aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Friday, February 23, 2007
Cory doubt Jobs’ sincerity
Cory Doctorow argues in Salon that DRM’s principal effect is legal, not technical. And he questions Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ offer to embrace a DRM-free music-sales environment:
Jobs’ DRM stance has historically been all over the map. He’s defended and decried DRM and consumer rights depending on which way the wind blows, and the spirit moves him. There was the “Rip, Mix, Burn” campaign, when Apple celebrated the idea that you could take DRM-free music off of CDs and load it onto your iPod (if you want to do the same thing with a DRM’ed DVD, you’re an outlaw). Back in 2002, he went on the record with this gem: “If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own.”
But later, an Apple attorney told a tech conference that Apple would keep its DRM even if the labels asked to have it removed. And when Real announced that it had put a Real DRM player on Apple’s iPod so that you could listen to its DRM music on Apple’s player, Apple responded with legal threats.
Actions speak louder than words. Artists have asked—begged—Apple to sell their music without DRM for years. From individual bestselling acts like Barenaked Ladies to entire labels of copy-friendly music like Magnatune, innumerable copyright holders have asked Apple to sell their work as open MP3s instead of DRM-locked AACs. Apple has always maintained that it’s DRM or nothing. These artists believe that the answer to selling more music is cooperating with fans, not treating them as presumptive pirates and locking down their music. [...]
[I]t’s easy for Jobs to aver that he will drop DRM if the labels let him. As Princeton’s Ed Felten points out, Jobs says the labels call the shots on DRM and forced him to add DRM to iTunes Music. So it’s hardly brave defiance to swear to take it off when the labels tell him to. As Felten puts it, “Apple is like the kid who says he is willing to go to the dentist, because he knows that no matter what he says he’s going to see the dentist whenever his parents want him to.”
How ‘bout a live 10-hour webcast from a sweltering plane that smells of poo?
That’s Steve Bryant criticizing jetBlue’s CEO David Neeleman for his YouTubed non-apology:
The same public relations flack who got a promotion for suggesting a YouTube apology should also be fired for forgetting to ensure Neeleman actually apologizes. Because nowhere in that rambling, awkward speech does flyboy actually say “I’m sorry.” And while he gets points for not reading a prepared statement - corporate apology as fireside chat? - he loses just as many for forgetting the first person pronoun even exists.
To wit, this Frankenstein of a sentence: “Obviously the events of the past week that have been well-documented in the press are really something that I, uh, obviously this is the most difficult time in our history.”
Bravo! Your ability to avoid personal responsibility - and therefore any need to answer boardroom detractors or shareholder complaints directly - is almost Clintonian in its genius. Also, good job on starting a YouTube account only two days ago. That’s like buying your wife flowers and leaving the price tag on the vase.
Truth is, Dave, jetBlue customers expect an apology that fits the crime. So while yes, a 3-minute fauxpology is a good start, you need to make a better show of contrition. I’m thinking on a truly David Blaine scale here.
How ‘bout a live 10-hour webcast from a sweltering plane that smells of poo?
Thursday, February 22, 2007
If it had been in CT, they’d have arrested the priest…
...and he’d be facing a 40 year prison sentence. AP:
SANTA FE, New Mexico (AP)—Three CD players hidden under a cathedral’s pews blared sexually explicit language in the middle of an Ash Wednesday Mass, leading a bomb squad to detonate two of the devices.
Authorities determined the music players were not dangerous and kept the third one to check it for clues, said police Capt. Gary Johnson.
The CD players, duct-taped to the bottoms of the pews, were set to turn on in the middle of noon Mass on Wednesday at the Roman Catholic Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.
The recordings, made on store-bought blank discs, featured people using foul language and “pornographic messages,” Johnson said. He would not elaborate because of the ongoing investigation.
If you missed it, the reference is to Julie Amero, the Connecticut substitute teacher who was convicted of four felonies and now faces a possible forty year prison sentence because a malware-infected school computer with an expired content filter flashed pornographic popups at a seventh grade language arts class. Learn about Julie Amero.
LATER: USATODAY.com technology writer Andrew Kantor today, “‘Miscarriage of justice’ doesn’t begin to describe it.”
