That level of genius was approached by some nameless ad executive in the 1950s with the first television commercials for the new aerosol shaving creams. Manly, athletic guys were shown using approximately twenty times as much shaving cream as was needed to get the job done.

But both of these classics might well be outshone by a brand new trend that combines TWO of the all-time greatest scams: the rebate, and the gift card. It was all of five years ago that we talked about them and they have been going from strength to strength. Probably time to combine them into one Perfect Scam. Just to clarify, the difference between the rebate and gift card scams on the one hand, and the shampoo and shaving cream marketing schemes on the other, is that marketing is simply a way of convincing you that you should buy something that you don’t need. The gift card and rebate scams are outright theft, if technically legal.

Both the rebate and and the card are of enormous benefit to a retailer because with both of them, only a percentage of the “face value” is ever redeemed. Give your rebate in the form of a gift card and you get two bites of the cherry, and you will probably end up paying out less than half of the amount you are appearing to give back to the customer.

A synopsis of a typical transaction shows clearly the risks for the customer and the benefits to the merchant. The details will not be applicable to all such transactions, but you get the idea…

1. You buy a widget for (an inflated price of) $200, because a $50 rebate is offered. NOTE you will pay sales tax on the $200, and it is not refunded on your rebate. Gosh, a scam that benefits the City and State, too!
2. Only 75-80% of customers will remember to mail in the paperwork before the deadline.

3. Of those that send it in, 15-20% might make some trivial mistake that invalidates the rebate request. And watch for Catch 22– you have to send in the original receipt, which you will no longer have if you need it for a warranty claim later.

4. The rebate processor can claim that he never received another 5-10% of the remaining valid rebate claims (who audits them, eh?).

5. NOW, and what’s new, the processor can deal with the few remaining valid rebate claims by sending you a “rebate card” which is a gift card “containing” the rebate amount.

6. Here’s where it gets really cool. You have to take the “rebate card” back to the merchant you got the original widget from and you have to buy something else. If the new widget costs less than the rebate amount, you are out the difference– call it a donation to the merchants “extra profit ” fund– unless you fall for step 7 below. In some cases there is even a processing fee, just like the gift cards, or a short time in which you can use it.

7. If the merchant really gets lucky, you will spend your rebate on something that costs more than the rebate amount, making up the difference in cash or credit, and maybe even making yourself eligible for yet another product rebate!

This is more than faintly reminiscent of Joe Pesci’s Leo Getz in Lethal Weapon– “First they f**k you. And then they really f**k you. And then they f**k you some more. Okay? Okay?” He was talking about the giant cell-phone companies, but that’s another scam for another day.

What can you do? Probably not much,  but you have an obligation as an informed consumer to at least understand how you are likely to be stung. You can boycott rebates, and gift cards, and especially rebate cards, but sometimes you have to just grin and bear it. The only sensible thing to do is to make the purchase decision based on the un-rebated price. If you get lucky and get a useful refund, well– that’s just what it is: you got lucky.

–SG

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Another Halloween is over, so we can get back to important things like getting ready for Christmas. If we’re lucky, there will be only one more interruption, namely that quaint US American holiday “Thanksgiving” when we get together as families, pretend we don’t hate each other, and participate in two activities that best represent our greatness as a nation– stuffing ourselves with food, and watching emulated blood sports on TV. Eleven months from now the armies of the War on Halloween will be surging and these comments will be available to anyone who cares to read them.

We could complain about religious warfare in the trenches of our kindergartens and primary schools. Is Halloween a pagan celebration? Is it satanist? Is it Christian? (That’s not a dumb question because Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows Eve, or the day before All Saints Day). The subtleties of the religious arguments are way too demanding for one with an All Hallows Hangover, so we’ll focus on what we can intellectually cope with– the real meaning of Halloween, which is… TRICK-OR-TREATing.

Sure, it’s an exercise in naked greed and naughtiness, but dammit there are rules. Violating the time-honored if unwritten rules is simply bad form. For example:

Bad form: Sitting in your car with the engine idling to watch your kids go up to the door and beg for candy.Worse form: Driving your kids to a better neighborhood than your own so they can beg for a better quality treat than your poor neighbors can come up with.

Bad form: Pushing your 18-month-old child from door to door in a stroller, and begging for treats on her behalf.

