Seen on the street. I’m told these t-shirts are available on Obama’s website.
Category: Politics
The Visible Man
Hasan Elahi whips out his Samsung Pocket PC phone and shows me how he’s keeping himself out of Guantanamo. He swivels the camera lens around and snaps a picture of the Manhattan Starbucks where we’re drinking coffee. Then he squints and pecks at the phone’s touchscreen. “OK! It’s uploading now,” says the cheery, 35-year-old artist and Rutgers professor, whose bleached-blond hair complements his fluorescent-green pants. “It’ll go public in a few seconds.” Sure enough, a moment later the shot appears on the front page of his Web site, TrackingTransience.net.
There are already tons of pictures there. Elahi will post about a hundred today — the rooms he sat in, the food he ate, the coffees he ordered. Poke around his site and you’ll find more than 20,000 images stretching back three years. Elahi has documented nearly every waking hour of his life during that time. He posts copies of every debit card transaction, so you can see what he bought, where, and when. A GPS device in his pocket reports his real-time physical location on a map.
Earmarks, “Phonemarking”, Congressional Excesses and Wisconsin Representative David Obey
John Solomon & Jeffrey Birnbaum:
But the new majority is already skirting its own reforms.
Perhaps the biggest retreat from that pledge came this week, when House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) told fellow lawmakers that he intends to keep requests for earmarks out of pending spending bills, at least for now. Obey said the committee will deal with them at the end of the appropriations process in the closed-door meetings between House and Senate negotiators known as conference committees.
Democrats had complained bitterly in recent years that Republicans routinely slipped multimillion-dollar pet projects into spending bills at the end of the legislative process, preventing any chance for serious public scrutiny. Now Democrats are poised to do the same.
“I don’t give a damn if people criticize me or not,” Obey said.
Obey’s spokeswoman, Kirstin Brost, said his intention is not to keep the projects secret. Rather, she said, so many requests for spending were made to the appropriations panel — more than 30,000 this year — that its staff has been unable to study them and decide their validity.
For instance, a new emergency spending bill for the Iraq war passed by the House this month had no specific earmarks, but it included a clause declaring that all the projects lawmakers had included in a previously vetoed bill were, in effect, included.
Likewise, the House Appropriations Committee report accompanying the Iraq supplemental spending bill vetoed by President Bush boldly declared: “This bill, as reported, contains no congressional earmarks, limited tax benefits, or limited tariff benefits.” But it set aside money for pet projects including $25 million for spinach, $60 million for salmon fisheries and $5 million for aquaculture.
“Absolutely nothing has changed,” said the Center for Defense Information’s Winslow T. Wheeler, a Senate appropriations and national security aide who worked for both Democrats and Republicans over three decades before stepping down in 2002. “The rhetoric has changed but not the behavior, and the behavior has gotten worse in the sense that while they are pretending to reform things, they are still groveling in the trough.”
A 2006 spending bill included $6.9M for Obey’s Northern Wisconsin District. Much more on earmarks, including those spread around Madison, here.
More from the Examiner here.
More US Inflation than Government Data Lets On?
This week’s Up and Down Wall Street looks at a recent analysis out of QB Partners. They are a hedge fund run by Lee Quaintance and Paul Brodsky.
QB put together an analysis of the US dollar, and why its ongoing weakness is both significant and ongoing. In their analysis they see the buck ultimately endingits run as the world’s reserve currency.
The heart of the analysis is the quandry left for the current Fed chairman Ben Bernake by new PIMCO flack and former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan.
Poor Ben is confronted with a long term Hobson’s choice: tighten the monetary and credit screws to bolster the dollar, go the other way — loosen credit and lower rates even further to prop up asset prices. Why is this no choice at all? Because History has taught us the Central Bank will continue to “inflate the money supply and promote more credit, thereby sustaining asset prices at the expense of the purchasing power of the dollar.”
There’s something to this. Grocery shopping recently I noticed that Stonyfield’s yogurts are now .99 each, up from .79 not so long ago. I also noticed that Listerine has shrunk their $6.50ish container, thereby increasing the price. I wonder how solid the Government data is?
True Broadband: Vermont vs. Wisconsin
An hour or so ago the Vermont House and Senate both gave final approval to a bill designed to make Vermont the nation’s first e-state. As defined in Vermont, e-stateness means cellular and adequate broadband coverage – fixed and mobile – everywhere in the state by 2010. The initial definition of adequate fixed broadband is 3 megabits per second service in at least one direction; but the bill contains a mechanism for ratcheting that up as requirements escalate. It is estimated that this requirement may be as high as 20 megabits in both directions by 2013.
