“For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to ‘those powerful few’ – Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.” @ Politico

I guess the Post was looking for news ways to make money in an age of declining advertising revenue. You would think they might have found a more subtle approach than a straight up bribing scheme, but what do I know?

The latest news is that the Post is canceling their plans to host the pay-for-access parties uncovered by Politico. However, the paper claims nothing immoral or corrupt would have occurred.

Sure.

So, what’s the verdict? Is the WaPo officially dead as a credible news organization?

We're watching for ways to take your money

By Ted

I would like to share my recent experience with Time Warner Cable.

I have been a subscriber for the past 3 years, so I have had to deal with intermittent incompetence, but no huge issues.

Last week I moved literally across the hall. In preparation for this move I contacted Time Warner asking if I could just carry my DVR box and cable modem 20 ft and reconnect the cables myself. I was actually hopeful considering that I had previously done a “self-install” for the cable modem – meaning, I had gone to the TWC hub on 23rd St, told them I wanted to add internet access, and they gave me a great cable modem and install kit with all necessary equipment/cables/splitters, and so I took home and hooked up that same day.

However, no such luck this time. Apparently I was only able to do the self-install because I had a “previously established connection” and was only adding services to it. Since this would be a brand new location, I needed a technician to come out and verify that the connection was working OK. So that was awful because of course the earliest available time was a full week later. However, all was not lost, because we took the opportunity to request access to HD Movies on Demand, which we found out required the most recent cable box, which would be free. OK so cool, free upgrade. Also, we would get 3 months of HBO/Cinemax/Showtime (+ HD versions) due to the transfer.

Upon moving, I discovered that the existing cable hook-up already worked. Before the cable guy even came, we got TV and internet for a week.

Then the guy comes last Friday. Basically nothing changed except we got a new box and the promotional channels. Also, when he went to test everything, the sound wasn’t working. He fumbled through menus and settings for about 10 minutes before I decided to check the back of the box and of course the digital audio coax cable was connected to the stereo analog Left output. I didn’t make him feel like a dumb*ss (easy to miss!) but laughed inside.

Then he asked to use our computer to make sure the internet was working. He was on there for about 15 more minutes, but I didn’t bother him, figuring he was doing something important. Finally he left, and there was a Safari window up with ESPN.com’s NBA draft 2009 coverage.

Anyway, what does this all mean? OK so my bill is normally $110, for HD DVR + Turbo cable internet. Whatever. I log in today to find out that this month’s bill is $179. ???? What is the difference, you ask? I scour the bill I hastily signed, and see a charge for “A/O Install” for $20 and “Truck Trip” for $40. Wow. $20 to move 2 cables from one box to the other (1 of which was correct) and $40 for… apparent bullsh*t.

Um… so that’s $60… where is the other $9? I see a charge for “ODN DVR HD” for $5.63… not quite sure what that is… considering there’s already a $10.95 charge for “DVR service”… and then there’s a $12.90 charge simply for “Basic” (no idea) and $2.38 for “DT Navigator” (…?). I mean I guess I signed this sheet but what are you gonna do, fight the guy?

Lastly, I turned to HBO tonight to find that it was turned off, whereas all the promotional channels the woman originally mentioned worked over the weekend after the cable guy came. Checked Cinemax and Showtime, turned off. “Call 1-800-xxx-xxxx to subscribe.” We called to query and the clearly outsourced fellow on the line informed us that he didn’t know what happened, but that the only promotional code he had to give was for HBO 1 month free.

So: $70 later, for moving across the hall, with working equipment and connections we already had, that’s what we get. F*cking HBO for a month. Way to monopolize go, TWC!!!

It’s time again to talk about torture…

Too much of the debate on torture has focused on specific tactics in isolation. The logic goes like this:

Pouring water on someone’s face doesn’t sound so bad does it? Having to stand in the cold doesn’t sound too terrible. Being slapped a few times is mean but not torture. I mean come on, you’re worried about depriving terrorists of sleep? These guys are trying to kill you and yours!

