(Sorry, a little late with this one. I was actually away from the Internet for the last several days.)

Imagine getting your high school diploma at around 18 and three years later the government gives you $80,000, with no strings attached. That’s the radical premise of a book by Yale Law School professors Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott. It’s called The Stakeholder Society, and the suggestion is that those who are given a foundation could use the money to invest in their own businesses, go to college, or otherwise feel they have a stake in society.

Though I heard about it some time ago, I haven’t read the book yet (it’s part of my mammoth Amazon wish list.) I was reminded of it when I read “The $6,000 Solution“, an article that’s part of The Atlantic‘s state of the union report.

Author Ray Boshara suggests an approach more restrained than that of the professors: a $6,000 grant at birth, placed in what he calls an American Stakeholder Account. With 7% return, that’s about $20,000 at graduation.

There are some important points to remember about the principle here, and Boshara does a good job of summarizing them: there’s a big difference between wealth and income, and it’s especially acute to those who aren’t white. A non-biased program such as this (which could be funded with just a quarter of recent corporate income tax breaks) would follow in the tradition of the G.I. Bill and the Homestead Act in granting Americans a good start, and in so doing giving back to our own country through the participation of a vibrant, active citizen.

Seems a good investment to me.

Can you get $80,000 just for graduating high school? Should you? Answer tomorrow.

Yesterday I was in the throes of a political frenzy. Today I’m trying to cool off. So I’ll keep these short.

Dissent. Those who say “if you don’t like it, move” in regards to American policy toward war are contemptible scum. There’s nothing more American than dissent, despite the Ashcroftian efforts to change that truth. I wouldn’t think it takes a college degree to know that.

Parallels. I’ve heard people compare the President to various movie characters/actors. Sometimes it’s funny and well done, sometimes it’s lightweight thinking of the worst kind, as when those weak writers desperate for description cast Bush as various “cool” film characters — some of whom are actually violent criminals.

Clarity. My boy B-don* e-mailed me in reference to the approval poll chart’s baseline. I thought he had a fair point so I added a caption to the chart (which I continue to present un-edited.) He also asked if I was completely against a war in Iraq. The answer: I don’t unconditionally reject war with Iraq, but I require evidence of weapons, U.N. participation, and a respect for the American people’s will, all of which are sorely lacking. I also want assurances that we would be in it for the long haul. This Newsweek piece puts it perfectly.

More reading. Good stories, tipped by TMW.

• “There’s something profoundly immoral about financing tax breaks for today’s wealthiest Americans by borrowing money from the unborn.” — Don’t Call it ‘Conservative’, John Moyers, TomPaine.com
• “The general [Norman Schwarzkopf] who commanded U.S. forces in the 1991 Gulf War says he hasn’t seen enough evidence to convince him that his old comrades Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz are correct in moving toward a new war now.” — Desert Caution, Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post
• “Will we be safer if we invade? The real answer is that we don’t know. But it’s quite plausible that an invasion will increase the danger to us, not lessen it.” — Iraq War: The First Question, Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times

* Here, “my boy” is used in a strictly heterosexual sense to convey camaraderie. But while I’ve got you reading the fine print, what’s up at B-don.com? Anyone speak Japanese?

Think back to where you were on the morning of the 11th of September. Of course you remember, likely very vividly. Now try to recall: where was Bush?

As you probably remember, Bush spent the day at Air Force bases in Louisiana and Nebraska before returning to Washington that evening. What you may not remember is that at the time, leaders in the administration claimed the president’s hiding was due to a “specific and credible” threat to Air Force One which involved a threatening call to the Secret Service using “secret code words” for the plane.

That claim was a lie. As we now know, there was no threat to Air Force One, and the fabrication of one appears to be an attempt to deflect criticism that Bush should have returned to Washington more quickly and spoken to the American public sooner.

And now, once again, we’re asked to believe without evidence.

First, Bush asserted that Iraq was connected to Al Qaeda in Prague or Kurdistan or somewhere, but offered no evidence and dropped it. Then he talked about a “nuclear mujahedin” with ominous aluminum tubes, but the International Atomic Energy Agency has said the tubes were not for nuclear use and that the United States has offered no intelligence that Iraq is even in the market for uranium. We’re told implausibly that Iraq’s failure to disarm as quickly as South Africa is reason to go to war immediately. And just last week, the administration insisted it couldn’t specify the Iraqi danger because it was classified. — ‘Trust Me’ Isn’t Good Enough, Jonathan Alter, Newsweek 03 Feb 03.

