The Ministry of Minor Perfidy

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Windy City Mike
social democrat, ca. 1930 trade-unionist, and professor of alleged history

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Tuesday, November 04, 2003

In the running for November

An early contender for the November 2003 Perfidy Prize for Inadvertant or Vertant Asshattery is our own President’s staff. From Calpundit:

THE MEMORY HOLE RE-REVISITED....First we had the White House scouring their website for headlines that said “combat operations” in Iraq were over and changing them to say “major combat operations” were over. You know, because the original got kind of embarrassing when American soldiers kept dying.

Then the White House webmasters blocked Google from caching all Iraq-related documents, but they seemed to have a good explanation for that so I let it slide.

But yesterday there was more historical revision: an interview in which an administration official said reconstruction would cost no more than $1.7 billion was mysteriously deleted from the USAID website.

Now, today, Josh Marshall reports that the White House altered the transcript of a presidential speech in a way that completely changes the meaning of what he said. Just one teensy little letter, though!

Is there an innocent explanation? Sure, maybe. But considering the track record here, I’m sure as hell not giving these guys the benefit of the doubt on it anymore.

Me either. My favorite thing this weekend was watching Rumsfeld on the news shows. I have never seen a man so adept at making me feel so stupid, so stupid! for remembering things differently than him, with his strained grin hinting at barely restrained contempt sitting there trying to work a Jedi Mind Trick on the whole nation. Breathtaking!

[wik] Mark A. R. Kleiman writes more about this. He notes that the change-- which made “We see a China that is stable and prosperous” into “We seeK"-- merely follows a similar formulation elsewhere in the article. But this is a public document, and my sense is that Bush’s people tend to treat the historical record like a poorly-run weblog, editing text and changing arguments where convenient without a thought of flagging that the update was made. Not a hanging offense, but not something I want in a President either.

Posted by Johno on 11/04/03 at 03:57 PM
Unmitigated Gall • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

We have a winner!

In a belated ceremony, the October 2003 Perfidy Prize in Inadvertant or Vertant Asshattery goes to the clearly deserving Food and Drug Administration for this genius move:

FDA considers forcing restaurants to provide nutrition information.

The state’s job is not to save people from themselves. And yet here we are discussing seriously whether every diner, sandwich cart, and restaurant in the country should tot up fat, calories, and vitamin content for their offerings. And how, exactly, will this work for places who change the menu every day? And what if a restaurant runs out of the salmon special mid-shift and has to toss together a substitute? Will they be fined for serving Undocumented Food?

How long until no small business can survive under the weight of the American Nanny-Regulatory State? “Welcome to America. Here’s your helmet and leash. Would you like your nose wiped?”

Jesus Horatio Christ. I need a cookie.

Posted by Johno on 11/04/03 at 03:37 PM
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On Reconstruction

The Economist has an article (graciously reprinted online) on the reconstruction of Iraq.

They see the glass as half full-- many utilities have been restored to prewar levels, oil is flowing-- which is valid. But I don’t think that’s too great. While I get that it will take time, “prewar levels” just aren’t that great a benchmark. We can be doing better.

The entire article is worth a read, and the most interesting bit is at the end. It suggests that big oil companies aren’t biting at Iraqi oil contracts, because such interests “tend nowadays to look at the lifetime capacity of a field, not at the chance of a quick profit. ‘You’re talking about a horizon of 10-12 years, minimum,’ says a European businessman searching for deals. Despite the high technical calibre of Iraq’s oil ministry, outsiders are not yet confident that long-term contracts will be watertight.”

So, even if it was all about the oil (and yes, let’s not kid ourselves that the economics of oil aren’t a big piece of the Whole General Sort Of Mish-Mash), it’s not really about the oil now, for better or worse. Ironic.

Of course, until sabotage is minimized, infrastructure upgraded, pipelines re-established, and stable operations established, investing in Iraqi oil is a fool’s game suitable only for sinking giant sums of US government money. That’s ironic too, and unfortunate.

