Tag: nyt

Pass. The. Damned. Bill.

Today’s installment of What Paul Krugman Said:

A message to House Democrats: This is your moment of truth. You can do the right thing and pass the Senate health care bill. Or you can look for an easy way out, make excuses and fail the test of history.

Tuesday’s Republican victory in the Massachusetts special election means that Democrats can’t send a modified health care bill back to the Senate. That’s a shame because the bill that would have emerged from House-Senate negotiations would have been better than the bill the Senate has already passed. But the Senate bill is much, much better than nothing. And all that has to happen to make it law is for the House to pass the same bill, and send it to President Obama’s desk.

[…]

[S]ome Democrats want to just give up on the whole thing. That would be an act of utter political folly. It wouldn’t protect Democrats from charges that they voted for “socialist” health care – remember, both houses of Congress have already passed reform. All it would do is solidify the public perception of Democrats as hapless and ineffectual.

And, let me just add: this asinine idea that you can chop the bill up into component parts is both functionally impossible and utterly improbable. So: the GOP is suddenly going to agree to operate in the best interests of the public? Since when? Seriously, when was the last incident of the GOP acting as though it had any responsibility re: actually governing. Name it. I’d seriously like to know. You could offer them full revocation of all taxes, closure of the IRS, and immediate shuttering of 85% of all government offices outside military and interstate highways and they’d still say: Hells No. Even better, from their entirely predictable point of view: the chop-it-up approach then ties up all legislative action for MONTHS as you serially run the mini-bills out for failed vote after failed vote after failed vote. All of which, of course, end in giant collective failure and a total lack of action on the things people are hopping mad about: the banks, Wall Street reforms, and jobs initiatives. Which, not coincidentally, are precisely the issues the Democrat could utterly crucify the 41-vote GOP with for the next eight or so months, right up until the 2010 mid-terms.They are AGAINST all of those things. And will vote to prove it. Unfortunately, they won’t be given the chance.

What part of the months-long slow-roll of the “negotiations” that went on from August to December of last year have the Democrats suddenly forgotten? The GOP wanted no part of compromise or some mythical “centrist” option. They DO NOT WANT TO PASS HEALTH REFORM OF ANY KIND, no matter what its shape, size, composition, font, paper quality, or decorative binding may be. Repeat: THE GOP is FUNDAMENTALLY and COMPLETELY against ANY REFORM. Full fucking stop.

Democrats, you’ve got two choices:

  1. Pass the fucking thing. You ALREADY DID. Those votes counted, you know. Pass, fail or abandon, those votes will hang around your necks like so many albatrosses. Better to have a useful outcome to point to than, you know, more months of utterly feckless failures.
  2. Pass a substantial expansion of Medicare and Medicaid, with Medicare buy-in over, say 45 or 50, paid for by some version of the Cadillac Tax on the wealthy. You know, what Ezra said. This would represent a substantial step forward, and can, without a doubt, go through reconciliation and would be a major fucking achievement that could start the day the bill was signed and, more importantly, people would actually like.

That’s it. Those are your choices. Why this is so fucking hard to understand after the display across the last 10 or more years up there is well and truly beyond me.

Fuck this up and it’s over. Democrats will be functionally out of power in 2010, totally out in 2012; Obama recalled as little more than Carter2. I’d say the odds for this outcome are pretty much 80/20 in favor of exactly that happening. If only the Democrat had a powerful leader with charisma and a strong public following. Somebody like that could take charge of this cluster fuck, start giving legislative marching orders, and navigate the turbulent political waters. But that guy has Rahm fucking Emanuel whispering in his ear. Odds go to at least 85/15.

Merry Christmas.

Inverted Pyramid Power

Robert Niles provides an absolutely essential bit of reading for anyone in the content-delivery world. Also known as “traditional” media (Yes, you. You are all in denial.), re: their efforts to invent new revenue models for their 19th century, dead-tree product line [emphasis added]:

You’re wasting your time. Please, stop. There is no new revenue model for journalism.

Done and done. In tweet length, no less. But no! Niles goes on to break it right on down into simple concepts for even the dimmest of bulbs. We are, after all, trying to get through to the likes of Rupert Murdoch here.

There are three ways – and only three ways – that publishers can make money from their content:

1. Direct purchases, such as subscriptions, copy sales and tickets
2. Advertising
3. Donations, including direct contributions and grant funding

Niles breaks down the first and potentially most important point using the basic economics of products you might see today in a bookstore, with emphasis on the relative price-points (e.g. papers are by far the cheapest thing in there and still aren’t selling):

Without a home-delivered hard copy, the commodity information available in most newspaper has no financial worth to most readers.

[…]

Because of this, no one is going to be able to craft a paid content model that elicits significant payment from more than a handful of readers for commodity news. And, despite what “proud parents” in the newsroom might think about their work, almost everything produced by all U.S. newspapers and broadcast newsrooms falls into that category.

Exactly. Why pay for “commodity information” that you can get on many phones? Your pay-walls won’t do a thing to stop that, either. Well, not a thing unless you count directing people to other sources and, worst-case, coercing them into learning how to use Pipes as a “thing.”
I’d extend this overall concept of economic value even further and say: without a home-device delivered copy, tuned to individual specifications, most newspaper-derived information has no inherent financial worth (incidentally, this is also why demographics are slowly and inevitably killing the Tonight Show). News can and will be gotten from anywhere. Again, publishers, you are selling your editorial judgment, not the actual content. Yes, the content had better be good, but I want to know what is critical to know, and not just the various bits of arcana and other nonsense that have simply been automatically included in papers since the 1950s because “that’s the way we do things.” I want to be able to go deep, instantly, on a subject of interest to me while still reaping a quick-hitting, broad view of the state of affairs on my block, in my state, in my country, in my hemisphere, and in the world. You’re not going to be able to have your own employees covering all those things, but you damned well better know how to leverage all the various individual sources that do, compile them, maybe add some value or viewpoint, and then present the best of it to me. Every second of every day, whenever and wherever I want it, whether as bullet point, abstract, or 50,000 word exegesis.

All that said, the thing somebody out there in charge of a major paper has really got to realize is this:

it’s time to take a hard look at the other side of the ledger, and work to find a publishing and production model that allows a news publication to live within its current income means. That’s where the real change will happen in news publishing

Modern journalism in the form of newspapers is entirely an ad printing concern. Subscriptions just pay to bring the paper to the door, not to print that which is brought. Everything about the current model is designed to maximize the capability to create and print a big package of paper ads with some interstitial articles in there (yes, and a little sex, too). This needs to change. The first publisher with a national reach (in terms of name and reputation) to divest itself from the print albatross and concentrate fully (or very nearly so) on providing flexibly deep coverage in a RSS-style, fully user-customizable package will win. Big. People want excellent, well packaged information and are willing to pay for it (witness Cook’s Illustrated, the only successful thing going in the print world today and entirely predicated on a fee for service model). You, the broader news media, provide those people with mediocre information and, generally speaking, inconvenience because of your colossal tunnel vision relative to “how things have always been” and how you get back to that model as soon as possible and forever. I’ve got news for you: always is over.

No change, same game

Jeff Zeleny runs down some of the bigger bullet-points coming out of the new book by the execrable Mark Halperin and “journalist” John Heilemann. Among them, this little tidbit:

In the days leading up to an interview with ABC News’ Charlie Gibson, aides were worried with Ms. Palin’s grasp of facts. She couldn’t explain why North and South Korea were separate nations and she did not know what the Federal Reserve did. She also said she believed Saddam Hussein attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

Of course, the real question here, the real fucking point: if you asked her today, could she tell you why North and South Korea are separate nations, what the Federal Reserve “does,” and, most importantly, who planned and executed the attacks on 9/11/01?

Her public comments since the election strongly imply that we already know. This sort of substantive information will not and will never come out in a media forever obsessed with the horse-races of the day. This will inevitably work towards Palin’s biggest asset: her “mish-mash of populism, everywomanism, and paranoia – coupled with a light touch on policy specifics – [that] has proven to be highly prescient in terms of everything that has come thereafter.”

Sad but true: ignorant ciphers like Palin and W. Bush are simply the odds on favorites for nationwide campaigns in this day and age. Anyone with an actual viewpoint, or that attempts to make a nuanced, non-rhyming statement, or dares wear a four-button suit, simply doesn’t have a chance. Not in that environment. Accept this information and begin planning (and messaging) accordingly. Or suffer the consequences.

NYT:

This month, at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, physicists and engineers built [model train] tracks inside one of its fusion reactors and ran a toy train on them for three days.
[…]

The modified model of a diesel train engine was carrying a small chunk of californium-252, a radioactive element that spews neutrons as it falls apart.

“We needed to refine the calibration technique to make sure we are measuring our neutrons as accurately as possible

Awesome.

67*

“Meaningful” agreement reportedly reached in Copenhagen. Which, apparently, means it is an agreement of some fundamental semantic meaning of that word based on other words that do mean things in a strict, lexicographical sense. Erm: Victory!

But, really, it matters not. No agreement, however large or small, meaningful or symbolic it might be is going anywhere in terms of being ratified by these United States. You think 60 votes on some minor insurance reforms is a high hurdle? Try finding 67 when in the neighborhood of 40 members of the Senate seem to agree with Inhofe and generally feel he’s a little too soft on the issue. Just saying.

And, just like with insurance reform, the Democrats have ceded the entire messaging operation to the GOP for at least the last decade or so. So good luck with applying public pressure on this or any other difficult issue. Most of the country thinks, like Inhofe, that the UN and its jack-booted thugs cooked the whole thing up in a black helicopter to please their Hollywood paymasters.

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy. Declare that you’re disappointed in and/or disgusted with President Obama. Demand a change in Senate rules that, combined with the Republican strategy of total obstructionism, are in the process of making America ungovernable.

But meanwhile, pass the health care bill.

Paul Krugman

Somewhere today, in the here and now, in the world as it is, a soldier sees he’s outgunned, but stands firm to keep the peace. Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, scrapes together what few coins she has to send that child to school – because she believes that a cruel world still has a place for that child’s dreams.

Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. Clear-eyed, we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that – for that is the story of human progress; that’s the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.

Barack Obama, accepting the Peace Prize

NYT: American households collectively consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008. That’s 34 Gb per individual. A day. Whoa. Don’t worry, AT&T, this sort of thing doesn’t affect you at all. You’ll be long gone before then.

Also: consider the proportion of that “Recorded Music” slice. Think about all the swirl around the RIAA and etc. Then look at the “TV” slice and contemplate the utter foolishness of those running commercial visual media (and especially: cable companies) in this country. Then, perhaps, buy a nice cave somewheres and go live in it.

AT&T to customers: Drop dead

Ahh, AT&T, you’ve under-provisioned your network and all those iPhones you are more than happy to sell contracts for are making it easy to, you know, do stuff. And you apparently didn’t count on that. For three years running. The result: lots of data in your under-provisioned network. Who do we blame for this oversight? Why, the customers of course:

The carrier has had trouble keeping up with wireless data usage, leading to slow load times and dropped connections. It is upgrading its network to cope, but AT&T’s head of consumer services, Ralph de la Vega, told investors at a UBS conference in New York that it will also give high-bandwidth users incentives to “reduce or modify their usage.”

Translation: usage caps and overage charges, here we come. You iPhone users need to be hobbled like the rest of our customers! It’s like AT&T is fundamentally determined to go into a death-spiral the second ‘Merican iPhone users can go to another network. Which, it appears, is most likely to be T-Mobile. Sure took a long time for Fucktardia to figure out that Verizon is built atop an incompatible network, didn’t it? But just why is AT&T so dependent on iPhone? Weren’t they turning a profit before? Yes, but:

iPhone accounted for roughly 68 percent of [AT&T’s smart-phone/3G] sales [that make up the lions share of overall sales revenue]

[-and-]

Wireless revenues were up 37.2 percent, driven by “messaging, internet access, access to applications and services,” or [the iPhone]

These are very data users (and the attendant revenue spike) that AT&T is both dependent on and has resolved to infuriate. The plan, in a nutshell, is

“Gentlemen, we’ve run our brand into the ground on the back of notoriously poor service, especially in the dense urban environments where our 3G network actually, you know, exists. Lets really, really take it to the next level by nickel and diming these same users in the last year or two of their contracts. That way, north of 40% of our new revenue streams will head for the exits the second exclusivity ends.”

Great plan. So long, AT&T. Been so nice knowing you.

All that said, it’s still unclear to me why Apple doesn’t just buy Sprint, turn it into a dumb-pipes company, and reap the ridiculous profits that result. Mayhaps they (still) will.

A Joke

David Brooks, yesterday, 11/15:

[Sarah Palin is] a joke. I mean, I just can’t take her seriously. We’ve got serious problems in the country. Barack Obama’s trying to handle war. We’ve just a had guy elected Virginia governor who’s probably the model for the future of the Republican Party, Bob McDonnell, pretty serious guy, pragmatic, calm, kind of boring. The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination – believe me, it’ll never happen. Republican primary voters are just not going to elect a talk show host.

David Brooks, 10/08:

It took [Sarah Palin] about 15 seconds to define her persona – the straight-talking mom from regular America – and it was immediately clear that the night would be filled with tales of soccer moms, hockey moms, Joe Sixpacks, Main Streeters, “you betchas” and “darn rights.” Somewhere in heaven Norman Rockwell is smiling.

[–and, from his NYT perch–]

Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because she seems so much like himself.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

Thoughtful people are welcome to change their minds. Encouraged to do so when the facts as we may know them change. What Brooks has been up to, though, is pretty clearly peddling that particular brand of NYT horseshit to the rubes whilst, simultaneously:

at a media panel for elites at the Le Cirque in New York City, Brooks denounced her anti-intellectual candidacy as a “cancer” on the Republican Party.

This sort of thing is the root of the problem with our discourse. At least in the past, it seemed you only had hearsay to go on; you suspected as much but could never hope to pin somebody on this sort of thing. Now, though, we have transcripts and often video of these sorts of brazen acts of dishonesty almost in real-time. And yet there’s still never, ever any accounting at the end of the day. Quite the opposite. Wrong on the war? Here’s a promotion, son; right on the war: You’re fired. Try not to be so shrill.

We’ve got to start unseating these people. Lou Dobbs makes a start, but is only the first of many. Elections have consequences. That Brooks didn’t learn this once and for all back in 2000 speaks volumes. He’s still playing at it like this is all some sort of elaborate parlor game that matters not at all. It’s unforgivable.