I’m probably the 10,000th person to say this, but as I was driving in today, I realized that the mobile web is at an inflection point where developers are going to stop building for the lowest common denominator and start pushing for the best. Feels similar to the way the web was just a few years ago when developers started getting fed up with IE6 and started emphasizing graceful degradation from Firefox/Safari instead of simply designing for IE6 + some.

The effects of this are subtle but profound. Already, we’re seeing pressure on companies like RIM to update their browsers to “catch up” w/ where the iPhoneOS, Palm OS, and Android OS are taking the web. This is setting a new baseline for developers and will shift internal development priorities. Already, for example, we’re seeing more & more AJAX & JavaScript features on mobile web sites. We’re seeing a lot more CSS3 transitions & effects in products like ESPN’s mobile NFL GameCast. We’re also seeing more HTML5 features coming out as well.

There’s going to be a big leap in the quality of mobile web applications and experiences over the next few years. Just think about what you expect from your desktop browsers today vs. what you expected in 2004. So much good stuff coming.

You should watch this or listen to the video above. It’s of President Obama speaking to and then taking questions from the House GOP Caucus. While there are the talking point moments, overall this was one of the more fascinating interactions I’ve seen in American politics. It’s also the first time that Obama has, personally, directly engaged himself in changing the tone of politics in an activist manner, if you will, rather than simply leading by example. You can get a sense of what I’m talking about, if you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing, by listening to the last 12 minutes or so (from around 73:00). Some really decent, substantive conversation between Obama and the GOP House Caucus.

More like this, please.

I hope Obama follows through on having regular meetings with both leadership teams (w/ part televised?), and perhaps can make Q&A like this a regular part of the conversation. I would love our own version of prime minister’s questions.

I’ve been more flip about this on Twitter, but I do want to take a moment to highlight this passage from Josh Marshall that I think highlights something important about the national mood:

What the Democrats — and a lot of this is on the White House — have done is get so deep into the inside game of legislative maneuvering, this and that ‘gang’ of senators and a lot of other nonsense that they’ve let themselves out of sync with the public mood and the people’s needs.

I have a few small things to add to this: I’ve found a lot of the angst about this bill from both left and right inexplicable in the basic sense. I get the general outline of the concerns. From the right, folks think this is a massive entitlement that may or may not get at the issues they feel are important (e.g. malpractice reform, more concrete cost controls, etc.). From the left, folks are clamoring that they voted for Change and Obama has failed them.

These things may or may not be true, but I’d argue that these complaints are a symptom of what Josh Marshall highlights above.

Obama is and was always a cautious centrist. I don’t have time now to link to all the pieces matching up his actions this first year with his campaign promises, but if you have doubts ask and I’ll find the pieces. He ran a nuanced tack about gay rights and DADT. He ran a nuanced tack about Guantanamo. He laid out his version of health care reform, maintaining private insurance and doing the least to disrupt the system. Both bills, quite frankly, follow the basic layout of his campaign proposals (exchanges, pooling risk, taxing the top bracket to pay for it).

The issue I have is that there’s a disconnect from the communicative candidate, who used his presence and skill to get in front of people to convince them to trust him, and the quiet President who only seems to come out with a “major” speech when something is going wrong.

I’m not suggesting he’s hiding, no.

He’s simply not leading. What I voted for was a competent executive who, as I wrote then, seemed to be running a very good campaign with a very good ground effort and delegation. Someone who could stand up and communicate with people. Well, it’s been a while since he’s been out doing that, and he’s turned over the message and the communication to folks like Reid and Pelosi who, for their other strengths, are horrible communicators.

So, this is where we find ourselves today.

I’ve tried over the last few weeks to talk to more people I disagree with, especially on this issue. I’ve been able to have productive conversations, generally. I certainly understand and respect those folks who think government shouldn’t help people at all (the no entitlements crowd), but that’s not me. I am pretty sure that it’s also not most of this country.

In the end, I don’t think people would be so upset about the bills if they actually understood what’s in it. Or if someone would point out how getting the exchanges in place would make it easier to start businesses. Or that this bill, like the stimulus is about getting America back on stronger economic footing, not disconnected from the effort to create jobs but part of it.

Not everyone would love the bill, I’m sure, but I’m sure more people would be willing to trust the President about this. I wish the he would stand up and try to make that case so we could find out.

