In The News 10/23/08

Deregulation and conflict of interest juxtapose in very dangerous territory.  News is slowly coming out that the credit raters knowingly gave their best rating to securities that didn’t deserve it.  Bond and securities issuers pressured rating agencies like Standard & Poor, Moody’s and Fitch, Inc. into issuing AAA ratings that they shouldn’t have.  Not surprisingly, those corporations made very large profits, in no small part because with excellent ratings, securities rose in value and more could be issued … with excellent ratings.  It was but one positive, though artificial and unethical, feedback cycle that kept driving housing prices through the roof in the 1990s and 2000s.  Also in the article: a severe admonishment from Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.  I had a lot of respect for Rep. Waxman coming out of the 2006 election cycle.  The past two years has shown me that he’s too ready to issue his rebukes but he hasn’t really exercised the oversight for which his committee is responsible.  I suppose getting beat up by the right-wing for decades will do that to you.  Will Waxman push for enforcement of regulations under an Obama presidency?  Time will tell.

Have people really adopted more efficient driving habits?  Will the money saved on falling gas prices go instead to reducing household debt, which runs into the trillions of dollars?  Here again, time will tell.

More economic stimulus is being discussed within Washington.  Should taxpayers get more cash or should the money instead be spent on infrastructure projects?  I vote projects.  They’re not as quick to enact, but they will deliver longer-lasting and more substantial economic growth.  Make a good portion of the projects related to renewable energy development and you’ll knock a whole bunch of birds down with one stone.  A more sane energy policy, mitigation of human forced climate change, improved domestic security, more jobs, a stronger economy.  Giving people checks that they spend once is the weaker solution.  Adding to the already enormous national debt with no medium- to long-term plan just doesn’t make sense.

Comcast is going to start making even more money to provide internet service … that might be only 3rd best in the world … in up to 10 U.S. markets.  Comcast is going to roll out service that will offer speeds up to 50 Megabits per second (Mbps).  At that speed, a movie could be downloaded in 5 minutes.  It takes 2 minutes to download the same movie in Japan right now.  Oh, the Japanese pay the same amount every month that we in the U.S. do for service that is 30 times as fast.  To get the better service, customers will be required to also subscribe to Comcast’s cable service.  What a joke.

India launched its first mission to Earth’s moon.  Chandrayaan-1 will map the moon in greater deatil than what was done by the Apollo missions in the 1960s, by the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft (launched last year), or by China’s Chang’e-1 spacecraft (also launched last year).  Chandrayaan-1 cost $80 million.  The U.S. is planning on sending the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to the moon next year.  That spacecraft will cost $500 million, but will provide even greater mapping resolution than Chandrayaan-1.

Fiscal Sanity, Slow Internet & Obama + McCain Pander

Who spends more: Democrats or Republicans? If you have a pulse, chances are you automatically said Democrats. That’s actually not the case. Here is a good, short piece explaining things differently than conservative brainwashing.

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I want to write a little more about this, but thought I should link to it in the interim. According to a second test conducted by SpeedMatters, Colorado’s median Internet speed is 2.34 megabits per second, 0.01 behind the U.S. median speed. Everyone has heard the U.S. is the greatest country on Earth, right? So how come the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in median internet speed? France connects at a median speed of 17.6 megabits per second (8 times faster than ours) and they’re only fourth on the list. Who’s first? Japan, of course, with a median speed of 63.60 megabits per second. People in Japan can download a feature-length movie in 2 minutes. The same movie takes 2 hours in the U.S. And this is the best part: we pay as much per month as the Japanese do for service that is 30 times slower! We need to tell the corporations that link us to the Internet that 15th place isn’t good enough. We need to demand 30 times better service. Anything less means we’re letting ourselves get robbed.

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Barack Obama and John McCain succumbed to pop politics yesterday by meeting with Rick Warren and discussing their faith and how it affects their public policy stances. This has no business in politics. A person’s faith is their own, it is a one-on-one relationship between them and whatever they believe in. Did the candidates meet with a panel of religious and non-religious figures that included a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Jew, an atheist, or a Wiccan? No. They met with an evangelical Christian only. They will preside over a country with more than evangelical Christians making up its population, but they sat down with only one narrow interpreter of faith. That is deeply disturbing.

Beside the lack of participation by other figures of faith, when has Barack Obama or John McCain sat down with a leading science figure to discuss how their understanding of science affects their approach to public policy? The answer: they haven’t. Religion continues to be given a higher level of public importance than science, despite the clear effect science has on the public and despite the fact that taxpayer dollars funds science research. Shouldn’t that process be open to the public? A number of scientists and bloggers called for a Science Debate this election cycle. Few campaigns even responded and those that did rejected the idea, citing the number of debates already agreed to and the logistics involved in adding another one. Yet this meeting with Rick Warren occurred. That’s insulting to science and its advocates.

I know John McCain doesn’t believe in science. He believes in getting bought off and pandering. But I expected more from Sen. Obama. If elected, he will oversee agencies responsible for science research and development. I want to know his level of understanding of science policy and what is important to him before he is President, not after. We all deserve that opportunity. That opportunity is being denied to us.