Executive Bonuses

I just found out that Fannie Mae gave $600k bonuses to their top execs. Odd that that's not in the news...

Budget Surplus's and Deficits

This graph is circulating around the internet and evidently started out on the Washington Post. I have several questions about it, but the most important to me is how do they compute these official surplus/deficit numbers? I've been claiming for years that there was no surplus in 2000 and Clinton's insane 10 years projected surplus was based on the assumption not only that the recession of 2000 (weren't we recovering from that by March?) would never happen but that we would continue the dot-com stock boom forever. But here's a graph stating (probably from CBO numbers) that there was an actual $236 billion dollar surplus in 2000.

In 1999 the public debt was 5.656 trillion, in 2000 it was 5.674 trillion, and in 2001 5.807 trillion. How do you run a $236 billion surplus and end with 20 billion less than you started? I assume it has something to do with off-the-books accounting for Social Security and Medicare (which despite Obama's promise to bring war funding on the books, he for some reason hasn't moved to move those onto the books. Perhaps because then the Democrats would have to quit claiming war spending is the biggest expense of the federal government) but I really would like to know how that happens.

Since I've posted this, I'd like to go ahead and address a few other things about these numbers. It is first off not true that Obama inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression. By nearly any reasonable measure the economy was worse at the end of the Carter administration than at the end of the Bush one. I also think it strange that people keep harping on his inheriting a recession. I actually remember early 2001 and the fact that the dot-com recession started under Clinton didn't seem all that interesting to most people then. By late 2001 we were already talking about how the economy was recovering from Bush's recession but it was a jobless recovery.

He did inherit an insane deficit, but it's not a very convincing argument that after 8 years of Bush he got a 400 billion dollar deficit (including the first part of TARP 1, I think) from by far the worst year of the Bush administration so he needs to spend on average more than double that every year of his administration. I'm rarely shocked by a lack of logic, but it truly shocks me that people think that President 43 having the worst deficit ever makes it reasonable for President 44 to be twice that bad.

Obama's impressive bipartisanship.

I just saw this note on Obama's permanent campaign PAC asking people to call overly conservative Democrats who oppose his "common-sense agenda".

I must admit. I had my doubts that Obama could bring a new era of bipartisanship to Washington, but given the impressive list of Democrats he has alienated it looks like he has managed it. Despite almost overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate he's still worried about getting his programs through a very bipartisan opposition.

States Rights?

Do states have any rights anymore? I heard this morning that the stimulus bill has a provision that the legislatures of the state can accept conditional "aid" from the Fed even if that particular State's law or constitution says the governor needs to approve it. I knew the Congress felt that Federalism might not be that great of an idea since state governments couldn't fund their programs so they need to take money from other states to even things out, but this is a ridiculous intrusion into the workings of the state governments and I sincerely hope that some Governor challenges it and gets it overturned in the Supreme Court (though that's probably political suicide) just to keep the office out of the fed's hands.

A great idea

I, sadly, don't know where the post was because I wasn't thinking about blogging on it when it happened, but sometime this week there was a note about how Gov. Jindal was saying he would have to evaluate the conditions on the money given to the states in the Obama spending bill. (I refuse to refer to it as a "stimulus package" because I don't think that was even its intent. Certainly there were progressives, Obama likely among them, who think that huge amounts of spending on liberal priorities will help the economy, but as Podhoretz brilliantly illustrates, the reason they wanted the spending bill was that they wanted the spending. They just happened to also think it would help stimulate the economy.) This is a wise move because frequently Federal grants are something like a dealer offering $5000 off on a new car. This doesn't help much if you spend $20,000 and don't need a new car.

