Deficit Reduction and National Priorities

Something is very, very wrong here. Why are we getting a spending freeze, now, when unemployment is at 10%? When home foreclosures are still taking place at a record rate?

What about Econ 101: government spending creates jobs in a slow economy, slashing spending eliminates jobs? Hmmm.

A few days ago, Obama endorsed the creation of a bipartisan deficit-reduction panel with "fast-track" authority to create legislation that can only receive a yes/no vote in both houses of Congress, therefore avoiding tricky amendments and reconciliation.  Much like the BRAC panel that recommended unpopular military base closures in 1989-95 and 2005, only such a bipartisan panel can administer the bitter medicine of spending cuts and tax hikes. It's such a good idea that it has been recommended by the Economist magazine, among others, as a way for the US to chart a course out of the deep deficit hole it has dug itself into. (See my earlier post on this issue.)

Indeed we have dug ourselves into a pretty deep hole. This year's budget deficit is projected to be $1.35 trillion, one of the highest since WW II. Even under relatively optimistic assumptions, the CBO projects that
interest payments on the debt will more than triple over the next
decade, rising from $207 billion this year to $723 billion in 2020.

But should we start slashing the budget now?

It seems like what is needed is a careful plan, a road map, so to speak, that charts a course out of the economic abyss of unemployment and low growth, and, once there, sets a course to fiscal responsibility. If we rein in spending too quickly, we risk undermining the economic recovery now in its early stages. But if we go back to business as usual, after the recovery has worked its magic, it is possible that global confidence in the American economy (and the dollar, especially) will quickly erode. With the CBO projecting the national debt to be somewhere between 67 and 100% of the overall economy by 2020, something will need to be done. The world will need to see our plan, and need to see that we are serious, in order to restore confidence in the future of our national economy.

Since spending money gets politicians re-elected, deficit budgets are common in good economic times. But we need to stop this practice (hence the bipartisan panel) and focus on what is important. That is why I recommend - crazy as it sounds, particularly right now - a discussion of national priorities. When we get out of this economic disaster we are in, there will need to be some belt-tightening. But does this mean that the poor need to suffer more? That more people need to go without health insurance? Should we continue to belch greenhouse gasses into the air? Should we let down our guard against terrorism? What do we want: guns or butter?

It seems like Americans are more polarized than ever. But we are going to have to communicate to our politicians clearly and effectively from now on what we want them to spend our hard-earned tax dollars on. Talking to each other first and deciding what our priorities are can really help streamline what will be a difficult process.

When the Media Is the Disaster: Covering Haiti

It is so easy to rush to judgment when those being judged are poor and black. How many times do we see "heroes" doing exactly the same thing in Hollywood blockbuster movies that the media is calling "looting" in Haiti? No condemnation for Hollywood characters, simply admiration for the determination of someone to save their family. The idea that poor blacks will simply take advantage of chaos to steal whatever they can draws upon centuries of American racism. It works too, in the sense that it allows the media to sell advertising. The worst thing is, the cynical pandering of the media to the African American audience by sending every single black reporter to Haiti is merely revealed for what it is: a money-making opportunity.
About Haiti Earthquake
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Remembering the Little People: Accounting for Kids

'The New York Times reports:

Remembering the Little People: Accounting for Kids: "An economist asks why the United States spends so much less money on children than on the elderly, and what the consequences for the economy might be. "

It shouldn't be a mystery why this happens - kids don't vote, and they certainly don't have the clout of the AARP on capitol hill. However, we know that you get more bang for your buck with spending on childrens' education and health (sorry grandma) - early education and healthy initiatives can go a long way to help the kids for the rest of their lives, creating healthy lifestyles and giving kids an educational headstart. Not that we should stop spending on the elderly. But spending more than twice as much on the elderly as on children is absurd and doesn't reflect rational priorities. According to the Times article, public spending on children amounts to about 2.2% of GDP while spending on the elderly is about 5.3% of GDP.

At the same time that we are spending enormous amounts to subsidize (rightfully so, I would argue) health care and retirement benefits for the elderly, (unsubsidized) child care costs more than public university tuition in 44 states - and, child care workers obtain near poverty-level wages. Young children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of poverty, but 19% of children in the US lived in poverty in 2009.

I think most people would argue that this is a case of misplaced priorities, until, that is, we tried to do something about it. Change is difficult in this political system, in great part because so many have such an enormous - mostly financial - stake in the status quo. It will take a great efforts and yes, even courage, by the nation's parents and others who care about the future to cure this distortion for our children's future.

Obama: Software Flaws Let Christmas Bomber Get Through

We are being told that institutional failure or human failure (i.e. "someone needs to pay") is responsible for the inability to connect the dots between intelligence fragments, and therefore a dangerous person with explosives being allowed to board Northwest Airlines flight 253. But according to Danger Room blog, it is really a simple matter of crappy software:

Obama: Software Flaws Let Christmas Bomber Get Through: "
Crappy government software — and failure to use that software right — almost got 289 people killed in the botched Christmas day bombing.

