TestingTesting

I've been playing last night's TestingTesting with Stephanie Patrick over and over. I produce this little living room webcast. It has a tendency to be singer/songwriter and folk oriented. Stephanie is a singer/songwriter but with an electric guitar and an amp. A bit edgier than what we usually have. It was great. And Zoe's pictures are wonderful. A really good one of the sound coming out of the amp.

Beaver Report - Day 11

I'm going to have to cut down the damn tree myself if the beaver doesn't get a move on. One day of mediocre chewing and he takes the next day off.

Internal Affairs

A Defining Issue

It will take time, and many legal proceedings, before the full story of Enron's collapse becomes known. But one thing is already clear: The case shows how adept corporate executives have become at shifting risk away from themselves and onto others, in particular onto their employees. Enron's leaders have walked away from the debacle chastened but very, very rich. Many of Enron's employees — no doubt including the loyalists who sent irate letters every time I criticized the company — have lost their life savings.

Behind this disaster for ordinary workers lies a little-remarked sea change in America's retirement system. Twenty years ago most workers were in "defined benefit" plans — that is, their employers promised them a fixed pension. Today most workers have "defined contribution" plans: they invest money for their retirement, and accept the risk that those investments might go bad. Retirement contributions are normally subsidized by the employer, and receive special tax treatment; but all this is to no avail if, as happened at Enron, the assets workers have bought lose most of their value.
(...)

The Bush administration's commission on Social Security reform issued its latest report last week, just as Enron entered its death throes. Most of the criticism of that commission's work, my own included, has focused on its, yes, Enron-like accounting: items seem to migrate onto or off the balance sheet to suit the commission's convenience. Thus when the Social Security system takes in more money than it pays out, as it does at present, this has no significance — the federal budget is unified, you see, so it doesn't mean anything when one particular piece of it is in surplus. But in 2016, when the Social Security system starts to pay out more than it takes in, there will be a crisis — Social Security, you see, must stand on its own.

But the commission resorts to bogus accounting only to make the case for its ultimate objective: to convert Social Security from a defined-benefit system, which guarantees retired Americans a certain basic income, to a defined-contribution system, in which the unwise or unlucky can find themselves destitute in their old age.
Some analysts I know think Social Security will be converted to a defined-contribution system, not because it is a good idea but because the financial industry — which has enormous clout in our money-driven political system — has so much to gain from the conversion. I hope they're wrong. But if they are right, the fate of Enron's poor employees, victimized by a management team they thought was on their side, may truly be the shape of things to come.
[read more]

thanks to BuzzFlash

HIDING PAST AND PRESENT PRESIDENCIES
The Problems With Bush's Executive Order Burying Presidential Records
by John Dean

On November 1, President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13233, a policy enabling his administration to govern in secrecy. For good reason, this has upset many historians, journalists, and Congresspersons (both Republican and Democratic). The Order ends 27 years of Congressional and judicial efforts to make presidential papers and records publicly available. In issuing it, the president not only has pushed his lawmaking powers beyond their limits, but he may be making the same mistakes as Richard Nixon.
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No president can govern in a fishbowl. But not since Richard Nixon went to work in the Oval Office has there been as concentrated an effort to keep the real work of a president hidden, showing the public only a scripted president, as now. While this effort was evident before the September 11th terrorist attacks, the events of that day have become the justification for even greater secrecy.
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These documents passed the twelve-year deadline for public release on January 12, 2001, but their release has been stalled by the Bush White House until now. The documents are believed to contain records that Papa Bush, as Reagan's vice president, is not happy to have made public. They also contain papers of others now working for Bush, who might be embarrassed by their release.
[read more]

thanks to BuzzFlash

External Affairs

Arie Arnon: Where are the brave leaders to get us out of this mess?
'I worry that what is waiting for us is even worse than what we have experienced so far'

After 30 years in the peace movement in Israel, I've seen movements in morale go up and down, but never have I seen such a fall as we have experienced over the past 14 months, when the latest intifada began. If we think back to the attempts made at the end of the Clinton administration – both at Camp David in July of last year and at Taba in January of this year – it is remarkable to realise how close the two sides were to reaching an agreement. Neither side would have got all it wanted, but polls at the time showed the majority of ordinary people were willing to accept the painful compromises that would have been necessary.

Unfortunately, those who were unwilling to give up their long cherished desires were able to scupper the agreements. The Palestinians found it difficult to accept that only a small minority of the 1948 refugees would be able to return to their homes in Israel, and the right-wing parties in Israel were not willing to abandon their colonising projects in the West Bank and Gaza. The result was the rise of a popular view on both sides: that there was no partner for peace on the other. That realisation was followed by the intifada, the election of Arial Sharon and the ever-escalating violence.

But it won't serve what should be the aim of government policy: to control the terrorists. In fact, these actions will make it harder for the Palestinian Authority to implement a ceasefire in its area. It may be true that Arafat did little to stop the inifada over most of the last year, but since 11 September, important parts of the Palestinian Authority and the movements that support it really wanted to stop the cycle of violence and move to political negotiations. But it almost seems as if the Israeli government does not wish the Palestinian Authority to take control of the elements who seek to kill Israeli citizens.
[read more]

Sharon's fantasy
The dream of replacing Arafat with compliant local warlords is gaining ground in Israel - but it will fail

Yet the hawks are not fazed. People feared the worst from the war in Afghanistan, they say, and those nightmares did not come true either. They are confident that it will not be mullahs and ayatollahs who take Arafat's place but "local commanders", regional warlords free of the old ideology of liberation who will soon realise it's in their best interests to reach an understanding with Israel. Sharon's hard-right infrastructure minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has it all mapped out: he wants to divide the territories into four cantons, each one separate from the other. There will be no passage between Gaza and the West Bank, none between Hebron and Ramallah. The bases of terror will be rooted out.
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For Sharon, the idea must have special appeal: after all, he's tried it before. His last grand scheme, Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, was also aimed at smashing Arafat and driving him into exile. Earlier his Likud party had sought to create "village leagues" in the West Bank, as an alternative to PLO-supporting local mayors. Then, as now, Sharon had the same desire - to create a different Palestinian people so that he would not have to deal with the real one.

It cannot work, of course. It is a total fantasy, an attempt to escape reality. Sharon, in particular, cannot contemplate what really has to be done - to sit down, talk and reach an accord with the enemy - because that will mean paying an unbearable price. Any peace deal will entail dismantling some, if not all, of Israel's settlements in the occupied territories. And yet these red-roofed villages have been the driving obsession of Sharon's career over nearly three decades. He cannot face tearing them down. As that well-placed official puts it: "No grandfather wants to destroy his grandchildren."

So Sharon will seek comfort in his dream of a quiescent Palestinian population, rather than a proud people, led by pliable warlords, rather than a national figurehead. His dream will fail, but who knows how much blood will be lost before it does?
[read more]