tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52815502024-03-07T16:38:12.960-05:00The Boys Weekend JournalSaving the World Before Bedtime...Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.comBlogger1025125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-11136961988004240502011-06-22T09:22:00.003-04:002011-06-22T09:26:15.453-04:00Man Robs Bank to Get Healthcare<a href="http://www.gastongazette.com/news/bank-58397-richard-hailed.html">This story</a>, from a local paper in North Carolina called the Gaston Gazette, really seems to capture the essence of the day. Well written, too. I definitely recommend that everyone take the time to read it.Veritas Infinitumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08658783985411391016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-15766572071514014122010-08-28T22:30:00.002-04:002010-08-28T22:44:16.399-04:00How to Make Local Government Sexy<a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/08/one-case-for-localism.html">This post on Andrew Sullivan's blog</a> by Conor Friedersdorf is quite relevant to my Aug. 3 post on localism. Per its title, it is clearly an advocacy piece in favor of localism, but if anything its opening ("Does anyone pay regular attention to their City Council or County Board of Supervisors?") tends to support my point. It raises the question, to me at least, of whether this is inevitable. That even those people who are generally aware of (and potentially engaged with) national politics are often disengaged at the local level is really problematic for advocates of local government. But how would you go about promoting increased engagement? Would better online reporting and organizing make a difference? Do we need dedicated and effective bloggers in every community to bring these issues to life? And how would you promote/fund that? One could argue that people don't pay attention to it because there is a perception that local government doesn't have that much power and doesn't really matter. But I think Yglesias's arguments to that local government still has considerable impact on quality of life (through zoning and business regulations) are quite persuasive. Why is the public's perception so different? Certainly I don't have answers to these questions, and as such I am disinclined to offer much support to movements in favor of increased power for local government. I'd just like to see those who advocate that address these issues more squarely. I'm not convinced this is an intractable problem, and if concrete steps could be taken to address it, it would be to everyone's benefit. I think we just need some creative thinking on this topic.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-87436182065720497792010-08-28T22:11:00.002-04:002010-08-28T22:19:26.020-04:00Exploiting the National Security Fixation for GoodBlogger Jeb Koogler, pivoting off a Foreign Policy article and a John Kerry speech<a href="http://fpwatch.blogspot.com/2010/08/exploiting-flood.html"> here argues</a> that efforts to direct aid to flooding victims in Pakistan is too focused on security issues:<br /><blockquote>Our aid policy in the wake of this crisis should largely be constructed and justified based on a notion of shared humanity -- not merely on a narrow assessment of American interests. That Pakistanis are suffering and desiring of international aid should be enough to warrant our attention, our dollars, and our support. </blockquote>This is simple enough. Of course he's right. But Americans just don't care that much about foreign aid, particularly in a tough economy. However, there is no amount of funding that appears to raise any questions in support of national security. So anyone with half a clue who wants to support a foreign aid effort is wise to cast it in national security terms. And it's not as if this is dishonest. I tend to think that on a dollar-for-dollar cost efficiency basis, foreign aid will in many cases do more for national security than investing in the military and national security industrial complex. And if that angle works, why not exploit it?Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-68240638814829672832010-08-19T15:56:00.003-04:002010-08-19T16:01:24.028-04:00"People die only once. They have no experience to draw upon."<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all#ixzz0x5F7RgpE">Here</a> is a very though-provoking, and heart-wrenching, article in the New Yorker that I highly recommend. As with many New Yorker articles, it is lengthy but certainly worth the time. It tees up the very personal and philosophical issue of how we face death, but it also raises issues that get to the heart of the matter on health care policy.Veritas Infinitumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08658783985411391016noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-82920592208919892102010-08-15T13:34:00.004-04:002010-08-16T22:37:42.830-04:00(Don't) Be EvilTo follow up my post from a week and a half back, it turns out the reports on the Google-Verizon deal were more or less accurate. Google and Verizon have thrown in together on a proposal for net neutrality legislation. Don't be fooled into thinking the result is a thoughtful compromise--it is a near total capitulation on the part of Google to Verizon's demands (<a href="http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2010/08/a-paper-trail-of-betrayal-googles-net-neutrality-collapse.ars">see here</a> for a good "that was then, this is now" comparison of Google's positions). The proposal has been hashed over quite a bit, and I don't want to repeat what has been said elsewhere (you can see <a href="http://arstechnica.com/telecom/guides/2010/08/googleverizon-we-do-loopholes-right.ars">here</a> or <a href="http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/08/10/internet-schminternet/">here</a> for decent commentary, <a href="http://gigaom.com/2010/08/11/surrender-monkeys-and-the-schminternet-what-the-web-says-about-google-and-verizons-net-neutrality-compromise/">here</a> for a survey of coverage). At a high level, the critical issues are: a) it completely exempts wireless from any rules; b) it creates an incredibly broad exception for any sort of managed services (allowing the creation of tariffed fast lanes); c) the non-discrimination language is so vague that it's hard to tell whether Comcast's interference with BitTorrent (which the FCC previously ruled against) would even be covered; d) the FCC is prohibited from engaging in any prospective rulemaking; e) the FCC's enforcement power is capped at a $2m fine (a pittance for the big carriers); and, f) the FCC is required to grant considerable deference to industry organizations in interpreting the rules. It is, as I stated in my last post, a devastating defeat for net neutrality.<br /><br />And the deal leaves the FCC in an awful situation. Already the FCC spent so long dithering on this topic that they allowed the carriers to wage a massive and surprisingly successful campaign to lobby Congress against net neutrality (see <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20005834-38.html">here for an example</a> of just how much clout they have). It's not a big stretch to think that all of those congressmen will jump on board with the Google-Verizon plan. And given how well respected Google has been as a net neutrality champion, it would not be surprising to see a lot of other more net neutrality-friendly legislators hoodwinked into thinking this is a legitimate compromise that they can get behind. Come November the political situation will only get worse. If the FCC was too timid to act before, the chances of them taking bold action now is about nil. The only real hope is that Genachowski feels so backed into a corner that his only choice is to fight back hard (I'm not terribly optimistic on this).<br /><br />While I noted before that Google has real conflicts of interest on the net neutrality question, on reflection it is still pretty stunning that they did this. Google is increasingly stepping into fraught policy questions, from net neutrality, to<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/07/09/analysis.google.china/index.html"> international trade and human rights</a>, to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/13/AR2008061303494.html">antitrust</a>, to <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2010-06-23-google-viacom-copyright-lawsuit_N.htm">copyright </a>(also <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=211601094">this</a>), to <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/12/google-buzz-privacy/">privacy issues</a>, and others. In all of these areas, Google has long benefited from its pro-technology, pro-openness, "Don't Be Evil" image. It's not that Google could do no wrong, so much as that techies would always give them the benefit of the doubt. That makes a big difference. But no longer. Google irrevocably shattered that image in a single blow (though the constant drip of all these other issues over the past several years surely didn't help). They will now be viewed as just another mercenary big company feeding its bottom line. The betrayal on net neutrality will cost them on many fronts, and unless there is some quid pro quo from Verizon that we don't yet know about, it doesn't seem like Google got much out of this deal. It's really difficult to fathom why they did what they just did.<br /><br />Update (8/16): As if on cue to prove my point that things will only get worse, the Tea Partiers <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/114101-tea-party-groups-come-out-against-net-neutrality">just launched a crusade against net neutrality</a>.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-64311120840966268472010-08-05T23:11:00.003-04:002010-08-06T00:14:31.160-04:00Can't Win For LosingI hate to be all telecom all the time, but <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/technology/05secret.html?_r=2&src=twt&twt=nytimes">this is kind of big news</a>. The FCC has dithered, vacillated, and backslid on net neutrality long enough that Google decided to take matters into their own hands and cut a deal with Verizon. Both parties now <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/google-and-verizon-sign-net-neutrality-agreement-begin-the-end/">appear to be denying</a> that anything happened. But it was extensively reported and it's hard to believe there is nothing to it. And the deal, if there was one, appears to have<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/05/AR2010080502423.html"> demolished the FCC's quixotic efforts</a> to reach a solution on net neutrality that left everyone happy. It's not exactly clear what the deal was, but the basic outline of it seems to be that Verizon would have free rein to do whatever the hell they want with wireless service, would <span style="font-style: italic;">mostly </span>be non-discriminatory with wireline service, but would have some sort of for-fee prioritization setup. In other words, it's a pretty devastating loss for the net neutrality supporters.<br /><br />I think there is a lot of sentiment that we've been stabbed in the back by Google, but Google was never an ideal champion for this cause. They're in some sense the best we've got because they have money and prestige and that seems to be the only real currency in policy-making circles these days. They also have that nice motto about not doing evil. But they have pretty conflicted interests on this. Allowing the service providers to create fast lanes does allow them extort a cut of the revenue from online content and service providers like Google, and will almost certainly hurt Google's profit margins. But Google has a lot of revenue and a lot of money. And the other big impact of it would be to increase the barriers to entry for disruptive new entrants in the online service and content business. It would cost more to get started and increase the companies' cash burn rate, making it harder for businesses to start small and organically build their businesses as they refine their service offerings with the early adopters (which was the path followed by the likes of Napster, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, not to mention Google itself). Basically, having climbed to the top of the heap, Google can, by throwing in with the service providers, attempt to pull the ladder up behind themselves. Google will have significant leverage with service providers. New businesses won't.