Tired Of People Who Are Tired Of It

I rarely discuss the insane ramblings going on in the local blogosphere here, but when someone writes something this stupid, I have to speak out.

Case in point is this nonsense from local conservative Glen Dean:

Meanwhile, the Guerilla Women use the term misogyny in the title of a post to describe anybody that doesn’t bow at the altar of Billary. I am so sick of seeing that word. It’s like a new word that everybody learned and can’t wait to type themselves. It reminds me of the time bloggers started using the word xenophobe to describe anybody opposed to current immigration policy. The ladies at TGW seem to even be accusing Maureen Dowd of being anti-woman. Good grief.

First of all, Glen, you need to read more. Just because a word is new to you, it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been used for decades to describe something very real. I first learned the word “misogyny” when it was used to describe the late comedian Andy Kaufman--you know, the guy who used to challenge women to wrestling matches. I think he started doing that back in 1979, when I was 17.

Anyway, I’m sorry Glen Dean is tired of misogyny. Oh, the poor dear. Those big long words, with all those funny “y”’s where vowels should be. It’s hard to type, and it’s got that awkward “gyny” thing in there, which makes one think of the wife’s trips to the ob/gyn. Ewwwww., icky!

But you know what? I’m tired of experiencing it. I’m tired of seeing it on TV every night, spewed from the mouth of Chris Matthews as he attacks Hillary Clinton for her cleavage, her pantsuits, her “tears.” I’m tired of seeing this crap presented as some kind of joke, or radio jerks shouting “iron my shirt.” I don’t find it funny.

I don’t expect the Glen Deans of the world to get it; they seem allergic to the concept of putting themselves in anothers’ shoes for five minutes.

We have come a long way--but we still have a long way to go.

And quit calling me “baby.”

More Blackwater Dirty Tricks

Stuck in traffic? In a hurry? Next time the busy sidewalks and roads at the Hill Center get you in a tizzy, why not move through the traffic the Blackwater USA way: with teargas!

Suddenly, on that May day in 2005, the copter dropped CS gas, a riot-control substance the American military in Iraq can use only under the strictest conditions and with the approval of top military commanders. An armored vehicle on the ground also released the gas, temporarily blinding drivers, passers-by and at least 10 American soldiers operating the checkpoint.

[ ... ]

Both the helicopter and the vehicle involved in the incident at the Assassins’ Gate checkpoint were not from the United States military, but were part of a convoy operated by Blackwater Worldwide, the private security contractor that is under scrutiny for its role in a series of violent episodes in Iraq, including a September shooting in downtown Baghdad that left 17 Iraqis dead.

[ ... ]

Officers and noncommissioned officers from the Third Infantry Division who were involved in the episode said there were no signs of violence at the checkpoint. Instead, they said, the Blackwater convoy appeared to be stuck in traffic and may have been trying to use the riot-control agent as a way to clear a path.

And we wonder why they hate us.

Meanwhile, over at ThinkProgress comes the news that Blackwater has hired yet another D.C. lobbying firm--their third since October.

You know, maybe if Blackwater didn’t act like such irresponsible bullies, they might not need to spend so much money on lobbyists. Just a thought.

(h/t, Cab Drollery)

No One Could Have Anticipated This! No, Really!

The Davidson County Election Commission burglary has had repercussions:

A private security firm didn't cover a vulnerable Nashville government building on Saturdays for months — but did send the city a bill for its services, according to a government audit.

Gosh, where have we heard that one before? Oh yeah, here:

A Halliburton subsidiary agreed to pay the government $8 million to resolve accusations of overbilling related to the firm's work for the Army in the Balkans, the Justice Department said yesterday.

And here:

U.S. Protection and Investigations, a private security firm working for the State Department in Afghanistan, “is accused of overbilling the U.S. government by charging for nonexistent employees and vehicles.” The overbilling “could add up to millions of dollars,” an American security official with close ties to the company told the AP.

And here:

The federal government is investigating possible price gouging and corruption by food companies that supply meals to U.S. troops in Iraq. Marketplace's John Dimsdale talks to Alex Cohen about the deals made between the Pentagon's key vendor and firms, including Perdue Farms and Sara Lee.

We still haven’t learned the lesson:

Halliburton Co. repeatedly overcharged the government and exhibited "profound systemic problems" under a $1.2 billion contract to restore oil services in Iraq, according to internal government documents released yesterday by one of the company's fiercest critics.