Although the bill passed the Vermont House with an overwhelming 132-2 vote more than a month ago, it was by no means assured of passage. Vermont’s citizen legislature is hoping to adjourn for the year sometime tonight. There was a danger that the Senate would not have the time it needed to consider all aspects of this very large bill. But they did!
Quite a contrast to Wisconsin’s process, where AT&T’s stagnant infrastructure (and more importantly, their lobbying prowess) carries the day. Gotta love our forward thinking politicians.
I-80: Inverse Traffic Therapy
I read with interest two recent posts regarding Madison’s traffic congestion. I, too have a fleeting moment or two when I consider Madison’s growing traffic congestion. It is difficult to use the words “Madison” together with “traffic congestion” after one has experienced the real, big city version. The photo above was taken recently while stuck in traffic on I-80. We’re a long way from that. Regional growth certainly makes our transportation system a rather useful topic for discussion and action. My dream? TGV type train service connecting Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee and Minneapolis.
Obama Blows it on MySpace
Micah Sifry has a great example of how the Obama campaign staff crushed a volunteer that had generated a huge following on MySpace. When the site Joe Anthony had sweated over reached epic proportions, the Obama campaign decided they needed to take control. So rather than hire the guy (or even fly out to meet him to interview/qualify him for the job) or even pay him a nominal sum ($40 k or so, for years of labor, a bargain no matter how you cut it), they went to MySpace (a company they were paying oodles to to help them promote the campaign at levels much less than Anthony’s site) to seize control of the it.
Robb has a new book out “Brave New War“, worth checking out.
OTOH, he’s done the right thing on debate media, via Lessig.
Red Tape for Tourists visiting the US
America is rated the world’s most unfriendly destination for foreign travellers in a recent global poll. The War on Terror (which includes a $15 billion fingerprinting program that humiliates every visitor to America’s shores and has yet to catch a single terrorist) has destroyed America’s tourist industry, killing $94 billion worth of tourist trade, and 194,000 American jobs.
There’s something to this challenging issue. A driver on Hong Kong told me recently that passengers destined for most countries, other than the USA can check in (and check luggage) downtown, then take the train to the airport and go right to the gate. The security “friction” does have significant costs all around.
A few Suggestions for Governor Doyle Regarding the AT&T “Video Competition” Bill
AT&T’s lobbying efforts to change Wisconsin’s cable TV regulations has generated a refreshing amount of commentary. 5 years ago, during Governor Doyle’s first Gubernatorial campaign, I had a chance to briefly talk with him after a debate with Scott McCallum. I mentioned Wisconsin’s poor broadband infrastructure (we continue to stand still, which means we’re falling further behind) and how AT&T had failed to invest in fiber networks. Doyle mentioned that he was aware of this, but could not do anything about it in a first term…..
Fast forward to 2007. This map, via broadbandreports.com displays the communities that have Verizon’s fiber to the home available. Fiber networks provide much higher speeds and more citizen choice than our aging and long since paid for copper networks (we continue to pay and pay and pay for the old stuff).
Perhaps, Governor Doyle might put citizen’s interests first and sign the bill only if:
- Those who provide service via this bill must do so via symmetrical fiber to the home, and,
- Customers may purchase the symmetrical fiber to the home service for internet use only (ie, without phone or video service). Such “naked” internet service shall be available at speeds equal or greater to those offered via phone/video bundles.. Cost and terms shall not penalize naked internet buyers vis a vis bundled phone/video purchases
- Customers shall have complete access to all internet services. Vendors will not restrict any IP services.
What are the odds?
UPDATE: A friend emailed simply: “Lotsa luck”.
Interestingly, this type of an initiative would be quite a legacy for the Governor. The fiber will be connected to our homes for many, many years.
AT&T Lobbying Investments (rather than fiber networks)
AT&T, parent of troubled Cingular Wireless, continues to invest in non-network related initiatives, as this article by Steven Walters illustrates:
AT&T doles out $54,000 ahead of cable bill debate
Doyle, lawmakers say money won’t affect stands on deregulation legislation
Communications giant AT&T pushed a controversial bill to have state government license cable systems by showering more than $54,000 in campaign cash on dozens of lawmakers and Gov. Jim Doyle over the past 15 months.
Campaign-finance records show that AT&T’s political action committee gave a total of $10,000 to four legislators and the Assembly Republican Campaign Committee in the past two months, when legislators negotiated details of the complex package with AT&T’s 15 registered lobbyists.