More on network neutrality

I know I haven't been posting lately, and I apologize. I've been extremely busy and sort of out of the loop on current events. Hence I've deemed it better to keep my mouth shut than to talk about issues that I haven't been following. However, this week I have discovered the magic of using the copius amounts of time that I spend sitting in my cubicle at my new job to listen to all sorts of lengthy podcasts. More on my job in a future post, but the idea is that if I can make it look like I'm doing work and simply listening to music, I can really do hardly anything and concentrate on learning great things from recordings of NPR programs or lectures from esteemed university professors, all without having to compromise myself by running up suspicious network logs.

One of the issues that's really captured my interest over the last few months has been network neutrality. It's obvious to anyone who actually uses the internet that network neutrality is absolutely essential to the character of our cherished internet. You probably wouldn't be reading this blog if there was no such things as network neutrality (although in reality, "you" probably aren't reading this blog, because nobody really does read this blog, as indicated by my traffic). There's been lots of ridiculous rhetoric from  right-wingers who are predictably walking the party line of being "pro-business", which in this case means the telecom companies. Now, I'll be damned if there exists a collection of companies on the planet that are more anti-competitive, corrupt, and deeply evil than the Baby Bells (what, all two or so that are left now?). The keyword is anti-competitive. There is nothing "free-market" about the telecom industry. To eliminate network neutrality is to stymie small business and innovation.

And while an appeal to entrepreneurialship alone makes the answer clear, we can go further and ask ourselves if that's even the whole story. All of this treats the internet solely as a gigantic, expanding marketplace. Yeah, it is, and that's great. However, the internet is first and foremost about information. Not a market for information, but the Information Superhighway. The telecoms want to play god and load up certain lanes with extra 18-wheelers as they see fit, and you can guarantee that Wikipedia isn't going to be able to pony up the dough for the fast lane. The efficacy with which the internet distributes vast amount of information to anyone with the curiosity to look has redefined our lives. And getting back to the business argument, it's completely obliterated information asymmetry in more markets than we could even begin to count.
Network neutrality completely turns the conventional wisdom about what constitutes "regulation" on its head. Yes, technically the government requiring that network operators must treat all network traffic equally is a regulation, but what does it actually mean in terms of beauracracy and oversight? Not much. The internet has grown exponentially and ingeniously so far, and this so-called regulation has been in place every step of the way. The federal government has done very little in the way of governing or controlling the internet. This regulation has been the key to the internet being the ultimate free-market, democratic establishment of the planet. "Hands Off" the internet could just as easily apply to Verizon and AT&T.

At the recent WWW2006 conference, Tim Berners-Lee made the excellent point that our economy can only function because of the "regulation" that we can't, for example, print our own money. It sounds pedagogical, but that's just because conservatives have been so successful at demonizing the word "regulation" like only they can do.

If that's the kind of regulation that self-proclaimed "free-market conservatives" are moaning about, then I think it's a clear indication that these people are either completely misinformed or extremely disingenuous as to exactly whose interests they are trying to protect. As with most issues, the average voter falls under the former category and the average Republican lawmaker/power broker falls under the latter – yet another example of the ingenious scam that is the continuing Republican stranglehold on our governement.

This disgusts me

The Washington Post reports that 63% of Americans find the NSA spying program to be "acceptable". I'll quote it all so you don't have to register.

By Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 12, 2006; 7:00 AM

A majority of Americans initially support a controversial National Security Agency program to collect information on telephone calls made in the United States in an effort to identify and investigate potential terrorist threats, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The new survey found that 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort. Another 35 percent said the program was unacceptable, which included 24 percent who strongly objected to it.

A slightly larger majority–66 percent–said they would not be bothered if NSA collected records of personal calls they had made, the poll found.

Underlying those views is the belief that the need to investigate terrorism outweighs privacy concerns. According to the poll, 65 percent of those interviewed said it was more important to investigate potential terrorist threats "even if it intrudes on privacy." Three in 10–31 percent–said it was more important for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats.