Posted by Johno on 11/04/03 at 03:24 PM
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Johno’s Roundup of Significant Things

In this issue:
The CPI Follows the Money Trail To Nowhere
Stone Cold Thuggin’
Afghanistan’s Steps Toward Constitution
Happy Kitten Sunshine Story Time

Read on, below the fold!

More Perfidious Goodness...

The Money Trail To Nowhere

The Center for Public Integrity has released “Windfalls of War,” their report on the correlation between cronyism and contracts in Iraq. You know, the Halliburton thing. Daniel Drezner riddles the report with too many holes to fly. Drezner’s central rebuttal is that by asserting a statistical correlation between campaign contributions and size of Iraqi reconstruction contracts, the CPI put themselves in the position of arguing from no evidence.

Drezner’s argument is pretty persuasive, though some commenters disagree. What is not said, though, is that the CPI chose a piss-poor way of measuring cronyism. All the CPI report’s research shows is that campaign contributions played little role in determining who won contracts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.

Drezner himself makes the salient point in a footnote: “ the primary thrust of Windfalls of War is that the process is riddled with malfeasance rather than disorganization. The notion that there was a conscious effort to reward Bush cronies with lucrative government contracts would require a lot more centralized coordination than the CPI report uncovers.”

As Godwin’s law runs, “never chalk up to malice what may be attributed to stupidity.” The more likely scenario as regards reconstruction contracts is this: there are maybe ten construction companies in the US large enough to undertake the rebuilding of Iraq, and fewer than that of companies who specialize in oil infrastructure (Halliburton among them). In the evident administrative chaos that surrounded the Administration’s run-up to the aftermath, Occam’s Razor suggests that Cheney, Condi, etc. said “Hey, I know a guy....” and the calls went out.

If they’re serious, the CPI needs to do a much more detailed investigation into whether cronyism played a role here, because by using the numbers they did, they demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of the beast.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that cronyism played no role in getting Halliburton, Bechtel, etc their phat contracts, but CPI sure haven’t found any smoking gun yet.

Stone Cold Thuggin’

David Brooks has an op-ed piece in the New York Times today which argues that the “opposition” we’re fighting in the Sunni Triangle are the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s thug brigades for which the delicious money/power teat has dried up. He doesn’t actually use the phrase, “delicious money/power teat"-- that’s my innovation-- but that’s the gist of it. He argues that making progress in the next few months is crucial, so that by the time Iraqi police, mayors, and so on are ready to take over they just have to mop up instead of fight a well organized crime syndicate.

It would indeed be grand if the Iraqis would hunt the killers. They know the territory. They can get the intelligence sources.

But the administration would be making a mistake if it sent the signal to the American people that the hard work from here on out would be done by the Iraqis themselves. After all, is it realistic to think barely trained policemen can, over the next six months, deliver blows against bands of experienced mass murderers? Is it realistic to think that a local Iraqi mayor will take on the terrorists and so risk his own death, when the most powerful army in the history of the earth is camped just nearby?

Cori Dauber, guest-posting at the Volokh Conspiracy, links to Brooks’ piece commenting

It is also important to keep reminding ourselves that for many Iraqis the pain of the old regime is still front and center, which puts comparisons between the situation before and after the war in a slightly different light. How is the situation in Iraq today? Too often when that question is asked we forget to begin the answer with, “well, the torture chambers are closed and there are no new mass graves.”

Damn right. And that’s the legacy that our agents in Iraq need to be very, very careful not to resemble in any way even by accident. This is part of that “hearts and minds” campaign that we have been posting about in this very venue, and I say again I think it’s the most important fight of all in the greater war.

Afghanistan’s Steps Toward Constitution

The Afghani draft Constitution was unveiled this week. It features a unitary government led by a President, makes no mention of the Shari’a laws, codifies Islam as the religion of Afghanistan, and makes provisions for the speedy replacement of a deceased President in order to prevent coups.

This is great news. While it’s true that you rarely get more than one shot at a Constitution, what I’ve seen seems encouraging.

That being said, the problems that plague Afghanistan are deep and cultural. Violence is a way of life there. The Atlantic Monthly carried a story last year that underscored how deeply the language, ways, and ethos of violent reprisal suffuse the entire culture, affecting even aimable relations against neighbors. Paraphrasing a bit from the article, I remember one woman in the mountains who told the writer that she was in the market for a rocket launcher because her neighbor up the mountain-- with whom she had no particular quarrel-- had one too.