<br /><br />So it's great that Google has been (and if its press release it to be believed, still is) a strong advocate for net neutrality, but it's worth noting that their interests don't align completely with the interests of other net neutrality advocates.<br /><br />But I think the big story here is what a disaster the FCC approach to net neutrality has been. Harold Feld has <a href="http://tales-of-the-sausage-factory.wetmachine.com/content/genachowskis-fast-fading-star-and-how-he-can-still-salvage-his-term-as-chairman">a really phenomenal post on this</a>, and I don't want to rehash everything he says. So go read it (and note that it was written <span style="font-style: italic;">before </span>this Google mess). And I agree with basically all of that. And I agree with the commenter to that post who notes that this is symptomatic of the way the Obama Administration appears to work (which is more or less what I said back <a href="http://boysweekendjournal.blogspot.com/2010/07/ill-have-another-hit-of-hope-and-change.html">in this post</a>). Virtually every worthwhile policy initiative has an entrenched interest that will oppose it, and the Administration is so cautious and conflict-averse they appear to be willing to let everything be derailed by endless deliberation. They just need to pick some fights, take action, let the incumbents howl, defend themselves to the public as best they can, and then let the chips fall where they may. What they're doing now is completely ineffective (if not counterproductive) and, as Feld notes, utterly demoralizing to anyone trying to serve the public interest. Hopefully this thing with Google, whatever the truth of it really is, will serve as the swift kick in the ass that the FCC needs.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-53545160609307717002010-08-03T22:49:00.003-04:002010-08-03T23:33:31.505-04:00Federalism/Localism Not All It's Cracked Up to BeMatt Yglesias has a number of long-running themes on his blog. Two of them are fairly interrelated: Local government has far more impact on people's day-to-day lives (mostly through zoning and business and parking regulation) than most people recognize, and Americans tend to vote on far more issues, both in terms of direct ballot issues and electing people to office, than voters are willing to care about. Those themes collide in <a href="http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/05/local-corruption-is-the-easiest-kind/">this post by Yglesias guest-blogger Jamelle Bouie</a>. Bouie argues that state and local government officials are far more susceptible to corruption than elected federal officials. I disagree with his aside in the final sentence that Congress is less corrupt than we think it is (see the Lessig post from a few weeks ago on that), but generally, I think he has a good point. <br /><br />There typically seem to be two motivating ideas behind pushing government authority towards state and local government: one size doesn't always fit all and vesting power locally will increase accountability. I think there's often a lot to be said for one size doesn't fit all. But I tend to agree with the Yglesias/Bouie position that localism does not increase accountability. It certainly increases the power of individual voters (you now represent 1 out of the 100,000 votes in your city instead of 1 out of 300,000,000 votes in the nation), but that increased influence has to compete with a huge gap in public attention. Not that many people truly pay to attention to national politics, but many people sort of pay attention to national politics, while almost no one pays any attention to local politics. And with the death of local newspapers (and the atrocious quality of local TV news), even if you wanted to invest in local politics, it's not easy to find good information. I think there are starting to be more blogs focused on the topic of local government (<span style="font-style: italic;">e.g.</span>, <a href="http://arlnow.com">this excellent Arlington blog</a>), but I'm not sure how widespread this sort of thing is. <br /><br />So it would seem to make sense that power should typically be pushed towards the federal level unless it doesn't make sense from an administrative standpoint (<span style="font-style: italic;">e.g.</span>, zoning) or there is a compelling one-size-doesn't-fit-all justification for keeping it local. The counterpoint is to look at how absurdly dysfunctional the federal government is at present. But I see that as a separate and distinct problem in that, if we don't solve that problem we will all be seriously fucked regardless of how we distribute power across local, state, and federal government.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-80679256141210720282010-08-03T09:37:00.007-04:002010-08-03T11:59:16.206-04:00Yes Virginia, There Is A Político LocoEveryone is no doubt familiar with Arizona's Immigration Law (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_SB_1070">Arizona SB1070</a>), portions of which were recently <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/28/AR2010072801794.html">blocked</a> from taking effect by a federal district court judge. Meanwhile, in Virginia, the Attorney General has decided that Virginia don't need no stinkin' law. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II recently released this <a href="http://www.oag.state.va.us/OPINIONS/2010opns/10-047-Marshall.pdf">official advisory opinion</a> concluding that Virginia law enforcement officers (including conservation officers) may inquire into the immigration status of persons stopped or arrested," under current Virginia law. In his view,<br /><blockquote>it would be most surprising if state and local officers lacked the authority, where appropriate, to arrest individuals suspected of committing federal crimes such as bank robbery, kidnapping or terrorism. State and local officers are not required to stand idly by and allow such criminals to proceed with impunity. The same holds true with criminal violations of the immigration laws.<span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;">One slight problem with that analysis--unlawful presence in the United States is a <span style="font-style: italic;">civil</span>, not <span style="font-style: italic;">criminal</span>, offense. See 8 U.S.C. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:100%;">§<span style="font-size:100%;">§ </span></span>1182(a)(6)(A)(i), 1227(a) (1)(B)-(C).</span> (For additional support and a more detailed legal analysis, see this very helpful <a href="http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl32270.pdf">CRS Report </a>from March 2009.) That distinction is critical to understanding the current legal battle involving SB1070. It has long been understood that state law enforcement officers may enforce federal <span style="font-style: italic;">criminal </span>laws, but they may not enforce not federal <span style="font-style: italic;">civil </span>laws unless there is an express delegation of authority.<br /><br />There have been several efforts in Congress to criminalize unlawful presence (which are summarized in this <a href="http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/library/P585.pdf">CRS Report</a> from 2006), but they have all failed. There has also been some effort to provide states with express authority to enforce civil violations of immigration law, but they too have been unsuccessful.<br /><br />In the <a href="http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/az-complaint.pdf">complaint</a> the United States filed against SB1070, the government argued that Arizona's law effectively criminalizes the unlawful presence of aliens "despite an affirmative choice by Congress not to criminalize unlawful presence" (see paragraph 54). In its <a href="http://www.azcentral.com/ic/pdf/0729sb1070-bolton-ruling.pdf">preliminary ruling</a> blocking enforcement of aspects of that law, the district court agreed and held that SB1070 creates new criminal penalties that are in direct conflict with the pervasive scheme established by Congress. It therefore enjoined Arizona from enforcing certain provisions for now, until the court has had the opportunity to reach a final decision on the merits.<br /><br />Virginia's AG Cuccinelli completely brushes aside the distinction between civil and criminal violations. Instead, in the opinion letter he attempts distinguish between the authority of a state law enforcement officer to <span style="font-style: italic;">arrest </span>an individual who is unlawfully in the United States, and the authority to <span style="font-style: italic;">detain and interrogate</span> someone who the officer reasonably suspects may have violated the law. That distinction is poppycock. The point is and has always been that civil enforcement of federal laws is left to the feds, unless the feds expressly authorize the states to get involved. Through this opinion letter, Cuccinelli usurps authority that clearly belongs to the federal government by effectively declaring that unlawful presence is criminally sanctionable in Virginia.Veritas Infinitumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08658783985411391016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-75189791299880400652010-08-02T10:40:00.003-04:002010-08-02T10:54:02.776-04:00Word of the Day: NutpickingI was reading through <a href="http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/08/conservative-liberal-sites-both-fueling.html">this piece</a> about the discussion of race in traditional and online media on Nate Silver's <a href="http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/">FiveThirtyEight.com</a> this morning (great blog, by the way) when I encountered the term "nutpicking." According to the <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/53877/Nutpicking-a-rhetorical-scourge-finds-a-name">link</a> Silver provided, the term was coined "to describe the increasingly common practice on the right (and yes, on the left, too) of cherry-picking random comments or hate emails to smear your entire opposition as raving nuts." (I also like the description provided by one of the commenters: "I like to think of it as 'picking peanuts out of poo.'")<br /><br />It looks like the credit goes to Kevin Drum for <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_08/009318.php">first identifying the practice in the wild</a> and then <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_08/009324.php">promoting the name</a>. Great term to describe an increasingly common phenomenon. I am certainly going to incorporate it into my vocabulary.Veritas Infinitumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08658783985411391016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-51451472438455800092010-07-29T10:23:00.003-04:002010-07-29T10:47:40.557-04:00It's a Small World After All--Even on FacebookThe Walt Disney Company <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_32/b4190035402934.htm">announced Tuesday</a> that it was paying $563 million to acquire "social gaming" company Playdom, the maker of Sorority Life and Mobsters--popular games on Facebook, MySpace, and mobile phones. Apparently social games are quite popular--according to <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_32/b4190035402934.htm">this Business Week story</a>, approximately 42 million people regularly play Playdom games each month. Another such game, Farmville, lists nearly 60 million active users on Facebook alone.