Me: Frank Lynch

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For something less spontaneous, I maintain The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page (over 1,800 Johnson quotes), with a weekly essay springing from one of Johnson's quotations.

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I like how I can have my entire collection on it. That's what I hear people are saying about their Ipods. Well, give me a break: what happened to simplicity? There are compromises: not only is there the lower fidelity from the medium (which you already experience from listening in those transit-type situations) but there are also compromises with the time it takes to load your music onto it. Like, did you notice that you already have all your music, and you're spending time to make another copy? This time isn't negligible? (If time isn't negligible, work late gleefully.)

Walkmans cost less, and you have more control over what you listen to. It only takes a moment in the morning, and a little commitment to decision making. Oh god forbid you'd miss that random occurrence of Frankie Goes To Hollywood. I shudder at your loss.
Link | | | 11:52 PM | Home

Screw you. With a not very well greased corn cob where it shouldn't oughtta go.

United Airlines has won the right to kiss its pension obligations goodbye.

This is not only the era of accountability which our putzness ran on, but the benefit that shareholders can look forward to under privatization: the employees in the companies where I hold shares will get more screwed than me and my friends will. I'm sorry, but who was talking "Ponzi scheme"?

Whoops, I made a mistake, it's because Bush is against late term partial abortions that we are supposed to accept all these travesties. My bad.
Link | | | 11:15 PM | Home

LINK POTATOES! Did you see this link I put up a few days ago, regarding preliminary discussions between Bush and Blair on invading Iraq?

"There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable," the MI-6 chief said at the meeting, according to the memo. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," or weapons of mass destruction.

The memo said, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Sounds about right to me. George Mitchell on our endangered system of checks and balances. The President may have tried to milk a stallion, but is Frist trying to milk W? (By the way let's be clear, Johnson's line about milking the bull is about a different phenomenon, searching for answers in unpromising places out of desperation. Just to be clear.)
Link | | | 8:50 PM | Home

Looking for action here? A lot of today's action (here, anyway) has been in the comments (scroll down, my post on Krugman's column lit some fires). You know how it is, with work and all... And as the New York Times' new conservative happy-go-lucky John Tierney put it this morning about repetitive news, what's so newsworthy about more and more killings? (I wonder how Tierney would write if this violence were to, A, happen in his neighborhood regularly, B, occur in response to an invasion from an unwelcome army, and C, if the aforesaid invasion were to have occurred because Bush had the intelligence shifted in order to support policy? What the hell's wrong with Tierney? Has he been cuddling up with Babs' "I don't need to hear about those body bags" daily inspirations?)
Link | | | 8:29 PM | Home
 

What are they hiding? The State Department is refusing further requests for information from the Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee, insisting they have all they need to make up their minds about John Bolton's nomination to U.N. Ambassador.

The State Department won't turn over more internal documents requested by Senate Democrats investigating John R. Bolton's fitness to be U.N. ambassador, a spokesman said Monday.

"I don't think we're stiffing anybody here," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. "What we're doing is providing all of the information that's required that's relevant to the investigation," Casey said. "We feel we've given all of the information that's required under those circumstances."

I don't understand - - what's to hide? Why not cooperate and give all that's been requested? If you were behind someone and wanted to help, wouldn't you be more forthcoming?

I could understand being reluctant if a friend of yours were being investigated for murder or something (although, you know, it's against the law to impede an investigation). But Bolton is basically vying for a promotion here. What's to hide, gang?

UPDATE: Can you say "loose cannon"?
Link | | | 9:32 PM | Home

Knowing your political base, and winking. You may already have read Paul Krugman's column today; if you haven't you should, it's a tough pitch for people like Luskin to get any serious wood on:

Let's consider the Bush tax cuts and the Bush [Social Security] benefit cuts as a package. Who gains? Who loses?

Suppose you're a full-time Wal-Mart employee, earning $17,000 a year. You probably didn't get any tax cut. But Mr. Bush says, generously, that he won't cut your Social Security benefits.

Suppose you're earning $60,000 a year. On average, Mr. Bush cut taxes for workers like you by about $1,000 per year. But by 2045 the Bush Social Security plan would cut benefits for workers like you by about $6,500 per year. Not a very good deal.

