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The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget designed a budget simulator that challenges users to limit the US public debt burden to 60% of GDP by 2018. I took the challenge yesterday, and faced some blowback over my tax-heavy plan to remake the budget.

The criticisms of my plan in the comment section were provocative and smart. So rather than bury my responses in an old article, I wanted to address them in a fresh post. Here we go:

1) Marketkarma: “You are really nailing wage based coastal high-earners.”
That’s basically right. I’m eliminating a lot of deductions that benefit blue state rich folks: the mortgage interest deduction, which is valuable for people with high mortgage interest payments as a percent of their total tax burden; and the state and local tax deduction, which hits states with a disproportionate share of high-income households and relatively high state/local taxes (see this Tax Policy Center article by Kim Rueben). I also elected to add another tax bracket for millionaires and let the Bush tax cuts expire for families over $250K.

MK estimates that my reforms might take these folks effective local/state/federal tax burden to more than 60%. I don’t know if that’s accurate. I certainly give some coastal high-earners a proper bludgeoning, but the richest families are already losing the value of some of these deductions because of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which uses a different set of taxable income and deduction rules to determine wealthier families’ tax burden.

Federal tax burdens on the rich have fallen dramatically in the last 30 years. In 1988, President Reagan’s last year in office, the top 10 percent, 5
percent and 1 percent of income-earners paid total effective tax rates
of 27%, 28% and 30%, respectively. Under 2009 law, these groups will
pay the feds closer to 22%, 23% and 26% of their income — across the
board, an approximate difference of five percentage points. We can afford to raise these rates to pay down the debt over the next 20 years.

2) Kill the Bush tax cut?
Two commenters — Steveinch and RustyJohn — suggested that we let the entire Bush tax expire at the end of 2010. Arithmetically, this is an attractive option. Compared to President Obama’s plan to renew the tax cut for families making less than $250K, letting the whole thing go would shave an additional $2.1 trillion off the debt. Repealing health care reform, by comparison, saves about 12% of that: $260 billion. But letting the whole Bush tax cut go — including the tax credits and marginal rates for lower-income folks — would kick the economy in the stomach just as it’s starting to breathe normally again.

Ultimately, the most important takeaway from the budget simulator is that a 100% spending-side solution to our debt is pretty much impossible. You can freeze discretionary spending, slash subsidies and enact major entitlement reform by means-testing benefits and raising the full retirement age. But very few itmes come close to the impact from letting the Bush tax cuts expire and taking the axe to tax expenditures like the deductions on state and local taxes and mortgage interest. This isn’t the opinion of your tax-loving author. It’s just math.

Since NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) acquired iVillage for $600 million four years ago, the women’s content network has tried a variety of ways to make good on that deal. After several brand restarts, NBCU brought in Readers Digest Association’s global digital head Jodi Kahn 18 months ago to finally put the network on better course. To do that, Kahn has been been on a hiring and site-launch spree the past few months. On the hiring end, she has tapped publishing vets like Glam Media’s Joe Lagani to run ad sales, while she has reformed iVillage’s verticals, like entertainment, into fuller sites.

Today, iVillage is launching its two newest sites, Pregnancy & Parenting and Beauty & Style, and Kahn is following the same pattern that has guided her through the other vertical rollouts.

Like the other four that have appeared after iVillage’s Entertainment site launch in September, both the Pregnancy and Beauty channels offer the promise of personalization tools, along with a mix of straightforward editorial and community features draped with e-commerce functions. While she declined to discuss how the pending Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) acquisition of a 51 percent stake in NBC would affect her moves going forward, in a phone interview with paidContent, Kahn said she’s sticking to the basic playbook she outlined when she started the job: Do as much research as possible, followed by a lot of testing and then see what works. The following is an edited version of our conversation.

paidContent: There are a lot of sites for new moms and makeover how-to’s. What’s different about these two new sites?

Jodi Kahn: As was the case for the other sites we launched over the past several months—Entertainment, Food, Astrology, Health—we did a variety of research that told us what women really wanted from the web. They wanted a mix of expert opinion and community and they wanted to find it all quickly and easily. That’s not something that most sites offer.

Specifically, the Pregnancy site is focusing on topics that range from getting pregnant to having a family, all the issues of dealing with children through the tween and teen years. We’re positioning this site as “We’re not your doctor, we’re not your mother, we’re a friend helping you through your pregnancy.” That said, the site will feature information that’s weighted equally from moms and doctors as well.

The Beauty site is just that—tips on makeovers and style, without surrounding it all with the latest news on celebrity looks and glamour trends. Speaking of what women want online, we’ve brought in YouTube star Lauren Luke as the site’s digital expert makeup contributor. Her online how-to beauty videos have been seen over 77 million times, which shows how highly regarded she is.

What are the next sites on iVillage’s rollout list?

We have a Home site coming in August. After that, we’ll be releasing a new community platform that will underlie all the site channels this summer as well. Alongside those plans, we’re going to concentrate more on mobile.

What are the mobile plans?

We’re going to do a reverse of what’s usually done. We’re going to create some original mobile content, and then rework it for the web. We’ve already done that in one instance. Our Astrology Horoscope page originated as an iPhone app. Of course, we’ll also take some stuff from the regular websites and apply it to mobile as well.

Any plans to charge for any of that content?

