Pressure Maliki, for Heaven's Sakes!

Today, there was a story about how Iraqi President Maliki has been sacking senior officers who have been too aggressive on the Shiite militia's like al-Sadr's Mahdi army. This is starting to get old, and it's high time the US started to put more pressure on him. Not just pressure that US forces will leave if there is little political progress, which is useful to a point, but also maybe we need to start talking partition. Democratic presidential Joe Biden is the only one who has seriously pushed this idea, and there certainly are numerous challenges, but as the alternatives dry, it might be a good option to keep pushing if for no reason that to keep Maliki on his toes.

A few thoughts on partition, by the way. The common response is Turkey would never allow an independent Kurdistan, and the rest of the Iraqis wouldn't accept a breakway republic with most of the oil. Maybe so, but as I see it, Turkey has little leverage in this debate - the US could "accept" a Kurdish offer for permanent bases that would deter any Turkish aggression. The oil is trickier, but is precisely why the US needs to start considering this option more seriously - it sends a message to Shiites and Sunnis that a prolonged stalemate could be the equivalent of singing sayanora to their oil riches.

Our Dishonest Gun Debate

It has been two weeks since the brutal murder of several Hokies by a deranged student, and now I finally post on the issue. My silence was not based on a lack of interest, but rather on a desire to avoid pronouncements during an emotional state. (Living but a few hours from Blacksburg, and almost having gone to VT, having actually met one of the professors who was killed, it certainly was a bit overwhelming!)

No, I'm not going to delve into Cho or his history. Nor will I talk about what Tech officials could or couldn't have done, beyond saying that the criticism of the administration soon after the incident was somewhat misplaced. What matters most to me is the longer structural question of gun control. I have tried to form an opinion on just where I stand on the issue, but that effort has been frustrated by the phenomenal dishonesty by both sides of the debate, seeking to prop their interests by skewing or outright lying.

The most prominent example of that dishonesty was a column by former Senator and presidential hopeful, Fred Thompson, of Law & Order where he argued that gun-control reduces violence. A well argued point, except he used as an example the fact that Great Britian, with the strictest gun-control laws in the planet, had higher gun-related deaths per-capita than the US. I knew that wasn't true, so I turned to peer-reviewed literature (the advantage of being in academia). Hmm, at least this one paper showed it not to be true....

I first thought Thompson had used a clever trick - by lumping terrorism-ridden Northern Ireland with England & Wales, the number of gun deaths would be artificially inflated (of course, you could add American soldiers who died in Iraq in the US toll to skew American numbers!) But an analysis by Dr Martin Killias at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland reveals the per-million gun homicides rates in England & Wales was 0.8, Scotland 1.1, Northern Ireland 21.3 ... and the US 44.6. So it's possible Fred Thompson just flat out lied.

And yet the claims that gun control works are just as dishonest. Cook and Ludwig found in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2000, little impact of the gun-control law, the Brady Act in reducing gun violence. This is something much of the mainstream media doesn't seem to acknowledge. Gun control doesn't really always work - it appears to have in tiny UK, but in a country as large as the US, there seem to be ways around it.

What then to make of a gun policy? If the statistics are inconclusive, we need to turn to moral arguments. Here too, I'm torn between the two sides. I do believe every person needs the right to own a gun and defend him- or herself - if I lived in a big city, I do not want to rely on the police when travelling through a violent neighborhood. And yet, I don't find the need to undergo a background check or register my weapon unnecessarily intrusive - after all, I do have to jump some hoops before I can operate a vehicle - why should a killing weapon be any different?

And then there are philosophical questions to answer. What happens when there is a military coup, or we have an government that is unresponsive to the people? As ridiculous as it sounds, this would hardly be the first time. Or what if we have a Holocaust-style effort at ethnic cleansing. Private militias would protect the interests of the people when existing systems break down (yes, it's true that right now, private militias are a bunch of crazy zealots who want to cause anarchy even if it means killing innocent civilians)

And then the talk of guns used as a deterrent in situations such as VT. Do we really want untrained members of the police trying to handle a situation when police officers undergo hours of hostage training for this purpose?

When all is said and done, it appears there is still a lot to think about when we talk guns.

Postscript You probably have thought a bit about Columbine in the last couple of weeks, and probably Michael Moore's interesting movie, Bowling for Columbine. James Tucker wrote a fascinating (and non-political) critique of the movie in the journal Global Crime, that you can read here.