We’ve been chatting on Twitter about the Newsweek Palin cover. Consensus is that it was a really stupid cover choice by Newsweek. The defenses I’ve read online for Newsweek have been pretty week. The best one, so far has come from Lindsay Beyerstein:

There’s nothing scandalous about Palin showing some skin, or wearing Spandex. But this cover image is deliberately styled to make the then-governor of Alaska look like a Vargas pinup girl. Unlike the other images in the series, this one references her status as a governor. As she poses like a swimsuit model, she’s clutching one icon of political power–the Blackberry–and leaning on another. The theme isn’t Sarah Palin, athlete. The theme is Sarah Palin, Sexy Governor. (As in: one of those dime store Halloween costumes: sexy cop, sexy ladybug, sexy sanitation worker…)

Predictably, Palin complained that Newsweek’s use of the image was sexist. Yes, the image was plucked from its original context. The whole point was that the picture was appalling it its original context. Newsweek is holding this picture up to the world and asking: Who does this?

My only problem with this explanation is that neither of the stories that made up the cover package actually addressed this point. The choice of the photograph for the cover would’ve made sense if Beyerstein’s piece was the cover story. But it wasn’t, leaving the new picture plucked out of its original context and really kind of dropped into no real context. It’s just there to catch the eye which, I guess, is what covers are meant to do.

Granted, the other pics inside apparently didn’t help Newsweek’s case any.

I’d rather see more people pay attention to what she’s actually saying about policy. Read stuff like that and it’s scary that she could’ve been VP. (make sure you read the first comment to understand how idiotic her statement was)

Note: I wrote this in May. I had a larger post in mind, but ran out of time. I think I wanted to expand on some places where I was particularly blunt. Anyway, this seems worth posting as is. Hope it’s worth reading.

A recent post over at Julie’s place about the budget situation in Hartford got me thinking again about problems with how we discuss politics.

My observation was that a number of people were debating policies in abstract terms. For example, one commenter suggested Hartford consider offering tax incentives for businesses to relocate into Hartford or use TIFs to boost development. The incentives idea was criticized because the taxes would eventually go up on the businesses once the incentives expire.

On the surface, this pair of points could make sense, but it really is missing too much detail to be even remotely useful. It’s akin to having a debate about tools. “Hammers are bad” is a pretty absurd thing to say, yet we do this with policy ideas all the time. We discuss the tool, in abstract, without considering specific policies that fill in important details. TIFs, tax incentives, marginal tax rates, etc. are all policy tools. They’re not policies themselves, so we should recognize that in our conversations with each other.

For example, in the case of a tax incentive for a business to relocate, a lot depends on how big the tax incentive is, how long it lasts, and what kind of businesses get the tax break. For example, if a business is easy to move, then the tax incentive is riskier, and less likely to achieve the desired outcome. On the other hand, if a tax incentive is structured to help offset relocation costs, perhaps it makes more sense for the business to move.

This also connects to a larger trap that we often fall into, one reinforced by the political parties and their attempts to sloganize their policy preferences. Folks across the political spectrum have preferences among policy tools but believe the tools are actually policy. For example, Republicans look to tax policy as their only tool for fixing many (most? all?) problems. Yet this is only one policy tool in a vast array of tools available. Maslow’s Maxim applies to policy issues, too. Not every problem is a nail, and we have more than just the hammer to help. Democrats would be wise to remember that as well.

We should all be asking candidates and fellow bloggers or commenters to be at least a little more precise about policies their advocating so we can all save time.

I’ve been reading the defenses of Roman Polanski and continue to be unswayed by any of them. All the defenses come back to the same three or four points:

1. Prosecutorial or judicial misconduct of some kind
2. 50 years was an unfair sentence
3. it was so long ago, why now?
4. The victim wants the charges dropped

I’ve read the arguments for each of these and remain completely unconvinced. I keep coming back to the same basic point: he broke the law, was convicted, then decided he was better than everyone else (and our appeals process) and ran. I know it’s not a particularly new idea, and maybe he was hoping to be Marc Rich, but that’s basically it.

The rest of this stuff is BS, pure and simple. The two pieces I’ve found that basically sum up my feelings on this case are this piece at Salon by Kate Harding and this piece at Cogitamus by litbrit.

