In every single Presidential election in recent times, much talk has centered around special interests, specifically accusations among the candidates that they have sold out to special interests. Frankly, I think it’s time for us to be adults about this issue and get used to the fact that every single candidate is sold out to special interests, and that we should vote for the candidates that are sold out to the special interests that offend us least. I think we can safely include in the list of special interests industrial associations, corporations, large donors, political action groups, religious groups, unions, and pretty much any other type of group that includes as part of its objectives the achievement of a political goal. Which politician isn’t associated with any such groups?

I think it’s easier to stay sane if you judge politicians by the policies that they support rather than by trying to figure out whose donations cause them to support those policies. If you think that drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve is a bad idea, does it matter whether President Bush wants to drill there because he takes tons of money from oil companies or whether he really does think that we need more domestic oil production? The end result is the same. By the same token, I don’t care whether Democrats think extending the term of copyrights is a good idea because they’re awash in campaign money from the entertainment industry or because they want to help support artists — it’s a stupid idea regardless. Speculating on motives is inevitable, but it’s certainly not reliable, and accusations of corruption are easy to deny. Focus on actions and their results, which are much less open to dispute.

I bring this up for two reasons. The first is that I hear that the Bush campaign is going to attack John Kerry for being “brought to us” by special interests. At the same time, I heard a college student interviewed yesterday say that he was supporting John Edwards over Kerry because Edwards seemed less sold out to special interests than Kerry is. This is pointless politics.

The Economist ran an article this week about the current job picture in America, stating in essence that outsourcing of jobs to cheaper labor markets has been part of the global economy for centuries and isn’t going away, and that not many jobs are lost to it anyway. As a fan of free trade, I’m very sympathetic to this line of argument, even though the idea of job opportunities in my industry scares me at a visceral level. Indeed, I find my enthusiasm for John Edwards seeping away as he continually scapegoats free trade on the campaign trail these days. Unfortunately, the Economist’s writer betrays a lack of understanding of the IT industry when he tosses out sentences like this:

And the bulk of these exports will not be the high-flying jobs of IT consultants, but the mind-numbing functions of code-writing.

I can’t think of many people who would rather work as consultants than coders given the same amount of pay. One thing the article does correctly point out is that the best insurance for continuing American success is investment in education at all levels. The labor market is constantly changing, and if we want to continue to lead the world economically, we need the best trained and most up to date labor force in the world. Given that education in general and higher education in particular has been hit hard by budget cuts at the state level around the country, I think we’re headed in the wrong direction.

Malcolm Gladwell: Big and Bad. Gladwell’s article talks about the difference between feeling safe and being safe, and how that has led Americans to swarm to large SUVs. Full disclosure: I drive a Jeep Cherokee (not Grand). On the other hand, that’s an improvement — all of my previous vehicles were Ford F-series pickup trucks. I have also learned the valuable lesson (mentioned in the article) that four wheel drive doesn’t do anything at all to help you stop on icy roads the hard way, but at least no one was injured in the process. I’ll also say that in many ways the Jeep Cherokee is not like the modern SUV of today. It comes in at a svelte 3100 pounds, and is actually a couple of inches shorter bumper to bumper than a Toyota Corolla. It’s still not the ideal vehicle for many reasons (it’s a 1999 model with mid-eighties technology and gets crappy gas mileage), but it is paid off.

David Weinberger has a good piece at Salon today talking about the myth of the Internet as an incubator for “echo chambers.”

Eric Allman has some common sense on spam. Right now I bear the costs of filtering spam, but at least it’s working pretty well for me.

My favorite roleplaying game ever, Paranoia, is being revived with a new edition this fall.

Billmon has a good post today about the rise of authoritarianism as a political movement in America. Worth thinking about anyway.

I had a crazy day today — first day at the new job and no computer access at all. Regular updates will hopefully resume tomorrow, or even later tonight.

The other day I talked about switching to a server side aggregator. I wound up trying Feed on Feeds, and I’ve been satisfied enough that I haven’t used anything else since. A reader suggested BlogLines to me, but I haven’t tried it yet. Unlike Feed On Feeds, which you have to install on your own server, BlogLines is a hosted service. Sam Ruby has found it good enough to switch to. The advantages of not having your RSS reading tied to a particular computer are compelling.

Newsweek demonstrates its usefulness by running a long piece this week on the military service of both John Kerry and President Bush, and how the Vietnam Wars affected their lives. In it we learn that Bush detested hippies and war protesters, but his feelings about actually going to fight in Vietnam don’t seem that far separated from theirs.