random rants and references

For those that care to pursue the South West Asia & Mid-East issue, Ed Morrissey of the Captain's Quarters blog has a good post, complete with map, on Why Now? at : Captain's Quarters . I'll let him do my ranting for me.

After noting that we went from initial action to free elections in less than 2 years in both Afganistan and Iraq, he continues “On the heels of that surprising success, Bush specifically called Syria out as his next focus during his annual State of the Union speech….(and) demanded a complete Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon ... Combined with his inaugural speech ealier and the success of Iraq's election, his words have had a powerful effect on Lebanese developments….Nor have we seen the wave of democratization crest yet. “

As to the Why Now question : “The answer lies in the 150,000 troops currently stationed in Iraq and the will to act that put them there. Does anyone think that Syria would have stood still for a spontaneous demonstration against their puppet government if Saddam Hussein was still defying the UN in Baghdad? … Would the people of the region had the undeniable personal courage to stand up to their oppressors as they have in Cairo and Beirut if they had not seen the Iraqis and their purple fingers, freely voting for their own government, with their own eyes?”

And finally: “Make no mistake. This transformation didn't just happen to coincide with the terms of Bush, Blair, and Howard. Expect the mainstream media to sell that meme in the next few weeks -- how George Bush, especially, got lucky to just happen to be President when all of this happened. Don't buy it for a second. He saw how to change the world and eliminate terrorism over the long haul and more importantly had the political courage to act in that regard.”

Talk about Kuhnian paradigm changes coming in Jolts; the Mid-East transformation jolts along as noted by this late-breaking report from FOXNews.com - Lebanese Gov't Resigns Amid Protests . There is a lot more happening in Lebanon now and still more to be done before that country is free of Syria; but the momentum is in the right direction. And we are helping it:

* The White House praised the resignation of Karami's government, saying it opens the door for new elections "free of all foreign interference" from neighboring Syria.

* The Bush administration Monday demanded anew that Syria comply with a U.N. resolution to pull its troops out of Lebanon and stop interfering in Lebanese affairs.

* "Syrian military forces and intelligence personnel need to leave the couny," McClellan said. "That will help ensure that elections are free and fair."

I had planned to follow up on my Friday post about living in a transformative age. Now, fortunately, my weekend laziness allows me to do less ranting and more referencing to the many articles that discuss recent Mid-East events as portending a major transformation there.

David Brooks, in his Saturday New York Times Op-Ed, asserts that : Why Not Here? "is the most powerful question in the world today", referring to the growing clamor for freedom and democracy in the Mid-East. He cites recent activities in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq to make his case about accelerating changes. He quotes the head of the Syrian Press Syndicate as saying "There's a new world out there and a new reality. You can no longer have business as usual." Later that same day, the the pace of change picked up, as reported by Yahoo! News - Mubarak Orders Egypt Election Law Changes . An event which followed within hours of Secretary of State Condi Rice's decision to skip her scheduled stop in Egypt after learning that Mubarak had jailed his key political opponent. (I think Egypt is the 2nd largest recipient of US foriegn aid. Could we be hinting that allowances are tied to good behavior, like tough parents? )

Since we are dealing with bigtime paradigm changes, Brooks give some credit for his thesis to Thomas Kuhn who " famously argued that science advances not gradually but in jolts, through a series of raw and jagged paradigm shifts. Somebody sees a problem differently, and suddenly everybody's vantage point changes. "Why not here?" is a Kuhnian question, and as you open the newspaper these days, you see it flitting around the world like a thought contagion."

Today, Michael Barone has a great summary in USNews.com: Minds are changing (3/7/05) , which covers the above events and more. He also notes that "minds are changing in the United States. On Nightline, the New York Times 's Thomas Friedman and, with caveats, the New Yorker 's Malcolm Gladwell agreed that the Iraqi election was a "tipping point" (the title of one of Gladwell's books) and declined Ted Koppel's invitation to say that things could easily tip back the other way. In the most recent Foreign Affairs , Yale's John Lewis Gaddis credited George W. Bush with "the most sweeping redesign of U.S. grand strategy since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt,"".

Barone finds particularly striking the words of Lebanese Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader long a critic of the United States :"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

If thes events constitute a "Tipping Point" breakout in the Mid-East, it will mark the start of a lasting transformation, even though the path may not be trouble free.

Hugh Hewitt poses this Vox Blogoli 2.2 question ( HughHewitt.com ) :Does the Senate GOP go McClellan or Grant if Harry Reid goes "Gingrich"? I feel it's worth answering, although not in quite the militaristic terms stated. The question is about how the Senate GOP will or should act on the process of confirming Judicial Nominations. Harry Reid has stated he will shut down the government , as Gingrich did in a stand-off with President Clinton ( a catastrophically bad ploy, as it turned out), if the Republicans attempt to force a simple majority floor vote for judicial nominations. The McClellan option is to talk and waffle; the Grant option is to force a rule change that prevents filibustering nominations. The current rule permits 41 senators to declare a filibuster and thus block any action; a rule change (termed by some the "Nuke" option) can be made by 50 senators to preclude or limit the use of a filibuster in the Advice and Consent process on nominees.