It really just comes down to this for me: He broke the law, plead guilty, and then didn’t like what the judge might do so he ran, committing another crime. It doesn’t matter how nice he is, or how flawed he believes the judges behavior was, we have a system to deal with these things. It’s imperfect, we all recognize that, but it’s the system we have. Polanski may have had a point about the judge going back on his deal, but he could’ve appealed (though, if you ask me, 45 days time served is a bullshit sentence for raping a 13-year-old girl, barely counting as a slap on the wrist). As a famous director, he could’ve fought this.

I’m also really upset that the victim’s wishes keep getting brought up as some sort of validation of Polanski’s plight. The only reason she agreed to this crappy plea deal was to avoid living through the pain of testifying again. In her 2003 editorial, she again makes the point that it’s the pain of going through it again that is motivating her to advocate for his freedom:

… honestly, the publicity surrounding it was so traumatic that what he did to me seemed to pale in comparison. … I have to imagine he would rather not be a fugitive and be able to travel freely. Personally, I would like to see that happen.

…

I know there is a price to pay for running. But who wouldn’t think about running when facing a 50-year sentence from a judge who was clearly more interested in his own reputation than a fair judgment or even the well-being of the victim?

If he could resolve his problems, I’d be happy. I hope that would mean I’d never have to talk about this again. Sometimes I feel like we both got a life sentence.

I’m sympathetic to her plea, and feel like I can rationally understand why she would feel that way. The thing is, it’s not her call. It’s also not the judge’s fault that she has to go through this again. Ultimately, this is all Polanski’s fault. He committed the original crime that put her in this position. He ran instead of accepting whatever justice the judge was going to offer. In running, he prolonged the publicity, increased the sensational nature of the case, and ensured that the story would never die. Her desire to have this go away is understandable, but ultimately it’s not motivated by anything that mitigates what Polanski did. There’s no justice in that, and justice is what our system is supposed to be about.

The Salon piece I linked above says it well, so I’ll just end with this:

I happen to believe we should honor her desire not to be the subject of a media circus, which is why I haven’t named her here, even though she chose to make her identity public long ago. But as for dropping the charges, Fecke said it quite well: “I understand the victim’s feelings on this. And I sympathize, I do. But for good or ill, the justice system doesn’t work on behalf of victims; it works on behalf of justice.”

It works on behalf of the people, in fact — the people whose laws in every state make it clear that both child rape and fleeing prosecution are serious crimes. The point is not to keep 76-year-old Polanski off the streets or help his victim feel safe. The point is that drugging and raping a child, then leaving the country before you can be sentenced for it, is behavior our society should not — and at least in theory, does not — tolerate, no matter how famous, wealthy or well-connected you are, no matter how old you were when you finally got caught, no matter what your victim says about it now, no matter how mature she looked at 13, no matter how pushy her mother was, and no matter how many really swell movies you’ve made.

That’s my read, and that’s why he should face a judge and do the time. If that makes me Puritanical, then get me a hat with a buckle, because it’s the right thing to do in this case.

PS. I’m really shocked at some of the names that have come out defending him – supposed signatories to the Free Polanski petitions include Wes Anderson and Natalie Portman. Plus there was that weird “rape-rape” comment from Whoopi Goldberg. I wish I could talk to one of these people and ask, “What are you thinking?”

I just had an exchange on Facebook that I feel like expanding on here. I’m going to anonymize the people, but suffice to say the person is a person I respect but with whom I rarely agree politically:

This person linked to a Politico article about Sen. Ensign receiving a handwritten note confirming that not having health insurance could lead to fines of up to $25K and/or up to 1 year in prison. They then made this comment:

Don’t want to buy the proposed mandatory health insurance? The penalty for non-compliance in the bill now is up to a YEAR in jail and $25,000 fine. And it’s in writing from the committee staff.

I read this and thought, there’s no way that’s the first penalty for not having health insurance. And, it isn’t. Here’s my comment back to him on FB:

I think you’re engaging in hyperbole for effect, but here’s some perspective on this that may make this seem more reasonable than you’re implying.

First, the requirement is that everyone will have health insurance, not that we buy a particular plan. Not sure if you meant to imply there was a particular plan, but wanted to clarify that. You and I, for example, will not see any change. The law includes a means test to make sure those who cannot afford insurance will never face the original fine. Certainly, we can debate the means test levels/limits, and I would welcome that.

