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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Friday, April 16, 2004 :::
From the Journal:Over the past year, a successful technology entrepreneur named Jim Hake has been working with the Marine Corps to help their reconstruction projects in Iraq. The Marines identify local equipment needs, and Mr. Hake's organization, Spirit of America, after raising the money, acquires the stuff, typically for schools and medical clinics. It flies directly out of Camp Pendleton in California. Jim Hake and the Marines are a coalition of the can-do, bypassing the slow U.S. procurement bureaucracy. More on that effort in a moment. Here's where you come in:
The First Marine Expeditionary Force and U.S. Army in Iraq want to equip and upgrade seven defunct Iraqi-owned TV stations in Al Anbar province--west of Baghdad--so that average Iraqis have better televised information than the propaganda they get from the notorious Al-Jazeera. If Jim Hake can raise $100,000, his Spirit of America will buy the equipment in the U.S., ship it to the Marines in Iraq and get Iraqi-run TV on the air before the June 30 handover. Here's the site.
::: posted by Steven at 6:57 PM
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I'd heard of efforts to contain grade inflation at Princeton before I saw that OpinionJournal piece. While I was out there the president of the undergraduate student body made a statement once defending grade inflation, and I remember commenting that if somebody at the University of Chicago had said that, he might well be pushed in front of the next Metra train.
::: posted by dWj at 9:48 AM
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In an uncustomary touch, Bush drew attention to U.S. casualties in Iraq in a pointed way, quoting an Iowa father who recently buried his son, a Marine. Typically in his speeches, Bush refers broadly to military sacrifice, and he has not attended the funeral of any of the nearly 700 U.S. troops killed in Iraq.
But here, with the conflict escalating -- 92 U.S. troops have been killed this month, the deadliest month since the Iraqi conflict began 13 months ago -- Bush cited the father of Lance Cpl. Ben Carman, of Jefferson, Iowa. He quoted Carman's father as saying that his son "knew that America was in danger, and it was time for guys like him to step up to the plate." Bush expressed "deepest sympathies" to the family, saying, "I know how incredibly difficult it is for them to put their loved one into the ground."
"The situation on the ground, I readily concede, is tough work," Bush said. "We will stay the course in Iraq so his son did not die in vain." Kudos to the President for being willing to bring it up. From the Washington Post.
::: posted by dWj at 9:43 AM
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Avvinti got out of the car and talked to the agent, and then got back into the car and began clutching his chest, Rubenstein said. The agent issued the $115 ticket and left without calling 911, he said. Sure; probably wasn't his job. Might have violated labor rules.
::: posted by dWj at 9:27 AM
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Thursday, April 15, 2004 :::
Forbes got to try out Google's upcoming GMail service. The review is mostly positive:As yet, many other basic features, like access to external email accounts via POP3 protocol, and the ability to change the "reply-to address" that appears in mail you send, are missing from Gmail. But it's still early in its existence. When the service gets to general release, we won't be surprised to see a mass migration from Hotmail, Microsoft's free Web-based email service, which has in recent months gone from being average to utterly abysmal in terms of user experience.
Users of Yahoo!'s much better and more powerful Web mail service may start to migrate as well, if only to get around the fees that Yahoo! charges for extra storage. As it stands right now Gmail's main advantage is its storage limit and searching ability. For many users, that may be enough. Link from JJDaley.
::: posted by Steven at 11:38 PM
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Recent scholarly research on international taxation has explored the impact of the tax code on the competitiveness of U.S. firms. Two factors that significantly undermine our competitiveness have been identified. The first is that we tax corporate income on a "worldwide" basis. If a company makes a profit in France, it will have to pay U.S. tax on that profit when it mails the money home, after receiving a credit for foreign taxes paid. Most other countries do not tax foreign profits at all. Any multinational firm that earns money in France, after all, pays French tax immediately. Why should we add a second tax on top of that?The other factor that harms U.S. competitiveness is the very high rate of U.S. corporate tax. Most other countries have reduced their corporate tax rates sharply in recent years. The U.S. has not, and the result is that we are now one of the highest tax countries on earth. ... So how do U.S. multinational firms stay competitive despite these disadvantages? Under current law, they can locate production and profits abroad and avoid paying the very high U.S. taxes by letting profits sit in bank accounts overseas. This strategy does not avoid foreign taxes, but since those are much lower than ours, the playing field is leveled somewhat.... Senator Kerry plans to end this. If a multinational makes money abroad, it must pay U.S. taxes immediately... The Kerry team clearly recognized the possibility that they were causing significant harm, because they added a loophole. If a U.S. multinational produces a product in a foreign country for consumption in that country, then they will continue to allow the firm to avoid U.S. tax until the money is mailed back home.... So why would anyone propose such a thing? Some industries, like food production, already operate that way. Because of local food regulations, and concerns about spoilage, it is often the case that food companies locate a separate plant in each country that they serve. Chief among these is Heinz Read it.
