more wishful thinking than solid analysis.
Update Further good signs for the US economy: we rank tops in competitiveness, a finding bolstered by the fact that while Europe shared our recession, it isn't sharing our recovery.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Break out the bubbly
The US economy grew at a blistering 7.2% annualized rate in the 2nd Quarter.
It won't last, of course; such growth rates aren't sustainable for developed countries. But it's an awfully good sign.
What does that mean for the election? It's obviously good for Bush, although one can't tell how good. Not that it should be, in the fairest of all possible worlds, since his economic policies have had, at best, marginal effect. But knowing that the economy is growing makes people feel optimistic, and makes worries about the situation in Iraq less pressing; if economic growth is strong, maybe we can afford that $87 billion, or even a little more, after all.
Articles like this one by Daniel Gross strike me as more hope and hype than hard-hitting analysis. I suspect we'll see a lot of it in the months ahead (just as Republicans kept waiting, ever so hopefully, for Americans to discover that they were really getting poorer all the time under Clinton.) Gross trots out every possible argument for how Bush hasn't done any real good for the economy, even when they're mutually contradictory; first he claims that the Bush tax cuts haven't really helped the economy (an assertion with which I agree), and then he claims that we're only having all this stupid growth because Bush spiked the punch with tax cuts, and it will all go away next quarter. He complains that we haven't yet had two consecutive quarters of robust growth since Bush took office, which is unsurprising given that he took office right at the beginning of a recession; all the forecasters I've seen expect robust growth to continue through 2004, barring a big external shock. While I'm as concerned as the next guy about the potential problem represented by our massive overhang of consumer, corporate, and government debt, the undertone of hope that it will all come crashing down in time to put a Democrat into the White House is, I think, more wishful thinking than solid analysis.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Intellectual honesty in practice
I'm glad to see that at least a few academic programs are rigorously adhering to the standards of intellectual honesty we expect from our nation's leading educational institutions in their advertising campaigns. It quite restores my faith in the Academy.
(Hat tip: Accordian Guy)
From the desk of Jane Galt:How embarassing
Tee-hee! More ammunition for those of you who think that journalists just make stuff up.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Holy socialism, Batman!
Russia may have just effectively re-nationalised Yukos, its largest oil-company, in the wake of its chief executive's arrest for fraud and tax evasion.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Virtue or vice?
For anyone who's ever been stonkered by those "virtue" funds which promise to invest only in environmentally, religiously, or politically correct stocks (at the cost of distinctly mediocre returns), there's now a fund just for you.
October 29, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Anniversary
It's common now to hear 9/11 referred to as Black Tuesday, but the phrase originally referenced an entirely different sort of catastrophe: the great stock market crash on October 29, 1929. That Black Tuesday saw fortunes destroyed, and came to be seen as the turning point between the Roaring Twenties, when times were flush and life was gay, and the Great Depression. Let's all wish a big Happy 74th! to the end of the first mass market speculative boom in history -- though not, as we all know all too well, the last. So break out the champagne, light up a nice big bonfire with all those Webvan shares, and meditate on just how much worse things could be. Suggested reading:
Update
Did I do this just to get some Amazon hits? asks a reader. No, believe it or not, I just happened to notice that yesterday was October 29th. And if you're at all interested in the topic, you should read all three books.
From the desk of Jane Galt:How many really died in the WTC?
They've removed forty people from the list of the WTC dead because their families couldn't prove that they were in the buildings and no remains were identified. Mostly they were illegal workers whose jobs weren't documented, or people whose families had nothing more than a vague notion that they might have been in the area.
It's odd to think about, isn't it? We have a nice, solid number of the dead, but it only gives us an illusion of precision. Presumably there's at least one lonely soul with few friends or family who wandered into the path of the buildings and never emerged.
And presumably there are also people whose families believed they died in the buildings, but who are still very much alive. I remember readings something about a train wreck in Britain which killed thirty, but in which three or four people simply went missing. Apparently they'd taken the opportunity to go walkabout and have everyone think they were dead. (I'm afraid I don't recall the details of how the police determined that they weren't dead.) The audacity of it boggles the mind -- could you, in a split second, witness a disaster and make the irrevocable decision to abandon your life in favor of the unknown?
Pity the families, anyway, of the forty removed from the list. They didn't just lose the benefits that will accrue to survivors; they lost the sense of finality that a name on a list can give you.
October 28, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Are the Democrats effectively discriminating against minorities?
With Miguel Estrada, and now Janice Brown, the Democrats are pretty clearly trying to keep conservative minorities off the appellate bench, so that they can avoid a high-profile showdown over a potential Supreme Court nomination. Is this the kind of discrimination they've outlawed for private companies?
Their defenders will say that's ridiculous; after all, the Democrats aren't saying that no minorities will be allowed on the Federal bench. They're just saying that no conservative minorities with sufficiently distinguished credentials to become potential Supreme Court nominees will be allowed on the federal bench.
