Minority Report

I'm a Bad Blogger with a Good Excuse

I know - it's been over a week since the last post, which was not really a post at all, but more of a why you wouldn't see me around much. Since that time, I've disposed of three years of my life, donated two years of it to the Salvation army, moved another three into storage and the most recent two to New Jersey - utilizing two rental cars, my sister's car, and three plane flights.

I've endured the first non-wedding related meeting of my family and my in-laws, who came into town to catch the spectacle of me graduating (a really lacklustre affair, unfortunately). My wife and I have closed on our first home and I've spent the better part of the last two days changing addresses, finding contractors, and getting ready to move yet again.

I've spent most of today ripping out the carpet from our floors, in order to save a few bucks - in hindsight, I realize from the economist's perspective that I was better off paying someone to deal with this nonsense - although it does represent my first homeowner-type activity. Don't hold your breath that I will be painting, plumbing, or any of those other household fixit things anytime soon. I think I've had my fill.

When I'm not blogging, that's also usually a good indication that I'm also not reading the paper and not paying attention to the news. It usually takes me a few days to get caught up with what's happening. The most interesting thing that I've seen is the New York Times' series on class in America, complete with a little guide they've developed to show how you stack up in America based on some key indicators.

The only other thing that I'm aware of is that today was the release date for Star Wars: Episode III. There were a bunch of theaters that began screenings last night at 12:01am but although I'm a big fan, even I'm not that crazy. Thankfully, the reviews are indicating that this one finally lives up to the standards set by the original trilogy although I'm still withholding judgement. This is the hardest part of the story to tell - and maybe people are just comparing it to the first two - so any improvement would be considered good.

All-in-all, I think it'll be another week of sparse blogging before I can get back into the saddle. Maybe I'll try to cram a bunch of posts tomorrow...

Moving Week

Not sure why this didn't post yesterday but FYI, I'm in the process of finally getting out of Pittsburgh for New York. Posting will be sparse this week. Check out Prometheus 6 for informed commentary on what's happening in the news.

In the meantime, Lester Gesteland, a New Jersey resident, has been listening in on 101.5FM in New Jersey and compiling a list of sponsors. Write the sponsors and let them know you don't approve of them sponsoring broadcasts that promote racist political disenfranchisement.

Be Sure to Go to This

Either this weekend or at the point that time travel becomes feasible:

Why not, say some students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who have organized what they call the first convention for time travelers.

Actually, they contend that theirs is the only time traveler convention the world needs, because people from the future can travel to it anytime they want.

"I would hope they would come with the idea of showing us that time travel is possible," said Amal Dorai, 22, the graduate student who thought up the convention, which is to be this Saturday on the M.I.T. campus. "Maybe they could leave something with us. It is possible they might look slightly different, the shape of the head, the body proportions."

The event is potluck and alcohol-free - present-day humans are bringing things like brownies. But Mr. Dorai's Web site asks that future-folk bring something to prove they are really ahead of our time: "Things like a cure for AIDS or cancer, a solution for global poverty or a cold fusion reactor would be particularly convincing as well as greatly appreciated."

...In case their august university does not exist forever, they have posted the latitude and longitude of the East Campus Courtyard (42:21:36.025 degrees north, 71:05:16.332 degrees west).

A roped-off area, including part of an improvised volleyball court, will create a landing pad so materializing time-travel machines will not crash into trees or dormitories.

Too bad I'm preparing for my move - I guess I'll have to wait until time travel is readily available...

Perspective of the Australian Foreign Minister

Met the Australian Foreign Minister today, Alexander Downer, who was in town meeting with our Dean and other school administrators to discuss plans to open a campus in Australia. Apparently, Australia is really interested in establishing a public policy program with a strong IT emphasis there.

They held an informal reception for him with a small group of graduating students and he offered his perspectives on Australia, the US, and the world. Pretty nice guy, very observant of cultural differences and values, which I guess is a good quality for a foreign minister. The perspectives he gave, which are obviously aligned with Australian foreign policy, didn't exactly inspire my confidence.

I asked him if he thought that the war in Iraq had hampered opinions of the West within the Islamic world, especially since the State Department has issued a report indicating a rise in terror incidents. His view was first, that the State Department report shouldn't be taken as indication that the absolute number of incidents has increased, but rather that reporting has improved.

Second, he thought that we shouldn't believe the liberal press views that the war in Iraq has inflamed the passions of the Islamic world. He believes that the Arab street either vaguely admires the US or is at worst, ambivalent about it. He thinks that the Arab street hates being under tyranny, since so many people live under autocratic regimes. They therefore welcome democracy in Iraq since it forebodes democracy in their own country. What he finds troubling are the tensions between Shiites and Shia, which he compared to the tension that might be had between a Episcopalian and a Catholic.