Bad form: Just standing there and not saying “trick-or-treat,” so the adult answering the door has to ask what you want.

Worse form: Replying “We want some candy.”

Bad form: Examining what you have been given before saying “Thank you” in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

Worse form: Liking what you see and asking for more.

Bad form: Going to the door with your teenage children, whether you are wearing a costume or not.

Worse form: Holding out your own goody bag.

Worstest form: Not bothering to interrupt your cell-phone conversation long enough to say “trick-or-treat” or even “thank you.”

In the hope that next year’s event might go a little more smoothly, we’ve prepared a script for your convenience…

1. Child knocks on door or rings bell… once.

2. Homeowner opens door and feigns astonishment that there is a witch, or goblin, or Darth Vader, on his doorstep.

3. Child utters the magic words “Trick or Treat!”

4. Homeowner gushes “Oh look at you,” or “Oh my goodness,” or some similar appreciation of the child’s costume.

5. Child presents container and homeowner deposits one or more treats.

6. Child says “thank you” and homeowner replies “you’re welcome.”

7. Child and homeowner wish each other a “Happy Halloween” and retire to prepare for the next transaction.

Improvisation is fine, but any serious departure from the script, or omission of its key elements, is just… bad form.
–SG

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The CIA is primarily an intelligence gathering and analysis organization, and it reports almost directly to the President, through the new Director of National Intelligence. .

Here’s the CIA’s offical mission statement, from its own http://www.cia.gov/cia/information/mission.html

We are the eyes and ears of the nation and at times its hidden hand. We accomplish this mission by:

* Collecting intelligence that matters.

* Providing relevant, timely, and objective all-source analysis.

* Conducting covert action at the direction of the President to preempt threats or achieve United States policy objectives.

An airstrike is hardly a “covert action,” it’s hard to think of a way it could possibly be more overt. An airstrike is a military combat action involving military forces and materiel (the Predator vehicle and its weapons are “owned,” maintained and supported by the US Air Force). Where is the authority for the Air Force to put advanced weapon systems into the hands of civilians? Where is the authority for the CIA to conduct military operations? That authority can certainly be claimed by the President, under the heading of “We’re at war, Congress authorized me to do whatever I need to do,” but consider the implications: if previous presidents believed that they had the same authority, they would certainly have ordered the assassination (by remote airstrike) of Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and the Ayatollah Khomeni, to name three.

There are reasons for having a strong military, and equipping it with technologically advanced weapons systems. There are reasons for ensuring that such weapons systems can be used only by the military, which has elaborate systems for command and control. Yes, the CIA can and should carry out reconnaisance missions using whatever technology is available. And having identified a target, national command authority (derived from the President) could certainly be used to order the Air Force to conduct the strike. Is that just a technicality?

We don’t want to sound alarmist, but somebody has to say this out loud: the Hellfire missile can carry a nuclear warhead. The legitimate military forces have an incredibly complex set of rules and procedures to control what they euphemistically refer to as “special weapons.” What level of control can we expect within the CIA?

–SG

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With a few exceptions, the Democratic Party should welcome in its newest member: President George W. Bush. The exceptions include defending the legality of his domestic eavesdropping program, making his tax cuts permanent, and nonsensical approaches to health care. For those of you wondering about the War in Iraq – that’s a lost cause. Congress gave that one away when it authorized the invasion. This year, I’m not going waste much time talking about our new method of pounding democracy down the throats of unruly Middle Eastern states. Suffice it to say that Bush, during his very first campaign for President, was dead set against nation-building. Now he’s the Builder Bob of this frustrating construction job.

On the domestic front, which has been ignored by Washington for years, many of the State of the Union address included retreads of just about everything the Democratic Party has been advancing. And some of the proposals were just plain silly.

Seeking energy independence from foreign oil, a still-born effort launched during the administration of GOP president Gerald ford. Following Ford, President Carter instituted programs aimed at developing alternative energy sources. Of course, the programs were either cut back or ignored by subsequent Republican and Democratic administrations. And the Republicans hate – just hate – urban mass transit programs. But don’t get me wrong. Encouraging alternative and advanced technologies today is a good thing, even though they have been promoted by nasty liberals for decades. We’ve got the ability to build into every house a solar-electric system that would decimate the demand for electricity generated by dirty coal or nuclear power.

