Political Rantings
Some More About the SWIFT Story
Saturday, June 24th, 2006I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on how SWIFT messages work, but I have worked with/for Wall Street firms for more than a decade, so I do know a thing or two about them. The more I read about this story, the more I am dumbstruck at the apparent lack of knowledge being displayed (or, as is more likely the case, ignored for political purposes). So, some facts that might help:
- A very large majority of banking institutions worldwide use the SWIFT network to send inter-bank messages. This is Metcalfe’s Law at work – the more people that use the network, the more valuable it becomes.
- The last American survivor of the Titanic sinking died in early May.
- The story of Titanic has lasted almost 100 years, because it’s an almost mythical tale of hubris – the unsinkable ship that went down on her maiden voyage.
- World War I was the Titanic for Europe – the obstacle that sank the “unsinkable ship” of Europe.
- World War II was like the Titanic for America, but our losses were overshadowed by the unparalleled success we enjoyed after it ended.
- The Cold War was like the Titanic for America, except that by “sheer dumb luck,” we navigated our way through it without destroying ourselves.
- Nuclear proliferation is currently like the Titanic for America, but like the captain of the ship itself, we don’t see the danger.
- 9/11 was like the Titanic for America, but our losses weren’t enough to open our eyes to the danger.
- The radical Islamic world, a demoralized Russia, a growing China, and an angry Iran are currently like Titanic for America, but we are not heeding the lessons of history and paying attention.
Categories: Money Talk, Political Rantings | 12 Comments »
Missed me again…
Friday, June 23rd, 2006I was on the 27th floor of the World Trade Center on 2/26/93 when the first bomb went off, and I was in 195 Broadway about two years later when some nutcase tried to blow up the subway with a mayonaise jar filled with gasoline. So it comes as no surprise that two weeks after my first visit to the Sears Tower, a group of terrorists got caught discussing a plan to blow it up. Not that I’m taking any of this personally or anything…
Apparently, these guys had “aspirations, but not the means” to pull off such an attack. They were caught when they approached an FBI informant who they thought was an AL Qaeda operative.
A few thoughts:
1) These guys weren’t necessarily all that dangerous (although they could have been if they had actually reached Al Qaeda), but we slam our intelligence agencies when they screw up, so it’s good to see them get a pat on the back when they nail something cold.
2) For those who believe privacy concerns have gone out the window, I believe this is the first time in history that an FBI director took time to explicitly state that “whenever we undertake an operation like this, we would not do it without the approval of a judge. We’ve got search warrants and arrest warrants and the like.” This is also a good thing.
3) This was the top story in the New York Post and the Daily News this morning, but it wasn’t even on the front page of the New York Times.
Even now (4:15PM, EDT), it’s only the number two story, behind (another) scare story about (another) secret program to collect data about American citizens (this time, financial data). These stories, which are so full of news cataloging that they’re starting to look like they come from a template, are becoming more and more obscure and less and less relevant to the issue of privacy they supposedly address.
Of course, various Democratic congressmen and an ACLU official blindly condemmed the program as “abuse of power” and the like, while showing little or no knowledge of what the SWIFT network actually is. The Times, amazingly, did so little research on it, that it doesn’t even seem to know that it’s an acronym (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), and keeps spelling it in proper case (“Swift”).
Categories: News and/or Media, Political Rantings | Comments Off on Missed me again…
Sorting Out the Same-Sex Marriage Debate
Thursday, June 8th, 2006Well, it’s election time again and the conservative, Republican President has low approval ratings, so it must be time to talk about same-sex marriage again. Before we begin, let me establish two facts:
1) I don’t believe for a second that we’re discussing this in an attempt to change anything about the laws governing marriage or the U.S. Constitution. This is a political ploy intended to make the conservative base feel better about President Bush, who campaigned on this position in both 2000 and 2004. Since it really won’t affect public policy much and I disagree with his position, I’m more than happy to just hang around until the issue goes away.
2) I, personally, would be thrilled to see same-sex couples granted the full rights and privileges of marriage as it exists today in the United States. My thoughts below are more about what I think is the best practical approach to helping those who are disadvantaged by today’s laws. I do not presume to speak for these folks, and fully recognize their right to tell me to mind my own business and go away.
OK, now that we’ve covered that, here is what I perceive to be the problem: There are many different definitions of marriage in the United States today, and allowing same-sex couples the right to marry under one definition has significant implications under another. People for whom a given definition is prominent, therefore, see the objections of another group (who are using a different definition) as wrong-headed, bigoted, or hateful. In order to have a rational debate that might actually resolve some of the inequalities in the current law, it’s important to clearly delineate these groups and their definitions.