Julie Amero, fear, and fear-mongering
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D., from the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, wrote PC World’s Steve Bass about Julie Amero:
Amero did what she though was appropriate to protect the students in her classroom, given her understanding that she was not to turn the computer off or close the classroom door (it is common safety practice to require that doors remain open). Based on a review of the reports from the students, what she did was successful.
Of the 60 students who could have seen pornographic material, only 10 reported that they did. Of these, eight reported seeing only mild erotica. The other two reported they saw “little pictures” that depicted some sexual activity. It appears that seven of the ten tried to look at the computer after being told by another student of the concern. None of the students reported any emotional upset or distress whatsoever.
Given the recent research study finding that 42% of young people between the ages of 10 and 17 have viewed online pornography, consider the implications if the police and prosecutors around the country now think that any parent or teacher who fails to take the steps that others think necessary to prevent this from occurring? Do we have sufficient prison space and foster care resources?
Willard has authored a report, The Julie Amero Tragedy:
I believe that the underlying issue is that of fear. Especially in the last year there has been an overwhelming increase in the level of fear-mongering about young people and the Internet. I believe such fear-mongering has reached the level that it is clearly interfering with proactive efforts to address the very real, but manageable, concerns about young people online.
Frequently, politicians and the media are engaging in activities that are unreasonably exacerbating the fear. Politicians want to present an image to the electorate that they are “protecting children online” and frequently call for legislation that will do no such thing. While some media sources are reporting responsibly on the concerns, others are sensationalizing the issues.
The fear-mongering is interfering with efforts to effectively educate young people about the risks. When they hear the message that all online strangers are dangerous and they know otherwise, they realize that adults simply don’t understand the Internet and are fearful about what they do not understand.
The fear-mongering is also undermining efforts to encourage young people to report to an adult if they have encountered a difficult situation online. Many young people are not reporting to adults when they have become involved in a difficult situation because they fear adults will overreact, blame them, and cut off their online access. If a teen reports to a parent that he or she accidentally accessed pornography, how many parents will act in the manner evident in the Amero case: assume that the access was intentional, fail to conduct an effective evaluation of the circumstances, and punish the teen?
And, in my opinion, the fear-mongering has resulted in the conviction of a woman whose computer was porn trapped and who clearly was trying her absolute best to protect the students who were under her care.
NOTE: Bass’s piece includes an apology to the juror and an examination of the jury instructions. He concludes they “had no choice but to vote guilty.” And for all the others who have not gotten our attention, the plea I’ve appended to all of my Amero posts:
WE NEED A COMPUTER FORENSICS INNOCENCE PROJECT; a Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld of the computer forensics world. We need experts who believe in the presumption of innocence and are willing to spend the time it takes to dig through logs, registry entries and hard drives to find exculpatory material when present. This is hardly the first case of its kind and, unfortunately, it’s not likely be the last. Prosecutors who look for - and presume - guilt do selective searches for data supporting guilt; those accused rarely have the resources to pay computer forensics experts to counter that selective evidence.
Radio sucks (& why)
Howard Kurtz yesterday while discussing the Sirius-XM merger:
In all the very fine stories about the proposed XM-Sirius merger, there was one glaring omission.
The reason these two companies have 13 million subscribers willing to cough up $12.95 a month for something we all grew up thinking should be free is that commercial radio has self-destructed.
All these folks (including me) are paying for satellite because they’re tired of cookie-cutter radio formats stuffed to the gills with commercials. They’re also fed up with focus-grouped music stations that play the same 60 songs until you keep hearing the chords in your sleep.
And local radio stations covering news? There are a few across the country. For the rest, forget about it.
Really, can you think of an industry (okay, maybe American automakers) that has frittered away such huge advantages and sent its customers scrambling for alternatives?
Via Jeff Jarvis.
In Fighting for AIR: The Battle to Control America’s Media Eric Klinenberg explains what happened. Here’s a podcast of his Vanderbilt lecture. Here a C-Span After Words interview with Ben Scott.
