Moses Kagan's Aurora Borealis

Free Traffic For NYTimes.com (and all newspapers!)

2009-05-28T10:38:00.000-07:00

Why are NY Times reporters anonymous in an age where reputation is all that matters, particularly online?

NY Times reporters create incredibly high-quality content. Yet, with the exception of the very small by-line atop (or sometimes below) each article, they are basically anonymous to everyone but hard-core media geeks.

So, NY Times Digital:

Create a profile page for each reporter
Include pictures and bio information
Include links and intro paragraphs from each of the reporter's articles
Include a comments area for interactions
If available, include links to reporter's Facebook, MySpace, etc.

Doing this would cost nothing and would open up an entirely new, more social way to consume the content the Times is already paying to create. Plus, the addition of social features would spur entirely new kinds of interactions between reporters and their fans.

So, NYT, what are you waiting for?

Guess the G.O.P. is Enjoying Minority Status

2009-04-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

From today's Washington Post:

"After getting blasted last week for presenting a budget plan light on details, House Republicans today unveiled a more complete proposal that would cut taxes for business and the wealthy, freeze most government spending for five years, halt spending approved in the economic stimulus package and slash federal health programs for the poor and elderly."

Andrew Cuomo Wins Today

2009-03-23T18:58:00.000-07:00

The current headline on NYTimes.com is: "$50m in AIG Bonuses to be Repaid".

While Congress fulminated, Andrew Cuomo, NY's Attorney-General methodically obtained the names and gains of the AIG bonus-babies.

When the CEO, Edward Liddy, asked the bonus babies to return 50% voluntarily, Cuomo said it wasn't good enough.

Now comes news that 9 of the top 10 bonuses (and 15 of the top 20) have been voluntarily returned in full.

It's difficult to over-state the importance of that headline to Obama Administration, which seeks to turn the page from the bonuses to rescuing the banks. My guess is, Cuomo's quick action will have earned him some serious chits from the president.

But what of the jerks who have so far refused to cough-up their ill-gotten gains? I assume they're mostly foreign, and therefore don't believe that they have any obligation to American tax-payers.

So how about this: Let's ban each and every one of them from entering the country until they return the money, with interest. No Broadway shows, no vacations in Miami, and definitely no jobs requiring travel to the US. My guess is, the money comes back quickly and quietly.

Hi David Brooks, Welcome to Planet Earth. When Did You Arrive?

2009-03-03T09:05:00.001-08:00

David Brooks is shocked (shocked!) that "..the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide... All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward."

Listening to conservatives, it's as if the past eight years never happened. They begin their argument from the position that the current balance of tax burdens is somehow right or fair, then call Obama a socialist for trying to re-adjust the balance.

But we've just had eight years where the rich disproportionately benefited from changes to the tax code. Inequality is up to levels last witnessed in the 1920's, in large part as a result of the richest Americans paying a far lower share of their income in taxes than has been the case for most of the preceding 50-100 years.

Here's an interesting anecdote from Warren Buffett: His marginal tax rate is lower than his secretary's, because his income comes from dividends and capital gains, and her income is from salary. That's just not fair.

For a while now, we've lived under an increasingly regressive tax code imposed by a Republican president and congress. Obama is just restoring the balance.

Will We Recover?

2009-03-01T17:55:00.000-08:00

Have had a lot of conversations recently regarding the fate of this country. Can we recover? Will things be the same again? Is this the end, or the beginning of the end, of American economic pre-eminence?

I'm not an economist and this isn't really the forum for macroeconomic theorizing. Let's talk instead about who we are, as Americans.

We are proud immigrants or we are the descendants of proud immigrants. We or our ancestors looked around the desperate refugee camps and benighted villages of our homelands and thought "there must be something better." We or our ancestors awoke one morning and, leaving everything known and comfortable behind, set off to America to make better lives for ourselves and our families.

What kind of person leaves everything he has known for his entire life, the geography, the society, the family, in search of gain? Who dares leave stability behind in favor of opportunity? A risk-taker.

We Americans are risk-takers. And we have created a society that encourages and rewards risk-taking. Has this gotten us into trouble? Of course it has. We have gambled on home prices and obscure financial instruments and we have lost.

