2010 In Reverie

I seem to be reading a lot of people, both personal friends and online, bidding a not so fond good riddance to 2010. I can't say that I can really complain much about it. Nationally and politically, it was definitely a rough year. The economic conditions are still shit, and I have little optimism that the 112th Congress will do much about it (unless you count cutting taxes and going after social security. You know, deficit reduction stuff). But personally, I can't really complain. I have a lot to be grateful for. 2010 wasn't anything spectacular, but it wasn't bad either. I guess 2011 can only go up from here. I guess I'm not just feeling very reflective.

So yeah, fuck it - time to have several drinks and then stumble around Tempe listening to Jimmy Eat World. There are worse things I could be doing.

Holiday Gaming

I haven't had much time for blogging lately, what with all my spare time being consumed by the Christmas break and video games. It's a pretty rough gig. I got Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for Christmas, and then picked up The Force Unleashed 2, Bayonetta, and Splinter Cell: Conviction (the later of the two for only $29 total).

I haven't gotten into Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood much yet, because I assume it will be awesome and I have just been working my way through some of the others. TFU2 was a horrible, horrible, waste of goddamned money disappointment. I don't even know how Lucasarts could put out such dreck in good conscience, but then again, there's probably not a lot of that left at that company at this point. George Lucas is pretty much a money whore. See Zero Punctuation's review for a completely accurate depiction of the game. This guy makes his living off of being overly negative in his write-ups, but every negative about the game that he highlights is merited. It's an enjoyable game for the 3-4 hours that you get to play it, but I mean what the fuck? Like ZP says, I have played DLC for other games that was about that long, and I only paid $4.99 for the privilege of doing so.

Have not tried Bayonetta yet, although I hear it's supposed to be pretty entertaining. Splinter Cell: Conviction has been very enjoyable so far (hard not to be considering I only paid $9 for it). It feels a bit like watching an episode of "24" at times: disgruntled, grizzled, ex-federal agent whose demeanor and appearance scream "Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in," a government conspiracy at the highest echelons of power, torture/interrogation fetishes, and of course, guards that don't shut the fuck up. But it's a lot of fun. The mark/execute combat system is pretty entertaining, although it starts to feel repetitive and overpowered after a while. But I mean...$9? Am I right?

Internet Monies

It's probably about time that everyone comes to the realization that when a Republican speaks in apocalyptic, hyperbolic admonitions about the ramifications of a given public policy, we should rush to do the complete opposite:

McConnell (R-Ky.) also signaled the GOP will attempt to block such rules in the next Congress. "Today, the Obama administration, which has already nationalized health care, the auto industry, insurance companies, banks and student loans, will move forward with what could be the first step in controlling how Americans use the Internet by establishing federal regulations on its use," said McConnell.

While arguing against net neutrality, McConnell relied on the very same rhetoric about a free and open Internet that is used to bolster it, exploiting the confusion that surrounds the issue.

[...]

McConnell warned that regulating the Internet could reduce investment. "This would harm investment, stifle innovation and lead to job losses. That's why I, along with several of my colleagues, have urged the FCC chairman to abandon this flawed approach. The Internet is an invaluable resource and should be left alone," he said. "Many Americans will wonder as many already do if this is a Trojan horse for further meddling by the government. Fortunately, we'll have an opportunity in the new Congress to push back against new rules and regulations."

McConnell's statement is so full of fail that it's hard to know where to begin. Outright, repeatedly and objectively debunked lies notwithstanding, McConnell has now added government regulation of the internet (net neutrality) to his list of evil librul boogeymen that are going to single-handedly savage our economy and push unemployment up to 20%. Specifically, McConnell claims that any sort of FCC regulation on the internet would stifle innovation, kill jobs, and discourage investment, and that the internet ought to be left alone. I think we all know how well things work when private industry is left to its own devices or laughably, to 'self-regulate' (see financial crisis/Wall Street, Massey Energy, British Petroleum). It doesn't fucking work. It never has, and it never will. But aside from that, what about the standard Republican claim that any government regulation will lead to job/investment/innovation killing?

