Trailer Park Product Liability?

A tornado hit near Evanston, Indiana yesterday.

At least 22 people were killed and 200 others injured.

Rescuers who reached the hard-hit Eastbrook Mobile Home Park shortly after 2 a.m. found children wandering in the broken glass and debris, looking for their parents, as parents called out for missing children.

One child was pulled alive from the debris more than 12 hours after the storm hit. But searchers said they were uncovering more bodies than survivors - at least 17 victims in the mobile home park alone. . . .

About 100 of the 350 mobile homes at Eastbrook were destroyed, and 125 others were damaged, Indiana homeland security spokeswoman Pam Bright said.

It isn't the first time that this has happened. It won't be the last. Every hurricane and tornado that hits the United States seems to wreck disproportionate damage on mobile homes. How many have died as a result? Hundreds? Thousands? And, how many more have been seriously injured or lost everything they own as a result of shoddy mobile home construction. They are fundamentally defective products (at least a significant share of them are). Maybe more modern designs are better, but the old designs have killed far too many people:

For nearly half of the Americans who die from tornadoes, the last view they have of this world is the disintegrating interior of their mobile home. Only one-third of the 15 million mobile home residents in the U.S. live in a mobile home park, and some of these do not have sturdy shelters for all residents. The other 10 million live on private rural land,

A mobile home is even less safe than a car in a tornado. Mobile home dwellers are twenty times as likely to die in a tornado as a site built house. More than 172 people died in mobile homes in tornados from 1998-2002.

Twenty million people in eight million mobile homes remain at risk, about 8% of all housing.

We wouldn't tolerate this kind of defect if it weren't the poor being killed.

Arizona Denies Married Women's Right To Vote

Arizona has denied at least a thousand people, mostly married women whose birth certificate names don't match their current names, the right to vote in this year's election, even though officials know that the vast majority of them are legally entitld to vote.

Proposition 200, which voters approved last year, requires Arizonans to prove U.S. citizenship to register to vote and to show a photo ID at the polls.

The law put this border state at the edge of a nationwide push to tighten screening at the polls: fifteen states now require ID at polling places, but no other state requires documentation of citizenship in order to register. . . .

In Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, more than 10,000 people trying to register have been rejected for being unable to prove their citizenship. Yvonne Reed, a spokeswoman for the recorder's office, said Friday that most probably are U.S. citizens whose married names differ from their birth certificates or who have lost documentation.

Reed said she hoped the number of rejected voters would shrink as election officials explained the new requirements. But, she said, "there will be an amount of people who we will not be able to get on the rolls because of not being able to find the right documents or just losing interest."

In Pima County, home to Tucson, 60% of those who tried to register initially could not. Chris Roads, chief deputy recorder and registrar, said all appeared to be U.S. citizens but many had moved to Arizona recently and couldn't access birth certificates or passports.

Many of those prospective voters have since been able to register, but Roads said about 1,000 citizens were still unable to vote in Tuesday's election because of Proposition 200 requirements. "The biggest bloc of people who are impacted are the legitimate citizens," Roads said.

Not surprisingly, support for Proposition 200 came disproportionately from Republicans, conservatives and Protestants.

A similar law in Georgia, which does not require proof of citizenship, has been held unconstitutional as a poll tax.

Why Don't People Buy American Cars?

It could have something to do with things like poor engineering when it comes to basic issues like safety:

The Toyota Sienna and Nissan Quest earned IIHS's highest rating of "Good" for side impact protection and the added designation of "Best Pick," indicating that they performed particularly well. The Honda Odyssey also earned a rating of "Good" in the test.

The Ford Freestar and Mazda MPV, when tested without their optional side airbags, were rated "Poor," the Institute's worst score.

When the Freestar was tested with side airbags installed, it earned a rating of "Acceptable," the second-best of four possible ratings. . . .

The head of the dummy in the driver's seat of the Mazda MPV was struck by the barrier as it crashed into the minivan. While the impact was not hard, the Institute said, any impact should be prevented.

"Plus the MPV's structure was marginal, so there was more intrusion that contributed to high forces on other parts of the dummies," said Lund. "In a crash of similar severity in the real world, it's likely that a driver would suffer internal organ injuries as well as rib fractures. The rear passenger possibly would sustain a fractured pelvis." . . . .

The Chevrolet Uplander and Dodge Caravan/Chrysler Town & Country minivans were not tested because they are undergoing design changes to improve their side impact safety. They will be tested early next year, the Institute said, along with the Kia Sedona minivan.

Also, who is and is not domestic, is ambiguous in today's marketplace:

Headquartered in Hiroshima, Japan, and started in 1931, Mazda has made its mark in the automotive market through creating cars that are both affordable and fun to drive. While Mazda’s largest shareholder is Ford Motor Company, which owns 33.4 percent of the company, it is a publicly held and traded corporation on the Nikkei exchange.

In North America alone, Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) directly and indirectly employs more than 30,000 people. With headquarters in Irvine, Calif., Mazda operates facilities in several states and provinces, including R&D and emissions facilities in Irvine and Flat Rock, Mich., and manufacturing in Flat Rock as well. Mazda’s port facilities include Port Hueneme, Calif., Tacoma, Wash., Midlothian, Texas, Jacksonville, Fla., Woodhaven, Mich., and Baltimore, Md.

Mazda also operates several U.S. facilities where its vehicles are built. All MAZDA 6 Sports Sedans, Sport Wagons, and 5-Doors are built at the AutoAlliance International facility in Flat Rock, Mich., a joint venture between Mazda Motor Corporation and Ford Motor Company. In addition, the Tribute model line is built in Kansas City, Mo., and all B-Series trucks are built at Mazda’s Twin Cities facilities in Minneapolis, Minn.

You decide.

A New Constitution For Colorado?

Ed Quillen, a Denver Post columnist, has once again made a shrewd observation. Colorado's Constitution is long overdue for a bottom up overhaul. It probably won't happen, but our current document is a real mess. It is long and mostly contains stuff that doesn't need to be enshrined in the constitution, rather than mere state law. The table of contents reads:

CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF COLORADO
Preamble (1 section)
I Boundaries (1 section)
II Bill of Rights (33 sections)
III Distribution of Powers (1 section)
IV Executive Department (23 sections)
V Legislative Department (53 sections)
VI Judicial Department (26 sections)
VII Suffrage and Elections (12 sections)
VIII State Institutions (5 sections)
IX Education (17 sections)
X Revenue (21 sections)
XI Public Indebtedness (10 sections)
XII Officers (15 sections)
XIII Impeachments (3 sections)
XIV Counties (20 sections)
XV Corporations (15 sections)
XVI Mining and Irrigation (8 sections)
XVII Militia (5 sections)
XVIII Miscellaneous (15 sections)
XIX Amendments (2 sections)
XX Home Rule Cities and Towns (13 sections)
XXI Recall from Office (4 sections)
XXII Intoxicating Liquors (1 section)
XXIII Publication of Legal Advertising (1 section)
XXIV Old Age Pensions (9 sections)
XXV Public Utilities (1 section)
XXVI Nuclear Detonations (5 sections)
XXVII Great Outdoors Colorado Program (11 sections)
XXVIII Campaign and Political Finance (14 sections)
Schedule (22 sections)

To start with, every article, with the exception of Article XIX (Amendments), after Article VII, ought to be dispensed with or converted into state law.

Also, while I am at it, I will note a particular egregious bit of intellectual property abuse in the State of Colorado from the Secretary of State's website:

Colorado Revised Statutes
Colorado Revised Statutes are made available for public use by the Committee on Legal Services of the Colorado General Assembly through a contractual arrangement with the LexisNexis Group which prepares and maintains the link below. The statutes are copyrighted by the state of Colorado (please see §2-5-115, C.R.S.). In addition, any person wishing to reprint and distribute all or a substantial part of the statutes in either printed or electronic format must obtain prior permission of the Committee on Legal Services; permission is not required to reprint fewer than 200 sections of C.R.S. (please see §2-5-118, C.R.S.).

What sort of totalitarian state is Colorado that it is a crime to distribute its laws to the people without state permission?

The Paris Riots of 2005

Paris is having riots. This is not the first time this has ever happened, hence the 2005 modifier in the title of this post. But, these riots are worst than most in the history of France, and probably the worst since 1968, which was as big a year in French history as it was in American history.

[T]he violence, which has become one of the most serious challenges to government authority here in nearly 40 years, showed no sign of abating, and Sunday was the first time policemen had been wounded by gunfire in the unrest. More than 3,300 vehicles have been destroyed along with dozens of public buildings and private businesses since the trouble began Oct. 27.

Just on Saturday night, the tally reached a peak of 1,300 vehicles burned, stretching into the heart of Paris where 35 vehicles were destroyed, and touching a dozen other cities across the country.

Fires were burning in several places Sunday night and hundreds of youths were reported to have clashed with police in Grigny, south of Paris where the shooting took place. On Saturday night, a car was rammed into the front of a McDonald's restaurant in the town.