In a country that has never really known stability in the sense we understand it, fostering goodwill and cooperation for a new Constitutional government will be a huge challenge, especially with the Taliban still mounting attacks.

Happy Kitten Sunshine Story Time

Look at the kitties! Look at them!

And that’s it for today. Have a cromulent day.

Too Goddamn Much Perfidy...

Posted by Johno on 11/04/03 at 02:19 PM
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Monday, November 03, 2003

Attack of the Clones

The AP is reporting that sales of cloned cattle are increasing in anticipation of an FDA ruling that cloned beef is safe to eat. Personally, I don’t see how the FDA could rule otherwise, given that a clone is by definition an exact copy of another animal. If the original ambulatory steak was edible, so will its identical twin. Of course, we must get ready for the deluge of dirty hippies screaming, “Frankenfood.”

Meanwhile, I eagerly await my first cloned steak. It has such 50s retro science of the future feel to it. I arrive home from work in my jet car, park in the garage of my circular, all-glass home of the future, tell the robot butler to hold all calls on the videophone, and sit down to a meal of cloned beef and genetically engineered potatoes. What could be better?

Posted by Buckethead on 11/03/03 at 09:31 PM
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Science is Fun!

You can’t resist reading something entitled “Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass”, can you?

Posted by Ross on 11/03/03 at 04:56 PM
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Drug Prices

Standard but faltering Republican rhetoric on the drug issue is twofold: First, safety is compromised by using those nasty Canadian pharmacies; everybody knows millions of people die every year in Canada from taking bad drugs (right). Second, it’s really about the research dollars; the rest of the world is mooching off of the US.

I heard an interview this morning on NPR with the Republican governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty. His plan is a state-sponsored mail-order program that will import drugs from Canada. Citizens (I refuse to call them consumers) order their drugs from a web site maintained by the state, which selects the Canadian pharmacies that are eligible to participate. The state is then able to maintain a significant amount of control over the quality of the pipeline.

Much of the free-for-all that exists in the American drug distribution system simply does not exist in Canada. If you’ve been following the Washington Post article on the subject, you realize by now that the American drug system is full of tiny suppliers who keep medicines in the back of their Honda Civics, and sell them to whoever will ask. The “chain of custody” for medications is something that the pharmacy distribution system has been fighting for years. Why? They want to preserve their ability to get gray-market drugs, and enhance their bottom lines.

Tamoxifen is one of the most widely prescribe drugs for treating breast cancer. In Germany, in that country’s national health care system, the drug costs around $60 US for a month’s supply. In Canada, a month’s supply costs about $50 US. Here in America, that exact same drug costs about $350 for a month’s supply. How many thousands of women are dead because they could not get the medicine? A very large number. And as the number of uninsured increases, the number of deaths increases.

But why does this happen? How can the drug cost seven times as much here as it does elsewhere? The reason is that there is no global cost-benefit analysis within the American system.

If a drug, like Tamoxifen, is the best course of action for a given health situation, the doctor must prescribe it. The cost is simply not a part of the equation. If the doctor doesn’t prescribe it, he/she will be sued. The insurance company must pay the bill; if they don’t pay, there can be severe consequences. What we effectively do is prevent any form of cost-monitoring, in the system. The drug companies love this, and know this...and they know that they are able to raise their prices almost at will; insurance companies will be forced to pay, because doctors are forced to prescribe. Perhaps it is incorrect to say that doctors are forced to prescribe; they are prescribing what they believe to be the best available medication.

In Canada, Germany, and other National Health Care systems, the system works a little differently. In these systems there is global cost monitoring. What the system does, in effect, is examine the cost-benefit ratio of a medication like Tamoxifen. At $350 for a month’s supply, there is a measurable benefit to the administration of the drug. The health care system is going to look at what else it could have done with that much money. If it can gain better care elsewhere (save more lives, increase quality of life) with the same money, that’s what it’s going to do. In effect, the health care system itself becomes the consumer, allocating scarce resources where it can find the most benefit.