Which is another point of clarification: the penalty you cited is for failing to pay the fine for not having insurance. The fine for not having insurance is UP TO $1900 (in a judge’s discretion, I assume). The 1 year + UP TO $25K is for failing to pay that fine.

Second, because this is a requirement to have insurance, not a requirement to purchase any particular plan, it’s very similar to how auto insurance works in many states. In CT, for example, failure to carry the proper car insurance can result in fines up to $1000. Failure to pay the fine is a Class A Misdemeanor with additional penalties + up to 1 year in jail.

Even failing to pay a parking/traffic ticket in CT is a Class A Misdemeanor.

Both of those are state penalties for very similar style regulation.

Again, not saying that this is perfect or ideal, but it’s not so bizarre or extreme. Certainly, the requirement for people to have auto insurance hasn’t lead to what [a commenter] above is implying. I’m not aware of a government run auto insurance program in CT, for example.

It occured to me after writing this that the car insurance analogy is actually the one that makes a ton of sense both in highlighting the banal nature of the proposed reform plans but also the risks that such plans might entail. After all, we have had mandatory insurance requirements in CT for at least 20 years (as have many states). Food for thought.

Citations for the penalties above, in case the lawyers want to correct anything I wrote (please do!):

Insurance violations

• Sec. 14-12c: Verification of security coverages. Surrender or confiscation of plates, when. Penalties for failure to insure or maintain insurance and for presentation of false or fraudulent identification card.
• Sec. 41-164r: Failure to pay or plead [looks to be general penalty for not paying a court ordered fine or fee]

Traffic ticket violations

• Sec. 53a-173: Failure to appear in the second degree: Class A misdemeanor [ my read of my research this AM: if you don't pay your ticket, it gets sent to court, which turns into this]
• State of CT Table on Fines & Penalties

I only watched about 20 minutes of the documentary The Last Truck on HBO today, but already I want to recommend the film. It’s short, interesting, and timely. Using interviews with workers, the doc covers the closing of GM’s Moraine Assembly Plant in Ohio in December of 2008.

I don’t have time to write anything particularly insightful about the movie, but I did want to share one thought.

The film interviewed a few of the auto workers about the $70/hour wage meme that was going around the time of the auto bailout. The crux of that little white lie was that the $70 ‘hourly cost’ included not only wages + benefits for current workers, which are on par or below Toyota, by the way, but also all the costs GM owes to retirees. As the doc mentions, GM has 2-4 retirees per active worker, more than anyone. The biggest driver of the costs of retiree benefits, and, thus draining the competitiveness of GM? Health care. And why did retiree benefits become a big part of GM current P&L? Arguably because retiree benefits didn’t show up on earnings reports.

The problems facing our country are interrelated. So, saving American manufacturing could be about healthcare & FASB/SEC regulations as much as it is about unions. Or healthcare could be about restoring our competitive chops in manufacturing. Or the bonus structures & incentives for executives could impact manufacturing competitiveness. You get the idea.

All I can think about as I watch the news is that as a society we’re just not set up to discuss these issues in any context aside from one at a time. I wish I knew how to fix that, because I think it would lead to better policy outcomes.

NBC just announced that Jenna Hagar (née Bush) is joining NBC’s Today Show as a correspondent. I really don’t know what to say, but this post by Glenn Greenwald captures the state of our elite press pretty well. I’m going to excerpt a few chunks below, but you should read the whole thing for the full effect:

They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain and Jonah Goldberg, and they should have Chris Wallace moderate it. They can all bash affirmative action and talk about how vitally important it is that the U.S. remain a Great Meritocracy because it’s really unfair for anything other than merit to determine position and employment.

…

Bill Kristol, Tucker Carlson and John Podhoretz can provide moving commentary on how America is so special because all that matters is merit, not who you know or where you come from.

…

Just to underscore a very important, related point: all of the above-listed people are examples of America’s Great Meritocracy, having achieved what they have solely on the basis of their talent, skill and hard work — The American Way. By contrast, Sonia Sotomayor — who grew up in a Puerto Rican family in Bronx housing projects; whose father had a third-grade education, did not speak English and died when she was 9; whose mother worked as a telephone operator and a nurse; and who then became valedictorian of her high school, summa cum laude at Princeton, a graduate of Yale Law School, and ultimately a Supreme Court Justice — is someone who had a whole litany of unfair advantages handed to her and is the poster child for un-American, merit-less advancement.

