Politics

Declan McCullagh at News.com reports that Sen. John McCain is preparing to hold a press conference with John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted and Miss America 2007 to announce a bill that will create a new mandate for Internet Service Providers to eavesdrop on all of their customers email and web traffic in search of child porn images. The act apparently requires ISPs to implement new technology to compare all images transmitted or received by their customers to a federal database of images (presumably via some one-way hash function, so that the database is not itself distributing child pornography), and to report any that are detected to John Walsh’s National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that operates as a clearinghouse/proxy for federal and state law enforcement with Congressional mandate and federal funding. The new bill is known as the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation Online or SAFE Act, and is not to be confused with the 2003 SAFE Act (Security and Freedom Ensured), the 1997 SAFE Act (Security and Freedom through Encryption), or the 1998 SAFE Act (Safety Advancement For Employees).

Rather than increase the Earned Income Tax Credit or reduce payroll taxes, Congress is moving forward with an increase in the minimum wage. Gary Becker and Richard Posner have written a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “How To Make the Poor Poorer” which describes the likely consequences of this feel-good legislation: Although some workers benefit -- those who were paid the old minimum wage but are worth the new one to the employers -- others are pushed into unemployment, the underground economy or crime: The losers are therefore likely to lose more than the gainers gain; they are also likely to be poorer people. And poor families are disproportionately hurt by the rise in the price of fast foods and other goods produced with low-skilled labor because these families spend a relatively large fraction of their incomes on such goods. Because most increases in the minimum wage have been slight, their effects are difficult to disentangle from other factors that affect employment: But a 40 percent increase would be too large to have no employment effect; about a tenth of the work force makes less than $7.25 an hour. Even defenders of minimum-wage laws must believe that beyond some point a higher minimum would cause unemployment, otherwise why don't they propose $10, or $15, or an even higher figure? Good intentions don't make for good legislation. UPDATE (February 9, 2007): Glen Whitman writes about how the minimum wage debate is largely symbolic on both sides, though this time it could be different. UPDATE (September 6, 2007): I just came across this interesting post at the Coyote Blog about how minimum wage changes affect his specific business. UPDATE (October 10, 2007): Here's a nice summary of U.S. minimum wage worker statistics, including: According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the median annual income of a U.S. worker is $32,140. Federal minimum wage is currently $5.85 an hour, or about $11,500 per year — just above the poverty line. Of the 76.5 million people paid by the hour in the United States in 2006, 2.2% make minimum wage or less. Here are some generalizations we can make about minimum wage workers: Most minimum wage earners are young. While 2.2% of all hourly workers earn minimum wage or less, just 1.4% of workers over the age of 25 are paid at or below the Federal minimum wage. More than half (51.2%) of minimum wage workers are between 16 and 24 years old. Another 21.2% are between 25 and 34. Most minimum wage earners work in food service. Nearly two-thirds of those paid minimum wage (or less) are food service workers. Many of these people receive supplemental income in the form of tips, which the government does not track. Most minimum wage earners never attended college. Just 1.2% of college graduates are paid the minimum wage. If you only have a high school degree, you’re more likely (1.9%) to be paid minimum wage. Those without a high school degree are nearly three times as likely (3.7%) to earn minimum wage. 59.8% of all minimum wage workers have no advanced education. Finally, as you might expect, part-time workers are five times more likely to be paid the minimum wage than full-time workers. UPDATE (November 25, 2012): There has been an accumulation of evidence that a moderate minimum wage is a net benefit, improving both wages and employment in some cases (reference to The Economist, Nov. 24, 2012, p. 82, "Free exchange: The argument in the floor"). Historical Comments Einzige (2007-02-03): Economics Professor Russel Roberts, over at Cafe Hayek, recently posted a brief survey of the empirical evidence on the effects of the minimum wage. Like the story of the broken window, it’s a lot easier to point to the benefits of a minimum wage than to the costs, but that doesn’t make the costs any less real. ...

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq that had its release postponed until after the election is now out, and it seems to indicate that Bush’s plan for a surge is doomed to failure: …even if violence is diminished, given the current winner-take-all attitude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene, Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation in the time frame of this Estimate.The NIE also says that Iran and Syria are “not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq’s internal sectarian dynamics." More at TPM Muckraker.