<br /><br />CNET <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20011946-36.html">notes</a> that other major media companies are expected to jump on this social gaming bandwagon, too. Google has been considering whether to launch its own social networking site centered on such games. Dan Porter, CEO of an independent social gaming company called OMGPOP, is quoted in the story as stating: "Expect more deals as competing media companies like Viacom, Fox, IAC and others as well as large public game developers and Asian gaming giants roll through and answer back."Veritas Infinitumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08658783985411391016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-54347419656586727812010-07-26T11:09:00.002-04:002010-07-26T12:27:53.074-04:00Hope and Public FinancingI agree with Joe (see <a href="http://boysweekendjournal.blogspot.com/2010/07/ill-have-another-hit-of-hope-and-change.html">this post</a> a few days ago) that Lessig's presentation is worth watching, and raises some fascinating issues. Lessig uses three areas of policymaking--broadband, cybersecurity, and copyright--to demonstrate how the legislative process is fundamentally broken. Lessig's fundamental point is that Congress is no longer run "for the people," but for special interests. Certainly not breaking news, but a point that cannot be highlighted enough.<br /><br />But what to do about it? Joe notes that Lessig seems to be promoting a public campaign financing bill through the group <a href="http://www.fixcongressfirst.org/">Fix Congress First</a>. I have not yet looked at the specific bill that they are proposing, but wanted to share my quick take on whether the concept of public financing is viable in light of the current Supreme Court composition. (I would love to provide a more detailed discussion down the road, if time ever permits.)<br /><br />There have been two important Supreme Court rulings this term that bear upon this question. First, in <a href="http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission">Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission</a>, the Court struck down previous limits on corporate independent expenditures. According to the Court, the concerns about corruption (or the appearance of corruption) are not sufficient to justify such a far-reaching ban on political speech. Furthermore, the Court held that First Amendment protections extend equally to corporations as to individuals. Importantly, the decision does not affect bans on direct contributions to candidates--although that may prove to be a distinction without a difference.<br /><br />The second ruling, which has received much less attention, is an <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/AZ-order-by-SCt-6-810.pdf">unsigned order</a> the Court released late in the term involving Arizona's public financing program. The basic issue in that case is whether it is unconstitutional to provide additional matching funds to candidates who participate in the voluntary public financing system when opponents spend above a certain amount. The Ninth Circuit held that Arizona's system was constitutional, but the Supreme Court enjoined Arizona from providing any such matching funds until it has an opportunity to hear the case next term (note that the parties have not even asked the Court to hear the case yet, but the Court's order is a pretty clear indication that it will take the case.)<br /><br />As I read the current jurisprudence, I don't think the Supreme Court is likely to declare public financing unconstitutional, but that approach would be completely ineffective without some restriction on private campaign financing or some other mechanism (such as Arizona's matching funds approach) to make the public financing scheme a meaningful option for those who choose to participate. In other words, public financing is a solution without any teeth if candidates can opt out of the program and do better through acceptance of individual and corporate funding--but the Supreme Court is likely to strike down any rules designed to encourage public financing over private campaign funding.<br /><br />In my view, any solution has to be found in the masses. I agree with Joe that it seems like a very hard thing to do, but I am not sure there is any way around it. I like the way that Lessig frames the issue--we have to get at the root of the problem if we expect to make any significant policy changes in this country--but I think he does not dig deeply enough. I would trace the problems back to the poor understanding that most Americans have of the major policy debates going on in the country, which is due in part to the laziness of the people and also to the corporate media.Veritas Infinitumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08658783985411391016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-38842636130914263572010-07-25T22:51:00.006-04:002010-07-27T23:39:13.944-04:00The Optimal SolutionHere's another telecom post (I've got some non-telecom stuff lined up for the near future). As I noted in my post last Wednesday, while net neutrality is currently a necessity, it is a far from optimal solution. It is exceedingly difficult to scope and define. For one, it typically relies on a nebulous concept of "reasonable network management practices" which are considered to be acceptable forms of discrimination. Also, it is difficult to figure out how to make it address service providers segmenting their network connection to deliver managed services (primarily video and voice) over bandwidth kept separate from the Internet segment of the connection without becoming increasingly invasive and intrusive into service provider business practices.<br /><br />Indeed, as I concluded that post, it would be far better to negate the need for net neutrality by forcing carriers to provider open access to the local loop to their competitors. This solution, however, has its own problems. The biggest one is a pricing problem. When you force open access, you also have to set rates. Set them too high, and you've accomplished nothing because the competitors will be unable to compete with the incumbent and no competition materializes. Set them too low and the incumbent gets choked for revenue and cannot profitably maintain its infrastructure. Accurate, objective pricing data will be difficult to come by, and both sides will have strong motives to skew the numbers in their favor. It will be a constant back-and-forth battle, rife with lobbying, and with regulators ultimately picking winners and losers (either intentionally or accidentally).<br /><br />No, the optimal solution is <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/telstra-joins-aussie-fiber-plan-no-more-copper-wires-ever.ars">this solution</a>. One government-funded fiber network to rule them all. For a one-time investment of about $38b US dollars, Australia will provide an essentially permanent solution to the broadband needs of all of its citizens. The network will be open access, allowing multiple service providers to compete to provide Internet access. It eliminates the natural monopoly of the last mile by making it a publicly-owned utility asset. And by wiring every home with fiber, it eliminates the need to ever perform a major network upgrade again. From here on out it will just be a matter of maintaining existing plant, and occasionally upgrading the optics at each end of the pipe.<br /><br />Obviously, this would cost a lot more in the US. Looking at just in terms of the population ratio you'd figure that it would cost something like $400-500 billion to do the same thing here. Given the current fiscal situation, that's pretty unlikely to happen. But any municipal or county government with access to some cash really should be doing this.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-56618521121172527992010-07-24T22:20:00.001-04:002010-07-24T22:37:27.058-04:00This Isn't What Social Democracy Looks LikeBefore I start generating new content, I am going to cheat one more time and post an email I wrote in January in response to <a href="http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/keeping-americas-edge">this article by Jim Manzi</a> proposing an alternative to what he perceived as a drive towards social democracy in the United States:<br /><br />I have a couple key points of difference with Manzi. First, I think his conception of government intervention in markets is misguided and outdated. Second, I think his proposed solutions do little to address the social cohesion problems that he pretty aptly identified.<br /><br />On the first point, Manzi's conception of government interference seems rooted in opposition to command and control regulation. To this extent his discussion of Reagan-era regulatory reform makes some sense. It was during this period that the government generally began to abandon command and control-styled regulation in favor of the market-oriented regulatory frameworks that prevail today. In some respects this means less regulation (which fits Manzi's conception), but often it just means <span style="font-style: italic;">different</span> regulation. Consider telecommunications. For many decades the telecommunications market operated with relatively little regulation, governed essentially by a handshake agreement (and settlement of several antitrust cases) between the federal government and AT&T, whereby the government allowed AT&T to exploit a natural monopoly and ruthlessly crush its competition, and in exchange AT&T would provide near-universal service at geographically-equalized rates (subsidizing areas with high costs of service with profits from areas with low costs of service). This arrangement produced little regulation and an unproductive and stagnant, if stable, market. In natural monopoly markets like telecom, market-based regulation facilitates competition and drives innovation and productivity. Regulation of financial markets (including the sort recommended by Manzi) is typically intended to prevent fraud and improve the information available to investors, facilitating increased market competition. Carbon tax or cap and trade policies are designed to internalize external costs so that competition produces market-optimal production levels (including driving competition and innovation in clean tech). And so on.<br /><br />Health care reform is a bit of an odd duck in that it merely codifies an existing broad social judgment that we as a society are morally and ethically unwilling to live with the consequences of a pure market for health care. You could say that this is a case of Manzi's tradeoff between market efficiency and social cohesion. But it's not as if health care reform is shifting society on that scale. That judgment was made a long time ago--we already treat anyone who walks into an emergency room in need of care. But we provide non-market-based care in a pointlessly inefficient manner. Moreover, various features of the current system inhibit worker mobility (most especially the combination of employer-based health insurance and pre-existing conditions), reducing the efficiency of the labor market. Ideally, smart regulation should be able to remedy these inefficiencies while carving out space for competition in the areas where it makes sense and does not directly contradict our general sense of social justice.