And here’s an oldie but a doozey, with a local angle:

WASHINGTON, D.C. - HCA Inc. (formerly known as Columbia/HCA and HCA - The Healthcare Company) has agreed to pay the United States $631 million in civil penalties and damages arising from false claims the government alleged it submitted to Medicare and other federal health programs, the Justice Department announced today.

This settlement marks the conclusion of the most comprehensive health care fraud investigation ever undertaken by the Justice Department, working with the Departments of Health and Human Services and Defense, the Office of Personnel Management and the states. The settlement announced today resolves HCA's civil liability for false claims resulting from a variety of allegedly unlawful practices, including cost report fraud and the payment of kickbacks to physicians.

Want more? No?

Look, I’m as big a fan of private enterprise as the next person, but can we dispense with the notion that profit-oriented private companies can somehow do government work better, cheaper, more honestly, or more efficiently than the government can? Their goal is to make a profit. I’m not saying there aren’t circumstances where hiring a private contractor doesn't makes sense, but this whole trend under the Bush Administration of privatizing the government is costing taxpayers billions of dollars in “waste, fraud and abuse.” The only folks who come out winners in these relationships are the contractors themselves.

Conservatives act like privatization is some kind of magic wand that will instantly save taxpayers money, remove red tape and do all sorts of other shiny, sparkly, wonderful things. This is bunk. It's just as wasteful as letting government do these jobs, and often there's less transparency and accountability. I mean, my God, why the hell are we still doing business with Halliburton? Oh, right. Forget I asked.

And now this privatization trend has trickled down to state and local governments--surprise surprise--so has the fraud, abuse and waste.

No one could have anticipated that!

Greenwashing

Another one bites the dust.

Yesterday’s New York Times carried a story about the purchase of Burt’s Bee’s by Clorox. Burt’s Bee’s is the company that makes natural, eco-friendly body products (I love the Milk & Honey body lotion and lemon cuticle butter myself). And now Clorox has bought the entire company.

This is happening with increasing frequency, and it’s easy to see why. Consumers have shown they care about how their food and body products are made. Consumers will pay more for healthy, organic products that are manufactured without abusing workers or the environment. Corporate America got the message: “green” is in, “sustainability” and “eco-friendly” are the new buzzwords.

And corporations like Clorox have decided the best way to get their “green” bonafides is to buy an independent company like Burt’s Bee’s, rather than changing how they do business themselves.

More often than not, there’s no indication that the wholesome product you’re buying has a big nasty corporate parent--and that’s no accident. It’s called “greenwashing,” and Clorox isn’t the only one getting on board. Last year, Colgate bought 84% of Tom’s of Maine, the company known for its organic toothpaste, deodorant and mouthwash. In 2001, Coca Cola purchased Odwalla, the organic juice company. Nothing beats Odwalla limeade on a hot summer day, in my book. In 2003, Group Danone, the French company that owns Evian and Volvic waters, among other things, purchased controlling interest in Stonyfield Farm/Brown Cow, the organic dairy. If you’ve never had Brown Cow cream-top vanilla yogurt, you are in for a treat--it’s more delicious than a pint of Haggen-Dazs.

Yes, globalization and corporatization have come to the natural foods store. (An interesting diagram of who owns what can be found here.) Much as I love these brands, this all makes me a little sad. Because one of the reasons I buy this stuff, aside from the fact that they are wonderful products, is that I try to be a socially responsible consumer. Whenever possible, I try to spend my money with companies that don’t abuse their workers or the environment, whose corporate philosophy reflects my ideals of social justice and environmental responsibility.

After all, it’s supposed to be the consumers’ voice in this “free market economy,” right? Aren’t we supposed to be able to vote with our wallets? But it doesn’t work when a big corporation known for human rights abuses in Third World countries (cough*cough*CHIQUITA BRANDS*cough*cough) gobbles up my nice little eco-friendly independent company. It’s not illegal, or course, but it really sucks. The consumers’ voice just got muzzled by a corporate King Kong.

Now, some folks will argue that when Clorox sees how profitable it is to be wholesome and green from their Burt’s Bee’s division, they’ll change their own practices. But that isn’t traditionally the way these stories have played out. Take a look at the case of Horizon Organic dairy and Silk soy milk. Both are now owned by Dean Foods, the country’s largest processor and distributor of dairy products. Horizon, part of Dean’s “WhiteWave” division, now passes off operations like an 8,000 head industrial dairy as organic, despite complaints that they don’t meet the legal requirements for an organic dairy farm. Meanwhile, Dean’s “Silk” and “White Wave” brands of soy milk use soy beans from Brazil and China, countries with specious environmental and human rights records. I mean, come on, China? Yeah, I tried to boycott China, too--for about five minutes. Good luck with that.