To me, the issue is simply whether the Senate is willing to face up to its constitutional responsibility to vote on the President's nominations. Our constitution provides many individual rights and a series of checks and balances to assure individual justice and freedom and to preclude the "Tryanny of the Majority"; it never intended to preclude decision by majority vote or to foster the "Tryanny of the Minority". Those few cases, where a super-majority vote was intended, were explicity stated. Based on founder intent and two hundred years of Senate history, there seems to be an especially clear case for a simple majority vote in the Advice and Consent process. I think the Senate should change its rule Back to a simple majority vote for nominees as was the case untill very recently and should do it as a matter of principle.

This has become a GOP - DEM issue because of a recent trend to constant campaigning and political obstruction by the party in the minority. There will always be power struggles and each party should press for the maximum advantage it can get. But that process of political warfare must stop short of overriding the constitution and ignoring the voters. Hence, the real issue is about the Senate doing its duty under the constitiution. Does it mean that President Bush is more likely to get his nominees approved, including some Supreme Court nominees? Yes, as it should. That issue was very much in front of the electorate last year and the voters decided it. Does it mean that, in future, a GOP minority may not be able to block a Dem President's nominees. Why, Yes, again as it should. How else can we voters influence our government?

In my post on "A Contrast of Librarians", I mentioned this Library Journal - The Google Opportunity article that focuses on how libraries can maintain relevancy in the Information Age of Google. With so much information online and accessible by increasingly powerful search engines, it seems all one needs is a computer and internet connection to access almost any information anywhere at anyime. The author, the President of the Canadian Library Association, does not hide from the threat posed to the traditional library mode of operation. Instead he embraces the new technologies and shows how to leverage the momentum of commercial information technology to the advantage of the library. Call it a demonstration of intellectual judo; or of a flexible management strategy that bends the organization to harness the oncoming forces and transforms itself in the procees. For it is library transformation that he advocates - to take advantage of the new technologies by reassessing and redefining one's objectives and organization in terms of client needs.

This article, also in Library Journal - Everything I Need To Know I Learned Online , discusses the advantages and uses of Online communities in terms of collaborative efforts among libraries and between libraries and the communities which they serve. The author, a consultant and the Community Manager for Webjunction.org, recognizes the trepidation with which some view the new technologies; and then shows how to take advantage of them for collaborative efforts that help librarians do better those things that are at the core of their profession. Importantly, these collaborations need to engage non-library information service providers. You could call it sharing the load to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts; or a flexible management strategy of 'ad hoc' partnering - a tactic that technology industry competitors use to form specific-focus teams to win and conduct very large projects. Interestingly, the auther uses a small rural Texas town and library as the backdrop for her article.

These articles offer good insights to guide the evolution of library services in our rural communities; both by confirming the value of some of our initiatives and by suggesting other promissing avenues. But, there is a more important point here : as a technology (information, in this case) becomes pervasive and ubiquitious, it allows communities to change dramatically what and how they do things; and that forces existing institutions (e.g. libraries) to change and reinvent themselves to continue serving their communities and clients. This is one facet of the transformation to an information society; and, whether we choose to lead, adapt, or drift along, we are involved.

I believe we are living in a Transformative Age in which there will be major changes to our domestic social structures and international relationships as well as to the interactions of technology and society. In many ways, the information services transformation is easy to see and the least controversial. I think the Iraq war, as part of the greater Mid-East initiative (or in that ugly inaccurate phrase - the War on Terror), is the initial phase or catalyst for a transformation of our global strategy, policies and relationships; and that the social security debate has a similar role in the transformation of our domestic policies and social structures from a basic presumption (or mindset) of entitlement and external care to one of opportunity and personal responsibility. These transformations will not progress linearly, calmly, or predictably; and compromises are more likely than complete (black to white) changes. But I suspect they will be the defining characteristic of the next decade. That should make for interesting times and some lively discussions. Of course, it raises the question about the old Chinese admonition "May you live in interesting times." - is it curse or blessing?

Its hard to imagine this Library Journal - Revenge of the Blog People! article being other than the fearful ranting of a modern day Abbot feeling threatened by today's version of the Gutenburg Printing Press. Imagine people being able to read anything on their own, using a "McGoogle" and even being able to comment on an abbot's pronouncements! "Blog People"? Well, according to Michael Gorman : "Blog People read whatever they want to read rather than what is in front of them...." and "... I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts." And Mr. Gorman? He is President-elect of the American Library Association and Dean of Library Services at a California State University . Makes one fear for the relevancy of libraries under his leadership.

On the other hand, an excellent article in the same issue of the Library Journal - The Google Opportunity presents the views of a Library Innovator coming to grips with the promises and pitfalls of modern technology. In it, Stephen Abram notes the impact and importance of Google and asks "Can libraries compete, complement, or cooperate? Or will we lose out?" He believes libraries still have a choice and offers ten key things that libraries should do to adapt and thrive. Stephen Abram is President of the Canadian Library Association and Vice President, Innovation, Sirsi Corporation. His ten key things deserve full reading and serious consideration by library professionals and community proponents seeking actionable inspiration.