We’ve been conditioned by years of televisionand movies to think of this stuff as the basis of interrogation. While I’m opposed to using any and all of those tactics, I could see a reasonable person agreeing they could be used by themselves under limited circumstances. But what’s not reasonable is approving of this:

Jamal Naseer, a soldier in the Afghan Army, died after he and seven other soldiers were mistakenly arrested. Those arrested with Naseer later said that during interrogations U.S. personnel punched and kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables. Some said they were doused with cold water and forced to lie in the snow. Nasser collapsed about two weeks after the arrest, complaining of stomach pain, probably an internal hemorrhage.

Or this:

In December 2003, a 44-year-old Iraqi man named Abu Malik Kenami died in a U.S. detention facility in Mosul, Iraq. As reported by Human Rights First, U.S. military personnel who examined Kenami when he first arrived at the facility determined that he had no preexisting medical conditions. Once in custody, as a disciplinary measure for talking, Kenami was forced to perform extreme amounts of exercise—a technique used across Afghanistan and Iraq. Then his hands were bound behind his back with plastic handcuffs, he was hooded, and forced to lie in an overcrowded cell. Kenami was found dead the morning after his arrest, still bound and hooded.

Or this:

The cases also include that of Abed Hamed Mowhoush, a former Iraqi general beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death. In the recently concluded trial of a low-level military officer charged in Mowhoush’s death, the officer received a written reprimand, a fine, and 60 days with his movements limited to his work, home, and church.

Going through those combined techniques repeatedly is not only painful, it’s deadly.

American officials, going all the way to the President of the United States, approved these tactics and are responsible for the broken lives and the dead bodies of these tortured men. At the very least, they should have to defend themselves in a long and embarrassing trial.

Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?

Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable.

… the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.

I’m all about calling ‘denier folk’ ignorant, disingenuous, greedy, or even just a**holes, but calling them treasonous is “politics as usual.” Unless you’re willing to say it’s treasonous to oppose universal health care, higher CAFE standards, more funding for FEMA or a even ban on abortion. It wouldn’t take much to argue that failing to enact each of those policies would place “future generations of Americans in grave danger.” So, call me old fashioned, but I think the label ‘treason’ should be reserved for actual treason, like giving our military secrets to another country.

Aside from his wee bit of hyperbole, Krugman painted a convincing and terrifying picture of what’s happening to our climate:

The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.

Thus researchers at M.I.T., who were previously predicting a temperature rise of a little more than 4 degrees by the end of this century, are now predicting a rise of more than 9 degrees. Why? Global greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than expected; some mitigating factors, like absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, are turning out to be weaker than hoped; and there’s growing evidence that climate change is self-reinforcing — that, for example, rising temperatures will cause some arctic tundra to defrost, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Temperature increases on the scale predicted by the M.I.T. researchers and others would create huge disruptions in our lives and our economy. As a recent authoritative U.S. government report points out, by the end of this century New Hampshire may well have the climate of North Carolina today, Illinois may have the climate of East Texas, and across the country extreme, deadly heat waves — the kind that traditionally occur only once in a generation — may become annual or biannual events.

That kind of nightmare scenario is why we should take preventive steps and reduce our carbon emissions. America is still the #1 polluter and consumer of energy, so reducing our footprint would help regardless of what other countries decide to do (but we should push them in the same direction).

The Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade legislation is a good first step, but it can’t be the only one. We need to seriously consider the sacrifices we’ll have to make to keep our planet from turning into an uninhabitable oven. We’ll need highly efficient or clean energy alternatives to basic American luxuries. Everything from cars to clothes dryers. Perhaps we’re looking toward a future where we just can’t produce and consume so much stuff, like all the crappy plastic garbage from China you see in Wal-Mart.

And look at it this way, even if we’re wrong and climate change is just a load of BS, at least our air will be cleaner. People in LA might even be able to breathe outdoors.

Unfortunately for them, the Internet rejects advertising.

Mass marketing flourished in print, on TV and on the radio, but only because those media all share a crucial characteristic: A passive audience.

I don’t mean completely passive.  Some crude exchange mechanisms do exist.  For instance, I could call in to a radio show or write a letter to the newspaper, and I could also buy a printing press and distribute my own content.  But those mechanisms have crippling limitations on audience participation, so the conversation overwhelmingly occurs in one direction — from anchor to viewer, from expert to layman, from owner to consumer.