The call to “buy American” was a real laugher. Where? How? Nothing is made here any more. Nothing! OK, we make our appliances here. That’s about it. Maybe broomstraw brooms in Colorado. Everything else is made in
China, and most of it is crap. But, the buying public and American business just want cheap crap. So we’ve got it. Welcome to Walmart USA – home of cheap crap and lots of it.

I was astounded when the President hyped advanced placement classes in math and science for our nation’s high school students. Just when did the President hear about AP classes? Certainly not during his high school
years. Must have been a little pillow talk between him and the librarian. When I was in high school – in the early sixties – we had advanced placement classes in math, science, English, foreign languages, and social studies. Hell, I entered the University of Illinois with credits in German, chemistry and college algebra. That was in 1965, bubba. I have a friend whose daughter just entered the University of Denver – as a sophomore! She picked up her first year of credits in high school. Hello? Anyone home at the White House? We already have AP classes, and have had them for – what – forty years or so. Maybe the President can toss a few bucks toward these valuable programs, now that he’s discovered their existence.

Want a tip for improving education (and this is for all you Republicans out there)? Quit bashing teachers! They’re under paid, under appreciated, under respected, and over worked – especially when it comes to being forced to parent unruly kids! Pass a law demanding parental responsibility and start praising teachers. How would you like
to work in a profession that gets bashed constantly by big- mouthed politicians?

How about the health care mess? Instead of talking about the 800 pound gorilla – A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM – Bush decides to set up more investment vehicles for Wall Street. How will medical savings accounts reduce the spiraling cost of health care? Poor people don’t have extra money to put into these accounts. Wealthier people don’t need them, except to shelter more income from taxes. An old and tired idea, the medical savings account concept has been around for a long time. It started as a part of cafeteria benefit plans offered to employees by some companies. It also assumes that people are over- using the health care system and that the savings account idea will cut back on this overuse because whatever isn’t spent on health care can be spent on a new TV made
in China (since none are made in America) at the end of the year. Ask yourself – except for the occasional hypochondriac, whom do you know who is overusing his or her doctor’s office? No one wants to go to the
doctor! The real problem is UNDER-UTILIZATION of the health care system, especially when it comes to preventative health care. Medical savings accounts aren’t going to solve that problem, although thyey will help the
bottom line for a few more mutual fund managers.

And speaking of the 800 pound gorilla, what about the 600 pound gorilla? Social Security. Let’s study it, he commands! Haven’t we done that three or four times in the past 25 years? When are we going to quit studying the problem and doing something about it? What a “fresh” approach to solving a problem – create a blue ribbon commission to study it. I’ll bet his staff and speechwriters worked long and hard to come up with this novel idea. So much for the President’s political capital he planned to use to reform Social Security after the last election.

And speaking of security, just assume you are being watched when you use the phone, send and email or demonstrate against anything associated with the establishment. What I don’t understand is how any hard-working journalist will be able to “phone it in” from the Middle East. How can businesses fax, email or phone business stuff to the Middle East? According to the President, all this sounds like fair game for our spies,
even though the U.S. Constitution says this isn’t supposed to occur without a warrant – and only courts can issue warrants. I don’t get it, and most members of the Democratic Party don’t get it. I suppose some newly conservative court will wind up sorting that one out. Kiss your rights goodby. By the way, spying on U.S. citizens is supported by the Democrats. They simply want the President to get the proper authority to
do so.

So while you listen to the Republicans slather praise all over the President for his innovative retread ideas, remember that liberal Senator Dianne Feinstein of the Peoples Republic of California gave Bush
a “B” on his 2006 State of the Union address. It’s almost like he was in an Advanced Placement class. So he’d be, like, a sophomore when he enters the Democratic Party.

Denver writer Richard J. Schneider studies Political Science at the University of Colorado Denver. In his free time he sails and builds nations in his back yard.

© Richard J. Schneider

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Here, in its entirety, is the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

If you read it carefully you will see that Jefferson and our Founding Fathers did not say that the Fourth Amendment applies to the President. This, evidently, is what the President means by “strict construction,” which he has been so vocal in demanding from the Supreme Court. And of course if you read the rest of the Constitution, you will see that it does not prohibit the President from telling the Supreme Court what to do. A “strict constructionist” will surely see that the President is not mentioned at all in the Bill of Rights. Therefore, ipso facto as the legal types would have it, the Fourth Amendment simply does not apply to the White House. Or, to quote an earlier generation of Republicans’ poster child of integrity, Richard M. Nixon, “…when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.”