Clear as mud, right? Let me try some specifics. When my wife and I got married, I believe we did three things simultaneously:
1) We made a sacred vow to love each other for the rest of our lives, and to live our lives as partners in everything we do.
To some people, this concept, in and of itself, defines marriage. Note that it doesn’t require government or religious sanction. All it requires is two people who share a common definition of the word “sacred.” People in this group often say things like “Do we really need the piece of paper?” In doing so, they voluntarily opt out of the various benefits and protections afforded to married couples under state and federal law.
2) We participated in a Jewish ritual that has remained basically unchanged for thousands of years.
In the Jewish religion, this ritual actually involves the signing of two binding contracts. The Ketubah, written in the original Aramaic, which spells out the rights and responsibilities of a Jewish husband and a Jewish wife, and the Get, which is a sort-of Jewish pre-nuptual agreement, in which the husband promises to give the wife the religious equivalent of a divorce if the marriage should end (without it, according to Jewish law, the woman would be unable to remarry).
To some people, being married in the “Eyes of God” is of paramount importance. A Justice of the Peace wedding, to these folks, would not constitute a “real marriage,” despite its financial and legal implications for the couple.
3) We signed a binding contract with the State of New York and the federal government of the United States.
This document, called a Marriage License, entitled us to a Marriage Certificate. That certificate guarantees us various benefits and protections under U.S. law. It governs, among other things, the way in which we would inherit each other’s money and maintain custody of our children upon one of our deaths, our right to share health insurance, the way we pay our taxes, our ability to jointly own property (e.g., a home), and many other important domestic issues.
To some people, a legal marriage is of the utmost importance. In fact, many people dispense with any sort of religious ritual and get married in a courthouse by a Justice of the Peace (a government official).
I’m sure there are many other definitions of marriage, but let’s just examine these three for a minute.
Regarding #1, those who oppose same-sex marriage have long since lost the battle. Gay men and women have been living together as spouses for decades, and there is nothing anyone else in the world can do to stop them. This is such a universal truth that it is rarely argued in the debate over same-sex marriage.
Regarding #2, most of the world’s major religions define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. This has been true for millennia, and quite frankly, I can’t imagine it changing now. I also suspect, although I don’t presume to speak for anyone but myself, that most same-sex couples have strong disagreements with the major religions on homosexuality in general, and as such, don’t much care to have their marriage defined or blessed by a particular church/temple/mosque/etc.
Regarding #3, the laws in 49 of the 50 states (Massachusetts being the exception) provide these benefits and protections only to man/woman marriages, and deny them to same-sex couples that have the same kind of relationship. The effects of this situation can range from inconvenient (the need to explicitly adopt your spouse’s children) to tragic (the inability to inherit a spouse’s estate or collect his/her life insurance claim after an unexpected death, if proper documentation isn’t established beforehand).
When the political debate over this issue is conducted, it is my strong belief that the proponents of same-sex marriage argue for equal recognition under the law (definition #3), and the opponents argue that expanding the definition of marriage would violate God’s law (definition #2). The relatively low polling numbers for same-sex marriage and the relatively high numbers for gay rights suggest that many who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds would be happy to grant same-sex couples the benefits and protections that the law provides man/woman married couples.
One solution to this conundrum has been to create a new category under the law called “Civil Unions,” which could be granted the same rights and privileges as married couples, but leave the concept of marriage consistent with the prevailing religious views. Unfortunately, the term “civil union” has become synonymous with those that oppose same-sex marriage, and has come to be seen as the “not-really-a-marriage marriage,” calling up images of the “separate but equal” arguments that preceded the Brown vs Board of Education case in 1954. This turn of events, in my opinion, has cost many same-sex couples a legal avenue to secure the benefits and protections that they so desperately need and deserve.
So what’s left? Another option that has been kicked around in the blogosphere (and maybe elsewhere) is to eliminate the term “marriage” from U.S. law, and make it the exclusive purview of religion. In a sense, this amounts to converting all marriages to civil unions (in a legal sense). Couples could profess their undying love for each other by themselves (#1), get married in a church/temple/mosque (#2) and create a Civil Union in the eyes of the government (#3) to secure the above-mentioned rights. This, in my opinion, is a promising solution, but it does not come without it’s detractors. Those who are married in a civil ceremony, for instance. They consider their relationship a “marriage” today, and probably would not take kindly to being told they are not married, simply because they did not go through a religious ritual recognized as a marriage. There are also people who did go through a religious ceremony, but still see this plan as a lessening of their marriage in the eyes of the government, and therefore oppose it.
