Government – Page 147 – artdiamondblog.com

Taking the Red Pill in China

Surfing the Web last fall, a Chinese high-school student who calls himself Zivn noticed something missing. It was Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that accepts contributions or edits from users, and that he himself had contributed to.

The Chinese government, in October, had added Wikipedia to a list of Web sites and phrases it blocks from Internet users’ access. For Zivn, trying to surf this and many other Web sites, including the BBC’s Chinese-language news service, brought just an error message. But the 17-year-old had had a taste of that wealth of information and wanted more. "There were so many lies among the facts, and I could not find where the truth is," he writes in an instant-message interview.

Then some friends told him where to find Freegate, a tiny software program that thwarts the Chinese government’s vast system to limit what its citizens see. Freegate — by connecting computers inside of China to servers in the U.S. — allows Zivn and others to keep reading and writing to Wikipedia and countless other sites.

Behind Freegate is a North Carolina-based Chinese hacker named Bill Xia. He calls it his red pill, a reference to the drug in the "Matrix" movies that vaulted unconscious captives of a totalitarian regime into the real world. Mr. Xia likes to refer to the villainous Agent Smith from the Matrix films, noting that the digital bad guy in sunglasses "guards the Matrix like China’s Public Security Bureau guards the Internet."

. . .

(p. A9) . . . , with each new version of Freegate — now on its sixth release — the censors "just keep improving and adding more manpower to monitor what we have been doing," Mr. Xia says. In turn, he and volunteer programmers keep tweaking Freegate.

At first, the software would automatically change its Internet Protocol address — a sort of phone number for a Web site — faster than China could block it. That worked until September 2002, when China blocked Freegate’s domain name, not just its number, in the Internet phone book.

More than three years later, Mr. Xia is still amazed by the bold move, calling it a "hijacking." Ultimately he prevailed, however, through a solution he won’t identify for fear of being shut down for good.

Confident in that solution, Mr. Xia continues to send out his red pill, and users like Zivn continue to take it. The teen credits his cultural and political perspective to a "generation gap" that has come of having access to more information. "I am just gradually getting used to the truth about the real world," he writes.

For the full story, see:

Geoffrey A. Fowler. "Chinese Internet Censors Face ‘Hacktivists’ in U.S." The Wall Street Journal (Monday, February 13, 2006): A1 & A9.

Audacity and Scale of Hurricane Katrina Waste and Fraud Are Amazing

Photo scanned in from my paper copy of the NYT issue cited below. Compare the version above to the cropped version that appeared in to online version below–whether deliverate or innocent, the effect of the cropping is to reduce the visual magnitude of the scene (and hence reduce the evidence of the magnitude of the waste).

(p. A1) WASHINGTON, June 26 — Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.

A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.

There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.

And there is the Illinois woman who tried to collect federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In fact, prosecutors say, the children did not exist.

The tally of ignoble acts linked to Hurricane Katrina, pulled together by The New York Times from government audits, criminal prosecutions and Congressional investigations, could rise because the inquiries are under way. Even in Washington, a city accustomed to government bloat, the numbers are generating amazement.

"The blatant fraud, the audacity of the schemes, the scale of the waste — it is just breathtaking," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

For the full story, see:

ERIC LIPTON. "’Breathtaking’ Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid." The New York Times (Tues., June 27, 2006): A1 & A13.

Cropped version of the photo run in the online version of the NYT article cited above.

Source of the graphic: the online version of the NYT article cited above.

Road Opens a Year Early: Contract Included Incentives

With monetary incentives to finish early, Hawkins Construction Company finishes westbound lanes a year ahead of schedule. Source of photo:
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=1636&u_sid=2214442&u_rnd=7720251

The long delays, and lack of visible progress in expanding 132nd, near our house, became a running joke—but the wasted travel time was not funny. Similar road construction delays were occuring all over town, to the point where it looked as though the issue might threaten the mayor’s re-election. So he got serious, and in new road contracts, included substantial monetary incentives for finishing the job ontime, and even more incentives to finish it early. The expressway pictured above is one of those built under the new contract. Maybe incentives really do matter?