“Information sharing does not appear to have contributed to this intelligence failure; relevant all-sources analysts as well as watchlisting personnel who needed this information were not preventing from accessing it,” the White House noted in its review of the incident. The problem was in the databases, and in the data-mining software. “Information technology within the CT [counterterrorism] community did not sufficiently enable the correlation of data that would have enable analysts to highlight the relevant threat information.”

You bet it didn’t. Government search tools weren’t even flexible enough to handle simple misspellings. As the White House review notes:

A misspelling of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s name initially resulted in the State Department believing he did not have a valid U.S. visa. A determination to revoke his visa however would have only occurred if there had been a successful integration of intelligence by the CT [counterterrorism] community, resulting in his being watchlisted.

This is a problem that commercial software firms largely solved years ago. (Try typing “Noa Schactmann” into Google, and see what comes up.) How it could persist in the CT community, I just don’t understand.

In a memo to his agency chiefs, President Obama ordered the Director of National Intelligence to “accelerate information technology enhancement, to include knowledge discovery, database integration, cross-database search, and the ability to correlate biographic information with terrorism-related intelligence.”

All of which will be helpful. But analysts have to actually use the tools. That didn’t happen in the Christmas attack. “NCTC and CIA personnel who are responsible for watchlisting did not search all available databases,” the White House noted.

The Department of Homeland Security did run Northwest Airlines flight 253’s passenger manifest against terrorism databases. But only after the flight took off. Ugh.

[Photo: U.S. Marshalls]"


Is there some reason we can't get this right??? Do we need to point our fingers in the wrong direction in order to score political points? Let's fix this problem and get it right this time.

Underwear Bomber Renews Calls for ‘Naked Scanners’

More from Danger Room Blog:

Underwear Bomber Renews Calls for ‘Naked Scanners’: "

After an alleged terrorist unsuccessfully tried to detonate his explosive underwear on a Christmas Day flight to Detroit, current and former American officials are now using the failed attack to push for more airport scanners to spot such explosives — and a lot more.

The Transportation Security Administration in recent years has tried out a series of “whole-body imagers” to look for threats that typical metal detectors can’t find. These systems are the only way that smuggled explosives, like the one officials say was brought on the Christmas flight, can be reliably found.

“You’ve got to find some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren’t easy to get at,” former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told The Washington Post. “It’s either pat-downs or imaging.”

The problem, privacy advocates say, is that a zap from one of the devices amounts to a “digital strip search” from a system “designed to capture, record, and store detailed images of individuals undressed.”

TSA has worked with two basic technologies to upgrade its passenger screening systems. Millimeter-wave sensors emit radio frequencies, and measure the differences in radiated energy. The result is a detailed, 3-D image of the passenger that looks sort of like a photo negative.

The TSA currently has 40 of these machines installed at 19 airports. Six airports have a machine each for primary screening. The other 34 are used for follow-up searches at 13 airports. The agency handed out a $25 million contract to Rapiscan Security Systems in October for 30 more of the machines.

Similarly, backscatter x-ray scanners send out low-intensity beams, and watch how the x-ray photons get reflected back. (Old-school machines simply sent the x-ray through the object.) “Elements with lower atomic numbers (fewer protons) on the periodic table scatter X-ray photons very powerfully, while elements located farther down on the periodic table tend to absorb more photons than they scatter.

Most organics are located closer to the start of the periodic table. So backscatter systems are very good at imaging organic material — much better than dual-energy systems.

They easily pick up the scatter patterns of drugs and explosives and body parts,” notes one helpful description. TSA has ordered 150 backscatter units, after 46 of the sensors were used at 23 airports in a pilot project.

But it’s unclear how far the TSA will be allowed to go in deploying these systems. Because the same technology that allows the scanners to find explosive underwear can also provide some rather revealing glimpses of passengers’ bodies.

The agency says there’s no privacy problem. “Facial features” (and, presumably, other body parts) “are blurred when our officers see the images,” the TSA insists. Nor will the agency “keep, store or transmit images. Once deleted, they are gone forever…. For additional privacy, the officer viewing the image is in a separate room and will never see the passenger, and the officer attending to the passenger will never see the image.”

“These images are friendly enough to post in a preschool. Heck, it could even make the cover of Reader’s Digest and not offend anybody,” the TSA noted on its blog.

But privacy groups aren’t exactly comforted by the agency’s assurances. TSA has already reversed earlier stands on the scanners, the groups say.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security on Nov. 9, to force it to give up information about the scanners. “TSA has stated that whole-body imaging would not be mandatory for passengers,” the Center noted in its complaint. “On Feb.18, 2009, TSA announced that it would require passengers at six airports to submit to whole-body imaging in place of the standard metal detector search, which contravenes its earlier statement.”

The House of Representatives voted 310 to 118 in June to pass a measure that prohibits the TSA from using whole-body imaging as a primary means for screening passengers. The legislation’s prime sponsor, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, said Sunday that he stands by the measure. “I believe there’s technology out there that can identify bomb-type materials without necessarily, overly invading our privacy,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune.