After all, the President’s first priority is to defend America. It says that right in the Oath of Office– “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” As you can see, “executing the office” takes precedence over the Constitution, and according to the President the office is whatever he says it is.

OK, all kidding aside, that’s a reasonable summary of the Administration’s justification for spying on Americans without a warrant, in direct contravention of the Fourth Amendment. Although it is customary to name the President, it is more accurate to refer to the Administration, because the President signed the order but the order itself has Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s fingerprints all over it. After all, the National Security Agency reports to the Department of Defense.

In other words, the President has ordered the NSA to eavesdrop on the private conversations of an unspecified number of people (estimates range from a few hundred to millions), without obtaining a warrant. The Administration has acknowledged that these targets of surveillance include US citizens and other persons legally in this country, which would be a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment.

A brief history of this issue may be useful for those of you who don’t know it, or who have let the Administration’s spin machine obscure it.

In the 1970s the National Security Agency developed a system called ECHELON to carry out automatic monitoring of electronic communications. The NSA already had the hardware in place, and owned more computer processing power than any other organization in the world (they are the biggest of the few users of supercomputers). They were technically capable of intercepting and recording virtually any electronic communications anywhere in the world. This includes telephone, fax, e-mail, and data communications that are carried on networks, and of radio signals including but certainly not limited to broadcast TV and radio. It has been reported that the NSA arranged for some telecommunications companies to route their network traffic in ways that made it easier for NSA to intercept.

You may now have some idea of the volume of electronic data that is available to the NSA eavesdroppers, and you may wonder how they can possibly deal with it. That’s where the ECHELON system comes into it. ECHELON is a system of graduated monitoring that starts with the giant vacuum cleaner that is the NSA collection system. Intercept operations are carried out by the NSA itself, the Cryptologic Agencies of the US military services, and by or with the cooperation of several foreign governments.

All of the intercepted communications are run through some very elaborate computer software that looks for specific words, names, or addresses (e.g. phone numbers), in perhaps a hundred distinct languages. This lowest level of processing is the DICTIONARY program, and it is carried out in stations all over the world, many of them operated by other governments who have intelligence treaties with the US. An ECHELON station in New Zealand, for example, will use several “dictionaries” maintained by the agency that it reports to as well as those of NSA, GCHQ, CSE and DSD (you can look those up for yourself).

When a target pattern is matched, which is to say that enough “flags” are identified in a transmission, a recording of that communication is escalated to the next level of the ECHELON system. The next level is probably a more advanced computer system that is slower but can detect more patterns, and make connections between message “A” which it is working on now, and messages “B,C & D” which were processed in the last month, or year, or decade.. On the other hand, if the message was escalated because it contained the words “bomb” and “disaster” but turned out to be a review of a movie, it can be discarded. If more flags or links are discovered, the intercept is escalated to the next level of analysis, which may actually be performed by a human being. Presumably, in some circumstances enough flags can be registered at the dictionary level to escalate the message straight to a human analyst.

But wait– wouldn’t interception, recording, and analysis of all communications going through a particular network involve the private communication of American citizens? And wouldn’t that automatically be a violation of the 4th Amendment? The answer to both questions is a resounding yes, and that is why Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978. FISA set down procedures for the handling of intercepted communications involving Americans, specifically required a warrant, and created a secret court (the FIS Court, or FISC, which has 11 judges– increased from 7 to 11 by the USAPATRIOT act) to which intelligence agencies could apply for a warrant. An agency requesting a FISA warrant can do so up to 72 hours after surveillance has begun– and that “retrospective” period is extended to 15 days “in time of war.”

The constitutionality of FISA warrants has never been tested in court, and is not likely to be. Nobody has been charged with a crime on the basis of a FISA warrant, and that is not likely to happen either so long as the government can declare suspects to be “enemy combatants” and hold them indefinitely without charges.

The only “oversight” of the FISA court’s activities would seem to be their annual reports to Congress, which indicate that in the first 22 years of its history the court issued 13,102 warrants as requested by the government, and modified exactly two of them. But beginning in 2000 the Court found itself rejecting applications by the Bush administration. Since 2001 there have been 5,645 requests for warrants, and the court modified 179 them (of which 173 were in 2003 and 2004). Also during 2003 and 2004 the court rejected or deferred at least 6 requests for warrants– the first outright refusals to issue warrants in the court’s history. The timing is significant– Bush ordered warantless spying only after he was denied warrants. What was he asking for that the exceptionally friendly FISA court would not give him? Sorry… that’s classified.