At the end of the day, the religious concept of marriage (#2) and the legal concept of marriage (#3) are two separate concepts. However, people view the laws of the land as a reflection of what our society accepts as permissible. Some religious people see a variance between the #3 definition and the #2 definition as a rejection of their religious principles by American society, and therefore oppose it.
This posture, coupled with the negative, “separate but equal” reaction to using a different legal term, creates a semantic paradox. And while it is semantic in nature, it is causing real financial and legal pain for thousands of couples across the country, and so it must be resolved.
I believe the solution lies in stressing the distinction between #2 and #3 above, and working in good faith to make both groups happy. This would involve either agreeing to separate terminology (with appropriate guarantees of equal protection) or agreeing to use the same term to refer to the different concepts, with broad understanding that a change in one does not imply a change to the other.
The current status of this debate – that of political football – erodes the likelihood of either scenario playing itself out and, as such, hurts Americans in very real and immediate ways.
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Depth of Activist Group’s Anger Revealed…
Friday, June 2nd, 2006BWAH HA HA HA HA!!! BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA!
(Hat tip: Instapundit)
Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.
‘This volatile and dangerous source of energy’ is no answer to the country’s energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the ‘threat’ posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.
But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.
We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: ‘In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world’s worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE].’
[…]
The aghast Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, said a colleague was making a joke by inserting the language in a draft that was then mistakenly released.
‘Given the seriousness of the issue at hand, I don’t even think it’s funny,’ Smith said.
The final version did not mention Armageddon. It just warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns.”
Categories: Political Rantings | 2 Comments »
A Democrat to Defend…
Thursday, June 1st, 2006This one goes out to Jeff Porten, who’s been accusing me of leaning too far to the right lately:
The Canadian Free Press has uncovered the shocking news that Jimmy Carter’s Carter Center of Atlanta has accepted over $1 million in donations from Bakr Bin Laden, Osama Bin Laden’s brother.
“An investigation by the Censure Carter Committee into the financing for The Carter Center of Atlanta, Georgia founded by President Carter and his wife to advance his “Blame America First” policies reveals that over $1,000,000 has been funneled from Bakr M. Bin Laden for the Saudi Bin Laden Group to the Carter Center,” says Censure Carter.Com in a mainstream media-ignored recent media release.
“In fact, an online report accuses former President Carter of meeting with 10 of Osama Bin Laden’s brothers early in 2000, Carter and his wife, Rosalyn followed up their meeting with a breakfast with Bakr Bin Laden in September 2000 and secured the first $200,000 towards the more than $1 million that has been received by the Carter Center.”
OK, let’s assume for a minute that all of this is true. Here’s the thing:
Big Deal.
Osama Bin Laden has more than fifty brothers and sisters. Many of them are on friendly terms with the United States. Several of them cooperated fully with our intelligence agencies just after 9/11, and several others have shown up in American pop culture – writing books or appearing on reality TV programs. There is no evidence of any sort that any of them are terrorists, or have any ties to terrorists (including their estranged brother Osama). The Bin Laden Group that these folks refer to is the largest construction company in the Middle East and, from what I read, a perfectly respectable company.
Michael Moore criticized President Bush and his family for having ties with the Bin Ladens in his movie, Fahrenheit 911 for the same misleading reasons. It was stupid then, and it’s stupid now.
Categories: Political Rantings | 4 Comments »
Supreme Court: Work memos aren’t free speech
Tuesday, May 30th, 2006The Supreme Court has just ruled that federal employees that report inefficiency or misconduct by their supervisors cannot claim free speech protection to avoid employer discipline.
Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, said:
There is protection for whistle-blowers in federal and state laws and rules of conduct for government attorneys.
When public employees made statement pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.
[To say it did would be] replacing managerial discretion with judicial supervision.
I’m surprised at this ruling. I would think that your right to free speech exists no matter what you’re saying or to whom you’re saying it. That said, I the fact that you have the right to say something, doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed protection from employer discipline.
I know the ruling only applies to federal employees, but it is interesting to extrapolate it to the recent discussions about prosecuting reporters who print classified information (and/or these reporters’ sources). If a federal worker can be punished for accusing his employer of lying, can a phone company employee, for instance, be punished for telling USAToday about an NSA program to collect phone records?
