Gusalmighty.com: A Leaded Perspective

Honor her death

Here is a nice story of someone doing something about the world, even as death drags them through the door. Gertrude M Jones used her own obituary to file a public complaint against the current POTUS, asking people who wish to provide a memorial donation to do so via support for groups seeking to oust the President in the next election. Howard Dean and Wes Clark's campaign have both noted that a few donations have come in in Ms Jones's name.

I like this lady. She was 81 when she died on August 25. I think she lived in New Orleans vicinity.

I wonder if her gravestone is anything like Royal Tennebaums?

We are our enemy

One of the many many things in life that I can't figure out and don't quite understand is the divisiveness of American political sentiment, especially with regard to liberal social welfare agenda. I can't for the life of me understand why people don't want the government to provide assistance and services to the American people, to provide a healthy safety net that looks out for the poorest amongst us. America is a proud nation that stands together tall, "one nation under God," yet we balk at collective measures to provide for the weakest members. I'm not a religious person, but wouldn't God vote liberal in this case?

I understand the arguments against waste and inefficiency and think that those criticism are necessary and valued contributions to the process of building a strong unified society. Wasteful and unneeded programs need to be slimmed down; the budget isn't there as a potluck. But the answer to inefficiency isn't to cut welfare and services, it is to improve them. And when we really get down to it, as a nation, we can afford a little inefficiency. It's shameful that we have the economic and techological prowess that we have yet even working families live in poverty.

We are a single nation united under a conscious banner and unconscious cultural mores. We subscribe to the same newspapers and watch the same TV shows. As society changes, for better or for worse, we are all involved (and responsible). This is nowhere more apparent than in the surge of single parent families that our nation has seen over the last generation.

Attitudes towards single parent families aside (and you are welcome to criticize or commend them), fact is it is not beneficial to the family (and thus not beneficial to society) for the parent to be working two jobs and never able to raise the child. It's well known and well cited (but more often ignored it seems) that it takes a village to raise a child. Our options are plain:

1) Condemn the family to poverty with a parent that doesn't work
2) Ignore the risks of a lack of guidance and applaud a parent that works and just finds someone to look after the kid.
3) Use government money to pay the parent to stay at home (living assistance welfare)
4) Use government money to provide quality child care.

The latter two options have obvious costs in dollars, but the first two options actually cost our society more. My favored option would be subsidized child care. This gets the parent out in the workplace, where they want to be, and frees up labor for our workforce, aiding the economy in general. The federal funds aren't raw expenditures but investments under this system. I think they are investments in the 3rd option as well, but not as good. The first two options just lead to shitty lives for kids who will grow up to be shitty parents.

Yes, there are success stories about children whose parent was never there while away working multiple low-paying jobs who were able to climb out of the poverty gutter and become successful. But that doesn't prove that it is possible for everyone. Just the opposite: it demonstrates that most people *don't* get out. If success in life is our gold standard, doesn't it make more sense to lower the barriers by supporting families?

I close by returning to my original question here: why is this such a hard thing for us to do as a nation? I think that in spite of our jingoistic revelations of unity, I think we view our fellow citizens with suspicion and fear. It's definitely there on a racial level, with the blacks as violent threats and the asians and Indians as intellectual threats. We are told we live in an age of violent threat from rogue nations and disease and that no matter what we do, we're going to get killed before we die. And that, my friends, is why we hoarde and hate and fail to look out for each other.

Elderly Welfare

I read yesterday that the average annual bill for prescription medicine among the retired elderly is about $3,100, and some people have annual bills of over $13,000 for medicines necessary to keep them alive. For anyone other than the filthy rich this is a staggering amount of money, all the more so when you consider that old people don't have earned incomes. I can sympathize with their call for federal prescription drug benefits to help ease this burden.

But although I sympathize, I'm not sure I support such a call. I don't know if I like the idea of using tax dollars to buy drugs for old people, especially when we don't use tax dollars to provide basic health benefits to the general non-elderly population and the law prevents us from buying particular recreational drugs as we may desire, even when these drugs are just plants and fungus. I'm not trying to turn a cold shoulder to old people here, but it just doesn't seem to be appropriate.

I like old people. I think they are pretty cool and I wish the nation as whole took greater pride in and care of our older generations. Their experiences over the last century are unique in the history of the universe and it is a shame to not capitalize on their wisdom and experiences more. Old people are a national treasure, a resource to be cherished and honored.

But when your time comes, your time comes. The human body isn't supposed to last for a 100 years, especially considering the stress we put it through in the environments we live in. Bodies wear out, plain and simple. I don't think it is the best idea to use our collective financial resources paying for kidney dialysis and hypertension pills.

This is a difficult opinion to hold though becuase it feels so heartless. I think that part of it rests with our collective fear of death and shame associated with the passing of a life. Death is a nasty thing, hidden away and treated as an enemy that we have to combat with the aim of conquering. This leads us to despise death instead of embracing it as the final chapter of the incredible rollercoaster ride of life. Death is inevitable, and if we recognize this and life our lives with an eye to it, we may instill a new sense of purpose and accomlishment, not to mention better health habits.