What is known, though, is that NSA “product” includes all sorts of intelligence that is unrelated to any military or national security purpose. Suffice it to say that US government officers, negotiating sales of grain to the Soviet Union, knew almost to the bushel what Soviet grain production was going to be– often before the Soviet government had any idea. And it is safe to assume that there is a lot of commercial intelligence “product” that would be of immediate interest to our government contractors, including, um, Haliburton. Hypothetically speaking, if Bush can deliver commercial intelligence to contractors, it must be an awful temptation to throw the odd bone to corporations that have supported him. He might even be tempted to use his assumed “authority” to conduct surveillance operations against his political “enemies.”

At the moment the Whitehouse is asserting the legality of warrantless eavesdropping on two primary grounds– the conversations which are monitored have one leg outside the United States, and the president’s ordering of surveillance is within his “war powers” authority. Both would seem to be highly questionable.

The Fourth Amendment does not include an exception for “papers and effects” involving persons outside the United States. The deliberate attempts to distinguish “domestic” from “international” spying are pointless. Or would they have us believe that a US citizen loses all of his contstitutional rights when he is overseas?

The “war powers” authority rests entirely on Congress’ authorization of the use of force against terrorists and countries that sponsor them. Bush has taken that to mean that a state of war exists, and has manufactured the War on Terror. Again referring to the Constitution, only Congress can declare war, and it has not done so.

But perhaps this will put the whole thing in focus: the NSA does not need a warrant to conduct surveillance of any foreign person or government. The FISA court was established specifically to cover cases where a warrant was required because of the involvement of a US person. The administration’s attempt to say that warrants aren’t necessary because some foreign person is also involved, is clearly out of bounds, violating not only the letter but the spirit of the FISA law and the Constitution. And common sense says that if a warrant is easy to get, can be obtained retroactively, and the details are secret forever, the administration can have no reason for bypassing FISA that is legitimate– again, we wonder why they were having warrants denied, deferred, or modified.

–SG

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An increase in minimum wage rates seems like an obvious solution, but states with higher minimum wages (e.g. New York and California, to name two) still have an ever increasing percentage of their residents living at or below “the poverty line.” Part of the problem is that governments keep changing the definition of poverty, or “move the poverty line” whenever it is in their political interests to do so. That’s way too easy to do, because poverty is hard to define. If we go farther than most reporting organizations do, and define poverty as being unable to afford the necessities listed above, you still have a lot of wiggle room because the cost of all of the necessities is driven by market forces, and there are huge relativities in the categories. For example, housing can range from a fleabag motel room to a house, transportation can mean public transportation in areas where it’s available to private motor vehicles where it is not.

So any attempt to establish a poverty line is going to be arbitrary, and irrelevant in many cases. And setting a minimum wage that is “enough to live on” is just about impossible. A big part of the problem is that the federal minimum wage is a one-size-fits-all approach to a very complex problem.

But another part of the problem is that minimum wage rates are way too high in many cases. Take your typical high school student who works part-time in a grocery store, and is paid minimum wage. Very likely he is living at home with his parents, so he doesn’t pay for rent or food. If he drives a car to work the odds are pretty good that most of the costs are paid for by his parents. In other words, all the necessities are paid for by someone else and his entire pay check is “disposable income.”

Maybe, just maybe, this kid really is saving for college, but how fair is that? One of his workmates, maybe a couple years older, is doing the same work for the same pay and can’t afford to pay rent and grocery bills, much less put money aside for later self-improvement.

It’s long past time to apply a simple solution to this problem– set a lower minimum wage for those who don’t need it, and a higher minimum wage for those who do.

There are plenty of precedents. In many countries, minimum wage rates are determined by the employee’s age and/or the industry in which he is employed. Industry-based minimum wages are difficult to employ fairly, but age-based minimums are relatively easy. And the age breaks could easily be adjusted by whether the employee has dependents.

Here’s an example of how it could be done– overly simplified, but adequate to illustrate the principles involved:

$3.00 for an unemancipated person under 18, or one who is claimed as a dependent, e.g. no exemptions on form W-4.