Suppose, finally, that you're making $1 million a year. You received a tax cut worth about $50,000 per year. By 2045 the Bush plan would reduce benefits for people like you by about $9,400 per year. We have a winner!

And yes, let's be clear, the "slower growth" which Bush talks about is really a cut. Don't think so? Well, let's say your boss promised you a raise of Y next year. And then, before next year kicks in, he cuts Y back to Y minus X. Not a cut? Then enjoy your slower growth, and tell your boss you're happy with it, too.
Link | | | 9:00 PM | Home

U.S. traction, finally. New York Newsday has picked up on the story of Blair's early decision to join Bush for Spring Break in Baghdad. (This is the first I've seen it in US media, it was in the Times of London earlier.) I really hope this gets rolling: the inspectors were clearly just for show, Bush wanted to go from the start.
Link | | | 8:46 PM | Home

Those pesky Dutch students! Don't they know the script?

[S]omeone on Bush's staff apparently made a tragic error over the weekend and the president started taking questions from some young people who hadn't been pre-screened for ideology, hadn't signed a loyalty oath, weren't prepped by a White House advance team, and had questions that the president didn't care for.

Unfortunately, this occurred in the Netherlands, so it wasn't Americans who got to ask their president questions, but it was compelling anyway...

Must be that Old Europe thing. Oh, WAIT, they were part of the coalition...
Link | | | 8:33 PM | Home
 

Is the outrage brewing yet? Just think about the complaints you'd hear, if we learned that interrogations of Eric Rudolph involved taunting him by flushing the Bible down the toilet.

UPDATE: Newsweek is retracting its story.
Link | | | 3:23 PM | Home

Will wonders never cease? Apparently that "third-in-command" Al Qaeda leader captured last week was about as important as a vice president in a bank — just of middling rank. This overclaiming is so typical, and yet again about a matter that's actually important. (I hope we all remember when Condi was on Blitzer's show and claimed that we'd captured three-quarters of the Al Qaeda leadership, without knowing how many leaders there really were.)
Link | | | 11:44 AM | Home
 

I'm having a disconnect... Don't get me wrong, I admire Sir Bob Geldof for what he did with respect to hunger in Africa, and I love a couple of his CDs like all get out. But there are two pieces in this article that don't want to shake hands: Geldof says he's not going to repeat himself with another Live Aid concert, and his spokeswoman (in Britain, it seems, you can be so specific) says "discussions are taking place about holding shows to raise awareness about Africa." There must be a nuance going on. But I'd pay to see Sir Bob, in a NY second.
Link | | | 7:22 PM | Home

Prospect Heights' own! Foxy Brown rejects a plea deal over assault charges. (She was even a cashier at the grocery store around the corner!)

Next up: my analysis of today's startling Michael Jackson news.
Link | | | 6:25 PM | Home

Greg Mankiw is a liar. And I'll tell you why. Over at Social Security Choice, an excerpt from an interview with Mankiw is posted, and the excerpt is in trouble from the get go:

Well I think there's no question that something at some point will have to be done to change the Social Security system. Anybody that looks at the numbers comes away thinking that the current system is just not sustainable in its current form.

Mankiw doesn't say "most people who look," or even "many people who look," he says "anybody that looks" doubts its sustainability. That means everyone, 100.00% without rounding.

It's completely false.

As I've said numerous times, there are many who have concluded differently. And if you don't believe their arguments, you should start with familiarizing yourselves with them.

In Social Security: The Phony Crisis, Baker and Weisbrot point out that the projected shortfalls can be covered with a small increase in the payroll taxes which will go unnoticed, thanks to rising incomes (after tax-income will continue to rise); they also point out that for the stock market to rise in the future at the right rate which the privateers project, the economy has to grow at a sufficiently high rate that the projected revenues in Social Security will increase so much that the shortfalls won't occur. And before you do any of that b-b-but when incomes rise so do the obligations stuff, read Brad DeLong.