"We have 10 policemen that were hit by gunfire in Grigny, and two of them are in the hospital," Patrick Hamon, national police spokesman, said early Monday morning. He said one of the officers hospitalized had been hit in the neck, the other in the leg, but that neither wound was life-threatening.

Rampaging youths have attacked police and property in cities as far away as Toulouse and Marseilles and the resort towns of Cannes and Nice in the south, Lille in the north and Strasbourg to the east. In Evreux, 60 miles west of Paris, shops, businesses, a post office and two schools were destroyed along with at least 50 vehicles in Saturday night's most concentrated attacks. Five police officers and three firefighters were injured in clashes with young rioters, a national police spokesman said. . . .

While the arson is wider-spread than in the past, it has become a feature of life in the working-class suburbs, peopled primarily by North African and West African immigrants and their French-born children. Unemployment in the neighborhoods is double and sometimes triple the 10 percent national average, while incomes are about 40 percent lower.

Car burning has become over the past 30 years a familiar form of protest in these neighborhoods and even a kind of delinquent entertainment. Every New Year's Eve dozens of cars are set alight in the eastern city of Strasbourg and more than 20,000 cars had already been burned in France this year before the recent violence.

Though the majority of the youths committing the acts are Muslim, French-Arabs and French-Africans, the mayhem has yet to take on any ideological or religious overtones. Youths in the neighborhoods say second-generation Portuguese immigrants and even some children of native French have participated. . . .

Young people in the poor neighborhoods incubating the violence have consistently complained that police harassment is mainly to blame. They say such harassment has pushed people's patience to the limit.

"If you're treated like a dog, you react like a dog," said Mr. Diallo, whose parents emigrated to France from Mali decades ago.

They have singled out the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, complaining about his zero-tolerance anti-crime drive and dismissive talk (he famously called troublemakers in the poor neighborhoods "lowlifes," using a French slur that offended many people).

So far away, and yet, so familiar.

Maybe I'm naiive, but I don't have the sense that this kind of explosive anger is brewing in the United States in the same way it is in France right now.

African Prisons Suck.

This probably doesn't surprise you. But, it bears mentioning that the conditions of jails and prisons in Africa is often miserable. Hat tip to Talk Left.

Also, just for good measure, I will also note that Africa has a huge number of non-democratic or marginally democratic nations, that it the scourged by civil wars of catastrophic scale in terms of human harm, that there are a number of African countries where more than 10% of the population has HIV, and that this short list only scratches of surface of Africa's many woes.

The United States does not have the best system of criminal justice, or a lot of other things, in the world. But, it certainly does not have the worst.

Pit Bulls

The Denver Post's editorial page points out a useful fact about pit bulls:

There are only about 15 to 20 dog-bite fatalities annually in the United States, but pit bulls have the dubious distinction of leading the pack. In a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control of more than 300 dog-bite fatalities from 1979 through 1998, pit bulls or cross-bred pit bulls caused almost a third of 238 fatalities in which a breed was specified.

A site that looks at the connection of dog breeds and dog bites notes that:

The dogs responsible for the bulk of the homicides are pit bulls and Rottweilers:

"Studies indicate that pit bull-type dogs were involved in approximately a third of human DBRF (i.e., dog bite related fatalities) reported during the 12-year period from 1981 through 1992, and Rottweilers were responsible for about half of human DBRF reported during the 4 years from 1993 through 1996....[T]he data indicate that Rottweilers and pit bull-type dogs accounted for 67% of human DBRF in the United States between 1997 and 1998. It is extremely unlikely that they accounted for anywhere near 60% of dogs in the United States during that same period and, thus, there appears to be a breed-specific problem with fatalities." (Sacks JJ, Sinclair L, Gilchrist J, Golab GC, Lockwood R. Breeds of dogs involved in fatal human attacks in the United States between 1979 and 1998. JAVMA 2000;217:836-840.)

Other breeds were also responsible for homicides, but to a much lesser extent. A 1997 study of dog bite fatalities in the years 1979 through 1996 revealed that the following breeds had killed one or more persons: pit bulls, Rottweilers, German shepherds, huskies, Alaskan malamutes, Doberman pinschers, chows, Great Danes, St. Bernards and Akitas. (Dog Bite Related Fatalities," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, May 30, 1997, Vol. 46, No. 21, pp. 463 et. seq.) . . . .

There is an 8 out of 10 chance that a biting dog is male. (Humane Society of the United States.)

It also noted that:

Studies of dog bite injuries have reported that:
*The median age of patients bitten was 15 years, with children, especially boys aged 5 to 9 years, having the highest incidence rate
*The odds that a bite victim will be a child are 3.2 to 1. (CDC.)
*Children seen in emergency departments were more likely than older persons to be bitten on the face, neck, and head. 77% of injuries to children under 10 years old are facial.
*Severe injuries occur almost exclusively in children less than 10 years of age.
*The majority of dog attacks (61%) happen at home or in a familiar place.
*The vast majority of biting dogs (77%) belong to the victim's family or a friend.
*When a child less than 4 years old is the victim, the family dog was the attacker half the time (47%), and the attack almost always happened in the family home (90%).

"Some 95 percent of the attacks on humans come from dogs that have not been spayed or neutered, and 70 percent of the attacks were committed by unneutered males."

One indicator I've seen for the number of pit bulls in Denver (pre-ban) is that:

Since Denver's city council renewed its 1989 ban on the dogs on May 9, at least 260 pit bulls have been put to sleep in the Rocky Mountain metropolis, spurring a network of pit-bull lovers into illegal action. . . . While it is difficult to estimate how many pit bulls live in Denver, the number of impounded pit bulls has been steadily rising over the past few years, from 103 in 1999 to 652 in 2003.

There are about 68 million dogs in the United States, and Denver's share should be about 100,000 dogs, if it is typical of the nation. Acccording to one story: "In Denver, city officials estimated that there were 4,500 pit bulls, despite the 16-year-old ban."

Thus, while there aren't good numbers on how many dogs of each breed are out there (only about a million dogs have a registered breed), or even widespread agreement on what constitutes a breed, it is safe to guess that the vast majority of dogs in Denver are not pit bulls or rotweillers, despite the fact that they cause the majority of fatalities. Apparently, about 5% of dogs in Denver fit that description despite the fact that they account for a much larger share of serious injuries, so the concern that has caused Denver to ban pit bulls, and has caused Aurora to seriously consider regulating them stringently, is real. This breed may be ten times as likely as the average dog to kill (and probably also much more likely to cause serious injuries).

Both sides play fast and loose with the facts in the debate. Pit bull proponents argue that 99.9% of pit bulls don't kill people, which is cold comfort considering that the dogs that mauled, but did not kill a 10 year old boy in Aurora this month count as non-killers by this standard. The vast majority of serious dog bites are not fatal. The "pit bulls" are nice dogs with bad owners theory may have something to it, but you don't have a grossly disporportionate record of serious dog attacks coming from just a couple of breeds that make up a small proportion of the total number of dogs out there for no reason. But, the pit bull opponents may be overbroad in describing the threat, which involves a pretty specific profile that has more components than just a breed alone.

Of course, small dogs, no matter how vicious are unlikely to kill people. For example, while my brother-in-law apparently has no worries about his Jack Russel Terriers in the presence of children, there is no way that I would trust my children around those dogs which are hyperactive, loud, and very pushy. But, they are also small and it is a safe bet that they couldn't pull off actually killing any child that was more than an infant. Chihuahua's are similarly not known for their ability to inflict damage.

Likewise, few dogs of any kind are capable of killing an adult person alone.

And, it also appears that just about any female dog, or male dog neutered before pueberty is going to be far, far less likely to be a serious threat to humans, than an unneutered male dog.

But, suppose that pit bulls aren't inherently aggressive, and that they are the breed of choice for people who train their dogs to be killers. This doesn't necessarily argue against serious regulation of the breed.

Given the attachment people have to their dogs, one could argue for narrower legislation. A ban on unneutered pit bulls or rottweilers in the presence of children under the age of twelve, for example, might be enough to eliminate the vast majority of the excess risk associated with the breed, while minimally regulating dog owners in situations where there are far less of a risk of death or serious injury. A ban on multiple pit bulls or rottweilers (some of the most frightening attacks have involved groups of pit bulls attacking people, including one that killed an adult woman) might also be worthy of consideration. But, it might not be necessary to ban the one neutered family pit bull in a family where the dog is unlikely to encounter children.

Pitching Schools.

When I was growing up, you went to the school assigned to your neighborhood, you attended the grade higher than the one you did in the previously year in 98-99% of all cases, and your children were assigned to particular teachers at that school without parental input. There was no formal procedure to change either of these assignments, although it wasn't unheard of for a particularly pushy parent to storm into the principal's office at a school, insist that a different teacher be assigned to their child, and be successful.