In a nation of overweight, diabetic, underexercised, smoking couch potatoes, the idea that we should spend our tax money on financing life past its due date strikes me as wrong, as a way of running away from facing up to moral responsibility and a perpetuation of the nasty habit of focusing on treating the systems instead of teh causes of a problem.

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't offer health benefits or insurance coverage to people. I DO support that idea. I'd even support providing chemical crutches to people below the average life span. But once you beat the odds and pass the average age, no more subsidies and welfare. Life with dignity and allow the nation to collective invest in the next generation, providing benefits for children and those still in the prime earning and caregiving years.

But if my opinion on this would be adopted by a majority, it would have to be accompanied with a sense of respect and gratitude to the elderly, for we are choosing to force them to continue to provide for themselvse long after they have given of themselves to others. It's a tough position to take, and I am not really excited to hold this opinion, but I can't help it.

Then again, maybe shunting some of the billions (that is thousands of millions) of dollars we spend on building weapons would solve the problem. I'd be happiest if this were to happen, but the realist in me knows that the (current, at least) powers that be would never concede to the value of that.

Stuffing the electronic ballot box?

I used to think that electronic voting was a needed killer app for modern democracy. I felt it would empower the masses and bring democracy back into the people's hands, away from the representative system we have here. My idealism yet again fell victim to the reality of computer systems, as the security mandates involved in massive online voting fall short in so many ways.

But now it turns out that the dangers from the outside are being usurped by the dangers from the inside. Get this: the people who are making the electronic voting machines are ardent Republican supports and the head of Diebold has been quoted as saying that he is commited to delivering electoral votes to the incumbent President next year.

Not only that, but the machines themselves are black boxes. We, the public, don't have any access to how they work and what they do when votes are tallied, processed, and sent. Apparenlty, the machines are also being used to count the votes as they come in, a legal no-no. Votes are only countable after voting has closed (but polling of voters after they've cast their ballot is okay).

This is a bad thing brewing here. We've got courts upholding the use of hokey punch-card machines in California, Supreme Courts denying recounts of ballots to determine Presidents, and now big money contributors to particular parties are put in charge of voting mechanisms with no public oversight? C'mon people!

One for the future media archaeologists

Many people have heard the bushwacked version of the 2003 State of the Union address, but I have just been alerted to the presence of a video version that is even more realistic. The addition of the video images makes the cut up audio even smoother. Very well done.

It made me wonder what media archaeologists of 4000 years hence would make of our era if they discover this remnant of history rather than the actual recording. Kind of like the phone call that Madeline Stowe made in 12 Monkeys.

Every move you make....

Check out this story to see what kind of handbasket we are riding in these days. It's a(n apparently true) story about a guy who had a chat with the F.B.I. after someone called them and reported him as reading "suspicious" papers (an internet printout) at a coffee shop. Gestapo, anyone?

And they said the T.I.P.S. snitch program wasn't implemented.

Big thanks to PSH over at Suckful for pointing this out. Be sure to check his site regularly, as it be a spicy meatball!

Plausible Deniability

This bullshit in D.C. has been planned from the beginning. Doesn't anyone think that it is odd that Bush made the effort to mention in the State of the Union that the information we got about the Iraqi attempts to buy uranium was from the British? There was no need to qualify where we got the intel from, but because everyone who had even the slightest awareness of facts knew that this was a complete falsity (including me, who discovered the truth about the uranium forgery in 12 seconds online way back when I first heard about it), I cannot help but believe that false information was intentionally used with the qualifier that it came from the British precisely in case the American public caught on to the lie. Then, as Rumsfeld and Rice have been saying lately, it will be possible to truthfully argue that Bush never lied about it. It is a fact that the information came from the British, and that is what Bush said. Never mind that it was known to be false.

Essentially Bush and his team are saying that they weren't really saying that Saddam had tried to buy uranium, they were just saying that the British told them that Saddam was trying to buy uranium. This is low-handed backstabbing of Blair and his adminstration as well, leaving them out to flap in the wind.

The simple mention that we got the information from the British just smells bad. Why bother to mention it unless you were setting up some insurance later on? They knew the information was false, but they said it in a way that duped the American public yet left them with a safe exit. And Bush campaigned on integrity...

This is but one example of the well-known ability for the Americans to allow themselves to buy into whatever it is their government and media are selling. It serves to emphasize the importance of a variety of media sources in a regular information diet, but considering that most Americans don't even have passports, it's probably expecting too much.

UN/US trade roles with regard to Iraq sanctions

I couldn't help but cackle aloud at this Washington Post article that explains how the United States wants the UN to lift sanctions on Iraq immediately but the UN wants to wait until it can ensure its involvement in the future of Iraq. The UN is insisting that it can't lift sanctions until it Iraq's disarmament has been established, a process that naturally involves UN weapons inspectors. The US argues that its military should be able to verify the existence of WMD and thus can validate the disarmament.