Under such a pompous over selling by Mankiw of Social Security's supposed "crisis," who has the time to read more?
Link | | | 11:29 AM | Home

Are they longing for religiously chartered settlements? Via Ishbadiddle via Daily Kos: a Baptist church in North Carolina has expelled members who don't support Bush:

Religion and politics clash over a local church's declaration that Democrats are not welcome.

East Waynesville Baptist asked nine members to leave. Now 40 more have left the church in protest. Former members say Pastor Chan Chandler gave them the ultimatum, saying if they didn't support George Bush, they should resign or repent. The minister declined an interview with News 13. But he did say "the actions were not politically motivated." There are questions about whether the bi-laws were followed when the members were thrown out.

This link at USAToday will probably be more stable than the one above...

During the presidential election last year, Chandler told the congregation that anyone who planned to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry should either leave the church or repent, said former member Lorene Sutton.

Why does this pastor hate the constitution?
Link | | | 9:14 AM | Home
 

The end of a dissident voice. Colonel David Hackworth, a harsh critic of the war in Iraq, has died.
Link | | | 7:15 AM | Home
 

Well, at least Spring Break In Baghdad has been effective at creating opportunities for fraud and waste:

US civilian authorities in Iraq have been unable to account properly for nearly $100m (£53m) earmarked for rebuilding, US financial auditors say.

Two audits found signs of potential fraud regarding the money, which includes oil revenue and assets seized from Saddam Hussein's government.

A third questioned the use of almost $18bn in US taxpayers' money for reconstruction projects in Iraq.

The audits found "no assurance that fraud, waste and abuse did not occur".

Lovely, just lovely. The entire world should be upset about this (not just citizens in Iraq and the U.S.), given all the international turmoil we caused by forcing this initiative.
Link | | | 6:59 AM | Home
 

A different view on Social Security. (The following is from Tom Faranda, whom I offered a plank of the floor a couple nights ago. He left this in the comments, but I think it's only fair to put it out as singular post. Tom wrote in response to this post of mine. Just one more thing, the disclosure: if I remember correctly, Tom is a financial consultant?)

To address several points:

The costs associated with personal accounts will be quite low compared to the costs of commercially available mutual funds (including no-load funds sold without a sale commission). The average annual costs of a mutual fund are a bit over 1%. In other words, if the gross return on your fund is 9%, the net to you is going to be 8% or slightly lower (on average). When you see a mutual fund advertisement and they quote past performance, thyey are quoting performance net of the internal costs. These fees include management, administration, etc.

However the cost of the accounts in the Federal Thrift Program is .30% - three tenths of one per cent. This is partly because all the funds are "passively" managed index funds - there are no managers to pay. And also they are "thrifty." The best known commercial fund family to take a similar approach is the Vanguard group.

The reason Wall Street likes the personal account concept has nothing to do with fund management profits - it's strictly the fact that over the long run it will introduce many people to investing, outside of bank accounts.

I broke down and ordered a (second hand) copy of the Baker and Weisbrot book. I am curious as to where they get the numbers for the "premium" for annuities being 15-20% of their value. Are they saying that for every $100 put into an annuity, only $80-$85 goes to work for the customer and the rest is overhead? I'd loved to know how they arrived at that figure. The insurance company acquisition costs (commissions they have to pay) to put an immediate annuity on their books is 4-5% max. This would include all payments to both an insurance agent and his boss (the general agent). Then the company has M & E costs (mortality and expense costs) and they have to build in some profit. But I can't see where that would get to the 10-15% level.

You need to remember that an immediate annuity is the reverse of life insurance. With life insurance you pay an insurance company a relatively small premium, and if/when you die, the insurer pays a relatively large lump sum of money. The insurer pools the buyer with large groups of poeple and can make predictions about approximately what number of people will die when. That's how they determine the premium.

With the immediate annuity, you give the insurer a relatively large sum of money and the company pays you relatively small income stream for your life. Again, with large numbers of annuitants the insurer can make a good calculation of about how many people will die, and when. That's how they determine the monthly payout.

The trick for the annuity consumer is to live a long time so you are one of the people the insurer has to pay for many years. One of the big injustices in the SS system has been mentioned by many commentators - the poor/lower paid workers (and members of minorities) have lower life expectancies, so they are in effect subsidizing the better paid, predominantly white members of the SS pool.