Washington establishment bemoans bloggers
Surprise, surpirse. Not:
In a press roundtable at the National Press Club tonight, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow led a discussion with White House correspondents about the impact of the internet on their respective jobs. Their conclusion? They don’t like being challenged by blogs.
NBC News’ David Gregory bemoaned how political coverage has “become so polarized in this country…because it’s the internet and the blogs that have really used this White House press conferences to somehow support positions out in America, political views.” Tony Snow admitted he sometimes reads blogs ("I’ll occasionally punch it up") only to find “wonderful, imaginative hateful stuff that comes flying out.”
Newsweek’s White House correspondent Richard Wolffe added, “[Bloggers] want us to play a role that isn’t really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information. … It’s not a chance for the opposition to take on the government and grill them to a point where they throw their hands up and surrender.”
Viacom Joost
Fear not, MTV fans. Episodes of “Laguna Beachâ€Â� and “The Real World” will soon be back on the Internet, free of charge. But this time, viewing is on Viacom’s terms.
Viacom, the parent of networks like MTV and Comedy Central, which produce the types of programs that are ideal for watching on the Web, said yesterday that it had reached a deal with the Silicon Valley start-up Joost to distribute video online.
The agreement came a little more than two weeks after Viacom demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 clips of its programming.
The Joost partnership gives Viacom something it pressed with YouTube but never received: a share of advertising revenue. Neither company disclosed the terms of the agreement, but media experts said a 65-35 split in Viacom’s favor would be reasonable.
Programs will have commercial breaks, but the number of commercials in each episode will be fewer than on regular network television.
The Joost deal also provides a level of control for Viacom that it lacked with YouTube. Joost will not allow users to upload any of their own content.
Exactly the kind of deal media giants like: they get the lion’s share of the ad money, they can clutter up their content with as many ads as they want, and the environment is not sullied by any of that user created content. Fine with me. Let them set up their space; the more they limit the availability of their content (whether through technical limits or ad clutter that makes a viewing experience all that much less appealing) the more room they leave in the media space for you and me to get ours seen.
SEE ALSO: YouTube’s media relationships going south fast.
GA law a no-brainer
From a Macon Telegraph editorial:
Senate Bill 37, sponsored by Sen. Emanuel Jones, D-Atlanta, that Towery endorses, that would allow judges to modify sentences involving convictions of teenagers that took place prior to July 1, 2006, when the sex offender law was modified. This measure is a no-brainer and should receive speedy approval. There’s just one holdup, but it’s a big one: President Pro Tempore Eric Johnson, a Republican from Savannah, doesn’t want to pass a law that would “release sex offenders on the street.”
Perhaps Sen. Johnson doesn’t understand. This measure isn’t drafted to put sex offenders back on the street. Its prime purpose is to undo a wrong perpetrated against a teenage boy caught up in a law that had unintended consequences. Wilson is not a sexual predator, but a kid that had oral sex with a girl slightly younger than he is.
He deserved a slap on the wrist, not a 10-year prison sentence and a lifetime designation as a sexual offender.
Senate President pro tem Eric Johnson won over Neal Boortz on WSB radio yesterday (audio here) through the use of selective facts, demonization and guilt by association, and blatant misinformation.
Add AZ to the states criminalizing our kids
A commenter says, “The disgusting legislative reluctance to correct situations like this continues in other states too.” Then points to this:
Family members of young sex offenders pleaded with lawmakers on Monday to change state laws that sometimes result in long sentences and lifelong consequences for those who commit crimes when they are minors.
Two bills, sponsored by Sen. Karen Johnson, R-Mesa, would have given judges, instead of prosecutors, discretion in sentencing juveniles tried as adults and would have expanded the age range that teenagers could have consensual sexual contact without criminal ramifications. With prosecutors mounting an aggressive defense of the status quo and one lawmaker absent, both bills died in committee on tie votes after a lengthy and emotionally charged hearing.
The legislation evolved from hearings last fall in which families, public defenders and others involved in the system told of unintended consequences of existing laws, including those that make consensual sex among teens a crime. [...]
Senate Bill 1425 would have changed the age range that can result in a felony conviction for consensual sexual contact. Under current state law, sexual contact, from touching to intercourse, with anyone younger than 15 is a felony, even if the youths are close in age and the contact is consensual.