But we are fundamentally undaunted. For every house-flipper ruined in this latest economic disaster there is, or soon will be, a vulture investor looking to buy foreclosed assets and re-position them for profit. For every insolvent bank there is an investor syndicate measuring the distressed assets for bargains. And for every failed company, there is a laid-off employee eying cheap office space, used computers, and under-utilized ex-colleagues and thinking, "Screw it. Maybe now is the time to see if I can start something."

So while I'm not really in any position to comment on the direction of key macro-economic indicators, I can tell you this: There is an energy there, an almost primal force relentlessly focused on profit and opportunity and willing to take risks to make it happen.

There are deals to be made. There are companies to be founded. Even now, in the midst of our common disaster, the seeds of recovery are being planted. I can feel it.

Election Day (and other tidbits)

2008-11-03T15:15:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the long posting break.

A few random thoughts:

1. If Obama wins, which it looks like he will, we should pause for a moment and reflect on the fact that ordinary, white Americans from all walks of life will have voted for a black man for president. They will deserve a lot of credit for their decency, their generosity, and for how far they / we have come.

2. McCain is going to be rightly praised for not allowing his campaign to get into the Jeremiah Wright crap. But he's going to be blamed for the Ayers / Hussein / etc. stuff. It's going to take some serious work in the Senate (maybe on immigration?) for McCain to atone.

3. The coming civil war within the GOP is going to be savage and protracted. If the Republican Party wants to be the party of intolerance, it's going to spend a lot of time in the wilderness of opposition. Eventually, some young leader will emerge who will reconstitute the party on the basis of strong defense, low taxes, and inclusiveness on immigration, etc. That person will be the next GOP president.

CAZT's new audition facility

2008-09-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

Our new audition facility has been open for about two months now and it's kicking ass. Check out the new CAZT studios website - Eli designed it, and it's awesome!

John McCain Invented the BlackBerry!

2008-09-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

Per Politico:

Asked what work John McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate's top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.

"He did this," Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did."

Al Gore, call your office.

Palin's per diem for staying at home... And we're off!

2008-09-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

I'd love a per diem for staying at my own house. Apparently so would Gov. Palin.

What do I think of Palin?

2008-09-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

Several friends have asked what I think of John McCain's choice of Gov. Palin as his running mate. Here goes...

1. She's objectively a bad choice to be a potential president. Being a good leader is about having a set of skills / attribues, including (but not limited to) communication, negotiation, information gathering, priority-setting, management, and having a vision. Some people are born with some talent in one or more of these categories, but most politicians spend a lot of time learning them.

Compare Palin to Obama (she certainly has): Obama isn't so experienced, as far as politicians go, but he's proven to be a remarkably quick study.

Being a state legislator and then a senator were his secondary school and university of politics, respectively. Competing against the Clintons (formidable foes) in the primary was his graduate school. The nomination is his diploma.

I don't think that Palin has had that kind of education yet. My guess is that she is smart and tenacious but raw and under-informed about key issues. Given the likelihood that she could be president if McCain wins (historically, the chances are approximately 1 in 3 or 1 in 4), I'm not happy with her selection.

McCain must know all of the above, so I think we are forced to conclude that McCain picked her because he thinks she can help him win, not because he thinks she would be a good president.

2. So let's evaluate the selection on the basis that McCain did: Will Palin help or hurt his chances?

I think the answer is that her chances need to be considered over time.

Right now, she is in the most dangerous part of the race. She's undefined for most voters. One or two more stories about her upbringing / family could define her as some kind of lunatic. One or two gaffes could make her into John Kerry. Biden could eviserate her in a debate ("I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. And you, sir, are no Jack Kennedy."), and thereby define her as Dan Quayle. Obama could decide to turn the advertising guns on her and try to define her in any number of unflattering ways (I think this last one is unlikely).

If she manages to make it through these next few weeks without getting nailed as a lunatic, gaffe-prone, a lightweight, or something else, then I think she has a reasonable chance to help him. She's attractive, she gives a good speech, she's willing (obviously) to be very, very negative in a way that some VP nominees (John Edwards, for example) are not, and she does seem to fire up the crazies on the far right.

