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Thieving China

Sunday, January 23, 2011

There’s no better blog, in my opinion, than Dean Baker’s Beat the Press, in which he skewers the press for its economics illiteracy, or, at times, for its seeming deliberate ignorance of the facts. Today he criticized the New York Times for characterizing the Chinese as thieves for stealing our intellectual property.

With reference to intellectual property, the New York Times told readers that, “China has a well-earned reputation for theft.” Intellectual property rules are defined by each country. China can only engage in “theft” if it has set up rules that is violating. In many cases, its laws on intellectual property do not provide clear protection to U.S. firms, therefore they may not be engaging in anything that can be described as “theft.”

This brought to mind the fact that, if China is indeed stealing, they may have gotten the idea from us, as they are certainly following the example of the United States when it was a developing nation. History buffs will recall that Charles Dickens used one of his lecture tours here to complain about the fact that his work was being appropriated by American publishers without a dime going to him.

What upset the Americans with their hero, whom they greeted as the most welcomed visitor since Lafayette (Forster, I, 186), was his stand in favor of International Copyright. Without it American publishers were paying no royalties on imported manuscripts. Few people of good will thought the policy equitable, but their objection was to Dickens’ use of his platform as a guest artist to speak out on business and politics. When he did so, some accused him of petty self-serving, in spite of the fact that International Copyright would also serve the interests of American authors, then ignored or short-changed by publishers who could easily pirate foreign materials. In any event, Dickens was equally disturbed by his sponsors’ undemocratic desire to muzzle him, to make him take the stance of an uncritical hero, as if democracy were a fait accompli on this side of the Atlantic. As the copyright issue inflated, it became for Dickens a symptom of a much more pervasive disease, name [sic] the American preoccupation with image-making.

So there’s nothing new under the sun. The likelihood is that the lack of copyright protection for foreign authors was a boon to American publishers, who got their content for free. While American authors may have felt a bit of a sting with regard to their foreign sales or even pirated editions here, those sales were negligible at the time, and, in any event, the publishers probably had more clout with the Congress than the authors. The publisher’s interests probably changed as American sales picked up abroad. There’s probably a similar dynamic going on in China. Once they have secured their place as our lords and masters, and we begin consuming their content, you can rest assured they’ll suddenly see the wisdom of copyright protections. We really can’t complain, since we blazed that path for them.

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What’s with Enfield?

Sunday, January 23, 2011

It would appear that the Republicans that are running Enfield have a secret agenda: enriching the ACLU, which is entitled to attorneys fees from losing defendants when it vindicates the constitution. After handing the ACLU a slam dunk victory when they insisted on having the high school graduation in a church, the Enfielders decided to censor the library in so outrageously open and notorious a manner that they might as well just write the ACLU a check now and skip the litigation.

From what I can discern, the Republicans manufactured a controversy about the showing of the film “Sicko” at the public library, then forced the town manager to pressure the librarian to cancel the film. Among other things, they made unveiled threats to wreak retribution at budget time if he failed to pull the film. Then, much to their apparent surprise, they found out that this isn’t Mississippi, and people didn’t take kindly to censorship.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Enfield Republicans have learned nothing from the graduation fiasco. Instead of retreating, they are doubling down. The town manager has gagged the town librarian, and imposed a rule that fact based films can’t be shown in the film series without presenting “multiple sides” of each issue.

I’m assuming this is his way to try to retroactively confer constitutionality on the actions of the council and himself. He must be a particularly spineless and/or incompetent town manager if he
didn’t have the brains or the balls to warn the council away from this in the first place.

The ACLU has taken an interest. I wonder how the taxpayers in Enfield feel about the Republicans once again needlessly spending their money in yet another attempt to subvert the constitution? And where, by the way, do these crazies come from and why are they congregating in Enfield? It seems like a perfectly nice place, but maybe there’s something in the air.

A Facebook group has been formed to oppose what the town did. Join up by clicking on the link. There’s an amusing exchange there between some rational types and one of the people on the video, a guy named Don Christmas, who was at the council meeting complaining about DCF taking him to court all the time (for, if he is to believed, telling his kids that despite their last name, there would be no Christmas for them if they did not shape up). Apparently he’s in favor of censorship too, but the funny part is that he can’t understand why people in the Facebook group think he’s ranting when he WRITES IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, without punctuation, and in incomplete sentences.