My gut objects to these laws for what they do to the kids. When I think it through it gets worse. Even if these kids are out of line, the place to find answers to address that is in the home, in schools, churches, counseling; in the community. The law is a blunt instrument. If there is a crime, fine. Most of this does not rise to that level.
What we’re talking about here is adolescence. And what we’re doing by putting our adolescents into the criminal justice system is abdicating community responsibility; worse still, it’s making criminals. Because when they come out of that system, if they ever do (remember, those sex offender convictions stay will them forever), they will be criminals. That harms us all.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Drill cancelled
It’s Severe Weather Awareness Week in Georgia, and companies, government offices, churches and more were supposed to conducted a severe weather drill today.
The drill was cancelled.
Beatboxing flutist
The theme song to inspector gadget on the flute while beatboxing…
Via WWdN: In Exile.
A Hacking Netflix idea to pursue
Hacking Netflix has a cool idea using Yahoo Pipes, Netflix, and a PVR. Using your Netflix queue RSS feeds, it would be cool if movies being shown on cable could be recorded automatically from your Netflix queue, and removed afterwards so you don’t have to rent them. The author mentions Yahoo pipes, a nice RSS mashup tool, but it’s not totally necessary.
It’s not currently possible, but it certainly seems doable, and something I’d use if it showed up on my TiVo.
Read on for HDMI cable warnings, “You can find perfectly good cables in the $5-$20 range online at lots of places.”
Unleashing the ugly truth
There is something bracing in the matter-of-fact clarity of Hardaway’s declaration. He cut through the clutter of weasel words and half-truths that traditionally surrounds homophobia, showed us what lies behind honeyed euphemisms ( ‘traditional values’ ), and claims to speak for God.
‘I hate gays,’ he said. Period, end of sentence. The statement had to it the same flat clarity of Bull Connor, straw hat on his head, cigar clenched in his teeth, siccing dogs on children. [...]
So often, we use words to distance ourselves from what we feel, to hide our true meaning, even from ourselves. Hardaway used words to say exactly what he felt, and it is possible to abhor what he felt and yet, appreciate that he does not make you guess or infer.
Think again of Connor, screaming obscenities under an Alabama sun. To hear him, to hear Hardaway, is to know that you have finally come down to it, finally met the beast that lives behind euphemism and weasel words.
It is ugly, but it is also, at long last, truth.
Barbara Gittings dies
I didn’t know her, but I was fortunate enough to have met her while a student working on the film Before Stonewall:
Barbara Gittings, a gay rights activist since the late 1950s, died yesterday in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. She was 75.
Friends say Gittings died after a lengthy fight with breast cancer. She helped organise the New York City chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, an early lesbian rights organisation, in the 1950s. During her work with that group, she met her life partner, Kay Lahusen.
She first became well known to the public in 1965, when she helped organise gay-rights demonstrations at the White House and Independence Hall.
Gittings had served as head of the American Library Association’s Gay Task Force. In 2003, the association presented her its highest honour, a lifetime membership.
Bill O’Reilly’s Genarlow hypocrisy
Genarlow made the O’Reilly Factor Talking Points the other day:
Wilson’s lawyer appealed, but lost. However, Wilson remains an object of sympathy in some quarters. But should he be?
This 17-year-old girl continues to say she was raped by Wilson and five other men who pled guilty in this case. But Wilson was found not guilty at trial, despite the fact the jury saw this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GENARLOW WILSON, CONVICTED SEX PREDATOR: Look at it closely. (BLEEP).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
The girl says she believes she was drugged. By most accounts, she seem to be intoxicated.
The reason we’re reporting this story is sometimes the media glorifies people who don’t deserve to be glorified.
Everything I’ve read says the sex was consensual. Where does O’Reilly find her saying she was raped?