I think he's probably right that many in the Arab world would welcome democracy, but I think what he ultimately failed to acknowledge, is that the US and possibly the rest of the Western world, doesn't actually want democracy in the Middle East. Historically, the US has preferred dictatorships, even Saddam Hussein's, because it's much easier to negotiate and deal with one person (or group of persons). Dealing with democracies are much more complex, since they often work at the whim of the people, and we can't control the people.

Look at the Saudis - we're not exactly pushing the royal family to get out of the way for democracy. We practically shunned the Turks for their democratic exercise of their rights to not support US troop deployments in their country. Our efforts in Iraq have been driven mostly towards controlling the kind of democracy that will take place there, out of fear that a true vote of the population would result in a Shia democratic theocracy.

On top of that credibility issue, is just the pure brutality of our presence there. The thoughtlessness  and the corruption in managing Iraq, from reconstruction to how we treat people and more specifically, prisoners, there - how can that not provoke an angry and bitter reaction?  If a bad customer experience causes that customer to tell 12 people, how many does an improper search, a wrongful detention, or the death of an innocent civilian create? We can control what the news media says about it, we can avoid counting the civilian casualties, but we can't prevent the Iraqi people from telling anyone about their grievances. Won't we get blamed for our own misconduct in that country and won't our mistreatment inspire vengeance?

Last Day of School

No friggin' way can I be angry about anything today. Not when I can be drunk!

Caught in the Headlights of Justice

This is the best news I've heard all week. After two years of not watching any television beyond a couple of episodes of the Daily Show, I can't wait for this to hit:

Comedy Central said yesterday that it was giving Mr. Colbert his own show: a half-hour that is expected to follow "The Daily Show" on weeknights and will lampoon those cable-news shows that are dominated by the personality and sensibility of a single host. Think, he said, of Bill O'Reilly and Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity.

...It will be called "The Colbert Report" - though, if Mr. Colbert has his way, the announcer will pronounce it with a faux-French accent: The co-BEAR ra-PORE.

..."We're going to deal with truth on my program," Mr. Colbert said. "We're going to catch the world in the headlights of my justice."

Arresting the Homeless for $2 Bus Fare

This is the kind of shit that drives me crazy about public policy:

The M35 bus arrests offer a vivid look at the reality behind the debate. They began several years ago, after a complaint by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that a rowdy group of riders had tried to throw a driver off the bus for challenging them over the fare. Since then, undercover officers have monitored the route.

The bus starts at 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, crosses the Triborough Bridge and reaches the shelters on Wards Island, a small island across the East River, in less than 10 minutes.

Homeless men and the lawyers who defend them say that the city created a Catch-22 when it designated the shelter as the place to sleep but then started arresting people who could not pay for the bus to get there. Even if they wanted to walk to the shelter, the men said, they could not, because the only footbridge from Manhattan is closed in the late fall and winter and at other times closes after 8 p.m.

"You're setting me up," said Shavar Shaver, 21, of Brooklyn, who was arrested with five other people for not paying his fare in January. "They're the easiest victims, the homeless people. Its entrapment. Why don't you go fight some real crime?"

These misdemeanor offenses go on their criminal record. So someone who is genuinely destitute trying to get to the homeless shelter could build up a pretty large "rap sheet" of misdemeanor thefts simply because they couldn't afford the bus fare to get there. And these men are really motivated to get to the shelter since if they miss a night, they lose their spot and have to go through the process all over again.

How much does the city spend to arrest these guys?

In interviews, five criminal court judges who spoke on the condition of anonymity questioned the wisdom of the arrests, saying that they wasted judicial resources. A court system spokesman said he could not quantify the cost of arraigning one defendant, a process that involves a judge, a prosecutor, court officers and a court stenographer. Most defendants also spend the night in jail, which costs $163, according to a breakdown by the city.

"I consistently put on the record how outraged I am by the whole thing," said Kathryn E. Freed, an arraignment court judge. "It's a complete waste of the court's time. It takes a lot of person-power to process them, house them and feed them. Meanwhile, the shelter, where they're heading, is set up to do just that."

Perhaps most frustrating, some of the homeless men said, is that even after moving through the legal system, they are in the same predicament they were the day before: They still have to get to the shelter.

Common sense public policy - just make a bus exclusively for indigent people trying to get to their shelters so that you don't have the run-up of legal and other costs to make them criminals for being poor.

No! We Must Make Billions and Billions of Dollars

Instead of just billions. The New York Times has a surprising piece examining whether Wal-Mart can afford to pay its employees more. This paragraph sums Wal-mart's choices rather nicely:

Many of those assailing Wal-Mart argue that the company can, and should, pay its workers at least $2 more an hour and add $1 or $2 an hour beyond that to improve its health benefits. A Harvard Business School study found that Wal-Mart paid $3,500 a year for each employee for health care, while the typical American corporation paid $5,600.

If Wal-Mart spent $3.50 an hour more for wages and benefits of its full-time employees, that would cost the company about $6.5 billion a year. At less than 3 percent of its sales in the United States, critics say, Wal-Mart could absorb these costs by slightly raising its prices or accepting somewhat lower profits.