Al Robinson (ctblogger) has been doing yeoman work on this issue, particularly in trying to get video of the council meeting up on the internet. As this is written, he’s located it and, I understand, is trying to edit it so that the pertinent parts of the meeting can be uploaded. The full video is here. I skimmed through it, but I think I missed some of the pertinent stuff. I should add that while this whole thing clearly appears to be ginned up by Republicans, there’s a Democrat on the council who is every bit as dumb as his Republican colleagues. He agrees with the absurd assertion that it’s not censorship on their part to stop the showing so long as anyone who wants to watch the movie can see it elsewhere. By that logic, of course, they could mandate that certain books be taken off the shelves since you can always buy them on Amazon. He also seems to think that libraries are only for kids. The movie, by the way, was to be played during school hours, so one must wonder what a kid would be doing there at that point and why this “Democrat” thinks being in the same building as people watching Sicko would make a kid uncomfortable.

It goes without saying that these same people wouldn’t have uttered a peep (despite their protestations to the contrary) if the librarian had been airing a right wing film, Ben Stein’s anti-evolution (and anti-fact) film Expelled, for example.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Local issues, Republicans | | Comments (2)

A tax by any other name

Saturday, January 22, 2011

The New York Times is reporting that a move is afoot among the banks to charge a fee for debit cards. Right now, it appears that U.S. Bank is going to lead the way. Economic dogma would lead one to believe that other banks, in order to compete, would try to take U.S. Bank’s customers by touting their fee free debit cards, but that’s not the way things actually work. The other banks will institute fees and, somehow, justify it as a way to compete with U.S. Bank.

This is not about recovering costs, of course. In fact, a little thought would lead any rational person to conclude that bank fees for processing transactions have been either instituted or raised as the actual cost of processing transactions has gone down. Remember back in the days when you needed to actually go to a bank and withdraw your money from a real live person. That cost the customer nothing, and still costs nothing. Electronic transactions are cheap by comparison with the cost of paying people to process transactions, and all-electronic transactions cost less than processing checks. Yet, the less the banks must pay, the more the banks charge, and let’s not even get in to ATM charges. This is all about maintaining bloated profits. And why? Because they can:

The executives hinted that to recapture revenue that most likely will be lost from recent legislative changes and proposals, the bank might change its checking account pricing, reduce rewards and “perhaps” add a debit card fee, among other moves.

Translation: We have been stopped from making excessive profits on certain portions of our business, so we will seek to make them elsewhere. If the debit charge is, as I suspect it will be, a per transaction charge, then it will be the equivalent of a sales tax. We are already paying such a hidden tax on every credit charge, and if I’m not mistaken, a lower charge on debit transactions. Ask any merchant how much tribute they have to pay to the credit card company on every transaction, so a fee on debit cards would be on top of that. The customer doesn’t see the current charges on the receipt or on a statement, but they pay it.

Naturally, this gouging will go unnoticed and un-protested. The supremely ignorant people of the United States would rather protest against any increase in, lets say, an actual sales tax, the proceeds of which go to such unnecessary things as schools, roads, police, etc., rather than to useful things like banker’s bonuses.

It would be interesting to find out the extent to which the non-financial sector of our economy is being stifled by the fact that the banking industry is in a position to drain off so much money without providing anything of value in return.

Filed in Corporate Crime | | Comments (0)

Friday Night Music-Hey Joe

Friday, January 21, 2011

Part of the fun of this feature is the search process, which often involves sort of surfing a stream of consciousness. Last week I was looking for an acceptable version of Walk Away, Renee to post (there isn’t one), and, in one way or another ended up watching Rickie Lee Jones singing Chuck E’s in Love. Rickie Lee Jones made me think of Patti Smith, which led me to this performance, which includes a version of Hey, Joe, embedded within what I guess you would call a medley, though that word hardly seems to fit Patti Smith.

It occurred to me that it might be fun to put together a collection of performances of this venerable song. Take your pick, or watch them all. The song has an interesting history, as you can see for yourself on Wikipedia. Even its authorship is somewhat shrouded in mystery, with many folks believing it’s a traditional song. It does seem to be somewhat out of its own time, which is, in fact, the sixties, or perhaps late fifties. You can understand how a listener might assume that it had been around forever.