The hubris and hypocrisy of his moralism is made manifest when you recall their were audio tapes about to be released in his own sex harassment suit. Jurors never heard them because he settled for millions of dollars and a binding non-disclosure agreement that snuffed out his own media fire just 2 weeks after the suit was brought. Recall some details:
Hours after Bill O’Reilly accused her of a multimillion dollar shakedown attempt, a female Fox News producer fired back at the TV star today, filing a lawsuit claiming that he subjected her to repeated instances of sexual harassment and spoke often, and explicitly, to her about phone sex, vibrators, threesomes, masturbation, the loss of his virginity, and sexual fantasies. Below [here] you’ll find a copy of Andrea Mackris’s complaint, an incredible page-turner that quotes O’Reilly, 55, on all sorts of lewd matters. Based on the extensive quotations cited in the complaint, it appears a safe bet that Mackris, 33, recorded some of O’Reilly’s more steamy soliloquies. For example, we direct you to his Caribbean shower fantasies. While we suggest reading the entire document, TSG will point you to interesting sections on a Thailand sex show, Al Franken, and the climax of one August 2004 phone conversation.
Remember, O’Reilly was 55 at the time, married and a father of two; the victim was 33. Genarlow was 17, the girl 15. A perfect example of the point in why we’re freaking out. There I pointed to Judith Levine’s Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex:
Among other insights, Levine wrote that “obsession with pedophiles stems for the reluctance to confront incest and the rampant sexualization of children” in American culture. “Adults project the eroticized desire outwards, creating a monster to hate, hunt down and destroy.”
STOP DEMONIZING CRIMINALIZING OUR KIDS BECAUSE YOU ARE A DIRTY OLD MAN!
LATER: I now understand that O’Reilly was referring to the girl Genralow had intercourse with, not the girl he had oral sex with. Sorry for my confusion.
Lawmaker who wrote child molestation provision has regrets
He says he never meant to criminalize kids for consensual sex:
ATLANTA - The former lawmaker who wrote a bill increasing the punishment for child abuse and child molestation said Tuesday that he never meant the law to be used against teens engaging in consensual sex acts.
Now, the General Assembly should revisit the law so that those who fall under those circumstances do not continue serving their 10-year prison sentences, said Matt Towery, a former Republican state representative who sponsored the Child Protection Act in 1995.
“I still feel the responsibility so many years later that this has turned out the way it has, and it needs to be fixed,” said Towery, a political columnist and owner of an online media company in Atlanta.
At a news conference, Towery said lawmakers should consider Senate Bill 37 as a way to solve the issue. [...]
Towery, who described himself a longtime friend of [SB 37 sponsor Sen. Emanuel] Johnson [D-Decatur], said he did not want to “blindside” the senator by speaking in favor of SB 37 but added that he has been frustrated for years that the provision was not fixed earlier.
Towery said the only reason the age of consent rules were changed in his child protection rules in the mid-1990s was because Senate Judiciary leaders said it was the only way the bill would come up for a vote in the upper chamber.
“I did not want to see then, nor do I want to see now, them serving 10-year sentences for something like this,” he said.
Yesterday Griftdrift pointed out that the only thing about the Georgia state legislature to be featured on the front page of the Metro Section of the AJC was a story about the licensing of water buffalo. So I went there to find this story today. It was there, but the Jacksonville.com story was nearly have again as long and more complete so I chose to quote it.
RELATED: “Senate President Eric Johnson, R-Savannah, also is facing increased attention outside Georgia for his opposition to reexamining the law.” That attention is well-earned! See: Evidence, jurors be damned. State senator says it’s rape!
AND ALSO: It’s hard to believe, but a case in Florida could be even worse.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
How anonymous sourcing has changed
As I watch the four hour Frontline series News War in the coming weeks (via TiVo, if you missed any you can watch online) I will regularly quote whatever strikes me as interesting.
First up, Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to research and evaluate the performance of the press, asked to speak broadly about how anonymous sourcing in journalism has evolved since Watergate:
I think that it’s important in understanding the [Valerie] Plame case to understand how anonymous sourcing has changed over the last generation. During Watergate and before that, confidentiality was a tool that journalists would offer to reluctant sources to coax them to come forward. It was the journalist who would say: “If you won’t tell me on the record, why not go on background? I won’t name you. I’ll protect you. You’re safe.”
Over the last 25 years, that has shifted to the point where confidentiality and anonymity are conditions that the source often imposes on the journalist before even talking to them in the first place. We’ve reached the point in Washington where today, it’s a standing, understood rule that every press spokesman on Capitol Hill will be anonymous. Why? Because only the members should speak for his or her office.
So you have a situation where people who are paid by taxpayers’ money are granted freedom to not be accountable for what they say on the record because everybody uses background all the time, and it’s just the way of the world: “If you won’t play by those rules, I won’t talk to you.” It’s been a complete power shift in which what was once a journalistic tool for coaxing sources, whistleblowers, to come forward, has shifted over and is now in the employ of the source, not the journalist. …
Hillary in New Hampshire
A New Hampshire friend sent an email with photos around today. 
The friend just happens to be the same friend who at Christmas gave me a copy of Obama’s Audacity of Hope that she had picked up at his Portsmouth book signing.
The subject line of today’s email: Hillary comes to the sea coast! (The exclamation point is hers):
Hillary Clinton came to the Seacoast last weekend and we got to meet her… I was very impressed by her “presence” with people (had never met her or even seen her in person), and even moreso by how candid she is about her thought process and what she is trying to pursue. She is a consensus-builder and a problem-solver, and I think her skills will be incredibly useful for leading our country. We were all impressed.
I’d say that kind of reaction bodes well for Hillary!
Teachers are more dangerous than al Qaeda
Last night on Fox News’s Hannity and Colmes, right-wing radio host Neal Boortz claimed that teachers unions are “destroying a generation” and are “much more dangerous than al Qaeda.” He stated, “Look, Al Qaeda, they could bring in a nuke into this country and kill 100,000 people with a well-placed nuke somewhere. Ok. We would recover from that. It would be a terrible tragedy, but the teachers unions in this country can destroy a generation.” Sean Hannity agreed, noting, “They are ruining our school system.”
An MTV renaissance?
Robert Young at GigaOM says MTV is poised for a comeback.
Generally speaking, I’ve bought into the mainstream blogosphere wisdom that it was a big mistake for Viacom to pull its clips from YouTube. I still see the move as nothing more than a negotiating ploy. But what if it is more?
Young says, “Viacom is doing absolutely the right thing” and quotes this press release as evidence:
You won’t find clips of comedian Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” and MTV’s “Pimp My Ride” on YouTube any more, but Viacom Inc. is laying the groundwork for its videos to be available to hundreds of thousands of other sites… In the next few months, Web users will be able to grab videos from nearly all MTV-owned sites and post them on their own blogs or Web sites, lessening the need to go to YouTube, the top online video service that Google Inc. acquired last year.
MTV’s newly-appointed President of Global Digital Media, Mike Salmi, says, “The move is part of a strategy to bring Viacom’s Web sites up to “Web 2.0’ standards… Part of that is allowing people to take our content and embed it and make your own things out of it, whatever they want.”
I might ask why Viacom is pulling the clips before they’re ready with their own site; that doesn’t seem “absolutely right” to me. But I could imagine that by making their “vast video libraries archived within MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, SpikeTV, etc.” available, exactly the “kind of “video snacks” that are so popular on online video-sharing sites,” we could see MTV reshape the web-video landscape the way MTV Networks did cable in the 1980s.
My two caveats are, 1) if they were going to, the roll-out should have been done differently - making fans mad by pulling videos from YouTube with only talk of an alternative doesn’t work for me, and 2) how are they going to handle advertising? Pre-roll ads of the kind the television-types use all over the net now are rejected by fans.
The ad industry itself should learn that interruption, clutter and irrelevance alienate viewers. The TV industry must learn that their content’s not worth half as much as their greedy little broadcast-monopoly manufactured-scarcity models suppose. They can make a bundle in small increments. Just look at Google.
Georgia’s growth industry: prisons
I let this pass without posting when I saw it last week:
Georgia’s prison population is projected to grow by more than 5,700 inmates over the next five years, an increase that would cost the state nearly $100 million, according to a study released Wednesday.
The report by the Pew Charitable Trusts projects that the U.S. will have more than 1.7 million men and women in prison by 2011 - costing taxpayers an additional $27.5 billion - if states don’t make changes to their incarceration policies.