I love his advice to "Lead the wireless revolution'' and "Get into the community" with it ! And that's just 2 of his 10 points. Fortunately for us in Susquehanna County,PA, our County Library and Community Information Network (CIN) are already engaged in several of his recommended initiatives. Even so, there is much more we could do to take advantage of his insights. I wonder if we could annex ourselves to the Canadian Library Association?

Social Security reform is a big issue today and hiding in wishful thinking doesn't solve any problems. So let's face up to and understand the basic hard facts.
While government agencies (SSA Trustees, SSA Actuaries and CBO) may differ in some details as they try to predict future trends, there does seem to be agreement on Social Security fundamentals. Today the FICA tax takes in more than it pays out, but in about 13 years that tax will be less than the benefits to be paid out, causing a draw-down from the SS Trust Fund. In another couple of decades (around 2040-2045), the Trust fund will be exhausted and incoming taxes will only be able pay about 75 percent of expected benefits. Then, under current law, the SSA must either raise taxes or cut benefits. We could solve the problem more gradually by raising taxes from 12.4 percent to 18 percent or by cutting benefits by one-third, or, over the longer run, by borrowing several trillion dollars.
The problem is caused by a combination of today's PayGo Structure (taxes in, benefits out, left-over surplus to Trust Fund) and national longevity trends (more retirees living much longer, with a coming surge of boomer retirees, while the number of workers to pay the taxes keeps shrinking). Soon there will be only two workers to pay for each retiree; down from 3-1 today and 16-1 only 50 years ago. The problem becomes urgent in 13 years not 40 years because there are no real assets in the Trust Fund to pay benefits. Unlike real assets in a personal account, the Fund only holds government promises to pay itself for all the accumulated surplus tax dollars that it has already spent on its day-day operating expenses. The only way it can pay those benefits, starting in 13 years, is to raise more taxes or to borrow more funds then. Raising taxes to build a surplus has not and will not work - it's really just a tax me now and tax me later scheme.
What does work is real personal accounts for individuals; accounts that are invested to harness the power of compound interest in real growing assets that you can spend on retirement or leave to your heirs if you die before retirement. That's what all federal and most university employees have had for years under very successful plans. President Bush proposes to offer the choice of those accounts to all younger workers as part of a revised Social Security program that also continues to pay current and near retirees their promised benefits - promises that can not be kept under the current system. That's not just another patch-up, it's real Social Security Rejuvenation for the 21st Century.
So why the opposition to letting people make their own choices about their money and their future? Has the "Anybody but Bush" theme become the "Anything but Personal Retirement Choice" theme?

(The above is provided here for reference. It was also published as a letter to editor in the Susquehanna County Independent and the Susquehanna County Transcript newspapers on 23 February 2005.)

Machias Privateer makes an amusing tongue-in-cheek proposal to End Mortgage Deduction - Save Social Security and bring the Bushies and AARP together in a common cause. It's brief and provides a quick chuckle by pointing out how the elderly, the boomers, and the gen-X'ers all benefit!

Then again, maybe it's really a neat way of showing how linking tax reform and social security reform could be a good idea. In that case, it might bring the Bushies closer together with Rep. Thomas(R) and his House Committee that will write the legislation for both efforts.

I was amazed by the amount of money the Social Security Ad Warriors were planning to spend and thought it useful to name some of the bigger warriors. But I failed to give equal prominence to the editorial Strawman Slappers, who can use their newspaper pulpits to participate in an Ad War without the costs of Ads ( and often without declaring their partisan colors); just as they do in any other political campaign. Today's New York Times woke me up to this failing with their editorial : Some Inheritance . This is a great example of how to construct a strawman and then slap it shapeless to scare people away from the truth. Half way through the chatter, they admit that what would happen under the President's plan is unclear ( that is, they don't know), but that doesn't stop them from making up the scariest possible outcomes and whining about them - regardless of their liklihood or even their clear unreality. There are too many scare fantasies presented to deal with here. So let's deal with two big ones.

First,the 'annuities won't go to your heirs once started' scare - well, Maybe. Depends on how they are set up. The 2 main models are the TSP and TIAA-CREF plans which allow annuities to be paid out over the lifetime of a single annuitant, or over the life of both of 2 joint annuitants (husband and wife) ; in either case, they can be be set up to provide a continuing payout to heirs if you die within 10-20 years of starting the annuity. These different payout options provide different amounts of monthly payments . Options are personal choices; existing plans have these; so why assume there will be no choices in the President's plan when he is emphasizing "choice"?