Today, most people might think that Jimi Hendrix, or possibly the Byrds, propelled this song into the public consciousness, but in fact this group was the first, and in fact the only group, to make a hit out of it. The Leaves:

The Byrds version isn’t on youtube, but Hendrix’s is:

Despite the leaves, it seems like all future versions flow from Hendrix. The Who:

and ZZ Top:

Finally for something that isn’t completely different, but any rock song with an accordion is surely somewhat different. Buckwheat Zydeco:


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This is not a good idea

Friday, January 21, 2011

One of the signal successes of the Obama administration was student loan reform. The previous system, in which private entities got paid for handing out government guaranteed loans, invited fraud and corruption, both of which accepted the invitation. Other than shunting money that should have gone into student loans to private companies, private involvement added nothing to the process. Among other things, it encouraged the growth of for profit “educational” institutions, which specialized in giving useless educations to desperate people. Since the government made good on defaulted loans, neither the schools or the lenders had any incentive to look carefully at the buyer, or at the prospects that the “education” would be of any use to the victim.

Now, having cleaned up that system, there is a chance that the Obama administration may institute a similar system in the mortgage industry. Incredibly, the folks that brought us the subprime mess are stepping forward to argue for a system similar to the old student loan system for handling government guaranteed mortgages:

As the Obama administration prepares a report on the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, some of the nation’s largest banks are offering a few suggestions.

Wells Fargo and some other large banks would like private companies, perhaps even themselves, to become the new housing finance giants helping to bundle individual mortgages into securities — that would be stamped with a government guarantee.

What could go wrong, other than a repeat of 2008? Fondly must we hope, fervently must we pray, that the Obama Administration will decline to guarantee a new round of mortgage madness.


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Just so

Friday, January 21, 2011


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The Onion: Sarah’s Poll Numbers Rising

Thursday, January 20, 2011


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Those old fashioned Brits

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Here in America, we have come to understand that the bigger the crime, the less justification for punishment. That means, for example, that starting an illegal war that results in the killing of tens of thousands of people (and, incidentally, lands the invaded country subject to the influence of another country with which you are at odds) is a consequence free crime, since you can’t do anything much more criminal. Institutionalized torture and endless imprisonment of mainly innocent people, inasmuch as they compound the crime, merely serve as further reasons to forget about the whole thing. We have learned these things, in our infinite wisdom, and have put the lessons learned to work. Never look back, we firmly believe, or you might learn something.

The British, on the other hand, have this quaint notion that maybe there should be consequences, if belated, for this sort of criminal activity, so they formed a commission to look into the whole Iraq invasion thing. Such a mistake, and, coming from a country with a proud imperial tradition of its own, a somewhat mystifying one.

But the British are certainly learning, for today the British government, after politely discussing the matter with Tony Blair, refused to hand over Tony Blair’s love letters to George Bush. We know that the British government has learned from ours because, according to the British government, there are several good and sound reasons to withhold the notes, all of which sound vaguely familiar:

The Cabinet Office said the refusal to allow Blair’s notes to be disclosed conformed to the inquiry’s protocols. Chilcot said recently the protocols were “put in place to protect national security, international relations and the personal security of individuals. They are not there to prevent embarrassment.”

As any American knows this statement can be translated roughly as follows: The protocols, as we choose to interpret them, have nothing to do with national security, international relations or the personal security of individuals. They are there to prevent embarrassment.”

You see, the only people who should be able to use these notes are people who will use them to continue to propagate the lies that led to the war in the first place. In their case, exposure of (portions) of the documents are perfectly appropriate:

[Inquiry leader Sir John Chilcot] refers to passages in memoirs, including Blair’s autobiography, A Journey, and disclosures by Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff, and Alastair Campbell, his former head of communications. Those publications, and the refusal to disclose Blair’s notes, Chilcot said, “leads to the position that individuals may disclose privileged information (without sanction) whilst a committee of privy counsellors established by a former prime minister to review the issues, cannot”.