This afflicts both parties (Kennedys, Gore, Casey, Bayh, Ford, etc.), but for what it’s worth, more of the Democrats seem aware of the privilege granted them by accident of birth. This is obvious in their policy preferences as well as the practical effects of their governance measured by the laws they’ve passed. Sen. Kennedy provides a timely and telling example, as this comment by Bill Russell shows so well. I posted that along with this excellent reader comment at Balloon Juice to my twitter feed. Both are worth a quick listen/read.

Regardless, Jenna Hager may turn out to be a great correspondent. This isn’t really about her, but just how many of our mainstream pundits and reporters are the products of famous parents. As far as I know this wasn’t true of Walter Kronkite or even Dan Rather (though was true of Peter Jennings, sort of).

Via @keithlam & @scottconnor, found this great essay by Paul Graham, Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule. The essay describes my challenges with being a manager vs. a maker almost to a T. I was particularly struck by these paragraphs:

For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn’t merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.

I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your own case. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.

This is further complicated by the challenges of trying to be great at your job. I’ve found I can only be either a good manager or a good coder. Every single time I’ve tried to do both (outside of a very small team of similar aptitude/motivation), I perform below my own standards at one of them. Either I cut corners in my code or I ignore my team too long. In the worst case, I do a bit of both. So, at my day job, I make the choice of being a manager.

This is also basically why I work into the night when I am coding. Working after emails die down and Heidi goes to bed offers that unbroken expanse of time to be creative and just get stuff done. This is again in conflict with the manager’s schedule so jobs that require a morning start time (early being, say, 9AM) make it hard to stay up late.

There’s something to be said for the discipline of getting up early and getting to bed early, but building neat things isn’t necessarily a question of that kind of discipline. In fact, Graham gets to this point right at the end:

When we were working on our own startup, back in the 90s, I evolved another trick for partitioning the day. I used to program from dinner till about 3 am every day, because at night no one could interrupt me. Then I’d sleep till about 11 am, and come in and work until dinner on what I called “business stuff.” I never thought of it in these terms, but in effect I had two workdays each day, one on the manager’s schedule and one on the maker’s.

While at Fanzter, I did the dinner to 3AM stint pretty much every day. It was my most productive time. It also led to tension as we had morning people in the company and the schedules never quite lined up. I made it work, by coming in earlier (10/10:30 or so until dinner-ish). His pattern of dividing the day is also pretty much how I ended up doing it, and if I had thought about it more, I would’ve even formalized it. As it was, I always felt as if I was doing something wrong. That’s why it was so satisfying to read this. It’s like someone sat down and decided to explain how I work.

I’m going to make Heidi read this, and I’m going to paste this to my wall if I ever do a startup again.

PS. Graham’s Hackers and Painters is still one of my favorite books. It’s a collection of his essays and many are about the same subject as the one above: what makes coders and artists similar and what makes them tick. Some of it is over-the-top almost hubris/presumption, but in general he has some excellent observations. Great read if you liked what you read above. Many of the essays are available on his web site. Hackers and Painters (the essay) is one of my favorites.

I listened to a really interesting episode of KCRW’s On the Point while driving home today. The episode was about the stimulus, asking the question “With Unemployment at 9.5 Percent, Is the Stimulus Working?” It’s worth listening just to get a rundown on the state of the stimulus and what parameters might go into measuring its effectiveness over the long haul.

While I found the overall discussion interesting, I’m surprised at the current spate of “the stimulus isn’t working, we need another/shouldn’t have passed it” stories coming out. It’s gotten to the point that President Obama essentially responded in an editorial that appeared in the Post. Which, btw, produced the most amusing “about the author” note at the bottom of the editorial:

Thanks, WaPo. I might not have remembered that.

My thoughts are simply this: it’s too early to tell whether we need more action or whether the stimulus was a bad idea at least based on any new information since the stimulus passed.

