bill:politics

I’ve been a reasonably happy customer of Wells Fargo for this entire century (damn, doesn’t that sound impressive!) and I suppose they’re more or less as good as any of the other big national banks. Your experience may be different, of course, as the collision of individuals dealt with and company policies create an individual track record so I’m not asserting anything other than my own.

This morning I’m beginning to wonder. Wells Fargo sent me the latest installment of their monthly customer newsletter email and I clicked a link labeled Detect Credit Fraud Early: ID Theft Protection because, hey, who isn’t interested in bank security. The page beings okay, with a headline of “Protect Your Good Credit with Identity Theft Protection” and is short too, covering the program with six bullet points, all less than two narrow lines.

And then I my eyes reached the closer: “Enjoy peace of mind for just $12.99 a month.” That’s right, Wells Fargo expects you, me and Dupree to pay $156 per year for keeping safe what I–and you may feel differently–expect ought to be the normal course of business! Not necessarily by a bank, maybe by the major credit bureaus, but if I had to guess I’d say that Wells Fargo is doing this in some sort of partnership with them.

Credit card companies and banks, here’s a competitive advantage you can offer customers: do this service, maybe minus the personal credit analysis, for free. Make a big deal about it in your advertising and marketing. Most other things being equal I’d sign up and blog you very positively, just drop me a note.

The Nobel committee made a good decision this week in awarding this year’s Peace Prize to Mohammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, which Yunus founded 30 years ago, for their pioneering work in bringing micro-loans to aspiring entrepreneurs. I do wonder why it was the peace and not the economics award, but that’s just a quibble.

I first read about the Bangladeshi’s work a few years ago on MetaFilter and was suitably impressed. By seeding local groups with small amounts of cash, loans of a few dollars, generally under the equivalent of US$100, are made that completely change the financial prospects of impoverished people.

And, of course, these rising tides do spread as their money recirculates in the form of additional loans as each is repaid and new spending to other businesses in the town and region. Not fast but very effective.

John Robb had a post today on the latest developments in the police v. PCC battle in Sao Paulo and reminded me I was saving up some material to blog on Brazil, to follow up this post from a couple of weeks ago.

A good friend of mine, born in Massachusetts but fluent in Portuguese and married to a lovely Brazilian woman, said to me the other day: “Brazil is like a big carcass being ripped apart by hyeanas.” The PCC problem in Sao Paulo is just one part of it, and probably the lesser.

The bigger problem, as discussed in my previous entry, is the completely lawless destruction of the Amazon. Not to go all ecowarrier but for the near future this will probably have a larger global impact and is being driven by a simpler motivation, greed. The government won’t step in effectively because the necessary individuals are corrupted and external intervention is a non-starter due to Brazilian nationalism.

To a degree, the PCC and Amazonian issues are driven by the same underlying cause: Brazil is a country with a tiny, ultra-wealthy ruling elite, who think nothing of jetting to Miami for a hairdo and dinner, and a huge improverished peasant class, millions of whom live in cardboard and newspaper shantytowns called invasions with no water or sewage
treatment and minimal electricity provided by illegal taps.

Two of the commonly cited examples of economic success are widespread use of ethanol and exported beef; even proud Brazilians will brag on them at parties. Both, however, are actually causing much more harm than good. To provide grazing for the always increasing cattle herds and farm land to grow the corn and grain to feed them and produce the ethanol, more and more land is required.

Where is the land coming from? Criminals and corrupt politicians! Even Lula da Silva, the left winger elected President in 2002 on promises to reform the system and dig the country out from under the thumb of the IMF and World Bank, has found it impossible to put a dent in the system. Da Silva’s re-election this October, considered a lock weeks ago, is now under severe pressure from a renegade senator even further to the left who split off from the ruling party because it failed to deliver on the 2002 platform.

Guns are as, or perhaps even more, freely available in Brazil as in the United States. Over the last 20 years groups of armed men have simply shown up in the Amazon and the nation’s countryside, chopped down as many of the beautiful old growth hard wood trees as they could carry off and set fire to the rest to clear the land for ranchers or farmers. Politicians and police are paid to do nothing and the ones who refuse the payola are killed or transferred to ineffectual postings.

The people who lived on the land head for Sao Paulo, Rio and the other big cities where nothing but more misery awaits them. The hovels, which can spring up over night, grow into the huge tracts known as favelas. Brazil’s most brilliant futebol players, Ronaldinho and Robinho being the latest global superstars in a line going back to Pele, often emerge from these ghettos but other than the dozens who escape via sports each year few residents have little such hope.