Second, the 'if you die before retirement, MAYBE, the government won't pay anything Because of the Big Debt to create personal accounts' scare - Wow! A double Fantasy Scare! There are 2 fallacies here - one about a phoney debt and one about a government grab of your account. They admit that all responsible source deny that "grab" scenario; so why raise it except to offer a scary strawman fantasy for their side's Ad Warriors to cite as coming from a "respectable" news source?? As for the huge "debt" to create personal accounts; it's a fantasy too. There is no debt created by these accounts, that individuals are expected to 'pay back'. Quite the opposite! Since the accounts represent real future savings to pay for their owner's retirement, they reduce the future traditional SS obligation (debt). Of course, if you put some of your FICA taxes into a personal account, you also forego some of the traditional SS benefit in order to get a larger combined benefit upon retirement; but that is your personal choice. Beware of Strawman Slappers trying to scare you out of your choices!

I thought Social Security would be an interesting and timely blog topic; but had no idea how high the stakes were going to be until seeing this article : Ad wars rage over Social Security Guess I'm just a little lonely voice amidst these big players waging their $50+ Million Ad War. The big players seem to be the same organizations that fought the ad wars in the 2004 election campaign. Lining up against Personal Retirement Choice are MoveOn.org, Campaign for America's Future (CAF), Rock the Vote(RTV), and AARP in a coalition that is raising over $30Million. On the other side, Pro- Choice are Progress for America (PFA), Club for Growth, and USANext (the "anti-AARP" senior citizen organization) ; these groups are hoping to raise $20-$40 Million.

As this war get rolling, AARP seems to be making the first major aggressive moves, claiming credit for $5Million spent and 250,000 letters sent to congress. In what seems a daring move to make black appear white, AARP and RTV have teamed up for poll pushing as described in MTV Poll Masks Youth Views on Social Security . Poll Pushing? Read the article to get a full discussion. Simply put, it means if you don't get the desired answer from a poll respondent, you keep asking slanted questions until you get something that fits your point of view. So, you can start with 65% in favor of "Choice" and then get it down so it seems only 47% favor it - but even so, the anti-choice duo could not torture the statistics into showing more opposed to choice than in favor.

Could it be that people really prefer to have a choice over how their money gets spent, regardless of how the Ad Warriors spend their money ?

Our Man in Brussels is the title given to this annotated version of President Bush's speech in Brussels this Monday. The annotations are done by the blog New Sisyphus , which presents the views of a State Department official commenting unofficialy. I had read the speech, but really enjoyed this annotated version. It's long, but well worth the time if one wants to understand how far forward this presidaent has moved us and the world. I agree that events are proving Bush right on a global scale and that you won't read much of this in the MainStream Media (MSM) . From the blog intro :

" Today President Bush delivered what we hope will be a landmark address on the future of European-American relations. Working from the base of momentum that the recent very successful trips of Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld created, the President delivered a speech that nicely sums up America's new foreign policy. The MSM, blind as usual, has painted the trip as a “mending fences” mission critical to the President’s success. Nothing could be further from the truth. President Bush’s core message has not changed one whit. If the President is, as the MSM insists, in Europe to kiss and make up, one would expect the President to adopt a different tone, speak a different language, "moderate" his positions. He did nothing of the sort.

What has changed is that the President is now coming off a series of political victories—elections in Kabul, re-election to the Presidency, elections in Iraq, a new movement for peace on his terms in the Israel-Palestine conflict, reform picking up pace in the entire Muslim world—that make it impossible for European governments to continue to view the Bush Administration as an aberration the next “normal” administration will correct. In addition, as the facts on the ground continue to trend Bush’s way, more and more people are beginning to realize that the President’s prescriptions were not the ravings of a wild-eyed “neo-con” fantasy but, rather, a “new realist” view that continues to be vindicated by events."

It's worth reading the whole thing for the annotations that are intermingled with the Presidents words.

Charles Krauthammer thinks the Bush team is shooting itself in the foot by talking about the SS trust fund 'exhaustion in : 2042? He argues they should focusing on the real imminent 'crisis' date of 2018, when the FICA tax takes less in than is needed to pay benefits. Since there is no money in the trust fund, that date is when we must raise taxes or borrow money to pay those benefits. He makes a clear case why the so-called trust fund exhaustion date is meaningless in real money terms -- 2040, 2050, 2100 it's just a matter of setting different assumptions on the rate of interest for compounding the non-existent money in the trust fund. (5% of Zero = 3% of Zero = Zero; it just let's us all pretend there's not a problem till it's too late.)

Treasury Secretary Snow pushes for pesonal retirement accounts and focuses on 2018 as the SS crisis start date in his 18 February Statement on Social Security Reform , but he repeats the 'trust fund exhaustion in 2042' theme that Krauthammer finds both outrageously misleading and self-defeating. Is that a half way meeting of the minds on this? Expect to hear more about 2018.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before the Senate on Wednesday, 16 Feb and before the House on Thursday the 17th; check out 'Full funding' for retirement plan -- The Washington Times .Seems he said enough to let people on both sides of the Social security debate find something to their liking. So here are my picks of his key quotes and points on Social Security.

Senate Quotes :

“Pay-as-you-go creates no savings.”

“The simple form of pay-as-you-go, by construction, saves nothing.”