This isn't how it works in Denver any more. Any student in Colorado can apply to attend any particular school in Colorado, and parents often request (with requests resolved by a priority and lottery system) particular teachers or programs within particular schools. In this system it is in the best interests of parents to attract other like minded parents to your child's school. This builds support for programs you like, and prevents enrollments from getting so low that your school is shut down or programs that you like there are cancelled.

Perhaps it was inevitable then, that eventually, what happened a day or two ago would happen. A parent (I presume) from Lincoln Elementary School, which serves Baker and West Washington Park, came to our door, flier in hand, lauding the virtues of Lincoln Elementary, the fact that it has only 175 students, and, its Montressori program. What looked like the PTA at a relatively ordinary public elementary school -- not a private school, nor a charter school, had begun a marketing campaign for the school. I suspect that this won't be the last such pitch we receive.

Now, I don't want to leave the impression that this is a bad thing. It isn't. While Milton Friedman's argument for voucher schools has elements that I could quibble with, his fundamental observation is right: Giving parents an ability to choose which school their children attend gives them far greater democratic influence on the school system than they have through political channels, and this is more true, not less true, for children of working class and poor parents who have zero political clout in most cases.

The problem with the analysis is that it fails to take into account how a transition from education through state sponsored schools to a system where schools are more or less independent plays out. In the current system, private education is predominantly religious, because that is a reason that people are willing to pay for a private education for their children when they could get a non-religious one for free, and because churches have subsidized tuitions. But, giving people financial assistance to attend those schools does not create more private school slots in the short term and deprives the public schools of badly needed resources.

In contrast, choice within a public school system, as we have in Colorado, has a similar effect to a voucher system, but does so in a way that tends to redirect existing school resources, producing far less upheaval, rather than abandoning existing schools in favor of fly by night, start up private schools. The evidence that this does happen, even within the public school system was on my doorstep this week. Schools are developing special programs and looking for ways to attract students. They are trying to compete in the educational marketplace. They are making their appeals, not to school board administrators or state legislators, but to individual parents who have a strong say in the matter. And, to the extent that individual schools do compete, it all happens without school buildings going vacant, without mass layoffs in public school systems, and without the wasteful exercise of trying to start over from scratch.

Let Them Eat Cake.

Yes, we all knew that Michael Brown failed in his job as FEMA director durig Hurricane Katrina. But, Styguis does an excellent job of pointing out just how little Brown cared during that disaster. A military officer who had a similar attitude would have been brought before a court martial and sent to Levenworth.

Heads Up: Plot Patents.

People have started to talk about patenting plots for fiction. Hopefully a dead end, but you never know. The point made about the dangers of patent law are certainly real enough.

Pirates.

While it may surprise many people, pirates not only exist, but in places like the coasts of Malaysia and Somolia, are actually common. Real pirates are low on charm and high on brutality. Like genocides in Sudan, piracy is another reason why I am not a pacifist. There are times when naval military force is called for, and defeating pirates is an easy example of such a time.

Now, in truth, the United States has a navy very ill suited for this kind of mission, it is primarily a "blue water navy" designed to fight the Soviets in the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Arctic. But, the proposed littoral combat ship, the first of which are under contruction now, would be perfect for this kind of mission.

Saturday Style.

Saturday is the day when our family does most of its shopping and errands. Many stores are closed or have limited hours on Sunday. Weekdays are dominated by school and work most of the time. So, it isn't unusual that we were shopping today.

The motivating factor for us, and this won't be the only trip this factor influences, was the rising price of natural gas. Heat is going to be very expensive this winter, and, as a result, we have resolved, like many people in Colorado, to keep our thermostat at the lowest tolerable temperature this winter. So far that hasn't been unbearable. November has been unseasonably warm so far. But, we know that it is just a matter of time before a cold snap hits.

Today's focus was window coverings. Our 1925 half duplex has single pane windows, with single pane storm windows. They have an insulation value in the vincinty of R-2, on a scale where R-0 is an open window or door, and R-15 would be typical for mildly insulated walls. We'd considered replacing them with better insulating windows before, but even assuming a very substantial energy savings on the order of 50%, it would have taken about twenty years to get our investment back (replacing windows in old houses is expensive because all the frames are non-standard sizes), and only a small percentage of a renovation like that will be reflected in resale value -- in part because it is the city lot in this neighborhood, and not the physical structure, that accounts for most of our home's value.

Our first set of window coverings were sheer white cotton, which are great in the summer, but have no insulating value. The last time we thought about the issue, we replaced those during the winter months with cotton duck, which also provide more privacy, which is a big deal now that the house next door was scraped and we now have a two story duplex ten feet from our windows. Today, we went with thick, gaudy red velvet in one room, and blue velvet in another, in the hope that it will have more insulating value than cotton duck and on the theory that if you are going to make a style change you may as well do so boldly enough that it looks like you did it on purpose.

Last winter we made a similar investment in rugs for a similar purpose. We have a front nook, above an uninsulated crawl space, that used to be the coldest place in the house. The floor there always sucked heat out of the room. So, we bought a thick imitation Persian rug for that area, which now is the children's favorite play space, and also bought another big thick imitation Persian rug (the real ones cost ten to twenty times as much) for another room in the house that has always been chilly. We also bought a throw blanket that you could wrap yourself in as you sat on the couch in the living room.

We haven't yet purchased a tapestry for the walls, but the thought has crossed our mind, and more throws, sweaters, blankets, and turtlenecks are all in our future. At work, I expect that my former habit (common among Colorado lawyers) of promptly depositing my suit jacket on a hook as soon as I entered my office where it remained until I left (indeed, it stayed there unnoticed on a hook in my old office for weeks after I left the firm to be a professor) will end. My camel jacket, in particular, is likely to see a lot of wear this year.

Hot drinks will be in, and cold ones will be out.

The idea of a heat lamp in the bathroom, so that we could be warm upon leaving the shower without heating the entire house, or even heating the bathroom all day, has suddenly appeared on the long list of renovations to consider, even if it hasn't made it to the top of the list yet. This will also likely be the year that we do decide to replace the weather stripping, and our inconclusive experiment in putting an extra layer of plastic on our bigger windows from last year is likely to be repeated again.

We live in a world that has been oblivious to the seasons for decades in our climate controlled indoor worlds, but rising natural gas prices may return at least a part of that awareness to our lives.

Our course, rising energy prices are not the only style driver at the moment.

Some of the needs are mundane and have mundane causes. For example, like most people, we have quite a bit of non-stick cookware. But, I defy you to find a pizza cutter or knife made out of plastic or wood that won't damage them in a store near you. We have found both, but they don't last forever, and if I had realized how hard they are to find, I would have bought half a dozen. Apparently, higher end kitchen merchants don't offer them because plastic is too nasty for the high end kitchen, while low end vendors assume that you don't have non-stick cookware.

Other style drivers run much deeper. One of the most insightful chapters in John Naisbitt's 1982 best seller Megatrends, was a chapter entitled "High Tech/High Touch", which argued that rather than continually pushing us towards more impersonal lives, people would reach to high technology by trying to find more "high touch" elements in our lives. Naisbitt spun that chapter into an updated book of its own in 1999, and the trend is still with us.

One of Denver's more intriguing businesses, situated in a high profile spot on Speer Boulevard near downtown, makes computer cases in interesting colors, or even with wood, instead of the drab plastics that are the norm outside the Macintosh dimension (a similar firm exists in Iowa). People spend $3 billion a year on personalized cell phone ring tones. Screen savers, and desktop backgrounds have also become high touch enclaves in an otherwise impersonal hgih tech world. A map of Wi-Fi users at MIT has shown that students are leaving study rooms for more comfortable lounges and coffee shops in droves, now that they can. Volkswagon's New Beetle released in 1998 comes with a bud vase, which has spawned a truly worthwhile analysis of the whole concept of a "bud vase feature" defined as: "functionality outside the core purpose of a product that evokes positive emotion about the product, and allows the user to express their personality or character in their use of the product."

Indeed, two of the baubles I am most on the prowl for (my father recently suggested that I move my search from the real world to google) are wooden belt buckles (since metal ones can trigger the metal detectors found in every court house and airport these days) and a bud vase for my Honda Accord (selections range from $185 hand made ones to $15 ones that are decidedly mass produced) as I am the sucker for flowers in our family. I haven't purchased either, however (there have to be some limits) so anyone out there making gifts lists, please take note.

Finally, Evil Mommy has a nice post on the joy of independent video rental shops, while Mile High Buzz considers the issue of what constitutes a corporate coffee house. I patronize both Starbucks and Blockbuster from time to time. Who doesn't? They are everywhere. But, given the chance I, and I think most people, value the diversity that independents bring to the market and favor them when I can as a result. Both posts explore the why's of that instinct.

Knowledge Saves Lives.

A hundred lives were saved because a 10 year old girl from England, Tilly Smith, knew the warning signs of a tsunami and insisted on getting the word out in the face of skeptical adults.

Two weeks before the Dec. 26, 2004, disaster that took at least 178,000 lives, Tilly had studied tsunamis in her geography class in Oxshott, a community of about 5,000 just south of London. The children were shown a video from an earlier tsunami.

Tilly was armed with that knowledge when the Smith family decided to go for a morning walk on the idyllic beach near the JW Marriott Phuket Resort and Spa.

Suddenly, "I saw this bubbling on the water, right on the edge, and foam sizzling just like in a frying pan,'' she remembered. "The water was coming in, but it wasn't going out again. It was coming in, and then in, and then in, towards the hotel.''

She recognized it as an indication that earthquake-driven waves were only minutes away.

Tilly turned to her mother, Penny, "and I said, 'Mum, I know there's something wrong, I know it's going to happen -- the tsunami.'''

When her mother replied that it was just a day at the beach, "Tilly went hysterical,'' recalls her father, Colin, who decided to return to the hotel with her 8-year-old sister, Holly.

While Colin Smith relayed Tilly's warning to the hotel staff, the girl dashed back toward the beach filled with about 100 people. She told the Japanese-born hotel chef of the danger, "and he knew the word tsunami because it's Japanese. But he never saw one.''

The chef and a nearby hotel security agent both spread the warning and the beach was swiftly evacuated -- minutes before the devastating waves struck.

The beach near the Marriott Hotel was one of the few in Phuket where no one was killed or seriously hurt.

Many reports of her story don't mention the fact that Tilly's knowledge only made a difference because she was certain enough to make a scene, in the face of skeptical parents, and because she wasn't willing to wait for her parents to take care of their own family and go through proper channels. Knowing is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition to save lives. Most of us are like Tilly, we aren't important enough by ourselves to make people act. We have to catch the ear of people who can make people act and present the facts with the certainty necessary to persaude them that action is required.

Of course, knowledge matters too. Tilly Smith's beach was one of only two locations in the entire Indian Ocean coast where the signs of a tsunami were recognized and people were evacuated. The other was the "Indonesian island of Simeulue, very close to the epicentre. Island folklore recounted an earthquake and tsunami in 1907 and the islanders fled to inland hills after the initial shaking —before the tsunami struck." As a result of an inability of almost everyone to read the warning signs: "The U.S. Geological Survey records the toll as 283,100 killed, 14,100 missing, and 1,126,900 people displaced." A third were children who went out to gather fish when the waters receded, unaware and with parents unaware, of the impending peril.

A high tech tsunami warning system can save lives, but hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved by a public education campaign similar to the familiar stop, drop and roll campaign for people on fire, or the campaign to get out and stay alive if you smell natural gas in Colorado. A 60 second commercial portraying what an impending tsunami looks like and telling people to run like hell for high ground when the waters recede would have been more than enough to save a majority of lives in this disaster. As estranged as I am from Boy Scouting, learning the signs of a tsunami was one of many useful tidbits of knowledge I remember from those days, along with tips on preventing deaths from flash floods, lightning strikes, tornados, fires and all manner of other disasters. Let's hope that low tech prevention isn't entirely squeezed out by high tech prevention before the next tsunami strikes.

Military Technology?

Colorado Luis alerts us to the invention of the self-foaming cold cappuccino. Behind his home brew blinders, however, he fails to see why anyone would want fermentation without alcohol. My guess: It is military technology. Generation Y soldiers can't imagine life without a capaccino, but producing foam in the field is not an easy thing. Hence, the self-foaming cold cappuccino.

Marijuana Prohibition History.

Marijuana was legal until October 2, 1937 in the United States. The first arrest under the new law was made in Colorado.

Intellegent Design Trial in Dover PA over.

The intelligent design trial in federal court in Dover, Pennsylvania concluded trial presentations on Friday. The trial was to a judge, John E. Jones III, rather than to a jury, so all that remains is for the judge to issue a ruling, expected by early January.

Notably, the forces of ignorance were represented by "Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Thomas More Law Center, which says that its mission is to defend the religious freedom of Christians." Who would have thought that the financial backing for ignoring science would come predominantly from Domino's Pizza (not that this is the only pizza chain with management that sponsors arch-conservative causes)? Also, it is ironic that a Catholic organization would go to the mat for a Christian movement, fundamentalist Christianity, the driving force behind Intelligent Design, that disagrees with the Catholic Church on evolution and believes that the Catholic Church is a corrupted instrument of Satan.

500 Posts.

And, November 3rd was the 4 month anniversary of this blog.

An Affordable Agenda For Colorado Democrats

Referendum C's passage has permitted life to go on with some semblance of normalcy in state government in Colorado. But, this hardly means that the Democrats who control both houses of the state legislature have free reign.

Budget Limitations

They can't increase taxes and most of Referendum C's money is already spoken for, with at least 90% ear marked for specific purposes. Recall:

30% for K-12 schools: textbooks, libraries, kindergarten and preschool, in-classroom instruction

30% for health care: For elderly, low-income and disabled people, programs to lower health insurance costs for individuals and small businesses

30% for community colleges and state colleges: Need-based financial aid, merit-based financial aid, College Opportunity Fund Program, which gives $2,400 a year directly to students to apply toward tuition costs

If Referendum D had passed the remainder would have gone towards:

ROADS AND BRIDGES

Work on 55 projects approved by the Colorado Department of Transportation:

$1.7 billion

K-12 SCHOOLS

Capital funds to repair dilapidated buildings in the poorest school districts. Typically, these funds are matched 2-1 by local districts, which means $220 million in total improvements: $147 million

HIGHER EDUCATION

Improvements and repairs to facilities at university, colleges and community colleges: $50 million

FIREFIGHTER AND POLICE PENSION FUND

Colorado's share of the state-local match to the pension fund, which the state has deferred for several years because of the budget crunch: $175 million

Thus, 85% of the remainder would have gone towards transportation, and I suspect that even in the absence of bonding authority under Referendum D, that the bulk of the remaining Referendum C money will go towards transportation.

Amendment 23 would have largely protected K-12 education from cuts in any case. Likewise Medicaid will largely be held harmless from state level cuts (although the Senate and House are both likely to pass significant cuts in this program at the federal level in then near future and rising medical costs also put pressure on the program). Referendum C will permit something approaching the status quo to continue in Colorado higher education from a funding perspective. Transportation budgets are likely to be a little higher, although, in the absence of bonding authority, the emphasis may be on fixing a larger numbers of smaller projects, rather than 55 major projects as originally planned.

From a budget perspective then, the 2006 session will be largely about priorities within major budgetary categories, rather than amongst them, and about cuts, if any, that can be made to the one major state budget item not addressed in Referendum C, the corrections budget.

Change We Can Afford

This doesn't mean that there aren't items in the Democratic agenda that can't be enacted at a modest budgetary cost. Some examples which were proposed, but did not become law from last session include:

* An end to employment discrimination based upon sexual orientation.
* A right for employees to take limited unpaid leave for school functions.
* A limited warranty of habitability in residential leases.
* A resolution of an ambiguity in the way eviction case deadlines are calculated in favor of tenants.
* A mandate that rape victims be informed of the emergency contraception option in emergency rooms.
* Establishing treatment rather than incarceration as the normative response to a first time hard drug possession cases in the courts.

Some other ideas that could go on the table include:

Elections
* Permit election day voter registration.
* Mandate verification receipts for electronic voting machines.
* Repeal criminal libel laws.
* A long term plan to implement a statewide voting center system where anyone, anywhere in the state to vote in any voting center in the state.
* Establish a small fund to investigate misuse of non-profits for political purposes by the attorney-general with an eye towards revoking corporate status under state law for such entities.
* Deregulate the caucus process to the extent possible, turning this over to political party rules.

Criminal Justice.
* Shifting the power to try juveniles as adults from prosecutors to judges.
* Shifting criminal justice resources from non-violent to violent offenders in connection with a redesignation of felony/misdemeanor classifications of offenses so that standard sentence enhancements become simply part of the offense grade.
* Establish strict liability for compensatory damages from the employers of law enforcement agents arising from the use of force which injures or kills innocent people, regardless of the intent of the office.
* Provide a right to attorneys fees for individuals acquitted at trial of a criminal offense when represented by a private attorney.
* Provide a right to compensatory damages equal to the median income in the state for each year in question (plus reimbursement of attorneys' fees) for people whose convictions are later overturned, regardless of whether or not the state's actions were wrongful.

Civil Liability.
* Enact laws to discourage the use of self settled asset protection trusts.
* Increase the damages threshold for single people without dependents to more than $250,000 in wrongful death cases, and the worker's compensation benefit for such people to more than a funeral allowance.
* Allow punitive damage awards in arbitration cases where they would be allowed under state law.
* Restore personal liability of management for unpaid wages under Colorado's wage claims act.
* The repeal of a law, apparently never successfully used, designed to make Colorado a center for foreigner's trying to hide their money from non-U.S. taxes and their creditors.
* Establish a statewide system for registering judgment liens (now handled seperately for each county).