We probably aren’t going to charge for the mobile content, at least not right away. We already do have a tiered paid content system in place for tarot card readings on the Astrology site. The prices range from $9.95 for a month’s subscription to $14.95 for three months and $29.95 for a whole year. We’re taking what we’re learning there and will apply it to other areas of the network. We don’t have any specific plans at the moment, but it could possibly center around a particular service offering. Like everything else, we’ll pilot something, study and plot the direction.

You talked about the mix of community voices and professional editorial and experts across the sites. How do you view Yahoo’s acquisition this week of freelance aggregator Associated Content? Is that the kind of model you might explore?

I’m interested to see what Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) does with Associated Content. I think it was a great purchase, and we’re going to explore ways of bringing more writers and voices into the site. But even thinking about that sort of thing is down the road; we’re going to stick to our knitting first before trying anything like that.

Related

• iVillage GM Miskin Back To London Ahead Of UK Updates
• iVillage Plans Larger Health And Wellness Rollout
• iVillage To Run Ad Sales For Independent EatingWell Site
• Industry Moves: Glam Media’s Lagani To Head Ad Sales For iVillage

“DWP says it will fire workers,” shouts the Daily News across the top of the front page.

“DWP to fire two caught in sting,” whispers the Times over a two-paragraph story at the bottom of page B-5  with a somewhat longer story online.

Both newspapers sent reporters to Interim DWP General Mayor and First Chief Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner’s morning press conference Wednesday so did local TV stations, most especially CBS2 which broke the story of workers drinking and driving and going to a strip club while being salaries up to $144,000 a year.

It’s easy to see this is a story of great public interest and significance, unlike the ridiculously hyped LA boycott-Arizona power shutoff story.

The boycott is phony and has no substance. Arizona’s power official only said he might recommend looking at retaliation if it had any real effect. And the problem with Arizona’s illegal immigrant law is in its symbolism and implementation which could lead to abuses and enormous liability claims, not in its substance which is basically the same as federal law and LA’s Special Order 40, both of which are enforced.

So why would the Times lead page B-5 with a catchup story on unplugging LA while caring so little about the DWP story, the editors not only buried and briefed it but called it a “sting” when it was an undercover hidden camera investigation? No one was lured to the strip club or liquor stores.

First and foremost, the Times institutionally doesn’t give a damn about LA or its people and never has, unless they are rich or famous or Hollywood celebrities — like Times staffers like to see themselves despite their company being in bankruptcy and their numbers down by more than half.

So the fact the DWP is the focus of the public’s growing discontent and the cash cow holding together a city government teetering on the brink of bankruptcy itself is of no importance.

Then, there’s the Times’ pride: It has a long history of ignoring stories broken up other media and the arbiter of the importance of all things Los Angeles even, as in this case, when the video of DWP workers aroused the sleeping population far more than rate hikes and the 100 years of DWP scandals.

Having said all that, the Times editorial decision does have a logic whether the editors actually thought about it or not.

Beutner is carefully managing the worker drinking-strip club scandal on the advice of PR people and political strategists.

It has to go away before the DWP can go after the long series of rate hikes it wants to pay its bloated payroll, appease IBEW Local 18 boss Brian D’Arcy with a couple of thousand more jobs and buy cleaner energy no matter how many billions is squeezes out of the public’s pockets and the local economy — money that will mostly go to giant Chinese and other corporations.

So he holds a quickie news conference to announce termination proceedings have started against two of the workers and others might face the same consequences while a broader investigation is under way to get closure on suspicion such conduct is widespread at the utility with at least the passive consent of managers who also are IBEW members.

You can bet little will come of the broader investigation. Beutner already has assured us he doesn’t care about the past so the probe won’t go very deep into the DWP culture, certainly won’t look at the people who have no work to do except unlocking and locking a warehouse door or the scams involving the theft of “surplus” DWP property..

Diminishing the significance of his statements further is there is a better than even money chance nobody will ever be fired unless D’Arcy gives the green light which he might do if he fix the culprits up with cushy jobs with his brethren in the private sector, IBEW Local 11.

That still leaves the problem of appeals to the Civil Service Commission and the rules put in place by our elected leaders to make sure that there is no workplace discipline anywhere at City Hall and workers never lose their jobs no matter what they do.

You might remember the two garbage men who a few years back rang up thousands of dollars in bills for personal calls on their city cell phones. They not only weren’t fired but they were given most of the rest of their lives to repay the city, supposedly because they didn’t understand the phones weren’t for personal use.

In days gone by, Beutner’s strategy would work. The Times would eventually declare case closed and come back in a year or two with an expose of its own of past DWP abuses.

But the journalistic world has changed.

The breakdown of the rule of law and of public service at City Hall is all over talk radio and getting extensive TV coverage. The internet is filled with bloggers’ reports on the DWP and City Hall’s endless list of failures. Viral email extends their reach to thousands of others. Citizen watchdogs are penetrating the walls of secrecy.

This scandal and all the other crimes against the city being committed by our elected officials won’t go away as easily as they did in the past. That is the light at the end of the dark tunnel that our city government has become — something that the political machine has yet to come to terms with.

Sliding its way into my heart!

T-Mobile just released this press release regarding the MyTouch Slide:

The T-Mobile® myTouch 3G Slide™ will be available on June 2 at T-Mobile retail stores, select authorized dealers and partner locations, and online at http://www.T-Mobile.com , with additional availability and an expanded marketing campaign beginning on June 16th.