There's no use simply arguing "the poor and minorities should get better health care, preventive care, etc." Of course they should. But that's just not the point here - the point is how to provide a better measure of economic justice, and giving ownership rights through personal accounts is a major way of doing that.

I want to thank Tom for spending the time to write this, I hope to have time to respond soon. For all sorts of reasons it's a tough week at Chez Lynch.
Link | | | 9:45 PM | Home

Shibboleth posting. It's sad that we need to do these, but if you don't, the rabid righties start with their posts over their absence. But yes, let's be clear, this is good news, unequivocally. (The bad news, of course, is that the wingnuts pretend to be the hall monitors.)
Link | | | 9:24 PM | Home

Marketing Pat Tillman. Nothing Pat Tillman did on the battlefield in Afghanistan (so far as I know) diminishes his status as a patriot, not in my eyes. Every one of our troops faces huge risks, and none can be confident of returning home. And on top of that, so many of our troops face additional financial hurdles due to extended tours (I'm thinking of the reservists here). Tillman, obviously, made an even greater financial sacrifice by foregoing his NFL salary in order to serve. I salute him. The sad thing, though, is that his sacrifice and death was not enough: he had to be memorialized as having died from enemy fire, when the brass knew better.

Soldiers on the scene said they were immediately sure Tillman was killed by a barrage of American bullets as he took shelter behind a large boulder during a twilight firefight along a narrow canyon road near the Pakistani border, according to nearly 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and investigative reports obtained by The Washington Post.

The documents also show that officers made erroneous initial reports that Tillman was killed by enemy fire, destroyed critical evidence and initially concealed the truth from Tillman's brother, also an Army Ranger, who was near the attack on April 22, 2004, but did not witness it.

In a way, their desire to market a hero doesn't cheapen all the others, it cheapens the brass. I shake my head, befuddled...
Link | | | 8:19 PM | Home
 

Rethinking privatized accounts. I've given them a lot of thought this past weekend, and it's clear that they won't only cure the insolvency issues for Social Security, but they'll put Social Security in the mega-black, to the point that Social Security can throw off super-funded obligations and build a better world, and persuade the undeveloped nations that Ellington is the way. If not Ellington, then the Trashcan Sinatras at least.

I'm being unfair: even the President isn't saying that privatization alone will cure the projected insolvency for Social Security... But if you've been reading here, I've been drinking the poison of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (by Baker and Weisbrot), wherein the severity of the shortfall is strongly questioned. Among their arguments against the severity of the crisis (or rather, the conflict between the crisis concept and the miracle of private accounts) is the disparity between the growth of the economy suggested by the forecasts for Social Security and the promises of growth in a private account based on stocks and bonds (an issue raised not only there, but here.) That is, if private accounts grow at the supposed rate, the economy has to grow at a higher rate than the Social Security Administration forecasts, in which case insolvency disappears.

But uh oh, there's also this from Baker and Weisbrot: in the commercial markets, annuities are not free. On average, the premium for annuities is 15-20% of their value. What do annuities have to do with privatized Social Security accounts? Well, annuities are the instrument that are supposed to pay you on a monthly basis after you retire, using the proceeds from your private account. At least, that's what's been suggested by people like Donald Luskin and others. So, to sum up in colloquial terms:

• We have to pay for the transition costs associated with private accounts;
• Private accounts will have fees which will whittle away at the account values, and the rate of whittling will be greater than what we might see were they managed by the government;
• The accounts' values will be further whittled down by the fees associated with selling annuities;
• It might all even be unnecessary ("hooha," to put it in colloquial terms), for the reason cited above regarding projected economic growth as well as others I haven't brought in yet (it being late and this being a "hobby")... those others being projected rises in incomes, under which a small sliver of an increase in payroll taxes would still leave a great net plus in after-tax income, as well as productivity increases... (See Social Security: The Phony Crisis)

That, I guess, is the fruit of my rethinking. But now I want to do a public, open call out to a frequent commenter here. Not as a challenge, but as an opening to dialogue. There aren't, so far as I know, spaces where opposing viewpoints are put out with equality.