<br /><br />And Manzi's criticism of the Recovery Act and TARP fail to address the ultimate aims of those regulations--preventing complete economic meltdown. There is a broad (though certainly not universal) consensus among economists that these policies have worked, and that true disaster was averted. Sure, as Manzi points out, the Recovery Act (though not so much TARP) puts a big dent in the federal coffers, but the Great Depression cut federal tax revenues by 2/3s against the pre-depression levels--how would that have impacted the federal debt level (to say nothing of its human costs)? And while Manzi criticizes the takeovers of AIG and Citigroup and the government's intervention in the cases of Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, there is again a considerable amount of consensus that the one event that pushed the financial system to the brink of utter collapse was the government's decision, in an effort to impose market discipline, to allow Lehman Bros. to go under. It's not as if the government had a lot of options in these cases. This is hardly, as Manzi would have it, the realization of some scheme to nationalize key market segments. The intervention in the auto industry is less defensible, but nonetheless represents essentially a judgment that the existing bankruptcy system does not provide an efficient mechanism to unwind a massive business concern without inflicting unnecessary collateral damage. I don't know if this is correct, but I am quite confident that the Obama administration has no real interest in running the auto industry. And I feel obligated to point out that Manzi's assertions about the Recovery Act are just plain wrong. He states that the Recovery Act is "dominated by outright social spending." In fact, the sort of social spending Manzi mentions (<span style="font-style: italic;">e.g.</span>, food stamps) is a) only about 10% of the cost of the Recovery Act, and b)<a href="http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/96xx/doc9619/Gregg.pdf"> one of the most effective means</a> to actually stimulate the economy. By contrast, tax cuts represented about 35% of the Recovery Act (and sadly do a poor job of stimulating the economy).<br /><br />In the end, there is no evidence of an actual shift towards a social democracy ... which is probably unfortunate, because, as Jonathan Chait points out in a response to Manzi, <a href="http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/conservative-accidentally-makes-the-case-social-democracy">European-style social democracy seems to work really well</a>. Manzi's whole foundational assumption that the U.S. economic system is superior to the European version has little evidentiary support. European social democracies are quite competitive.<br /><br />Which gets to my second point: Manzi doesn't appear to have a solution to the problems he posits.<br /><br />Manzi provides several suggestions to address the perceived threat of social democracy, but only two that could possibly address the issues Manzi identifies regarding social cohesion: increased school competition and immigration reform. His suggestions on both fronts seem sensible, but also modest, and not nearly up to the scale of the problems he identifies. Manzi's school proposals would, I think, be an incremental improvement, but I don't think they would nearly equalize the quality of education obtained by the high income and low income groups Manzi identifies. And I think just about everyone agrees that immigration reform would be a good idea, but I suspect that Manzi perceives immigration to be much bigger problem than I do. Together, these reforms would probably put a dent in the emerging levels of social inequality, but a small one. I appreciate that Manzi is thinking in productive directions about policy reforms aimed at social cohesion, something few of his contemporary conservative comrades are willing to do. However, if he rejects the sort of broad-reaching social safety net that European social democracies employ, particularly while resting on unfounded assumptions about the economic costs of this approach, I think it's incumbent on him to propose an alternative that can have a similarly broad-reaching impact on social cohesion. He doesn't come close.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-76539926033151510932010-07-21T00:00:00.003-04:002010-07-21T21:39:46.032-04:00Some Old News (Net Neutrality)In an effort to continue to add some new blog content, I'm going to cheat and recycle a blog-worthy (I hope) email I sent a few months ago in response to inquiries from a couple of folks about my opinion on a) <a href="http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9775">this article by Tim B. Lee</a> and b) the <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-06/comcast-wins-in-case-on-fcc-net-neutrality-powers-update6-.html">D.C. Circuit's opinion in Comcast v. FCC</a>. My reply follows:<br /><br />Tim B. Lee's (not to be confused with Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee) paper has a lot of good content. Where it falls apart is on its competition analysis. Lee's fundamental premise is that interfering with network openness decreases the value of the network, service providers have an interest in maximizing the value of the product they're selling, and, therefore, service providers will not want to interfere with the openness of the network. On p. 23, Lee says this will hold true even in the case of a monopoly. This analysis, I think, ignores a critical factor: the elasticity of the market. Lee's argument holds true only in an elastic market, where consumers will be highly responsive to changes in the value of the good. I would argue that broadband Internet access is a very inelastic market. If you look at usage statistics for people under the age of 65 (and even more dramatically for those under 50), virtually everyone uses the Internet. It plays an integral role in virtually every facet of people's lives--personal communication, social and family relationships, entertainment, education, work and employment-seeking, access to government services, etc. It is not something people will do without based on incremental changes in the value of the product. So if you are hypothesizing a monopoly market, consumers have very little leverage with which to discipline service providers. Service providers would have to do tremendous damage to the product value before they saw a significant change in consumer behavior. Consequently, service providers are free to consider ways in which to make the network more lucrative for themselves (charging content providers for access to exclusive fast lanes and the like), even if it moderately decreases the value of the product they are offering consumers.<br /><br />To take that one step farther, if service providers can get away with decreasing the current value of the network, they have absolute freedom with respect to controlling the emergence of future services that might add value to consumers. They already have a captive market based on the present value of the offering, so they would have nothing to lose by steering future developments in ways that benefit their bottom line, even if in doing so they diminish the overall value of these developments to their consumers. This is the most concerning aspect. It would be bad to diminish the availability or value of existing Internet-based services, but it would be tragic to undermine the Internet as a source of creativity and innovation.<br /><br />The crux of this dispute, at present, is video services. Based on the history of the Internet, I think we have to assume that there will continue to be unforeseen developments and emerging new services, and some of these will probably require very high bandwidth connections. But at present, the only applications that really require 30+ Mbps connections are video services (and even then this is mostly for high def, and, in the relatively near future, 3d video). Lee touches on the fact that cable and fiber-based service providers already have a walled-garden for video, but acts as if this stands separate from the net neutrality discussion. It doesn't. I have participated in discussions on net neutrality with the Assistant Secretary for NTIA (outside of the 5 FCC commissioners, probably the most influential government official on this matter), and these walled-off video services were very much a part of the discussion. And the service providers are hardly content to rest on the status of their present walled-gardens for video. Look at the pricing for FiOS or for the emerging DOCSIS 3.0 cable services. Low speed Internet connections (5-20 Mbps) are priced similarly to the prices from other Internet service providers, but the high speed connections (50+ Mbps), which could potentially threaten their video services, are always set at such a high price point that the Internet-only price exceeds the price of getting a lower-speed video connection bundled with video service. It's a pricing structure designed to protect the video services. Meanwhile, Time Warner and Comcast are openly attempting to lock down online distribution rights for cable TV content. They have stated that they will make online access to this content contingent on the user having a subscription to their video service. AT&T and Verizon have not publicly disclosed any parallel efforts, but I would be shocked if they were not working behind the scenes to lock down content of their own. And Comcast is now in the midst of a high profile effort to acquire NBC Universal, bringing in a huge library of content and programming to add their exclusive access system. Acquiring NBC will also give Comcast partial control over Hulu, which will be one of its primary online TV competitors.<br /><br />All told, this is a broad and comprehensive effort to lock down a high-value, high-bandwidth data service. And the general unavailability of high speed connections combined with market uncertainty over licensing and content access issues has successfully prevented the development of any true innovative competitors in the IPTV space. Moreover, because one element of the service provider strategy is to price high speed connections out of the market, this has had the collateral effect of slowing or preventing the development of other potential high speed services and applications (this is why Google is now proposing to create a city-wide testbed for a 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-home network). Letting Internet service providers into the online content and services market completely upends our expectations, per Lee, of how they should behave to improve the value of their Internet service product. Net neutrality advocates need not restrict themselves to worrying about hypothetical future harms, the real thing is happening right in front of our faces.<br /><br />In discussing the potential threat of walled-gardens, Lee raises the example of AOL. AOL famously began as a walled-garden with exclusive content, then eventually, grudgingly, gave their users access to the Internet, and finally the exclusive content was dropped entirely. According to Lee, this illustrates that walled-gardens are not profitable. The key point that Lee omits is that AOL was not a monopoly (or even a duopoly). AOL's actions were driven by intense competition, mostly with mom-and-pop Internet service providers, at a time when all it took to be an ISP was to park a computer at the end of a copper phone line. The current service providers are generally monopolists or duopolists. The cost of entry to the market is prohibitively expensive (and economically inefficient). And the incumbents are so large that their collective actions can shape the development of content and services on the Internet in a way that AOL never could. The fact that walled-gardens failed in the 1990's tells us nothing about whether they could be economically viable for Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and TWC today.