Half–51 percent–approved of the way President Bush was handling privacy matters.

The survey results reflect initial public reaction to the NSA program. Those views that could change or deepen as more details about the effort become known over the next few days.

USA Today disclosed in its Thursday editions the existence of the massive domestic intelligence-gathering program. The effort began soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Since then, the agency began collecting call records on tens of millions of personal and business telephone calls made in the United States. Agency personnel reportedly analyze those records to identify suspicious calling patterns but do not listen in on or record individual telephone conversations.

Word of the program sparked immediate criticism on Capitol Hill, where Democrats and Republicans criticized the effort as a threat to privacy and called for congressional inquiries to learn more about the operation. In the survey, big majorities of Republicans and political independents said they found the program to be acceptable while Democrats were split.

President Bush made an unscheduled appearance yesterday before White House reporters to defend his administration's efforts to investigate terrorism and criticize public disclosure of secret intelligence operations. But he did not directly acknowledge the existence of the NSA records-gathering program or answer reporters' questions about it.

By a 56 percent to 42 percent margin, Americans said it was appropriate for the news media to have disclosed the existence of this secret government program.

A total of 502 randomly selected adults were interviewed Thursday night for this survey. Margin of sampling error is five percentage points for the overall results. The practical difficulties of doing a survey in a single night represents another potential source of error.

This kind of apathy is far more dangerous to America than terrorism could ever be.

USA Today: NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls

I wish I could say this was shocking, but it's really not. It makes you think twice about labeling people "conspiracy theorists" because if anyone had suggested a year ago that this was going on, they would have been called batshit crazy.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

Read the rest here

Keep in mind that the guy who presided over all of this, General Michael Hayden, is Bush's pick to be the new Director of Central Intelligence.

They claim that the program does not actually listen to the phone calls, but that screams of a half-truth. I'm sure that it's technologically impossible to actually listen to an analyze the content of every call, but it's absurd to think that they don't use this data to pick out a subset of people to monitor constantly.

There's no doubt in my mind that there are more shocking revalations to come. 

Neil Young – Living With War (continued)

First of all, you can download the entire album here.

Of all the artists that dominated the 60s and 70s, Neil Young is arguably the only one that has managed to remain relevant throughout nearly his entire career. Perhaps not popular, but never treading water. A lot of his albums from the 80s and 90s are average at best, but he's always had a knack for maintaining a sense of artistic integrity that eludes peers like Bob Dylan (Victoria's Secret, anyone?). Some of his latter-day triumphs like Freedom, Ragged Glory, and Greendale deserve to be spoken of in the same sentence as the best of his 70s work.

For the last, oh, thirty or so years, he has bounced back and forth between using 1972's Harvest and 1975's Tonight's the Night as jumping off points for his next musical tangent. I don't necessarily mean in terms of style, although the albums that recall Harvest are numerous, but in terms of attitude. There's Neil the elder country statesman, and there's Neil the crotchety, eccentric old man. And let's face it, he's always seemed kind of old, even when rocking the fuck out with Crazy Horse.

I'm sure this exercise in Neilology has been done many times before, but the take-home point is that he's still awesome, and he has two modes of awesome. Last year's Prairie Wind was the work of "Harvest Neil". It was sufficiently affable, but I think we can all agree that "Tonight's the Night Neil" is the Neil of legend, and for every Harvest Moon, I expect a Greendale.

I just never expected one so soon.

Less than a year after Prairie Wind, he announces this album, Living With War, a protest album about President Bush, the war in Iraq, and the state of America. Needless to say, many were skeptical. Although when I heard it described as "a brilliant electric assault", I must admit that my fears were at least partially assuaged. The feverish pace of it all was also a reason for optimism. The album was made available to steam over the internet yesterday, but it was recorded just weeks ago. Clearly Neil had a message that he considered urgent, and even if we all knew what it was going to be, it was refreshing to see him so energized after coming off as so erudite on Prairie Wind and its companion film Heart of Gold.

And now that I've lived with the album for a good 36 hours and 10+ listens, I can tell you that it surpasses any conceivable expectations. It's great, it's the best album he's made since Tonight's the Night, it's likely to be the best album of 2006, and it ought to be a clarion call for America to wake up and stop embracing the Team America approach to evaluating political activism. Living With War is a masterpiece.

As a self-proclaimed Neil Young obsessive, I reached that conclusion right about when the drums on "After the Garden" kick in. The track is reminiscent of "Country Home", the first track of Ragged Glory; a craggy rocker with a soaring, sublime melody. He makes his intentions clear with the first line: "Don't need no shadow man runnin' the government". The rest of the lyrics are more ambiguous, but the song is nothing if not upbeat. This is exactly the song that I've been wanting to hear from Neil for years.

The choir that was just barely audible in "After the Garden" is more prominent on the reflective, gorgeous title track. Throughout the album, the use of the choir is always tasteful, and it always adds to the song. In fact, it's one of the things that really propels to Living With War to great heights. Neil's idiosyncratic use of the choir is charming on "The Restless Consumer", where the choir dominates the verses, only to disappear as Neil's voice cracks (as only his can) and dies in the first chorus.

The propulsive "Shock and Awe" co-opts the Bush Administration's slogan in the album's most angry track. He decries the tragedy of the war. We all know the story, but what's striking about this song (apart from how perfectly it brings the rock) is how he avoids placing direct blame for the war, instead approaching it as a tragedy. He doesn't overlook the key observation that there was a clear majority of Americans who supported the war, and it is not just Bush's mess, but our mess.

And that insight is the key to the albums success. It deftly avoids sinking into partisan cheese by presenting a vision of America that is shameful, but entirely optimistic. It doesn't appeal to a hatred of President Bush, it appeals to a love for America and what our nation stands for. He appeals to the strength of the American family on "Families", one of the most moving tracks on the album, despite its brevity. Instead of dwelling on how bad our situation is, he tries to remind of us how much better we could make it.

And, you know, that's that one song that everyone's dying to hear, the ostentatiously titled "Let's Impeach the President". When the lyrics first appeared a couple weeks ago, reactions ranged from "Holy shit, this is bad" to "Well, they might sound better than they read". Here's a snippet:

 

Let's impeach the president for lying

And leading our country into war

Abusing all the power that we gave him

And shipping all our money out the door

You see what I mean? I think Neil fans everywhere let out a sigh of relief when they discovered that the song is, in fact, utterly amazing. It's as anthemic as anything Neil has ever written, and the man has written some anthems. It's angry, it's uplifting, it's unifying, and it's actually kind of hilarious. Midway through the song he juxtaposes soundbytes of President Bush contradicting himself with Neil yelping "FLIP…….FLOP" in his best angry grandpa voice. It couldn't be more effective. I suppose it's too much to ask that this song might be a hit single or something, but I won't give up hope.

The elegiac "Roger and Me" is an achingly beautiful story of a man losing his childhood friend to war. It's as good of a song as he's ever written. I'm hesitant to call it the highlight of the album, because every song is absolutely flawless, but I haven't been so moved by a song in a long time.

Roger and out, good buddy

I feel you in the air today

I know you gave for your country

I feel you in the air today

Simple lyrics, but drenched in that mournful, highway-at-sunset distortion that Neil practically invented, they are crushing. And to follow it up with a rousing rendition of "America the Beautiful" is a masterstroke.

I can honestly say that this is the most moving album I have ever heard. I've never heard music that appealed to my patriotism so genuinely. Lately I've felt a deep sense of despair at the direction the country is headed, but with one fell swoop, Neil Young has turned it around and made me proud to be an American (let's not get into the perversion that arises when you consider that Neil is Canadian by birth). He's going to be denounced by the right-wing and blasted as being un-American, and that's a crime. Living With War is the Great American Album.

Update: Download link updated

More on GOP intolerance

One of Ezra Klein's weekend guest bloggers writes something similar to what I was trying to say in this post, only more eloquently.

“Learn how to speak English!”—a contemptuous shorthand for only English-speakers are real Americans—has been screamed at immigrants for decades by nationalistic tools. Malkin and her cohorts gussy it up a bit, and frame it as a “national security” and “economic” issue associated with undocumented (mostly Hispanic) workers. Bush and Co. turn it into a policy issue. Suddenly, my grumpy old neighbor’s muttered “Damn furners!” has become the basis for a federal initiative. It’s not that there aren’t legitimate security concerns to be considered, for example, but the real impetus of the policy is turning out the base vote by appealing to prejudice.

More:

When we read that nearly 20% of American high school students experience physical assault on the basis of sexual orientation, and a doctor who performs abortions—and was already shot by a radical anti-choicer—has become the target of a campaign to hold him “accountable for his actions that have caused untold misery and loss of life,” and a Hispanic teen is beaten and raped within an inch of his life by two white teens as they hurled racial epithets at him, we must necessarily consider what forces legitimize such actions in the minds of the perpetrators. And we need look no further than the GOP and their ever-so-helpful message enablers, as each incident is representative of one of their key wedge issues: gay marriage, abortion, and immigration.

When real people are used as fodder to garner votes born of bias, those real people are inevitably endangered. Politicians and their well-paid water carriers cannot continually demonize a group of people and then claim naivety that the fuckwit homophobes, radical anti-choicers, and racists on whose votes they are dependent for their continued supremacy actually treat those groups as demons, monsters under the bed who threaten our very way of life. We should expect nothing less for a disingenuous wedge issue designed by the likes of Karl Rove to exploit the prejudices of the GOP base to translate into action that leaves victims of policy also victims of violence.

I implore you to read it all. It's terrific. 

Neil Young – Living With War

So I think Neil heard me when I said, "You know, this Prairie Wind and Heart of Gold stuff is pretty cute, but you need to kick some ass again."

Following the release of Heart of Gold in theaters (which is great, by the way), Neil went into the studio and recorded a protest album about President Bush and the war, conveniently titled Living With War. He recorded it in an absurdly short period of time and promised that it would rock. And we're talking a span of weeks here. I, a Neil obsessive, only heard about this a few weeks ago.

Today the entire album was made available to stream from Neil's website. AND IT IS AWESOME. It's a return to the pure noise and distortion of Ragged Glory. Yeah, the lyrics are a little corny, but these days you have to judge his output on how badass it sounds, and this is a perfect 10.0.

And as much as people want to crack jokes about it, pretty much everything he's singing about it right…

Listen to it here.

Nuclear energy

I'd like to join the chorus of people who seem to think that this piece by Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore calling for a new era of nuclear power is a good thing (you might need to register for free to read it). I don't necessarily like the idea of nuclear power, but I like it a whole hell of a lot more than fossil fuels. He makes a good case and it's well worth the read.

I still think that not enough attention is being paid to wind power though. 

Republican hypocrisy on immigration

There's a great article in today's New York Times about the economic impact of illegal immigrants, a subject that is open to debate. One of the statistics that frequently gets brought up in defense of the recent immigration bill passed by the House is that illegal immigrants lower the wages of native high school dropouts. The beginning of the article puts that in perspective:

CALIFORNIA may seem the best place to study the impact of illegal immigration on the prospects of American workers. Hordes of immigrants rushed into the state in the last 25 years, competing for jobs with the least educated among the native population. The wages of high school dropouts in California fell 17 percent from 1980 to 2004.

But before concluding that immigrants are undercutting the wages of the least fortunate Americans, perhaps one should consider Ohio. Unlike California, Ohio remains mostly free of illegal immigrants. And what happened to the wages of Ohio's high school dropouts from 1980 to 2004? They fell 31 percent.

Later in the article:

At first blush, the preoccupation over immigration seems reasonable. Since 1980, eight million illegal immigrants have entered the work force. Two-thirds of them never completed high school. It is sensible to expect that, because they were willing to work for low wages, they would undercut the position in the labor market of American high school dropouts.

This common sense, however, ignores half the picture. Over the last quarter-century, the number of people without any college education, including high school dropouts, has fallen sharply. This has reduced the pool of workers who are most vulnerable to competition from illegal immigrants.

This may sound sort of un-liberal of me, but I can't help myself from not really giving a damn about Americans who dropped out of high school. We have a good public education system, it's free, and there are precious few legitimate reasons not to finish high school. If these people want to go it on their own, then I don't have much sympathy if they find themselves competing for jobs with immigrants. So what I'm saying is that the "lower wage for high school dropouts" didn't carry any weight with me in the first place. And even if it did, this new study appears to at least put it in context.

Anyways, what strikes me about this whole debate is the rather reprehensible flip flopping of the GOP. The champion fiscal policy that has quite clearly had a less than optimal impact on the working poor (at least opposed to how great it has been for the richest Americans, but let's not get into a tax debate), they want to dismantle the safety net of Social Security, and abhor the minimum wage. Yet all of the sudden, Republicans are sticking up for the high school dropout's interests! They are willing to contradict their free market worshiping ways on a whim.

What disgusts me about it are the not so subtle racist overtones. Opponents of illegal immigration are not going to give a damn about economics if they hate Mexicans, and I think the GOP is trying to tap into that hatred.

This is an important debate, but it seems like it's becoming yet one more instance of Republican pandering.

Update: Kevin Drum agrees and offers a similar take.

The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting

Via Greg Mankiw, a study of the effects of Fox News on voters between 1996 and 2000 from a couple of Berkeley economists. Here is the abstract:

Does media bias affect voting? We address this question by looking at the entry of Fox News in cable markets and its impact on voting. Between October 1996 and November 2000, the conservative Fox News Channel was introduced in the cable programming of 20 percent of US towns. Fox News availability in 2000 appears to be largely idiosyncratic. Using a data set of voting data for 9,256 towns, we investigate if Republicans gained vote share in towns where Fox News entered the cable market by the year 2000. We find a significant effect of the introduction of Fox News on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000. Republicans gain 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns which broadcast Fox News. The results are robust to town-level controls, district and county fixed effects, and alternative specifications. We also find a significant effect of Fox News on Senate vote share and on voter turnout. Our estimates imply that Fox News convinced 3 to 8 percent of its viewers to vote Republican. We interpret the results in light of a simple model of voter learning about media bias and about politician quality. The Fox News effect could be a temporary learning effect for rational voters, or a permanent effect for voters subject to non-rational persuasion.

You can download the paper here. 

The numbers aren't exactly huge so I'd take it more as food for thought than something to contend. If anything, this lends credence to the popular conservative talking point that the "liberal" media changes voter opinion (more on the liberal part in a moment). I think it's pretty clear that the media can affect public attitudes. It's a simple examble, but how is a sensationalistic cable news network trumpeting a political ideology any different than MTV hawking a Britney Spears single? Both are media conglomerates run by people who probably have a vested interest in the product selling well. Britney Spears will sell more records because of MTV, so doesn't it follow that people might vote Republican because of Fox News? The question to me is whether or not we can judge the overall bias of the media as "liberal", despite the fact that conservatives consider it cut and dried. Since when is reporting the facts about, say, Patrick Fitzgerald's court filings way out in left field? It's the truth! But because it casts the administration in an unequivocally negative light, it is derided as liberal nonsense.

One could go on and on, I suppose.