But in some sense, this is a distinction without a difference. The idea that some Democrats have that George Bush should, because he narrowly lost the popular vote, nominate the judges Al Gore would have picked is quaintly cute, but also risible to anyone who is not a party loyalist. Bill Clinton won a lower percentage of the popular vote than Bush did, and no one seems to feel that he should have nominated Republican judges because of it.
George Bush is going to nominate conservative judges because George Bush is a conservative. If you have said that no conservative minorities (or fewer conservative minorities) will be allowed on the courts, then you are effectively saying that you will not allow minorities to make the high court for as long as George Bush is president.
Anti-discrimination suits supported by those same Democrats have made it difficult for companies even facially neutral employment tests that have disparate impact on minorities. Should Democratic senators hold themselves to a lower standard than they hold private enterprise?
Update A number of bloggers and commenters have spent a lot of word disproving either the thesis that the Democrats are racist, or that they will not allow minorities on the apellate bench. These theses are easily disproven; unfortunately for my interlocutors, they are also not what I asserted. I asserted that they were strategically blocking certain minorities who might be nominated for a Supreme Court bench, because their minority status would make them politically difficult to oppose. Such discrimination is illegal for a private company even if there is no racial animus involved (say, "I love black people, but I can't hire a black manager because he might be promoted to VP, and a black VP would make my customers uncomfortable"). Why should it be legal for the Senate?
For a more detailed explanation of why the Senate's actions, if performed in the private sector, would indeed probably be in violation of our anti-discrimination laws, go here. If you just want to rant about what a racist jerk I am, don't follow the link -- you're in danger of learning something.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Station break
I know my blogging has been absolutely disgraceful of late, but I'm afraid I'm burning the candle at both ends these days. For your reading pleasure, I have a column up at TCS in which I bemoan the disgrace of our recent senate vote to make the Iraqi reconstruction money a loan rather than a grant.
October 23, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:This Washington Post editorial speaks movingly of the difficulties that only those of us who grew up in a mixed marriage know.
Yes, my little chickadees, it is true; my mother comes from a family of Yankees fans, while my father was raised in the Red Sox tradition. We have been raised with my mother's faith, which makes things a wee bit tense during the playoffs.
October 22, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:What's worse than being a Japanese bank?
Being an American phone company, apparently.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Japan's banks
Japan's moribund banks, riddled with bad loans and and insider culture, are one of the main things crippling the Japanese economy. Daniel Gross warns that the latest bout of optimism for bank reform is overblown.
October 21, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:All pensions, all the time
I have another column on Social Security up at TCS.
October 20, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Chock full of capitalist imperialist porky goodness!
I've been busy, busy, busy, so while I'm away, check out the Carnival of the Capitalists, which has all sorts of econoblog-type posts for your delectation.
October 17, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Don't forget!
Blogger bash tonight at 6:30 at the beautiful Shalel Lounge on the Upper West Side. Featuring special guest bloggers from Libertarian Samizdata!
From the desk of Jane Galt:Yankees! Yankees! Yankees!
You know, Yankees fans get a lot of grief.
I'm no fair weather fan; I've been with the Yankees since 1981. At my first live game Dan Pasqua hit three home runs and won the game, and my heart was utterly lost. (He never made much of himself and got shoved down to the minors a few years later, but in my heart, he's forever a shining star.)
This was about like deciding to go into the market in a big way on October 1, 1929.
I suffered with the Yankees for years. Was I bitter? No. When their time came, I rooted for the Mets like a dutiful citizen. I didn't need to drag others down to our (pitiful) level to feel vindicated. I loved the Yankees because they were OUR team, the team my grandmother has watched or listened to faithfully for years, not because of some win-loss record.
Now I know that Red Sox fans are hurting right now. Really, I do know. Remember when y'all were in the series and we weren't? Because I sure do.
I confess, I nearly gave up in despair last night. It seemed hopeless; I thought to go to bed, and take the bad news in the morning, when I'd be more emotionally able to handle it. And then . . . a miracle happened. I don't want to sasy that God loves the Yankees more than other teams . . . but clearly, much of His Special Plan revolves around a victorious squad of Bronx bombers.
Sox fans, please understand that when you see me careening around singing "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee are the champions, my frie-ehnd . . . . !" I mean it in the most loving way possible.
October 16, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Question of the day
I've heard of a supposedly foolproof system of winning at roulette, as follows:
1) Put down your stake on either even, odd, black, or red
2) If you lose, double what you had on the table and bet again on the same thing.
3) If you lose again, double again.
4) Repeat until you win
5) Then stop.
You can only win the amount of your original stake, of course. Can any budding mathematicians find the hole in this theory?
From the desk of Jane Galt:Just how bad is the 9th circuit?