<br /><br />This brings us to the D.C. Circuit's decision last week. In 1996, Congress passed a Telecommunications Act that set up a regime for competitor access to the phone companies' last mile networks, allowing them to compete with the phone companies to provide phone and Internet service over their own infrastructure. At the time there were no commercial cable Internet service providers. As the cable companies became a larger and larger part of the broadband Internet service market, the disparity between phone companies (who were forced to share their plant with competitors) and cable companies (who weren't) became pronounced. Lawsuits by competitive Internet service providers attempting to gain access to the cable companies' plant forced the FCC to make a decision as to how to reestablish parity between the phone and cable companies. By this time (2002), Bush II was in office, and the default Republican position of helping the big guys prevailed. The FCC decided to designate Internet service as an "information service". The Communications Act gives the FCC a powerful tool box of regulatory controls over "telecommunications service" (generally referred to as Title II), but very little authority over "information services". The FCC had to shamefully torture the statutory definitions for telecommunications service and information service in order to make this determination, but that is neither here nor there. Several years later, after the case of a small phone company (Madison River Communications) blocking VoIP services that competed with its voice services, the Commission realized that they might want to regulate the behavior of Internet service providers in some cases. Having excluded Internet service from Title II, they didn't really have the statutory authority to do so, but decided to release a list 4 of non-binding network openness principles. A couple years after that, various members of the public were able to definitively prove that Comcast was interfering with BitTorrent traffic on its network, and they filed complaints with the FCC. After a long proceeding, in 2008, the Commission found the Comcast had violated the 4 principles, and required them to stop. Comcast challenged in the D.C. Circuit, asserting, among other things, that the FCC lacked statutory authority to enforce the 4 principles. They were right. Immediately following the FCC's Comcast decision, I did the first draft of a memo on the decision for a client. I predicted that Comcast would win the case in exactly the manner they did. So I can't say that I disagree with the D.C. Circuit's opinion.<br /><br />At this point I think there is little question that the FCC will continue to enforce net neutrality principles. It was really the only big ticket item in Barack Obama's 2008 platform that related the FCC. Obama has reiterated his commitment to net neutrality on multiple occasions since taking office. It has to be at the top of the Democratic FCC commissioners' priority lists. So, to me, the question is not if, but how. Already there is a lot of talk on Capitol Hill about creating new legislation to give the FCC authority to enforce net neutrality. However, given the state of the senate, and the other major legislative efforts under way, it seems unlikely that anything like this could become law for a year or two, if at all. One quick way for the FCC to fix the problem by themselves would be to reclassify Internet service as a Title II telecommunications service. Two of the Democratic commissioners (Copps and Clyburn) appear to be inclined to doing this. The chairman, however, has indicated reluctance to do so. Reclassification would not only allow the Commission to enforce net neutrality, but would expose service providers (now including cable providers) to a whole suite of requirements under Title II. This would be a major change in regulatory approach, and the service providers will spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the next year or two to lobby against it. And even once the Commission acts, the service providers will then tie it up in lawsuits for years (as they did to the 1996 Act, from the time it was passed until the Bush-led Commission threw in the towel). It wouldn't be a pretty picture. But I nonetheless think it would be the right thing to do.<br /><br />Moving Internet services back into Title II would allow the Commission to enforce net neutrality, but more importantly it would give them the tools to force the service providers to open their network to competitors. If done well, that could negate the need for net neutrality. Net neutrality is a regulatory framework designed for non-competitive markets. In a competitive market, consumers can respond to changes in the value of goods being offered, and Lee's thesis above would actually apply. Service providers that cripple their networks in the interest of building walled-gardens will see their subscribers go elsewhere, and the market will provide sufficient discipline to ensure good behavior. The only net neutrality regulation that would be required would be a network management disclosure requirement to ensure that consumers were making informed decisions. I think net neutrality is necessary given the current state of the market, but it is not an optimal solution. Competition would be far preferable. And, of course, for the service providers, competition is a far scarier prospect that net neutrality. Consequently, what we are likely to see is Chairman Genachowski publicly wavering on whether to join with his fellow Democratic commissions in favor of classifying Internet service as a Title II service until the service providers cry uncle and agree to some sort of non-Title II regulatory framework in which the FCC will be able to enforce net neutrality. Again, not my preferred solution, but it's what I view as the most politically feasible approach for Genachowski, and it has a distinctly Obama-esque feel to it.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-6416909193954903092010-07-20T10:44:00.003-04:002010-07-20T11:38:28.509-04:00Hope and Change and BroadbandI am looking forward to viewing the presentation that Joe linked to in the previous post, and I am thrilled that the BWJ revival post involves the perennial favorite issue campaign financing. I hope to comment more on the state of Supreme Court jurisprudence in the coming days.<br /><br />For now, however, I wanted to draw attention to a recent report from Nokia Siemens Networks entitled the <a href="http://www.connectivityscorecard.org/images/uploads/media/TheConnectivityReport2010.pdf">Connectivity Scorecard</a> (h/t <a href="http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/new-survey-confirms-shoddy-us-broadband.php?ref=fpblg">Talking Points Memo</a>). There is no question that America lags many other developed countries on infrastructure, as reflected in key measures such as broadband speed and penetration. But the report argues that the notion of connectivity should be expanded beyond basic infrastructure to encompass how the network is used (such as time spent online, take-rate of internet-based services, and usage of websites by businesses). And under this broader understanding of connectivity, the Connectivity Scorecard puts United States second behind only Sweden. (The U.S. was #1 in the previous two years that the report had been published. Fucking Swedes had to rain on our parade.)<br /><br />I recognize there is a lot of subjectivity built into a report such as this. And it does not diminish the importance of continued investment in broadband infrastructure--nearly 20 million Americans live in areas that are not served by a single broadband provider, and only 35 percent of homes with annual incomes less than $50,000 subscribe to broadband. But perhaps we don't suck <span style="font-style: italic;">that bad</span>. I bet Americans have more Facebook friends than other comparable countries. And probably more trolls per capita too. Seriously, though, my point is that Americans as a whole are pretty Internet-savvy, and that should count for something.Veritas Infinitumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08658783985411391016noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-38218339941567937922010-07-19T22:42:00.004-04:002010-07-19T23:34:51.721-04:00I'll Have Another Hit of Hope and Change, PleaseSo it's been, hoo boy, over a year since I posted anything here. I'm once again going to try to get in the habit, and I figure I should start out with something strong. So here's an <a href="http://lessig.blip.tv/file/3485790/">amazing presentation by Larry Lessig</a> that provides a useful primer on the topics of broadband policy, cybersecurity, and copyright, then bends all three of these topics into a larger point about America's political process. It is very much worth the time to watch.<br /><br /><embed src="http://blip.tv/play/lG2B1fgbAg" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="390"></embed><br /><br />It's almost an hour long, but I think it stops 20 minutes too soon. He never answers the question of, well, what do we do now? I see that he's promoting a website for <a href="http://www.fixcongressfirst.org/">Fix Congress First</a>. They appear to have a well-thought-out public campaign financing bill. But is that really the answer? Is there any real possibility this can get passed? (My guess: no.) Could it stand up to Supreme Court review? (Probably not, unless one or more of the conservative justices keels over while the Democrats still hold the White House.) If it did become law, would it solve the problem? That's hard to say, but at least it would be a huge improvement.<br /><br />In any case, this seems like a hard thing to do as an insurgency. Lessig hits the crux of the problem when he notes that people commonly react that of course the powerful business interests run everything--it's always been like that! Certainly there has always been a certain amount of influence-trading in Washington D.C., but I have a hard time believing that it has always been like this. Nonetheless, I think the tendency among the public to believe that this is the way it always has been and always will be, until the end of time, amen, may present an insurmountable barrier for the popular uprising approach to political reform.<br /><br />What I'm trying to say, in a long-winded way, is that my one source of crushing disappointment with the Obama administration has been its complete unwillingness to confront any powerful business interest. There were many things I admired about candidate Obama, but highest among them was his apparent dedication to changing Washington and improving the political process. I had hoped it would be the administration, rather than Lessig and his merry band of outlaws, spearheading the movement for political reform. I had hoped that he would confront entrenched interests and use his platform to show how badly they had served the public in the past and how directly their current interests conflicted with the public interest. None of this has happened.<br /><br />Obama prevented a depression, passed landmark health care legislation and financial reform, and has done a lot of other good things. But he has done nothing in the realm of political process reform. Lessig is right that the FCC totally rolled over on the broadband plan. And Greenwald is right the administration only made it past the entrenched interests on health care reform by buying them out. And something not so different just played out on the banking regulations. It is honestly shocking to me how fearful this administration has been of entrenched business interests. Given the populist mood in the country, I should think the White House would relish a good fight with an unpopular industry (like the banks, or the health insurance companies, or Comcast). That, frankly, is the sort of press they need. But instead, when they get even a whiff of a fight like that coming, they turn tail and head for cover.<br /><br />I don't know what to conclude. The Obama administration having been a letdown on this, I don't see any viable path towards political process reform in the near future. Between that and the new requirement for a super-majority to pass anything in the Senate (fodder for another blog post), the federal government has truly reached a new level of dysfunction. Despite Obama's legislative successes of the past couple years, I am deeply dismayed about the prospects of the federal government competently addressing any of the major challenges that will come its way over the next 10+ years. We are in a bad way to be sure.