Kevin Drum

The NSA Is Still Data Mining Your Telephone Calls

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| Wed Jun. 5, 2013 6:33 PM PDT

I confess that I'm a little puzzled by this Glenn Greenwald story in the Guardian:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April....Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.

The NSA, as part of a program secretly authorized by President Bush on 4 October 2001, implemented a bulk collection program of domestic telephone, internet and email records....Until now, there has been no indication that the Obama administration implemented a similar program.

Obviously I'm missing something. After Democrats caved on the surveillance bill in 2008, I simply assumed that this kind of massive data mining of telephone metadata was going to continue forever and everyone knew it. But Glenn suggests that, in fact, this is something surprising. So I guess I assumed wrong.

I'm going to mull this over for a while to figure out where I went wrong. In the meantime, go read the full story.

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Blogging Just Keeps Getting More and More Expensive

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| Wed Jun. 5, 2013 11:39 AM PDT

It's official: the Washington Post is putting up a paywall. You can view 20 articles per month for free, but you need a subscription to view more than that.

For casual news consumers, this doesn't matter much. And even for me, it's more annoyance than anything else, since even after you've viewed 20 articles you can still get in free via search engines or links from other sources. Still, it's an annoyance. And it means I have a decision to make. I already subscribe to three newspapers—the LA Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal—and I really can't afford to subscribe to more. So should I just put up with the annoyance of getting access to the Post, or should I drop one of my other subscriptions?

If the Koch brothers buy the LA Times, that will make my decision pretty easy. But they haven't done that yet. The Journal is less useful than it used to be before Rupert Murdoch dumbed it down, but it's still useful. I could switch to the Financial Times for my business news, which would make sense from a quality-of-journalism perspective, but it's more expensive than the Journal, so it wouldn't help on that front. I could also dump home delivery of the LA Times and switch to home delivery of the New York Times to satisfy my prehistoric need for a print newspaper, but that would set me back nearly a grand a year all by itself (at least, as near as I can tell from the Times' egregiously hard to understand subscription page).

Decisions, decisions. Back in the day, all this stuff was free and I had access to Lexis/Nexis too. I guess that was the golden age of blogging or something. No longer.

Chart of the Day: Student Loan Debt Is Skyrocketing

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| Wed Jun. 5, 2013 10:17 AM PDT

You've probably seen this chart before, but it's worth seeing again: Student loan debt is just flatly out of control. I understand why this has happened, and I understand why it's hard to get a handle on, but we're going to regret it if we don't do something about this. We're training a whole generation to be wary of going to college, and for those who do, we're forcing them to start out their lives living under a mountain of debt. This is a recipe for disaster. More here from Maggie Severns.

It's also yet another fault line between young and old that's not likely to turn out well. My generation got a cheap college education when we were young, and we're getting good retirement benefits now that we're old. Pretty nice. But now we're turning around and telling today's twentysomethings that they should pay through the nose for college, keep paying taxes for our retirements, and oh by the way, when it comes time for you to retire your benefits are going to have to be cut. So sorry. And all this despite the fact that the country is richer than it was 50 years ago, and will be richer still 50 years from now.

But at least today's kids don't have to worry about being drafted. That's something, I suppose.

Immiserating the Poor for the Benefit of the Rich

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| Wed Jun. 5, 2013 9:46 AM PDT

Mark Bittman is appalled at the farm bill currently wending its way through Congress:

The current versions of the Farm Bill [] could hardly be more frustrating. The House is proposing $20 billion in cuts to SNAP — equivalent, says Beckmann, to “almost half of all the charitable food assistance that food banks and food charities provide to people in need.”

Deficit reduction is the sacred excuse for such cruelty, but the first could be achieved without the second. Two of the most expensive programs are food stamps, the cost of which has justifiably soared since the beginning of the Great Recession, and direct subsidy payments.

This pits the ability of poor people to eat — not well, but sort of enough — against the production of agricultural commodities. That would be a difficult choice if the subsidies were going to farmers who could be crushed by failure, but in reality most direct payments go to those who need them least.

I'm starting to lose my ability to write rationally about this stuff. I just don't know any longer what I'm supposed to think about a political movement whose primary raison d'être, one they no longer even bother to conceal, is an almost gleeful immiseration of the poor for the benefit of the rich. How is it that the wealthiest country on earth has come to this?

