Republicans have cost America $1.3 trillion, not $24 billion

Standard and Poor's rating agency estimates that the government shutdown cost the US--the country, not the government--$24 billion. This figure is based on what the gross domestic product would have been, without the shutdown, compared with what it actually is. This is all hypothetical, of course. No one can say what the GDP would have been because no one can predict the future with certainty.

The government shutdown certainly caused loss of pay for many thousands of workers, not just federal workers, but all those whose livelihood depends on the federal government. It also caused hardship for those left without day care, or unable to get Medicare or Medicaid.

The damage done by Republicans to the US economy, however, has been much greater than just $24 billion. The great recession was a severe blow to the economy. The recession may not have been the fault of the Republicans alone, although an argument can be made that they caused more than a little of it by their obsession with government regulations, which they relaxed with disastrous consequences. But the Republicans were wholly responsible for the lack of a second stimulus package and by the false economies of reductions in government spending that have made the recovery from this recession much worse than average for recoveries in the US.

In fact, the average recovery of the US from recessions after 48 months has been 17%. At this point, the US GDP is only 9% higher than it was in December, 2008. After previous recessions, under both Democrats and Republicans, the federal government has passed vigorous stimulus, assuring that the economy would recover as quickly as possible. After the 2010 elections gave them control of the House of Representatives, the Republican congress refused to pass any stimulus at all. In fact, they forced the president to accept a seriously reduced federal budget, an action that further damaged the economy.

A simple mathematical calculation shows approximately how much the economy has been damaged by Republican intransigence. The economy has actually grown by 9%, or $880 billion since December 2008. If it had grown at a 17% rate (which is only the average rate for recoveries), it would now be $1.31 trillion higher than it actually is.

Therefore, the idiotic policies of Republicans in congress have already cost the nation at least $1.3 trillion.

Jikininki--a ghost story from Japan

Note: This Japanese ghost story was translated by the American author, Lafcadio Hearn over 100 years ago. Holly recommends it as a classic Halloween story and so I am posting it here. Enjoy!

JIKININKI

Once, when Muso Kokushi, a priest of the Zen sect, was journeying alone through the province of Mino (1), he lost his way in a mountain-district where there was nobody to direct him. For a long time he wandered about helplessly; and he was beginning to despair of finding shelter for the night, when he perceived, on the top of a hill lighted by the last rays of the sun, one of those little hermitages, called anjitsu, which are built for solitary priests. It seemed to be in ruinous condition; but he hastened to it eagerly, and found that it was inhabited by an aged priest, from whom he begged the favor of a night's lodging. This the old man harshly refused; but he directed Muso to a certain hamlet, in the valley adjoining where lodging and food could be obtained.

Muso found his way to the hamlet, which consisted of less than a dozen farm-cottages; and he was kindly received at the dwelling of the headman. Forty or fifty persons were assembled in the principal apartment, at the moment of Muso's arrival; but he was shown into a small separate room, where he was promptly supplied with food and bedding. Being very tired, he lay down to rest at an early hour; but a little before midnight he was roused from sleep by a sound of loud weeping in the next apartment. Presently the sliding-screens were gently pushed apart; and a young man, carrying a lighted lantern, entered the room, respectfully saluted him, and said:—

"Reverend Sir, it is my painful duty to tell you that I am now the responsible head of this house. Yesterday I was only the eldest son. But when you came here, tired as you were, we did not wish that you should feel embarrassed in any way: therefore we did not tell you that father had died only a few hours before. The people whom you saw in the next room are the inhabitants of this village: they all assembled here to pay their last respects to the dead; and now they are going to another village, about three miles off,—for by our custom, no one of us may remain in this village during the night after a death has taken place. We make the proper offerings and prayers;—then we go away, leaving the corpse alone. Strange things always happen in the house where a corpse has thus been left: so we think that it will be better for you to come away with us. We can find you good lodging in the other village. But perhaps, as you are a priest, you have no fear of demons or evil spirits; and, if you are not afraid of being left alone with the body, you will be very welcome to the use of this poor house. However, I must tell you that nobody, except a priest, would dare to remain here tonight."