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-53941408801301409152009-08-17T09:29:00.002-04:002009-08-17T09:34:30.235-04:00Killing GrandmaI definitely want to continue this discussion and plan to share a few more thoughts soon, but in the meantime I have to pass on <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/14/AR2009081401495_pf.html">this very interesting article</a> from the Washington Post addressing the public fury expressed at some of the town hall meetings over the last few weeks. The title says it all: "In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition."<span style="font-size:+2;"><b></b></span>Veritas Infinitumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08658783985411391016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-90909802614881615602009-08-08T17:46:00.003-04:002009-08-08T18:10:02.324-04:00Thoughts on Health Care ReformLet me first say that Veritas made an excellent <a href="http://boysweekendjournal.blogspot.com/2009/07/rationing-is-not-socialism-but-is.html">commentary </a>that addresses some very fundamental issues of health care reform and the ongoing debate. I agree that the current discussion is not being helped by fear mongering such as "socialized medicine" or "government-run health care" or "no one wants a bureaucrat between them and their doctor" (and the last would be different how from HMOs?). As Veritas points out, health care like so many other resources, is a limited resource and by definition is rationed in one form or another.<br /><br />So how to do it? I heard an excellent segment recently on <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111063048">Fresh Air</a> by Maggie Mahar. It's only 20 min long and well worth a listen. She highlights some of the reasons for skyrocketing costs of health care and offers some interesting solutions to at least part of the problem. A few of her points:<br /><br />1) Like Veritas pointed out, going away from a fee-for-service approach vs. a lump sum payment might be one way to shift the focus to spending what is necessary and important for patient care rather than trying to make money. One perverse thought - might doctors/hospitals actually cut out certain tests or treatments in the interest of making more profit? Presumably this would be held in check by conscience as well as potential for lawsuits, but I wonder.<br />2) Making all insurance companies nonprofit. Another potential way to focus services on efficient, outcome based patient care rather than profit.<br />3) Increasing payments for primary care providers and reducing them for specialists. I certainly do see the inequity in salaries and reimbursements for procedures vs. primary care services. This may be one way to increase our supply and effectiveness of primary care providers. <br /><br />I also wonder what happened to the discussion of malpractice lawsuit reform? I really like the idea of having a panel mediate such disputes and think this would go a long way towards bringing health care providers on board, even if it is a relatively small part of the cost of health care.<br /><br />Speaking of the numbers, Henry Aaron has a very nice commentary in the <a href="http://healthcarereform.nejm.org/?p=1355">New England Journal</a> discussing the projected costs of the current health care bill as well as options to pay for it. This is well worth a read, and at some point Americans need to be better informed as to how we might pay for all this if we are going to do it. Adding to the deficit is really not an option at this point in my opinion. One option that has been put forth is making cuts to Medicare and Medicaid which Aaron shows to be one of the biggest areas of savings, though it remains unclear to me what these cuts would entail or mean.<br /><br />On a more general note, I wonder if some (or much) of our increasing health care costs are due to lifestyle factors of Americans. Rates of obesity have skyrocketed along with its consequences of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Perhaps we should really be targeting our funds towards prevention such as weight loss counseling and treatment and exercise programs. Reducing this burden would have tremendous effects on the long term health of Americans and I predict would go a long way towards lowering costs in the long run.<br /><br />I really look forward to more discussion on this and feel like I have so much more to learn. It's a complicated issue but a very important one. And as Veritas points out, what we are doing now is simply not sustainable.<br /><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111063048"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></a>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06297538001736068125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-66661659693349597092009-07-30T15:58:00.053-04:002009-08-01T18:51:59.160-04:00"Rationing" Is Not "Socialism" But Is Essential for Cost ControlI hope to provoke a good discussion on the health care debate by sharing a few thoughts. Rather than focusing on specific provisions that may be in the legislation (particularly because Congress itself hasn't figured them out yet), I want to explore some more fundamental questions. In what I hope will be merely the first installment on this topic, this entry argues that rationing is an essential mechanism for controlling the cost of health care. Without effective rationing, health care costs would likely be far higher than they are now and will almost certainly overwhelm us within a few decades.<br /><br />Opponents of reform efforts <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123060332638041525.html">have argued</a> that President Obama "will ration your health care," as though rationing is part of the scary socialist nightmare that some see lurking around the corner. Much more recently, Republican Senator <a href="http://grassley.senate.gov/">Chuck Grassley</a> of Iowa (whom <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/us/politics/28baucus.html?_r=1">some consider</a> to be critical to any bipartisan deal) stated in an <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111273311">interview with </a><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111273311">NPR</a> that we need to slow down the process because "we want to make sure that seniors don't get health care rationed." That is classic fear-mongering. The undeniable fact is that we have always had rationing of health care--we should be asking how to implement it in a fair and cost-effective way.<br /><br />Peter Singer, a bioethics professor, recently <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?pagewanted=print">wrote</a> that "[h]ealth care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another." Traditionally, medical care was performed on a "fee-for-service" basis, and providers were rewarded for extending every feasible treatment under the circumstances, with little regard to cost--so long as the patient could pay. Even under a fee-for-service model, medical services are rationed: You get the level of care that you can afford. As Economics Professor Uwe Reinhard <a href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/rationing-health-care-what-does-it-mean/">noted</a>, "free markets are not an alternative to rationing. They are just one particular form of rationing." (In <a href="http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1297324&blobtype=pdf">this article</a>, John Butler discusses other forms of rationing besides price, including rationing by denial, rationing by delay, and rationing by dilution.)<br /><br />Beginning in the late 1960s, the "managed-care revolution" injected a gatekeeper in between the doctor and the patient with the aim of keeping costs in check. All managed-care plans ration health care services through one mechanism or another. For example, many HMOs generally rely on "utilization management" (or "utilization review") to determine what treatments or services are covered under a patient's plan, using "medical necessity" as the touchstone. Whatever the method, managed-care organizations have to come up with some way to restrict health care services in order to bring down costs--otherwise, they are not "managing care" at all. As Justice Souter observed in <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/98-1949.ZO.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Pegram v. Herdrich</span></a> (a 2000 Supreme Court decision addressing the ability of a patient to sue her insurance company for allegedly breaching its fiduciary duty), "no HMO organization could survive without some incentive connecting physician reward with treatment rationing."<br /><br />Even assuming that managed-care organizations have a beneficial role to play, it is obvious that they have not done enough. Health care spending in America is out of control. In a <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=8758">2007 report</a>, the Congressional Budge Office (CBO) found that per capita spending on health care has grown much faster than per capita GDP over the last four decades. In 1965, total health care spending was less than 6 percent of GDP. By 2007, it rose to 16 percent. Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (and formerly the Director of the CBO) <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=8948">testified</a> that we spend nearly twice the amount spent per capita than France, Canada, and Germany--and nearly two-and-a-half times the amount spent in the U.K., Italy, and Japan.<br /><br />And it is only going to get worse (and fast), unless we make some serious changes. The CBO projects that, absent dramatic legal reforms, we will spend 25 percent of GDP on health care costs by 2025 and 49 percent of GDP by 2082. For the visual learners among us, here is a graph<a name="1078927"> reflecting the projecting spending on health care as a percentage of GDP:</a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8758/Figure4.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 670px; height: 253px;" src="http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8758/Figure4.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />In a 2008 <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=8947">report</a>, the CBO found (and most analysts agree) that "the bulk of the long-term rise resulted from the health care system’s use of new medical services that were made possible by technological advances, or what some analysts term the 'increased capabilities of medicine.'" Other factors (such as aging of the population, the rising prevalence of obesity, administrative costs, and the practice of "defensive medicine") taken together "appear to explain less than half of long-term spending growth."<br /><br />David Brown of the Washington Post recently wrote an <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/25/AR2009072502381_pf.html">article</a> examining the changes in treatment for coronary heart disease. He observed that the chance of dying from a heart attack has dropped from 30-40 percent in the 1960s to about 6 percent today. But the price for that improvement has been hefty. Over that same period, "the charges for treating a heart attack marched steadily upward, from about $5,700 in 1977 to $54,400 in 2007 (without adjusting for inflation)." Furthermore, according to that article only about half of the improvements in outcome can be attributed to increased spending on medical care; the other half "is the result of a more favorable 'risk profile' for Americans--less smoking, lower cholesterol, better blood pressure."<br /><br />Rationing care (on some other basis besides price) is the only feasible way to control costs. It is also necessary in order for President Obama to accomplish his other <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/health_care/">stated objectives</a> for health care reform--including "assuring affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans." As Dr. Arthur Kellermann observed in a recent <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106168331">interview with NPR</a>, "in contrast to other wealthy countries, we don't ration medical care on the basis of need or anticipated benefit. In this country, we mainly ration on the ability to pay. And that is especially evident when you examine the plight of the uninsured in the United States."<br /><br />I wholeheartedly agree with Professor Singer <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html">that</a> "[t]he debate over health care reform in the United States should start from the premise that some form of health care rationing is both inescapable and desirable. Then we can ask, What is the best way to do it?" There are no easy answers, but we will certainly never escape the crushing burden of health care costs unless we begin to discuss the tough questions, like:<br /><br />(1) What is the minimal level of care to which all individuals should be entitled?<br />(2) Assuming that "medical necessity" is not an effective standard in containing health care costs, what standard should we use?<br />(3) Should we consider how much longer a patient is likely to live, even if the treatment is successful?<br />(4) Who should decide in particular circumstances whether a specific course of treatment should be allowed?<br /><br />Hopefully we can have a great exchange of ideas on these and other questions here. I encourage everyone who reads this to participate, either by posting entries, making comments, or sending emails. Together, we can save the world before bedtime!Veritas Infinitumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08658783985411391016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-26260012715926793822009-03-25T13:06:00.006-04:002009-03-25T13:26:38.124-04:00The Outrage GameAs a follow-up to <a href="http://boysweekendjournal.blogspot.com/2009/03/you-are-outraged-because-we-say-you-are.html">last week's post</a>, Joe Klein has a <a href="http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/03/23/populist-rage-never-mind/">fine column on the AIG bonus outrage</a>:<br /><blockquote>There is a real crisis out there. It has existed for a while. It has been spreading slowly as factory after factory has shut down, as the gap between rich and poor ballooned, as the rich found ways to get richer betting on exotic financial instruments with all the economic substance of a roulette wheel, as the middle class found it harder to pay for college, for health care, for gasoline.<br /><br />But most of the anger we see and hear comes from people who are paid to be angry, on cue, on cable television--as opposed to people with actual grievances. Suddenly, the White House press corps goes barking mad over the AIG Bonuses. It is said that the bonuses are an aspect of the bust that the "public" can understand; in truth, the bonuses are an aspect of the bust that reporters can understand. Suddenly, the Obama Administration has a "crisis." The President has to go on television and act as if he's angry, even though he knows these bonuses are the tiniest outcropping of outrageousness.</blockquote>A bunch of people on Wall Street engaged in high-stakes gambling with a lot of other people's money and the reputations and stability of financial institutions that had endured for many decades. They amassed personal fortunes that the rest of us could scarcely imagine while burning down their firms and taking the entire global economy down with them. That's outrageous. That is un-fucking-believably outrageous. That a CEO at AIG who had been installed by the federal government to clean up the mess (along with some folks in the Treasury Department) decided it wasn't worth fighting in court over $150m in bonuses that the company was contractually obligated to pay--that's not outrageous.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-42886194147607362402009-03-23T13:37:00.002-04:002009-03-23T13:50:49.635-04:00Financial RegulationI'm somewhat perplexed by this blog post by <a href="http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2009/03/re-regulating_t.html">Richard Posner</a> on financial regulations. Posner argues that there should be no new financial regulations until the current recession has bottomed out. There is a basic intuitive support for this argument in that additional regulations could limit risk-taking and drive up the cost of lending at a time when the federal government is desperately trying to encourage new lending. But Posner's position is focused primarily on uncertainty in the marketplace. He writes: <br /><blockquote>Any regulatory initiatives at this time will simply increase the already great uncertainty in which the financial industry is operating; and as Keynes pointed out, anything that increases uncertainty in a depression causes hoarding, which can in turn precipitate a deflation likely to deepen and protract an economic downturn.</blockquote>His point is well taken, but I think he gets the matter of uncertainty backwards. The uncertainty Posner appears to be worried about is already priced into the market. The one thing that investors are not uncertain about at this point is that <span style="font-style: italic;">there will be</span> new financial regulations. I don't think anyone doubts that at this point. The uncertainty is about what those regulations will be. The sooner the government can spell that out, the sooner this uncertainty will be diminished. The additional benefit is that the financial crisis has severely undermined public confidence in the banking system, and if the new regulations are well-crafted (or at least are broadly perceived to be), they can begin to restore some confidence. And in any case, when it comes to the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders, all of these concerns may be secondary to the fact that there is huge public support for financial regulations at present, leading to a desire to strike while the iron is hot.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-79400906952822608152009-03-20T10:25:00.003-04:002009-03-20T11:01:40.364-04:00You Are Outraged Because We Say You AreThanks to Al Giordano for <a href="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/banality-outrage">writing this column</a> so that I don't have to. <br /><br />Whenever executive salary and bonus caps have been discussed in the context of the various bailouts and rescue packages, I have supported any draconian measure that legislators have been willing to contemplate. I think it would be difficult to overstate the moral and ethical culpability of these executives and traders in this financial disaster. And if that means they quit their jobs, big deal. There are plenty of unemployed financial workers who would be happy to have them. <br /><br />But this drama over the AIG bonuses leaves me cold. I just can't bring myself to give a shit about it. Given the context we talking about here, it is small potatoes and completely unsurprising. The mad rush of media personalities and politicians to trump one anothers' expressions of outrage, on the other hand, inspires a fairly visceral reaction in me (nausea). There are few things more pathetic than the panic of a politician who suspects that he or she may be missing a populist moment, and their willingness to dive head first off a cliff in hopes of landing on the bandwagon. And I can't help but suspect that if there were real populist outrage over this it would have taken longer to build and longer for the press to pick up on it. When the media goes into full-on shrieking populist outrage mode the moment it hears about the story, it rather seems like it's the media that's outraged more than the populace.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-73189508677767122272009-03-10T16:20:00.007-04:002009-03-17T14:36:54.587-04:00Further Developments in the War on IPTVA few weeks ago I noted that the networks <a href="http://boysweekendjournal.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-battleground-for-iptv.html">shut down Boxee's efforts to deliver their content</a> to viewers' TVs via Hulu's streaming web service. I speculated there as to why the networks would not want to play ball with Boxee. There is no question, on the other hand, why the cable companies are frightened of pure IPTV services, and it should come as no surprise that they are actively looking for ways to wall off content from them. Comcast and Time Warner are attempting to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cable-companies-ganging-up-on-hulu-2009-2">lock up cable TV content</a> for online distribution (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/comcasts-ondemand-online-web-video-service-coming-this-year-2009-2">more details here</a>). This content will be transmitted over the Internet in the same manner that a pure IPTV service would transmit it. The catch is that it will only be available to people who also subscribe to the cable companies' TV service. <br /><br />Many cable TV programmers are likely to jump at this opportunity, as they've never been able to survive on a purely ad-supported basis and rely on cable carriage fees for about half their revenue. And, of course, even on that basis many cable channels could not survive if they were not tied together in cable tiers with other more popular channels (this is what much of the fight over a la carte cable revolves around). In fact, ESPN got out ahead of this game by trying (with considerable success) to <a href="http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/espn-stands-fir.html">strong arm ISPs into paying</a> for its exclusive online content in a system analogous to a cable carriage agreement. What's next, regulatory battles over a la carte Internet? Oh, Kevin Martin, where have you gone?<br /><br />On the other hand, for any really successful cable channels, my guess is they could do better by going it alone. This move will necessarily limit their online audience (as big as Comcast and Time Warner are, there are a lot of folks on the Internet who are not Comcast/Time Warner subscribers [though Harold Feld suggests that <a href="http://www.wetmachine.com/item/1478">all MVPDs will be in on this game</a>--anticompetitive conspiracy anyone?]). Moreover, they will be stuck in the position of subsidizing the crappy cable channels just as they have been through cable tiering all along. And if the good channels all flee, this may end up to be a pointless endeavor for the cable companies. <br /><br />Obviously this move creates one more hurdle for IPTV providers to jump before going head-to-head with cable and telco video services. But it also creates potential net neutrality questions. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/comcasts-ondemand-online-web-video-service-coming-this-year-2009-2">This article suggests</a> that Comcast will not treat this content any differently from other traffic for the purposes for traffic management or bandwidth caps. But if they or any other ISP were to in any respect preference this traffic, I'm calling it right now: instant FCC smack-down. This is <span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">exactly </span></span>the sort of thing that net neutrality is intended to prevent. <br /><br />In fact, I think the existence of monthly bandwidth caps at all will soon become highly suspect in the FCC's view. The Comcast Order hinted that monthly caps might be an acceptable network management technique. But anyone who routinely uses an Internet connection to view high def video will chew through these caps (I've seen estimates that HD video requires 4-12GB/hr (depending largely on the type of content), meaning a 250 Gb cap will last between 20-60 hours spread across all PCs and TVs in the household). In essence, monthly caps can be utilized to preference a non-IP-based video service over IP-based competitors. <br /><br />ps. As you might note from my links here and in the previous post, I've been enjoying Silicon Valley Insider's Dan Frommer on this topic. He seems to be the go-to guy for this stuff.