Dinesh D’Souza, who blames liberals for exercising their freedom in ways that cause Muslim radicals to hate and attack the U.S., gets a nice takedown at World-o-Crap. Also see Ed Brayton’s commentaries on D’Souza from last year: “The Inanity of Dinesh D’Souza” (September 2006) “Walcott on D’Souza’s New Book” (October 2006) “More on D’Souza’s Ridiculous Book” (October 2006)

This video of John McCain shows video clips of him saying one thing and then the opposite on a number of subjects including the war in Iraq, the Confederate flag, the religious right, and gay marriage. Some of these are a bit misleadingly edited, such as the gay marriage item, where it doesn’t look like he actually contradicted himself to me. Hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars. ...

Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator points out that, rather than distinguishing themselves from Republicans Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, and Tom DeLay, each of whom played fast and loose with the rules on nonprofits, prominent Democrats in Congress are doing the same. Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, and Evan Bayh are each officers in their family charities; their failure to disclose this makes them guilty of felonies. Pelosi calls her failure an “oversight” and promises to file amended annual disclosure statements.

Arizona State Representative Pamela Gorman (R-District 6, Anthem) was one of several legislators who accepted gifts from the Church of Scientology and helped promote bills for Scientology’s Citizens Commission on Human Rights. She is also on the Legislative Advisory Board to the Heartland Institute, publisher of Environmental & Climate News, a publication that is still, as of its February 2007 issue, arguing that global warming is mythical. This issue contains articles such as “Greenland Coldest in 60 Years” and “Little Ice Age May Return Soon,” and contains a set of graphs of global satellite temperatures on p. 7 that attributes 1998’s high temperatures to El Nino. The Heartland Institute’s past articles have included titles like “Eight Reasons Why ‘Global Warming’ is a Scam” (2003), “National Geographic Promotes Global Warming Myths” (2004), and “Michael Crichton is Right!" (2005) (Rep. Gorman’s Blogger profile lists “Anthem Shrugged” as one of her favorite books. Ayn Rand wrote books called Anthem and Atlas Shrugged, but it appears Rep. Gorman has combined them. She has apparently been too busy to blog much; she posted twice in January 2006 and has only posted again this month.) ...

Chirag Mehta has created “tag clouds” for a bunch of presidential speeches (including State of the Union addresses), with a slider so you can see how the topics have changed over time. Chris Mooney points out that George W. Bush’s State of the Union addresses have used “God” and synonyms twelve times, and “climate change” or “global warming” zero times.

The Kearny Board of Education released a memo and statement last week regarding “the expression of personal religious beliefs by professional staff in the classroom." They have indicated that they will be hiring an outside professional to provide training to its teachers about “Constitutional parameters” and will institute a formal policy “expressing its strong commitment to the principle that personal religious beliefs of our institutional staff have no place in our classrooms."

The blogosphere was in an uproar about Section 220 of Senate Bill 1, on the basis of a press release from astroturf organization GrassRootsFreedom, run by conservative political activist Richard A. Viguerie. This press release claimed that this section of the “Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007” would require all bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people to register with the government. Slashdot promoted the press release with its typical inaccuracy, with very few commenters actually bothering to read what Section 220 actually said. In fact, the bill only required registration for bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people who are paid. And not just paid, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter. And not just paid at least $25,000 per quarter, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter by a client to promote lobbying on a political issue. Specifically, Section 220 required “paid grassroots lobbying firms” to register and file reports, and defined those as a person or entity that “is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period." The Captain’s Quarters blog was one of those that correctly identified the misinformation from Viguerie. Viguerie has been a major player in U.S. politics for a long time, and is described as follows in my “Fundamentalism is Nonsense” pamphlet (6th edition, 1986): Richard A. Viguerie, of the Richard A. Viguerie Company of Falls Church, Virginia, runs one of the largest direct mail fundraising companies in the country. He has raised money for such organizations and individuals as the Panama Canal Truth Squard, Gun Owners of America, the American Security Council, Citizens for Decency Through Law, Terry Dolan’s National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), the Conservative Caucus, and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Senators Jesse Helms (NC), Jim McClure (ID), Orrin Hatch (UT), William Armstrong (CO), John Warner (VA), and Representatives Philip Crane (IL), Mickey Edwards (OK), Larry McDonald (GA), and Phil Gramm (TX). Viguerie also publishes the magazine Conservative Digest [Conway 82, pp. 83-84, 87].The reference is to Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman’s 1982 book, Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America’s Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives (Doubleday). Viguerie’s efforts were successful, and Section 220 was removed from S. 1 by Senate Amendment 20. ...