“If you’re going to move to private accounts, which I approve of, I think you have to do it in a cautious, gradual way.”

”[M]y own judgment is I think when you have assets which…you can bequeath to your children and which have your name on it. I think that is a highly desirable thing because you give wealth basically to people in the lower and middle income groups who have not had it before.”

“I can conceive of these being extraordinarily popular accounts and if they are, I think it has a very important, it’s a very important addition to our society because as you know, I’ve been concerned about the concentration of income and wealth … this in my judgment is one way in which you can address this particular question.”

House Points:

* Mr. Greenspan repeated his support for creating a new system of private accounts to fully fund Social Security's obligations to retirees in the years ahead.

* He said such a system would have an advantage over the current one because it would ensure that money supposedly set aside for retirement is actually saved for that purpose. Today, payroll taxes that the government doesn't use to pay retirement benefits are immediately spent on other items. About $1.5 trillion in Social Security funds have been spent that way.

* Another reason Mr. Greenspan said the private accounts would be desirable is they would enable many low-income workers to enjoy the benefits of building wealth for the first time.

And in My View :
Mr. Greenspan makes very clear in both sessions that the current PayGo system does not create any savings and that excess dollars going into the “Trust Fund” are really spent on other operations ( the Trust Fund shame); personal accounts correct that because the dollars go into real assets for named individuals.
These personal accounts do allow real prepaying for retirement, which was not the case for the past 20 years of the Trust Fund.
He also makes the case that personal accounts will create wealth for those on the lower half of the economic ladder.
For me, this confirms my belief that these accounts have two major societal effects – first, they start us on the road to a self-sustaining Social Security system; and second, they provide real wealth accumulation opportunities for all Americans.

So, you're not happy with any of the SS reform ideas being offered? You think they are all too shortsighted and lack a really innovative 21st Century vision? Well, then check out Glen Reynolds Ultimate Solution, or as he calls it at TCS: Tech Central Station - Real Social Security Reform.

As you might expect for a really ambitious proposal, the ultimate solution is "Let's get rid of Social Security. And let's do it by making sure people live so long that the idea of "retirement" will become largely meaningless." Of course, Mr. Reynolds is extremely prolific as both commentator and law professor; and for him, the concept of "relaxing in retirement" may well be anathema.

Then, again, he may have found a great way to focus attention on a potential major national technology initiative : diverting a small percentage of retirement or medical entitlement funds into aging research. The idea being that a significant long-term research investment will yield dramatic results downstream in our ability to live more fully for longer total life spans.

Are the biomedical sciences, biotechnology and nonotechnology at the right stage for large investment? Do we know which aspects to fund now or later? How much should be invested and how to balance private vs public investment and control? I can't answer those questions. Answering those questions is the technology policy part about How to proceed. Answering the questions about Whether and How Much/Fast to proceed is the social policy part. And everyone gets to voice an opinion on that. Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for some really Big thinking on a big problem.

I hadn't thought of casting the issue that way until reading Pete du Pont's challenging editorial in today's WSJ Opinion Journal, online at OpinionJournal - Outside the Box . This editorial strikes me as making the same basic point as a comment on my SS Rejuvenation post by Paul, who chided me for being too 'political' and not hitting the obvious paternalism of 'Personal Accounts' opponents who want the government to make retirement money decisions for people instead of giving us the choice of making our own decisions. Interestingly, it turns out Paul is a young law student who sees the same key point as Mr. du Pont, a very successful lawyer and politician. Maybe they are right about what really divides the pro and con sides of the 'Personal Accounts' debate : that is all about socialism versus individualism. Read the whole thing for yourself and decide.

By the way, the du Pont article also has a very concise summary of Social Security fundamentals and the prime solutions under discussion. I think he makes a clear case for personal accounts while dealing directly with the contradictions in the positions of some unions and AARP.

A renewed Presidential Administration, a new Secretary of State, and successful elections for an independent Iraq : Are these changes likely to lead to friendlier diplomatic relations between us and Europe? James Glassman at TCS argues "Yes" and offers good insights here - TCS: Tech Central Station - US and Europe, Closer Together

Michael Barone has an excellent article in USNews.com: Michael Barone: Blogosphere politics (2/21/05) , that cites the differences between left and right leaning blogs in terms of their following, backing, focus, and impact on the 2004 campaign.

In his view, "Dean ... amassed an E-mail list of 600,000 names. ...(which) Kerry inherited" This enabled his campaign to raise more money than the Bush campaign. But that Internet constituency was motivated primarily by hatred of George W. Bush; and “Now the big money comes from the left blogosphere and Bush-hating billionaires like George Soros.” On the other hand (the right one!), “The Bush campaign, quietly, used the Internet to build an E-mail list of 7.5 million names and a corps of 1.4 million volunteers who produced more new votes than the Democrats. But the right blogosphere was different from the left. There was no one dominant website and no one orthodoxy. ..... The focus of hatred in the right blogosphere is not Kerry or the Democrats but what these bloggers call Mainstream Media, or MSM. They argue, correctly in my view, that the New York Times, CBS News, and others distorted the news in an attempt to defeat Bush in 2004.” He concludes : "So what hath the blogosphere wrought? The left blogosphere has moved the Democrats off to the left, and the right blogosphere has undermined the credibility of the Republicans' adversaries in Old Media. Both changes help Bush and the Republicans."