Japan has surged ahead of the United States on the wings of better wire and more aggressive government regulation, industry analysts say.

[...]

In 2000, the Japanese government seized its advantage in wire. In sharp contrast to the Bush administration over the same time period, regulators here compelled big phone companies to open up wires to upstart Internet providers.

In short order, broadband exploded. At first, it used the same DSL technology that exists in the United States. But because of the better, shorter wire in Japan, DSL service here is much faster. Ten to 20 times as fast, according to Pepper, one of the world's leading experts on broadband infrastructure.

Indeed, DSL in Japan is often five to 10 times as fast as what is widely offered by U.S. cable providers, generally viewed as the fastest American carriers. (Cable has not been much of a player in Japan.)

[...]

Perhaps more important, competition in Japan gave a kick in the pants to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), once a government-controlled enterprise and still Japan's largest phone company. With the help of government subsidies and tax breaks, NTT launched a nationwide build-out of fiber-optic lines to homes, making the lower-capacity copper wires obsolete.

"Obviously, without the competition, we would not have done all this at this pace," said Hideki Ohmichi, NTT's senior manager for public relations.

His company now offers speeds on fiber of up to 100 megabits per second -- 17 times as fast as the top speed generally available from U.S. cable. About 8.8 million Japanese homes have fiber lines -- roughly nine times the number in the United States.

[...]

The opening of Japan's copper phone lines to DSL competition launched a "virtuous cycle" of ever-increasing speed, said Cisco's Pepper. The cycle began shortly after Japanese politicians -- fretting about an Internet system that in 2000 was slower and more expensive than what existed in the United States -- decided to "unbundle" copper lines.

For just $2 a month, upstart broadband companies were allowed to rent bandwidth on an NTT copper wire connected to a Japanese home. Low rent allowed them to charge low prices to consumers -- as little as $22 a month for a DSL connection faster than almost all U.S. broadband services.

[...]

As the United States drifted, a prominent venture capitalist in Japan pounced on his government's decision to open up the country's copper wire.

Masayoshi Son, head of a company called Softbank, offered broadband that was much cheaper and more than six times as fast as NTT's. He added marketing razzmatazz to the mix, dispatching young people to street corners to give away modems that would connect users to a service called Yahoo BB. (The U.S.-based Yahoo owns about a third of it.) The company's share of DSL business in Japan has exploded in the past five years, from zero to 37 percent. As competition grew, the monthly cost of broadband across Japan fell by about half, as broadband speed jumped 33-fold, according to a recent study.

QED, and that article is even three years old. Here you have a prime example in Japan, under similar circumstances to the US (albeit a decade ago, sadly), effectively using government regulation to revolutionize an industry and transform it into a global leader. The end result was faster speeds, lower prices, better technology, superior innovation, and yes - more jobs. The unbundling of Japan's broadband infrastructure and low rents made it possible for the supposed Republican free market Jesus, small businesses, to enter the industry. All of this was forced by regulation, and it created a better outcome for everyone.

But McConnell and his caucus are not interested in these outcomes. They want the status quo - for telecom giants like AT&T & Comcast to have a virtual monopoly and to be free to continue to gouge its customers at the highest possible prices that the market will bear. For all their love and worship of the free market, their actions declare the exact opposite: they don't want competition, lower prices, better access, or more choices for consumers, because Republicans don't promote capitalism, but plutocracy in its purest form. And they continue to promote this perverse agenda through their fear mongering language and warnings of government takeovers that a good 40-50% of the Fox News loving populace actually believes.

I know that facts, data, and empirical evidence have a librul bias but I'll conclude with the following graphs from OECD. The first shows the average monthly price per Mbit/s by country, in US Dollars at purchasing price parity (PPP). The second shows the fastest broadband speeds by country (also in Mbit/s), as reported by the incumbent telecommunications operators.

Yes, you read that correctly: we pay on average approximately four times more than Japan, for speeds up to 400% slower. I guess this means all of fears have come true: the OECD has become part of the evil, librul Amurika hating agenda.

