McDonald’s is dumping Super Size menu items. I often complain to my wife that restaurants have, over the years, resorted to shovelling ever larger amounts of food at their patrons to make price increases seem reasonable, and the portion size arms race at fast food restaurants over the past decade or so has been absurd. When Chicken McNuggets were introduced, the standard serving was 6 nuggets. Now the Chicken McNugget Value Meal includes 10 of the nasty little grease wads. When fast food restaurants first arrived, the standard adult meal was what you’d find in a child’s meal today. Fancier restaurants are no better — the amount of pasta served with most entrees at midscale restaurants is insane. I guess that’s how you justify charging $13.95 for something worse than mediocre, but I generally find it offensive to good taste.

Update: Apparently everything is getting bigger.

Avi Rubin: My experience as an Election Judge in Baltimore County. Information security researcher Avi Rubin served as an election judge in a precinct that used the new Diebold voting machines.

One question that I’ve been wondering about is why terrorists (or guerillas, or insurgents, if you prefer) would want to start a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. Obviously there is plenty of friction between the various ethnic and religious groups in Iraq, but this conflict isn’t manifesting itself that way. Instead there are some shadowy actors that are committing terrorist attacks against Shiites in hope of inciting them to violence. The only answer that makes sense to me is that whoever is behind these attacks hopes that everyone in Iraq will reject the occupation due to the ongoing violence. If Shiites feel that they’re under constant attack and that the occupiers are not protecting them, then they will demand that the occupiers leave so that they can protect themselves. Killing occupation forces is hard and getting harder, and more than that, it has worked as well as it’s going to work — we’re handing over sovereignty this summer. So the terrorists instead recruit people to kill other Iraqis, and exploit the bigotry of their recruits to do so. The fact that people on the scene of the attacks threw rocks at American soldiers who showed up to help out in their aftermath would seem to indicate that this strategy is working.

Now that John Kerry is the Democratic nominee for President, it’s time for Democrats to remember the words of a song from Kerry’s war protestor days, “If you’re not with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” Kerry is not the candidate that captured my imagination, but I think he’s a good man and will be a fine candidate. The major complaints against Kerry are as tired and generic as you can possibly imagine — the Republicans actually complain about his “flip-flopping.” Has there ever been a Democrat that Republicans didn’t say that about? In the meantime, the Republicans are planning on using the agenda in the Senate this year to pin Kerry on divisive issues, which is as pathetic and cynical as you might imagine.

Update: Here’s The Economist on Kerry’s inconsistencies:

Mr Kerry’s real vulnerability, though, may not be his liberalness, but rather his inconsistencies. In recent years, he has voted for plenty of Republican-sponsored measures, including the war in Iraq, the controversial Patriot Act (which gives the government more power to spy on citizens) and educational reform. As Mr Bush has noted, Mr Kerry’s words do not always match his Senate voting record. He voted in favour of the NAFTA free-trade area in 1993, but on the campaign trail, especially in the downtrodden mid-west, he has promised to review all of America’s free-trade agreements. Despite voting for the Iraq war, Mr Kerry now accuses the Bush administration of misleading America over the threat Saddam posed. Similarly, he has railed against the way the administration has enforced the Patriot Act and the No Child Left Behind Act, despite having voted for both.

My guess is that the American people can identify with a politician who gave the President the benefit of the doubt and got burned. The NAFTA stuff aside, none of the Bush policies that Kerry voted for has been implemented in the way it was proposed. When I talk to former Bush supporters who are now going to vote against him, they’ve been stung in much the way Kerry has. The natural Kerry response to these charges is that he made the mistake of trusting the President. He probably should have known better, but the people who believe he should have known better are going to be voting for him regardless.

Another update: Slate’s Michael Grunwald has a helpful table of Kerry’s most famous waffles. Seems to me that having a public career that goes back a couple of decades is looking like a liability. Gore got raked over the coals in a very similar way.

Depressing, yes. Surprising, no.

Tim Bray has a helpful translation of the official word on Yahoo’s paid search service.

A friend emailed me a question about Social Security, and I have to confess that I don’t know the answer. Here’s the question, or the observation:

Social security is it’s own fund. Money comes in though payroll taxes and goes out through benefits. I thought the only reason that it even shows up as a line item on the overall budget is that the excess funds are used to purchase US bonds, which is “income” for the general budget.

So I don’t understand how raising income taxes (or rolling back the Bush tax cuts) helps Social Security at all, unless we dump some general fund money into it.