Except, of course, through crime. My friend says that middle class Brazilians travel between home and work, shopping or school in constant fear of carjackings, kidnappings or worse, windows closed, doors locked and guards opening electric gates at the last possible moment and for the shortest time span so no one can sneak inside.

The recent actions of the First Command of the Capital (PCC) gang, the focus of Robb’s attention, is an early indicator that the largest country in South America may soon become the next failed state in our hemisphere, joining Columbia and Peru, but with horrifically more serious consequences than increased drug trafficking.

The good news is that the I.R.S. is reviewing companies involved in the options backdating scandal and will go after corrupt corporations and executives whenever a case can be made, which with any luck ought to be even more often than the S.E.C can get criminal convictions on securities violations. As the saying goes, Capone never did time for murder.

If it turns out that Sun Microsystems took this liberty in the one grant I got from them the feds can count on an updated tax return–and Sun can expect a lawsuit looking to recoup any money involved.

The S.E.C., though, wiped out a big chunk of goodwill when they “waived nearly $15 million in payments from Scott Sullivan, former WorldCom CFO, and two other executives who were jailed over the $11 billion fraud that drove the company into bankruptcy.” The money was to come from bonuses he was illegally awarded so why should the fine be waived? If the answer is that Sullivan spent the money on lawyers then I think he should have been stuck with a public defender, same as any other indigent defendent.

Not wanting to be topped, the Republicans in Congress are making a shallow election year ploy to score points with less well off supporters through a minimum wage increase, all the way to a whole $7.25 in hour in three small, annual steps. Though this is the first increase they’ve come close to passing in 10 years the real beneficiaries of the bill are–knock me over with a feather–the ultra-wealthy.

Amazing how they can spin the legislation since the real meat of it is $310 billion in tax cuts. That’s right, Bush and his crew are trying to hide yet another attempt to whack the estate tax though fortunately the Democrats have enough votes to block passage in the Senate. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) admitted as much by saying he thought the tax cuts would make the medicine of the minimum wage increase go down easier!

Todd Huffman, an Oregon pediatrician, really says it well:

“Families that work hard and full-time shouldn’t be poor in America. This November, Americans need to elect politicians of every stripe who will support a living family income, who will put poverty relief ahead of tax relief for the rich, and who will put the interests and needs of America’s workers ahead of corporations and wealthy estate-owners. In the fight against poverty, there’s no Republican or Democrat way - there’s only the right way. We have the wallet - can we find the will?”

Keith Curtis took advantage of being in the same coffee shop and got an extensive interview with Dr. Bradley Edwards of the SpaceWard Foundation. Edwards is a leading researcher in the effort to develop a space elevator and after working on the concept and then the actual effort for years he can handle what might seem like tough questions easily.

You won’t be surprised to learn that I’m a supporter. As covered in the interview, we’ve really about reached the peak in the oil production curve. Building even one space elevator completely changes the equation. These days we cannot afford to ignore such an opportunity. A couple of the comments question Edwards’ attitude towards NASA involvement but I agree with him: keeping the project in the private sector as much as possible significantly improves the probability of a successful result in far less time.

Curtis does pitch the right questions on engineering, economics and government involvement so it’s worth reading if you want to get filled in.

President Bush: Sell the Ranch

Being Poor is the title of John Scalzi’s moving prose poem in which each line begins with the title words and in matter of fact English list one more thing that being poor is. A couple that really stuck out at me:

Many, many more sad additions added in the comments which ran so long Scalzi had to open an extra post to handle them and then take a third to explain that, yes, he’s entitled to write this post having grown up poor.

After a year of thyroid cancer, Chief Justice William Rehnquist died tonight making for a strange end to a strange week. The odd feeling for me is a mix of personal and public and, of course, is in no way intended to make light of the extreme sadness of Katrina and its aftermath or the Chief Justice’s death, just an accurate one word summary of my emotional state.

Nevertheless, filling this seat on the bench will undoubtedly become a political battle of enormous proportion; because of Rehnquist’s long illness, groups on both sides have been banking cash to be used whoever Bush nominates. The John Roberts nomination has instantly become a minor matter even though none of its ramifications has changed in the least.

Instead I’m wondering if this will be, essentially, the straw that breaks everything. Katrina has wreaked devastation in ways that require resources the Federal government, much less the private sector, doesn’t seem to have. Not when we’re spending billions every month in Iraq. And the secondary effects of the storm’s damage will rampage through the economy as well–gas and lumber prices are already rising, hundreds of thousands of jobs are in an unknown state, and the vulnerability of other regions to natural disaster must suddenly be taken far more seriously.