Available in three colors – black, white or red – the myTouch 3G Slide will be available from T-Mobile USA for $179.99 (after $50.00 mail-in rebate) with a two year service agreement and qualifying voice and data plan.

For more information on the myTouch 3G Slide, customers can visit http://mytouch.t-mobile.com.

So, anyone really interested in running out and picking one up?

Might We Suggest…

• Rumor: T-Mobile myTouch 3G to Get Sense-Flavored 2.1
  Here’s one we missed last week…  Techland is reporting that the refreshed myTouch 3G from T-Mobile will see Android 2.1 once testing is finished.  Techland’s Peter Ha interviewed Andrew Sherrard, th…

Se acaba de hacer oficial la llamada a revisión del Fiat Ulysse y Scudo. Supuestamente y según afirma una gran cantidad de clientes de estos modelos es que ambos tienen un consumo de combustible demasiado alto.

Tras las imnumerables quejas, Fiat ha comenzado a investigar para encontrar la causa del problema y parecer ser un manguito que, al hacer contacto con el aislante acústico del motor se deteriora pudiendo ocasionar una fuga de combustible.

Por otra parte, también se ha detectado otro fallo en el software del vehículo en el que se pueden apagar las luces delanteras sin intervención del conductor, lo cual puede ser muy peligroso si estamos conduciendo de noche o por una carretera con escasa visibilidad.

Como es normal, estas reparaciones no serán totalmente gratuitas.

Related posts:

1. Fiat 500 y 500C con nuevo motor
2. Fiat Punto, teaser del restyling
3. Fiat 500 BEV

Posted by Hal Dardick and John Byrne at 10:05 a.m.; last updated at 1:55 p.m.

Mayor Richard Daley today rejected the idea that the Supreme Court is likely to overturn the city’s gun ban, but said that he will be ready to act quickly to put in place restrictions on gun ownership if it does.

 

It’s defeatist to prepare new gun laws ahead of the court’s ruling, which should come before the body recesses at the end of June, Daley said.

 

"You have to have confidence in the Supreme Court, Maybe they’ll see the light of day," Daley said at a City Hall news conference. "Maybe one of them will have an incident and they’ll change their mind overnight, going to and from work."

 

The mayor said if the court overturns the Chicago ban, as expected, he’ll quickly present new legislation to the City Council.

 

"Whatever the details of the court’s ruling will be, we will always find new ways to keep guns off our streets," he said.

 

Daley offered no specifics on what he will propose. But he talked about the possibility of ballistics tests for registered guns, so police can track them if they’re used in crimes.

 

He also said that if guns are allowed in Chicago, something has to be done to allow police, firefighters and other first responders know how many weapons are in a home as they respond to a call.

 

"If you get a call for domestic violence, or you get a call for a burglary, or you get a call that a man with a gun is outside someone’s home, and the police officer goes to the scene, goes to the door and sees a person with a gun, what decision does he have to make with regards to his safety and the safety in that home?" Daley said.

 

"When you think about that, you’re really placing the first responders in a much more difficult — with all the restrictions on police officers, what they can do and what they can’t do — we’ll have to give them a worksheet for them, where they’ll have to read it to you, take your FOI card out?"

During the news conference, Daley reacted with the help of a prop when a reporter suggested the city’s handgun ban has been ineffective, given the number of shootings that still occur in Chicago.

 

"It’s been very effective," Daley said, picking up a gun from the dozens displayed on a nearby table. "If I put this up your butt, you’ll find out how effective it is. Let me put a round up your, you know."

 

"But that’s why you want to get them out," he continued. "You want to get these out. This gun saved many lives. It could save your life."



The mayor mentioned the possibility of some kind of registry to let police know how many guns and what types are in each house, but said nothing has been finalized.

In 1982, the city barred the registration of additional handguns, but allowed those residents who already had handguns to keep them. That ordinance became known as the city’s handgun ban.

In June 2008, the nation’s high court overturned a similar ban in
Washington, D.C.. and justices are now weighing a Chicago case
that will determine whether that ruling should be extended beyond
federal enclaves.

Supreme Court justices are expected to rule next month on McDonald vs. City of Chicago. The court heard arguments March 2 on the case. At the time, Tribune Supreme Court reporter David G. Savage reported that most of the justices who two years ago said the 2nd Amendment protects individual gun rights signaled they are ready to extend this right nationwide and to use it to strike down some state and local gun regulations. You can read the rest of that story by clicking here.

In the D.C. case, justices did not close the door on all gun
regulation, and D.C. later enacted a law requiring gun owners to go
through five hours of safety training, register their firearms every
three years and undergo criminal background checks every six years.

More extensive training requirements for gun owners — such as that enacted in Washington D.C. — also is a possibility, Daley said.

 

"We’ll work harder to make sure only responsible adults can have access to guns across the nation," Daley said. "When you think about that, you have to go through driver’s ed and you have to get a license, you have to pass a test for drivers, but you don’t have to really do anything to own a gun," he said.




Preserving the handgun ban has been high on Daley’s agenda during
his two decades as mayor. For years, Daley also has pressed state
lawmakers for tighter gun control laws, including an assault weapons
ban,but has found only limited success in a state where gun owner rights are closely guarded downstate.