Georgia’s projected prison population gain would amount to an 11 percent increase over the current population. At the current annual cost of about $17,000 per inmate, that would amount to a cost increase of more than $98 million, according to the report.
The report says rising overall populations and state policy decisions like mandatory minimum sentences and reduced parole grants are contributing to the spiraling prison populations.
In states like Georgia, the growth in methamphetamine cases also was cited as key factor.
Meth-related admissions more than tripled in Georgia between 1999 and 2005, the study says.
Admissions? Is that “convictions?” I don’t get it. If so, Georgia is bucking the trend:
[T]he federal National Survey on Drug Use and Health released results from a survey that showed meth use had “declined overall between 2002 and 2005” and that the number of “initiates"- people using the drug for the first time in the 12 months before the survey-had “remained relatively stable between 2002 and 2004, but decreased between 2004 and 2005.”
MORE on the Pew prison study. MORE on the exaggerated Meth epidemic.
Protecting kids, Georgia-style: lock them up & throw away the key
I’m appalled to read this in the NYTimes today:
The second piece of legislation introduced with the intent of helping Genarlow Wilson, a former honor student and star athlete who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for having oral sex with a 15-year-old classmate, may be in trouble in the Georgia General Assembly.
Senator Emanuel D. Jones, a Democrat, sponsored the legislation, which would make it possible for judges to reconsider the cases of hundreds of young adults, including Mr. Wilson, who are serving long mandatory minimum sentences in prison for having consensual sex with teenage minors. Mr. Jones said the bill was mysteriously left off the agenda of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
And on Monday, the Senate’s leader, Eric Johnson, publicly denounced the bill and said that although Mr. Wilson, now 20, was serving a harsh sentence, he deserved no leniency.
You’ll recall that evidence, jurors be damned, Senator Johnson says it’s rape.
SEE ALSO: The Sex Panic: Why we’re freaking out.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Bass on Amero: Take Action
Right after my newsletter was posted, many of you asked what you could do. You can check the Julie Amero blog and consider helping by way of the Julie Amero Defense Fund.
If you’re interested in details, there are two excellent articles that go into technical high-gear. The first is Randy Abrams’s “Can a Legal System Unversed in Technology Result in a Fair Trial?” Next is Mark Rasch’s 7-part Mouse-Trapped.
Your Cards and Letters
You can also use the power of e-mail. The State’s Attorney responsible for supervision of David Smith, the prosecutor in the Amero case, is Michael L. Regan. You might want to write him and strongly urge he help Smith file a motion to vacate the conviction. An e-mail to the Chief State’s Attorneys of Connecticut Kevin T. Kane and Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell can’t hurt, either. (There are more e-mail links on the Julie Amero site.)
If you write, however tempting, try not to go on a rant. Use your computing expertise—and a civil argument—and you’ll likely get better results.
The case has the public’s attention and it’s taken on an energy that won’t be stopped. Stay tuned.
Agreed. And for all the others who have not gotten our attention, the plea I’ve appended to all of my Amero posts:
WE NEED A COMPUTER FORENSICS INNOCENCE PROJECT; a Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld of the computer forensics world. We need experts who believe in the presumption of innocence and are willing to spend the time it takes to dig through logs, registry entries and hard drives to find exculpatory material when present. This is hardly the first case of its kind and, unfortunately, it’s not likely be the last. Prosecutors who look for - and presume - guilt do selective searches for data supporting guilt; those accused rarely have the resources to pay computer forensics experts to counter that selective evidence.
Libertarian Paternalism gaining traction
In a NYTimes Talking Points column last week, Helping People Help Themselves (subscription), Teresa Tritch does an excellent job of walking us through the emergence of behavioral economics:
From “lather, rinse, repeat,” to how you invest for retirement, the way you do most things now is the way you’ll continue to do them. That all-too-human tendency to favor the familiar and resist change, called “status quo bias,” is a central finding of behavioral economics - a discipline that fuses psychology and economics. Behavioral economics has demonstrated that in money matters (as in life), people are motivated by impulses that are measurable and predictable - and often irrational. That won’t surprise anyone who ever threw good money after bad, succumbed to a fad or ate the whole thing. One of the founding fathers of behavioral economics, the late Amos Tversky of Stanford University, once quipped that the scientific exploration of human behavior illuminated what was already obvious to “advertisers and used car salesmen.”