Immediately after Katrina destroyed New Orleans some people were suggesting that we take this as an opportunity to ’strategically retreat’ from Iraq. Now, with a massive political confrontation on tap as well, this seems an even more prudent choice. I can only hope Bush, Rove and Cheney will agree.

Technorati tags: SCOTUS supremecourt bushinations politics

Check out the trailer for The Constant Gardener, opening in a couple of weeks. Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, and Bill Nighy star in Fernando Meirelles’s film adaption of John Le Carre’s bestseller about corporate skullduggery and government complicity. Meirelles’s last movie was the Brazilian international hit City of God which, coincidentally, is sitting on my Tivo waiting for me to stop playing on the computer to watch. This movie is definitely making a political statement, have no doubt, but seems like it will be highly watchable. [via The Movie Blog, which I hesitate to link, due to nasty in your face ads that I usually don't see thanks to RSS, but this one time...]

Another excellent investigative series from Seattle Times: The Selling Drug Secrets. Lovely pull quote, right on the front page, from the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania: “The practice is a moral cesspool.”

Doctors, generally, seem to make plenty of shiny green lettuce. They drive nice cars, have time to play golf and get to keep their knowledge current by attending conferences in beautiful resorts. One might think, hey, that’s not bad and it’s fair–doctors go to school longer, help people at their worst and put up with paperwork and billing practices of insurance companies.

There is a line, a pretty solid and bright one, though, and the doctors discussed in these articles have trampled over it in order to get their shiny green to the next level. When supervising patients in drug studies the doctors sign legally binding contracts compelling them to keep any and all information regarding the study confidential. As in secret, seal the lips and throw away the key.

But for a tidy fee in the range of $300-500 or more, twice on some days, they chitchat with investment research analysts. And then have the gall (pun intended) to claim they’ve done nothing wrong! One doctor discussed in the article was a member of the safety review board for a study, meaning he saw the real results as the trial was conducted to make sure patient safety wasn’t compromised, and he took fees to discuss the drug’s prospects before the trial was complete. The doctor saw no problem with his actions: Palevsky defended his decision to talk to Fulcrum: “Why should I have not?”

Hello? Earth to Dr. Do You Think You Are God’s Second Son, sorry I have some news for you: You should be packing up your little black bag because if the Feds have any balls left at all you’ll be making housecalls from behind bars. Later in the series a very important point comes out: most doctors take so much graft from the pharmaceutical companies they don’t even realize that this is a bad thing.

Why didn’t I listen to my mom when she told me to go to med school? Why did I let a little squeamishness stand in the way when I could have picked a specialty that ensured once in practice blood would be something I drew only on the fairway?

Time Warner Offers $3 Billion to End AOL Hangover: Of course, as the article explains, the individuals responsible for the decisions leading to this lawsuit will suffer no direct, and little indirect, retribution. Shareholders, insurance companies and (for a small part) the auditing firm will pay, not to mention you and me since big pieces of this are tax deductible.

I love it when GWB gives another yack about personal responsibility while his corporate buddies are walking around looking at huge additions to their bank accounts rather than taking personal responsiblity.

In Bad to the Last Drop Tom Standage gets to the point: $46 billion is spent every year on bottled water, substantially all of that in America and other developed nations where the tap water is indistinguishable by taste and insufficient to avoid any potential contaminants by volume. For less than a quarter of that every single human being on the planet can have safe water and sanitation, the lack of which kills millions and sickens many more.

In Bubble Bubble Dan Gillmor points to another sign that housing prices are rising to insane levels.

Not sure I completely, or even mainly, agree with Lou Dobbs but I surely appreciate the direct, unequivable smackdown on the CNOOC bid for Unocal. Dobbs questions the usefulness of “the default libertarian views of the Bush administration” when national security is involved.

Here’s another of those line drawing situations. Keep government out of business decisions to the extent possible versus the true nature of CNOOC. The Chinese government does own 70% of the company and this move has to be seen as a conscious element of their drive to secure as raw energy stock whenever and wherever it can be had.

From a neutral perspective the Chinese are smart to use this strategy. Their leadership understands the economic effect of peak oil, that even the initial small decrease in supply will cause significant price increases because demand will continue growing. What moves Bush and Co. are making or proposing, such as opening ANWR, offer little hope of improving our position.