$7.00 per hour, basic minimum wage, for a person who is self-sufficient but has no dependents, e.g. a single “self” exemption on the W-4.

$1.00 per hour additional, for each dependent claimed on the W-4.

The obvious fly in the ointment is that employers would naturally prefer to hire low-cost high-school students, but there’s an easy fix for that too– there are so many overheads or “on-costs” associated with hiring an employee that it should be easy for the federal and state governments to offer incentives (e.g. tax breaks) or disincentives e.g. (tax penalties) to level the playing field.

–SG

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In our nation’s history up through around 1960 or so (the famous Miranda decision was in 1966), our culture thoroughly embraced the following principle, which would be familiar to anyone who grew up in middle of the 20th century:

It is better to let ten guilty people go free than to punish one innocent person.

This simple principle is central to our system of government, and most particularly to our system of law. It is also central to Christianity, which is supposed to be the majority religion in this country. It is at the heart of our “innocent until proven guilty” rule.

But times have changed. The current prevailing philosphy is:

It is better to punish ten innocent people than to let one guilty person go free.

You can see this paradigm shift all over the place if you look– from movies and TV shows where a “hero” cop breaks the law to get a confession, to politics where a foreign leader can be framed to justify a war (and torture can be justified as a legitimate part of intelligence gathering), to the courts, where death sentences are imposed on the young and or retarded and children are tried as adults.

Capital punishment is probably the best example of this change. In the first place, it is the most extreme example of why we had the rule in the first place– in theory, any other punishment can be undone if you discover that the wrong person was executed. But more to the point, we have one state where capital punishment was “suspended” because a number of innocent people were identified on death row, with the concomitant presumption that some had been wrongly executed. Under the old rule this would have been enough to stop executions entirely. Under the new rule we have at least one state that is still trying to make executions easier.

Any law enacted by any legislature that reflects this new paradigm would seem to be unconstitutional on the face of it. But if the majority wants such a law, it must be ok. So we go right ahead and allow (even encourage) our government to violate our rights under the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments in the knowledge that it will take many years for a protest to get to the Supreme Court, and by the time it does the Supreme Court may be nothing more than a judicial arm of a political party. Sometimes it’s ok to torture people (if we hate or fear them enough). Sometimes it’s ok for the police to search your home without a warrant (if they think we might be terrorists). Sometimes it’s ok to lie under oath (if it is to protect national security). The word “sometimes” does not occur in the Constitution, which our leaders have sworn to uphold and defend.

The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not in the Constitution. Nor is the right to privacy.

Or so they would have you believe, those who want to deny those rights to us. But what about the 9th Amendment, which reads in full “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Equality, and the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are “self-evident Truths” and inalienable, according to the Declaration of Independence.

The two roles of Justice are to protect the innocent and to punish the guilty. But a majority of us now believe that punishment of the guilty is more important than protection of the innocent. And the majority rules. That’s America.

–SG

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It is so close to perfect that we were blinded to some of the deeper implications. The “ratchet effect” became a central theme of the pro-C&D campaign. Judging by the comments, we did a pretty good job of explaining it, and why it was a “red-herring” issue. But we were fooled to the extent that we accepted the “ratchet effect” or “ratcheting down” of state earnings as a valid issue. In fact, it is a very clever “straw man” argument set up by some very skilled propagandists.

A rachet is a simple mechanical device which allows something to move in one direction only.
Looking at the drawing, when the ratchet wheel rotates counterclockwise, the end of the pawl slides over the tip of a tooth and drops into the notch behind it. The wheel is free to rotate counterclockwise, and the only effect is the clicking sound as the pawl drops into each slot. But try to rotate the wheel clockwise, and the tip of the pawl comes up against an obstruction, which stops the rotation.

One of the most familiar ratchets is a socket wrench. It is a reversible ratchet, allowing rotation in either direction, but only one way at a time.

Mechanical devices are often used as metaphors, in everyday English as well as in politics. Usually there is a direct relationship between function of the device and the activity that is being described. In business, for example, we might say that it is necessary to “ratchet our expenses down.” This is an excellent metaphor because we are going to reduce our expenses in relatively small steps, in ways that prevent or at least impede movement in the other direction.