[JURIST] UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon [official website] on Wednesday banned all UN employees [UN News Centre report] from using cellular devices while driving in an effort to take the prohibition against cell phone use global. Ban is teaming up with US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, US Ambassador Susan Rice [official profiles], and Jennifer Smith, president and co-founder of a national advocacy group, FocusDriven [advocacy website], to launch a global campaign to improve road safety by ending habits that distract the attention of drivers. Ban addressed reporters in New York, highlighting the danger [remarks] associated with the practice.

Every year, more than 1.2 million people die on the roads around the world, and as many as 50 million others are injured. … Studies indicate that using a mobile phone increases the risk of a crash by about 4 times. And yet in some countries up to 90 percent of people use mobile phones while driving. We must instil [sic] a culture of road safety. A culture in which driving while distracted – on the phone, or text messaging – is unacceptable. … I want every driver in the world to get the message: Texting while driving kills. No SMS is worth SOS. The United Nations is leading by example. That is why I am issuing an administrative instruction aimed at promoting road safety, saving lives and prohibiting all drivers of UN vehicles from texting while driving. I thank the leaders here for being a driving force for road safety. Together, we have a message to all drivers of the world: Don’t let using a mobile for a few seconds make you or others immobile for life.

In March, the UN General Assembly [official website] proclaimed the period from 2011 to 2020 as the Decade of Action for Road Safety [press release] to encourage global efforts to halt or reverse the increasing trend in road traffic deaths and injuries around the world.

Several countries have been enacting cell phone use bans while operating motor vehicles in response to the increase in cell phone related accidents. In October, Ontario enacted a law banning the use of handheld devices [JURIST report] while driving, outlawing text messaging and talking on a cell phone while behind the wheel. Ontario joins other jurisdictions in Canada and the US to pass similar bans including Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Labrador, California, and New York. Earlier this October, US President Barack Obama signed [JURIST report] an executive order [text] making it illegal for federal employees or government contractors to use text messaging while driving. Despite numerous studies showing that drivers using handheld phones are more likely to get into a crash or near crash, some have criticized bans on using technology while driving. Dave McCurdy, CEO of the Auto Alliance [advocacy website], an automobile industry advocacy group, cautioned [Huffington Post op-ed] that increasing restrictions on technology use in automobiles may cross a threshold and hinder more than help. But the Auto Alliance’s official position [press release] supports legislation that bans text messaging while driving.

DURBIN WELCOMES TWO CHICAGO AREA LEADERS AS SPECIAL GUESTS TO THE JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today welcomed Sylvia Puente and Artemio Arreola as his guests to an address by the President of Mexico Felipe Calderon Hinojosa to a joint session of Congress. Durbin, a member of the Senate Escort Committee, will meet with his guests prior to the joint session.

“At today’s Joint Session of Congress, I look forward to hearing President Calderon’s views on strengthening the partnership between our two nations,” said Durbin. “I am pleased to welcome both Sylvia Puente and Artemio Arreola as my guests to the Joint Session. They have both been tirelessly working to improve the lives of our Hispanic population in Illinois and around the country.”

Sylvia Puente’s twenty-five year career serving the Latino community spans a wide range of experience at local, state and national levels. She has been recognized as one of the “100 Most Influential Hispanics in the U.S.” by Hispanic Business magazine. She is currently the Executive Director of the Latino Policy Forum, a public policy and advocacy organization in the Chicago metropolitan area working to improve educational outcomes for children, make housing accessible and affordable, and build the influence and leadership of the Latino community.

Artemio Arreola has been a union labor activist for the Service Employees International Union for 15 years. He is a co-founder of the March 10th Movement which organized the first large scale immigrant rights march in Chicago on March 10th, 2006. He is currently the Political Director for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights an organization that is dedicated to promoting the rights of immigrants and refugees to full and equal participation in the civic, cultural, social, and political life.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

On the surface, it might sound like one of those amateurish conclusions a blogger might reach after having just read the press release: Symantec, a software company now mainly known for security products, acquires some assets from a non-competitor in order to get that company’s logo. But in the deal between Symantec and VeriSign announced yesterday, there is no mistaking the fact that the antivirus products maker acquired, among other things, the single asset that just last week VeriSign argued was the ticket to its own future stability: quite literally, its own logo.

Up until yesterday, its name was the VeriSign Trust Seal. A big part of VeriSign’s business had been the licensing of that logo to “trusted” Web sites whose security services pass VeriSign’s test. So when online shoppers see that pixelated checkmark inside the circle, they conclude the site they’re shopping on is safe…and they’ll buy more.

A marketing brochure published by VeriSign in March (PDF available here) tells the story of how the licensing of the Trust Seal logo to the online mall TheFind, which represents a multitude of smaller retailers, discovered that for those retailers it serviced that did display the Trust Seal, click-throughs increased by 18.5% over rates for retailers without the seal (Symantec estimates the “sales uplift” for retailers bearing the logo as high as 36%).

“One of the most important issues to users about an online retailer is its procedure for safeguarding personal data such as credit card numbers that travel over the Internet when customers make purchases,” the brochure reads. “With the rampant growth of phishing and identity theft, consumers are increasingly wary about providing this information, especially to companies they do not know. Therefore one of the pieces of information TheFind publishes about retailers is the protection they employ for transmitting private data. In many cases a generic ‘SSL Encryption’ logo appears. When the retailer uses VeriSign SSL Certificates, however, users see the VeriSign seal.”

The business that got VeriSign as far as it’s come thus far has been the sale of SSL certificates to Web sites, and the subsequent licensing of its Trust Seal to those sites that meet VeriSign’s conditions. The brochure implied that the checkmark was an indicator of trustworthiness that goes over and above the little padlock symbol that browsers use to indicate the presence of SSL or TLS encryption.

Late last month, VeriSign published its financial results for Q1 2010, and they’re not all bad. But they were a continued indication that the SSL certificates business was flagging, as executives credited themselves with bumping up the company’s Naming Services division — where it competes with the likes of GoDaddy and Register.com — and picking up the slack.

VeriSign began its expansion of its Trust Seal Services business last February. Two weeks ago, during its quarterly conference call with analysts, CEO Mark McLaughlin made a bold pronouncement in a response to a Baird & Co. analyst (Seeking Alpha transcript available here): His company would begin marketing the Trust Seal to Web sites that don’t use SSL certificates, in a move that would risk diluting the meaning of the seal in exchange for addressing a much broader potential market.

“The plan is to at least two groups of folks. The first one we are after is a broad-broad market that we’ve never addressed before, which would be sites that do not require SSL certificates. So they are non-transactional sites in nature,” said McLaughlin. “There are ten times more sites in that category than folks who would be in the e-commerce SSL total addressable market.”

Just seven days ago, VeriSign announced the expansion of its Trust Seal Partner Program, in what was then considered an effort to get the checkmark pasted onto just about any site in the world that someone, somewhere might consider “good.”
As VeriSign VP for marketing Armando Dacal stated at the time, “With the VeriSign Trust Seal, our partners now can bring the trusted VeriSign brand to a much broader marketplace, including content publishers, ad-supported Web sites, small online businesses, and e-commerce sites whose shopping carts are managed by a third-party service. Now every Web site whose success relies on a trusted relationship with consumers can display an extension of the most recognized trust mark on the Web.”

However, as analysts from the online financial service Trefis predicted following that announcement, that dilution strategy would not be as effective as VeriSign had hoped. The fact that the checkmark had come to stand for quality SSL certification, it concluded, would reduce its attractiveness for anyone else who thought it could stick the checkmark on its site at random, and call itself a VeriSign partner.

As Symantec made clear during its acquisition announcement yesterday, although it’s acquiring VeriSign’s SSL certification and Trust Services business, along with its logo, it’s not acquiring that company’s strategy. SSL certification could become an influential selling point for Symantec’s existing enterprise security products, such as Symantec Protection Suite. Rather than broaden the Trust Seal’s addressable market, Symantec now plans to tighten its focus, making it more of an incentive for online retailers to purchase not only SSL certificates but other Symantec products and services as well.

So while a billion and a quarter in cash is a lot to pay for a logo, Symantec seized an opportunity to save an influential business from drowning itself in its own market strategy. In yesterday’s announcement, Symantec said it would try to keep VeriSign employees who were critical to the business, though it acknowledged that some would be let go. That might not be a bad idea either.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Michael Giberson

Even before the current oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico it was well understood that drilling offshore sometimes results in spills.  The current oil spill in the news has brought the idea of spills to the attention of many, many more people, people who don’t usually think too much about these things.  But it isn’t obvious to me that the spill should cause us to revise our estimates of the likelihood of spills, or otherwise alter any of the factors that go into well reasoned policy analysis.  And if all of the inputs going into a well-reasoned policy analysis stay the same, then the policy recommendation should stay the same too.

If you now favor changes in regulations to reduce the likelihood of future oil spills, you should identify the new policy-relevant information upon which you base your call for changes.  Or, in other words, you should specify what was wrong with your understanding of offshore oil development as of about two months ago, and then explain how correcting that mistake leads you to favor more restrictive regulations.

It is possible, too, that correcting mistakes in your earlier thinking could lead you to favor less-restrictive regulations.  After all, there is no reason to believe that all errors in earlier thinking were biased in the same direction.  For example, learning about advances in movie-star funded clean-up technologies might lead you to reduce your estimate of the expected costs of spills.

By the way, with Canadian tar sands soon to become the largest single source for U.S. oil imports, any advocates of regulatory changes that diminish oil production from offshore U.S. sources on environmental grounds should  include in their analysis the environmental effects of marginal increases in tar sands output and other oil sources.  (Or did your policy analysis assume that diminished offshore production would be compensated for by people driving less and riding sustainably-fueled robot unicorns more?)

SEE ALSO: Robin Hanson on regulation ratchets for related.

The Mortgage Bankers Association says that if you just missed a morgage payment, you’re not alone — 10% of homeowners just did the same thing.

Despite that somber-sounding news, the association’s chief economist, Jay Brinkmann, says that the foreclosure crisis does not appear to be getting worse. The trouble is that it’s not exactly improving either.

“I don’t see signs now that it’s getting worse, but it’s going to take a while,” he said. “A bad situation that’s not getting worse is still bad.”

Most troubling is the fact that the crises has moved from bad mortgages to a crisis of unemployment and reduced income. Borrowers with good credit who took out fixed-rate loans are now the fastest growing group of foreclosures, says USAToday:

Economic woes, such as unemployment or reduced income, are the main catalysts for foreclosures this year. Initially, lax lending standards were the culprit. But homeowners with good credit who took out conventional, fixed-rate loans are now the fastest growing group of foreclosures.

Those borrowers made up nearly 37% of new foreclosures in the first quarter of the year, up from 29% a year earlier.

10% of homeowners missed a mortgage payment in Q1 [USAToday]

I’ve been interested in gadget manufacturing for a while now and, as I reported a few months ago, things are pretty bad but they’ve been worse. Now, however, we’re seeing clusters of suicides at Foxconn as well as an undercover “report” from Foxconn’s “Hell Factory.” I’m calling bull.

First, consider that Foxconn has 400,000 employees in Shenzhen alone. Cleveland, Ohio has 478,403 residents as of the 2000 census and I suspect that’s gone down. You’re not amazed by the number of suicides in Cleveland, right? It’s par for the course. People go nuts in Cleveland, even though they have a great meat market and the Cleveland Clinic is really nice. People don’t want to live, sometimes, right?

As for working conditions – the dead eyes, the exhausted employees, the beatings – well, that happens in Cleveland, too. When a mass of humanity coalesces into one place all sorts of things happen. People get tired. People die. People are abused. People abuse.

Look: we built Foxconn. Sure, Taiwan build the factory proper, but we build the demand. We want free feature phones and we want them now. We want $500 laptops. We want 60-inch TVs for $999. We want, we want, and we want. Steve Jobs isn’t standing on a table with a whip, exhorting these employees to apply the ceramic back to the iPhone HD more quickly. These people, as many reporters better than I note, (read Factory Girlsand Country Driving) need these jobs and they do everything we do to get a better deal. Foxconn is successful because it can mobilize an army to manufacture your cellphone. But China is changing and they won’t be able to pull many more shenanigans. The workers are gaining power and when that happens, watch out.

Manufacturing is a shitty business. It really is. Every factory I’ve visited, from fine watch factories in the mountains of Germany to a place where they make promotional USB keys, is soul-taking and deadening. Those who lament that manufacturing jobs have left the US never worked in manufacturing. Ten out ten college graduates don’t want to sit and solder 5,000 USB connectors to 5,000 PCB boards a day. Heck, we can’t even get Americans to work in slaughterhouses.

But the factory gives the employees a living wage, offers them respite from the poverty and strictures of the countryside, and creates the potential for advancement. They didn’t have that before they walked through the factory gates.

We used to manufacture things in America until we got smart. Then we sent manufacturing further and further afield and, I would wager, none of us understand the true nature of manufacturing. Two generations have gone by since the last real steel barons led the world in production and we look back on those days with nostalgia. My grandfather Herman worked in the Wheeling Steel plant. They lived in company housing, ate company food, and lived a company life until they made a little money and moved into town. I doubt he was fulfilled, but it was a job. His step-son, my father, graduated from college and went to work for the government at a warehouse – one step away from manufacturing. Now I, his coddled son, get to dick around on the Internet all day. Give the Chinese another fifty years and they’ll have shipped all their manufacturing to Mars and they’ll dick around on the Internet as well.

Go ahead: Cry for the folks at Foxconn. Rail against the injustice. But if you follow the money, you’ll realize the injustice stems from our desire to have more in more ways. So much crap comes out of China it boggles the mind. But someone is buying that crap. Someone, somewhere, is taking what China makes and they’re taking it every second of every day.

Our neophilia knows no limits. The Evo 4G just came out today. Hoopty doo. It’s another phone that was built by another person on an assembly line in China. Want to know why more amazing stuff doesn’t leak out of Foxconn? Because the employees don’t care. A phone is a phone is a phone and they can’t afford a new one anyway.

I always say this: vote with your dollar. Don’t upgrade your phones every five months. Don’t throw away your old PC. Work with what you have. There is no sane reason for a laptop to cost under $300. But they exist. Manufacturers figured out that people who see devices as disposable will buy more and more of them. Do research, buy what you think is best, and hold onto it. Then Foxconn can shut down.

Then what happens to those 400,000 people? I don’t know, but we’d better be ready for them because they kicked our ass in manufacturing and they’re about to kick our ass in everything else as well.

I loathe those neat little summary headlines that purport to tell you why things sold off–“Dow Drops 100 points on unemployment worries” and so forth–as if the journalist surveyed all the millions of people who bought and sold stocks and found out why they did what they did.  So any attempt to fully explain this morning’s ugly market behavior in terms of one factor or another is bound to be deeply flawed.

I think what we can say is that the market is as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.  And no wonder.  Greeks are rioting again, casting serious doubts on the viability of this austerity plan. European leaders are still muttering about “wolfpacks” in the markets, which is usually the last refuge of desperate finance ministers taking unrealistic positions.  The euro has “relapsed“, falling back towards $1.20.  Jobless claims in the US rose unexpectedly last week, dampening the sense of forward momentum in the economy.  Mortgage applications are down, which means the housing market may retreat from any tentative gains now that the tax credit has expired. Financial reform is moving towards passage “with all the consistency and predictability of an old pickup with a busted clutch.”  And we seem to be hovering on the brink of deflation.