I've heard a number of people argue that the 9th Circuit isn't really wacky -- it's just so big that, unsurprisingly, a lot of its cases get reviewed. Dahlia Lithwick, no rock-ribbed conservative, seems to disagree:
as you'll recall from Wednesday nights, that Lennie and Ed and must usually knock, yell, "Police! Open the door," then wait some respectful interval before summoning the guys with the battering ram. How long? Well, the boys on the 9th Circuit seem to be of the opinion that one should give the drug dealer in question the opportunity to flush the coke, touch up his highlights, purchase a ticket from Orbitz, then climb out the fire escape, as the cops (to quote Ross from last week's Friends) count Mississippi-ly in the hall.The 9th Circuit judges in question—one of whom was, in fairness, a 6th Circuit judge sitting by designation (who died shortly after authoring the opinion in question, so one wants to be careful with the sarcasm)—were particularly moved by the fact that Mr. Banks was in the shower when the police only waited 15 to 20 seconds before bashing his door in. The word "soapy" appears several times in the opinion. Unclear if they might have decided differently had Banks been given an opportunity to rinse and repeat. The soapiness is clearly cause for heightened constitutional scrutiny. The panel, ignoring reams of precedent, chose to set up an elaborate decision matrix, with level of exigency on one axis and the need to damage property on another. It would take a team of NASA scientists to calculate when a no-knock entry or a brief wait would be appropriate using this calculus. The result is a rigid, yet incomprehensible, rule that would have cops waiting some unspecified "longer" period of time than 15 to 20 seconds in non-exigent cases where doors will be bashed.
Defendant Banks, by the way, wants to suppress the evidence found as a result of that search, including the three guns, 11 ounces of crack, a scale, and $6,000 in cash. Even though, as the 9th Circuit dissenter points out, the cops could have waited 50 seconds and Banks still would have been in the shower, unable to hear them knock.
October 15, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Breaking news
The Staten Island Ferry just crashed into the dock, killing at least a dozen people.
From the desk of Jane Galt:We aim to please
Readers have requested more pictures. Here's a black and white snap that didn't make the head shot cut.
As you can see, my desk is not going to be nominated for any Good Housekeeping awards.
From the desk of Jane Galt:How much will a Democratic President be able to raise taxes?
David Broder makes a very good point, and not one that I've seen made quit this way before:
All nine [Democratic presidential candidates] agree on one thing: President Bush's tax breaks for wealthy Americans must be rolled back, either to reduce budget deficits or to finance new health care benefits or both.Some would go much further and eliminate all the reductions Bush has pushed through Congress in the past three years. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean and Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri take that position, while retired Gen. Wesley Clark, and Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut would let middle-class families keep their tax cuts and limit the rollbacks to high-income households.
Yet none of the candidates -- or their policy advisers -- is asked the obvious question: What if the House of Representatives, which must originate revenue bills, remains under Republican control in 2005?
That is the likelihood, after all. None but the most upbeat of Democrats holds out much hope for reversing the majorities Republicans have held in the House since 1994. With few open seats and few seats where incumbents appear to face serious challenges, the most optimistic Democratic prospect is to shave a few seats off the GOP's margin.
And few things in political life are more immutable than the opposition of House Republicans to any talk of tax increases. The last time rates were raised on anyone, in 1993, not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted for President Bill Clinton's tax bill.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Why I'm against making drugs illegal
Not because I use drugs; I'm afraid my worst chemical addiction comes in two liter bottles and has a pleasantly fizzy taste. But because, as Mark Kleiman points out, it's so damn hard to get rid of them, and the costs of trying -- and failing -- to do so are considerable:
One idea about drug law enforcement is that by making the illicit traffic more expensive and dangerous for the people who sell drugs, enforcement can push up the prices of drugs and therefore reduce consumption.The old criticism of this approach, based on the notion that demand for illicit drugs was highly inelastic, turns out to be incorrect; cocaine and heroin, at least, seem to have greater-than-unit elasticity, so a price increase will actually decrease the total amount consumers spend. So increasing drug prices would seem to be a useful goal.
The bad news is that, in the face of mass distribution, enforcement has a very hard time increasing prices. When I learned about the illicit drug markets around 1980, heroin traded at wholesale for about $250,000 per kilogram and at retail in New York for between $2 and $2.50 per pure milligram, reflecting a kilo-to-street markup of about 10x.
Now, after twenty years of intensified drug law enforcement, the wholesale price is about $70,000 a kilo and the retail price in New York about 20 cents per pure milligram. [*], a factor-of-three reduction at wholesale and a factor-of-ten reduction at retail, reflecting a greatly reduced markup. The general price level, as measured by the CPI, has roughly doubled over that period, so the inflation-adjusted price of a pure milligram of heroin is actually down about 95%.
The price drop for cocaine has been a little bit smaller: from about 80 cents per pure milligram in 1980, the price fell very rapidly until about 1988, and has since stablilized (in nominal-dollar) terms at about 15 cents per pure milligram, which adjusted for inflation is a deline of about 90%.
All of this happened in the face of an enforcement effort that increased the number of drug dealers behind bars from about 30,000 in 1980 to about 450,000 today.