Further, American refiners will not be able to reverse the longterm trend of declining capacity so the significance of Unocal’s market share will grow; by 2010, mark my words, any promises regarding continuing delivery to the United States being made now to secure this acquisition will be long forgotten.

Returning to the opening questions, the line for me is pretty clear: China cannot expect us to allow them to play by the same rules as other foreign acquirers when they don’t offer us similar chances. Even if they did America cannot (continue to) ignore true national security demands.

For further reading: Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash

Click over to The ONE Campaign and tell President Bush and the other seven G8 leaders the time has come to put muscle behind the programs to bring the poorest nations out of their misery.

My view is captured well by the old aphorism about teaching a man to fish rather than handing over the fish. Plenty of gifts have been given already but have generally disappeared into a tangle of corrupt pockets or flowed back into Western accounts through purposely overpriced public works contracts.

The current situation is so dire, though, that the rest of us need to do both. Otherwise in fairly short order there won’t be anyone left to teach. The recent cancellation of $18 billion of past loans was a positive step but only a good start.

President Bush speaks often and loudly of the need for all nations to become real democracies (off topic: as he moves the USA away from it) and this to me is the key. The residents of the poorest nations, in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, are blocked from developing more often because of local elites content with their own status and power.

So part of the G8 muscle needs to be behind efforts to remove the dictators, juntas and tribal warriors who rape, kill and imprison. Too often the drive for democracy is ignored because such regimes (smartly) offer short term benefits.

Pakistan is a perfect example: superficially an ally in the war on terror, in reality providing cover for Osama bin Laden, hiding nuclear proliferator AQ Khan, and supporting continuing Kashmiri terrorist groups. Sudan is another, as NY Times columnist Bob Herbert has detailed over the last few years, the central government blatantly dithering as Darfur is destroyed and the Chinese become the latest foreign resource exploiters.

Raise your voice. Nobody else is going to make the future you want for you.

Given that Scoble will comment on other aspects of Microsoft’s political involvement, I wonder what he has to say about Following Bill Gates’ Linux Attack Money and Microsoft Getting Closer to the Fire, Tom Adelstein’s research into some not too pretty connections his corporate leadership has with American politicians [via Doc].

Scoble goes sideways on Microsoft in China. Gotta disagree with him–and also on his penchant for commenting on the intersection of Microsoft and politics in ways that just smack me as not being his true beliefs.

In the world of Star Trek Rick Berman is a name held in deep content by a large faction of the franchise’s biggest fans, blamed for the banal, money over art productions delivered since the midpoint of The Next Generation’s run. In Washington, DC, though, there’s another Rick Berman and this one seems to be doing work that would put the other to shame.

Striking Back at the Food Police looks at the efforts of Berman’s lobbying group, the Center for Consumer Freedom, and I read it twice, some parts more, without understanding how even with what are presumably very generous fees Berman can utter such quotes as this with straight face:

“You can’t accommodate these people,” he said, referring to archnemesis Michael Jacobson and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “They’re not going away. If you create some healthier products, they’ll go after all the unhealthy ones you still make.”

I know. Tragic how foolish men like Jacobson want to help the rest of us eat food that’s good for us. Not because of an emotional connection to animals like the PETA crew but to help us all avoid an early death or diseased final years.

Another Times article, In Overhaul of Social Security, Age Is the Elephant in the Room, points out that we’re living longer. As the title indicates the direct concern is for the future financial health of social security payments and the inability of the Congress and Administration to strike a deal. Hell, the Democrats won’t even come to the table until Bush takes private accounts off it.

I couldn’t help thinking of the foolishness of the DC Berman and his corporate backers (regardless of the name you didn’t think he was getting paid by freedom loving individuals, did you?) in their shortsighted pursuit of profit. After all, people have to eat and a healthy customer eats longer than a sick one. So why not develop and sell food that’s not full of crap like high fructose corn syrup and refined white sugar?

Take one pinch of Bruce Shneier’s U.S. Medical Privacy Law Gutted, a dash of White House’s Phillip Cooney taking markup pencil to scientific reports intended to be statements of fact and a heaping teaspoon of the abysmal failure of the Administration to explain the Downing Street Memo and you have recipe for one of the worst tasting Summer souffles in recent years. Well, probably not a souffle, that’s too French for this bunch, let’s call it a nasty ass beef ribs BBQ in tribute to the pseudo-Texan roots.

Tax break gives huge benefits to drugmakers: If you think the Administration doesn’t reward supporters after reading this article, you’re even less connected to reality than me.