Explanations, please?

Okay, can somebody explain this without invoking the usual backroom dealing and corruption?

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reached a preliminary agreement to sell the remains of IndyMac Bank -- one of the biggest bank failures in U.S. history -- to a team of high-profile investors, suggesting there is private money willing to invest in troubled banks if the government agrees to shoulder heavy losses.

The investment team, which includes affiliates of private-equity chieftain Christopher Flowers, hedge-fund investors George Soros and John Paulson, and computer mogul Michael Dell, will contribute $1.3 billion in capital toward a purchase of IndyMac Federal Bank, valued by the FDIC at $13.9 billion, which is the amount of deposits, loans, securities, branches, and other assets to be held by the bank on Day 1.

The complex terms also include seller financing that could take the form of Federal Home Loan Bank loans and other sources...

[... Then, 12 paragraphs, and a jump to page A6 later...]

As part of the deal, the FDIC agreed to share future losses on a set pool of IndyMac assets...

...IndyMac will assume the first 20% of losses on these assets, which the FDIC wouldn’t quantify until the deal closes.  The FDIC will absorb 80% of the next 10% of losses, and then 95% of losses on the remainder of the portfolio. - The Wall Street Journal ^[1]

So Soros, Paulson, Flowers, Dell, and friends are getting almost $14 billion assets for a bit less than 10 cents on the dollar.  That feels like a typical fire-sale ratio, although it would have been nice if, for something worth $14 billion, the FDIC could have held out for a better price: Was the only choice to give Soros, etal a $13 billion gift from the taxpayers?  Couldn’t they find somebody who would have paid, say, $2 billion?

And then there’s the other shoe: Those “guarantees.”  Not satisfied with a 90% margin on IndyMac’s “quantified (?)” assets, the “investment team” held out for federal– that means taxpayer, you know– protection against losses for another “unquantified” block, probably (the article doesn’t say) illiquid mortgage derivatives and the like.  The new owners say they will generously accept the first 20% of any losses, but taxpayers get to make up all but a pittance of the rest... which can rise to as much as 74½ % of whatever “value” the FDIC dreams up.

And this stuff is to be valued how?  At “market”?  (No, that would be zero.)  At “book (before disaster)”?  Hel-lo 74%!  At some “best guess”?  And how are losses determined?  If they aren’t based on the entire “set pool,” then this is just another way to privatize profits while sticking the public with the losses... and didn’t we just run ’round that bush with Fannie and Freddie?

All in all, at first glance (and even second glance) this looks to me more like a plan to funnel federal money to specific favored individuals than a way to restructure a bank.  But I’ll admit that I’m just an ordinary clown who doesn’t “do” high finance.  So maybe someone who does can explain where I got confused.

Elsewhere (added 090105 15:43):

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Too old for this sh*t

Will Truman (via C.G. Hill):

Working at Southern Tech, I’m constantly amazed by the fact that our older faculty/staff can clearly and easily be separated into two degrees of capability: mediocre and nonexistent.

The Mediocre folks are capable enough of doing basic word processing tasks and working with one or two specialty statistics programs they’ve been using for at least a decade.  The Nonexistent folks are much worse; they routinely need help figuring out (I am not making this up) that they have accidentally pushed the Caps Lock key when typing.

As near as I can tell, the “Nonexistent”-skilled folks have one thing in common: all are over the age of 45, whether faculty or staff.  Watching them attempt to work on their own, I can only conclude that for some portion of the population, the ability to form new mental models and learn new tasks (or even new ways of doing old tasks) has been lost after this age...

Let us take a look at what is going on here: Truman’s first swipe is at the Mediocre, “... capable enough of doing basic word processing tasks and working with one or two specialty statistics programs they’ve been using for at least a decade.”  I sense the disdain of the uber-geek: “Basic word processing” (but nothing advanced!) and “...one or two... programs they’ve been using for decades” (those old fogies!).  Then he takes on the Nonexistent, who can’t even negotiate the Caps Lock key!  (I wonder: How many of those folks are equipped with junk keyboards that provide no tactile feedback, and hide the “Caps” indicator on the other side of the room?)  And the horror!, should some Luser complain about the interface:

...my mother, whose interaction with computers amounts to announcing that the way certain things are programmed to work is “dumb”, and proceeding to attempt to interact with the computer in the way she thinks it should have been programmed to react rather than altering her behavior to work with the system as designed.