I don’t have any answers; I’m not suggesting that there oughta be a law or any such thing. I’m mostly just trying to raise awareness here. And point out what utter bullshit the whole “free hand of the market” concept is, when corporate behemoths barge their way into whatever market they want, often hiding their tracks to keep consumers in the dark. "Free hand," indeed.

I guess the answer is for me to do without Odwalla limeade and Brown Cow vanilla yogurt and Burt’s Bee’s Milk & Honey body lotion and all of the other things that make life so enjoyable. I guess I can do that.

But I’m not giving up toothpaste. No way.

Outsourcing Elections

I’ve made no bones about how I feel about electronic touch-screen voting. I don’t trust it, I don’t want it, and I don’t understand why we have to have it.

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine has an excellent, albeit alarming. article about the problems with touch screen voting. It’s long, but it’s a thorough and comprehensive overview of the issue.

By now, most of us on the blogopshere have heard about the undercounts and switched votes, vulnerability to hacking and the election-night crashes. Etcetera. Etcetera. But about halfway through this article, author Clive Thompson gets to the really scary part of this issue:

This has created an environment, critics maintain, in which the people who make and sell machines are now central to running elections. Elections officials simply do not know enough about how the machines work to maintain or fix them. When a machine crashes or behaves erratically on Election Day, many county elections officials must rely on the vendors — accepting their assurances that the problem is fixed and, crucially, that no votes were altered.

In essence, elections now face a similar outsourcing issue to that seen in the Iraq war, where the government has ceded so many core military responsibilities to firms like Halliburton and Blackwater that Washington can no longer fire the contractor. Vendors do not merely sell machines to elections departments. In many cases, they are also paid to train poll workers, design ballots and repair broken machines, for years on end.

“This is a crazy world,” complained Ion Sancho, the elections supervisor of Leon County in Florida. “The process is so under control by the vendor. The primary source of information comes only from the vendor, and the vendor has a conflict of interest in telling you the truth. The vendor isn’t going to tell me that his buggy software is why I can’t get the right time on my audit logs.”

There you have it. The vendor has a conflict of interest in telling you the truth. This is why I want the “free hand of the market” out of my elections. Touch-screen voting is complicated, it’s high-tech and requires computer literacy to fix bugs and crashed machines. It requires an expertise beyond the ken of most poll workers, who are senior citizens. But even the tech-savvy can’t handle the problems that have been experienced with this equipment. The manufacturer has to fix these problems. But voting machine manufacturers have a political agenda, just like any business owner will.

Why are we ceding control of our elections to the companies that make the voting machines? This is no small thing. People have died for the right to vote in this country. And we’re just giving it away to some corporation? Why?

One of my conservative readers, responding to an earlier post on this issue, observed, “I'd just as soon everybody mark their choices on serialized paper ballots and count them by hand, even if we have to wait a week to find out who won.” I actually agree. I don’t think it will take that long, but I’d rather it be late, and accurate vs. fast and wrong. It’s just too important.

Graffiti Saturday

I can't remember where I saw this but it seems an apt representation of certain corners of the local blogosphere. Just sayin' ...

This Doesn’t Smell Right

Last night, NBC Nightly News aired Lisa Meyers’ story on identity theft (video clip here). The piece talks about how state and county governments make identity theft easy by making personal information like Social Security numbers readily available.

I daresay none of them make it as easy as the Davidson County Election Commission, which apparently just hands out laptops containing unencrypted personal information on every registered voter in the county. (Last night WSMV’s Dan Miller reminded us that information on every Davidson County voter was stolen--including Vince Gill and Gov. Bredesen. Oh, my. Because, you know, it’s not like anyone knows who they are.)

Sheesh.

Anyway, there’s just so much that’s not right about this story. Coverage from The Tennessean, WSMV, Nashville City Paper, and other local news outlets have revealed some rather implausible patterns that make me question the “just thieves looking for computers to steal” story:

• In a breach of protocol, all 81 laptops were locked up, save two.
• Those two computers’ hard drives were not encrypted.
• Passwords and user IDs were taped to the computers.
• The digital video recording system providing surveillance of the Election Commission office had been unplugged well before the break-in.
• The incident occured on a long holiday weekend, when security is provided just part-time.
• The security guard on duty (since fired), “listened to Christmas music, ordered food and visited the break room, failing to make his hourly rounds.”
• This all happened one month before our presidential primary, and eleven months before our presidential election.