A previous president was fond of saying “Trust, but verify.” It may be the smartest thing he ever uttered.

The rich and the stupid have cheered loudly upon news of Bush‘s latest round of suggested tax cuts, with which he promised that “ninety-two million Americans will keep an average of $1,083 more of their own money.” The rich like it because they know what the stupid do not: three-fifths of the money goes to the top 10% of taxpayers. In fact, the middle 20% of taxpayers (income $29,000 – $46,000) would see just a $256-289 reduction. The next quintile (60-80%; those who make up to $77,000) would see a savings of $574-657.

The figure put forth by Bush (who will save $44,000) and Cheney ($327,000) may be technically correct, “but only in the sense that it is also true that if Bill Gates happened to drop by a homeless shelter where a couple of nuns were serving soup to sixty down-and-outers dressed in rags, the average person in the room would have a net worth of a billion dollars. Average, yes; typical, no.” (from The New Yorker) Small wonder the Financial Times, that left-leaning rag, called the claim “obviously bogus.” The honest approach, as anyone with even a tiny amount of statistics will tell you, is to use the median. But I guess it’s not as impressive to talk about savings of not even three hundred bucks.

Learn more. Spinsanity takes on the Bush deception campaign in Taxing the public’s trust, which contains links to PDF tables from Citizens for Tax Justice (table) and the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (table.) Also try Not your ordinary averages, which details the myth of the $1,000 check being spread by new majority leader.

…consider the promises of a year ago:

Bush, 29 Jan 02: “[O]ur budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term.”
USA Today, 24 Jan 03: Budget expected to show record deficit

Bush, 29 Jan 02: “When America works, America prospers, so my economic security plan can be summed up in one word: jobs.”
National Post, 24 Jan 03: Fears growing U.S. entering jobless recovery (“jobless recovery” was also the order of the day during George H. Bush‘s term)

Bush, 29 Jan 02: “[C]orporate America must be made more accountable to employees and shareholders and held to the highest standards of conduct.”
USA Today, 24 Jan 03: Corporate reform cools

I’m sure tonight’s speech will include updates on these promises — right after we hear whether Osama Bin Laden has been found “dead or alive.” Actually, if Yahoo!‘s latest news story (Bush Address Won’t Include New Iraq Data) is to be believed, we’ll hear a new promise: his agenda includes “a new plan to direct drug treatment money to religious groups.”

Wonderful.

(Updated at 00:36 on 29 Jan 03. The “record deficit” link had an incorrect URL.)

Note: This chart is cropped to conserve space. The baseline is 40% and not 0%. Click for larger version.

That’s a plot of 14 presidential approval surveys since 2001 began. As we head into the State of the Union, Bush‘s approval numbers are headed for an all-time low.

The reason is obvious: it’s the economy, stupid. As the Dow and S&P sink to 3-month lows, one would be wise to ask if a pro-business Republican president really is the best thing for the economy. Because he isn’t.

Democrats, it turns out, are much better for the stock market than Republicans. Slate ran the numbers and found that since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return. In 2000, the Stock Trader’s Almanac, which slices and dices Wall Street performance figures like baseball stats, came up with nearly the same numbers (13.4 percent versus 8.1 percent) by measuring Dow price appreciation. (Most of the 20th century’s bear markets, incidentally, have been Republican bear markets: the Crash of ’29, the early ’70s oil shock, the ’87 correction, and the current stall occurred under GOP presidents.) — The Democractic Dividend, Slate.com

Now we need a good Democrat candidate to step up and articulate this message. Sadly, at the moment that’s as hard to find as an Enron indictment. (Note: both of the above based on material from DailyKos, which might just make it into my daily reading routine.)

(This entry was changed 29 Jan 03 at 00:13. A cutline was added to the chart for clarity.)

And, again, if you’re waiting for the smoking gun, the problem is when you see the smoke coming out of the gun it’s too late, the damage has been done.

That’s press secretary Ari Fleischer in Monday’s White House press briefing. It all sounds good, but unless you’ve got the pre-cogs from Minority Report on your side, it’s not smart to act without evidence — and we just haven’t been given any.

The unprecedented stance for a pre-emptive strike the government has taken can best be summed up as “guilty until proven innocent.” It’s an awful way for the world’s sole remaining superpower to behave. We must have a clear, consistent standard. And we must have proof.