Overall, I give her a D+ as a potential VP and an incomplete as part of the Republican ticket.

GOP VP Pick Palin = Governor of Fairyland

2008-08-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

Lost in all of the talk about Sarah Palin is the fact that being governor of Alaska is not like being governor of any other state in the country.

Alaska draws all of its revenue from the oil & gas industry, to the point where citizens don't need to pay taxes. In fact, each resident of Alaska receives an annual check from the government.

This allows the government of Alaska to avoid making painful choices about budgeting. It also means that the governor of Alaska is by definition the least qualified governor in the nation to assume national executive office.

Lying in Politics

2008-08-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

Paul Krugman's piece in the Times today argues that the Republican Party is "the party of stupid". By this, he means that:

"... know-nothingism - the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there's something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise - has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party's de facto slogan has become: 'Real men don't think things through.'"

Krugman's wrong, and what's going on is worse than stupid.

The election and governing strategies of Bush the Younger were / are predicated on a simple, stunning insight into American politics: The great mass of people are so uninformed that it is possible to lie to them without being caught.

By "caught", I don't mean that lies go undiscovered. The media, the mainstream and the blogs, do a pretty good job of ferreting out the truth in most cases. They dutifully report that, for example, offshore drilling won't affect gas prices, or that Iraq was not connected in any meaningful way to Al Qaeda. But their reporting doesn't matter. Why?

The media is fragmented, so that there is no one media institution capable of reaching a truly mass audience. We are functionally illiterate, reading fewer newspapers (with in-depth commentary) and playing more video-games and watching more movies, etc. The right wing has embarked on a long and successful campaign to discredit the media by arguing that it is biased in favor of the left. The list of theories goes on and on.

Whatever the reason, the media is no longer an effective watchdog. It can scream and yell about lies politicians tell, but we aren't listening. Maybe it has been like this all along, maybe not. But it seems to me that there was a tacit agreement for a long time among politicians of both parties to refrain from telling direct lies to the people. You could fib or stretch the truth, but you didn't lie about big things.

George Bush changed all of that. He rejected the tacit bargain and lied and got away with it. McCain and the rest of the Republicans have learned the lesson. Politics isn't a debate contest. The public isn't a tenure review committee or the editorial board of a scientific publication.

The American public is effectively asleep at the switch. Lying to us, unfortunately, seems to work. It's a sad, sad state of affairs. But, again unfortunately, we get the politics we deserve.

Disbar / Jail Goodling and Fire Her Hires

2008-07-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

Now that we have further proof that Monica Goodling, Alberto Gonzelez's aide, subverted the civil service laws designed to protect the jobs of career government workers from political interference, I have a few questions:

Will Goodling and the other guilty parties be punished? Is there any doubt that what they did (perverting the hiring process in the Justice Department such that non-partisan or Democratic leaning candidates could not be hired or promoted) was worse for the country than, say, some crackhead robbing a liquor store? At the very least, these people ought to be disbarred, convicted in court, and run out of Washington D.C. on a rail.
What about the political hacks they hired? Do the civil service laws that Goodling ignored now protect these incompetents from a thorough house-cleaning after the election?

This is most assuredly NOT an isolated incident. The Republican Party has gone beyond mere disagreement with the laws and regulations it dislikes. Instead, under President Bush, the GOP has been relentless in subverting the power and credibility of those parts of the Executive Branch tasked with enforcing rules it finds disagreeable, the Justice Department being just one example.

We Americans have endured the consequences in ways large and small: the response to Katrina by the cronies running FEMA, the bungling of the Iraq occupation after the Administration transferred authority from the "unfriendly" State Department to the more pliable Defense Department, the lack of enforcement of voting rights protections for minorities during recent elections by the Voting Rights office of the Justice Deparment, and the un-ending stream of recalls of unsafe food and toys by the under-staffed and under-funded FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection (whose Bush-appointed leader actually testified to Congress that she did not want more power and money to police toy companies), to name a few.

These were not accidents. They were the foreseeable outcomes of policies cooked up by an Administration staffed by people who believe that government, all government, is bad.

My Favorite Headline...

2008-07-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

Great article, even better headline:

"Obama Overseas! In Presidential Mode! Back Home, It's McCain in a Golf Cart."

What Obama Will Tell Euros Tomorrow

2008-07-22T19:16:00.000-07:00

Mark my words:

Obama is going to give at least one speech in Europe that is much more pro-American than people are expecting. He is going to publicly give the Europeans, particularly the French, a hard time about not fulfilling their responsibilities in Afghanistan.

Why am I so sure? Two reasons: First, Obama has a history of telling groups what they don't want to hear. Want examples? He has repeatedly excoriated black males (as a group) in front of black audiences for not being sufficiently involved with their children. He also swatted down the Clinton / McCain Fuel Tax Holiday Idiocy.

Second, the media is waiting to pounce on anything that Obama does overseas that could be construed as talking down to Americans (like the infamous "bitter" talk in San Francisco). What better way to swing things the other way than to give the Euros a (deserved) tongue-lashing for not pulling their weight?

Here's an argument for pardons that argues against them

2008-07-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

From the Times:
"As the administration wrestles with the cascade of petitions, some lawyers and law professors are raising a related question: Will Mr. Bush grant pre-emptive pardons to officials involved in controversial counterterrorism programs?

Such a pardon would reduce the risk that a future administration might undertake a criminal investigation of operatives or policy makers involved in programs that administration lawyers have said were legal but that critics say violated laws regarding torture and surveillance.

Some legal analysts said Mr. Bush might be reluctant to issue such pardons because they could be construed as an implicit admission of guilt. But several members of the conservative legal community in Washington said in interviews that they hoped Mr. Bush would issue such pardons — whether or not anyone made a specific request for one. They said people who carried out the president’s orders should not be exposed even to the risk of an investigation and expensive legal bills.

“The president should pre-empt any long-term investigations,” said Victoria Toensing, who was a Justice Department counterterrorism official in the Reagan administration. “If we don’t protect these people who are proceeding in good faith, no one will ever take chances."

Exactly.

GOP asks users for comments on platform. My comment: White, white, white.

2008-07-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

Take a quick look at the people charged with shaping the Republican Party Platform. Does that look like the America you live in? Four old, white dudes? Really?

Microsoft and Yahoo

2008-07-08T08:13:00.000-07:00

Michael Arrington has a piece on Techcrunch today ripping into Microsoft for offering to consider re-entering merger talks if Yahoo replaces its board. He argues that: "...Microsoft, led by CEO Steve Ballmer, have taken Yahoo’s rebuffs entirely too personally. It’s no longer just about business, it’s about destroying and humiliating the people who embarrassed Microsoft."

False. The reason that Microsoft is insisting that Yahoo replace its board before re-entering talks is that Jerry Yang and his allies previously gave Microsoft the distinct impression that, rather than submit to a merger, they would "burn the furniture [and] destroy the place".

We can all understand why Yang would have gone to extreme lengths to try to keep the company he founded from being subsumed into Microsoft. However, we can also all understand why Microsoft, having had its fingers burned once, would prefer never to deal with him again.

My unsolicited advice to Yahoo shareholders: Fire the board, do a deal, and get on with life.

A Weak Defense of Helms Unpicked

2008-07-07T10:47:00.000-07:00

Further to the Jesse Helms post:

Here is a partial list of Mr. Helm's "achievements" as adapted from Marc Thiessen in the Post:

Helms led the successful effort to bring Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO
He won overwhelming approval for his legislation to support the Cuban people in their struggle against a tyrant. - [Helms-Burton strengthened the embargo, which has been an embarrassing policy failure since JFK's Administration.]
He secured passage of bipartisan legislation to protect our men and women in uniform from the International Criminal Court. [We, alone in the West, have refused to acknowledge the legitimacy and jurisdiction of a court designed to bring war criminals to justice. Thanks, Jesse.]
He won majority support in the Senate for his opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. [In insisting upon our right to test nuclear weapons, we incentivize other countries, like Iran, to pursue their own.]
He helped secure passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, which expressed strong bipartisan support for regime change in Baghdad. [We all know how this story unfolded.]