Mr Kleiman, who is not in favor of legalization, suggests other policy alternatives to attempting to increasing the price through interdiction. These are mostly focused on minimizing the community disruption caused by drug dealers. But since the criminal behavior is enabled, and indeed often created, by black market premiums and black market practices, it seems to me that making drugs legal would remove the disruption entirely, at much less expense than mitigation efforts.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Things that make you go huh?
Mickey Kaus writes the following about Rush Limbaugh:
I've never shared the liberal animus toward Rush Limbaugh. The few times I've listened to his show it has been conducted on what seems like a pretty high level. But I don't understand why conservatives are attempting to mercilessly deprive liberals of their enjoyment of Limbaugh's current troubles. Even the wisecracking Lucianne has gotten all earnest all of a sudden. I say show some compassion: Let the liberals gloat. ... P.S.: One who is not afraid of gloating is Harry Shearer. If you can listen to his "Rush to Recovery" without even once cruelly laughing at Limbaugh's expense, you have no humanity at all. ...
I should preface this by saying that while I think it's somewhat unseemly to openly gloat at one's opponents misfortunes . . . ostentatious kindness is ever so much more cutting . . . I haven't been among those urging Rush-haters to back off. To the extent that he's been a hypocrite about drugs -- although to be fair, I'm not sure he talked about drugs all that much -- well, payback's a bitch sometimes, and turnabout is fair play.
What flummoxed me was the allegation that Rush Limbaugh conducts his shows at a fairly high level. The few times I've tuned in, it seemed to be a decent enough collection of news clippings that hadn't made the national media the way they perhaps should have . . . but so heavily embroidered with terms like "Feminazi", and allegations that Mr Limbaugh was one of the lone voices of reason in a world full of lying liberals who spend their days plotting the overthrow of all that is good in the world, including Mr Limbaugh, that I couldn't make myself pay attention for very long. But in all fairness, I've only heard his show four or five times, so I might well have just caught him on his bad days.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Just how badly are we doing on civil liberties?
Very interesting defense of the DoJ's actions in the wake of 9/11, based on a talk by somewone who was there.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Speaking of economic problems. . .
Outstanding column by Paul Krugman.
Update Same thing, said better and earlier, and less alarmist, by Arnold Kling.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Tilting at geriatric windmills
I have a column up on Social Security and Medicare at Tech Central Station, complete with flashy new head shot taken by a beloved co-worker.
October 14, 2003
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:I meant to do it last week but I had to clip my nails
Have you ever been reading along in an article and stumbled on something that just didn't seem right? It's unfortunate when little things in a news story aren't right, because you begin to doubt the truth of the whole narrative.
Today's WSJ features a front-page article titled "Behind Dean Surge:A Gang of Bloggers And Webmasters" (unfortunately, you need a subscription). It's an interesting piece that supposedly covers how the Dean campaign got into blogging, etc. I enjoyed reading how Joe Trippi came to manage Dean's campaign, and how his affinity for a particular blog, MyDD, guided hiring and 'grassroots' decision making. Furthermore, the article illustrates part of Dean's appeal - he seems to be adaptable, open, and willing to give up control. Especially relative to his competition. But then this -
The new hire's first assignment: create a campaign blog. That took a week and it wasn't fancy -- readers couldn't directly post comments yet -- but it was the first official campaign blog in presidential election history.A WEEK? Someone with experience can set up a blog in an hour (yes, with comments). A week? This is really going to hurt with the blogging audience.
Dare I ask - what kind of planning went into this if it took a whole week?
Anyway, here's the context. Another observation I made is that the internet may not be a great place to get paid for things, but it sure seems like a great place to get donations.
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- Two years ago, Joe Trippi was a burned-out Democratic operative who had fled Washington for California. Working as a marketing consultant for dot-coms, he was awed to learn how millions of computer whizzes had designed the Linux operating system through a free-form grass-roots collaboration and taken on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows. He wondered if a political campaign could work the same way.Today he is managing Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's campaign and he's stopped wondering. The former Vermont governor is using the Internet to transform political fund raising. About half of the campaign's $25 million take so far was raised over the Web, mostly in small donations -- a funding base the Democratic Party all but abandoned in recent decades.
Mr. Dean's Internet-fueled rise from backbencher to front-runner is a story of desperation, risk and luck. "This thing kind of evolved because of the Internet community, not us," Mr. Dean said in an interview. "The community taught us."Politicians have been mining cash from cyberspace since 1996, when Bob Dole blurted out an incorrect home-page address while debating Bill Clinton. Despite the goof, the site raked in $200,000 overnight. Two years later, the Internet helped Jesse Ventura fund and promote his bid to become Minnesota's governor. In 2000, John McCain got a two-day, $2 million windfall in Web donations after beating George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary. Mr. Dean's Internet donations have propelled him way ahead of his rivals; in all, he has collected about $5 million more than the second-place Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, whose fund-raising pace slowed as Mr. Dean's accelerated. Everyone else is $10 million or more behind.
"Jesse Ventura was the hop. John McCain was the skip. And Howard Dean is the quantum leap," says Michael Cornfield of George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet.
During his California exile, Mr. Trippi couldn't completely disengage from Washington and got addicted to political "blogs." Blogs are Web soapboxes where hosts post news and opinions and readers respond, often rapidly. The effect is a never-ending virtual town-hall meeting.
Last fall, Mr. Trippi was lured back East to run the Dean campaign. Mr. Dean had become the party's most outspoken critic of the war with Iraq, and crowds flocked to his events. But by January, the campaign had just $157,000.
"We will never have any money," the governor complained, according to Mr. Trippi.
"We have to use the Internet" to build a base, Mr. Trippi responded.
Mr. Dean understood the concept, but the details escaped him. "What's a blog?" he asked.
At the time, the blog buzz about Mr. Dean was growing, and William Finkel saw a business opportunity. Mr. Finkel, 24, had just joined New York-based Meetup Inc., which sets up gatherings for people with common interests in bars and restaurants that pay fees to have business steered their way. The company, which started last spring and expects soon to turn a profit, had focused on nonpolitical get-togethers, soliciting names of, say, breast-cancer survivors, sorting them by zip code and setting up local "meetups" for them.
On Jan. 10, Meetup initiated gatherings focused on the three Democratic presidential contenders whom Mr. Finkel felt had Internet drawing power: North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Kerry and Mr. Dean. Within a day, 150 people had signed up for each of the two senators. More than 400 registered for Mr. Dean.
The response was helped by a Dean devotee in Oregon, Jerome Armstrong, a graduate student who promoted Meetup's Dean invitation on his blog, "MyDD," for "my due diligence." MyDD, as it happened, was one of Mr. Trippi's favorites and he had debated Mr. Armstrong via e-mail about an Internet-based presidential campaign. Mr. Armstrong figured Meetup could help Mr. Dean and urged Mr. Trippi to hire the company. On Jan. 27 he did, bargaining the company's proposed monthly fee down to $2,200 from $10,000. The deal allowed the campaign to sponsor its own meetups and, most important, collect e-mails from anyone who expressed interest.
A couple of weeks later, Melanie Choukas-Bradley, a 51-year-old environmental writer in rural Maryland, bought a $50 ticket for a Dean fund-raiser in Washington, at the suggestion of friends from Vermont. She had been fuming over the impending war and the Democrats' meek opposition to President Bush. The campaign asked for her e-mail address, as it did with every prospective supporter. This would become key to its fund-raising success as the campaign's list of 8,000 addresses grew.On March 5, the campaign held its first official meetup in New York. The Essex Restaurant was told to prepare for 200 people, but 500 mobbed it, with more in a line outside. Mr. Dean emerged from his taxi and froze. "I was just shocked, stunned," he recalls. "I didn't understand the implications of [the meetups]. Trippi understood it immediately."
The campaign still lacked money or manpower and had only one Internet expert. But virtual-world supporters soon showed up on the campaign's real-world doorstep.
Mathew Gross, a 31-year-old environmental activist living in Moab, Utah, had been praising Mr. Dean on blogs for months. In March, he quit his job serving burritos and flew east to join the Dean campaign -- without calling ahead.
After stopping to buy a $10 tie, he took a cheap motel room in Burlington, near campaign headquarters. On his first day as a volunteer, he stuffed envelopes. That night he stayed up late writing a memo on the importance of blogs. The next morning, he marched toward Mr. Trippi's office to deliver it, pausing at the door just long enough for senior aides to start escorting him away. Mr. Gross threw the memo toward the boss. "I write on MyDD!" he shouted, guessing Mr. Trippi would understand.
Mr. Trippi's head shot up. "You're hired!" he yelled back.
The new hire's first assignment: create a campaign blog. That took a week and it wasn't fancy -- readers couldn't directly post comments yet -- but it was the first official campaign blog in presidential election history.
Like most campaign Web sites, Mr. Dean's had a donation mechanism. Four days before the first financial quarter ended on March 31, the finance team sent a sheepish appeal for money to the 25,000 people now on the campaign's e-mail list. Mr. Trippi was astounded when about $83,000 arrived via the Web on the last day. He wondered if aggressively soliciting money over the Internet could yield more.
October 12, 2003
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Comment Spam - sending IPs
[last update and horrible question of the day - anybody want to make odds on when these guys figure out trackback?]
Here is a list of IPs from whom I/we have received this sort of thing. The first one was eight months ago or so:
207.88.76.143
219.95.12.122
219.95.14.239
209.210.176.22
The last one was the "preteen lolita" spam. If you have any others, post 'em in the comments. I've banned these here.
UPDATE: also a few brain damaged insult specialists.
UPDATE: according to an unfindable trackback on Winds of Change, these also:
209.210.176.19
209.210.176.20
209.210.176.21 (and 4 more not in the excerpt)
Looks like a whole block of 'em from 209.210.176.0-63 (just type in 209.210.176. in your IP banning)
UPDATE: from Cronaca
61.189.229.61
219.95.14.69
216.228.168.110
Perhaps it is time to show the IP of every commenter. There is a tag in MT to do exactly that.
SOLUTIONS UPDATE: Here is the most direct solution I've seen. I can't get to it tonight, but this would get rid of any automated spambot, as opposed to blocking each IP as it comes up.
Beyond this, the "spider trap" technique seems attractive. As I understand this, you hide a few forms in the page that trigger the "comment.cgi" script. robots will trigger the form, but humans will not. An entry from a hidden form will take their IP and add it to a banned list. Thus they only get you once. I assume this is what MT will do in a forthcoming patch. This could be done in PHP or PERL now, I suppose.
Steven Den Beste (see the comments) sought out the owner of the 209.210.176 block, responsible for some of the more disgusting spam -
OrgName: SISNA, Inc.
OrgID: SISNAI
Address: 265 East 100 South Suite 310
City: Salt Lake City
StateProv: UT
PostalCode:
Country: US
NetRange: 209.210.176.0 - 209.210.176.63
CIDR: 209.210.176.0/26
NetName: SISNA-SLC-SERV
NetHandle: NET-209-210-176-0-2
Parent: NET-209-210-176-0-1
NetType: Reassigned
Comment:
RegDate: 1998-12-02
Updated: 1998-12-02
TechHandle: PN44-ARIN
TechName: Ngai, Peter
TechPhone: +1-801-924-0900
TechEmail: pngai@sisna.com
I'm not suggesting you write to Pete, or turn these folks in or anything, but there you are...
October 10, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Cool site of the day
Find out what time it is anywhere in the world at the World Time Server.
October 09, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:The long slide into mediocrity
Great article from the Atlantic chronicling the tragic decline in the educational standards to which we hold our youth.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Quote of the Day
From Daniel Gross, in Slate:
In the Wall Street Journal, a union official lamented that "When General Motors was the biggest company, it raised the bar on benefits and wages. … Now Wal-Mart is the biggest, and it has lowered the bar." Of course, when General Motors ruled the earth, it operated in a comparatively benign, competition-free environment. It could afford to be generous. Today, GM—along with Ford and DaimlerChrysler—stands as a case study of what happens when a company continually raises benefits while failing to grow. The Big Three are essentially social insurance institutions trying to support themselves by selling motor vehicles.
October 08, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Blogger Bash
Don't forget: all those in the New York area should come meet special guest bloggers from Libertarian Samizdata at the Shalel Lounge on October 17th, starting at 6:30. Be there or be . . . somewhere else, I suppose.
October 07, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Blegging
This is not for a story, but only for my personal satisfaction.
Anyone who lived in Philly during the early nineties remembers the commercial for the various CoreStates Bank product lines, all sung to the same tune. I remember the chorus very well:
We've been through everything you've been through
We've grown up strong and healthy like you
We know what you want your [card/bank/etc.] to do
CoreStates [card/bank/etc.] . . .
You know us and we know you
But while I remember that the verse of at least one started "Ben Franklin, cheesesteaks. . . mumble, mumble . . . Tastykakes . . . ", the remainder eludes me. Can anyone provide the verses for these jingles? The song is stuck in my head, and as long as it's there, I'd like to be able to sing all of it.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Question of the day
I have in front of me a book that cites three countries as having trade comprise more than 100% of GDP: Liberia (527%), Aruba (126.2%) and Syria (105%). Who wants to venture a guess as to how this is possible?
From the desk of Jane Galt:Headline of the day
Canada establishes birthplace of its lone mad cow
. . . a suitable monument will presumably be erected as soon as the search committee comes inside, takes the mulch bucket off its head, and stops barking like a seal.
October 06, 2003
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Advantage: Academic Bloggers
Eugene Volokh offers several good reasons why so many major bloggers are academics, but they all center on positive qualities of academics as opposed to a negative selection working against private sector and other bloggers. It doesn't surprise me at all that academics would thrive in an environment where complete freedom to opine is an advantage.
Speaking freely and spontaneously in a blog is a poor match for a world so quick to take offense at the opinionated. Nobody in the commercial world enjoys the protection of tenure. After all, it is extremely hazardous to say anything that might be considered:
- about or offensive to clients
- about or offensive to colleagues
- research or analysis that one's employer would like to a) sell or b) suppress (if it contradicts the house research, for instance)
etc. etc. My general sense is that if an employer wants to get rid of you, they would go hunting on your blog for words that might seem to violate policy in one of the ways enumerated above, or evidence of blogging during work hours.
I don't dispute an employer's right to tell you what to do during work hours, and I suppose they have the right to contract for control over even the opinions you express on your own time. I do find the latter both shortsighted and repulsive.
I had some comments on my own situation a while ago.