“Yes, there is some brief violation of privacy with a full-body scan,” Rep. Peter King, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, told Face the Nation. “But on the other hand, if we can save thousands of lives, to me, we have to make that decision, and we have to come down on the side of saving thousands of lives.”

But that logic makes about as much sense as the TSA’s new rules forcing passengers to stay in their seats for the last hour of a flight, says security guru Bruce Schneier. “It’s the same magical thinking we’re used to getting from the TSA,” he tells Danger Room. “Descend on what the terrorists happened to do last time, and we’ll all be safe. As if they won’t think of something else.”

Photo: TSA

"

We Knew it was Coming: The Airport Crack Scanner

Danger Room reports:

The “underpants bomber” has renewed calls for new and more invasive security measures. Already, there’s a push to install scanners that show travelers’ naked bodies through clothing, using either millimeter wave or backscatter X-ray imaging. But even those scanners might not have caught the terrorist who nearly brought down Northwest flight 253.

That’s why one company is trumpeting a sensor that can supposedly “detect substances such as explosive materials … hidden inside or outside of the human body.” First step: Actually build a human-sized machine.There has already been one report of a suicide bomber carrying explosives internally. Many sources, including the BBC, carried an early report suggesting that Abdullah Hassan Al Aseeri adopted the new tactic of “carrying explosives in his anal cavity” for an attack in September. The target, a Saudi prince, survived, but Aseeri was reportedly blown in half by the blast. Later reports suggest the explosives were actually sewn into his underwear, but security experts believe there is a real danger of “internally carried” bombs, a technique used for years by drug smugglers.Nesch, a company based in Crown Point, Indiana, may have a solution.

It’s called diffraction-enhanced X-ray imaging or DEXI, which employs
proprietary diffraction enhanced imaging and multiple image radiography (.pdf).

Rather than simply shining X-rays through the subject and looking at the amount that passes through (like a conventional X-ray machine), DEXI analyzes the X-rays that are scattered or refracted by soft tissue or other low-density material. Conventional X-rays show little more than the skeleton, but the new technique can reveal far more, which makes it useful for both medical and security applications.

“Our patented technology can detect substances such as explosive
materials, narcotics, and low-density plastics hidden inside or outside
of the human body,” company CEO Ivan Nesch claims. DEXI allows
explosives to create contrast, he adds, so it would be able to detect
both the underpants bomber and the shoe bomber before they boarded.

The image shows how a conventional radiograph does not detect two packets of “illegal materials” concealed in soft tissue, while they are plainly visible in when DEXI technology is used.

Of course, X-ray scanners always bring up a concern over the level of radiation involved. One of Nesch’s corporate slogans is “Less radiation, more information,” as DEXI uses significantly less radiation than other approaches.“It is far less than what a passenger would receive simply by flying on an airplane across the United States,” says Nesch. “Passengers who are imaged using DEXI security will be exposed to approximately 50 times less radiation than that of a conventional radiograph. ”

Have we heard this before?? It is completely safe, and it will enhance security? It will preserve privacy?

The first thing I thought when I heard about bombers carrying explosives in their underwear and body cavities, I knew privacy would go down the toilet. People would be screaming for full body scans and body cavity searches in as many airports as possible. Of course, any pretenses about modesty from the "family values" right would immediately be forgotten in the name of security. Which is what we see now. And the advent of the "crack scanner" seems to point us in this direction.

Bend over, America!

Sleep Challenge 2010: Women, It's Time to Sleep Our Way to the Top. Literally.

Arianna Huffington and Cindi Leive have indeed given us good advice in their article - for men and women both. They say that women should stop cutting corners on sleep, and start taking care of themselves by going to bed. Then women's brains won't be dulled by sleep deprivation and we can be more effective in our lives. The double burden that women often bear makes this advice applicable to women to an even greater degree. Our over-stretched schedules and multiple demands makes skimping on sleep that much more attractive.

The problem in the advice, though, is in the implementation. I wholeheartedly agree with the advice, but without some sort of reduction in demands, it is nearly impossible to get those 8-10 hours (yes, 10 hours!) of sleep I need to feel refreshed. (In fact, I probably feel best when I get 11 or 12 hours, which is quite rare.) How can a person work 8+ hours a day, prepare and eat meals, take kids to soccer and/or scouts, get some exercise, pay attention to kids, pay attention to spouse, and then get to bed at a reasonable time? Oh, yes, there are dishes to do, trash to take out, errands to run, organizing and finances to keep up on, and daily life that needs to be run. Not to mention the cleaning and organizing that needs to be done to make a perfectly manicured lawn, spotless house, and so on. Forget perfection, just focus on the basics that keep the roaches from taking over the house! Not everyone can afford a weekly house cleaner and personal assistant.

Is it possible that our lives are getting too complicated? That the corporate life is too demanding? Perhaps there's a reason why our kids feel neglected, why people feel busier than ever, while they still manage to watch 4 hours of TV a day. Others are telling us what we "need," and those "needs" are becoming too many. Focusing on the important things, like family, and our health, is becoming harder than ever, and the less sleep we get makes us more vulnerable to the messages that tell us we need to be doing and having more (and more and more and more).

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost