Wired: The Second Coming of Philip K. Dick. I see I'm not the only one who noticed this. [Hack the Planet]

Dick is one of my favorite authors but I am just amazed at how many of his movies have made it to the big screen while maintaining what made them so good. Paranoia always seems to have a place in the mainstram.  11:09:55 PM    

Broken Record

No Amount of Money for These Vets

Some of the Gulf War POWs were tortured, mostly pilots. A judge awarded them damages payable from the Iraqi funds now controlled by the White House, which refuses to release the money.

On Tuesday, Veteran's Day, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked why the administration won't permit former Gulf War POWs to receive the funds awarded them by a judge. This is a section of the official transcript, starting about halfway through the press conference. Joe Conason's Journal provided the pointer. (I've bolded the operative language.)

Q Scott, there are 17 former POWs from the first Gulf War who were tortured and filed suit against the regime of Saddam Hussein. And a judge has ordered that they are entitled to substantial financial damages. What is the administration's position on that? Is it the view of this White House that that money would be better spent rebuilding Iraq rather than going to these former POWs?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know that I view it in those terms, David. I think that the United States -- first of all, the United States condemns in the strongest terms the brutal torture to which these Americans were subjected. They bravely and heroically served our nation and made sacrifices during the Gulf War in 1991, and there is simply no amount of money that can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. That's what our view is.

Q But, so -- but isn't it true that this White House --
Q They think they're is an --
Q Excuse me, Helen -- that this White House is standing in the way of them getting those awards, those financial awards, because it views it that money better spent on rebuilding Iraq?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, there's simply no amount of money that can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering --

Q Why won't you spell out what your position is?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm coming to your question. Believe me, I am. Let me finish. Let me start over again, though. No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of a very brutal regime, at the hands of Saddam Hussein. It was determined earlier this year by Congress and the administration that those assets were no longer assets of Iraq, but they were resources required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq. But again, there is simply no amount of compensation that could ever truly compensate these brave men and women.

Q Just one more. Why would you stand in the way of at least letting them get some of that money?

MR. McCLELLAN: I disagree with the way you characterize it.

Q But if the law that Congress passed entitles them to access frozen assets of the former regime, then why isn't that money, per a judge's order, available to these victims?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's why I pointed out that that was an issue that was addressed earlier this year. But make no mistake about it, we condemn in the strongest possible terms the torture that these brave individuals went through --

Q -- you don't think they should get money?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- at the hands of Saddam Hussein. There is simply no amount of money that can truly compensate those men and women who heroically served --

Q That's not the issue --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- who heroically served our nation.

Q Are you opposed to them getting some of the money?

MR. McCLELLAN: And, again, I just said that that had been addressed earlier this year.

Q No, but it hasn't been addressed. They're entitled to the money under the law. The question is, is this administration blocking their effort to access some of that money, and why?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't view it that way at all. I view it the way that I stated it, that this issue was --

Q But you are opposed to them getting the money.

MR. McCLELLAN: This issue was addressed earlier this year, and we believe that there's simply no amount of money that could truly compensate these brave men and women for what they went through and for the suffering that they went through at the hands of Saddam Hussein --

Q So no money.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and that's my answer.

[Escapable Logic]

This must have been fun to listen to. We set up a legal way for tortured soldiers to get money from Saddam's regime, a federal judge determines they have a right to it, but this Administration feels they do not. That the money is better used to rebuild Iraq. Why not just ask Congress for more to make up for this? What a wonderful message to send. As a vet, you are entitled to certain things, unless we decide you aren't. Well, it has been that way since our very first war. Seems to me that many of the vets from the Revolution were not very happy with the way their government treated them. Things do not seem to have changed much.  10:27:44 PM    

You May Call Me A Dreamer ...

The Elephant in the Corner...

...of this election cycle is the Internet. Suppose for a moment that we're able to get past our sturm und drang that says that the fascist NeoCons are going to sell our republic out to the Republicans and that the pinko commie fag liberals will sell our democracy to the Democrats. What would our government look like if it were as customer-centric as Amazon?