Quote of the Day: Thomas Jefferson

First up, sorry for not blogging more often. Personal circumstances have prevented me from being as active as I'd like, and it's likely my blogging might remain spotty for the better part of the next month.

I was in Washington, DC with my parents last weekend, and was really struck by the following quote by Thomas Jefferson. At a time when we seem to obsess about what the Founding Fathers had in mind, it's interesting that one of those men certainly hadn't intended the stubborn dedication to their thoughts and views. This inscription is on the Jefferson memorial, along with more famous quotes:

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Coming Clean ...

NPR's Opinion Page had a recent piece on how bloggers need to come clean just as professional journos do. While I certainly don't have the audience to have companies send me free products to review (although I am available for anything free!), I thought I'd take a couple of minutes to review any conflicts of interest I may have.

First off, politics. I was a Communist growing up, and it's only when possibilities arose when India opened up did I realize how screwed up leftist ideologies are, and the potential markets have to unleash individual creativity. I have definitely moved far to the right, but I'm still a tree-hugging, pro-immigration (duh!) conservative who tends to be a social moderate who wants government out of people's lives, except when they need to be there. Hmm, this isn't going so good...

I think the real estate market is due for a crash, and worry about the common man and about friends. At the same time, I have recommended home ownership to some people based on their particular circumstances, and I myself wouldn't mind finding a bargain.

I think the stock market is overvalued, but I own my share of stocks and mutual funds. I have recently exited positions in mutual funds in small caps, emerging markets and some fixed-income, but I still have investments in the market.

I am not sure global warming is a crisis, but I think we can't afford to wait to find out. But I still drive a car (it's a fuel-friendly Honda Accord!) I invest in companies that are proactive in global warming such as Duke Energy, but also in those that aren't, including Ford and oil & gas companies.

I think people eat too much crap, and I sure rant about nutrition, but I eat a bowl of ice-cream every day. And if something is free, I'll eat it. Unless it's a doughnut ... I don't do doughnuts!

I'm sure there are others I can't think of now, but let's just say, my disclaimer policy is ... "do as I say, not as I do!"

Pelosi Alert!!

Always watch out for a politician who has too exaggerated an opinion of him or herself! The latest victim to this self-indulgent think is Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who seems to think that just because she's the first speaker of the House, she needs to try and be a pseudo-president. Her latest escapade was a damaging trip to Syria, where she conveyed a peace message from Olmert and "determined the road to Damascus is a road of peace". Except that Olmert's office denies it ever sent a peace message, and Syria is hardly a peaceful country, implicated in the assasination of the former Lebanese prime minister and supporters of the malicious Hizbollah.

What Ms Pelosi did achieve was to perpetuate a sense of American weakness - the idea that the insurgents in Iraq have used to egg each other on - that democracy weakens the spirit and that when the going gets tough, America gets going. I'm all for negotiations with all parties, but when a speaker of the House choses to subvert the elected leader of the free world, it makes you shake your head in disgust. But forget me, even that liberal bastion, the Washington Post had a damning editorial on Pelosi's foolish shuttle diplomacy.

Start the Cuts!

A day after the Supreme Court ruled that it was within the EPA's jurisdiction and responsibility to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, President Bush assured the public that he takes climate change very seriously. A sign of change? I was hoping so until I saw this:

... anything that happens cannot hurt economic growth. I care about the working people of the country but also because in order to solve the greenhouse gas issue over a longer period of time, it's going to require new technologies, which tend to be expensive.

Being a hard-core capitalist myself, I appreciate not affecting the economy, but I think there has been enough done by companies such as Duke Energy and Toyota, to suggest that a proactive approach to global warming could be an opportunity rather than an obstacle to greater growth. The US, with its technological prowess, is uniquely capable of leveraging its assets to be the climate change solution provider of choice for much of the world.


But waiting for technology is a mistake! The reality is that the solution is conservation and energy efficiency, not in supporting ludicrous ideas like embracing ethanol (about which I have ranted before). A good start would be a fuel tax or some increase in CAFE standards. Indeed, transportation is the one of the most inefficient segments of our energy market. The chart is from the Department of Energy, and shows that the transportation segment accounts for under 30 quadrillion BTUs of energy consumption, but produces about 500 million MT carbon equivalent! A progressive taxation system, where gas sippers are exempt while guzzlers are heavily taxed would encourage energy efficiency.