This set-up benefits the advertiser.  His message reaches a captive audience member, who, before the invention of TiVo, would need serious persistence to avoid commercials.  This was especially true on the airwaves, where stations synchronized commercial breaks to force us to endure blither blather.

Audience passivity also benefited advertisers in terms of suppressing criticism.  Because of barriers to information distribution, both financial and ideological, consumer groups had much less reach than corporate marketers.

The game has changed.

With the Internet, I am active.  I decide what content I want, and then I access it via the shortest possible route (unless I feel like browsing), and I do this whenever I want.  If ads block my route, I am annoyed.  If they pop up at me, I close them down.   If they arrive in e-mails, I filter them out.  If they play before my video, I snarl at them.

When ads appear alongside my desired content, I have virtually no reason to pay attention to them.  If I want a product, say a digital camera, I read a review site and consider the extensive, consumer-generated information.  We have a newfound voice.  We can now publish instantly and freely.

In an article on TechCrunch, Professor Eric Clemons outlines four premises that explain why he thinks, as he puts it, “the internet is not replacing advertising but shattering it.”  Clemons, who teaches at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says, in short:

1. We don’t trust ads.
2. We don’t want ads.
3. We don’t need ads.
4. Ad space is plentiful and therefore not profitable.

I reference Clemons, as I referenced Taylor in an earlier piece, because his thoughts influenced my own.  But, as with Taylor, I have disagreements.

Premises #1 and #2 are true on the Internet, but they are also true generally.  When we watch TV, we want to see the program, not the commercials.  We don’t trust commercials either.  All things being equal, I might buy a cereal I’ve heard of in an ad instead of one I haven’t heard of, but that’s not because I trust the ad.  Rather, it’s because I’m familiar with the product, and “familiarity induces preference.”

Premise #3 identifies the critical change.  We’ve never trusted or wanted ads, but now we don’t need them either.  On review sites, I can expose myself to more products and learn more trustworthy information about them.

Premise #4 would fail without premise #3.  Ad space is also plentiful in the physical world, but only some of it can reach mass audiences.  Internet traffic is finite; it concentrates in certain hubs.  If ads were still needed by consumers, marketers could potentially target them at these hubs.

So the Internet will shatter advertising, and I propose that this is reason for celebration.  Note that the overriding purpose of an advertisement is to persuade me to buy or support something.  It presents information in the context of persuasion, and so it cannot be expected to be objective and honest.

Insofar as the Internet provides a robust oversight mechanism (e.g. consumer reviews), it produces a more meritocratic market.  Products and services thrive, not because mass advertising has persuaded us or familiarized us, but rather because we actually trust and desire them.

Let’s say you’re about to sell a car. You’ve decided that you can’t part with your wheels for less than $10,000, but you think it could be worth as much as $12,000. When it comes time to post the Craigslist ad for your car, what asking price do you put down?

If your name is Barack Obama, you’ll probably ask for $10,000, get bargained down to $9,000 and end up crying yourself to sleep. At least that’s what Obama is threatening to do with the cause of health care reform.

The default liberal position on health care reform is that we should have a single payer system where the government pays for all medical care, this should decrease costs and expand coverage to all Americans. The default conservative Republican position calls for maintenance of the status quo, because of distrust in big government, or an increased reliance on market competition to further drive down costs.

The White House and so-called liberal Democrats in Congress are pushing for what they are calling a “public option” where a government plan is allowed to compete on the health care market versus private insurers. This is supposed to be a compromise to conservative Republicans that fear blowing up the current system and the health care “market.”

But by compromising in advance of the actual negotiations, Democrats are all but assuring they won’t even get a public option. The “public option” is now defined in the media as the most left/liberal/hippie/socialist position, and so there will be enormous pressure to compromise even further.

So while liberals would love to see a single payer system, they’d be satisfied with a public option. And now, due to inept bargaining tactics, they will likely get neither.

For more on this, read Atrios, Krugman and Yglesias.

Flickr photo by brykmantra

House of Smart

She’s not the only one that can’t get no satisfaction. In the space between Xzibit’s West Coast Customs and Lil Jon’s East Side Boyz, graduates from the Humanities lament their decisions to study subjects they were actually interested in, as they’ve found themselves with few marketable skills. Some have been funneled into graduate programs, but, for many, those require superhuman devotion to obscure, highly-specialized topics.

A liberal arts program always succeeds in the sense that it exposes students to the world and helps them think about it in new ways. Unfortunately, two structural problems in particular prevent the Humanities from producing even greater benefits:

First, departments have been separated from each other. We’ve divided academics just as we’ve divided labor.

Second, application has lagged. Departments often produce a dearth of practical, actionable research and outreach.

These two weaknesses play on each other. Specialization often produces specialized language, which further separates departments. A lack of practical application, on the other hand, means that your findings in Political Science mean little to me over in Philosophy.

Departmental segregation, aside from being influenced by the division of labor, reflects historical limitations in how we handled information. According to Professor David Weinberger, print – formerly the primary medium for information – had characteristics that shaped how we conceive of knowledge, truth and, of course, information itself. A book is self-contained, it’s limited in length and it’s static. In the same way, a department in the humanities is self-contained, it’s elite and it’s resistant to revision.

But, now, our capacity for information has been revolutionized. The Internet, the new medium, actually rejects containment, permission and stasis. A book on the Civil War would give me a concentrated dose of information and analysis from some expert(s), and, five years from now, that book will stay say the same thing.

Instead, let’s say I go to Wikipedia, where information is networked. The improvement seems almost exponential. The Civil War article links to innumerable related topics, it’s collaborated on by hundreds of contributors/editors and, when new information emerges, it reflects it quickly.

I don’t mean to say simply “do it like Wikipedia,” but rather I want to show that this networked system seems generally superior for advancing our understanding. The real world cannot perfectly copy the Internet, but it can at least resemble it.

And what about the second problem – practical application? Specialization clearly exacerbates these woes and maybe even underlies them. I wonder too if it could be a leftover of the Greek philosophical tradition, which saw knowledge seeking as leisurely and worthy for its own sake. Knowledge was a realm for those who had free time, and truth was treated as an internal possession.

This conception makes no sense now. We believe, as a society, that education should be available to all, and, in practice, information has been democratized and externalized (Weinberger again).

If it’s going to be beneficial for society, education must be reformed. History has intrinsic value, and studying it for its own sake is OK, but that should be secondary. Its primary purpose should be to help us. So, for instance, we could organize departments around problems, as Professor Mark Taylor of Columbia proposed in the New York Times. Imagine a water shortage department featuring collaboration by environmental scientists, political scientists, law students, anthropologists and so on.

I only agree with Taylor this far, as the rest of his commentary treats the university as if it was a failing brain factory that should get an IMF makeover (i.e. a kick to the groin). Of the rest of his proposals, some are irrelevant to my topic, and some are appalling. For instance, he says permanent departments should be abolished, retirement should be enforced and tenure should be abolished. Well, we shouldn’t abolish an existing department unless somehow we can show it lacks sufficient distinctness. His other two ideas, mandating retirement and striking tenure, would surely injure academic freedom.

I imagine that problem-oriented departments would complement, rather than replace, and their ultimate goal would be benefit, not profit. The suggestion that we must define benefit as profit perverts the ideal of free inquiry and threatens to transform universities into corporate auxiliaries. If anything, we should point these departments toward problems that don’t have profitable solutions. They are the problems that need attention.

Short of hopefully solving some of these social problems, these proposed departments should enable future video store philosophers (err, “film” store philosophers) to develop a more widely-applicable skill set, all while gaining experience with other disciplines, other students and, of course, the challenges of the real world.

On that point, here is an excellent video rant by Bill Maher (h/t Chris Dierkes):

For those of you who can’t watch the video, here’s the transcript, courtesy of HBO.com (bolds are mine):

And finally, New Rule: He’s your president, not your boyfriend. Now, last week in this space, I criticized President Obama for not fighting corporate influence enough, and it made some liberals very angry. My phone rang off the hook, my email filled up, and Nancy Pelosi got so mad her face moved.