I've been discussing the idea of e-democracy today with Doc Searls and Phil Windley who are having dinner in Las Vegas on the topic as I write this. (I told Phil I wish I could be a fly in his soup). Our collective assessment is that no one is thinking about e-democracy on a large enough scale.

Everybody wants smaller government except the government. Everybody wants government to have a better User Interface. Everybody wants the government to be as user-friendly as Amazon. Everybody wants transparency everywhere in government: voting auditability, legislation, cloak room deal-cutting, pork, contracting, etc. And we all want the cost of government to drop like ISP pricing.

And no one wants politicians getting in the way of governance any more. At some level, we know this is possible and inevitable. But should we have to wait a couple of decades for our overdue upgrade?

Phil observes an interesting latency factor built in to government: governments resist all management principles for 20 years after they've been widely accepted in private enterprise. He says that if you announce in a company that 20% of the people are going to be let go, everyone assumes that it will be someone else, thanks to their high opinion of their value to the enterprise. Apparently, though, if you make that announcement in government, everyone assumes they'll be part of the 20%. He's describing a culture founded on a sense of fraudulence.

I'll bet that most of us have a similar vision of e-government. Once you describe government as a web app, the rest is mostly details. All fifteen of us could sit down and sketch it out on a couple of flip chart sheets. But to implement it, we need to cajole the bureaucrats out of their bureaus.

Phil and I are willing to stipulate a couple of points:

1. Many, maybe most of government employees could be replaced by a well-designed web app.
2. The big cost of government is not the payroll, but the programs that bureaucrats dream up to justify their job/program/department.
3. If only the bureaucrats would cooperate, an IT SWAT Team could design that web app in #1.

Here's the secret to breaking the civil service log jam: Establish a program under which a cooperative civil servant can qualify for reasonable merit raises and retirement on the pension they're aiming at, if they'll just go home and stop causing trouble. First they need to cooperate with the SWAT Team to manage the paperwork they currently handle. If they can demonstrate that they really don't do anything, they get a bonus, since it saves everyone so much trouble.

You say Republican and I say Democrat

With a proper UI and scalability, does anyone care what servers are behind the scenes at Amazon? Isn't it the same with e-government? If the systems run properly, the party in power doesn't matter as much. Citizens should be discussing the fine points of services and decision-making rather than Dem vs. GOP. It's a granularity issue: the finer the grain, the more useful the design discussions.

When the citizenry is significantly involved in rating programs (think of epinions or Amazon reviews), defensive wars like Afghanistan are more likely and preemptive wars like Iraq, perhaps less. I really don't care, as long as we all share a sense of what's right and willing to commit wholeheartedly to, since that's the benchmark for an effective program, whether it's military action or AmeriCorps. I hope it's obvious that fine-grained citizen involvement is the opposite of the citizen initiatives so popular in California. Those are not fine-grained, but rather the bumper-sticker school of governance.

Along the way, we'd discover that all of us reasoning together are a lot smarter than some of us. My sense is that smarter-than-average people of both ends of the spectrum are scared to death of a broad-based democracy.

The Internet mustn't be simply a way to win elections but a basis for governance.

If Estonia can do this stuff, surely we can.

[Escapable Logic]

This will take a long time to come to fruition. It requires an access to the intrenet that we are far from achieving. Wo pays for what has always been the major portion of government. How is this to be done? What works at the county-level vs the federal? I am sure that the internet will have a huge effect on government but it may not be pretty so see.  10:22:15 PM    

More on the Elsevier boycott and cancellations. Paula Hane, Cornell and Other University Libraries to Cancel Elsevier Titles, Information Today, November 17, 2003. Excerpt: "Cornell University Library has posted a list of about two hundred Elsevier journal titles it is canceling for 2004. Harvard University says it is preparing for similar cuts in its Elsevier subscriptions. The University of California continues its negotiations with the Dutch publisher of scholarly scientific journals on behalf of all the UC campuses, while faculty on some campuses have resolved to boycott Elsevier if reasonable rates cannot be negotiated. Other universities and library consortia around the country are also in the throes of assessing what they can afford and what they will have to cancel due to price increases and budget constraints....Many faculty scholars at numerous universities have already embraced alternative scholarly publishing and open-access models, such as BioMed Central, Public Library of Science (PLoS), and others. Just this week, SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) announced a partnership with PLoS 'to broaden support for open-access publishing among researchers, funding agencies, societies, libraries, and academic institutions through cooperative educational and advocacy activities.'" [Open Access News]