Muso made answer:—

"For your kind intention and your generous hospitality, I and am deeply grateful. But I am sorry that you did not tell me of your father's death when I came;—for, though I was a little tired, I certainly was not so tired that I should have found difficulty in doing my duty as a priest. Had you told me, I could have performed the service before your departure. As it is, I shall perform the service after you have gone away; and I shall stay by the body until morning. I do not know what you mean by your words about the danger of staying here alone; but I am not afraid of ghosts or demons: therefore please to feel no anxiety on my account."

The young man appeared to be rejoiced by these assurances, and expressed his gratitude in fitting words. Then the other members of the family, and the folk assembled in the adjoining room, having been told of the priest's kind promises, came to thank him,—after which the master of the house said:—

"Now, reverend Sir, much as we regret to leave you alone, we must bid you farewell. By the rule of our village, none of us can stay here after midnight. We beg, kind Sir, that you will take every care of your honorable body, while we are unable to attend upon you. And if you happen to hear or see anything strange during our absence, please tell us of the matter when we return in the morning."

All then left the house, except the priest, who went to the room where the dead body was lying. The usual offerings had been set before the corpse; and a small Buddhist lamp—tomyo—was burning. The priest recited the service, and performed the funeral ceremonies,—after which he entered into meditation. So meditating he remained through several silent hours; and there was no sound in the deserted village. But, when the hush of the night was at its deepest, there noiselessly entered a Shape, vague and vast; and in the same moment Muso found himself without power to move or speak. He saw that Shape lift the corpse, as with hands, devour it, more quickly than a cat devours a rat,—beginning at the head, and eating everything: the hair and the bones and even the shroud. And the monstrous Thing, having thus consumed the body, turned to the offerings, and ate them also. Then it went away, as mysteriously as it had come.

When the villagers returned next morning, they found the priest awaiting them at the door of the headman's dwelling. All in turn saluted him; and when they had entered, and looked about the room, no one expressed any surprise at the disappearance of the dead body and the offerings. But the master of the house said to Muso:—

"Reverent Sir, you have probably seen unpleasant things during the night: all of us were anxious about you. But now we are very happy to find you alive and unharmed. Gladly we would have stayed with you, if it had been possible. But the law of our village, as I told you last evening, obliges us to quit our houses after a death has taken place, and to leave the corpse alone. Whenever this law has been broken, heretofore, some great misfortune has followed. Whenever it is obeyed, we find that the corpse and the offerings disappear during our absence. Perhaps you have seen the cause."

Then Muso told of the dim and awful Shape that had entered the death-chamber to devour the body and the offerings. No person seemed to be surprised by his narration; and the master of the house observed:—

"What you have told us, reverend Sir, agrees with what has been said about this matter from ancient time."

Muso then inquired:—

"Does not the priest on the hill sometimes perform the funeral service for your dead?"

"What priest?" the young man asked.

"The priest who yesterday evening directed me to this village," answered Muso. "I called at his anjitsu on the hill yonder. He refused me lodging, but told me the way here."

The listeners looked at each other, as in astonishment; and, after a moment of silence, the master of the house said:—

"Reverend Sir, there is no priest and there is no anjitsu on the hill. For the time of many generations there has not been any resident-priest in this neighborhood."

Muso said nothing more on the subject; for it was evident that his kind hosts supposed him to have been deluded by some goblin. But after having bidden them farewell, and obtained all necessary information as to his road, he determined to look again for the hermitage on the hill, and so to ascertain whether he had really been deceived. He found the anjitsu without any difficulty; and, this time, its aged occupant invited him to enter. When he had done so, the hermit humbly bowed down before him, exclaiming:—"Ah! I am ashamed!—I am very much ashamed!—I am exceedingly ashamed!"