If these "achievements" are among the best arguments in favor of Helm's career that Thiessen can muster, I think he's proven my point for me.

Jesse Had Blood On His Hands

2008-07-05T20:36:00.000-07:00

Of all the things Jesse Helms did in his long career, waging a long, bitter rear-guard action to block funding for AIDS prevention and treatment was the worst. Here is the relevant part of the Times obituary:

"He fought bitterly against federal financing for AIDS research and treatment, saying the disease resulted from 'unnatural' and 'disgusting' homosexual behavior. "Nothing positive happened to Sodom and Gomorrah," he said, "and nothing positive is likely to happen to America if our people succumb to the drumbeats of support for the homosexual lifestyle."

Helm's personal crusade against funding for AIDS meant that thousands, possibly millions, of people here and around the world died needlessly from a disease which (with a bit more research) eventually proved manageable, if not yet curable.

There's a tendency in life to smooth over awkward moments and misbehavior in people's lives after they're gone. In this instance, the impulse ought to be avoided. Jesse Helms was a cruel, mean, selfish, bigoted man whose legacy ought to serve as a warning to others who hold similar views now.

The long arc of American history bends toward freedom and compassion and equality. Stand in its way and you will be remembered harshly. Good riddance, Jesse.

French Army Shoot (Wrong) People

2008-07-01T15:29:00.000-07:00

Wow. Just wow:

"PARIS — The chief of staff of the French Army resigned on Tuesday, two days after a soldier from one of the country’s top units fired bullets instead of blanks during a military exhibition, injuring at least 16 people and prompting broad outrage and incredulity." - NY Times

Jay-Z's doing it... why can't Dems?

2008-06-28T19:04:00.000-07:00

Jay-Z is out there talking about Katrina.

Leaving aside torture, our government's handling of Katrina has to be the most shameful episode of the last eight years. I don't know why the Dems aren't running that footage on TV again.

Do Americans not remember how painful and awful those few days were? Does anyone need four more years of that?

Not that Obama is an energy saint either

2008-06-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

Corn-based ethanol is a boondoggle. We ought to be importing Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol.

However, my man Obama is in bed with the ethanol lobby. He offers the same nonsensical arguments in favor of "energy independence" that every other politician uses to justify inane, market distorting policies.

For the millionth time on this blog: energy is essentially fungible. You can buy it on world markets. The key is to use less of it, not worry about where you're buying it from.

Of course, no politician is perfect. I just hope that Obama recognizes this nonsense for what it is, pandering to improve his election chances, rather than actually believing that corn ethanol is a good idea. In other words, I hope Obama's being craven instead of stupid.

More Oil Idiocy

2008-06-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

I'm going to quote Charles Kauthammer at some length:

"Gas is $4 a gallon. Oil is $135 a barrel and rising. We import two-thirds of our oil, sending hundreds of billions of dollars to the likes of Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. And yet we voluntarily prohibit ourselves from even exploring huge domestic reserves of petroleum and natural gas.

At a time when U.S. crude oil production has fallen 40 percent in the past 25 years, 75 billion barrels of oil have been declared off-limits, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That would be enough to replace every barrel of non-North American imports (oil trade with Canada and Mexico is a net economic and national security plus) for 22 years.

That's nearly a quarter-century of energy independence. The situation is absurd. To which John McCain is responding with a partial fix: Lift the federal ban on Outer Continental Shelf drilling, where a fifth of the off-limits stuff lies."

No matter how often their ideas are discredited, there are still some who believe that we can drill our way out of our energy problems. Rather than make the argument(s) again, I instead propose that you read the following article from Mother Jones: The Seven Myths of Energy Independence.

User interface idea: Registering for Websites

2008-06-19T11:25:00.000-07:00

I hate when you're registering for a new site and it requires you to go back to your email account, find the welcome email, and click the confirmation link. It screws up the flow of registering and I would be willing to bet that it's a major roadblock for sites looking to register people.

So, why don't sites just ask you for your email account and password? The sites can then go and try to log into your email account. If successful, then they know that you are, indeed, the owner of the valid email account that you say you are the owner of, which is the whole point of confirmation links anyway.