It does seem strange for a market-solution lover to be embracing taxes, but that is the only situation when markets don't reflect the true costs of doing business.

Quote of the Day: John Mackey

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market in a conversation with Kai Ryssdal in the program Marketplace on American Public Media:

Well, in the United States, the average individual in America, we spend about 8 percent of our income on food. They spend about 15 percent in Europe, and about 20 pecent in Japan. So if you've been to Europe and you've been to Japan the quality of their food on average, in my opinion, is higher than it is in the United States. Americans make a tradeoff; we trade off less expensive food and it's not as good and we're also if you look around we're suffering an obesity crisis in the United States; we eat a lot of crappy food in the United States.

And we could afford to eat better. But we are . . . we have come to believe that we're entitled to cheap food, not understanding that there's a direct relationship between quality and how much something costs. We don't make that . . . if you think about the other parts of our lives, we know that automobiles vary tremendously in quality as does computers, as does stereo equipment as does cameras as does every other part of our lives, but in food we somehow or another think God, we really need to buy the cheapest stuff possible and we kind of treat our bodies not very respectfully.

It is an extraordinary interview with a man who dropped out of college 6 times, studied philosophy, not business, lost half of the seed capital of $45,000 in his first year operating an organic food store, and came on to build the nation's largest organic food store. Listen to the interview or read a transcript.

They Have Their Models!

I was watching a very interesting interview with Mr James Grant, editor of the Grant's Interest Rate Observer and a truly brilliant forecaster, and was stunned by some of what I heard. For all we have heard on the subprime mortgage market risks, most articles have focussed on the revenues of individual subprime mortgage providers. We have never really heard just how significant the subprime market is, and many articles have alluded to the subprime being a small fraction of the overall mortgage market.

Sub-prime and Alt-A [better than subprime, but below prime] represent 40% of the $8 trillion mortgage market. Hundreds of billions of dollars of CDOs were sold... You take 70% of a pile of BBB- (marginal)... 70% of this junk, is AAA. [How do they do that?] They have their models!

What is a CDO? CDO is a collaterized debt obligation - basically a package of mortgage loans that has been studied by credit rating agencies and assigned a certain risk. So basically agencies have used mathematical models to study recent correlations between the securities in that portfolio to classify the collection of junk as equivalent grade to a US Treasury. The problem, as Mr Grant points out, is that these models are based on what can be considered an anomalous recent period of lax lending, and the model predictions will turn out to be wrong. Indeed, a caption during the story pointed out that about 10% of subprime mortgages are delinquent by 90 days as of December 2006.

Mr Barry Ritzhold takes the focus to the effects on the economy, and the effect of the reset of interest rates on $2 trillion dollars worth of mortgage debt, that will result in monthly payments rising 10-50%. He cites a study by a title insurer, First American Corp., that projects that one in eight ARMs (adjustable rate mortgage) will end up in default. That's a stunning number, and in an economy that's already a little overstretched, may well cause a recession, in his opinion.

The risks associated with computer modeling though stretch further than the mortgage market. A bevy of hedge funds and "quant" investors have increasingly been relying on mathematics for investing. As one of my professors who teaches a water quality modeling course keeps reiterating, creating a model without the right data to support it is an exercise in academic gymnastics ... and foolhardiness.

Quote of the Day: Judge Gung-Ho

While trying to tag my old posts (something I've been putting off for a while), I came across an old post on Judge Gung-Ho, a bankcruptcy court judge and anti-credit card advocate. The post I liked then really struck a chord, and so I chose to post it as today's Quote of the Day:

The rule that I like to use is if it's $10 or $20, pay cash for it. If you can eat it or drink it, pay cash for it. And the best example of that is reported in the Wall Street Journal. When McDonald's started to allow people to use credit cards instead of paying cash, the average sale went from $4.75 to $7. Need I say more?