All of this raises the possibility of the dread “double dip” recession. 
Worse, that recession was expected to come (if it did) when fiscal and
monetary stimulus were withdrawn–not when a peripheral member of the
eurozone ran out of borrowed money.  The parallels to the Great
Depression are not perfect . . . but they’re certainly uncomfortable. 
And if we do double-dip now, there’s a good possibility that we’ll
eventually triple-dip, because all that extra money does have to be
mopped off at some point.

Which of these factors is driving the markets down so sharply?  Frankly,
any of them would be enough to trigger at least a little selloff.  At
the moment, we seem to be in the middle of a highly imperfect storm.

Below is a list of Speaker Pelosi’s guests for President Calderon’s Joint Meeting Address today at 11 a.m.

Front row of the Speaker’s box (left to right):

Mr. Paul Pelosi

Ambassador Carlos Pascual, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico

The Honorable John A. Pérez, Speaker of the Assembly, State of California

The Honorable Antonio Villaraigosa, Mayor, City of Los Angeles

Ms. Dolores C. Huerta

Ms. Rosa Rosales, President, League of United Latin American Citizens

Dr. Elena Rios, President and CEO, National Hispanic Medical Association

Rev. Luis Cortes, President and CEO, Esperanza USA

Arturo Vargas, President, NALEO

Other guests in the Speaker’s box include:

Madeleine Albright, Former U.S. Secretary of State

Jim Jones, Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico

Henry Munoz, Chair of the Commission for a National Museum of the American Latino

Ali Noorani, Executive Director, National Immigration Forum

Rosario Anaya, Executive Director of the Mission Vocational School in San Francisco

Santiago “Sam” Ruiz, Executive Director of the Mission Neighborhood Center in San Francisco

###

Dieter and Keith discuss the AT&T Palm Pre and much more, listen in!

• Download it directly with this link
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• Listen to it here with the player above

Thanks to everybody for writing and calling in!

read more

“It’s a perverse use of eminent domain,” says Brian Rainville. “There is no public good here.”

He stood on a green field, filled with alfalfa and grass, on the gentle rolling hills of his family’s Franklin, Vermont farm… just steps from the Canadian border. He says the barn dates back to 1800, and the land is on the national registry of historic places. But Brian’s family, who have been dairy farmers here since 1946, may not have the land much longer. The United States Government says it needs 4.9 acres of the family’s property to help protect national security.

The Rainville farm sits on the Morses Line border crossing, a sparsely used two lane blacktop with an aging Customs and Boarder Protection building that the Department of Homeland Security wants to modernize and expand. The agency plans to use stimulus funds to build a new $8 million dollar, multi-lane complex, and says it needs the nearly five acres of the Rainville’s farmland to complete it.

The Rainvilles say the project will put their farm out of business. With the farm losing money, every inch of land is needed, especially the land they use to grow hay to support their cows for the production of milk.

“We are in a good fight here,” says Brian, “This has been a good living for three generations. We are only the third family in 200 years to own the property, and the thought that our own government is going to destroy us! This has been our American dream for a century, it can’t end that way,” he says sadly.

The crossing is lightly used. Government statistics from the Customs and Border Protection agency show just over 14,800 vehicles cross the border every year. That works out to about 40 cars a day, or roughly two and a half an hour. The crossing is not even open 24 hours a day. Brian thinks it should be closed completely, and the traffic moved to larger crossings nearby. But the government is intent on upgrading the facility, which includes the small customs building built in the 1930’s, that sports a small bench with handcuffs.

“The Morses Line Port is more than seventy years old and has dilapidated infrastructure and outdated technology,” said Customs and Border Protection spokesman Rafael Lemaitre in a statement to Fox News.

“By making critical upgrades to the Port, we will meet essential Post-9/11 security and operational standards while fulfilling the economic goals of the recovery act.”

Lemaitre says the agency takes the concerns “very seriously,” and wants to “work to find a solution that balances security with the needs of the local community.”

Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy told a Senate hearing that “people have been driving back and forth on that roadway for decades,” and that the plan is “creating animosity.” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano promised to conduct a public hearing on the issue, and to “have a meeting with the community.” She also said there are efforts to reduce the amount of land her agency would need for the project, but that there is a minimum amount of land that would be needed, and “unless you do it, you might as well not do it at all,” she said.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is beefing up crossings on both the borders of Canada and Mexico, and has received $420 million in stimulus funds for that purpose. The agency also says the project will help the local Vermont economy, by providing more than 90 jobs. The agency says “modernizing the Morses Line Port will address a critical national security need.” The goal of Homeland Security officials remains the protection of our country, and the agency insists it is working in a way to balance the local concerns with its mandate to protect the nation.

The government has offered $39,500 for the acreage, but Brian remains adamant. His 70 year old father still milks the cows, as he has since he was six years old, and his brother also works the farm. Brian, who teaches High School history and civics classes, has created the e-mail site: [email protected], to generate support.

“As a civics teacher, I’m astounded,” he told Fox News.”I talk to my students about a responsive government, a government that protects rights, a government that protects property. And I have a representative of my own federal government, sit down in my parents’ kitchen and tell them that the federal government sees no reason why they should keep their land?” he says angrily.

“We’ve been lied to, I’ve been misled and I’ve had enough of it,” he says defiantly. “It’s heartbreaking.”