I just find it funny because the US was forever in favor of sanctions that accomplished nothing towards their intended purpose and only served to wreak death and disease on a population while further strengthening its eeeeeeeevil leader. Now they pull the "we need to do what is good for the Iraqi people" line out of their ass as a card to play against the UN trying to get itself a useful and substantial role in the rebuilding of the country.

I can't imagine why the US wouldn't want the UN on board. Well, I can, but not by any rational calculation. Having as many extra multi-lateral organizations involved would only seek to dissuade those who suggest the occupation liberation of Iraq was for the sake of the US gov't first and the Iraqis second.

If anyone is interested, Foreign Affairs magazine has a pretty good article that lays out a good plan for building democracy in Iraq. My money is that the US doesn't employ anything remotely close to that though.

Japan to renounce nationhood in bid to mend economy

Newly appointed Bank of Japan head Hiromasa Fukui unveiled his highly anticipated plan for bringing Japan out of the now 12-year long recession that has proved resilient to all other attempts to rectify it. Following a bubble economy in the 1980s driven by little men with big egos who like to burn money on real estate, the Japanese stock market has lost 60% of its value and has interest rates of 0.00000000000000412%. Joblessness has reached horrendous levels at 5.5% of the working population and homeless sarariman have established chic blue-tarp castles under local bridges and in many public parks and castle grounds.

In response to the pressure to finally fix the problems, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi appointed a luke-warm conservative in the apparent hope that he would decide to break with his life-long business precendent and develop a radical plan with even a chance to cure Japan's economic ills.

The plan, in typical Japanese fashion, refused to outline a specific strategy and offered a plate of options ranging from a switch to the Euro and a nationwide day of seppuku. The option that garnered the most interest both publicly and politically appears to be headed for passage into law within the next 2 weeks with the implementation beginning in early May.

Mr Fukui's suggestion to throw in the towel on Japan's lot in the world and start anew has struck a chord with the nation that rose from the ashes of WWII with nary a nail for their coffins. The proposal demands that Japan renounce its nationhood status, toss out the ¥en as currency, and join forces with Taiwan.

"It's obvious to anyone who's bothered to look that China is the future, in all things economic, military, political, and spiritual," quipped Rakuhoku Uetsuka during a debate in the Upper House of the Japanese Diet. "We have never been originators of anything and see no particular reason to maintain an independent identity in the face of such a future in China's shadow."

The rationale behind the push to join Taiwan politically and economically is based on the assumption that China's claim to the territory will eventually result in the absorption of the island into the Asian juggernaut.

"If we can hold our economy together long enough to ride the coattails of China's growth, we'll be okay. We've got a rapidly aging population and there isn't a kamikaze's chance that we'll be able to support all the old people we're going to have around here in a few years. This is the only way forward for us. We share a written language, so it shouldn't be so hard to merge."

There have been no official comments from the Chinese government regarding this plan, but analysts suggest that China's memory of Japanese atrocities in WWII may impede the smooth transition envised by the Japanese authorities.

DMCA ownz yuo!

Wired reports that Lexmark has won its case against Static Control, a company that provides competition to the Lexmark's monopoly on ink cartridges for Lexmark printers. Lexmark built a specialized chip system into their printers that prevent the use of ink cartridges that don't have a certain chip built into them. Static Control figured out a way to make their own cartridges work and sold them as a low cost alternative to the price-gouging offerings from Lexmark.

Lexmark then sued under the auspices of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act which was passed to aid in stemming the illegal copying of copyrighted Intellectual Property, mostly music and video. One of the most controversial aspects of the DMCA is that it outlawed the circumvention of copyright controls such as encryption, even if the reason for the circumvention was to use the copyrighted material in legal ways. This has the effect of locking up material that can otherwise be legally used.

In this case, Lexmark claims that Static Control's discovery of how to integrate their ink cartridges with Lexmark printers violates this same rule. The most amazing thing is that Lexmark claims this is good for competition:

From the article linked above:

Vincent Cole, Lexmark's general counsel, said Thursday the company was pleased. "We believe that our printing solutions and services make us unique, and we intend to vigorously protect the intellectual property that helps to set us apart from our competition," he said in the statement.

Huh? What competitors do you have when you shut off their access to the market? Zero! Nada! Nai! Njet!

It is this kind of application of the DMCA that nicely illustrates how flawed it is. The idea behind copyright is to encourage innovation by protection granting a short-term monopoly to innovators for profit. DMCA was supposed to just help provide that incentive, but here we see it being applied to squash innovation and reduce marketplace competition. It hurts the job market (imagine if Static Control has to close up shop. More unemployed, yo).

Anyone interested in understanding more of how the DMCA is ruining the world should read this PDF from the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

Inside Information

A source placed in a highly sensitive work environment gave me inside information that Bush is going to declare war within the next 72 hours. All I can say is that I hope the dollar plunges against the yen because I have to send back some cash to pay off some debts.

Remember, you heard it here first.