(p. 1A) An electronic sign above West Dodge lured drivers with a simple message: "Expressway Open."

The real draw was the quicker commute drivers encountered Thursday evening during the first rush hour after the opening of the West Dodge Road Expressway.

After two years of construction, the expressway’s westbound bridge opened to traffic at 10:35 a.m. Thursday, more than a year ahead of schedule.

A steady flow of traffic streamed across the bridge Thursday evening.

"It was wonderful," said commuter Jean Crouchley.

For the full article, see:

MICHAEL O’CONNOR AND RICK RUGGLES. "A Concrete Example of Progress; Motorists Expect Daily Drives to be Quicker with New Route." Omaha World-Herald (Friday, July 28, 2006): 1-2.

(Note: The online version of the article had the title: "Making quick work of commute on Expressway.")

Intense Competition in Chip Duopoly

Phil Hester, apparently a chip hotshot, joined A.M.D. ten months ago as its technology chief, to "help lead its battle against Intel." (Hector Ruis, mentioned below, is the C.E.O. of A.M.D.)

Mr. Hester and other A.M.D. executives say that the technology in its laboratories gives them plenty of reason for optimism, and that in some product categories Intel is just catching up to advances A.M.D. pioneered. Just next month, for example, A.M.D. is expected to introduce improvements to Opteron, and both companies are designing chips to run cooler and consume less energy.

Much like Intel, A.M.D. is working to increase the number of processors on each chip from two to four, and the company says it will introduce new designs for servers and desktop systems that will be released in mid-2007, followed later in the year by a new design for notebooks. Many analysts are also expecting the company to counter Intel’s pricing moves with price cuts of its own. At A.M.D.’s annual conference for analysts last month, Mr. Hester also disclosed an unusual plan to let other manufacturers build chips that work closely with its own chips, indicating an openness and flexibility that has not been seen before in the company’s strategy.

With that effort, referred to as Torrenza, A.M.D. is licensing some of its chip specifications to other technology developers so they can add specialized functions, like advanced graphics and math processing.

“We want to open up our technology and unleash a completely new wave of innovation,” Mr. Ruiz told analysts at the conference.

Advanced Micro has picked up about five percentage points of market share over the past year, nearly all of that from Intel, according to Mercury Research. Today, A.M.D.’s overall share is about 21 percent, to Intel’s 74 percent, and at the analyst meeting Mr. Ruiz said the goal was to have a 30 percent share by 2008.

Mr. Hester said A.M.D.’s road map for new products had not changed much since his arrival. Mostly he has focused on improving the way employees manage projects and pushing them to develop multiple designs at one time. He said he also emphasized cooperation inside development teams, rather than having teams compete for attention.

The competitive situation has helped with this. “Being the underdog creates a culture of cooperation,” Mr. Hester said.

For the full story, see:

LAURIE J. FLYNN. "Jumping at the Chance to Fire Away in the Chip War." The New York Times (Weds., July 19, 2006): C7.

(Note: the online version of the article has a different title, viz., "A.M.D. Seeks to Gain in Its Rivalry With Intel.")

“a jobs program for people who couldn’t make it in the private sector”

Source of book image: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400065526/sr=8-1/qid=1153368329/ref=sr_1_1/104-2835260-2878345?ie=UTF8

The levees are built by the Army Corps of Engineers, with the Orleans Levee District enjoying local control. It is instructive to learn that the former president of the levee district bought himself an inflatable rubber craft a decade ago. As Mr. Horne writes, some levees gave way "even before water reached the heights the walls were meant to contain and, in some cases, after it had begun to ebb."

Beset by outsourcing, brain drains and budget cuts, the Army Corps has been skimping for years. This spring, its commanding officer conceded that there had been problems with flood-wall engineering. But the government hardly has a monopoly on blame. As Mr. Horne notes, the corps had intended to build a flood barrier at the mouth of Lake Pontchartrain on the city’s northern border ("an idea that would, after Katrina, suddenly seem like the highest sort of wisdom"), but the plan was scrapped when environmentalists sued.

By the mid-1970s, "the completion date for the upgraded flood defense that Congress had mandated for New Orleans had already been pushed back thirteen years," Mr. Horne writes, and one section was still unfinished as Katrina hit. Apathy and indifference "turned government work into a jobs program for people who couldn’t make it in the private sector or who couldn’t be bothered to try."

Government handouts of a different sort followed the hurricane: After a slow start with its relief effort, FEMA helped countless hurricane victims who were truly in need, but the agency also began cutting checks for almost anyone who asked. "An initial $2000 would turn up in the mail within a few days of registering online or placing a call," Mr. Horne writes. In fact, the agency "rolled over for millions in fraudulent or duplicate claims without checking to see that the applicant had offered a vacant lot or a nonexistent address as his or her residence." Perhaps that was easier than risking further accusations of bias.

For the full review, see:

TOM BETHELL. "Books; Levying the Blame; Nearly a year after a hurricane ravaged a city and the finger-pointing began, two books dissect the destruction and the government’s response." The Wall Street Journal (Sat., July 15, 2006): P8.

The citation for the Horne book is:

Horne, Jed. Breach of Faith. Random House, 2006. (412 pages, $25.95)

Environmental Bureaucrats Ignore Local Knowledge

Source of book image: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300106211

From a useful review of a book on environmental policy:

(p. D8) The striking aspect of his new book is the story he tells of his own journey from supporter to critic of the Spaceship Earth theory of environmental law. His first step toward disenchantment was seeing, as an NRDC lawyer, the EPA’s personnel up close. "The EPA had not come from Starfleet Academy," he notes, "but rather was an amalgam of the federal government’s preexisting environmental programs," then part of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In short, the bureaucrats were real people with real incentives, just like politicians and voters—but unanswerable to the public.

The next educational step, for him, was the decision to buy a farm in upstate New York. Mr. Schoenbrod was surprised by the wisdom of his rural neighbors. He movingly describes how a local logger changed his mind about forestry practices by showing him, among much else, that sometimes cutting down particular trees can benefit the forest. (It sounds like a simple observation, but it is the kind of thing that bureaucrats, with their sweeping mandates, often don’t allow for.) Mr. Schoenbrod also looks at the local reaction to a number of environmental decisions, such as the EPA’s ordered dredging of the Hudson River because of the small risk of PCBs. The intent was to protect the health of local communities, but upstate landowners opposed the dredging by a ratio of more than 2 to 1.

For the full review, see:

John Berlau. "Bookshelf; A Law Unto Themselves." The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., August 18, 2005): D8.

The full reference to the Schoenbrod book:

Schoenbrod, David. Saving Our Environment from Washington: How Congress Grabs Power, Shirks Responsibility, and Shortchanges the People. Yale University Press, 2005.

When Public Schools Fail, Give Parents a Refund

Writing on Weds., July 12th, libertarian litigator Clint Bolick, seeks to improve failing schools by using the courts to increase parental choice:

A world of education reform will change tomorrow when a group of families files a class action lawsuit in Chancery Court in Newark, N.J. They are asking for an immediate and meaningful remedy for 60,000 children trapped in failing schools — by transferring control over education funds from bureaucrats to parents.

Seeking to vindicate the state constitutional guarantee of a "thorough and efficient" education, the plaintiffs in Crawford v. Davy ask that children be allowed to leave public schools where fewer than half of the students pass the state math and language literacy assessments that measure educational proficiency; and that the parents of these children be permitted to take the pro rata share of the public money spent on their children, to seek better opportunities in other public or private schools. Supporting the families are three prominent New Jersey groups: the Black Ministers Council, the Latino Leadership Alliance, and Excellent Education for Everyone.

The remedy these parents seek is fundamentally different from the one established by more than three decades of litigation across the country. Courts in states like New York, Texas and California have ordered massive increases in school funding to fulfill state constitutional mandates for educational "equity" or "adequacy," all on the belief that more money will boost school quality and student performance. The funds have produced new programs and bureaucracies, but too often they fail to trickle down to the students by way of improved educational quality.

In any area other than education such a remedy would be considered bizarre. Suppose you purchased a car whose warranty promised "thorough and efficient" transportation, and it turned out to be a lemon. If you sued to enforce the warranty, would a court order a multibillion dollar payment to the auto maker in the hope that someday it would produce a better product? Of course not: It would order the company to give your money back so you could buy a different car.

For the full commentary, see:

CLINT BOLICK. "Remedial Education." The Wall Street Journal (Weds., July 12, 2006): A16.

Global Warming Ranked at Bottom of World Priorities by Economists and Ambassadors

Bjorn Lomborg. Source of image: online version of WSJ article cited below.

(p. A10) Bjorn Lomborg busted — and that is the only word for it — onto the world scene in 2001 with the publication of his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist." A one-time Greenpeace enthusiast, he’d originally planned to disprove those who said the environment was getting better. He failed. And to his credit, his book said so, supplying a damning critique of today’s environmental pessimism. Carefully researched, it offered endless statistics — from official sources such as the U.N. — showing that from biodiversity to global warming, there simply were no apocalypses in the offing. "Our history shows that we solve more problems than we create," he tells me. For his efforts, Mr. Lomborg was labeled a heretic by environmental groups — whose fundraising depends on scaring the jeepers out of the public — and became more hated by these alarmists than even (if possible) President Bush.

Yet the experience left Mr. Lomborg with a taste for challenging conventional wisdom. In 2004, he invited eight of the world’s top economists — including four Nobel Laureates — to Copenhagen, where they were asked to evaluate the world’s problems, think of the costs and efficiencies attached to solving each, and then produce a prioritized list of those most deserving of money. The well-publicized results (and let it be said here that Mr. Lomborg is no slouch when it comes to promoting himself and his work) were stunning. While the economists were from varying political stripes, they largely agreed. The numbers were just so compelling: $1 spent preventing HIV/AIDS would result in about $40 of social benefits, so the economists put it at the top of the list (followed by malnutrition, free trade and malaria). In contrast, $1 spent to abate global warming would result in only about two cents to 25 cents worth of good; so that project dropped to the bottom.

"Most people, average people, when faced with these clear choices, would pick the $40-of-good project over others — that’s rational," says Mr. Lomborg. "The problem is that most people are simply presented with a menu of projects, with no prices and no quantities. What the Copenhagen Consensus was trying to do was put the slices and prices on a menu. And then require people to make choices."

Easier said than done. As Mr. Lomborg explains, "It’s fine to ask economists to prioritize, but economists don’t run the world." . . .

So all the more credit to Mr. Lomborg, who several weeks ago got his first big shot at reprogramming world leaders. His organization, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, held a new version of the exercise in Georgetown. In attendance were eight U.N. ambassadors, including John Bolton. (China and India signed on, though no Europeans.) They were presented with global projects, the merits of each of which were passionately argued by experts in those fields. Then they were asked: If you had an extra $50 billion, how would you prioritize your spending?

Mr. Lomborg grins and says that before the event he briefed the ambassadors: "Several of them looked down the list and said ‘Wait, I want to put a No. 1 by each of these projects, they are all so important.’ And I had to say, ‘Yeah, uh, that’s exactly the point of this exercise — to make you not do that.’" So rank they did. And perhaps no surprise, their final list looked very similar to that of the wise economists. At the top were better health care, cleaner water, more schools and improved nutrition. At the bottom was . . . global warming.

For the full interview, see:

KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL. "The Weekend Interview with Bjorn Lomborg; Get Your Priorities Right." The Wall Street Journal (Sat., July 8, 2006): A10.

(Note: first ellipsis is added; the second ellipsis is in the original.)