In the episode of To the Point, Maya MacGuineas, of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, essentially lays out this argument and, in the same section, she or someone else suggests that what we’re really getting here is a rehash of the same debate that happened in Jan/Feb. Those that wanted a bigger stimulus are saying we need another stimulus, and those that opposed the stimulus are claiming that the stimulus didn’t work. That sounds about right, especially considering that the debate in the public sphere has the same folks on both sides of the original debate.

Another weird aspect to this debate is the constant calls of “no one got this right” or, as Atrios likes to state it, “No one could’ve predicted” when excusing why every economic forecast made by those in power (either government or leading banks/investment firms) was wrong. There have been several places that have gotten this right, including several blogs and major economists like Nouriel Roubini. It’s really hard to understand why they don’t get more airtime, and why discussions of their approach to policy doesn’t get more discussion. When they get on TV, they’re treated like Oracles rather than economists who have approaches we should understand.

My last point, and this is more general frustration when discussing the economy beyond just the stimulus, is that we don’t talk about the structural imbalances that drove the downturn in the first place. There’s very little serious discussion about how the real estate market got so hot, or why so many people were turning to home equity lines of credit in order to spend. There are cultural issues, certainly, but also failures of fundamental regulation.

We’ve also now gone through a 30 year period in which we’ve undergone a massive shift of wealth to the wealthiest Americans. Median wages have been stagnant for many Americans over the last 10 years, while the richest Americans have seen massive growth in their median wages. This is not consistent with historical norms, especially compared to the strongest periods of American growth.

I know it’s unrealistic to expect that discussion to make it into the mainstream conversation, but IMHO it’s the real issue.

Here’s the analogy that keeps coming up in my head as I try to summarize my thoughts.

Politics is like chess, especially at the presidential level. It takes skill to plan out the next 18-24 months in the future, especially as other potential candidates & their allies are all jostling and repositioning to make themselves look better. Good “players” recognize not only where they need to get to, but the steps required to get there. The next move is as important as the strategy for three moves down the road.

Bad players, on the other hand, tend to focus on the grand strategy and lose sight of the next few moves. That’s how you can four-move checkmate an opponent at the start of a game. They’re too busy thinking about a complicated opening or their middle game while you’re actually checkmating them.

Perhaps this is an esoteric analogy, but Palin’s move seems like that novice chess mistake. No matter what the actual reason, she’s missed the whole “quitter” angle. It’s a big mistake. The ads for the Republican primary practically write themselves. I can’t imagine Romney is going to back down from that fight or that some deal can be struck that puts her at the top of the ticket unopposed. There are too many competing voices and egos, as there always are, in Presidential politics.

No matter what is really going on here, her ambitions are toast. She’s hurt her own chances as a candidate. She’s diminished her ability to help other candidates in close races (key part of the endorsement quid pro quo at this level). I can’t see anything that gets better because of this, and I’ve tried hard to look at this from her perspective.

I keep imagining the following scenario playing out at Team Palin HQ:

1. Palin believes she has a legitimate shot at 2012, she knows she’s popular now, and therefore can create/cement a movement around her right now. Two more years in Alaska won’t get her any more visibility but will likely diminish it.
2. Some opportunity has presented itself to allow her to focus on that movement: a book deal, tv/radio gig, etc. This is the “higher calling” she feels is a must do, because it enables point 1 which means she can “save America.”
3. If she does this while being governor, she’ll be criticized for ignoring the work of being governor.
4. Ergo, she resigned to preempt that criticism so she can be free to pursue this opportunity.

That’s the most Palin friendly explanation I can see at this point. Just to get there, I’m conceding her claims of patriotism driving this (it wouldn’t be the first time she’s confused ambition and patriotism), and conceding that there’s no scandal. Even in this frame, nothing else makes sense.

So I keep coming back to that analogy: she’s going to get four-moved. She just hasn’t realized it yet.

I rarely do this, but I’m basically copying the post from Ritholtz’s blog:

“American Casino is a powerful and shocking look at the subprime lending scandal. If you want to understand how the US financial system failed and how mortgage companies ripped off the poor, see this film.”
–Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winning economist and writer

I’m sure many of you have seen stories about the reporting around the proposed defense budget, but I felt it was important to pass on two clips that explain the issue very clearly.