GWOT: Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

Via the New York Times, we learn that Endless War is about to expand to a new front:

WASHINGTON — Senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan's tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistan’s efforts to root out militants there.

The proposal, described by American officials in Washington and Afghanistan, would escalate military activities inside Pakistan, where the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash.

Almost a decade later and we are still following the Bush mantra of go anywhere/fight anywhere so we don't have to fight them here. And we do mean anywhere - we are in Yemen too. And as Wikileaks has revealed, the Yemeni government has been claiming responsibility for US attacks in order to mask our role there:

President Obama has approved providing U.S. intelligence in support of ROYG [Republic of Yemen government] ground operations against AQAP targets, General Petraeus informed Saleh. Saleh reacted coolly, however, to the General's proposal to place USG [U.S. government] personnel inside the area of operations armed with real-time, direct feed intelligence from U.S. ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] platforms overhead. "You cannot enter the operations area and you must stay in the joint operations center," Saleh responded. Any U.S. casualties in strikes against AQAP would harm future efforts, Saleh asserted. Saleh did not have any objection, however, to General Petraeus' proposal to move away from the use of cruise missiles and instead have U.S. fixed-wing bombers circle outside Yemeni territory, "out of sight," and engage AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] targets when actionable intelligence became available. Saleh lamented the use of cruise missiles that are "not very accurate" and welcomed the use of aircraft-deployed precision-guided bombs instead. "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Saleh said, prompting Deputy Prime Minister Alimi to joke that he had just "lied" by telling Parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa were American-made but deployed by the ROYG.

Meanwhile, back in the US, our infrastructure is crumbling and sorely lagging the rest of the developed world, unemployment remains perilously close to 10%, and Congress quibbles over any sort of domestic or social relief program that would add event a red cent to the deficit while we spend trillions trotting the globe in search of Scary, Evil Terrorists. But hey - at least we are Safe. Who can put a price on that?

Is This Good For The Company?

The US Chamber of Commerce is still a collective of profit-worshipping assholes:

Over the weekend, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) tried to revive the bill by changing the way the compensation fund would be paid for. Instead of ending the foreign corporate tax loophole, Gillibrand proposed a new funding mechanism, including a 2 percent excise fee on certain foreign companies that receive U.S. government contracts. However, the Chamber still believes the bill’s offsets are unacceptable.

Asked for comment by ThinkProgress, Chamber spokesperson Tita Freeman told us that the Chamber takes no position on compensating 9/11 first responders, but absolutely opposes Gillibrand’s new funding mechanism because the Chamber believes it to be “harmful to the business community and the economy.”

Well isn't that predictable? More ad hominem. They completely support the bill, but the way it's paid for would upset the gods of business and the economy! And that's scary! The truth is that they don't give a shit, because if they did, they would support this humane and necessary legislation. They just care far more for their profits than they do the suffering of 9/11 workers. As I indicated in my earlier post, this isn't exactly a bad year for business. They could afford to give a helping hand.

What the hell ever happened to being a good, decent corporate citizen? They are a dying breed.

Steal from the Poor, Give to the Rich

Recent headlines this week bring us yet another indication of how fucked up and broken our political and governmental system has become.

The James Zadroga 9/11 Health & Compensation Act of 2010 has been an ongoing legislative action since last year, despite the currency of its title from the latest revisions. The bill seeks to provide compensation to first responders at Ground Zero who have been afflicted with debilitating diseases, mostly respiratory in nature, as a result of their service at the WTC in the wake of 9/11. It would seem that it would be a purely moral, just, and obvious choice to provide proper compensation and access to healthcare for those among us that sacrificed their well-being (and in some cases, their lives) in our nation's hour of need. However, that very notion belies the fact that this is America - a nation where nothing purely moral and just happens automatically, and where perverse moneyed interests and their legislative stool pigeons fight viciously to protect the plutocracy at any cost.