This would all be cruel enough even if the economy were good and you thought that folks on food stamps needed some motivation to get themselves off assistance and into jobs. Cruel but—arguably, anyway—perhaps best in the long run. But now? When the current level of SNAP spending is entirely due to the swollen ranks of the unemployed and underemployed, which makes it all but impossible for most recipients to entertain even a faint hope of either finding work or, for those lucky enough to have jobs, increase their incomes enough to escape poverty? Is there even a pretense of a reason for these cuts, aside from a desire not to reduce subsidies to agribusiness and not to raise taxes on the best off? Help me out. What is it?

Immigration Reform Gets a Sudden Blast of Reality

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| Wed Jun. 5, 2013 7:52 AM PDT

One of the key questions that's been swirling around the immigration debate from the beginning is whether Marco Rubio is being an honest broker. Does he really and truly want immigration reform? Or does he want to play the role of reasonable conservative for as long as he can, and then, more in sadness than in anger, turn against his own bill at the end because it's not tough enough? Byron York reports that it's looking like the latter:

Speaking with radio host Hugh Hewitt Tuesday, Rubio said the Senate should “strengthen the border security parts of this bill so that they’re stronger, so that they don’t give overwhelming discretion to the Department of Homeland Security.” He said he was working with other senators on amendments to do just that.

Then Hewitt asked: “If those amendments don’t pass, will you yourself support the bill that emerged from Judiciary, Senator Rubio?”

Rubio answered, “Well, I think if those amendments don’t pass, then I think we’ve got a bill that isn’t going to become law, and I think we’re wasting our time. So the answer is no.”

"Those amendments" are poison pills that would require 100 percent operational control of the border before any new green cards are issued, a standard that's pretty obviously impossible to meet. The only reason to insist on them is to give Rubio a plausible exit strategy from his own bill.

Or so it seems. Maybe Rubio has something else in mind. But it's sure starting to look like Rubio has figured out that his support for immigration reform is doing him more harm than good with the tea party folks he needs if he ever wants to become president. What's more, he's probably less confident than he used to be about the chances of getting the House to go along anyway, which makes it pointless for him to keep taking damage over the issue.

We'll see. Rubio's support, as always, is critical to immigration reform. If he bolts, it's dead. But if he insists on his poison pill amendments, it's dead too. I'd say the odds on passage just dropped dramatically.

Maybe Republicans Won't Block All of Obama's DC Court Nominees After All

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| Tue Jun. 4, 2013 8:50 PM PDT

Will Republicans flatly obstruct all three of President Obama's nominees to the DC Circuit Court? It sure seems that way to me, but Jonathan Bernstein disagrees:

Here's my guess — not a prediction, but just a guess based on past patterns. We'll continue to hear the insipid rhetoric about "court packing" and how the DC Circuit doesn't need any judges anyway, but that will be mostly just background music for the rubes. One of the picks will get through fairly easily. One will be killed by filibuster. And the third will be a close call, but probably get through, perhaps with a few Republicans voting yes on cloture but against confirmation. Those opposing picks will mainly focus on claims that the nominees are out of the mainstream ideologically, or will allege lack of proper judicial temperament, or some other such reason — very few Republicans will claim that they are blockading the DC Circuit Court.

Maybe! Jonathan thinks Republicans will be leery of total obstruction because "it would almost certainly push Democrats over the edge into going nuclear." That's a good point—better, I think, than his argument that Republicans haven't blocked every single appellate court nominee in the past. I don't think that's very meaningful. This fight is different, and the stakes are higher, so I don't think past performance is a good indicator of how Republicans are going to play things.

But fear of pushing Democrats over the edge into killing the filibuster is probably quite real, and there might well be half a dozen Republican senators who (a) take that seriously and (b) are nervous about the total blockade strategy in the first place. These half dozen will also need to be senators who (a) aren't up for reelection next year and (b) can afford to cross the conservative media, which is almost certain to turn this into a litmus test of standing up against Obama's attempt to impose his thuggish one-party rule over the entire country. But there might well be six such senators. I'd say Jonathan makes a good case.

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That IRS Conference in Anaheim Isn't Really the Scandal Everyone Thinks It Is

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| Tue Jun. 4, 2013 5:17 PM PDT

The hot news today is the scandalous revelation that the IRS spent $4.1 million on an employee conference in Anaheim a few years back. Here's a typical description:

Some 2,600 Internal Revenue Service managers gathered in Anaheim, Calif., in August 2010 were treated to $50,000 worth of comic videos and $135,000 worth of guest speakers, one of whom collected $17,000 to paint portraits of famous personages on stage, an audit found....Some $64,000 was spent on giveaway swag for all attendees, including thousands of logo-emblazoned “brief bags” and spiral journals, 800 lanyards, 75 travel mugs and 75 picture frame/clocks, and various other customized knickknacks such as pens, can coolers and Post-It notes.