IMHO, there are a cluster of issues here: I note the perennial problem of “engineers vs. everybody else” in interface design, the ever-more-frequent requirement of groking the designer’s thinking before one can learn a tool, and the difference between learning something for the sake of learning it, and learning something as a step on the way (or an obstacle in the way) to accomplishing some task.  All of these are worthy of discussion, but I’m going to confine this rant to the issue of “tech and the ‘mature’ user.”

From where I sit (well on the far side of 45), it’s my bet that many of these older folks simply don’t see that the technology which has been foisted upon them is particularly useful.  The prospect of negotiating the steep learning curve required to gain facility with some new gadget is seen as as a waste of time, especially if the utility of the gadget involved is viewed as dubious, or its useful life is seen as transitory.  This also leads to impatience with poorly-documented or non-intuitive systems.  “I can already word-process ‘just fine,’ ” they say. “Why waste my time adapting to Office 2007’s quirks, when I’ll just have to do it all over again in a year or two.”  (This kind of attitude becomes more common as one reaches a “certain age,” the value of “certain” varies with the circumstances, as well as with the person involved).  And if the answer is, “Because IT decreed it,” well, you’re setting yourself up for a lesson in passive resistance.

Within the last ten years, I personally have assimilated enough HTML, CSS, and javascript to be comfortable playing around with fairly complex web pages, gotten  familiar enough with the Gimp to do some pretty fair photo editing, begun learning MySQL, and (because I want to write an extention for Foobar2000) am getting acquainted with MS Visual Studio.  I don’t offer this list as some sort of geek credential, but to demonstrate that this old dog is still capable of learning new tricks– when he sees them as being worthwhile.

Because there is one point where I’ve run out of patience: My cell phone.

more...

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Western Digital: What were they thinking?

So I have this Ancient Legacy Box^[1] that runs some ancient legacy software.^[2]

Within the Ancient Legacy Box is an IDE hard drive that is beginning to develop some bad sectors. It’s time to change it.

Now, read on...
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General Mills blows a chance for a marketing bonus

Once upon a time there was an organic produce company called Cascadian Farm.  Formed in 1972, over time it became successful and partnered with other organic producers to form Small Planet Foods.  The rising demand for organic produce attracted the attention of large food processors, and at the end of 1999, the Small Planet and its Cascadian Farm brand were acquired by General Mills.

The “organic” end of the food industry is noted for its free spirits, and Cascadian was no exception. Says “pop”:

Around 7 years ago, my friend and I were... wandering the local Safeway...  My friend, who at the time was the head purchaser of organic foods for another grocery chain, excitedly dragged me over to the frozen foods aisle to show me packages of not only broccoli, but corn and other frozen items as well, with teeny tiny little faces [Photo]shopped in to very inconspicuous places.  My friend, who dealt with the company regularly, told me that they were the faces of employees and their children.

Hey, is that cool, or what?  Unfortunately...

Months later, I would remember this experience while shopping with a new girlfriend.  I dragged her over to show her the faces, but alas there were none to be found, and I was thought to be insane.  I called my friend right there on the spot and he confirmed to me that the company had changed hands or management or something, and the little heads had stopped appearing.

“About seven years ago” would have been just after the General Mills acquisition.

Fast-forward to 2008.  Many of the package designs have been replaced with plain-Jane ones, but not all, as the ladies who run the Bread and Honey foodblog discover:

...she suddenly remembered this crazy broccoli package in her freezer she wanted to show me.  She handed me the box and I studied it carefully, squinting, even allowing my eyes to blur, to try and see what I was missing.  She pointed- “Do you see?”  See what?  I didn’t see anything.  Just broccoli.  Her finger tapped on a certain part of the box and she urged me to look closer.  “There- right there. Do you see it..?”

As might be expected, reader reactions included the standard comments about subliminal marketing– and Soylent Green, but as people learned the story behind the faces, most found the idea pretty clever.

Apparently too clever for the suits at General Foods.  An inquiry by B&Hs Alicia Carrier elicited this somewhat-embarrassed-sounding explanation:

“Dear Mrs. Carrier:

“Thank you for contacting us concerning Cascadian Farm...  We appreciate the opportunity to address this matter.  Unfortunately, there is no one available for you to interview...

“The tradition of hiding names or faces on Cascadian Farm packaging began over a dozen years ago.  It was unspoken tribute by the package design department to the friends & family of Cascadian Farm. The faces won’t be included on our redesigned packaging.”