So, it appears that we can take comfort in the fact that the British people will remain as comfortably ignorant of the details of the criminal conspiracy as will we. We must give them credit for trying, but really, it’s hard to believe they could have been so naive as to think that crime on that scale should have consequences.


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Joe! Reconsider!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

The folks at My Left Nutmeg were pleased to hear about Joe Lieberman’s decision to retire from the Senate (likely to a well paid gig dissing liberals on Fox). We here at CTBlue (well, that would actually be me here at CTBlue) don’t feel that way at all. We wanted Joe to stay the course.

To our minds, nothing would have been more delicious that to see Joe come in third in a three way race. Now, Lieberman might take some solace for that, since he at least he wouldn’t be tied for third with two other candidates. But more delicious than watching his humiliation would be the fact that his candidacy would have assured the victory of a real Democrat. That, in my opinion, was the real reason Lieberman wouldn’t run. Not only did he know he would lose; he knew that if he ran there would be no way for the Republican he will now endorse to win.

So, do I feel good about Joe leaving? No, though it will be good to see the back of him. I don’t watch television, particularly Fox, so I won’t ever have to hear his whiny voice again, though I’m sure the masochists who watch Fox will circulate his more outrageous statements to the internets.

I agree with my brethren at MLN about one thing, though. We owe a debt of gratitude to Ned Lamont. If it weren’t for Ned, Lieberman would still be a nominal Democrat, probably guaranteed yet another nomination despite his apostasies (he wouldn’t have endorsed McCain, but he would have done just about everything else he’s done over the last four years). Ned exposed him for what he is. Alas, it took about a year too long for reality to sink in with the majority of voters, but ultimately they tumbled to him.

Now, we just have to avoid a bruising primary and elect a real Democrat to replace the faux Democrat that was Lieberman. I’m announcing right now that I’m endorsing whoever has the best chance to win.


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An interesting dynamic

Thursday, January 20, 2011

It is an interesting fact of political life in this country that Democrats tend to elect people who either more or less reflect their values or are more conservative than Democrats as a whole, while Republicans tend to elect people that are not just more conservative than Republicans as a whole, but far more conservative than Republicans as a whole. In fact, you often have to wonder where these people hide until they run for elective office.

Consider the newly elected Senator from Utah, who feels quite comfortable saying he is against Child Labor Laws. I don’t need a pollster to tell me that even most Republicans feel that the federal government can and should regulate child labor. There are numerous examples of Republican politicians who have been elected despite holding views greatly out of step with the views of the rank and file (although embraced by the truly crazy) but I’d be amazed if there were a handful of Democrats (certainly none in the Senate) who are similarly out of touch with the views of party members from their districts. I should amend that statement to say that there are only a handful who are so out of touch to the left of the Democrats in their district. It’s fairly common for Democrats to be out of touch to the right.

This is another of those asymmetries that pulls our discourse and our laws to the right, despite the fact that, when asked, people in this country are, if anything, more liberal than conservative. I’m not talking about the labels they apply to themselves; the term “liberal” has been demonized while the term “conservative” has, to say the least, not been so treated. I’m talking about views about issues when those issues are fairly presented to them.

I personally suspect that out of touch conservatives can get elected because the media that is not forthrightly right wing is afraid to scrutinize them for fear of being labeled “liberal” and because, while Democrats will quickly run away from anyone to the left of Harry Reid, Republicans will support anyone with an R after his or her name. No matter the candidate, they will close ranks and engage the slime machine against the Democrat in the race. Thus we are now in a situation in which consensus “liberal” views of decades past (such as, that child labor should be regulated by the federal government) are now under attack from all sides, not so much because the objective situation has changed, but because the right has quite skillfully moved the rhetorical “center” ineluctably rightward, a process that legiimizes extreme views that would have been considered extreme in days past, but, despite still being objectively extreme, are now considered worthy of consideration by the folks in the Beltway. And when I say the attacks are coming from all sides, I mean it. The push is on to blame the unions that represent state workers for the budget woes of the states, when there’s little objective evidence to support that. Andrew Cuomo, an alleged Democrat, made that demonization the centerpiece of his campaign. Where did a right thinking (in the sense of “correct thinking”) voter have to go, in light of the fact that his opponent was quite possibly clinically insane?


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