I agree and think the Old Media Impact is a fundamental change that will accelerate and extend far beyond political campaigns. Just when I thought I could add a discussion of blogs impacting Old Media on the SwiftBoat Vet, Rathergate, and Eason Jordan stories, I found that Powerline has an interview with Barone and 2 great posts on those subjects and more. Read both herePower Line: A word from Michael Barone More Power to them!

A local newspaper caught my eye with two letters that panned the President's plan to improve Social Security and characterized Personal or Individual Accounts as “Risky Gambles”. They didn;t discuss the underlying problems with Social Security that are addressed by those accounts. Instead they offered only some tax increase options. Since I hold a different view, I thought I'd try my hand at articulating the Social Security issue as I see it with no claim of doing a complete analysis.

This is a big issue for me since, like many others, I'm old enough to collect a check from social security and to have sons and daughters-in-law paying into the system. I'd like to see a solution that that works as well for them (and my grandchildren) as it does for me. Looking at the current Social Security system, it seems clear that the best hope for a real self-sustaining and long-term solution is the Bush proposal that blends Individual Accounts into the existing system.

So what are the big underlying problems with today’s system?And why can't we fix them, as suggested by the two letter writers, by increasing the wage tax cap or adding state employees ? Well, I see three big problems: 1) the “Pay as You Go” (or PayGo) financial structure; 2) our national demographic and longevity trends; and 3) the Trust Fund Shame (or illusion?).

PayGo simply means today’s workers pay FICA taxes that go to today’s retirees as benefit checks. As long as more taxes come in than benefits go out, this can work as it has for years; but it gets tougher as the number of workers shrink and the number of retirees grow. The worker to retiree ratio was pretty high in the 1930’s, but has been the constant victim of national demographic and longevity trends ever since. Over the last 100 years, life expectancy has increased from under 50 to over 75 years and advances in health sciences should see this trend continue. After World War II, we began the 20 year Baby Boom. These Boomers turn 65 in the years 2010-2030, making another big drop in workers and surge in retirees. The result of these trends is that the worker to retiree ratio dropped to 16-1 about 50 years ago; and now stands at 3-1 heading to 2-1 in the not so distant future. The good news is we’ll have longer lives and more retirees; the bad news is there will a lot fewer workers to pay the benefits, and recent birth rates indicate this trend will continue. So, it’s a Big problem Now.

Raising taxes by increasing the wage cap or by adding state workers, does not solve the Big Problem caused by PayGo and longevity trends as they combine to spiral us into an ever deeper financial hole. At best, they postpone our immediate problem into a bigger one for our kids. Why is that? Adding new workers may seem to help in the short run, but they will eventually retire and draw benefits from that same shrinking pool of workers to retirees, making for a worse problem later. (And not much later either, since these people are all in the same age range as current workers!) Taxing higher wages, under current system rules, means these high earners/ high taxpayers will become very high benefit receivers in future because the system bases their benefits on the amount of their wages as well as the number of years in the system. Given the longevity trends, these tax “solutions” may well become much bigger problems later. There’s another reason why these tax fixes may make the problem even worse. Those added tax payments now don’t go to pay today’s benefits, they become part of the surplus of revenue over benefits and the surplus funds go into the “Trust Fund” where they earn interest. Sounds good, huh? But not really!

The Trust Fund Shame (illusion?) is that the surplus FICA dollars are not really “saved”, they are spent immediately for the current operation of the Federal Government, just like any other tax. The Government does issue Bonds to the Trust Fund, but these are not real assets in the sense of an IRA or bank account or house that a person owns; think of it as one part of the government (Treasury) writing promises (Bonds) to pay another part of the government (Trust Fund) for benefits at a future date. But those payments can only be made WITH taxes or other revenue that it must raise then. The shame of the fund is that it requires massive future taxes or borrowing to pay its obligations to retirees. (Sort of a tax me now and tax me later scheme.) Adding new surplus taxes now only makes for a bigger tax problem later. Sure, these are government obligations, but they are not any form of real wealth for any person; just a promise to pay money in future, but nothing that you can borrow against or sell or leave to your heirs as you could with a personal trust fund. That’s the second part of the Trust Fund Shame – the illusion of a personal asset that's not really there.