One other thing. The end of the article is another “sign of the times,” I fear:
[Kennedy] was joined by the court’s conservatives – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The court’s liberals, Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, dissented.
I don’t follow the Supreme Court all that closely, but that’s the first time I saw a ruling described that way…
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Leaning to the Right?
Friday, May 26th, 2006In the comments from this post, Jeff Porten asks:
It’s my perception that you’ve polarized harder right since 2004. Agree or disagree?
Disagree.
My political leanings have been relatively consistent for the last few years. I’m generally conservative when it comes to financial matters. I’d rather have as much of my money in my pocket as possible, but I’m willing to pay taxes as long as I feel I’m getting some service in return. I’m generally liberal when it comes to social matters (pro-choice, pro-gay rights, etc.). And I’m anti-political correctness for political correctness’ sake, which may be more of a conservative thing, but I’m not sure how that categorizes…
The two things about my politics that might be confusing (and might make me appear to have polarized right lately) are these:
1) I tend to focus on what is happening as opposed to what could be happening.
So when stuff like the NSA scandals come up and people (mainly liberals, I find) begin screaming about how our civil rights are gone and the constitution has become birdcage liner, I tend to see their un-mitigated, un-punished, un-discouraged screaming as proof positive that they’re wrong. I also remain confident that as long as there are people out there screaming like this, the bright light of public opinion will keep any given administration from eroding our civil rights in any serious way. With all the hullabaloo lately, my civil rights have not changed one iota and, individual anecdotes aside, I believe 99% of the country is in the same boat.
2) I try to read multiple accounts of the same story, remove the spin and the editorializing, and focus on the facts.
The Bush administration has become as scandal-ridden as the Clinton administration was in its second term. Now, as then, a public mood has developed in which it’s very fashionable to disapprove of everything the President says or does, and use each new “incident” as further proof that he is <choose your favorite: evil, stupid, incompetent, power-hungry, war-mongering, a religious nut, other: ___________.>.
Stories about one thing end up being about something else. Criticisms about a particular event become evidence toward a theory of greater wrongdoing. Motivations are assumed and presented as fact. Tempers flare and logic subsides. Describing the event/action itself without embellishment becomes unsatisfying and insufficient.
In this environment, someone who points out inaccuracies in a story, or tries to separate opinion from fact, is often accused of defending the administration, even when his/her statements are inherently negative towards it.
Here’s a real life example to illustrate my point, taken from a conversation I had with a family member last summer:
Family member: That goddamn Bush. I can’t believe how badly he screwed up that Katrina mess.
Me: The mayor and governor screwed up the evacuation, and left FEMA to be first responders as opposed to the last line of defense. Where FEMA screwed up was in not adjusting to the situation on the ground; using the same old techniques, even though this problem was much worse than other problems.
FM: How can you defend FEMA when the whole world agrees they screwed up?
Me: I agree they screwed up. I’m just saying they weren’t the only ones who screwed up.
FM: I can’t believe you think Bush did a good job on this. <So-and-so> from <such-and-such> paper said no President has ever screwed up so badly.
Me: Ugh. I didn’t say Bush did a good job on this. The buck stops with him, so he gets the blame for the federal response. But if you’re lining up people to blame, you can’t ignore Mayor Nagin, Governor Blanco, or FEMA Director Brown.
FM: Brown is a @#%*@ing Arabian horse trainer. And the guy he replaced left because he was corrupt. It’s just another example of Bush’s cronyism, like the time he fired that General in Iraq for saying he needed more troops.
Me: Brown performed legal services and did logistics planning for the Arabian horse firm. And after that, he was assistant-director at FEMA, so it’s not so crazy that he got the job. Also, the guy before him presided over the FEMA response to four hurricanes that hit South Florida in one season in 2004, where FEMA was touted as being more effective than it’s ever been. Some even credited its response with helping to secure Florida for Bush in the November elections. Personally, I think it had more to do with the fact that Gov. Jeb Bush and the local Florida officials know what to do when a hurricane was coming, so FEMA’s standard response worked well. And by the way, what does Iraq have to do with any of this?
FM: Listen to you, defending Bush and FEMA at a time like this. When did you become such a radical republican?
Me: AARRRRGGGHHH!!! The first thing out of my mouth was “FEMA screwed up.” I just think the press is short-cutting past how they screwed up because it’s more fun/popular to blame everything on Bush. Sells more papers & all that. I think it’s important to understand how they screwed up, so we can fix it for next time. Don’t you?