I’m glad the security guard was fired, but I want them to aim a little higher as far as accountability goes. I’m thinking Election Administrator Ray Barrett should be dusting off his resume right now. I understand Barrett started his Election Commission career working in the warehouse that stores all of the county's voting machines. You’d think he’d know something about security.

As I’ve written before, if anyone wants to hack our elections we have no back-up. No paper trail, no way of recounting votes, except to ask a computer to spit out its data again. If you’re worried about hacked computers, and the ES&S iVotronic has proven to be vulnerable, then this is not reassuring.

Musings On $100/Barrel

Those futures traders are so cute! It’s just like playing Monopoly:

Crude oil futures for February delivery hit $100 on the New York Mercantile Exchange shortly after noon when a single trader bid up the price by buying a modest lot and then sold it immediately at a small loss. Prices eased somewhat in later trading, settling at $99.62.

But while the trader was apparently looking for vanity bragging rights, the spike in crude prices of $3.64 for the day reflected deeper worldwide trends, including the surge in energy demand from China, India and the oil-producing countries themselves.

Aww. Bless his/her heart! I tell ya, that’s one for the grandkids, alright! Or maybe, one for eBay:

Of the trader who sent oil to $100 in New York on Wednesday, Mr. Gheit added, “He’s probably going to frame the ticket and sell it on eBay for $100,000.”

Sure, why not? It’s not like this stuff matters, or anything. It’s not like what happens on the New York Mercantile Exchange has any effect on real people. It’s all fake, right? Free hand of the market, wheee!

Am I the only one thinking these Wall Street folks are as out of touch as the Washington press corps?

Anyway, those annoying Henny Pennies over at Peak Oil have been sending me dire “How to survive $100/Barrel” screeds for months. Now that it’s actually here, I thought I’d see what they have to say:

$100 oil in itself is no big deal - its 1% higher than $99 oil. But it serves as a milestone reminder that the future is likely to be less 'easy', and perhaps dictated by new rules. Questions abound: will high prices bring about more production? Will high prices begin a "hoarding" phenomenon among exporters and producers? Will $100+ oil spur energy alternatives with the scale and quality of energy dense crude oil? Is this even possible? Will society start to realize the dichotomy between natural capital and financial capital? Will $100 oil reduce demand in developing countries? Will OECD oil-importing countries (like the US) take the lead on changing the cultural carrot of consumption that drives energy use?

That last question is the biggie. That “cultural carrot of consumption” keeps our economy afloat. Everything is predicated on getting people to buy an increasing amount of stuff, and the juice driving this engine is oil. As people pay more for oil, they’ll buy less stuff.

If we had half a brain we’d be preparing for this bumpy road, maybe figuring out how to use less oil and investing some serious time and money into non-carbon fuels, the ballyhooed “Apollo project for energy.” That would be nice but it won’t happen. Because our government is run by the oil companies, and they have no interest in transitioning the economy away from a centralized resource they control from oil field to gas pump to an energy source that everyone has access to, like wind, solar or even biofuels.

Because we’re about to get our asses kicked in a hellacious recession, which means oil prices will stabilize, temporarily, as we go into panic mode. By then we'll be thinking $80/barrel is a steal, in the same way that I filled up on $2.86/gallon this morning and fleetingly thought it was a bargain.

And then things get worse:

There is absolutely no reason why oil will stay at $100 a barrel or anything close.

To emphasize how well the world’s economy is doing at the minute, the Journal points out that the IEA in Paris sees world oil demand in the fourth quarter rising by 2.3 million b/d over last year to nearly 88 million b/d.

What they don’t tell you, however, is that in August 2007 world production (all liquids) was estimated by the IEA to be 84.6 million b/d down by 854,000 b/d from August 2006. In 2006, and so far in 2007, world production has been just about 85 million b/d, some 3 million b/d less than we are forecast to consume in the current quarter.

We could of course take the extra 3 million b/d out of the world’s stockpiles, which would then be dropping by 90 million barrels a month — not really a long-term solution. Will OPEC bail us out with a 500,000 b/d increase in production? Could be, but considering that 140,000 b/d of that increase is supposed to come from Venezuela, where production has been stagnant for years, I wouldn’t count on it.

So there you have it. From the perspective of imminent peak oil, $100 oil is not something to weather for a while. It is merely a milestone on the way to still higher prices. The Journal’s bold conclusion that we can handle $100 “quite well” may be perfectly true, until you ask “then what?” and the only possible answer is higher and higher prices.

Somewhere the bubble will burst, for at the close of every day, the world’s oil reserves are 85 million barrels smaller and smaller and smaller ....