My real interest, though, came in one of the commenters, who got so mad he stated that Jindal shouldn't get any of the money, and neither should any state represented by a Senator who "obstructed" the bill. I'll leave aside for a second the possibility that one might vote against something where they had no hand in the writing and nearly every attempt to modify it was rejected because of a belief in deleterious effects of the bill and not mere political obstruction. My thought is that this is a terrific idea. If I could speak for my state I would say "terrific!" Like most conservatives, I think this bill is going to be a disaster. I think it's going to practically double the baseline budget, inflate the currency, add massively to the debt, and still not create nearly the 2.5 million jobs (that's $250k per job, assuming it works) that Obama claims. If you're giving me an opt-out, I'm in. Just don't make me or my kids pay for it, either.

In fact, why don't we develop a system of governance based on that. Here's what we could do: We could set up a limited central government (We'll call it "federal" to distinguish it from a true "national" government that can do anything) that has limits on its power to only do those things that are needed to keep the nation together: They could put together an army and a navy, keep the coast and sea lanes free, declare war when needed, regulate commerce with other nations (we tried regulating commerce independently as states during the early days of the nation; it was a disaster), create a standard currency, regulate interstate trade, and only tax enough to carry out those powers. Then if the states disagreed on how to deal with an issue they could each come up with their own solution. Liberals like California might want to give lots of money for Green Cars for government employees and monorails and increases in welfare in the hopes that giving away lots of money increases the economy enough to offset the taxes or bonds they had to have to pay for it. Conservatives like Georgia might want to cut taxes on businesses in the belief that they would create enough jobs to increase the actual revenue.

I think this is a brilliant idea. I'm surprised nobody thought of it 200 years ago.

Facebook's new Terms of Service

There's evidently a big hullabaloo about Facebook changing their Terms of Service. It's a big enough deal that I heard it mentioned on the radio this morning, which means it's gotten past the .000001% of us who actually read such things. For reference here are the old terms:

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

The new terms scratch that last sentence. Big deal.

Under the new terms you give Facebook the right to relicense (at a profit) your video of your kids to be part of a porn shoot without telling you, even after you close your account. Under the old terms they could still sell it to the porn industry before you close your account, and because they relicensed it you can't do anything about sales they made prior to your account closure, but once you close that account they have to find somebody else to make new sales with.

The change even makes sense. Previously if you closed your account they technically had to go through everybody else's pages and make sure that no mention of anything you did appeared anymore. Now they can keep that stuff up.

The broader license, however, doesn't. Facebook claims they need such far reaching rights so that they can share your stuff with other Facebook users. I once knew an FCC investigator into two way radios (which are legally required to use as little power as needed) and he said he wasn't really interested in the guy running at 2000W; it was the guy talking to him with 2W that was interesting. Similarly, Flickr/Yahoo! is an interesting point of reference here. Flickr seems to do just fine allowing people to share their pictures, and this is the license they use for it:

However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Yahoo! Services, you grant Yahoo! the following worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable:
...
With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Yahoo! Services other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Yahoo! Services solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Yahoo! Services and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Yahoo! Services.

Some of the text here is similar (in particular the standard right to "use, distributed, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform, and publicly display" content) but there is an enormous gulf between Facebook's perpetual, irrevocable, and transferable license and right to sublicense with Yahoo!'s license to use solely for the purpose for with such content was submitted for as long as you elect to continue to include such content.

Working well with others

I just read a report that the Obama State Department is, to our nations great discredit, working with the second Durbin conference on racism. The US and Israel walked out of the first conference when it (predictably) became a forum for Arab nations that put Christians in jail for keeping stores open during Ramadan, even if it isn't actually illegal, to officiously declare racist the policies of one of the two countries in the middle east where a Muslim can vote and members of all Islamic sects can build mosques.

In the Jerusalem Post it is said "Jewish leaders were told that Washington's decision to participate in the conference was being coordinated with the Israeli government." Like Obama's reaching out to conservatives on the massive-increase-in-government-spending bill, this meant not that he would actually take input from them, but rather informed them of the time he was going to go sell out to the UN.

I see a growing pattern of working well with others, so long as they go along with what was already decided.