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-23274779319854876602009-02-25T22:41:00.004-05:002009-03-04T09:46:02.661-05:00Where Copyright Enforcement Collides With Network ManagementArsTechnica brings us <a href="http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2009/02/oneswarm-friend-to-friend-p2p-likely-to-irk-big-content-isps.ars">this story about the fascinating next step</a> in the arms race between online filesharing and the content industries. A new P2P client, developed by the University of Washington, integrates BitTorrent into a social-networking-type framework that renders it impractical for any user to determine the ultimate origin of files he downloads. <br /><br />The way this apparently works is that a user installs the client and links to his buddies (who have likewise linked to their buddies). When he runs a search it will poll the buddies to see if anyone has the desired file. If not, it will search the buddies' buddies, expanding outward until it finds the file. The file is then routed back to the original user through each intermediate buddy and, significantly, the source of the file is anonymized at each step so that each client is aware only of its immediate neighbors. Consequently an MPAA executive searching the network for infringing files would have no idea which users to sue. They would not have IP addresses or any other identifying information for anyone beyond their immediate circle of friends (supposing, for the sake of argument, that MPAA executives have friends). <br /><br />It's a great system for people who want to avoid being sued for copyright infringement. The flip side, however, is that routing files through a bunch of intermediate steps rather than directly from the ultimate source to the downloader is hugely inefficient. You burn a lot of network resources to achieve anonymity. This is where the interests of the content industries knock heads with the interests of the ISPs. The ISPs have long had a love-hate relationship with filesharing as it is a network management challenge, but also a great value proposition for their customers. This is less true now, but in the early days filesharing was one of the primary drivers for consumer adoption of broadband. Not only would ISPs be better off with the straight BitTorrent model, but BitTorrent could be optimized to prefer nearby nodes, thereby increasing its efficiency and lowering the burden of filesharing on ISPs. This can be done to some extent by software alone, but could be further enhanced through the cooperation between the software developers and the ISPs. Moreover, the FCC's <a href="http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/114846-FCC_Comcast_Violated_Internet_Open_Access_Guidelines.php">decision in the Comcast case</a> makes clear that the ISPs are on dangerous ground when they attempt to interfere with filesharing software. Optimization of filesharing software, rather than an escalating battle, seems the sounder option for them. <br /><br />How this conflict gets resolved is unclear. In the near term there is little that the ISPs can do about it. But at least they may start to become involved in the policy battles over copyrights and filesharing, and one could hope that the significant collateral damage inflicted by this fight, combined with its general futility, could lead to more intelligent policy. It is interesting to note that the adverse parties in this conflict (the big ISPs and major content providers) are the same parties that appear to be aligned on the same side of the <a href="http://boysweekendjournal.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-battleground-for-iptv.html">Hulu-Boxee story I posted earlier</a>. I don't see any interplay between the two issues at this point, but it's something to watch for.<br /><br />As an aside, the article quotes the creators of the software as stating that its intent is, in part, to create a platform free from the prying eyes of an oppressive government. This is likely BS. While this software would make it considerably more difficult to track a file to its source, it is not impossible. With access to the PCs of the intermediate users (or, more likely, the logs of their ISPs) it is still possible to track a file back to its original source. While this is impractical in the context of a copyright claim, it is not something I would want to stake my life or liberty on where an oppressive regime is concerned. <br /><br />ps. Public service announcement: <a href="http://www.quakelive.com">This is unbelievably awesome</a>.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281550.post-62578272751233769732009-02-24T21:12:00.007-05:002009-02-25T09:28:11.823-05:00How the Surge Became One of the Biggest Swindles in the History of American Foreign Policy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3082/2575251162_1625b4b027.jpg"><img style="margin: 20pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 396px; height: 264px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3082/2575251162_1625b4b027.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />In February 2006 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Askari_Mosque_bombing_%282006%29">Al Qaeda bombed the al-Askari Mosque</a> in Samarra, Iraq. The attack was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's crowning achievement, setting off the bloodiest and most grisly phase of the civil war in Iraq. The escalation of the war and the brutal ethnic cleansing campaigns carried out by all sides helped to turn American public opinion decisively against the war and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/08/election.why/index.html">played no small role in the wins </a>of the Democratic party in the November 2006 mid-term elections. While many inside and outside of Washington were finally ready to start looking for an exit, the Bush administration, its legacy already inescapably tied to the war in Iraq, <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/bush-ask-billions-20000-more/story.aspx?guid=%7B50DD932F-6A6A-45CE-9A6B-2F88B1649F72%7D&dist=">decided to double down</a>. President Bush <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_troop_surge_of_2007">announced the troop surge on January 10, 2007</a>, and the additional troops began entering Iraq before the end of that month.<br /><br />Midway through 2007 the levels of violence began to tail off, and by the end of the year attacks and casualties had fallen to their 2004-05 levels. In September 2007 General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_to_Congress_on_the_Situation_in_Iraq">reported to Congress</a> that while virtually none of the political objectives of the surge had been met, the military objectives of the surge were being met. Over the course of 2008, it became conventional wisdom among political talking heads of all stripes that, notwithstanding the failure to achieve the political objectives, the surge had succeeded. John McCain prevailed in the 2008 Republican primaries largely <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/938659.html">on the basis of having been a champion</a> for the surge. Mainstream newspapers called out Democratic candidate Barack Obama for <a href="http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/07/our-view-on-ira.html">failing to admit that he had been wrong about the surge</a>. And Obama, for his part, seemed content to <a href="http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/09/obama_iraq_surge_beyond_dreams.html">support this conventional wisdom</a> on the basis that if the surge had worked, then it must be time to bring the troops home. This conventional wisdom has been augmented by the fact that the decline in casualties and violence has generally taken Iraq off the front pages. For the past year the conflict has been largely out of sight and out of mind, which itself serves as evidence of the apparent success of the surge and also diminishes public discussion that might lead to challenges of the conventional wisdom.<br /><br />Lately, however, something odd has started to happen. Thoughtful and serious people, with whom I often agree, are employing the apparent success of the surge as justification for a much longer term commitment to keeping troops in Iraq (e.g. <a href="http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/02/18/thomas_ricks/">Thomas Ricks</a> and <a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/02/barack-w.html">Andrew Sullivan</a>). Let me put aside for the moment the fact that <a href="http://boysweekendjournal.blogspot.com/2008/07/gaffe-that-draws-blood.html">I don't believe that the surge was the primary cause</a> for the decrease in violence in Iraq (in fact, it <a href="http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/93081/forget_the_surge_--_violence_is_down_in_iraq_because_ethnic_cleansing_was_brutally_effective/">probably wasn't even the secondary cause</a>). Even if we assume that the surge was solely responsible for the decline in violence, the fact that we are today not one iota closer to solving the basic structural political challenges of Iraq than we were three years ago should reveal the surge to all as the utter failure that it is. In truth it stands as a testament to the hollowness and stupidity of the entire endeavor in Iraq from day 1. The question of how to resolve the ethnic/sectarian divisions of Iraq was at the top of every critic's list of objections before the war started in 2003. Here we sit in 2009 and still no one has the first fucking clue how to resolve this problem. And yet Ricks and Sullivan would have us keep tens or hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq for at least another 5 years in hopes that someone can pull a rabbit out of a hat and make everything better. I hate to be the one to break it to these fellas, it ain't gonna happen.<br /><br />When I go back and look at what I wrote about Iraq <a href="http://boysweekendjournal.blogspot.com/2007/05/we-all-want-out-of-iraq.html">two</a> or <a href="http://boysweekendjournal.blogspot.com/2006/05/lets-go-home.html">three</a> years ago, I see little that has occurred to change my evaluation. It's true that the decline in violence has bought us some time (although the levels of violence have been <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSTRE51M74820090223">ticking up again</a>, possibly in <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101050719">reaction to last month's elections</a>). But time for what? There still appears to be little prospect for political reconciliation, meaning that whatever fallout will result from an American withdrawal will happen whether we withdraw this year or in 2015. And our presence in Iraq continues to cost us the lives of our servicemen and an immense amount of money, strain our military capacity and limit our effectiveness in Afghanistan, and hinder our efforts to repair relations with Arab and Muslim nations. The opportunity costs of remaining in Iraq are substantial, and the benefits of staying appear to be minimal. It's time to bring this misadventure to a close.<br /><br />I remain of the opinion that we should be prepared to intervene again if things spiral too badly out of control, but I do not believe that we will see a serious effort towards political reconciliation until we force the issue by drawing down our forces. We have no better options than to try it and see what happens. The surge has not altered that equation. It has only delayed us, at significant cost, from asking the hard questions and making the hard decisions for the past two years. Now is the time to do what needs to be done.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Photo credit </span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoriah/2575251162/">Zoriah</a>Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06320185643968172638noreply@blogger.com0