If the government does resort to using eminent domain, Brian says “the message is we don’t care what you do, or how long you have been there. If we want it, get out of our way. And that’s not the United States of America.”

This is the latest installment of the Fox News “It’s Your Land” series. If you have property issues, contact Fox News Senior Correspondent Eric Shawn and Producer Becky Diamond at: [email protected]. Segments can also be seen on the Fox News Channel, Sunday mornings from 10 a.m. to 12 Noon, E.S.T.

Via Prison Planet.com » World News

Quentin Peel
Financial Times
Thursday, May 20, 2010

The man at the eye of the financial storm that has engulfed the euro has learnt to be patient after 20 years confined to a wheelchair. But Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany’s finance minister, is also a man in a hurry.

He wants urgently to rewrite the rulebook of the euro zone to prevent any such crisis happening again, and at the same time to revive the momentum of international negotiations on tougher regulation of financial markets. He has returned to the idea of an international financial transaction tax, to make financial institutions share in the costs of the crisis, even if it can be agreed only inside the European Union.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

He admits that the greatest problem affecting the markets is one of trust in the ability of the EU, and especially the 16 members of the common currency area at its heart, to bring their debt and deficits under control as they have promised. “That is the task we must perform,” he tells the Financial Times aboard his Luftwaffe Challenger jet bound for Berlin. “But that doesn’t alter the fact that financial market regulation is also necessary.

“I’m convinced the markets are really out of control. That is why we need really effective regulation, in the sense of creating a properly functioning market mechanism.”

Full story here.

1-800-Contacts is the rare company where an actual human picks up the phone when you call–no maze of phone menus. Peter tells Consumerist that he had a fantastic experience where a customer service rep went above and beyond in the service of the health of his eyes.

I just wanted to mention my love for 1-800-contacts, and how they go above and beyond as a usual part of their business. Besides having a direct-to-CSR phone line (no phone-menu’s to navigate through, a real person picks up the phone immediately), friendly CSR’s, quick service, and a great return policy, today they went above and beyond what I would expect them to do. Let me explain:

I recently was told by my eye care professional to take a month break from contacts. My glasses were really old and cracked — pretty much unwearable. I went to an in-the-mall-one-hour glasses place to get a new pair before work the next day. They tried to call my optometrist’s office to get a copy of my current prescription so that they could fill the order for new glasses. Well, it turns out my doctor was on vacation, and so nobody would be able to send my prescription for several days.

I knew that 800contacts had my prescription since I order contacts from them. I called their number, and a friendly CSR answered right away. After verifying my identity, the CSR was eager to help by faxing a copy of my prescription (which they had on file) to the glasses place at the mall. She even offered to look up the mall-store’s phone number and fax number. Sure enough, they faxed it over, and I was able to get a new pair of glasses this evening.

I find these responsible actions to be refreshing. 800-contacts didn’t need to fax my prescription (in some sense the glasses store in the mall is a competitor — they sell contact lenses too). But, they went ahead and did it since it was the right thing to do. I’m continuously impressed by their level of service.

The cyclone Laila Landfall started on the coast of the southeastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, and went out to sea, after leaving a trail of destruction in several towns in the area.

According to the Service Indo-Asian News (IANS), the tropical storm entered the mainland in the afternoon of Thursday in the vicinity of Bapatla, Guntur district.

Laila, the first hurricane that formed this year in the Bay of Bengal, was accompanied by winds of 125 kilometers per hour and heavy rain.

“We are assessing the damage caused by the storm in coastal Andhra,” said a state government official who was quoted by IANS.

According to the report of the Indian agency, Laila went back into the sea after a short journey by land, now continues towards Balasore in Orissa state, although is a little weaker.

Strong winds and rain since yesterday affecting the catchment area of the storm have caused serious damage to crops and infrastructure, while reportedly had 14 victims.

The Indian defense ministry said in a statement it had mobilized nearly one hundred troops, including several doctors, and four helicopters to help the victims.

Around 50 000 people living in flood-prone areas were evacuated before the arrival of the hurricane, and thousands more moved to safety by their own means.

“We have taken all necessary precautionary steps to reduce human and material losses. The official machinery is prepared for any eventuality,” said local mayor, K. Rosaiah, told reporters in the state capital of Hyderabad.

In May last year, the storm Aila ended 169 lives and left more than seven million victims in its passage through India and Bangladesh.

Related posts:

1. Fifteen People Dead from Cyclone in India
2. Storm in India: Kills more than 30
3. Serious Cyclone Hits India

Who didn’t see this coming? A few days ago we learned of one woman’s inability to buy an Apple iPad with cash at an Apple Store. Store policy was such that they would only accept credit cards or debit cards. Apple was totally in the right legally, but it came across sorta funky, particularly given the woman’s backstory. Well, after a few days of bad press Apple has changed the policy: you can now walk into any Apple Store and buy an iPad with cash.

Apple issued the following statement to KGO-TV, the station where this story first broke:

About a month ago, we said we’d like you to use a credit card when you buy your iPad, and that was the best way we could think of to make sure that people only bought two per individual. And then it came to our attention that Diane [Campbell], through your story, was very interested in buying an iPad with cash, and we made a decision today to change that.

That’s that, then.

As of right now, you should be able to walk into your local Apple Store and walk out with a shiny, new iPad having paid cash.

A victory for the little guy, for sure.