Well, bah!

Here General Mills had something going that enhanced its brand both internally and externally.  It gave its employees recognition and “ownership” of what are normally commodity products (“See, there’s my daughter’s face!”).  It gave customers something to discover: A little “lore” that they could use to one-up their friends.  And it was a “plus” that made Cascadia’s products different.  All done at hardly any cost, and without imparing the value of the brand in any way.  Just like something out of one of those “use creative distinctions to enhance your brand and make your company special” textbooks.

Shot down, for whatever reason.  Like something out of one of those “how unimaginative management turned _____ into just another _____” textbooks.

The readers are disappointed:

On October 28, 2008 4:59 PM, LMinVT said...
Personally, I would have thought that people may have started buying them out of curiosity, and found that they are good, and continued to buy their products.

At 11:20 AM on Wed Oct 29 2008, emilymarion333 said...
I like the little faces...too bad.  Cascadian Farms is in my hometown so we always bought this brand growing up.

At 2:52 PM on Wed Oct 29 2008, Ein2015 said...
@emilymarion333: I second the liking of the faces.   Nice story behind it, too!

At 11:21 AM on Wed Oct 29 2008, SkokieGuy said...
I'm saddened by this.  What a charming and cool tradition and why discontinue?  Look at all the publicity this generated.

Dear Cascadian Farms:
The benefit of discontinuing the hidden faces is?

And what if, as commenter Angela opined:

HA!  “Unspoken tribute” aka... the design studio probably snuck them in for fun and didn’t bother to tell anyone else until after it got printed.  I work in a design studio, I should know

Well then, maybe somebody in that design studio deserves a promotion to brand management.



Elsewhere:

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Rights? *What* Rights?

From the American Civil Liberties Union:

...Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the American people are not generally subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches.  The border, however, has always been an exception.  There, the longstanding view is that the normal rules do not apply.  For example the authorities do not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a “routine search.”

But what is “the border”?  According to the government, it is a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the “external boundary” of the United States.  As a result of this claimed authority, individuals who are far away from the border, American citizens traveling from one place in America to another, are being stopped and harassed in ways that our Constitution does not permit...

On the roads of California and elsewhere in the nation – places far removed from the actual border – agents are stopping, interrogating, and searching Americans on an everyday basis with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing.

The ACLU estimates that two-thirds of the country’s population (including 9 of the top 10 metro areas) fall within the “100 miles from the border” zone.  It encompasses the entirety of Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.  For your convenience, the ACLU has produced a handy map of what they call the United States’ “Constitution-Free” Zone.

The map:


At first glance this might appear another case of post-9/11 overreach.  But inland Border Patrol roadblocks were actually found legal^[1] in 1976^[2] by the Supreme Court decision UNITED STATES vs. MARTINEZ-FUERTE, ET AL.^[3]  The decision permitted “immigration check” roadblocks many miles inland.  As seems inevitable, in the thirty-some years since the decision there has been mission creep.  Today other agencies often participate, and searches have snared American citizens for the (also seemingly-inevitable) “drugs” and “child porn.”

Meanwhile, the federal government has made little effort to monitor or limit the scope of these actions– yet another example of failure by the Congress and the subsequent administrations to look out for the rights of ordinary citizens.^[4]

Random “your papers please” stops are an opprobium to a free society.  I’m old enough to remember American propaganda (which was propaganda, even if it was true) that used such stops to draw the line between the Free United States and the Evil Communist Bloc.^[5]  It’s beyond ironic that, less than twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, our government engages in the very thing it used to condemn.

And if we want to consider “original intent,” I certainly doubt if the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island or Vermont would have voted to adopt a constitution in which the Fourth Amendment was effectively a dead letter within their boundaries.  (Not to mention that in 1787 a “border zone” of 100 miles would have effectively included the entire country.)

I wonder how someone in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Columbus, Ohio; Lynchburg, Virginia; or Columbia, South Carolina will react when they’re stopped (and searched) by Border Patrol agents and, on asking the reason, being told “we don’t need one.”


Elsewhere:

Related (immigration enforcement and border security):

Provoked by:  Slashdot, where there are several first-person accounts in the comments
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Little arrows, for me and for you...