"You need not be ashamed for having refused me shelter," said Muso. "You directed me to the village yonder, where I was very kindly treated; and I thank you for that favor.

"I can give no man shelter," the recluse made answer;—and it is not for the refusal that I am ashamed. I am ashamed only that you should have seen me in my real shape,—for it was I who devoured the corpse and the offerings last night before your eyes... Know, reverend Sir, that I am a jikininki, [1]—an eater of human flesh. Have pity upon me, and suffer me to confess the secret fault by which I became reduced to this condition.

"A long, long time ago, I was a priest in this desolate region. There was no other priest for many leagues around. So, in that time, the bodies of the mountain-folk who died used to be brought here,—sometimes from great distances,—in order that I might repeat over them the holy service. But I repeated the service and performed the rites only as a matter of business;—I thought only of the food and the clothes that my sacred profession enabled me to gain. And because of this selfish impiety I was reborn, immediately after my death, into the state of a jikininki. Since then I have been obliged to feed upon the corpses of the people who die in this district: every one of them I must devour in the way that you saw last night... Now, reverend Sir, let me beseech you to perform a Segaki-service [2] for me: help me by your prayers, I entreat you, so that I may be soon able to escape from this horrible state of existence"...

No sooner had the hermit uttered this petition than he disappeared; and the hermitage also disappeared at the same instant. And Muso Kokushi found himself kneeling alone in the high grass, beside an ancient and moss-grown tomb of the form called go-rin-ishi, [3] which seemed to be the tomb of a priest.

Online security: We must secure the internet for personal use

Ezra Klein, of the Washington Post's Wonk Blog, declared on Morning Joe that the rollout of Obama Care is a disaster. Problems were to be expected on the first few days, he said, but not by the third week. 

Klein is more an economics wonk than a computer geek, while I am more the latter. I agree with him whole-heartedly on this, but the situation goes far beyond the Obama Care web site, health.gov. The problems with the web site are multiplied a million times in the internet itself. The difficulties concern, not the mechanics of the site, which is basically a simple site into which a user puts his or her data and the program draws conclusions based on the data. The problem lies in web security itself, which is very broken indeed and gets worse with each passing day.

Before the internet was invented, online traffic consisted of users within a single computer, generally a mainframe. Each user had a single password. His or her security was protected by the internal security of the mainframe itself. Access was controlled by a human being who had to set up accounts for any new users. These users operated within a walled garden, which is to say there was no access to the computer from outside the institution to which it belonged.

The invention of the internet changed all this. Today, millions of people log onto the internet each day. Each person may have dozens of accounts, each with a password and each with the risk of being hacked into by one of the other millions of users. Furthermore, there are thousands of programs that act like humans which roam through the internet much like flies seeking nourishment from a carcass. Most of these programs are benign, like the google programs that keep track of web sites and enable people to find what they are looking for. Other programs are malicious, some looking to take over your computer or steal all the data on it, or even clean out your bank account before you know what is going on.

The Federal government is not to blame for the bugs in the Obama care web site. A cursory examination leads me to suspect that all of these bugs are in the security system, the basic information each user needs to use to log on. This is hardly surprising because there is no standardized system for guaranteeing privacy on the internet.

The free market is to blame. Let me repeat. The free market is to blame for the chaos of the internet. Each web site or company must handle its own security. Some web sites are woefully inadequate to this task. Meanwhile, many people spend their entire lives looking for security leaks and ways to profit from the sloppy coding of others. Many of the people who are doing this have a big advantage over casual users because they work for governments. In short, they are not constrained by the free market but are free to spend their entire time devising devilish computer programs.

The NSA is the best-known computer security organization in this country, but many other countries have their own versions. All these operations have one thing in common. No one knows what they are doing or when they will release it on the rest of us.