I want to open the floor to Tom Faranda. Tom, this site isn't run by blogger or blogspot, I do it all through html and WordPerfect, so it's not like I can issue you a password and you can post at will. But I am willing to give you a plank of the floor, and I'll mark it up in html. Think about it.
Link | | | 11:07 PM | Home

Moving on to the Humanities (Part 2). (I guess I should start numbering these...) An Ekdahl Christmas: this weekend I made an aspirational DVD purchase, one I really want to watch but can't be confident I'll be able to, if you get my drift. It's the Criterion Collection edition of Fanny and Alexander, the edition with the expanded Swedish television version. In the theater this was a movie which I loved in so many ways: not just the way it was shot, but the story it told about childhood, drenched in mysticism. And that scream: such a wail I have never heard! I've seen very little else by Bergman, but nothing struck me like this. Anyway, I started to watch it tonight, thinking that Abigail (who is out of town) wouldn't miss my watching it without her. As I watched, though, I questioned that decision and shut it off.

The last scene I saw before shutting it off was very thought provoking, however. It's Christmas Eve, when Christian charity should be in overdrive (as if it should ever abate!). Isak, a shopkeeper, has just given instructions to his assistant Aron (and from these names... well, you know...). Walking down the street, Isak encounters a violinist, with an associate holding a cup; Isak puts a coin in the cup, and from the sound, you know the cup is otherwise completely empty. I remember a lot from when I last saw the film, and I remember a harsh minister who marries Fanny and Alexander's widowed mother; I'm not completely sure Bergman is indicting shallow Christianity yet, but the shopkeeper's coin in an otherwise empty cup on Christmas Eve is pretty telling.

I hope Ab will want to watch, I'm kind of chomping at the bit on this...
Link | | | 9:00 PM | Home

Is it really May? A front page article at the Washington Post, published today, is questioning whether or not Bush had a mandate with his slim victory over Kerry. "Doubts About Mandate for Bush, GOP." Where has the Post been, for God's sake? Does this mean they'll feel free to take the gloves off now?
Link | | | 7:14 AM | Home

Sadly, three more car bombs on Monday in Iraq. And on Sunday a car bomb killed 25 at a funeral. Think we'll be out before Bush II is over?
Link | | | 7:04 AM | Home
 

Moving on to the humanities... I took my daughter and one of her friends to see A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this afternoon, and I have to tell you it was a relentless hoot, top to bottom. Alan Rickman was his usual splendid self, even though he was in far less than the starring role (I can't remember not enjoying what he's done, and Truly Madly Deeply will always hold a special place in my part). A curious age thing: I cried when Arthur articulated the great question, while my eleven year old daughter winced most when Marvin was shot through.

On another note, this weekend I've been listening to the 5 CD The Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack. It's a splendid collection drawn from a handful of nights at Winterland in 1974, and on the whole I think it's three or four rungs better than Europe '72. I think the songs are more interesting and the performances stronger. Why did it take 30 years for this to come out?
Link | | | 7:04 PM | Home

Is John Bolton against capital punishment? U.S. law is not under his jurisdiction, either in his current post or in the post he's been nominated for. But in an editorial of his (published in USAToday in 2000) I linked to below, one of his reasons against international courts was this:

First, the ICC wrongly assumes that war-crimes perpetrators will actually be deterred by the risk of possible conviction. But hard men like Hitler and Pol Pot are often not deterred from aggression, even by cold steel, let alone by a weak and distant institution with no real enforcement powers. Last year, Slobodan Milosevic, aided by the now- deceased Arkan, ignored the existing Yugoslav tribunal and inflicted grievous wrongs in Kosovo. Holding out the prospect of ICC deterrence to the truly weak and vulnerable is a cruel joke.

Thankfully, there are few Hitlers and Milosevics in the world. Can we be thankful that there are so few because of international law? Or, it is possible that there are many who are lower rank than those two who are also deterred?