Can we talk? Yes, the Inspector General found that the event planners didn't always follow proper procedures, and I'm painfully aware that stuff like this often sounds dumb when you read about it after the fact. What's more, a few of the items in the IG report sound genuinely dodgy. But honestly, there's less here than meets the eye. The IG found that the IRS "did not use available internal personnel to assist in searching for the most cost-effective location as required," and I assume that's true. But you know what? There are surprisingly few places where you can hold a conference for 2,600 people. Just ask anyone who's ever done one of these things. And in the end, the total cost ended up at about $1,600 per person for a three-day conference. That's....not bad, actually. Again, just ask anyone who's ever done one of these things.

And for what it's worth, can I add that every single private company in the country has held more of these kinds of conferences than you can count? Yes, there's a Dilbertish case to be made that they're stupid and a waste of time. I was always fairly cynical about them, myself. But trust me: the rock-jawed titans of the private sector do all this stuff and more every single year. You might think it's dumb, but they all seem to think it's worthwhile. Is it any surprise that IRS management figured it was worthwhile too?

The Obama administration cracked down on this stuff long ago, and there's very little of it still being done. That's probably good optics, but it's less clear that it's good management. After all, it's not as if getting everyone together once a year for some face time is an obviously stupid thing to do. Either way, though, let's keep this in perspective. I know that's hard because this stuff is such an easy target, and I know that defending it is a lose-lose proposition. But just talk to some of your friends who work for large corporations. They'll tell you. Not only is this kind of conference nothing out of the ordinary, but by private sector standards it sounds positively restrained. As scandals go, this is pretty weak tea.

Please Don't Feed the Patent Trolls

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| Tue Jun. 4, 2013 12:06 PM PDT

The Wall Street Journal reports that President Obama plans to take aim at patent trolls:

To help deter questionable lawsuits, the Obama administration plans to, among other things, direct the Patent and Trademark Office to start a rule-making process aimed at requiring patent holders to disclose the owner of a patent, according to senior Obama administration officials. Businesses sometimes are sued by shell companies and don't always know who actually owns the patent they are being accused of infringing, and whether the firm holds other relevant patents.

In addition, the president plans to ask Congress to pass legislation that would allow sanctions on litigants who file lawsuits deemed abusive by courts, officials said.

I suppose these might be good ideas, but I'm a little hard pressed to see how they're going to make much of a difference. I'm with Tim Lee, who points out that a series of court rulings in the 80s and 90s made it possible for everyone, not just the trolls, to be granted patents that never would have withstood scrutiny under earlier rules:

Today, we're suffering a collective hangover for that patenting binge: hundreds of thousands of patents that probably shouldn't have been granted. The problem is made worse by rules that give patent holders too much bargaining power against accused infringers.

Trolls have taken advantage of these rules, but so has everyone else with a patent portfolio....The most innovative start-ups are increasingly being forced to make payments to their more established competitors, whether or not the latter continue innovating. That actually discourages innovation, the opposite of the effect the patent system is supposed to have.

....Anti-troll legislation targets one set of firms that are taking advantage of a broken patent system. But it might be more productive to focus on reforms to fix the patent system itself.

The biggest problem here is that it's not as easy as it sounds to distinguish a patent troll from any other patent owner. But even if it were, why should we? In all sorts of areas, people are allowed to buy rights to revenue streams that they themselves aren't responsible for producing. Why should patents be any different?

They shouldn't be. If a patent is legitimate, then its owner should be able to exploit it. That should be true whether the owner is the original inventor, a corporation who employs the inventor, or a firm that buys the rights to the patent. What's more, there's no reason that an inventor with a legitimate patent shouldn't be able to sell it off if she thinks someone else is better able to exploit it. Once you allow that, however, there's nothing to stop someone from accumulating lots of legitimate patents and exploiting them.

But is a firm with lots of legitimate patents a patent troll? Nope. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the stuff that strikes as trollish is almost always related to firms with lots of patents that seem kind of bogus. If we want to reform our patent system, that's where we need to start. Limit patents much more stringently than we do and, perhaps, place common sense licensing rules on them. If we do that, we'll no longer care who owns the revenue stream.

For more, check out Zachary Roth's 2005 piece in the Washington Monthly, "The Monopoly Factory: Want to fix the economy? Start by fixing the Patent Office." It's a pretty good overview of the problem.