The company performs some interesting gymnastics to get around this argument. First, they suggest that they already pay a significant wage:

Here in Bentonville, Mr. Scott pursued that theme. "If you're telling me because you're Wal-Mart and you're going to pay $12 an hour and this other retailer is going to pay $5.15 an hour, the federal minimum wage, and they're not going to provide any benefits at all and somehow the consumer is rewarded in all this, all you're doing is perpetuating the status quo," he said. "You're driving inefficiencies into the system. It doesn't make any sense."

And then, of course, talking about how increased wages would hurt the low-income customers of Wal-marts who depend so highly on their low, low prices:

If "we raised prices substantially to fund above-market wages, as some critics urge," the company argued in a recent two-page ad in The New York Review of Books, "we'd betray our commitment to tens of millions of customers, many of whom struggle to make ends meet."

It's interesting that the notion of just accepting lower profits simply doesn't even enter the decision calculus. If they pay higher wages, they must raise prices, and higher prices hurt their customers. Only problem is that this argument depends largely on the lie that their wages would be substantially higher than above-market. That would certainly be true if the market wage was the minimum wage - which this NY Times graphics helpfully illustrates is not the case.

Of course, if Wal-mart was really interested in helping out the customer struggling to make ends meet, they'd give up profits altogether and pass the savings onto their customers. The best distortion is how Wal-Mart suggests that they are a good employer because tons of people apply to work there:

He said that if Wal-Mart were as greedy as its detractors say, it would never have attracted 8,000 job applicants for 525 places at a new store in Glendale, Ariz., or 3,000 applicants for 300 jobs in outlying Los Angeles.

Yeah, that might be true if this were a popping economy and lots of people weren't unemployed. Moreover, as has been well documented, when Wal-mart enters a market, they put enormous competitive pressure on other retail stores that pay living wages to cut costs. Those stores cut employees or shut down altogether. When you're in a tough economy, no jobs around, I'm sure even the crap ass pay that Wal-mart gives is worthwhile if it means that you can make a dent in your rent.

It all boils down to the fact that Wal-Mart is greedy as hell and even though it can afford to pay its employees better, it won't because ultimately it's not about serving employees or even customers - it's all about the shareholder.

Holy Crap! Quoted by MSNBC!

For my post about Microsoft dropping its support for the gay community. Good thing I'm a Mac user - doesn't sound like Microsoft was too happy:

The reports created an uproar among advocates for gay and lesbian rights and in the blogosphere, where Microsoft was portrayed as having abandoned its gay and lesbian employees. (MSNBC is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC News.)

“They threw us to the radical right dogs and now are risking every other company in America withdrawing its support for our civil rights legislation as well,” wrote “John in DC” on the widely read Americablog, while another writer, identified as “Angry Desi” wrote on The Minority Report: “Any way you look at it, Microsoft is leaving gays out in the cold.”

...Tami Bergasse, a senior corporate spokeswoman for Microsoft, said Friday that the company’s stances on diversity and nondiscrimination had not changed and noted that Microsoft issued a letter in support of the Washington legislation, which has been introduced annually for many years, as recently as the last session.

Reports that Microsoft had rescinded its support for anti-discrimination policies misrepresented the company’s position, Bergasse said. “What the reality is is that we moved to a neutral position on this bill, and we did it well before the legislative session,” she said.

Reading the article, Microsoft still insists that this is a neutral move and has nothing to do with the Christian bigot. If that's the truth, then they shouldn't have taken the meeting with him or they should have kept support for the legislation this year, then let the gay community that they were going to back off for next year's cycle. That's the only way for Microsoft to avoid the perception that they caved.

Not a Racist Bone in His Body

Except for the one that likes to shoot at Korean Americans with a BB gun, via Angry Asian Man:

RUTLAND, Vt. --A 19-year-old Rutland man has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly firing a BB gun and striking two Asian members of a high school track team running through the city.

Daniel Streeter pleaded innocent Friday in Vermont District Court to two counts of attempted aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the April 25 incident. He was released on conditions that he not contact the alleged victims.

Prosecutors also charged both offenses as hate crimes, which provides for enhanced penalties if convicted.

Deputy State's Attorney Marc Brierre said in court Friday that the hate crime provision was added because Streeter fired his BB gun as the Mount St. Joseph Academy track team was running on Meadow Street and hit the two non-Caucasian members of the team, even though they were not next to each other.

..."His wife and mother assured me that he does not have a racist bone in his body," Lancaster said of Streeter.

Rutland City Police said Timothy Jones, Mount St. Joseph Academy track team's coach, called Monday afternoon reporting the incident.

Police interviewed the two students hit from behind by the BBs, Joseph Park, 18, and Janet Oh, 15.

Park told police he had welts after being shot twice in the buttocks, Schutt wrote. Oh said she had a small welt on the small of her back, the affidavit stated. Both refused medical treatment.

Both Park and Oh told police they believed they were targeted because they are Korean.