::: posted by dWj at 9:58 PM
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Regarding 9/11-commissioner John Lehman:Lehman's focus was the transition between the Clinton and Bush administrations. He told Rice that he was "struck by the continuity of the policies rather than the differences," and then he proceeded to ask Rice a series of blunt questions as to what she was told during the transition.
Among Lehman's questions was this: "Were you aware that it was the policy...to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that's discriminatory?"
[...]
"We had testimony a couple of months ago from the past president of United, and current president of American Airlines that kind of shocked us all," Lehman told me. "They said under oath that indeed the Department of Transportation continued to fine any airline that was caught having more than two people of the same ethnic persuasion in a secondary line for line for questioning, including and especially, two Arabs."
Wait a minute. So if airline security had three suspicious Arab guys they had had to let one go because they'd reached a quota?
That was it, Lehman said, "because of this political correctness that became so entrenched in the 1990s, and continues in current administration. No one approves of racial profiling, that is not the issue. The fact is that Norwegian women are not, and 85-year-old women with aluminum walkers are not, the source of the terrorist threat. The fact is that our enemy is the violent Islamic extremism and the overwhelming number of people that one need to worry about are young Arab males, and to ask them a couple of extra questions seems to me to be common sense, yet if an airline does that in numbers that are more than proportionate to their number in particular line, then they get fined and that is why you see so many blue haired old ladies and people that are clearly not of Middle Eastern extraction being hauled out in such numbers because otherwise they get fined."
[...]
I'm starting to understand why John McCain was insistent that Secretary Lehman be put on the commission. Like McCain, Lehman isn't beholden to the partisan Democrats, or to the administration. This former Navy reserve officer who flew combat missions over Vietnam and was named Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Navy when he was just 38 years old, seems only to want the truth exposed, without regard for the blame game that has come to characterize the public proceedings of the 9/11 Commission. I only wish we had nine more like him, in which case I'd be much more confident that we're in the process of getting to the bottom of what went wrong and ensuring it doesn't happen again, instead of the high-stakes partisan skirmish that seems to have taken shape. Yeah, what he said.
::: posted by Steven at 6:10 PM
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I may be in a strange mood to find this as funny as I do: As I survey the views of people around my country, there is a lot more nuance than is transmitted by your journalists and pundits. The media leave out nuance? Gambling at Rick's?
::: posted by dWj at 1:21 PM
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From the Schadenfraude department:Taxpayers working feverishly to meet the April 15 filing deadline can take some comfort knowing they are not alone when it comes to scratching their heads over this year's forms. Tax returns are getting more complicated. I actually take a striking lack of comfort in that.It is not only frustrating, but economically counterproductive, said David Keating, senior counselor for the National Taxpayers Union and author of a new study on tax complexity."This is something that hobbles the nation's productivity because we have a lot of very talented people filling out paperwork," he said. "It's a real deadweight in our economy." And there's schedule D:Capital gains can be taxed at multiple rates this year, depending when the asset was bought and sold. Yeah, I remember particularly enjoying that part of the form.
::: posted by dWj at 11:40 AM
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There's no penalty for filing late for a refund, except, of course, that you forego any earnings on that refund until you get it. If the IRS wants yet more money from you, even after all they made off with last year, you can get an automatic extension on filing, but not on payment; I guess you're supposed to take a stab at it and try to send in at least the right amount, hoping to get back the difference later. But if you hear otherwise from someone who knows what they're talking about, listen to that instead of me.Addendum: I don't know whether the rules, even insofar as I have them correct for the feds, are the same for the state of Illinois, but if I'd had no interest, dividends, or capital gains, I would be due a 4¢ refund. I'm not sure to what extent it's supposed to be viewed as optional to file your taxes, but if, as I understand it, there's no penalty for never doing so if you're due a refund, it wouldn't be worth the postage stamp for me to file. (As it is there are enough adjustments that this isn't even terribly close to the situation.) Addendum 2: This guy seems to know what he's talking about. If you make this payment and cover at least 90% of your real liability, you win. You don’t pay a late filing or late payment penalty. Earlier he implies that the penalty for filing late applies only if you need to pay more taxes.