The Fox Tail is Wagging the GOP Dog

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| Tue Jun. 4, 2013 10:28 AM PDT

What's the Republican Party to do? A recent report, commissioned by the College National Republican Committee, tells us what we already knew, namely that the GOP is widely reviled by young voters:

In the focus group research conducted in January 2013, the young “winnable” Obama voters were asked to say what words came to mind when they heard “Republican Party.” The responses were brutal: closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned....[The same] respondents in the Columbus group of young men who voted for Obama were asked to name who they viewed as leaders of the Democratic Party. They named prominent former or currently elected officials: Pelosi, the Clintons, Obama, Kennedy, Gore. When those same respondents were asked to name Republican leaders, they focused heavily on media personalities and commentators: Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck.

So what's the answer? It's obvious to us liberals: ease up on the gay bashing, ease up on the gender wars, ease up on the dog-whistle racial appeals, and ease up on the NRA über alles approach to gun regulation.

The problem is that while this may seem obvious to us, moving further and further to the right hasn't been the disaster for Republicans that we often make it out to be. Sure, they've lost two presidential elections in a row, but parties lose two presidential elections in a row all the time. On the brighter side, they won a landslide victory in 2010 and took control of the House. They control enough statehouses to gerrymander their way to continued control for a good long time. And for a party supposedly on the ropes, they sure seem to have Democrats scared that they might win back control of the Senate in 2014.

So why change? Especially since easing up on culture war issues, while it might appeal to younger voters, would almost certainly lose them votes among their older, more tea partyish base. It's genuinely hard to see how this turns into a net win for Republicans in the short term, and it's hard to see why they'd be motivated to risk it given the fact that they probably don't feel like they're actually in any existential danger right now.

Still, in the long term this is surely a serious problem. So how to solve it? By chance, a friend just wrote me an email that provides the answer. Here it is:

I'm a little confused. The Garance Franke-Ruta story on the "157 visits!" seems to have been completely missed by the Fox News world. I expected they'd breeze by it and not admit they got it wrong (O'Reilly's segment looks comical in retrospect, even going so far as to tell Douglas Shulman to shove the Easter eggs from the Easter Egg Roll up his ass) but they went right back to it last night. And Bob Woodward even joined in. They have to account for those 157 visits immediately!

What the ...?

Bob Somerby was watching Fox last night and reports the same thing. And there you have it. It's conservative media that controls the GOP's fate. The Republican Party could almost certainly solve its problem if Fox News and the rest of the gang were on board. They could lighten up on the culture war stuff, thus increasing their appeal among young voters, while keeping the oldsters on board too. Right now, though, they can't do it because the Rush/Drudge/Fox axis will go ballistic, turning the tea partiers into frothing maniacs over every perceived deviation from traditional morality. If they agreed among themselves to stop doing this, the frothing would subside and the party would have a whole lot more short-term maneuvering room to address their long-term problem.

But my friend's email explains why that won't happen. Fox and the others aren't really in business to help Republicans. They're in business to keep the tea party crowd whipped up and ready to invest in the gold coins offered by their advertisers. Outrage is how they do this, and neither facts nor the long-term health of the GOP are allowed to get in the way. Pounding away mendaciously on Shulman's 157 visits might be the kind of overreach that hurts Republicans in the long run, but who cares? The rubes don't read the Washington Post and don't know that the story is bogus, so Fox will keep at it because it's good for business. The tail is now wagging the dog, and the Republican Party is being held hostage to the bottom line of the conservative media.

This is the Republican Party's core problem. Sure, it's always hard for a party to change directions, even moderately, but it's almost impossible when you have organs like Fox News generating froth-at-the-mouth outrage over every deviation from orthodoxy. It makes the short-term risk of change too great to bear. Until the GOP fixes that, they're going to have a hard time fixing anything else.

Blacks and Whites Use Pot At About the Same Rate, But Blacks Get Arrested for Pot Possession a Lot More

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| Tue Jun. 4, 2013 9:14 AM PDT

From a report by the ACLU:

In Morgan and Pike Counties, AL, Blacks make up just over 12% and 37% of the population, respectively, but account for 100% of the marijuana possession arrests.

Just a coincidence, I'm sure. But across the country, it turns out, African Americans are arrested for pot possession at far higher rates than whites even though usage rates are about the same. Keith Humphreys points out that this is partly because marijuana laws have been loosened primarily in whiter areas of the country. At a guess, some of this might also be due to the use of possession charges as a plea bargain from more serious charges. Nonetheless, this accounts for only a fraction of the difference. The rest is most likely racially motivated, as the chart on the right makes clear. Black arrest rates are higher than white arrest rates—usually a lot higher—in every single one of the 25 biggest counties in the country.

More here from the ACLU study. The full report is here.

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