And somewhere a NYMEX trader has a souvenir of the day the big unraveling began.

Hooked On Edenics

The cavalcade of clowns continues:

Here you will discover that ALL human words contain forms of the Edenic roots within them. These proto-Semitic or early Biblical Hebrew words were programmed into our common ancestors, Adam and Eve, before the language dispersion, or babble at the Tower of Babel -- which kickstarted multi-national human history.

Oh, for crying out loud. I thought I put you morons on my Burn List this year. 

Amusing though this may be, the problem with religion-as-fake-science is that before you know it, some idiot in Kansas is going to want to teach “Edenics” as an alternative to Linguistics, and they will find another group of idiots--maybe, for instance, the Alliance Defense Fund--to pay for the series of lawsuits to try to force this garbage onto American kids. Meanwhile, another group of idiots, completely unrelated, will complain about “frivolous lawsuits.”

And no one will get the irony.

(h/t, Pharyngula)

Middle? WHAT Middle!

Paul Krugman’s column on Slate is full of wisdom that one hopes the Democrats heed. Chief among them is his advice to forget the middle, because, contrary to the miopic views of Beltway insiders like David Broder, the country is actually trending more liberal:

... [I]t's true that even now, polls suggest that Americans are about twice as likely to identify themselves as conservatives as they are to identify themselves as liberals.

But if you look at peoples' views on actual issues, as opposed to labels, the electorate's growing liberalism is unmistakable. Don't take my word for it; look at the massive report Pew released earlier this year on trends in "political attitudes and core values." Pew found "increased public support for the social safety net, signs of growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished appetite for assertive national security policies." Meanwhile, nothing's the matter with Kansas: People are ever less inclined to support conservative views on moral values—and have become dramatically more liberal on racial issues.

And it's not just opinion polls: Last year, the newly liberal mindset of the electorate was reflected in actual votes, too. Yes, some of the Democrats newly elected last year were relatively conservative. But others, including James Webb of Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, have staked out strikingly progressive positions on economic issues.

In such a climate one could have banked on a group of so-called “moderates” to suddenly clamor for “bipartisanship" and “political unity”--of course they have. They’ve been sitting on their hands for nearly eight years as the Bush Administration shred the Constitution; another eight years of irrelevancy must look really scary to these folks.

Sure enough, faster than you can say kumbaya, we have the “national unity movement” threatening to back an independent run by Michael Bloomberg. Okie dokie. Good luck with that.

I have the same problem with Unity ’08 and the "unity movement" as I do with those ridiculous “United We Stand” bumper stickers one still sees on occasion: No, united we don’t stand, and anyone who thinks we do either is awash in wishful thinking or believes anti-war sentiment is some kind of fringe movement.

By the same token, we do not have political unity right now. The nation is polarized, and as long as we have conservative and liberal talk radio, Fox News, and hate-spew coming from the Ann Coulter crowd (coupled with folks in the MSM who continue to give her ilk a national platform)--in other words, as long as there exists entrenched, established partisanship and people who profit from it--then there will be no political unity in Washington.

I mean, gosh. Isn't that why we have two parties to begin with?

Look, I'm as tired of the gridlock and ill-will as the next person, but this isn't a new thing. And these calls for “unity” ring awfully hollow when you remember this little incident from the 2004 Republican National Convention:

As Krugman points out, the problem is not George W. Bush but the movement that spawned him. Pat Peale was not some ordinary delegate who thought it would be cute to mock John Kerry’s Purple Heart, she’s a Texas GOP insider. These people aren’t going away, and they aren’t going to play nice with Democrats “in a spirit of Unity.”

Does anyone seriously believe that Ann Coulter will stop calling liberals “Godless” and Jonah Goldberg will quit fabricating his bogus histories of “liberal fascism” and Chris Matthews will get over his creepy Clinton fetish in a spirit of unity? Get real.

Digby exposed this sham for what it is, a way of telling Democrats to shut up “in the spirit of Unity” (which they seem to be doing very well anyway, without any help from the David Broders of the world):

I guess everyone is going to have to pardon us cynics here on the liberal side of the dial for being just a teensy bit skeptical of this demand for bipartisanship. The last time the country elected a centrist conciliator who wanted to leave behind the "braindead politics of the past", he first got kicked in the teeth by fellow centrists Sam Nunn and David Boren over gays in the military and raising taxes on the rich, and then faced an opposition so vicious that it ended with an illegitimate impeachment and a stolen election. A lot more has happened since then, all of it bad.

Damn straight.