Travolta and the Celebrity Guidance

I'm tired of Hollywood types asking us to change our lifestyles. The latest in this lunacy is a string of celebrities pitching for modifications in our lifestyle to reduce global warming. First, there was former VP Al Gore, touring the world raising awareness while actually increasing his energy consumption since the movie came along! Tsk tsk, just purchasing credits doesn't allow you to come clean, Al! Now, there's John Travolta doing what Hollywood does best - lecturing us to reduce our carbon footprint, while himself being responsible for 800 tons of CO2 emissions, 100 times that of the average Briton. He owns and operates 5 jets, clocking in at least 30,000 flying miles in the last 12 months. Yeah, we need to cut our electricity consumption down, John - thanks for setting us straight!

I think we need to tell Hollywood types to just shut the f*ck up and stop using their public image to wax on topics unless they are prepared to make real sacrifices.

Think NFL Players Make Too Much?

Some random facts I chose to look up on a Saturday afternoon ...

The average NFL player makes $1.1 million a year. Seem like a lot? Well, the average NFL player only lasts just over 3 seasons, so if he doesn't have another profession lined up, he's guaranteed not that good a life. Oh, and by the way, only 0.2% of high school seniors who play football ever make it to the NFL. All said, maybe NFL players don't get paid all that much?

OUTRAGE! Politics at the GSA

This video of the congressional hearings on the General Services Administration, the purchasing department of the Federal government, is deeply troubling as it indicates that taxpayer money was being used to discuss how to use GSA resources to help Republican chances in '08. The politicization of our government continues ...

Firefox Add-On of the Day

If you're like me, you surf the web a fair bit. Some are reputed sites, some not so much. Some sites install spyware software, others (especially a lot of Indian sites, for example) just have plain annoying adware to get around pop-up blockers. Say goodbye to all your problems with the Firefox add-on of the day ... one of my favorite add-ons and enough of a reason to switch to Firefox if you still are on that dino called Internet Explorer ... drumroll ....

NoScript

NoScript disables all scripting until you specify that the provider is a truster provider (similar to your pop-up blocker) What is nice is that most sites keep their servers clean and any ad- and spyware is run from different servers, so I can (if I need to) allow the main server while continuing to forbid other servers.

In this day and age, I think security trumps most other considerations and NoScript goes a long way to making the Internet a much safer place. Find out more at the NoScript homepage.

The Big Ethanol Lie

Yesterday, President Bush and Detroit's Big 3 automakers touted cars running on ethanol, or E85, as the future. You know the spiel - reduce dependence on foreign oil, defend our national security interests, yada yada. Of course, the cars would be flex fuel, meaning they could run gasoline, but let's focus on the fuel of the future.

Well, it's a damned lie! Bush and his buddies in Detroit want you to think they went green, while doing not a damn thing (and this isn't even a partisan rant, for my readers know which way I slant!) But better than I could ever argue, I'll excerpt quotes from Robert Bryce, managing editor of Energy Tribune magazine, from a discussion on the Newshour yesterday. Here are some snippets:

The reality of the ethanol business now in America is that a lot of this rhetoric is simply being used to propagate more subsidies for this industry. The creation of corn ethanol is simply -- it borders on fiscal insanity. We're making subsidized motor fuel out of the single most subsidized crop in America. That's corn.

Second, when you look at the contribution now that corn ethanol is making and ethanol overall to the American oil mix, the ethanol industry produced about five billion gallons last year. That's the equivalent of about 200,000 barrels a day of oil equivalent. That's 1 percent of America's overall energy consumption.

If you took all of the corn in America, Ray, and converted all of that corn into ethanol, you'd produce about the equivalent of about 1.3 million barrels a day of oil equivalent. That's equal to about 6 percent of America's total oil consumption.

There's this idea somehow that, in the Renewable Fuels Association and these other ethanol boosters, that America can solve its oil imports and become more energy secure with ethanol. I think it's largely just a canard. This is just cover for propagating more subsidies for this industry.

Is ethanol really that green? Mr Byrce points out that the energy consumption in making ethanol means that there may be slim, or even negative, net energy produced by corn ethanol. So a lot of this is huey! Why are the Big 3 automakers behind it?

... the automakers are on board on this is that, by building E85 vehicles, what they are allowed to do is artificially inflate their CAFE numbers. They are actually able to artificially inflate their fleet efficiencies, and that is why they're so pro-E85. Last month, U.S. News and World Report estimated that, between 2001 and 2008, this CAFE credit loophole that they're exploiting is actually resulting in the U.S. burning something on the order of 17 billion gallons of additional fuel than they would otherwise.