Much of the uproar about the Senate’s pork-ified bailout bill has centered around the first item on this list:

The special provisions include tax breaks for:

• Manufacturers of kids’ wooden arrows - $6 million.
• Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum producers - $192 million.
• Wool research.
• Auto-racing tracks - $128 million.
• Corporations operating in American Samoa - $33 million.
• Small- to medium-budget film and television productions - $10 million.

Turns out there are two stories here.

The first story is that the items on this particular list aren’t actually expenditures. Nobody is being given $6 million. What’s happening is a tax is being eliminated.  But in Congress’s upside-down “all your money belongs to us” accounting, anytime some poor benighted taxpayer gets to keep more of his hard-earned bucks it gets listed as an expense.  (And we actually pay these people to make up rules like this!)

Okay, the second story: What’s this all about?  For that we go to a pair of reader e-mails over at The Corner:
The first:

Under the Wildlife Restoration Act… [aka] the Pittman-Robertson Act… guns and hunting equipment are taxed... [The taxes are] returned to the States under matching grants to fund their hunting programs. Hunting arrows are subject to the tax… The purpose of the wooden arrow exclusion is to exempt toys from what is otherwise a hunting excise tax.

Understandable, except, as it turns out, “toy” arrows used to be excluded:

This provision was included to correct a mistake that was made several years ago in the JOBS Act, when the excise tax on archery arrows was changed from a percentage tax to flat rate of 39 cents. As a result of the imposition of this flat tax rate, producers of wooden practice arrows that cost 30 cents each are now required to pay 39 cents tax on each arrow – more than doubling the cost of these arrows.

So WTF is the JOBS Act (and wtf do jobs have to do with taxing arrows?)? Well, a search over at THOMAS turns up “H.R.4520 • the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004.” H.R.4520 turns out to be yet another one of those  everything-including-the-kitchen-sink bills that Congress loves so dearly. The table of contents page for this monstrosity runs 17 screens on my browser.  And sure enough, buried in the middle^[1] is Title III (“Tax relief for agriculture and small manufacturers”), Subtitle C (“Incentives for small manufacturers”), Section 332^[2] (“Simplification of excise tax imposed on bows and arrows”).  To wit:

SEC. 332. SIMPLIFICATION OF EXCISE TAX IMPOSED ON BOWS AND ARROWS.

(a) BOWS- Paragraph (1) of section 4161(b) (relating to bows) is amended to read as follows:

(1) BOWS-

`(A) IN GENERAL- There is hereby imposed on the sale by the manufacturer, producer, or importer of any bow which has a peak draw weight of 30 pounds or more, a tax equal to 11 percent of the price for which so sold.

`(B) ARCHERY EQUIPMENT- There is hereby imposed on the sale by the manufacturer, producer, or importer--

`(i) of any part or accessory suitable for inclusion in or attachment to a bow described in subparagraph (A), and
`(ii) of any quiver or broadhead suitable for use with an arrow described in paragraph (2),

a tax equal to 11 percent of the price for which so sold.'.

(b) ARROWS- Subsection (b) of section 4161 (relating to bows and arrows, etc.) is amended by redesignating paragraph (3) as paragraph (4) and inserting after paragraph (2) the following:

`(3) ARROWS-

`(A) IN GENERAL- There is hereby imposed on the sale by the manufacturer, producer, or importer of any arrow, a tax equal to 12 percent of the price for which so sold.

`(B) EXCEPTION- In the case of any arrow of which the shaft or any other component has been previously taxed under paragraph (1) or (2)--

`(i) section 6416(b)(3) shall not apply, and
`(ii) the tax imposed by subparagraph (A) shall be an amount equal to the excess (if any) of--

`(I) the amount of tax imposed by this paragraph (determined without regard to this subparagraph), over
`(II) the amount of tax paid with respect to the tax imposed under paragraph (1) or (2) on such shaft or component.

`(C) ARROW- For purposes of this paragraph, the term `arrow' means any shaft described in paragraph (2) to which additional components are attached.'.

(c) CONFORMING AMENDMENTS- Section 4161(b)(2) is amended--

(1) by inserting `(other than broadheads)' after `point', and
(2) by striking `ARROWS- ' in the heading and inserting `ARROW COMPONENTS- '.

(d) EFFECTIVE DATE- The amendments made by this section shall apply to articles sold by the manufacturer, producer, or importer after the date which is 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act.

Well, that’s clear as mud, innit?

But (assuming I’ve got the right JOBS Act^[3]) the problem appears to have been created when the authors modified Subsection 4161: The added paragraph (3) says “any arrow.”  No exemption for toys!

