Posts

The buck stops where?

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: ...

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: ...

Paul Krugman: Maestro of Chutzpah 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.