The Solution:

The U.S. Government--most likely through a contractor--needs to develop a security system that is available to all of us and protects us whenever we go online. There are many suggestions on how to do this. Many of them use some trait peculiar to the individual, such as the voice, the fingerprint, or the iris. The science of these systems is not advanced enough to be foolproof, however. Each of them requires a special attachment to the computer and therefore is difficult to transfer from one computer to another.

The most likely security method is one already in use for online transactions with banks. The user has a personal password and a device that provides a new extension to the personal password--usually a 6-digit number--every minute. The device is about the size of a digital watch. The site being protected has a copy of this password, which is unique, or nearly unique, for each user. A hacker who wishes to break this system would need to know(a) the personal password, (b) the time the system started, and (c) the sequence of numbers being used to generate new password.

Until each of us has such a device that permits us to log onto the internet, we all run a risk of having our personal information stolen along with our cash. This is the lesson we should take from the failure of the Obama care rollout.

Gawker at the Jefferson Memorial

(Full Disclosure: Holly is my wife)

Holly Masri's "Gawker at the Jefferson Memorial" is on display at the Art League gallery in the Torpedo Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia until November 4. Rather than focus on the memorial building itself, which is nearly always depicted in photographs from the exterior, the artist has captured the experience of the Memorial. The painting conveys the monumental scale of the building by showing its huge marble columns from the inside. These columns extend upward out of the frame of the painting, giving a strong impression of their great size.

The central figure--the Gawker--is a senior citizen as revealed by his bucket hat and the sweater draped around his shoulders. He is apparently engrossed by something high up on the wall. As visitors to the memorial know, he is looking at (and reading) one of the three large panels that contain the writings of Jefferson engraved in stone. The gawker is oblivious to the other tourists as he gazes upward in an almost religious fervor.

The other figures in the painting are more typical visitors to the monument. Some are looking at other features of the building, perhaps the giant statue of Jefferson that neither the gawker nor the artist seem to notice. Other figures are arranging themselves for a group photograph. But the Gawker seems transported into a world of ideas and history, oblivious to his surroundings.

The artist skillfully suggests the thoughts and emotions aroused by a visit to the monument by a careful selection of images and details. If you look closely at the painting, you can feel the coolness of the air and hear the voices and footsteps echoing in the enclosed space. You may even hear the Gawker reading aloud the words of Jefferson.

Good Guy David Koch, Meet Dark Money David Koch

On Friday, [October 4,] the David H. Koch Childcare Center will be dedicated, in a celebration that highlights a major and ongoing shift in universities’ thinking about recruiting and retaining people who do world-class research. (Boston Globe)¹

Nice guy David Koch loves children. The story of MIT researchers who desperately needed childcare brought a tear to his eye. So he generously donated $20 million to MIT for a new child care center.

That sentence should gob smack you, because there is another David Koch, who uses dark money to attack democratic institutions and stifle scientific investigation. This money is called “dark” because it is filtered into front groups to prevent people from discovering where is comes from and who is behind it.

Dark money David Koch, through a complex web of front groups, donated $200 million to defeat Barack Obama and kill the Affordable Health Care Act. The Act will provide health care for millions of children who currently have no insurance. Dark money David also provides money for Tea Party candidates to get into Congress where they have used the sequester to deny Head Start childcare to 57,000 disadvantaged children. Dark money David hasn't said anything about shedding a tear for the Head Start kids.

There is a logical explanation for this behavior. David, like Mitt Romney, believes in helping the “producers” or “makers” but not the underprivileged, or “takers”. The takers comprise at least 50% of the population, but they should be left to fend for themselves because they are too incompetent to be of any use to society. The scholars at MIT, on the other hand, are valuable producers and should be helped as much as possible.