And there we have it:  The original law– the one that created the tax to fund the states’ hunting programs– was either so confusing, so complicated, or so expensive that someone complained, and when it came time to write the 2004 bill, someone in Congress stuck in a section to make sure the arrow manufacturers got taken care of.  Unfortunately, they screwed up, and the toymakers suffered collateral damage.

And four years later, the provision to correct that mistake gets buried in the 340 non-germane pages of the 2008 financial bailout bill.  Lovely!


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Preparing the battlefield

The Washington Post actually criticizes a Democrat:

[House Speaker] Pelosi deserves no praise for her leadership on Monday.  Even stipulating that we are in the closing weeks of one of the most important political campaigns in a generation, her inability to rise above the tendency to score political points was inexcusable.  Monday’s vote was a moment to set aside those instincts and talk about the package as an example of Washington’s ability to work cooperatively in a time of crisis.

Instead, Pelosi accused Bush of economic policies that create “budgetary recklessness” and “an anything-goes mentality.”  And she closed with a partisan call to arms.  “In the new year, with a new Congress and a new president,” she said, “we will break free with a failed past and take America in a new direction to a better future.”

And Glenn Reynolds notes

Strikingly, these criticisms come from The Washington Post, not some right-leaning publication.

Well, before we celebrate the Post’s sudden attack of bi-partisanship, let’s engage in a little Kremlinology.  When the Official Democrat Media prints something counter to expectations, the reason must lie beyond the obvious. Let’s look past the surface to find the story-behind-the-story.

First off, on reading the entire piece, it’s immediately evident that it’s not as radically deviant as the anti-Pelosi quote, taken in isolation, would imply. After a single-sentence paragraph to set the scene, writer Dan Balz spends 10 paragraphs (582 words) wailing on – wait for it! – the Republicans.  From the ineffectiveness of President Bush, to the “ideology” of the House Republicans (“crucial in any decision” says an unnamed “veteran of a past Republican administration”), to the “disarray” of the Republican party in general (“leaderless and lacking in cohesion”), to John McCain (“raised more questions about his own style of leadership”), etcetera, etcetera: The list is long, and no stone is left unthrown.  It goes on and on, paragraph after paragraph, winding up with a couple of extracts from former-Bushie Peter Wehner’s NRO Corner post (“foolish and irresponsible” “lame and adolescent”).  Then, finally, Balz is ready to tackle the Democrats.

If anyone’s keeping statistics, they get four paragraphs.

Now, Pelosi’s speech was out of line.  In fact, it was so far out of line with what any reasonable person would have expected from the Speaker of the House that failure to acknowledge it would have left Balz tiptoeing past an elephant the size of China.  So he does, but in curiously muted terms.  Pelosi showed an “inability to rise above the tendency to score political points.”  The strongest language (fairly) characterizes the speech’s conclusion as “a partisan call to arms.”  Oh, and there’s a wrist-slap for Harry Reid, too: “[Reid has] sounded grudging in his comments about the Democrats’ willingness to participate in finding a solution to a problem that he argues is wholly the fault of Bush and the Republicans.”  “Grudging,” huh?  Like he was just having a bad day?  Certainly nothing ideological there!

Having come this far, the question remains: What’s this all about?  The answer lies in the piece’s final paragraph:

...Anger at Washington will feed a hunger for change, and it's likely to fall harder on the GOP as the party that holds the White House.  But for the next president and the next Congress, whatever its makeup, Monday’s performance should be looked at as an example of what it was, a performance designed to undermine the public’s confidence in its elected leadership.

As he dog-whistles the “change” slogan, Balz issues a warning: Any Republican (or Democrat, for that matter) who fails to go along with the next (i.e., Obama) adminstration’s program of Hopeful Changitude (or is it “Changeful Hopeitude”?) will be condemned by the press as “ideological,” or â€œundermining the public’s confidence,” or “not by any means representative of a governing majority in the country,” or (if they’re feeling generous) “partisan.”  The press will uphold its side, sincerity and principle will be granted only to the anointed, and all others be warned..

Of course, we already knew that.

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Okay, here it is...

Bailout plan comparison based on statements and press coverage.  Sources and revision history at the bottom.