Summary, if you haven’t heard: Defense Secretary Gates has unveiled a new defense budget earlier this week. The budget increases the overall defense budget by 4%. If you listen to the television press, though, the plan is almost universally being called a budget cut. Regardless of the rest of the details, the idea that a 4% increase gets reported as a cut is ludicrous. For more on the details, I suggest you check out TPM’s summary here. I’m sure you can find more by simply doing a google search.

Here are the clips that lay this out, one funny from The Daily Show and the other from Joe Scarborough’s show on MSNBC.

First, the TDS clip:

Here’s TPM’s compilation of an appearance by Rep. Joe Sestak (a retired admiral, btw):

Again, I’m not sure about the merits of these changes. Sestak makes some points worth reading further on. However, I’m pretty sure that there’s no reasonable way to call this budget a cut or to complain that Gates is shortchanging our troops. This is about protecting pet projects and local jobs, as these defense budgets always are. Even here in CT, the debate isn’t about whether the country needs these F-22s, but whether the jobs at Pratt & Whitney might disappear when the F-22 order gets cut down.

I have a ton of respect for those concerns, but we should call it what it is, not falsely impugn the motives of people proposing the plan when there’s no evidence of it. This is about local jobs over national priorities. Local jobs are important, but that shouldn’t be Gates’s concern.

I can’t think of a funnier and more perfect takedown of Glenn Beck’s idiocy. He’s so far gone from reality at this point that it’s amazing he still has viewers. Anyway, this is one of the best Colbert segments in a long while.

(I missed February, so, uh, we’ll just count this mix for both months. )

This month’s mix is a pretty diverse set of music. As usual, there are a few items missing. Here’s the list as I have it in iTunes (songs Amazon doesn’t have are linked below in the notes column):

Enjoy!

Where’s the beef, indeed.

I was responding to Dan and BadMD in the comments to my previous post, but perhaps this is clearer than my crappy writing last night. Or, maybe it’s still crappy. You decide.

Also, just so we’re clear – my point isn’t’ to support the AIG bill that Congress passed. I’m ambivalent at best, but generally unhappy with the way this is all getting handled.

In fact, that was the whole point of the second half of the post – we’re all still trying to blame people instead of figuring out what the right policy is. This bonus thing is a sideshow. It’s something like a .1% of the money given to AIG.

There were systemic flaws in play. Something a commenter over at balloon juice said is still sticking with me, which is basically this:

When a few people do something, it can be explained as individual behavior. When a society does something or an entire industry (banking/lending in this case), there must be larger forces at work, screwed up market incentives, bad or insufficient regulation, something. We need to have a conversation about that stuff and yet that makes up very little of our discourse.

That was sort of my point, and my primary criticism of the DeSantis op-ed. Sure, he ran a good division. Who cares? It’s not about him. And that goes for both his whining and the public’s ‘outrage’.

I’m not sure why I should have any sympathy for him, btw. When I got laid off, I didn’t get to write an NYT op-ed. When Republicans were proposing legislation to rework auto-worker contracts, where was all of this “sanctity of contracts” stuff?

This country now is (and maybe was always) more interested in blaming people. Until that f’ing stops, we’ll get people in power demagoguing people… not sure why DeSantis thinks how good his division was matters.

Sujal

The comment I was referring to is here, and it was actually at Obsidian Wings, not Balloon Juice. Here’s an excerpt of the parts that rang true to me:

Let’s try a simple analogy: if one electron jumps two feet to the left, that’s just the random motion of electrons. But if every electron in your shirt jumps two feet to the left at the same moment, you’ve got to ask why they all did the same thing at once. Any one of them could do it, but it defies the laws of probability that each of them just happened to take the same bounce at the same time.

Same with people. If one person stops saving, or buys an overly expensive house, or whatever, then that’s one person’s bad decision. But if a whole society does it, one has to ask what forces are acting on everybody at once, because it’s ridiculously unlikely that everybody just happened to make the same set of bad decisions at the same time.

…

I’ll cheerfully take the responsibility for the bad effects that any of my decisions have had on my own life. But it’s those whose political pull and economic clout ruined the lives of thousands and millions of people who have to take the hit for our larger crisis.

That last paragraph is what a lot of people are feeling. It is part of why “Not my fault” feels like it’s true when most of us consider our own circumstances, especially to folks like DeSantis.

That’s hardly the full picture, though. It’s not just those with clout that caused the problems, it’s also those of us who passively went along.