So there is no contradiction between the good deeds of Good Guy David and the underhanded skulduggery of Dark money David. Koch simply views society as divided into makers and takers and treats the two groups accordingly. Good guy David's philanthropy, while benefiting a fortunate few, has its dark side as well. For example, one of the most virulent climate change skeptics holds the Alfred P. Sloan chair for Meteorology at MIT. David Koch donates a lot of money to the college, not just the $20 million for the day care center. There could be a quid pro quo there: Koch spends millions to attack climate change scientists while MIT, which he gave money to, honors a discredited climate skeptic.

And what a skeptic. The guy's name is Richard Lindzen. Lindzen has spent the last 20 years attacking his fellow climate scientists repeatedly and in print. According to him, everyone is lying except him, and they are doing it for money and fame. Lindzen himself has received money from oil companies, including the Koch brothers, to act as a pro-oil expert. He is paid because he purports to be a climate expert, but what he says is diametrically opposed to the writings of most other experts. One report says he has been paid $2500 a day to do this.

In 1993, Lindzen appeared at a conference of climate deniers held by George Mason University's International Institute. Lindzen essentially called all mainstream climate scientists liars and fools, saying that

"scientist-activists were distorting the issues by (1) presenting only part of the data, (2) distorting logic, (3) repeatedly stating their case in apocalyptic terms, (4) announcing findings at press briefings before other scientists have had a chance to examine their research, (5) using science to advance a political agenda, for example, 'Nuclear Winter,' and (6) intimidating other scientists through coercion."²

Lindzen goes farther. He accuses climate scientists of Lysenkoism. Tiofim Lysenko was the head of Stalin's Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Since Stalin condemned Darwinism as bourgeois pseudo-science, Lysenko forbade Russian scientists to make any mention of natural selection. Scientists who resisted this edict were executed or imprisoned.

I suggest that Lindzen himself is more like Lysenko than those he attacks. His views are politically determined by the parties—the oil industry—that pay him. He holds a prestigious seat at MIT, an institution that only recently brought its global warming projections into accord with the rest of climate scientists. He denounced climatologists at a conference held at George Mason University, which received over $30 million from the Koch brothers.

The Kochs are creating the same kind of conservative echo chamber in academia that exists in the public media, where Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and Rush Limbaugh all share the same opinions and repeat the same distortions of reality. The Kochs are unable to convince actual scientists that global warming does not exist, but they are creating a small enclave of academic institutions who preach that up is down, economic recession is good, and Ayn Rand is always right.

1David Koch funds Day Care at MIT, Boston Globe, Health and Wellness, 10/3/03, http://goo.gl/US5qgf

2Scientific Integrity in the Public Policy Process, http://goo.gl/VV4ysR.

NSA leaks: TOR and what to do about it

The National Security Agency (NSA) has been trying to break an encryption system called The Onion Ring (TOR). This information was contained in top secret documents made public by Edward Snowden. The Guardian has  breathlessly published this information, although it is difficult to see why this should be big news.

TOR is a cheap way for Internet users to communicate with each other anonymously. The US Government has developed TOR as a means for dissidents in countries with repressive regimes to communicate with each other and the outside world, or for spies to send reports back to their agencies without leaving a computer trail. TOR works like a chain letter. It takes an email you write and removes your return address from it. TOR uses its own servers and removes the return addresses of all of them before it delivers your message.

NSC has been attacking TOR, and the tin-hat brigade seems to have its hair on fire over this. The constitutional absolutists consider NSC's action an attack on free speech. The paranoid right and the paranoid left are united on this issue. TOR is a good thing. NSC should not mess in where it doesn't belong.

The problem with that logic, if it is logic, is that NSC's job is to go after whatever tools or networks the spies and terrorists and criminals may be using. NSC may be overreaching in some areas, but this is not one of them. The libertarians consider this a first amendment issue, but the first amendment is yet another one of those ideas that was fine before people with bombs could kill thousands of innocent civilians, or child pornographers could encourage their minions with secret websites.