Health Care
* Allow small businesses and self-employed people to buy into either the Medicaid system or the state employees health insurance systems at cost.
* Improve vaccination rates.
* Prohibit pharmacists from refusing to provide prescriptions for their patients.
* Allow non-prescription (or paraprofessional prescription) emergency contraception.

Business and Professional Regulation
* Mandate stronger penalties and stiffer enforcement from professional regulatory bodies.
* Mortgage broker regulation.
* Ban and establish serious remedies for car sellers who engage in yo-yo financing (i.e. giving vehicle owners the impression that lending is secure and then denying a loan and repossessing the car if less favorable terms aren't met).
* Prohibit a variety of lending practices in consumer transactions, including, but not limited to, negative amortization loans, excessive default interest rates, excessive late fees, etc.
* Require subprime mortgage lenders to disclose comparable costs of renting and prime rate lending, and a description of which customers which generally qualify for prime rate lending.

Transportation
* Improve car insurance compliance enforcement.
* Reinstate a modest form of no fault car insurance with a more comprehensive ban on suits in small cases (including property damage cases), a more limited medical expenses definition, and few, if any, collateral benefits (e.g. lost services).
* Prevent the "super slab" project on the Eastern Plains from being imposed without governmental consultation.
* Encourage modern traffic circles.

Education
* Start foreign language instruction at an earlier age (i.e. like 3rd grade).
* Permit school districts to impose impact fees on new residential development.
* Prohibit local governments from offering businesses property tax breaks without the consent of impacted school districts.
* Improve truancy enforcement and support for truant children and their families.

Why Don't People Give A Shit?

Hunter, a front page poster at Daily Kos, screams in outrage at the a House committee's vote in favor of cutting programs like food stamps, Medicaid (especially for children), student loans and child support enforcement by $54 billion in committee (the Senate appears to have spared food stamps and child support enforcement, but still cut Medicaid and student loans, producing a cut of $35 billion with just 52 votes in favor). Both also end farm subsidies for cotton and reduce them otherwise, which is less troubling as they are largely a form a corporate welfare. The bill would also open up ANWAR to oil drilling.

Why? So that they can pass a $70 billion tax cut for the rich next week.

What is wrong with the American people? Votes like this should be political suicide. But, Republicans vote the wrong way again and again, and Democrats vote the right way again and again, and Peoria doesn't seem to notice. Are Republicans evil, ignorant, or willfully ignorant? I'm inclined to go with evil, but I'll entertain other suggestions.

Singapore and Human Rights.

Singapore is one of the worst offenders in the world when it comes to executing people who don't deserve it. Two weeks from now, it plans to execute a man for his first drug smuggling offense. Don't expect a word of protest from the Bush Administration.

The Denver Election Commission.

Young Angry Liberal and Common Cause have been sparring in e-mails over a Common Cause proposal to replace the Election Commission with an elected Clerk and Recorder who appoints a director for elections, the norm in almost every other county in Colorado.

The Common Cause proposal is horrible. Case in point: Tracy Baker. A bad Democratic clerk and recorder in Denver would be re-elected just as easily as a bad Republican clerk and recorder was in Arapahoe County.

Other cases in point for not having partisan elected officials run either ministerial record keeping or elections include Katherine Harris, a blatantly biased force in the 2000 Presidential election in Florida as Secretary of State, and the late Colorado Secretary of State Victoria Buckley, whose performance of the ministerial duties of her office was so poor that the legislature stripped this constitutional post of some of its responsibilities so that they wouldn't be mishandled.

Removing the election duties from the non-partisan aspects of the job of clerk and recorder allows a Mayor to appoint a qualified administrator to handle this important but apolitical post. I trust a Mayor whose success depends on public approval of the operations of the City and County of Denver to choose a qualified person for the clerk and recorder job more than I trust a political party, even my own political party, to do so. An ability to run a political campaign and get donations to run advertisements does not translate into an ability to process deeds, wedding licenses, mortgage recordings, or plats efficiently.

Is the election commission doing the best job possible right now? No, it is not. But, the officially non-partisan elected offices are not doing poorly because they are non-partisan. The system isn't broken and the election commission is not on the take. What is wrong is that the people who got elected weren't the best people for the job. Rather than trying to abolish the election commission, Common Cause should take a more obvious course: it should recruit and support more qualified candidates to run the election commission. Sometimes the voters screw up and the problem is generally self-correcting.

Advanced Features Rant.

One of the historically wonderful aspects of the Macintosh R&D culture has been the recognition that less is often more. Unlike Windows mice, which have two buttons, Mac mice have just one. The genius of the iPod is that it has so few buttons, not that it has so many features. Mac people figured out that the 3.5" floppy had outlived its usefulness before its Wintel cousins.

This insight is not widespread. Extra features are often downright annoying.

For example, Microsoft Word automatically tries to format lists for you, rather than using a WYSIWYG methodology. Getting default formatting conventions out of MS Word documents requires persistence, the navigation of multiple layers of obscure settings windows in non-obvious places, and lots of time. While Word Perfect (which, alas, is not the industry standard) allows you to easily see every bit of formatting in your document and delete it from the main page if you don't want it, the reveal formatting function of MS Word is far less transparent. It can easily take half an hour or more to figure out why there is a blank line separating two footnotes, for example, despite all of your best efforts to delete it, for example. Indeed, that particular problem often can't be removed with the delete key at all, you often have to go to multiple layers of menus you wouldn't naturally even think to consult.

I discovered and finally disabled some other annoying hidden features in the track pad mouse substitute on my Toshiba laptop. It so happens that it designates an invisible portion of the interface to automatically trigger the forward and back buttons in internet explorer. If you are trying to fill in a comment box and need to move around it with the track pad, the result is often losing everything you've types in the process and not knowing why. Another hidden "feature" devoted parts of the pad to automatic scrolling, and another made the pointer move even when you weren't doing anything. Aaargh! To allow such features is, barely, tolerable. To make them defaults without mentioning anything prominently in the short version of the users guides is human systems engineering heresy.

Software designers (and hardware designers), please, keep your interfaces as simple and intuitive as possible. If someone couldn't easily figure it out without reading the instructions, then you shouldn't do it. The measure of a products quality is not how many features it has, but how many features the average user who doesn't have the instruction book at hand feels comfortable using on a regular basis.

Cubic Zirconia Turns 70.

While I titled a previous post about man made genuine diamonds "fake diamonds", those diamonds are real, indistinguishable from natural diamonds. Cubic Zirconia, a diamond look alike found in department stores everywhere, in contrast, is a fake diamond. According to Science News, it was first produced seventy years ago (may require registration) in October.

It is worth remembering also, that while cubic zirconia is far less valuable because it is far easier to make than diamonds are, that it is pretty and has some desirable properties in its own right, it "can be heated to incandescence and dipped into cold water without cracking, is highly resistant to acids, and ranks next to carborundum in hardness."

Circumcision

The health benefits of circumcision have been the subject of a long standing debate influenced greatly by religious traditions (Jews have practiced infant circumcision for centuries, while the traditional Islamic practice is to circumcise boys in early adolescence). One health benefit, however, is now definitively established. In men, "circumcision reduced HIV risk by 60 percent". Why?

Uncircumcised men have soft foreskin around the head of the penis containing many cells that are easily infected by HIV, according to epidemiologist Robert C. Bailey of the University of Illinois at Chicago. These cells, called Langerhans' cells, "tend to be close to the surface," he says. Once infected, he adds, "they carry the virus deeper," to the immune system T cells that HIV most commonly infects.

Circumcision removes the foreskin. During healing after the procedure, the protein keratin toughens the skin of the penis, which reduces HIV penetration there, Bailey says.

The trial examining the question in South Africa was called off three months early because the benefits of circumcision were so clear.

Getting off death row.

Not everyone on death row belongs there. But, walking out of the jail doors with a fake ID is not an approach to doing so that I recommend. This is just one more reason to believe that the Texas criminal justice system is an abject failure.

Castro and Chavez

Fidel Casto, who has run Cuba more or less single handedly since 1959 and Hugo Chavez, the fairly recently elected far left wing President of Venezula, are arch-enemies of American neo-conservatives. Neither even offers a fig leaf of respect for traditional free market economic theory.

But, neither man has been a complete failure to his people, and there are far better candidates for our country's shit list than these two men.

Consider Cuba. Despite decades of a U.S. embargo, the life expectencies of men and women respectively are 74 and 79 years, literacy is a respectable 97%, and per capita GDP as of 2002 was $2,300 a person, not high by U.S. standards, but about the same as Boliva, Honduras, Nicaragua, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and more than Haiti, most of which got the way they were due to right wing dictatorships. Considering that the United States has crushed Cuba's tourism revenues and has also squelched trade with what would otherwise have been its largest trading partner (a particularly devistating blow to Cuban cigar exports), it isn't stunning that it lags a little in the region. Cuba is certainly not anywhere near the state of desperation of fellow communist regime North Korea which is far poorer and literally has seen large numbers of its people starve to death.

Chavez is no slouch either. Consider, right now Bush has a 35% approval rating (according to a CBS poll) and Dick Cheney's approval ratings are at 19%. Hugo Chavez, in contrast, whom Bush as systematically sought to undermine and Pat Robertson publicly wondered if the United States should assassinate, has a 77% approval rating in Venezula where he is President, on a program considerably to the left of FDRs.

He's riding particularly high among the country's urban poor, thanks to the proliferation of health, education and welfare programs known as misiones and the deployment of 23,000 Cuban doctors, teachers, physiotherapists, sports coaches and literacy experts in the squalid barrios of Caracas and other major cities.

Emboldened by his political comeback, Chavez proclaimed himself a born-again socialist during a visit to Havana last May and has tacked a far more radical course in domestic policy since the beginning of the year. The expropriation of large and supposedly idle ranchlands and industrial installations has been accompanied by the formation of tens of thousands of rural and urban cooperatives, many of which were launched with government seed money. Chavez has declared war on capitalism and its underlying profit motive, and has mooted the idea of paying Venezuelan workers in something other than old-fashioned wages. "Being rich is bad," he has argued. "Corruption is a product of capitalism."

Now, I certainly don't want policies in the United States that look anything like those of Cuba or Venezula. But, the world community is also starting to realize that free market policies that make sense in mature post-industrial democracies aren't necessary the best solution for developing countries fraught with intense inequalities of wealth, stagnant out dated economies, wide spread poverty and weak political institutions and democratic traditions.

Somebody who has a 77% approval rating has to be doing something right. So does a country with long life expectencies despite low per capita incomes. The U.S. should drop its embargo with Cuba in favor of a policy of trade and engagement, and drop its efforts to undermine Chavez as an exercise in doctrine anti-communism, and instead focus its efforts on regimes which commit far more eggregious harms to their citizens, like the one currently in place in Sudan.

Ignorance=Death

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"

-- Voltaire

As I've noted before on this blog there is now a highly effective vaccine to prevent HPV, the main cause of cervical cancer. Inhuman forces of ignorance that call themselves Christians oppose this vaccine, claiming that it would promote promiscuity. These Christians deserve fates in this world as bad the hell they preach about on Sundays. A lengthy diary at Daily Kos explains in very personal terms the fate those Christians want to impose on thousands of women every year.

You could live in Alabama.

If you lived in Alabama, repeat possession of marijuana for personal use would be a felony offense for which 500 people are sent to prison terms (typically, at least a year) annually. In Colorado, the penalty for the same offense would be a $100 fine.

XM-8 Abandoned.

The folks in defense procurement do not read Voltaire. As a result, the do not know that the best is the enemy of the good.

The XM-8 was a new and improved M-16 assault rifle (it also would have replaced the M-4 carbine). The main selling points were that it was a little lighter and much more reliable, even in adverse conditions for a similar cost. It wasn't going to be terribly expensive. For the cost of 7 F-22s or one new destroyer, they could have been made available to every single Marine and Army solider. Please recall, the Marines and the Army are currently fighting two regional wars and seeing troops killed every day. Neither the Navy nor the Air Force are making this kind of sacrifice. This program has now been cancelled, however (full text here of the government's announcement in Word format). So despite having an improved version of something we already have which is immediately ready to field test, the military is simply going to abandon the whole enterprise and start over from scratch in the hope of someday, many years from now, finding something better. You know what they say about military intelligence.

Sudan Still Sucks.

All hell is breaking loose again in Darfur, Sudan, despite peace treaties that supposedly dealt with some of the problem a few months ago.

The movie "The Constant Gardener" has a scene that aptly displays the kind of violence villages are experiencing (think tribal raiding parties with automatic weapons that are raping, pillaging, kidnapping and killing), even though it apears to place the scene in question in Kenya, rather than in Sudan, where these incidents are more common.

I imagine that the British are aware of what's going on, but the main stream media in the United States is virtually oblivious. A sample of the events there:

[G]unfire in el-Geneina, capital of West Darfur, comes after an unprecedented evacuation of non-essential UN personnel because of violence in the region. All roads from el-Geneina remain “red no-go” because of insecurity, paralyzing humanitarian organizations and leaving more and more vulnerable civilians completely cut-off from food, medicine, and water (for example, many tens of thousands of displaced persons depend upon water that is pumped by engines requiring fuel, which cannot now be transported). The UN has offered contradictory numbers on the numbers of affected people in West Darfur, but the area coordinator for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in West Darfur, Andy Pendleton, would seem to have particular credibility:

"‘With each passing day we are in a race against time to get assistance to over half a million people to whom we have lost regular access,’ Andy Pendleton, area coordinator for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in West Darfur, said in el-Geneina on Sunday. ‘The situation is desperate, more desperate than ever before,’ he warned.” (UN Integrated Regional Information Networks [el-Geneina], October 12, 2005)

That the violence throughout Darfur is accelerating, and indeed reaching unprecedented levels in various respects, is confirmed in many other UN accounts. Two weeks ago, Juan Mendez, UN special advisor on the prevention of genocide, declared of the attack on Aro Sharow camp for displaced persons: “Until last week, there have never been concerted, massive attacks of an indiscriminate nature against civilians in camps in Darfur” (Washington Post, October 10, 2005). What we must remember is that the attack on Aro Sharow, a camp of some 4,000-5,000 displaced people from African tribal groups, was conducted by Khartoum’s military proxy, the Arab militia force known as the Janjaweed. The collusion between the Janjaweed and the National Islamic Front, which retains full control of the military and intelligence services in Sudan, was recently underscored by the African Union:

“On 28 September 2005, just four days ago, some reportedly 400 Janjaweed Arab militia on camels and horseback went on the rampage in Arusharo, Acho and Gozmena villages in West Darfur. Our reports also indicate that the day previous, and indeed on the actual day of the attack, Government of Sudan helicopter gunships were observed overhead. This apparent coordinated land and air assault gives credence to the repeated claim by the rebel movements of collusion between the Government of Sudan forces and the Janjaweed/Arab militia. This incident [ ] was confirmed not only by our investigators but also by workers of humanitarian agencies and NGOs in the area.” (Transcript of Kingibe press conference, Khartoum, October 1, 2005)

The final death toll from the attack on Aro Sharow was at least 35 defenseless displaced persons. The entire population was made to flee, and the UN High Commission for Refugees estimates that about 25% of their flimsy shelters were destroyed. Kingibe went on to emphasize yet another attack, in North Darfur, that again saw Khartoum’s regular military forces attacking civilians:

“The following day, a clearly premeditated and well rehearsed combined operation was carried out by the Government of Sudan military and police at approximately 11am in the town of Tawilla and its IDP camp in North Darfur. The Government of Sudan forces used approximately 41 trucks and 7 land cruisers in the operation which resulted in a number of deaths, massive displacement of civilians. [ ] During the attack, thousands from the township and the IDP camp and many humanitarian workers were forced to seek refuge near the AU camp for personal safety and security.” (Transcript of Kingibe press conference, Khartoum, October 1, 2005)

Situations like Darfur are one the reasons that I am not a pacifist. A single brigade of Army troops, perhaps cobbled together from several different countries, would be all that it would take to bring these organized attacks from the outside on the people of Darfur to a decisive end.

Hat tip to Curious Stranger for link.

Fake Diamond Economics.

Are fake diamonds really going to pull the bottom out from under natural diamond prices? Maybe not.

In a nutshell, the raw materials are cheap, but the factories and brain power need to make it run are not.

The Imprisoning Society.

[A]bout one in every 31 adults [was] under correctional supervision at the end of 2004, compared with about 1 in 36 adults in 1995 and about 1 adult in every 88 in 1980

Source.

The change is not due to rising crime rates. It is due to different sentencing laws.

Don't Forget Poland.

Perhaps now we know why President Bush felt Poland's role as a U.S. ally was so important, despite the modest number of troops provided. They provided a home for human rights free torture centers run by the CIA. Romania, Afghanistan and Thailand were also involved.

Campaign Nuts and Bolts.

The Vote Yes For C and D campaigns, which I spent election day working for, was one of the best ones that I have seen.

A big share of a good campaign is basically non-partisan work that election officials should do, but don't do, or don't do well. For example, when a voter was unsure of where to vote, we could ask their address, get a map on the screen of a computer, and not only tell them which precinct they were in, but how to get there from their home. We spent a lot of time reminding people we had reason to believe would support us (by virtue of location or party affiliation or contacts with us) to turn in the absentee ballots that they had requested. We found people to get voters with no viable transportation to their polling places, or to get ballots to them if that wasn't feasible. We answered questions of people who weren't sure what to do, for example, if they had requested, but not received an absentee ballot.

Like all political campaigns, a big part of the effort at the grass roots level is vapid. The campaign spent large quantities of time, money and effort, simply putting up signs all over the state saying "Vote Yes For C and D", and waving them at street corners. If voters were simply logical analysts of their own interests, signs like this shouldn't matter at all, because they contain no information in and of themselves except for a motto ("Moving Colorado Forward") so vague it could have stood for just about any issue or candidate. But, signs are basically mini-endorsements. If people in your neighborhood put up signs, then maybe you'd agree. If they don't, maybe you shouldn't care either.