The “ratcheting down” of state spending which “needs” to be countered by C&D is an invalid metaphor, because state spending can go up or down depending on the previous year. It is precisely because there is no ratchet effect that spending can go up or down. OK, here’s where it starts to get interesting (at least to a student of propaganda). The effect of C&D, if passed, will be to create a ratchet effect on state spending, not eliminate one! C&D would allow state spending to go up, and only up.

Historically, one of the most well-documented propaganda techniques is “projection.” You identify your own faults or weaknesses, and project them in exaggerated form onto your opponent. The technique can be identified in one form or another in most political campaigns, but sometimes it is pretty subtle. The subtlety in the “ratchet down” issue is in the positioning of the argument, and the emotional connotations. By the “positioning of the argument” we mean the way we jumped right into debate over whether C&D would “correct” the “ratcheting down,” which was itself taken as fact. The official voters’ guide (the Blue Book) even had a chart showing the “ratchet down” effect as part of the factual background of the issue.

The emotional subtext is equally interesting– the word “ratchet” has an extremely negative connotation in many usages. Who could forget Louise Fletcher’s portrayal of the tyrant Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Nurse Ratchet has become a metaphor for tyranny; if you google “Nurse Ratchet” you will find around 24 thousand hits. And she is fifth on the American Film Institute’s list of the 50 all-time greatest movie villains, behind only Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs), Norman Bates (Psycho), Darth Vader (Star Wars) and the Wicked Witch of the West (Wizard of Oz). Only guess what– there was no Nurse Ratchet in either Kesey’s book or the movie. The character was Nurse Ratched, and for that matter, in the text she is almost always referred to as Miss Ratched. Miss Ratched, sounds like “ratchet,” sounds like “ratshit.” This might well have been deliberate, insofar as a ratchet is the primary mechanical component of a torture rack, and “ratshit” is often a synonym of “crazy” (the story takes place in an asylum).

In propaganda terms, the techniques used to promote this one particular viewpoint included the straw man, projection, obfuscation, association, dissimulation, and emotional blackmail. Hit an issue that hard and it’s not surprising that part of an argument escapes critical analysis. The “ratchet effect” is textbook propaganda, worthy of a Goebbels or a Rove.

–SG

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We stand by our recommendation of a NO vote on state referenda C & D, but there are a couple of “campaign issues” that should not go unnoticed. First let’s take a brief look at Aurora’s proposed property tax increase.

Aurora finds itself in fiscal difficulty primarily because of poor management. City government has acknowledged that the heart of the problem is that sales tax revenues are down, and that the appropriate way of balancing the budget would be to ask for an increase in the sales tax rate. But they “know” a sales tax increase would not be effective, because Aurora shoppers can so easily go across the city line and make their purchases in districts with lower tax rates. For example, if there is something you can buy in adjacent unincorporated Arapahoe County, you get an immediate discount of 4% by not paying city sales tax. So they are asking for an increase in property tax, to raise $10.5 million per year to pay for some specific things which we’ll talk about in a second. The fundamental principle here, and the reason we can recommend a NO vote without debating the finer points, is that the increase is a classic example of “tyranny of the majority.” A majority of voters do not own property, and there is something “un-American” about allowing them to impose a tax on those who do.

Now let’s look at what the money is being raised for. Aurora says it needs the extra $10.5 million dollars to open two fire stations, keep one library branch and a couple of swimming pools from closing, and hire additional police officers to comply with an earlier voter mandate to provide two officers per thousand of population. The citizens of Aurora already voted the funds to build those two fire stations, to build a new branch library and redevelop two other library branches, and to hire additional police. At the time those measures were approved, there was no indication that “more money” was going be needed later. During the same time frame (including the post-2001 recession that led to the “crunch”) the city spent $70 million on a new “Municipal Center” and the old City Hall building has been sitting empty for two and a half years (it’s for sale, with a price tag of $2.5 million). One of the justifications for the Aurora Taj Mahal was that the city would be able to consolidate 28 distributed facilities and departments. We can only wonder how much money is sitting there in unused city properties, but one of those properties alone is “worth” $2.5 million, so maybe that’s where the budget shortfall is.