<End of Act I>
You’ll note that nothing I said in the above conversation is complimentary to Bush, FEMA, or the events after Hurricane Katrina. All I’m trying to do is get the facts right. But it’s not enough to say FEMA was one of three agencies that screwed up. It has to be the only one. And the screw-up has to be the worst screw-up in the history of screw-ups. And it has to prove Bush’s incompetence in several other areas (including hiring practices and running the Iraq war).
The bottom line: The quantity and degree of unsubstantiated criticism against this president is more than we’ve ever seen before. When I see it, I just can’t help trying to set the record straight, or direct people’s attention to the actual issue at hand. Since this kind of behavior is viewed as defending the President (as opposed to levying more accurate criticisms), I can see how some may perceive me as becoming increasingly conservative.
I guess I’ll have to wait until someone unfairly accuses a Democrat of something in order to show my true, “fair and balanced” self.
Categories: Political Rantings | 6 Comments »
The Lesson of Titanic: Stop Building Ships That May One Day Sink
Friday, May 19th, 2006In the comments thread on this post, Jeff Porten suggests I read the IHT editorial, America the Titanic, to prove to me that American hubris is leading to her ultimate demise.
Allow me to quickly summarize the editorial in bullet point form:
So basically, what we’re saying is this: just as Europe “sank” financially, militarily and socially after World War I, America has come up against various obstacles since that could very well have destroyed her (except that we consistently fail to actually be destroyed). Given this history, it’s amazing that we aren’t predicting our own downfall given our current set of obstacles.
The morale of this story (IMHO): When your theory has no actual supporting evidence, explain why your evidence should support you, even though it doesn’t. Then, triumphantly reach the conclusion you set out for in the first place.
Categories: Political Rantings | 1 Comment »
Hillary Clinton: Young People Ain’t So Bad
Monday, May 15th, 2006Hillary Clinton told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week that young people in America “think work is a four-letter word,” because they “have a sense of entitlement after growing up in a ‘culture that has a premium on instant gratification.'” (quotes from the AP article, which may have been paraphrasing).
Chelsea Clinton, now 26-years old and working as a consultant for McKinsey & Co., called (out) her mother by telling her, “Mom, I do work hard and my friends work hard.” After which, Hillary promptly corrected herself, saying “I was referring only to young people that can’t vote yet.”
No, just kidding. She issued the proper politician-apology: “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to convey the impression that you don’t work hard [by saying you don’t work hard]. I just want to set the bar high, because we are in a competition for the future.”
OK, I added the part in the brackets, but hey – this is so much fun…
Anyway, go Chelsea!
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By the Way, Is Data Mining Unconstitutional?
Friday, May 12th, 2006I have a question: Is data-mining by the U.S. Government unconstitutional?
By my count, we’ve had this discussion at least three times now (the TSA profiling debate after 9/11, the request for search results from Google/Microsoft/Yahoo to fight online porn, and now the NSA getting phone numbers), but the politics of the specific example always get in the way of the more generic question.
Here’s my thinking: if the government wants to spy on one person, they need to get a warrant. Without a warrant, clearly it’s illegal.
If they want to spy on a group of people (defined by a characteristic, not a list of names – i.e., all people who pay cash for airline tickets, or all Arab-Americans, or all people who call Afghanistan more than five times per month), warrants are less applicable (what do you do? Get a list of names and obtain warrants for each person?), but there should be some check/balance to make sure that they have a legitimate reason to investigate the group – a “group warrant,” if you will (this, by the way, strikes me as protection against prejudice more than protection against privacy).
Now, if they want data on everyone in the country (i.e., all phone calls), both the warrant and the “group warrant” seem less relevant. Clearly, the point of retrieving all the records is to <u>look</u> for reasons to investigate. So what checks and balances are required in this case?
In both the second and third cases, I think the missing check is some assurance that the government will use the data they collect <u>in the aggregate only</u>. Today, even if that’s all they’re doing, people worry about the possibility that they may do more.
What if we could allow aggregated data searches, but require the government to obtain warrants if patterns are identified, or if certain individuals meet the criteria of a search? In other words, the they get the data mining for free, but if it turns up anything, they should get approval to check it out. This scenario would take some technical development (not too much, I think) and some advancements in the law to catch up with the technology (to define, for instance, when the search is specific enough to cross the line from data mining into spying on individuals).
Such advances, I believe, would provide the government the opportunity to take advantage of modern surveillance techniques while giving people the peace of mind that their privacy is not being unduly invaded.
Categories: Political Rantings | 14 Comments »