::: posted by dWj at 9:39 AM
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Taxes are due today. If you haven't started yet, you probably should.
::: posted by Steven at 6:54 AM
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Wednesday, April 14, 2004 :::
An email to The Corner from someone familiar with the intelligence world; it emphasizes the difficulty of a quick fix, and criticizes related demogoguery. Out of a sense of obligation to provide some snippet here, let's go with"and the fixes YESTERDAY." What fixes? [Fewer] layers between the analysts and the policymakers? More raw data to the policymakers? Maybe that will improve things; maybe that will result in policymakers doing the job analysts should be doing. More information to other agencies? Congress leaks classified information like a sieve; would the security benefits of giving info to the FAA, FBI, TSA, Homeland Security, etc. be worth the risk that some bureaucrat could leak information that can identify sources and methods?
::: posted by dWj at 2:40 PM
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I have acquired pants.That might make a good enough post by itself, but something curious about the pants I bought last night is that they include, sewn in inside, an extra button. I've seen this before, and would consider it unremarkable, except that the pants aren't closed with a button — they use that metal hook-type-thing that I'm used to seeing in suit pants. The pants contain no functional button, only what would be a replacement button had it something to replace.
::: posted by dWj at 12:17 PM
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Dorothy Rabinowitz at OpinionJournal has a somewhat lengthy write-up on the anti-Bush group of 9/11 widows, in particular their starting four.Others who had lost family to the terrorists' assault commanded little to no interest from TV interviewers. Debra Burlingame — lifelong Democrat, sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, captain of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, did manage to land an interview after Ms. Rice's appearance. When she had finished airing her views critical of the accusatory tone and tactics of the Jersey Girls, her interviewer, ABC congressional reporter Linda Douglass marveled, "This is the first time I've heard this point of view."
That shouldn't have been surprising. The hearing room that day had seen a substantial group of 9/11 families, similarly irate over the Jersey Girls and their accusations — families that made their feelings evident in their burst of loud applause when Ms. Rice scored a telling zinger under questioning. But these were not the 9/11 voices TV and newspaper editors were interested in. They had chosen to tell a different story — that of four intrepid New Jersey housewives who had, as one news report had it, brought an administration "to its knees" — and that was, as far as they were concerned, the only story.
::: posted by dWj at 11:10 AM
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A California state senator said Monday she was drafting legislation to block Google's free e-mail service "Gmail" because it would place advertising in personal messages after searching them for key words. I was going to comment on this, but Prof. Volokh already said what I would say, except he's said it better.
::: posted by Steven at 12:07 AM
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Tuesday, April 13, 2004 :::
Jack Welch presses the administration to be willing to change the June 30 deadline if necessary — and he presses us to understand if he does.
::: posted by dWj at 5:40 PM
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I got out of bed a couple hours ago and have been drinking a lot of juice. I felt like death warmed over, which was an improvement over this morning, when I didn't feel warmed over. I'm feeling more or less crummy right now, which is enough of an improvement on both that I think I'm going to my Swedish class tonight.I checked my stocks, and thought it interesting that they were ordered by the dollar value of the holding, from the biggest holding to the smallest. This, it turns out, was coincidence; they were also ordered alphabetically by stock symbol. For 6 items, the odds are 1 in 60 that they would be either ascending or descending in the same order in position size as alphabetically. Correction: That's 1 in 360. And an illustration of why it's a good thing yet that I'm not at work, perhaps.
::: posted by dWj at 3:46 PM
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Since there seems to have been some confusion on this point: that comment that we don't have any nude pictures here? That wasn't meant as a request. Thanks, though.
::: posted by Steven at 1:47 AM
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Lileks, for Newhouse:"If we had been able to put (the hijackers) on the watch list of the airlines, the two who were in the country; again if we'd stopped some of those people at the borders; if we had acted earlier on al-Qaida when (it) was smaller and just getting started ... the whole story might have been different."
If. If. Maybe. If. If George W. Bush had phoned the Saudis on the first day of his administration and told them any act of Islamist terror would result in a mushroom cloud over Mecca, and that he would consider it "what we call in bowling a practice frame," it might have been different. It might have been different if B-52s had taken out the Taliban in February 2001 -- and we all know how Ted Kennedy et al. would have exploded in a rain of bile had Bush kicked off his term with a pre-emptive war. The articles of impeachment would have been drawn up before the first wave of bombers returned to base. I might have backed impeachment.