Source of book image: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0521010683/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/104-0101568-2686373?ie=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155

Foreign Aid Is Harmful to African Countries: More on Why Africa is Poor

Source of book image: online version of WSJ article cited below.

As Robert Calderisi makes clear in "The Trouble With Africa," foreign aid is usually mismanaged, wasted or simply diverted to various precincts of the continent’s busy kleptocracies, subverting the evolution of normal markets.

Africa is by no means the only region in the world where corruption seems endemic. Paul Wolfowitz, the head of the World Bank, addressed the problem of corruption on a trip to Indonesia earlier this year. Even building a new baseball stadium in the Bronx can involve community-outreach efforts that might better be called payoffs. But Africa seems to find it especially difficult to set up a legal system that can enforce contracts and compel transparency.

Mr. Calderisi says more explicitly than anyone — except perhaps George B.N. Ayittey and the late British economist P.T. Bauer — that foreign aid is almost always harmful to the African counties that receive it. The fault, he notes, is not in the stars but in the behavior of Africans themselves, especially the leaders who have pocketed so much of the money intended for their citizens.

For the full review, see:

Roger Kaplan. "Bookmarks." Wall Street Journal (Fri., June 2, 2006): W7.

The full reference to the Calderisi book is:

Calderisi, Robert. The Trouble with Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. (249 pages, $24.95)

Government Paid 34 Cents to Collect a 15 Cent Toll

The 157-mile Indiana Toll Road had lost money five of the last seven years. A principal reason was its antique pricing; tolls had not changed since 1985 and were far below what comparable American toll ways charged.

As a private citizen, I had always been intrigued to stop at a concrete booth and fish out a dime and a nickel to pay the 15-cent toll at Gary. As governor, I asked, ”What does it cost us to collect a toll?” This being government, no one knew, but after a few days of calculation, the answer came: ”About 34 cents, we think.” I said, only half in jest, that we should just go to the honor system and we’d come out way ahead.

Why would a losing enterprise with an underpriced product drift on in that way? Because it was run by politicians, who are rarely businesslike and deathly afraid to annoy anyone. So the state lost money on the road, postponed repairs and expansions and failed to install the electronic technology that makes toll ways elsewhere faster, more convenient and more efficient.

Just as many business units are more valuable if separated from their conglomerate parent, an asset like a highway can be worth vastly more under different management. When we offered our road for long-term lease, we received a high bid of $3.8 billion, cash, from Macquarie-Cintra, an Australian-Spanish consortium. The highest estimate of the road’s net present value in state hands was less than half that amount, and even that estimate assumed regular toll increases of the kind past governors steadfastly refused to impose. Noting the road’s record of losses, one finance professor remarked, ”If they’d gotten a dollar for it, it would have been a good deal.” Instead, Indiana will soon cash a check that closes a gap most had believed insoluble. Future toll increases will be capped at the level of inflation.

For the full commentary, see:

MITCH DANIELS. "For Whom the Road Tolls." The New York Times (Sat., May 27, 2006): A13.

Government Corn Subsidies Are Inefficient

(p. 19) That the United States is using corn, among the more expensive crops to grow and harvest, to help meet the country’s fuel needs is a testament to the politics underlying ethanol’s 30-year rise to prominence. Brazilian farmers produce ethanol from sugar at a cost roughly 30 percent less.

But in America’s farm belt, politicians have backed the ethanol movement as a way to promote the use of corn, the nation’s most plentiful and heavily subsidized crop. Those generous government subsidies have kept corn prices artificially low — at about $2 a bushel — and encouraged flat-out production by farmers, leading to large surpluses symbolized by golden corn piles towering next to grain silos in Iowa and Illinois.

For the full story, see:

ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO. "THE ENERGY CHALLENGE: A Modern Gold Rush; For Good or Ill, Boom in Ethanol Reshapes Economy of Heartland." The New York Times, Section 1 (Sunday, June 25, 2006): 1 & 19.