Tomorrow, Mr. Bush will do his master‘s bidding in his address to the nation. With any luck, the writing will be better in the State of the Union than in Saturday’s radio address (“Our nation faces many great challenges all at once.”)

Even if that’s the case, don’t expect any real justification for war with Iraq. The usual crumbs about flouting U.N. regulations will no doubt be trotted out, but you won’t find any parallels with states for which we have evidence of a program to develop weapons of mass destruction. (You remember North Korea, right? That would be the country that Bush labeled as part of the “axis of evil” in last year’s SotU.)

So if Bush won’t tell us why he wants so badly to invade (other than the polls, which I’ll cover tomorrow) then perhaps we should turn to Iraqi oil to stave off crisis”>The Observer:

Facing its most chronic shortage in oil stocks for 27 years, the US has this month turned to an unlikely source of help – Iraq.

Weeks before a prospective invasion of Iraq, the oil-rich state has doubled its exports of oil to America, helping US refineries cope with a debilitating strike in Venezuela.

After the loss of 1.5 million barrels per day of Venezuelan production in December the oil price rocketed, and the scarcity of reserves threatened to do permanent damage to the US oil refinery and transport infrastructure. To keep the pipelines flowing, President Bush stopped adding to the 700m barrel strategic reserve.

But ultimately oil giants such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell saved the day by doubling imports from Iraq from 0.5m barrels in November to over 1m barrels per day to solve the problem. Essentially, US importers diverted 0.5m barrels of Iraqi oil per day heading for Europe and Asia to save the American oil infrastructure.

The trade, though bizarre given current Pentagon plans to launch around 300 cruise missiles a day on Iraq, is legal under the terms of UN‘s oil for food programme.

But for opponents of war, it shows the unspoken aim of military action in Iraq, which has the world’s second largest proven reserves – some 112 billion barrels, and at least another 100bn of unproven reserves, according to the US Department of Energy. Iraqi oil is comparatively simple to extract – less than $1 per barrel, compared with $6 a barrel in Russia. Soon, US and British forces could be securing the source of that oil as a priority in the war strategy. The Iraqi fields south of Basra produce prized ‘sweet crudes’ that are simpler to refine.

89 seconds of good editing. (QuickTime, 6.1M)

I’ve been very interested in the trends surrounding the music industry the last few months. A great article in Wired covers the current state of affairs very nicely. Snippet:

To leap the hurdles posed by digital technology, the industry must find a way to make money selling downloaded music on a per-track basis, allow in-store CD burning, slash recording costs with cheap software and hardware, and change artists’ contracts to reflect the new economic reality. Doing any one of these will be next to impossible. Doing all of them would be one of the more amazing turnarounds in business history.

While these systemic challenges continue to press the labels, a few more articles provide context. In Canadians Burned By Blank-CD Levy, the writer tells us that more than 40 countries add a fee to the price of blank CDs, to “compensate musicians and music publishing companies” for music swapping. In Canada, this means you can legally copy a friend’s CD.

But if that seems like a method that works, consider: the levy will increase tenfold if the 2003 proposal is approved, and to this day not a single cent has been distributed from the fund. (Not to mention people who buy CD-Rs without using them for music; some surveys put this number at half of all CD-R purchasers.)

Back in the States, the RIAA was successful in its bid to force an ISP to give up a file trader’s name without a court order. Yet another example of the terrible law we call the Digital Millennium Copryight Act: stripped of any burden of due process, large companies can now move to identify anyone they wish to interrogate.

Come to think of it, what do they plan to send to that KaZaA user, anyway? A cease-and-desist letter? An invoice, as has been used to some success in Denmark? Wasn’t it always said/assumed that the companies would never go after consumers directly? The recording industry’s announcement of their plan to hold ISPs more accountable seems more their style: levy invisible, mandatory fees indirectly on the consumer to preserve their business models.

Perhaps someday the average consumer will get so sick of it all that (s)he will look for a clear, reasonable copyright policy that doesn’t assume every Internet user is a criminal.

I’m not holding my breath.

The decision has come down in Eldred v. Ashcroft, and the Supremes have ruled with Congress. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which prevented any copyrights from expiring through 2018, has been left in force. As a result, creative works remain under control for a period equal to an author’s life plus 70 years or, in the case of works for hire, a 95 year term. Some note Congress has extended the term of existing copyrights 11 times in the last 40 years, so there is little reason to expect that any copyrights will ever expire in the future.