The propaganda can be pretty subtle, too. Consider the “non partisan” analysis of information presented in
Arapahoe County’s “grey book” on the Aurora tax issue. The state’s “blue book” presents arguments for and against C&D. For Aurora’s propetry tax increase we get a “PRO STATEMENT” and a “CON STATEMENT” (wink-wink) The final paragraph of the “pro statement” is a neat little summary printed in bold, and underlined:

It is a simple concept: a “Yes” vote means extensive improvements in public safety, and preservation of the vast majority of city services; a “No” vote means deep cuts. There is no other choice.

The “con statement” gets no such highlighting, and you have to actually read it to see that the police staffing level was approved by the voters upon the initiative of the City Council and the Police Association, and funded by, wait for it… a sales tax increase.

Switching back to the C&D campaign, the shouting continues, mostly from the “pro” side which seems to have unlimited funds for TV and radio advertizing, yard signs, and banners. For the record, we have actually seen one single yard sign saying “NO.” Some valiant citizen stole a “Yes on C&D” yard sign and spray-painted “NO” over the “yes.” Probably the only thing we need to add in defense of our own “NO” recommendation is that voters should always consider who it is that is spending significant dollars to promote a tax increase.

Two of the most loudly promoted arguments in favor of the C&D tax increase are related to spending on education. The proponents insist that if the referenda are defeated there will be reduced spending on K-12 programs and colleges. K-12 spending increases were dictated by the voters already, in a Constitutional amendment that overrides TABOR. So that’s an outright lie. And in the case of Colorado’s institutions of “higher learning,” there may indeed be reduced state spending, but as we have observed elsewhere the major universities get a mere 10% of their funding from the state as it is. The correct question isn’t being asked– by what percentage would state spending be reduced, and what percentage of a school’s budget does that represent?

So our recommendation is for a NO vote on the state C&D issues, and a NO vote on the Aurora property tax increase. But, sadly, our prediction is that both will pass. Enough Aurora voters will vote in favor of a tax that they won’t have to pay personally, and enough CO voters have been convinced that they or their children will somehow benefit by giving the state a blank check. Ah, democracy!

–SG

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Ivins has a point, although her Petulant Pique appointments are really due to something much worse than pique. Especially when you consder them alongside appointees who are simply being rewarded, and those who are simply incompetent.

We think a better term for Ivins’ “petulant pique” appointmentsthem would be AV appointments, for “Administrative Vandalism.” Vandalism covers a wide range of sins, from spray-painting your name on the side of a bridge for reasons of vanity to the deliberate destruction of someone’s property, whether it’s because you enjoy breaking things in general or you are exercising a sneaky hatred of the person who owns the property. In a perfect world, all appointments would be the best available person for the job. In the W world, all appointments seem to be the result of vanity, vindictiveness, or cronyism. And any such appointments will tend to vandalize the agency. In most cases such appointments are basically a private arrangement, a reward if you will, and the public is none the wiser. In other cases it’s actually humorous, as in the appointment of vet to take over women’s health. In a few cases there is potential for tragedy or at best a Heckuva embarrassment.

You’re welcome to read Ivins’ column if you like. You’ll find it here, but note you will need to scroll through the archives and look for September 22nd because Creators Syndicate does not facilitate a permalink. In the meantime, we’ll summarize the appointments that Molly specifically mentions:

Appointment: Department of Labor, assistant secretary in charge of the health and safety of workers.
Appointee: Edwin Foulke… “a partner from the most notorious union-busting law firm in the country. What he does for a living is destroy the only organizations that care about workers’ health and safety.”

Appointment: Forest Service.
Appointee: “a timber industry lobbyist.”

Appointment: Public Lands
Appointee: “a mining industry lobbyist who believes public lands are unconstitutional.”

Appointment: Head of the clean air division at the EPA
Appointee: “A utility lobbyist who represented the worst air polluters in the country.”

Appointment: Head of the Superfund
Appointee: “a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfund regulations.”

Appointment: No 2 at the EPA
Appointee: “A Monsanto lobbyist ”

Appointment: Council on Environmental Quality
Appointee: “A lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute”

Appointment: investigation into recent price gouging by oil companies
Appointee: “a former lawyer for ChevronTexaco”

All that and no mention of John Bolton!

Are we seeing a pattern here? Ivins obviously thinks so, and ascribes the pattern to fits of juvenile pique on the part of the president. It’s a comfortable analysis for those of us who see an element of childishness in our 43rd president. But the reality is much more serious– far more than pique, it’s deliberate vandalism.

–SG

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