From the desk of Jane Galt:It's a mad, mad world
Okay, Arnold I can kind of buy. But Dennis Miller? I mean, I love the man and all. . . but part of the fine art of running for office is passing up opportunities to be witty when they involve pissing someone off. Pissing people off, wittily, is Miller's greatest talent.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Understatement of the week
From the Economist's Countries section, on political forces in Argentina:
Peronism has a poor record on the peaceful and orderly resolution of internal disputes.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Open Source on the Other Hand
So why did I really write that piece?
I like open source. I think it's come a long way towards building corporate applications. I think the idea of distributed development is just fundamentally neat.
I don't have any love for SCO. I think that the idea of trying to put your competitors out of business via the courts stinks. I have some sympathy for Darl McBride, because I can well imagine how desperate I'd be if I were sitting on top of a failing company, but that doesn't mean I'm rooting for him to win.
I think the open source development model has some issues that are inherent in the structure. It's not good at generating "idiot boxes", which are a large component of the market; Linux developers are, by their nature, not in need of frou-frou wizards, and after all, the strength of open source is the passion of its developers. It's highly un-scalable in revenue terms, which to my mind a problem for the future; Linux competes well against against low-scale, fragmented markets such as those for Unix servers, but I'm skeptical that it can muster either the market power or the developer numbers necessary to take over the desktop. Companies currently funding it seem, to my innocent eyes, to be unlikely to continue doing so at current levels should they achieve their goal of getting Microsoft and its appalling pricing power out of their market. And the problem of accountability seems to be a looming issue.
I know that the open source community has explained how these aren't problems at great length, but I find their explanations unconvincing. And I wish that open source advocates would spend less time telling me that I'm an idiot who's just too stupid to get the new paradigm, and more time telling me how they're going to fully fund development out of what are, essentially, already fully budgeted consulting revenues. But that doesn't mean I want to see Linux fail; I'd be very happy to see it succeed. If you've got a good explanation for how it will, give it to me, don't yell at me.
I don't think that Linux developers pay enough attention to the business side. On the other hand, I didn't think of liability problems either. One of the best classes I took in business school was a class on new ventures. Not big, sexy new ventures, like Red Hat; new ventures like opening your own self-storage place. The class taught us to rip business plans to shreds. It also taught us, by letting us shred some business plans that succeeded, that there is no magic formula for picking a successful business. If someone had pitched Linux to you before it was started, you'd say they were crazy. Now it's got Microsoft looking scared.
But I do think that there are many in the open source community who are focused on the technical aspects of the system, and the advantages to the IT department, to the exclusion of everything else. You can laugh when I say "price and power aren't everything", and I understand why you laugh, but less technical users have other considerations, and the snobbery of techs of all stripes hurts them in at the enterprise level.
I'm on your side, guys. I'm not urging others to make you fail; I'm trying to help you succeed. Maybe I'm wrong, but you can just tell me that; you don't need to hurl insults at me. The level of anger that I generated by merely saying that a lawsuit brought by someone else, which I certainly didn't applaud, might mean trouble, is worrisome. The lesson of open source is supposed to be that a good idea can come from anywhere. If you attack anyone outside the community who points out potential issues, you're closing off a potential avenue of the continuous, decentralized improvement that is supposed to be the great strength of the system.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Open Source Redux
Why do I write about open source? I'm a glutton for punishment.
There have already been a number of emails on my article, all of them excoriating me for not understanding the case.
Many say that the issue isn't copyright. But SCO is suing over misappropriation of copyrighted materials, and bringing in code stolen by others than IBM by claiming that IBM is inducing others to distribute the stolen code in order to relieve its own liability. These claims have been widely referred to in the press as copyright claims; I followed common usage.
Others have claimed that end users can't be sued for infringement. This is just wrong; all the lawyers I've seen quoted said that, yes, indeed, end-users could be liable because the software is sold "as is". It's unlikely that individual users would be targeted, but large corporations could be. This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about -- so far, maybe ten Linux afficionadoes have blithely informed me that it's just not possible to sue end users or distributors of copyrighted material, even though the RIAA pretty much just did.
Many, many others have said that, in fact, SCO has no case because the snippets of code they showed at SCO forum were public domain. This says nothing about all the snippets they didn't show, which are the bulk of their case. The analysts who saw bigger chunks (after signing an NDA) said there seems to be a case. We won't know, of course, until the case gets into court; the analysts weren't allowed to root around in the source code.
Further interlocutors said that I was an idiot because this particular lawsuit couldn't be filed against anyone but IBM. Yes, but again, I'm looking at the next lawsuit, not this one. I'm not interested in litigating the case. I carry no brief for SCO. All I'm interested in is whether the potential liability issues could have a chilling effect on Linux adoption -- not whether this particular case has any merit. Darl McBride could be the antichrist, and the case could be totally worthless, and it could still shut down Linux adoption. And the lawyers seem to be saying that there is a legal issue, and groups like the Gartner Group are warning their clients to hold off on Linux for a while.