OK, so how do we solve so huge a problem? Well, it took a long time to get here and the solution will probably need a long transition time too; but the sooner we start the easier it will be. I believe we need a serious structural reform that directly addresses the 3 big problems. The reform must shift us over time from PayGo and an illusionary Trust Fund to an improved Social Security (and Wealth) system that allows everyone to acquire real assets that they own, and which can provide a secure and financially better retirement than the current system. Personal or Individual Accounts are the key and essential means to do that; they capture the power of compound interest to grow real personal assets and wealth. The claim, that these accounts are “risky gambles”, flies in the face of the evidence from the past financial history of this country and its markets. For example, the government covers all employees under its Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) for retirement income (and real assets) based on employee choice of different market investment funds (cash, bonds, & stocks); the TSP common stock funds shows 12% annual growth over both its life and even the last 10 years, including the 2000-2003 bear market. By the way, the annual operating costs are down to about 0.06% now, less than 10% of the average mutual fund's costs. University employees have had a similar experience since the 1950’s with their TIAA-CREF retirement plans.

The TSP and TIAA-CREF plans do an excellent job of providing their participants with much better rates of return than does Social Security - and the funds are vested and can be left to one's heirs. Can't say that about today's Social Security. While I'm no expert, I do think President Bush's vision is right on target. His proposal lets younger people put some of their FICA Tax into Personal Accounts that build their own wealth for retirement, makes secure the current promises of payments for older workers and retirees, and reduces the system's future liabilities (i.e. the future tax burden on our kids). Of course, it will take work and negotiation to turn this vision into a real 21^st Century Social Security system. But big problems need big visionary solutions, not more patchs to a seventy year old system. So, how about some real Social Security Rejuvenation?

Most of us are familiar with the Pareto Principle or the 80-20 Rule as it is also called. It is often expressed by stating that 80% of the work gets done by 20% of the workers or 20% of the products provide 80% of the profit and so forth. The Rule has been around for almost 100 years and has held true because it has reflected well the economics of the times - the economics of scarcity. Does it still apply to the economics of the Information Age, when we may have almost unlimited access to information based services and products?

Chris Anderson makes a very strong case that it does not in his Wired Magazine article on “The Long Tail”Wired 12.10: The Long Tail This article is worth reading fully not just for the stories about how the music, video, and book markets and distribution economics are changing today, but also for some help in seeing how to take advantage of the changes in information economics that can improve our options and opportunities.

The "Long Tail" is Anderson's term for the information-based marketing concept behind the success of media distribution companies like Rhapsody,Netflix and Amazon in the music, video, and book businesses. While these companies sell many copies of each of the top "hit" products, they also sell a few copies each of a vastly larger number of niche products to a very large audience of buyers. For example, music stores may only stock and sell the top 10,000 to 40,000 tracks; Rhapsody sells , or streams online, each of its top 400,000 tracks at least once a month. The Long Tail is all those non-hits that sell a few copies each, but add to a very large number of sales. Rhapsody sells more from the Tail than from its top 10,000. Amazon has similar sales statistics. As Anderson puts it "with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance. And the differences are profound." He claims these companies exhibit three big lessons, which he calls the new rules for the new entertainment economy :
* Rule 1 - Make everything available.
* Rule 2 - Cut the price in half; then lower it.
* Rule 3 - Help me find it.

As Anderson puts it " All this, of course, applies equally to books. Already, we're seeing a blurring of the line between in and out of print. Amazon and other networks of used booksellers have made it almost as easy to find and buy a second-hand book as it is a new one. By divorcing bookselling from geography, these networks create a liquid market at low volume, dramatically increasing both their own business and the overall demand for used books. Combine that with the rapidly dropping costs of print-on-demand technologies and it's clear why any book should always be available. Indeed, it is a fair bet that children today will grow up never knowing the meaning of out of ." Since this article was written, Google has begun a massive effort to digitize several large library collections and has debuted Google Print as a way to increase the size of the "digital library"(and the reach of publishers) and to provide easy browsing of the "library" for potential customers.

There is a lot to think about in all of this; but two points seem key for those of us in rural area: First, we are in that Long Tail of tiny audiences that these companies need to reach and serve; And the same techniques and systems that are set up to reach us can be used by us to reach all the rest of that market (an Information Market flows both ways). Second, that 3rd Rule is very important, there a growing need for better ways to help people find and access information, services, and products (or, to exploit information technology, focus on the information).

UPDATE (at 9AM, 9Feb 05) : Excerpt from John Kremer's newsletter; for more on him and his publications check out his website at www.bookmarket.com . Check out the market forecast for book publishing on demand; if even half of that happens, it's a huge market that alters the way we publish, find and get books.

POD Publishing: An Interesting Development

Late last week, PrintShift (a value-added solutions provider for the print-for-pay market) and ExactBind (developer of the Rapid Publishing tool suite) announced the formation of a network of on-demand book publishing centers. Their goal is to create 1,000 franchised locations where you can print and bind books on demand for delivery within two days.

?Print shop fulfillment centers will be qualified and provided with a web-based ordering system and binding equipment to enable the publishing of hard cover books on demand,? said Tom Carpenter, EBW President. ?This book publishing model represents a real breakthrough in the rapidly growing on-demand arena. Authors, publishers, schools, church organizations, art galleries, real estate companies and other segments are clamoring for their own custom books which they can now have within 48 hours and at an affordable price.?