Issue	Original (Paulson) Plan	Interim proprosals (mostly Frank-Dodd)	9/28 compromise
Cost	$700 billion taxpayer-funded Line-Of-Credit (all at once)	$700 billion in $150 billion tranches	$700 billion: $250 billion at once $100 billion on report to congress remaining $350 billion requires further congressional approval If after 5 years the government has a net loss of taxpayer funds as a consequence of the purchase program, the President will be required to submit a legislative proposal to recoup such funds from program beneficiaries.
Applies to	“Toxic paper” backed by subprime mortgages.		‡ Adds “other troubled assets” owned by “pension plans, local governments, and small banks”
Government Acquires Equity?		Mandatory equity interest in all participating firms.	Mandatory equity interest in total takeover scenario. Proportional equity interest based on percentage of assets sold if deemed appropriate by Treasury Secretary.
Insurance			Requirement to establish mandatory insurance/guarantee program at no expense to the taxpayer. “Pay to play” for participating companies, based on risk.
Oversight	none, plus immunity from court review (“trust us”)	(Various reporting and oversight requirements)	Bipartisan oversight commission, split evenly between minority and majority. † Inspector General and GAO to monitor Treasury Dept. actions. † Treasury must post all transactions online. † Immunity provision OUT.
Executive Pay		Executive compensation standards that would affect companies not involved in this financial crisis. Lowered the deduction on executive pay to $400,000 for ALL companies.	Prohibitions on executive compensation to ensure bad actors are not rewarded: In a total takeover (like what happened with AIG), no golden parachutes or severance pay. ‡ Recovers bonuses paid based on promised gains that later turn out to be false or inaccurate. For equity participation over $300M, total ban for top 5 executives on golden parachutes and tax deduction limit on compensation above $500,000.
“Affordable Housing” Slush Fund		20% of any transaction profits channeled to Housing Trust Fund and Capitol Magnet Fund. “Profit” calculated on each individual sale, taxpayers stuck with any losses. See Jim Lindgren	OUT
“Say on Pay” (Mandated union representation on corporate boards)		Mandate a nonbinding shareholder vote on proxy access [by unions] and other corporate governance issues for any company in which the Treasury Department buys a direct stake in certain assets.	OUT
Bankruptcy “cramdown”		Allow bankruptcy judges to reduce mortgage principal.	OUT (Blunt) but... ‡ “The government can use its power as the owner of mortgages and mortgage backed securities to facilitate loan modifications (such as, reduced principal or interest rate, lengthened time to pay back the mortgage)” (Pelosi)
Loan to auto industry		$25 Billion for developing energy-efficient vehicles	Moved to continuing resolution.  (Not part of this bill, but will be spent anyway.)[2]
Oil shale development ban[1]		Extend to September 30, 2009	Not in “discussion draft”[3]
“Mark-to-Market” Accounting Standard			GAO study on the impacts of mark-to-market accounting standards and effects on the banking crisis. Restatement of existing authority to suspend mark-to-market.
Tax benefits for community banks			Allow community banks to offset capital losses on GSE assets (= Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac paper) against ordinary income. (i.e., tax deduction)
Personal taxes			‡ Extends a provision (passed earlier in this Congress) to stop tax liability on mortgage foreclosures.

Anything I’ve missed?

Sources:

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“Sexist” Republicans and the Professionally Indignant

So I open my inbox to find an e-mail from The Sibling.  Seems that one of her associates is searching for a campaign item, a button sported by the Indiana delegation at the RNC.

Buttons are the hot item at the Republican National Convention. The Alaskan button reads, “From the coldest state comes the hottest vice president.”  But [Indiana State] Sen. Sue Landske and some fellow Hoosiers came up with a button of their own: “Hoosiers for the hot chick.”

Pat Koch from Santa Claus, Indiana likes it.

“Being a hot chick, strong fun and capable all go together,” said Koch, who said she wouldn’t see anything sexist even if a man were to don the button.

“We’ve been selling them at five dollars for hurricane victim relief and we’ve sold 250 of them,” said Sen. Landske.

At this point I must regretfully confess that, political junkie though I be, this is one aspect of Palin-o-mania that managed to escape my notice.

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“Too Much Information” Yeah, that’s the problem.

Somebody named Dusty Horwitt (who, after we get to the bottom of the article, turns out to be “a lawyer who works for a nonprofit environmental group^[1]”) writes in the Washington Post that he is worried. Worried that Data is drowning out Vital Information:

The information avalanche coming from all sides -- the Internet, PDAs, hundreds of television channels -- is burying us in extraneous data that prevent important facts and knowledge from reaching a broad audience.