What’s the answer here? As my friend points out, Social Security is its own fund. Here’s what AARP (who better to comment on Social Security) has to say:

How is that possible? Today, 65 million boomers are paying into the system and, along with about 89 million other employed Americans, are helping build that reserve. In fact, Social Security trust funds currently hold more than $1.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury Bonds. So even though people are living longer, more money is going into Social Security than is being paid out. Now, of course, when the boomers start to retire, the money built up will begin to be drawn down. But even if we just sit back and watch the program, without any kind of change at all, Social Security will be able to pay 100 percent of promised benefits until 2042. After that, it will still be able to pay nearly three-quarters of the benefits promised today in tomorrow’s dollars.

The operative question, then, is how does the deficit threaten Social Security? Here’s what Alan Greenspan said in his Congressional testimony on February 25:

In 2008–just four years from now–the first cohort of the baby-boom generation will reach 62, the earliest age at which Social Security retirement benefits may be claimed and the age at which about half of prospective beneficiaries choose to retire; in 2011, these individuals will reach 65 and will thus be eligible for Medicare. At that time, under the intermediate assumptions of the OASDI trustees, there will still be more than three covered workers for each OASDI beneficiary; by 2025, this ratio is projected to be down to 2-1/4. This dramatic demographic change is certain to place enormous demands on our nation’s resources–demands we almost surely will be unable to meet unless action is taken. For a variety of reasons, that action is better taken as soon as possible.

The budget scenarios considered by the CBO in its December assessment of the long-term budget outlook offer a vivid–and sobering–illustration of the challenges we face as we prepare for the retirement of the baby-boom generation. These scenarios suggest that, under a range of reasonably plausible assumptions about spending and taxes, we could be in a situation in the decades ahead in which rapid increases in the unified budget deficit set in motion a dynamic in which large deficits result in ever-growing interest payments that augment deficits in future years. The resulting rise in the federal debt could drain funds away from private capital formation and thus over time slow the growth of living standards.

Greenspan mentions the CBO projections, they can be found here. Back to Greenspan:

Today, federal outlays under Social Security and Medicare amount to less than 7 percent of GDP. In December, the CBO projected that these outlays would increase to 12 percent of GDP by 2030 under current law, using assumptions about the growth of health-care costs similar to the intermediate assumptions of the Medicare trustees; when spending on Medicaid is added in, the rise in the ratio is even steeper. To be sure, the rise in these outlays relative to GDP could be financed by tax increases, but the CBO results suggest that, even if other non-interest spending is constrained fairly tightly, ensuring fiscal stability would require an overall federal tax burden well above its long-term average.

He then goes on to explain some ways that we can cut Social Security benefits and save cash down the road.

In reading Greenspan’s testimony, one thing that comes through loud and clear is that the real worry is not Social Security but rather Medicare and Medicaid. As the AARP and Paul Krugman will be glad to tell you, Social Security is funded through 2042 through its trust fund (I have no idea what “lock box” Al Gore was talking about in 2000). Medicare and Medicaid are not funded in the same way.

Getting back to my friend’s original email, I guess the issue is that given the current revenue base and mandatory expenditures, we’re not going to be able to fund Medicaid and Medicare without blowing out the deficit even more. Is that what’s at issue here? If someone could forward an article to me that lays this all out in layman’s terms, I’d appreciate it. I feel like most of the articles on this assume a base level of knowledge that I don’t have.

Update: Here’s The Economist article on Greenspan’s testimony. Elsewhere, Brad DeLong confirms that the problem is Medicare.

Further update: Another friend wrote to make the point that the massive Social Security trust fund is all owed by the government. As it gets spent, the money to pay back the principle and interest will come out of the debt service category of the federal budget. Hence the comparisons to Enron accounting. (The Federal government is borrowing money from itself to make the deficit look smaller, and we’ll be paying for that with our income taxes in the future.) That also explains the lock box question — I assume that the there is some fear in a crisis the government will not make good on its commitment to the balance in the Social Security trust fund.

Paul Krugman: Maestro of Chutzpah

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blockquote> Last week Mr. Greenspan warned of the dangers posed by budget deficits. But even though the main cause of deficits is plunging revenue — the federal government’s tax take is now at its lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950 — he opposes any effort to restore recent revenue losses. Instead, he supports the Bush administration’s plan to make its tax cuts permanent, and calls for cuts in Social Security benefits.

Yet three years ago Mr. Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, warning that otherwise the federal government would run excessive surpluses. He assured Congress that those tax cuts would not endanger future Social Security benefits. And last year he declined to stand in the way of another round of deficit-creating tax cuts.

But wait — it gets worse.

You see, although the rest of the government is running huge deficits

Ed Felten points out that today the Diebold electronic voting machines that have been the subject of much controversy are going to be used in the Maryland primary.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in The Nation: The Junk Science of George W. Bush. (Or, if you’re more comfortable with the view from the right, Glenn Reynolds weighs in as well.)