It’s our fault because we’re not asking the deeper questions. We need better leadership. We need better citizens who take their vote more seriously rather than revel in the mediocrity (“average joe”-ness) of their politicians. We need better politicians who actually consider what their policies do beyond the headlines… I really don’t know how to fix this, btw. So, I’m going to shut up again because I don’t know how to fix it. This is all interrelated and I’ve got nothing to add beyond saying, “We’re f*cked if we don’t stop this.”

I’m sorry if that’s not useful. Hence the, you know, lack of blogging. Of course you got me worked up enough to blog in the middle of my work day…

An AIG Exec VP wrote an op-ed for the NYT today in the form of an open letter to AIG’s CEO announcing his resignation from AIG. In it, the exec, Jake DeSantis, argues that he and his fellow bonus receivers are being unfairly demonized by the public and by politicians because their divisions were healthy, profitable, and sustainable. They worked hard and deserved the compensation they received. Because they weren’t involved in the CDS business that effectively killed AIG, the public shouldn’t blame them.

This line of reasoning is interesting. It’s also absurd, as demonstrated by the funniest comment I’ve ever read at the NYT:

The company where I was a janitor went out of business. It wasn’t my fault, I kept the floor clean. The taxpayers should be paying my salary.

That is, in essence, Mr. DeSantis’s argument. Leaving aside the issue of whether the government should or can ask for these bonuses back, his argument is basically ‘not my fault, so pay me!’

“Not my fault” is a common refrain these days, from Chris Dodd to the Bush administration to people on Main St. who got into mortgages they couldn’t sustain. At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeonly old man, this is ultimately the disease that is at the root of the entire meltdown. Real estate brokers, mortgage brokers, bankers and lenders, and home owners all took advantage of each others’ greed. Now that it’s blown up… “not my fault” is all you hear from everyone.

I keep thinking that we’re in pretty serious denial all around. We all screwed this up together. Maybe we all didn’t behave recklessly, but we all took advantage, in our own way, of the greed that permeated all of this. When people started running into trouble a few years ago, we were quick to blame this or that reason. Subprime! Community Reinvestment Act! Today it’s greedy Wall St. culture and millionaire executives.

Do we all look to demonize others for our troubles? In town, people won’t blink to demand the teachers renegotiate their contracts down and to call them greedy. I suspect many teachers don’t have an issue with AIG execs having their bonuses taken away, even though the underlying principle is essentially the same. I don’t mean to pick on Mr. DeSantis, but I imagine many of these Wall St. execs wouldn’t blink if teachers were getting pink slipped to save some money on taxes. Maybe these are good policies, but we don’t ever have that discussion. It’s always about “who’s screwing me.”

Well, while we were all saying “not my fault” and “they’re screwing us,” we all managed to screw ourselves. We’ve got to get beyond the blame game. I wish I knew how, though. Hence the lack of blogging…

For those wondering where the heck I was and what the heck I was doing traveling for so long, you saw the results during the Apple iPhone 3.0 event yesterday. Being the secretive lot they are, Apple has asked us not to disclose any of the particulars of our time with them, the process, etc. So, no blogging about it for me beyond what they’ve disclosed: we spent about two weeks (less, in our case) building an app for the demo event. We actually built an app that we had postponed on our app roadmap because the 2.x releases didn’t have push notification available yet. So, the moment we found out about push, Alerts was the natural choice over our other, in development applications.

I’m happy with what we were able to accomplish over the sprint considering we built the whole thing, from the BottomLine to alerts feed, essentially from scratch. Dalmo, a new member of my team, did some great work, and I had a refreshing spell of doing nothing but coding and hands-on building the product.

One more thing: A lot of folks have been coming up and saying congrats and the like. While I appreciate it, this is only the beginning for us. Building a great demo app is one thing, but I really enjoy building great, innovative, released products. Being part of the teams that built FantasyCast, all the live-updating infrastructure at ESPN.com, and Coolspotters is what I work for. So, hold the congrats for when we launch our apps. We’ve got some good stuff coming. If you loved the alerts prototype, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

If you want to see me (and, really, who does… er, I mean, doesn’t), skip to 39 minutes in. We’re on right after Oracle. I’m the driver for the demo, walking on stage behind Oke.