“Important facts and knowledge.” Such as...?

...To achieve their goals, political movements need to reach and influence tens of millions of citizens...

Okay, propaganda. And...

“It's much more difficult [to reach people] today -- and much more expensive,” said Steve Eichenbaum, creative director of a Milwaukee-based marketing firm that helped engineer Russell Feingold's upset U.S. Senate victory in 1992...
...
...Media fragmentation has driven up TV advertising costs as candidates compete for the shrinking number of time slots that can reach voters, says Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin...

Propaganda, political campaigning, and advertising. I see. And...?

The opportunity to educate millions of citizens, so essential to significant movements of the past, has dwindled. In the early New Deal era, the Roman Catholic “radio priest” Father Charles Coughlin...

(We’ll skip the discussion of whether Father Coughlin is best characterized as an “educator” or as a “rabble rouser, socialist propagandist, and bigot.” Meanwhile, say on...)

...promoted ideas for economic reform to a weekly audience estimated at 40 million... Today’s top talk-radio host, Rush Limbaugh, reaches only about 14 million people per week.

So the problem is that Rush’s audience isn’t large enough?

(Didn’t think so...)

Anyway (skipping some direct quotes; the piece is badly organized), Horwitt goes on to lament the decline of newspaper circulation, blaming “the overload” which “siphons audiences and revenue” (while carefully failing to note that, although some of the decline can be blamed on new alternatives, a lot has been existing subscribers getting fed up with a shoddier– Cut that news hole! Gotta maintain those profit margins!– and more biased newspapers).

And nobody seems to be watching network television anymore, either. Why, what’s a poor community organizer to do?

The challenge is to find ways to strengthen democracy in the era of TMI. It won't be easy, but the situation may not be irreversible, either.

“Strengthen democracy,” huh?  And I’ll bet you’ve got a plan, don’t-cha, bucky...

Rather than call for government regulation of technology itself, perhaps the best way to limit the avalanche is to make the technologies that overproduce information more expensive and less widespread.

I’ve got it!  We’ll abolish the internet and send everybody back to steam radio!

But Dusty, the great unwashed might resent us raising the price of, and then taking away, their toys.  What to do...what to do...?

It could be done via a progressive energy tax designed to keep energy prices at a consistently high level...

That’s it!  We’ll tax it out of existence!  Brilliant!  (Smithers!  Some single malt for the gentleman!)

... (while providing assistance to lower- and middle-income Americans).

Our clients! Of course. (Have another single malt!)

This solution may sound radical and unlikely,

Not to mention stupid.  You are writing in the Washington Post.  What’s less energy-efficient than printing stuff on dead trees and then hauling it around town on trucks?  Hey Post editors, did you read this before you printed it?

...Modern information technologies are highly energy-intensive. According to Arizona State University engineering professor Eric Williams, a desktop computer “is probably the most energy-intensive of home devices, aside from furnaces and boilers.^[3]” ... It’s possible that over time, an energy tax, by making some computers, Web sites, blogs and perhaps cable TV channels

Hey, what about regular TV channels. After all, using millions of watts of electricity to throw something into the air is almost as inefficient as printing stuff on dead trees and hauling it around town on trucks. Has the NAB heard about this yet?

too costly to maintain, could reduce the supply of information...  A reduced supply of information technology might at least gradually cause us to gravitate toward community-centered media such as local newspapers

which print stuff on dead trees and then haul it around town on trucks

instead of the hyper-individualistic outlets we have now.

If the thought of more expensive information technologies makes you flinch, consider economist Alan Blinder's warning that the Internet could lead to the outsourcing of 40 million American service jobs over the next 10 to 20 years, including such jobs as financial analysts, lawyers^[4] and computer programmers...

So. Under the guise of “strengthening democracy” (and saving energy and jobs), this clown wants to return us to those glorious pre-Rathergate days when the Recognized Media told us what to believe, and we believed it. When there were no alternate sources to contradict a Walter Duranty (or a Walter Cronkite).

When all the activists had to do was convince a few gatekeepers. When the Received Wisdom remained unquestioned.

Noooo thank you.


(And then there’s that little thing called Moore’s law.  I imagine that, tax or no tax, on the day the final issue of the last newspaper comes off the press, you’ll still be able to find us, sitting in front of our solar-powered computers, blogging away.)

HT:  Comment by “AlanDP” at Hell In A Handbasket
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