This isn't to say that there weren't more substantive messages. TV spots, editorials in the paper and press releases and events designed to lead to free media all, at least, impart some idea of what the issue is about, which you wouldn't even know from looking at the signs. Lining up endorsements and getting the word out about them also mattered. So too did talking with a small proportion of people who actually want to discuss the issues, in debates and door to door campaign conversations. But, a remarkably large share of voters barely read the papers, don't attend political events and have never talked to anyone about the issues, so the basics have to be established before anything else matters.

Ultimately, I am not a person who thinks that what is wrong with our political system is that we spend too much money. Indeed, I think that we spend far too little money on informing people about elections and making them run smoothly, which is what campaign money goes towards doing. (Yes, there is the issue of money going to misinform people too, of course). In economics, spending money on a fixed prize at the end of the rainbow is called rent seeking, and this kind of behavior is a concern because money spent seeking rents is often not productive itself (i.e. campaign money doesn't provide government services). But, this certainly wasn't the case for Referenda C and D. Both sides combined spend about 1% of the amount of money at stake on campaigning. If twice as much spending would have left the public better informed, I'd be all for it.

The problem is not that there is too much money, but that the money is too hard to raise and that it often comes with strings attached.

Scared Republicans

The liberal myth about the Republican party is that it is a party of secure privilege. But, no political party can manage on privilege alone. There simply aren't enough people who identify themselves as privileged. No, the Republican party is, perhaps more than anything, a party unified by the fear of people with something to lose.

Liberals are uncomfortable with even acknowledging the kinds of fears that drive the Republican party. Republicans are terrified of crime. They are afraid of central cities. They are afraid of blacks, Hispanics and immigrants of all stripes. They are afraid of Muslims and atheists. They are afraid of bad schools, bad influences and questionable boyfriends. They are afraid of bad discipline and loose morals. They are afraid of government. They are afraid of the rest of the world. They are religious because so much of their fate of beyond their own control. They value savings and investment because they fear that a downturn could hurt them. They fear universal health care because they fear it could compromise the plans they have for themselves or bankrupt them with high taxes. They fear having their jobs or livelihoods offshored or otherwise endangered. They are not confident that it is possible to take care of everyone and want to put their own families first. Republican men are afraid of loosing their manhood -- no Republican would even joke, as Howard Dean did, about being a metrosexual. Republican women are afraid of the social fabric coming apart at their expense.

I've always lived in cities or small towns, so it has taken me a long time to understand, to believe in the existence of, the fears that drives suburban geography.


Republicans want cars rather than buses or rail, because they fear crime (or at least discomforting breaches of etiquette) from their fellow passengers. Republicans want cars and offices to be accessable only by car so that people too poor to own cars can't bother them their. If you are surrounded by people who have, you restrict your worries to outsiders and want to make it hard for them to reach you.

This isn't the only reason that Republicans want to live in the suburbs, of course. Schools in neighborhoods where no one poor can afford to live are going to have higher test scores and the belief that schools with higher test scores are better is widely held, although not necessarily accurate. The high cost of urban real estate is also a major factor. Urban neighborhoods that most suburbanites would consider living in (with race, schools and crime all factoring in as major concerns in how those decisions are actually amde) are very expensive compared to suburban neighborhoods that they would be willing to live in. A 1/15th of an acre city lot in Washington Park is worth about $150,000. A much larger lot in the suburbs can cost as little as $20,000.

This post isn't devoted to finding solutions to all of those fears, but until one comes to terms with the insecurity of those voters, one can't even begin to win them over.

Gloves Off?

Andrew Romanoff, Democratic Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives, was the principal author and cheerleader of Referenda C and D. He knew he needed Republican backing from Governor Bill Owens to get the measure passed, and he was right. In an unwritten part of the deal to secure support from Owens, Romanoff basically muzzled his caucus in the 2005 legislative session, despite the fact that Democrats controlled both the House and Senate in Colorado.

Now, the deal is over. Democrats have Referendum C which will give them the flexibility, as the party in control of the legislature, to put together a reasonable budget, rather than a TABOR driven one. The main consolation prize for Owens, funds for 55 major road and bridge projects through a major issue of new debt, didn't pass, in large part due to Owens' failure to rally Republican support. There were, of course, plenty of items in Referendum D that Democrats would have been happy to have funding for, like shoring up pension funds for union firefighters and policemen, and capital funds to fix crumbling school buildings, but this was a secondary piece of the puzzle for Democrats.

Of course, Governor Owens can veto just about any Democratic legislation and can probably sustain most of those vetos in the face of override attempts, as the Democratic majority is slim and on many issues, a sufficient number of Republicans, as divided as that caucus is in Colorado, would back his decision to veto legislation. But, the end of the gentleman's agreement that muzzled the last legislative session means that now Democrats can introduce what they want and turn any bill that is vetoed into a campaign issue for 2006. If they pick wedge issues, like non-discrimination in employment against gays, and emegency contraception access for rape victims, as it did last year, this will force Republicans to either cooperate or defend their unpopular votes in 2006. This year, however, unlike last year, the wedge issues won't be just on social issues, they will also be on economic issues, which made up the bulk of the matters held back in the last session.

Democrats still have a delicate balance to keep. They genuinely don't want to be seen as anti-business, and in Colorado, they aren't, but they do want to present a credible and distinct alternative to the Republican party in Colorado. But, there is enough on the Democratic to do list, after decades out of power in Colorado, that picking and choosing the most popular items from their agenda shouldn't be too difficult.

Real Compassion.

Governor Vilsack of Iowa, a moderate Democrat, showed the kind of compassionate conservatism that many of George W. Bush's non-Texas supporters had hoped for when he ran for office the first time, by restoring the civil rights of all released felons in the state with his pardon power. We want to draw ex-cons back into legitimate society, not force them out of it by preventing them from voting. The courts upheld this exercise of his pardon power.

Referendum D

The Denver Post (528,947 to 537,375 with 2,991 out of 3,098 precints counted) and Rocky Mountain News (529,293 to 543,521 with 3145 out of 3219 precints counted), now appear to concur that Referendum D has lost by more than the 0.5% margin needed to trigger a recount, although their numbers are not quite identical. Also, both have come considerably closer to complete results. Given known discrepencies between election officials in Denver and El Paso Counties and the Post over the number of precincts in the county, and a number of other errors made throughout the evening by the Post, I'm inclined to guess that the Rocky is closer to the mark, althought the differences are not huge.

At any rate, while I was in the minority at the Colorado Pols office pool in predicting a win on Referendum C, others came closer to guessing the number of votes that would be cast for the measure. I was unduly optimistic. Oh well.

Intellectual Property Litigation

Al Lewis wrote yesterday about two jewelry makers who incorporate ancient quotes into their jewelry, Mark Becker of Denver, and Jeanine Payer of San Francisco, a decidedly higher end jeweler.

UPDATE (December 31, 2018): Becker's current website is found here. END UPDATE.

Jeanine Payor sued Becker for "trade dress infringement", i.e. copying a look and feel, which at the outset is a good indication that her claim is a weak one. But, her suit was not so frivolous that it was prevented from going to trial, and my point today is not to discuss frivolous intellectual property claims. My point today is to point out how expensive our system of litigating intellectual property claims which are not frivolous can be, even when the basic dispute is very simple, as it was in this case, and to point out how strongly influenced third parties can be in intellectual property cases:

Becker turned to a group called the Colorado Lawyers for the Arts, a nonprofit that provides free legal services to its members. The group usually helps artists with more mundane legal problems, such as setting up nonprofit entities, executive director Jim Conder said. . . .The group put Denver intellectual property attorney Christopher Beall of Faegre & Benson on the case. Beall, in turn, got help from law firm Latham & Watkins in New York.

The legal team spent a year and a half and more than 2,000 hours defending the case for free. Had they been paid, it would have cost more than $500,000, Beall said. For his part, Becker agreed to pay expenses, which he said total about $90,000. Last week, a jury ruled in Becker's favor.

"This case was an important victory for artistic freedom and free competition," said Beall. "In vindicating Mark, the jury sent a powerful message that artists should be free to compete with each other ... even if their styles of expression are somewhat similar."

First, $590,000 to litigate whether two lines of jewelry are similar is outrageous. Car accidents, which sometimes involve far more complex facts, are frequently litigated for $50,000 or less. Sometimes the system can allow too much due process.

But, second, why would a bunch of artists and lawyers freely give money to a fund undertaking litigation which would seem primarily to benefit Mark Becker. The recovering alcoholic isn't that nice a guy. Of course, the answer is simple. If the advocacy process were allowed to run its course, without their aid, Becker would likely have lost his case and other artists could have been at a disadvantage as a result in the future. Their economic interest in that not happening is clearly illustrated by the fact that they are willing to chip in to a legal defense fund that superficially is benefitting him. (Of course, it is a bit more complex than that, lawyers are expected to do free legal work from time to time and litigating whether sets of jewelry are similar for 2,000 hours is much more entertaining than handling several child custody cases involving destitute parents, which is a more typical pro bono assignment.)

Part of the problem with our intellectual property laws is that they encourage blowing up trifles like this, which are relatively unimportant economically for either party, into very expensive litigation. In the absence of trade dress rules, Payer could still have prevented Becker from producing the offending jewelry. But, instead of doing so by bringing suit to demand that Becker cease and desist, he would have had to pay Becker some sum of money, certainly less than $590,000, in exchange for a promise to stop competing with Payer in the future. Payer would have gotten what he wanted, no court would have establishing any lasting legal principles that implicated third parties, and Becker could be better off economically than he is under this scenario where he still up upside down to the tune of $90,000, simply for the privilege of continuing his business.

As long as intellectually property rights are overly expansive, to the extent that a broad reading of them threatens everyone in the profession, money will surface to fight battles royal over relatively minor cases like this one. And, those litigation costs are largely dead weight losses to society, as are the opportunities lost by artists refraining from producing works for fear that they might be in a gray area that might subject them to prolonged litigation even if they might ultimately prevail in court on the merits, as Becker did. What attorney in good conscious would advise Becker to make the jewelry that he did if they had seen this lawsuit coming?

Process Matters.

Mile High Delphi makes a worthwhile observation about this year's election over C and D.

[I]f the City and County of Denver had an all mail election, with a turnout of 50%, instead of the projected 42%, Referendum C would have gotten about 14K additional votes.

Even more to the point, D would have passed, which would have been better for firefighers, policemen, educational institutions needing capital improvements, and our state's roads and bridges.

Mail ballot counties had a much more chaotic election this year than Denver did, but I'd be willing to trade it for a higher turnout (although turnout was actually over the predicted 42%).

Final Tax Reform Panel Report.

The Tax Profs Blog has links to the final report of the President's Advisory Commission on Tax Reform and ample analysis of it by a number of think tanks. The two plans are described in gross outline on page 5 of this executive summary. One is called the Simplified Income Tax Plan and the other is called the Growth and Investment Tax Plan. The later is more radical in its treatment of the taxation of businesses.

The plans are neo-conservative wet dreams, which should be dead on arrival in Congress. They make the law more complex for the 65% of taxpayers who don't itemize their tax returns, and many who don't. The plans exacerbate the existing tax law's overtaxation of earned income, relative to unearned income, in a manner that makes the tax law unnecessarily complex. The plans discourage employers from providing their workers with health insurance. The plans penalize people in places like New York and California, which have high state and local taxes and high housing costs, as well as older workers in companies with defined benefit retirement plans, which are abolished. Both student loan interest and tuition tax credits, both of which promote higher education, are eliminated, with only a general "saving for everything" type account retained. Only a few of the ideas have any merit, even standing alone.

The taken as a whole plans are a recipe for building an American aristocracy, not a balanced growing economy. We, as a nation, can do far better in devising a just and managably simple taxation system.

Secret CIA Prisons.

The reason that Dick Cheney is so hot to exempt the CIA from torture rules is apparently that the CIA maintains a secret gulag of prisons in foreign countries with whom we are not at war, at which torture is routinely practiced. If you don't think that this is un-American, you scare me.

More Election 2005 Winners

Denver's results are 96%+ complete.

So, it is now possible to say with some certainty that Jill Conrad has defeated Brad Buchanan, apparently a function of the fact that Conrad has a Democratic Party endorsement (which left questions about the party affiliations of Brad Buchanan) and a Denver Public School's employee's endorsement, as well as a longer history of involvement in the schools. None of the factors was strong, and the race itself was close (with the major newspaper endorsements and endorsement from leading political figures split, and with the platforms of the two candidates being almost identical), but it was enough to give Jill Conrad the lead in the race.

Issue 100, which passed by a healthy margin, sought to bring parity to marijuana treatment and alcohol treatment under city ordinances. But, it was merely symbolic, as state anti-marijuana statutes remain on the books. It is, however, also notable that only one city councilman, Charlie Brown, who represents East Washington Park, vehemently opposed the measure, while others, like at large member Doug Linkhart, took a "whose cares?" position on the issue, rather than reflexively opposing it. While the federal government continues to vigorously enforce marijuana laws, putting occassional federal marijuana crime defendants away for long prison terms and making a large proportion of all its arrests and prosecutions for marijuana possession, the American public in Issue 100, in "low priority" municipal mandates in Seattle, Washington and Oakland, California, and in medical marijuana cases in a significant minority of states including Colorado and California, have repeatedly made clear that marijuana is not a menance, despite the fact that few major political figures have actually endorsed loosening legal prohibitions for marijuana. Conservative reefer madness may take time to abate at the legislative level, but the average person simply isn't worried about pot. (A similar measure in Telluride was defeated, but only thirteen out of more than six hundred voters would have had to have voted differently for that to reach the opposite result -- it was hardly a blowout defeat.)

Finally, it is increasingly clear that despite rumors of sinking polls on the eve of the election and poor turnout in key jurisdictions, Referendum C has passed in Colorado as a whole, with good performances in both the suburbs and rural areas compared to pre-election expectations, and good turnout in Denver (well beyond the 42% expected by Denver election officials). Referendum D remains a very close matter statewide, but D does not have to pass for C to be adopted, even though C does have to pass for D to be adopted. This is good news, for the reasons discussed at length already on this blog, but the fact that it was so close deserves more attention. This was a bipartisan measure adopted in the face of a dire budget crisis with widespread support from about 1,096 nonprofits in the state. The campaign was well organized, well funded and had highly committed high profile leaders. Yet, it was hardly a slam dunk. This dynamic is central to Colorado politics and needs to change if Colorado is to prosper.

Undervoting

One of the complaints frequently lodged against using elections to decide issues is that uninformed people will vote. This isn't necessarily the case. In Denver, about 30% of the people who voted on Referendum C, the top of the ticket issue in Colorado this year, did not vote for an at large school board candidate, despite the fact that everyone in Denver who voted for Referendum C was also entitled to vote for the at large school board seat. The reluctance to vote in that race is understandable, as the candidates did little to distinguish themselves from each other, and information about the race in the press, in general, was meager.

Denver Election 2005: Early Winners.

I'll be up late watching the results for Referenda C and D (overwhelmingly supported in Denver), for which I spent about thirteen hours today campaigning, and the Denver At-Large School Board election, which will be won either by Brad Buchanan and Jill Conrad, who have together captured 88% of the votes at this early hour. Issue 100, the marijuana issue, is also surprisingly close.

The remaining issues and candidate races don't look close. Issue 1A (a new lodger's tax to pay for tourism), issue 1B (debrucing in Denver, i.e. eliminating TABOR spending, but not tax increase caps), issue 1C (housecleaning charter amendments), and issue 3C (a tax increase for a merit based pay system in the school district) all have comfortable leads. Incumbent Michelle Moss, in School Director District #2, Jeanne S. Kaplan, in School Director District #3, and Kevin Patterson, in School Director District #4, will all win by overwhelming margins of victory against token or non-existent opposition.

Referred Issue 5A concerning a tax increase for Green Valley's metro district, basically, Denver's "copville" is going down to an overwhelming defeat, which is also not too surprising, has there has been almost no visible campaign in the media to justify the increase.

The big picture is that Denver voters are willing to pay taxes to get services, while the state at large has a very large minority of the population that reflexively opposes any revenue increasing measure, no matter how dire the consequences.

American Cars

The October numbers clearly show that Americans don't want to buy American cars unless they have steep discounts. With the end of employee pricing:

General Motors, the world's biggest automaker, said car sales fell 12 percent and truck sales 30 percent. . . .

Ford said its car sales fell 11 percent to 67,958 units, while the truck side fell 31 percent to 131,889. . . .

DaimlerChrysler sales were not as bad, but still fell three percent to 183,163 cars and trucks.

In contrast, Honda and Toyota saw growing sales. It is also notable that the most succesful lines in the Big Three were brands which, until recently, were not American brands:

For October, British-based Land Rover was the only Ford brand showing year-over-year increases, up 40.2 percent to 3,753 vehicles.

Land Rover sales have increased 32.7 percent this year while another British subsidiary, Jaguar, has seen sales fall 33.5 percent.

DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes-Benz group helped buck the trend. The first full month of sales for its R-Class vehicles brought a slight gain to 18,349 vehicles sold, up from 18,323 a year ago.

Until the American automobile industry can make better cars it will continue to be in trouble.

Vote Today.

If you haven't voted already, you need to vote today. The polls are open until 7 p.m. and you have a right to take time off from work to vote if you must.

The decisions on Referenda C and D will deeply influence Colorado's future. The polls show that the vote on these issues will be close. Your vote matters. Vote Yes on C and D.