This insistence upon the welfare of the few at the expense of the many manifested itself most recently when Senate Republicans issued their intent to block any and all legislation until the Bush tax cuts were extended in their entirety. The oddly termed Obama-McConnell tax cut/unemployment benefits package ultimately flew through both houses of Congress, because Republicans never met a tax cut that they didn't want to take home to their mother. The total package is estimated to cost about $858 billion, with $125 billion of that cost coming from tax cuts for those with incomes over $250,000, and the newly gutted estate tax. All of this, of course, goes straight to the deficit and is not paid for by any means, but as our Republican establishment always tells us, tax cuts pay for themselves by way of magic unicorn dust and their overt fiscal detriment is a figment of our collective imagination.

Our very own Senator Kyl leads the asshole brigade, levying typical Republican whine charges of process, that the bill was rushed, that amendments weren't allowed, and of course - cost:

KYL: This has been a moving target since day one. … This is something that they came up with to just put directly on the floor of the Senate, without any hearings, without any opportunities to figure out what it should be like. [...]

I have no idea how this thing would work. So they reduced it from $7 billion to $6 billion — I have no idea whether $6 billion is a reasonable figure. … But the question is who’s responsible? Who’s at fault? Do they have the money? Is the insurance adequate to cover it? Wasn’t the previous settlement adequate? Why would they need $6 billion?

KYL: First of all, they should have peace of mind when it comes to health care. The question is what and how? And when you try do it, as you said in your introduction, in a hurry, in a lame duck session, without a hearing, without understanding what the ramifications are and whether we can amend the bill, you’re doing it in the worst way. For example, there has already been a settlement for a lot of these people, a fund that’s been set up for them to receive funding. Will the people who are supporting this legislation be able to participate in that fund? Nobody has been able to say. Why $7 billion? What will the requirements for qualification be for the money?

Nobody wants to deny care to people who, and by the way these are primarily people who helped to clean up the site in the aftermath of 9/11 and there weren’t enough adequate precautions taken in some cases to deal with potential health issues and to the extent that they’ve become ill they do need to be taken care of. It’s one thing to make an emotional appeal to say we need to care for someone who did something good. It’s another to do it in a sensible way. And that’s all we’re asking for. You bring it up in the lame duck session with no opportunity to amend it and you’re probably going to make bad legislation. All this could have been done earlier I might add.

To summarize the Republican position, $125 billion in tax cuts for people who genuinely don't need the money is worth holding the lame duck session hostage to secure its passage. But a mere $6 billion to provide solvency to emergency workers that risked their lives in the wake of an attack on American soil is something that must be done Correctly, Properly, and Deliberately. Of course they need health care! No one denies that, but it must be done the Right Way, even though none of these bullshit rules or provisos applied when we were busy fellating the rich with tax cuts. As Jon Stewart astutely notes, this posturing is ironic coming from a party that made 9/11 their pet catch phrase during the Bush years.

But the Republican bile does not end there. Since Republicans have spent the last two years vehemently insisting upon pay-as-you-go (or paygo) rules for any legislation (except tax cuts, of course), Democratic sponsors of the bill ensured that it was fully funded and deficit neutral. This was accomplished by ending a corporate tax loophole. Enter the US Chamber of Commerce, which in my opinion, is rapidly giving Goldman Sachs a run for its money for the dubious honor of the great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity. The Chamber lobbied against the bill, spewing ad hominem and red herrings in an attempt to scare lawmakers into doing the bidding of their corporate masters. And much like the income tax cuts for the wealthy, corporations don't need them either:

Investors around the world say President Barack Obama is bad for the bottom line, even though U.S. corporations are on track for the biggest earnings growth in 22 years and the stock market is headed for its best back-to- back annual gains since 2004.

It remains to be seen what will happen to the first responder bill, but with the Senate tied up with passing START and possibly DREAM during the lame duck session, it's unlikely that it will come up for a vote, let alone break cloture. And the Republican-controlled House next year and slimmer Democratic margins in the Senate only further compound the bill's path to passage. But that's okay - I'm sure all those tax cuts will trickle down to the 9/11 workers and the free market Jebus and invisible hand will cure them of all that ails them. Or something.