::: posted by Steven at 1:34 AM
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Monday, April 12, 2004 :::
The New York Times Magazine has a piece about fighting malaria:As malaria surges once again in Africa, victories are few. But South Africa is beating the disease with a simple remedy: spraying the inside walls of houses in affected regions once a year. Several insecticides can be used, but South Africa has chosen the most effective one. It lasts twice as long as the alternatives. It repels mosquitoes in addition to killing them, which delays the onset of pesticide-resistance. It costs a quarter as much as the next cheapest insecticide. It is DDT.
KwaZulu-Natal, the province of South Africa where Ndumo and Mosvold are located, sprayed with DDT until 1996, then stopped, in part under pressure from other nations, and switched to another insecticide. But mosquitoes proved to be resistant to the new insecticide, and malaria cases soared. Since DDT was brought back in 2000, malaria is once again under control. To South Africans, DDT is their best defense against a killer disease.
To Americans, DDT is simply a killer. Ask Americans over 40 to name the most dangerous chemical they know, and chances are that they will say DDT. Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane was banned in the United States in 1972. The chemical was once sprayed in huge quantities over cities and fields of cotton and other crops. Its persistence in the ecosystem, where it builds up to kill birds and fish, has become a symbol of the dangers of playing God with nature, an icon of human arrogance. Countries throughout the world have signed a treaty promising to phase out its use.
Yet what really merits outrage about DDT today is not that South Africa still uses it, as do about five other countries for routine malaria control and about 10 more for emergencies. It is that dozens more do not. Malaria is a disease Westerners no longer have to think about. Independent malariologists believe it kills two million people a year, mainly children under 5 and 90 percent of them in Africa. Until it was overtaken by AIDS in 1999, it was Africa's leading killer. One in 20 African children dies of malaria, and many of those who survive are brain-damaged. Each year, 300 to 500 million people worldwide get malaria. RtWT. Link probably requires free registration.
::: posted by Steven at 4:36 PM
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Lowry on WalMart:More than 90 percent of Wal-Mart employees have health insurance. Half of those get their insurance through the company, and the rest through other means, whether their parents, or spouse, or Medicare. Many Wal-Mart employees are young people or semi-retired, and thus aren't supporting families. Employment there can be an escalator to success. Two-thirds of the stores' managers are former hourly employees.
Meanwhile, the competition howls about Wal-Mart for good reason ? because it almost invariably gets out-hustled, out-discounted and altogether out-retailed. FAO Schwarz, the pretentious toy seller, has nearly been bludgeoned out of business by Walton's creation. Such is the cost of selling overpriced toys in the age of Wal-Mart. Yes, the killer store snuffs out charming local retailers, but most consumers simply value convenience and low prices more than charm.
All across America, shoppers have voted with their cash and charge cards. Almost a third of all disposable diapers and hair products are purchased at Wal-Mart. No other store sells more groceries, toys, or furniture. This is a boon for lower-income Americans who spend a disproportionate amount of their income on retail goods. As a Federal Reserve economist has said, "Wal-Mart is the greatest thing that ever happened to low-income Americans." Labels: Wal-Mart
::: posted by Steven at 3:15 PM
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Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau to Set Low-Carb Beer StandardsThe Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau set interim standards for the use of terms like "low carbohydrate," saying an alcoholic beverage must have less than 7 grams of carbohydrates to be labeled or advertised as such. A serving of alcoholic beverage traditionally contains 17 grams of alcohol.
::: posted by dWj at 2:52 PM
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Somebody found this blog by searching for "kerry healey nude". Kerry Healey is our Lieutenant Governor, unless she spells her name "Healy" -- I believe she spells it one way and the city manager of Cambridge spells his name the other way, but I can't remember which is which. At any rate, I don't have any pictures of either of them, in any state of dress. Sorry to disappoint.
Well, not that sorry.
::: posted by Steven at 8:09 AM
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Sunday, April 11, 2004 :::
Phil Mickelson has won The Masters.
::: posted by dWj at 7:36 PM
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The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.'"... Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
::: posted by dWj at 9:43 AM
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Phil "Avis" Mickelson is tied for the lead at Augusta going into the final round.
::: posted by dWj at 12:57 AM
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