Nor am I interested in a debate about the merits of open source. Many people have sent me paens to the wonderfulness of the open source model; others have trashed my background because I used to install (horrors!) NT systems. These things are not relevant to the case. Linux could be the most wonderful operating system in the world, and still get shut down by liability issues, just like a drug that cures a heart attack by giving you cancer won't make it on the market. And while I know that many Linux advocates see Microsoft technical types as zombie monsters intent on conquering hte world for Uncle Bill -- folks, it's just a job. I'm not trying to take down your operating system; that's Darl McBride. I'm just trying to figure out whether Darl's going to succeed. And my considered judgment is that he well might.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Open Source
I have a new column today at Tech Central Station on Open Source, which I wrote because I don't get enough people yelling at me at home.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Yankees! Yankees! Yankees!
Weeeeeeeeeeeeee wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 03, 2003
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Language Removal
Just a quick interruption from exile in the seventh circle of doubt my carefree hiatus to bring you this important voter service related to the California recall from Language Removal Services.
Warning: The Language Removal Home Page looks like some kind of fringe extreme close-up 'pr0n' at first.
October 02, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Prison Rape
This Slate article (hat tip: Tech Central Station) on prison rape does make a good point: many of us are against prison rape, but we're not necessarily sufficiently against it to spend lots of money getting rid of the problem. I mean, personally, I'm willing to do my part by decriminalizing drug use and thus cutting down on the prison population (one of the remedies recommended by the authors), but then, I was in favor of drug legalization before. Am I willing to take my hard earned dollars and give them to the government to build more prisons and hire more guards? Umm . . . how many dollars are we talking about, boss?
From what I know, those construction prisons have a central, apparently unresolvable, problem. If you put the prisoners together, they will commit violent acts against each other, since prisoners, as a group, tend to be sociopathic with little impulse control. If you keep the prisoners isolated from each other, they go nuts. You can mitigate the problem by hiring lots of guards, but since the number of people who want to be prison guards isn't all that great, you either have to pay them a lot, or employ the sort of people who enjoy spending time wielding sticks around sociopaths enough to do it for modest pay.
And there is some evidence that the public operates on a moral sliding scale: are we be willing to pay as much to protect a rapist from getting raped in prison as we are to protect some kid who retailed an ounce of Oaxaca ditch weed to his roommate? Perhaps if we get the non-violent offenders out of the system, we won't care enough to protect those that remain, even though we are, in effect, regularly subjecting prisoners to something that you could never get a jury to vote in as a penalty, which I think is a pretty good definition of cruel and unusual punishment.
From the desk of Jane Galt:A moment of thanks . . .
To everyone who helped fill the grouch bag over at Stately Galt Manor by hitting the tip jar or the adstrip. I love you all.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Things that make you go hmmm . . .
This article by Steven Landsburg cites new economic research suggesting that half of us were once a highly undervalued commodity: baby girls. That's right, all you women who felt like your parents wanted your brothers more were probably right. People expecting a son are more likely to get married; people with sons are more likely to stay married; people with sons are less likely to try for another child.
Yet interestingly, I read an article a while back that suggested that at high income levels that changes. (As indeed does Landsburg's article: the effect is much less pronounced in the US than in poorer countries). The article focused on a clinic that can help you pick, with roughly 80% accuracy, the gender of your baby by centrifuging the sperm. Even though, for reasons I don't recall, the attempt to get a boy had a higher success rate, 2/3 of the couple who went to the clinic were trying for a girl, not a boy. Most of them had already had two or three of the other gender before trying this technique to balance out the family. And they wanted girls, presumably because Mom, who had to do the heavy lifting, had a better chance of persuading her husband to try for a girl so she'd have someone to pass makeup tips onto than Dad had of persuading his wife to give it one more try so he'd have a football partner.
So feminists should be running screaming in the other direction from the quasi-marxist "sustainable community" model. The only way we'll get true equality is to get rich! rich! rich!
October 01, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Obligatory money grubbing
I'm not much of a one for pledge drives. But a couple of people have asked how they could foster my amateur efforts here, so here's the scoop. Want to help support the site? (My student loan officer is huuuuuungry . . . ) There's always the traditional "say it with cash" approach, conveniently facilitated by that Amazon tip jar you see at your left (UPDATE: er . . . right. Must be weak from lack of food . . . ). But if you don't have any money to give (or just don't want to give me any money, which is, incidentally, probably a wise decision on your part), you can still help support my loan officers in the style to which they have become accustomed, by clicking on the ads below.
My google ads pay me every time you click, so browse away! And my BlogAds pay me even if you don't click through, which is all the more reason why you should go see their lovely, lovely websites, and purchase merchandise from those who offer it. Remember: a blogger in default on her student loans is a stressed out, depressed blogger who may not be able to muster the energy to bring you the finest in political, economic, and bullmastiff-related commentary.
But even if you don't do anything, thanks so much for stopping by. Later this week: dog pictures!
From the desk of Jane Galt:Election update
You know the 2004 presidential contest is heating up when the potential nominees start dragging out the mind-bogglingly silly policy proposals for their administration in never-never-land. . .