If none are deterred, then what are to make of capital punishment? Surely there have been mass murderers and serial killers who did their deeds in spite of the threat of prosecution. Should we throw out all death penalty sentences under the same reasoning as Bolton has offered here?

Maybe this is a false choice, but the two choices which occur to me are that either justice is not a deterrent in general, or, Bolton has inappropriately focused on two extreme cases to make his point.
Link | | | 1:53 PM | Home

Understanding Bolton. A profile up this morning at the New York Times provoked an immediate shiver on my part: if you see the same edition I see, you'll quickly see a picture of him carefully scrutinizing chad counting in West Palm Beach during the Florida 2000 Presidential recount process. He's quoted as saying, "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team and I'm here to stop the count." Perhaps he also said things like "I'm here in the interest of safeguarding democracy" or "The will of the people is what counts." If he did, we don't see it in this article... And we're left with the feeling that this man is a partisan politician, for we also read in the photo caption that "Dick Cheney later said that Mr. Bolton deserved 'anything he wants' in the administration." I personally cannot imagine why anyone should receive such an unqualified endorsement; surely there must have been areas where he wasn't qualified? Perhaps I hold the Bush Administration to the wrong standards.

One article, of course, does not a political career describe. If you look at his online resume at the State Department, you see that he apparently only worked in the government during years when Republicans were in the White House. Prior to Reagan, he worked as an attorney in private practice; during the Clinton years he worked again in private practice as well as at the American Enterprise Institute. (It appears that in 2000, the year of the recount, his sole employer was the AEI; if he worked for the Bush campaign in other capacities, it's not on this resume.) Of course, it's not unheard of for people to enter and leave the private sector as the party of the White House changes: you see a similar path regarding Richard Armitage. New Mexico governor Bill Richardson also only held administration posts during the Clinton years (non-Clinton years were spent in other branches of state and federal government).

Supporters sometimes try to brush off his remarks about leveling the upper floors of the United Nations under some sort of statute of limitations; but you don't have to spend much time over at the AEI web site before you find writings of his like this, from 2000:

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a fundamentally flawed idea that the United States should unequivocally reject and actively oppose, despite its moralistic rationale.

Because the ICC reflects a crabbed, hopelessly legalistic view of international life, it will most likely be weak and ineffective, although no less troubling for the illusions of stability it will create. Unfortunately, there is another possibility, that it might actually acquire real enforcement power, and then inevitably be politicized and used against the United States and close allies such as Israel.

He goes on considerably from there, and doesn't soften up. (Personally, I think that the last few weeks of American history have pointed out why we need institutions like the ICC: in my books, too many in the brass have gotten off for abuses in our war against terror, and the accountability seems to stop with the soldiers on the ground. I wonder what kind of signal this sends to our troops regarding our support? But I digress...)

Trying to hide away the long history of what Bolton has said as if due to age alone it's irrelevant is patently ridiculous. When Kerry was running for President, the GOP pulled out everything it could, dating back to his years as Lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, under Dukakis (1983-84), certainly earlier than the era during which Bolton made some of his inflammatory comments. If Bolton's statements have been less inflammatory while in the State Department, it points to the grave necessity of keeping him under a tight leash. And from reports we hear about his unapproved speech on Korea, as well as filtering out discrepant opinions from getting to Powell and Rice over Iran, it appears a choker collar won't even be enough.

I bring all this up, of course, because we are far from out of the woods regarding his nomination to U.N. ambassador. (Bush expressed strong support for him on Thursday night, for instance.) Republican senators on the Foreign Relations Committee are surely receiving pressure from U.N.-hating conservatives regarding their votes. (These groups still undoubtedly hate the U.N. Security Council for its failure to endorse Bush's Spring Break in Baghdad a couple years ago, and it surely rankles them even more that Blix and Baradei were spot on about the usefulness of giving the inspectors more time.) So: if you live in Rhode Island, Alaska, Nebraska, or Ohio, your senators are the Republicans who are on the fence. You can use the links on that page to contact them, and I urge you to do so. Of course, if you review the list of Senators on that page and decide to contact some other senator, feel free to. Just be polite and prepared: this link may provide you with additional, valuable information.
Link | | | 11:29 AM | Home
 

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