Until 1976, the average copyright term in the United States was 32.2 years (the maximum term was 56 years, but 85% failed to renew their copyright after 28 years). In the last forty years, that term has tripled — every single work copyrighted today will remain copyrighted for an average of at least 90 years. — Doc’s diagnosis

That’s bad news, and it’s bad law. As much as “content owners” would have us believe that intellectual “property” is just like tangible property, it simply isn’t. If I take your chair, you have no chair. If I sing your song, you’re deprived of nothing — except perhaps license fees, which come not from anything you’ve done, but from society’s agreement to respect your work. That bargain should provide at least some benefit for the rest of us, rather than just give assignees the right to charge for public performances of “Happy Birthday” for 150 years.

As always, Larry Lessig is on the case with an excellent proposal to balance copyright owners’ needs with those of the public. It’s highly worthy of discussion — and implementation.

If you have QuickTime installed and ten minutes free, watch this. It’s amazing how cheap news slogans and motion graphics look when you edit them together. Layered on top of endlessly gabbing pundits, they have this hyperactive, desperate need to command more and more of your attention even as they actually say less and less. (The word “evil,” for example, has never been used more broadly.)

I find this piece (a Sundance Online Film Festival entry) especially interesting in light of the questions I noted in yesterday’s entry.

Just a few minutes ago, I completed watching the documentary One Day in September, concerning the 1972 kidnapping of male Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the Olympic Games in Munich. I’ve long intended to watch the film, as I knew little about the events that took place more than three decades ago.

The documentary took my breath away.

It revealed the shocking ineptitude of the German security forces. Though they refused an offer for an Israeli commando team, the Germans had no storm team of their own. When they considered rushing the apartment where the men were held, they picked police officers seemingly at random. That attack plan was called off because East German TV was broadcasting the preparations live, including to the terrorists. Later in the day, only 5 German snipers (there were 8 hostage takers) were positioned at the airport, some without sniper rifles, all without armor, helmets or even radios.

This lack of communication would take a tragic turn later when some of the police would turn on themselves and armored cars, supposed to be in place early, were not requested until 20 minutes after the final shoot-out began. They arrived forty minutes later. (A similar communications problem [PDF; part of this report] also hampered FDNY response to the WTC attacks.)

The film revealed the harrowing brutality of the terrorists, who emptied a full clip into a helicopter full of bound hostages, one just 18. When it was all over, all of the 11 Israelis were dead and five of the terrorists had been killed. The bodies of the terrorists killed were taken to Libya, where the coffins were carried through huge, cheering crowds. The remaining three hostage-takers were held in prison for a short while until being released on the demands of a hijacker who took over a Lufthansa flight. It was later discovered that the German government had colluded to arrange the “hijacking” to rid themselves of the terrorists. They would never stand trial.

This Academy Award-winning documentary raises many questions. What is the media’s role in these situations? Did the East German news crew have any responsibility to assist the police? Was it appropriate for the modern-day filmmakers to provide Jamal Al Gashey, the sole surviving terrorist, the chance to appear, his face obscured, and say “I’m proud of what we did in Munich”? Were the Israeli assassination squads who eventually took the lives of the other two Palestinians acting appropriately? Most of all, will we ever find resolution in this conflict that has defined Israel since its establishment more than 50 years ago?

This post was supposed to be about the Creative Commons, a new organization dedicated to finding innovative ways to allow others to use your creations without committing to the full restrictions of copyright or to the wild frontier of public domain. See the explanation animation (in Flash) for more about the CC concept.

I say “supposed to” because as I was about to begin typing, my eye glanced across a bill from my telephone company, Qwest. On that document — just a phone bill — the footer reads “This bill is protected by one or more of the following U.S. Patents: Des. 385,298; 390,599; 5,845,942; and 5,951,052.”

There was nothing remarkable about the bill, so I looked up the ‘052 patent to see what was invented. The innovation is apparently perpendicular text. Yes, you read right. “Information (e.g., text) in the information panels is oriented in a first direction, and information in the remittance panel (e.g., text) is oriented in a second direction, perpendicular to the first direction.”

I’m impressed with what the Creative Commons is doing, and I wish them luck. But if this Qwest junk is an example of what’s getting intellectual property protection these days, we’re going to need far-reaching, legislative changes. Starting with the patent office.