And the solution. Mr Bryce is bold in calling for a motor fuel tax. Look, as a conservative, I don't like taxes, but I'm not dogmatic about them. But I would also cut the ridiculous subsidies provided to traditional energy companies, and impose a carbon-based tax on fuel.

Firefox Add-On of the Day

I love Firefox - I think it's simply the niftiest browser, and being open-source allows many users to address real issues. Unfortunately, most people don't recognize just how nifty some of these add-ons are, and to them, it appears like there isn't that much different from Internet Explorer. To encourage migration to Firefox, I'm starting an occasional post called the 'Firefox Add-On of the Day'.

And the Firefox Add-On of the Day is ...

CoolIris

CoolIris allows you to preview links before you open them. This is cool because it loads faster than clicking the page, and allows you to quickly navigate a page with multiple links, much faster than clicking each link and then hitting the back button would. You can select a phrase, and right click to look up its definition in the directory, or look for a Wikipedia entry on the phrase (something I do a lot), or instantly e-mail web pages. All this makes CoolIris the Firefox Add-On of the Day.

Learn more and download here.

Hillary and the 1984 Ad

If you haven't seen it, you must watch the anti-Hillary viral video put out by a supporter of Barack Obama. It is based on doctoring Apple's original ad, that was based on a Orwellian vision of the world. This is truly brilliant, and demonstrates how a little creativity (and not even that much - mind you, this was an existing ad!) can go a lot further than millions of dollars of ad-spending.

Airline Diets

During my recent trip to India, I flew United from Washington, DC to Frankfurt and then Lufthansa from there to Chennai. During my visits, it struck me how much airline food might reflect how the cultures eat. (Ok, so I don't really know how Germans eat!) A disclaimer - I ate vegetarian meals on both legs. The United meal was fatty and sugar-laden - breakfast was something like a Honey bun, and certainly something that would make a cardiologist see plenty bucks! The Lufthansa meal, on the other hand, was tasty, made with obviously fresher ingredients including olives and artichokes (YUM!). But the meal was also a lot lighter (bad for a big eater like me!). Even their soda cans are smaller! Maybe flying the national airline reflects a lot about the national diet?

Not Made in China

I heard this on a PBS program on China, and was so stunned I had to google it. Here's a factoid for you ...

China is losing more manufacturing jobs than the United States. For the entire economy between 1995 and 2002, China lost 15 million manufacturing jobs, compared with 2 million in the U.S.

source

That's quite a stunning revelation indeed, and should give pause to those politicians and commentators who claim an artificially deflated yuan is responsible for US manufacturing job losses!

DOJ Mess: Now Fitzgerald's No Good?

The Department of Justice mess continues. There's been a lot of outrage over how 9 US attorneys were sacked after the 2004 election. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales first claimed they were fired for poor performance, something that was decried by their recent performance evaluations. The incident has raised Congress' ire and there have been calls for investigations. That led to a document review, which produced this gem:

US Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald - co-prosecutor for the trial of Mafia boss John Gotti, prosecutor in the case against 12 accused of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, who has served on a team of prosecutors investigating Osama bin Laden in 1996, chief counsel in 1998 US embassy bombings, who successfully exposed a bribery scandal involving then-Gov George Ryan of Illinios, a Republican, and indicted Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, a Democrat, who won the AG's award for Distinguished Service in 2002, and successfully prosecuted former VP chief-of-staff "Scooter" Libby, has achieved a ranking of "not distinguished themselves".

Wonder what it takes to distinguish yourself if Fitzgerald hasn't done it. The scary part is not that someone made up a memo like this ("not an official position") but that people with similar status were fired! This administration has seemed to specialize in this kind of whimsical behavior.

But as the mud-hurling (justified, I might add) at the administration and the AG (who it seems has made it a regular habit to mislead Congress) continues, it would do us well to question our system. Why should it be ok to fire US attorneys to make way for partisan appointees, something Republicans and Democrats have consistently done? Why should it be ok to appoint judges on partisan lines? Heck, why do we appoint AGs on partisan lines? The consequences are a skewed justice system, where belonging to the wrong party gets you hounded while the right party can smooth away those ethics questions.

Author's Note

If I haven't been blogging much, it's because I was away in India. I just returned from a fabulous trip, and had much to write about before I got buried in work. So keep the faith that my brain will hold all that information ...