I don't approve of NSA collecting data on everyone in their search for terrorists. They can find smarter ways to reach their goals. But once they discover that a terrorist cell may be using an encryption tool, be it TOR or something more intricate and advanced, I want law enforcement to be able to break up that terrorist cell before it can work its evil in the world.

In 2011, the hacker group Anonymous attacked and brought down a TOR site that distributed child pornography. I applaud the motives of Anonymous, but their actions frequently display the worst traits of vigilantism. They target suspects and attack them without giving them a fair hearing. I don't want to read that Anonymous took down a child porn site. I would like some quasi-government entity, perhaps an NGO, to do that.

We need to have a reasonable discussion about what we can do, acting together, to protect ourselves from those who would abuse modern technology. Having automatic reactions against NSC, or anyone else, is not helping us reach that goal.

Beyond government by crisis: Fixing the leaks

The United States has a written Constitution that describes how the government works. We also have rules, not included in the Constitution, that affect how the government works. Some of these rules are causing extreme problems with basic governance. The political parties, primarily the Republicans at the moment, use these rules to stop government when it becomes apparent that the routine running of government goes contrary to their policies. These rules should be fixed when there is no crisis so that we can avoid similar crises in the future.

Crisis 1. The government cannot run without a budget

The Constitution states that any revenue bill must originate in the House of Representatives. The Framers apparently did not consider that the House might decide not to pass a budget and thereby bring government to a halt. The Framers believed in negotiated settlements. They did not foresee a group of representatives who would refuse to negotiate until their demands are met.

This predicament is not predetermined by the Constitution itself, however. The solution could be a simple law instead of a Constitutional amendment. This law would be a law that takes effect when certain conditions are met. For example, the order of succession to the presidency is set by law, not by the Constitution, and the selection of a new president is determined by a specific event, namely the death or incapacity of the current president.

The Congress could pass a law that goes into effect when a budget expires without Congress having agreed on a new one. The budget would be replaced, as currently, by a continuing resolution that continues funding a current levels until a new budget is agreed upon.

This automatic continuing resolution could run indefinitely, as seems reasonable, or it could expire after a set period of time. The effect would be the same in both cases, since a new continuing resolution would come into effect as soon as the old one expires, unless a new budget has been passed and signed into law.

Crisis 2. The government cannot continue borrowing money after the current debt limit is reached.

The debt limit is a relic of the nineteenth century when the government raised revenue by selling bonds or other financial instruments. The practice reached its current form in 1939, when all borrowing was consolidated into one package, called the national debt. Since then, the debt limit has periodically been used as a bargaining chip by one party or the other. The repercussions for allowing the U.S. Government to default on its debt are severe, however.

In 1979, during a similar debt ceiling crisis, as reported by the Washington Post, the U.S. Treasury actually defaulted on a small number of loans--about $120 million worth. This relatively small default caused a ripple effect in U.S. government debt because it raised interest rates by 1/2 of one percent, eventually costing the U.S. Treasury billions of dollars. This amount represented money that had to be repaid at higher interest rates as a result of the "micro" default.

The 2011 debt ceiling crisis was even more expensive, even though the Congress acted before any actual default. As reported in a study by the U.S. Treasury Department, this "near miss" led to a number of negative consequences, including a loss of household wealth of $2.4 trillion and a loss in retirement wealth of $800 billion. Although housing prices and the stock market recovered within a year, the losses sustained during that year can never be recovered. This is because the interest on those investments was lost and any interest that could have been compounded was also lost.

The costs of tinkering with the debt ceiling are grave. The U.S. should institute an automatic debt ceiling increase whenever the actual debt nears the official limit. This automatic debt ceiling increase would work like the automatic budget increase described above. The new law would assure that no irresponsible Congress could ever undermine the full faith and credit of the United States.

The automatic debt ceiling increase would not necessarily keep increasing U.S. debt indefinitely. Then, as now, the Congress has complete control over how much it spends and borrows. No law can force the Congress to behave responsibly, or we wouldn't be facing another Congressional extortion right now.