The price of Tamoxifen in Canada is $50 because that is the benefit it provides to the health system. It is not about price controls; the Canadian health care system will not pay more than $50, because at that point, the money is better spent elsewhere. The German health care system has set this boundary at $60.

I submit that the American health care system needs this kind of global control; or, at least, it can become statistically aware of the efficacy of the drugs it uses, and construct an index of the cost-benefit of medications. The lack of caps on spiralling medical costs in the current American system is due to the lack of global cost-benefit analysis.

Posted by Ross on 11/03/03 at 02:02 PM
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Sunday, November 02, 2003

Powers Of Ten

Very cool Java applet demonstrating the wonders of the universe, from the very large, to the very small...hopefully you have installed Java! If so…

Powers Of Ten

Posted by Ross on 11/02/03 at 03:00 PM
The Miracle of Science • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Saturday, November 01, 2003

The Council of Concerned Citizens

The President is attending a fundraising event for Haley Barbour, who’s running in Mississippi. Barbour, you will recall, was recently photographed smiling and enjoying himself at a CCC event. CCC is one of the more openly racist/freako organizations out there today; any google search will bring you information leaning in that direction. You will also recall that not so very long ago our good friend, the former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, was thoroughly raked over the coals for his association with the group.

Bush is “accepting” Barbour’s explanation that “he didn’t know who the group was”, when he attended the event.

Let’s summarize: The Republican President is accepting as an explanation that the Republican National Chairman was not aware of the political firestorm that erupted around the Republican Senate Majority Leader on racism issues; that he (the RNC chairman) didn’t keep track of the “details”.

The President knows full well that Haley Barbour knew exactly who he was meeting with.

Earth To Barbour: “Hey, Haley, Trent Lott is taking heat for being associated with the Coalition of Concerned Citizens. They’re freaky and racist.”

Barbour: “I have no idea who that political action group in Mississippi is. OK, we’ll deal with it.”

Earth to Barbour: “Why are you hanging out with the CCC? Didn’t we cover this already?”

Barbour: “Who? I have no idea who you’re talking about. But I can assure you that my intentions are honorable.”

Earth to Barbour: “Stop doing fundraising events with the CCC and pandering to them to get their votes. It looks really bad.”

Barbour: “Who? I have this funny blank spot in my mind. There’s something that I just can’t quite remember.”

Bush: “I am the goddamn President, and if Haley says he can’t remember, then he can’t remember, alright? Haley won’t be doing anything with the CCC any more.”

Barbour: “Who? Everybody keeps talking about this like I should know who this racist group of my old friends is.”

Bush: “Shut up, Haley. Didn’t I give you and Allbaugh a totally cushy way to make millions funneling Iraq contracts? Aren’t you supposed to be quietly making a killing? Stop making me look bad with this CCC business.”

Barbour: “Who?”

Posted by Ross on 11/01/03 at 01:05 PM
Unmitigated Gall • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Don’t Cry For DarkProfits

I just read that there’s another mass email worm on the loose. Yeah, denial of service is bad and all that, but this one apparently targets DarkProfits.com. They’re the friendly folks who sent me (and my mother) a few dozen emails that loudly proclaim, in the subject line, “your credit card has been charged $247.35 for child porn”, and provide a convenient HTML form where you can enter in your credit card details if you disagree with that charge.

It’s an anti-spammer worm, which is an interesting development. It’s sort of a stupid one, though...it makes no sense whatsoever to create a worm that only does one thing. You really want the bot army if you can get it, and it’s a lot simpler to build something that morphs itself from one form to another, that is very general, that has little for scanners to get a hold of.

The bottom line is that Windows-based computation is in some pretty severe danger right now. Microsoft has absolutely insisted that the default state of the OS be that processes can do whatever they want, wherever they want. Unix takes the opposite view, that much of the system is protected from processes unless they can get rooted. Guess which one makes for a more secure system?

Of course all of that can be subverted, instantly, by one crappy program running setuid root. C may be a good language for writing bits and pieces of an OS, but it’s lousy at security.

Posted by Ross on 11/01/03 at 06:02 AM
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