InfoTrends/CAP Ventures of Norwell, Massachusetts, states that the on-demand book publishing market is expected to grow to from 2% of all book pages in 2000, to 100 billion book pages by 2015?a 30% annual growth rate.

For more information on these franchised centers, contact Tom Carpenter, President, ExactBind West, 20331 Lake Forest Drive #C-13, Lake Forest CA 92630; 949-598-4423; Fax: 949-598-0059. Email: Tom.Carpenter@ExactBindWest.com.
Web: http://www.ExactBindWest.com.

A Hat Tip to Viking Pundit ,who makes many good points about Social security,for his posting on "Private accounts for Congress – not for America" :
"George Will has a must-read column in Newsweek titled “Harry Reid’s ‘Roulette’” and subtitled: “Members of Congress are doing very well indeed under a plan comparable to the one President Bush would allow all Americans to participate in”:

Begun in 1987, the Thrift Savings Plan, which as of December 2004 had assets of $152 billion, is a retirement-savings plan open to all civilian federal employees, including senators, and all members of the uniformed services.

They can invest as much as 14 percent of their salaries in one of five retirement funds. Consider the rate of return of C Fund, one of the five. It is a common-stock fund, so it should represent the risks that Reid thinks should terrify Americans:

In only four of 17 years has the rate of return been negative. But in 11 years the rate has been greater than 10 percent, in eight years it has been greater than 20 percent, in four years it has been greater than 30 percent. The compound annual rate of return for the last 10 years has been 12 percent, and the return over the 17 years has been 12.1 percent.

[Senate minority leader Harry] Reid participates in the plan, but opposes allowing all Americans the comparable opportunity that Bush is proposing. But if the numbers just cited are the result of roulette, the legislators should let the rest of us into the game in which they are prospering.

One of the governing tenets of 1994’s Contract with America was one stating that Congress must comply with rules imposed on the rest of America. If personal accounts are disallowed by Congress, then obviously Congress must divest itself from the Thrift Savings Plan."

I think the key point here is that the TSP and its counterpart in the University World, TIAA-CREF, do an excellent job of providing their participants with much better rates of return than does Social Security - and the funds are vested and can be left to one's heirs. Can't say that about today's Social Security. Reform will be a big topic this year and, though I'm no expert, I do think President Bush's vision is exactly right. The key is letting people have the choice to put some of their FICA Tax into Personal Accounts that build their own wealth for retirement. This approach also keeps the promise of secure payments for older workers and retirees while reducing the systems future liabilities (i.e. the future tax burden on our kids).

Blogs are a very rapid fact-check and balance on current news. Let's take an example from todays New York Times (NYT) which has a lead article,The New York Times > Washington > Bush Budget Raises Drug Prices for Many Veterans,that discusses aspects of the proposed VA budget Note the title and header as it appears on the front page summary of the on-line NYT Breaking News; it gives the impression that Bush is scrimping on poor Vets. And for many who just scan the "Summary" or first paragraphs, that misleading "impression" becomes the whole message. The article, after a few paragraphs, does explain that the "cost increases" only apply to financially well-off vets who have no service-related disability; still later one can read about how the budget provides more overall funding and shifts priorities to better serve those Vets who have service-related disabilities and/or are less well-off financially.

What's my Big Point here? Well, I get the Times on-line every morning; early today, beforeI got to read the NYT article, I read about it and its misrepresentative ( dare I say biased) title in an excellent review by the Captain's Quarters: "The Non-Existent Cuts At The VA". As Capt. Ed puts in his 6:30 AM Post :
"The New York Times tries its best to hype up a controversy over veterans' benefits in the new budget submitted by the Bush administration, but the Gray Lady reveals herself as the painted lady for the Left instead. Robert Pear and Carl Hulse offer up this slanted look at the new budget under the headline 'Bush Budget Raises Prescription Prices for Many Veterans.' The qualifier 'many' should raise eyebrows, although the reader has to scroll down to the tenth paragraph to discover what it means."

It's neat to be able to read the morning news and the fact-check rebuttal with your first cup of coffee. The power of Blogs to change the ways we see the world continues to grow. I'll add to this theme in some future postings.

Welcome to my new blog and the first entry in a series of observations on current events, technology, and the social and scenic aspects of life in the endless mountains of northeast Pennsylvania.

The first blog decisions are to pick the template and color and to set the tone for what will follow. I'm too lazy to go beyond blogger standard templates, but color choices were tough - how to symbolize optimism and freedom and current events. Red for America's election of the Freedom administration? Purple/Blue for the Iraq election? Orange for the Ukraine election?

The decision became easy when I realized a great Blog was closing its virtual doors. So, the color and template were chosen to say "Good-Bye" and give a reference to The Diplomad, and suggest that anyone interested in an inside ( the US State Department Foriegn Service) view of recent Tsunami , UN or other international events can still find a reality check in their archives.

Future posts will reflect my attempts to maintain a log of references (hopefully with annotation) to interesting articles and information on the web, and to provide sporadic commentary on a variety of subjects that interest me, including observations of the local scene.