Look, folks, I like Obama, too. I’m just saying, let’s not make it a religion.

And, as far as you folks on the right who think that we’re now somehow in league, we’re not in league. I was criticizing Obama for not being hard enough on the corporate douchebags you live to defend. I don’t want to be on your team. Pick another kid.

So, I stand by my words. But, there is another side to the story. And that is that every time Obama tries to take on a progressive cause, there’s a major political party standing in his way: the Democrats. Now, people talk a lot about a third political party in America. We don’t need a third party. We need a first party. You go to the polls and your choices are the guy who voted for the first Wall Street bailout, or the guy who voted for the next ten.

This year, we’re hearing that a public option for health care is unlikely because it doesn’t have the support of enough Democrats. Even Ted Kennedy’s plan– Ted Kennedy, yeah — leaves 37 million uninsured. This is because we don’t have a left and a right part in this country anymore. We have a center-right party and a crazy party.

And, over the last 30-odd years, Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital.

So, what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby; that’s the Democrats.

And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-earth-ers and Civil War re-enactors who mostly communicate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans. And who actually worry that Obama is a socialist.

Socialist? He’s not even a liberal. I know he’s not because he’s on TV. And while I see Democrats on television, I don’t see actual liberals. And if occasionally you do get to hear Ralph Nader or Noam Chomsky or Dennis Kucinich, they’re treated like buffoons. Okay, these are not three of the world’s most charismatic men, but then nobody is going to confuse Newt Gingrich for Zac Efron. And I have to look at his fat face on TV more often than that free credit report song.

Shouldn’t there be one party that unambiguously supports cutting the military budget, a party that is straight up in favor of gun control, gay marriage, higher taxes on the rich, universal health care–legalizing pot–and steep, direct taxing of polluters? These aren’t radical ideas. A majority of Americans are either already for them or would be if they were properly argued and defended.

And what we need is an actual progressive party to represent the millions of Americans who aren’t being served by the Democrats. Because, bottom line, Democrats are the new Republicans.

It’s like when some Chinese company buys the name of a great old American brand and slaps it on some cheap crap. You buy it out of reflex, and it’s only later that you think, wow, I didn’t even know Woolworth’s made dildos…

Imagine a meat company that bred ten billion rats, fattened them on trash and sewage, ground their bodies into chuck, and then sold it all as grade-A ground beef to McDonald’s and Burger King, right under the noses of the USDA: this is exactly the same thing, only with debt instead of food. We’re eating it, they’re counting the money.

Then I found this proof that they are “counting the money” (bolds are mine):

Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm’s 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.

A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm.

Staff in London were briefed last week on the banking and securities company’s prospects and told they could look forward to bumper bonuses if, as predicted, it completed its most profitable year ever.

Meanwhile, this is how the rest of the country is dealing with the recession:

In all seriousness, I’d like to know if the government is even looking into wrong doing at Goldman Sachs. I’d be surprised if some kind of law wasn’t broken while they profited handsomely from a recession and government bailouts.

“Imagine a meat company that bred ten billion rats, fattened them on trash and sewage, ground their bodies into chuck, and then sold it all as grade-A ground beef to McDonald’s and Burger King, right under the noses of the USDA: this is exactly the same thing, only with debt instead of food. We’re eating it, they’re counting the money.” – Matt Taibbi (go read the entire article)

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In Iran, the government is starting to violently crackdown on the protests over the recent election. Reuters is putting the death toll at somewhere between 10 and 13, with more than a hundred injured.

I was emotionally struck by this video of a confrontation between protesters and Iranian authorities I saw on Sullivan’s blog over the weekend:

The latest news is that Iranian election monitors have admitted to massive voting irregularities, but the government insists it wouldn’t have changed the outcome. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Guard has threatened a “revolutionary confrontation”with protesters threatening the regime.

If more blood is spilled, let’s hope it’s not just to replace one set of dictators for another. The Iranian people deserve better.

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Our lead commenter Ian got married this weekend. All the best to him and his new wife!

Just so you know, this is how Ian proposed…