More on the Elsevier boycott. Another business that seems to be moving in directons orthogonal to its customers. Cornell. Harvard. California. Here is a reason why. The Elsevier journals

'account for less than 2 percent of the serials to which the Cornell Library subscribes, but that cost is equal to over 20 percent of the Library[base ']s total serials expenditures including the Medical School.'

10:13:58 PM    

Group wants phone number plan put on hold. A telephone industry association asks federal regulators to stop telephone number portability rules from taking effect on Nov. 24. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

How surprising? First the do not call list is attacked, now the traveling phone number. It seems that anything that is designed to help the customer is a problem for many of these companies. It is easy to tell which ones are on the wrong side. They keep doing things that are the opposite of what their customers want, things that make it easier for them. This is more a naked grab for power than any attempt to provide what the markets want.  10:05:27 PM    

SCO plans more Linux lawsuits. The Linux antagonist vows to widen its legal battle against the open-source operating system, saying it intends to sue large-scale Linux users for copyright infringement. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

You'd think this was MS talking, the words sound so similar. Trying to say that only for profit software will prevail. Threatening to sue endusers. All for something that has not been shown to be true. Isn't that the American way? Sue a million people, collect from a few thousand and then retire. These guys give capitalists a seriously bad name.  10:01:30 PM    

Anyone Feel Like We're Doing Something Wrong?. Link:

ROME, Nov. 17 âo[per thou] The sight was extraordinary, but less so than the sound, or rather the lack of it. Although thousands upon thousands of people filled one of this city's most chaotic squares during the evening rush hour on Monday, the decibel level seldom rose above a whisper's.

Silence was just one way in which those people sought to show their respect for 19 Italians killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq last week. Another was to wait two to three hours, in the drizzle and dark, for a chance to walk past the victims' coffins, arrayed inside a palace that towers over the square, Piazza Venezia.

The line went on and on, just like Italy's mourning.

This country's reaction to the casualties it suffered in the attack has been more than a modest, fleeting sob.

For days on end, Italy's leaders have delivered public statements as sweeping as soliloquies. Newspapers have been jammed with essays about slain heroes, and television reports have been filled with crying.

[Eschaton]"QB

An interesting comparison with how we are treating our dead.  3:12:17 PM    

AARP and Big Insurance. From the Center for American Progress:

"Critics say AARP, which formally unveiled its new headquarters building in downtown Washington last month, has softened its earlier militancy because it is preoccupied with its profit-making enterprises, including $100 million in earnings from the sale of insurance, mostly Medicare supplemental policies."
- Newsday, 10/21/2000

"AARP's receives more than $100 million in revenue from health insurers."
- Denver Post, 5/21/96


"Critics suggest that AARP's substantial profits from the sales of Medigap and other insurance policies, drug company advertising in its magazines, and investment schemes conflict with its interests on behalf of seniors...AARP President William Novelli acknowledged complaints from members that AARP has been too timid in the political battles to defend Medicare and Social Security. He conceded that AARP has pulled its punches since right-wing groups and members of Congress criticized it as too liberal."
- Newsday, 2/19/02

"AARP's pharmacy service is part of its insurance sales operation which generated $ 101 million in revenue last year - 17 percent of the organization's total budget."
- Capitol News Service, 8/15/02


"AARP receives millions of dollars from UnitedHealthcare, a national health insurance firm based in Minnesota."
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2/24/01

[Eschaton]

Follow the money. When almost 20% of your money comes from the sale of insurance products, I guess you would be happy to with a plan to create even more. Short term gains. The scourge of our times.  3:04:41 PM