And yet most economic models and the public policies they inspire still assume that human beings behave like Mr. Spock of “Star Trek.” According to the models, people are guided in their decision making by a consistently rational and highly reliable sense of their own best interest.
That notion is finally changing.
Behavioral economics first emerged some 30 years ago, most prominently with the research of Mr. Tversky and Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University. By the 1990s, the field was being popularized. In 1990 and again in 1997, for example, Money magazine used behavioral economics to create features and quizzes designed to explain why smart people make dumb money moves. In 2002, Mr. Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics for his contributions to behavioral economics. Increasingly, the field is attracting some of the brightest minds in economics, involving the nation’s major universities and think tanks, publications and conferences.
But it wasn’t until last year that behavioral economics first shaped public policy in a big way, via the pension reform law of 2006.
The behavioral economics aspect of the pension reform law is that it allows an employer to automatically enroll employees - who may opt-out - in a 401(k). It also allows automatic increases, the idea being that we can default into what’s in our best long-term interest and triumph over those pesky instant gratification desires that hold us back.
Tritch explores how this might be applied in other areas of our lives, from smoking to the cost of a printer (she highlights the $29.99 Hewlett-Packard Deskjet 3747 Color Inkjet printer, which has a four-year cost of $2,400 when you include ink for about 20 black and white copies a day. “Should that information be prominently disclosed?” YES!!!)
She concludes:
Questions of if and when the government should decide are also loaded.
Most any government intervention seems objectionable if you assume that people usually make the best choices for themselves. That anti-government sentiment is intensified if you also believe that markets are impersonal, leading by some inexorable logic to optimal outcomes for society-at-large.
Behavioral economists reject those assumptions. But it doesn’t automatically follow that government solutions are inevitable or even desirable: Excessive regulation of economic activity would lead to a nanny state.
In their articles and in a forthcoming book, titled “Nudge,” Mr. Thaler and Mr. Sunstein suggest a middle ground. First, they point out the importance of acknowledging that in many situations, some person or entity must make choices that affect others.
Think back, for example, to the pension reform law. Before automatic enrollment, employers chose to require employees to enroll in a 401(k) plan. Because of the employer’s choice, an employee who did not enroll would contribute zero percent of salary to the plan. In other words, zero was the default contribution. Mr. Thaler and Mr. Sunstein point out that in situations where it seems that no one is making a controlling decision, it is usually because “the starting point appears so natural and obvious,” it is taken as a given. Automatic enrollment, however, is a different choice that establishes a different default position. Is steering the employee in the direction of participating objectionable? No, especially since the employee is free to opt out.
Which leads to their second point in the search for a middle way between hands-off government and the nanny state. If no coercion is involved, there is no justification for rejecting government interventions out of hand.
Policies that do involve coercion - taxation, for one - obviously require public support to be sustained. If the support dries up, the policy presumably will, too.
But it is a mistake to oppose tax-supported programs like Social Security or universal health care on the faulty assumption that everyone does better when individuals take their best shots in the marketplace.
Critics of behavioral economics are quick to point out that government officials are also human, subject to the same biases that trip up the rest of, and thus would be no better at making decisions than anyone else. That’s an oversimplification. Expertise, professionalism and experience work to mitigate biases, as do debate, discussion, deliberation and oversight. In a functioning democracy, we have a right to expect and demand those traits and processes in government, in which case, we could rely on government decisions, at times, more than our own.
This being a democracy, we could rely, but verify.
I’ve long been an admirer of Cass Sunstein, but my first introduction to his more recent work with Richard Thaler on what they call “libertarian paternalism” came in a podcast of his talk delivered in the 5th Annual “Chicago’s Best Ideas” series last October.
I was immediately swayed. I’ve downloaded their principal paper, Libertarian Paternalism Is Not an Oxymoron (a brief 45 pages), but have not yet read it. As my title suggests, I can only hope these ideas gain traction. Tritch’s article reads like a right step in that direction.
The Divine Miss M
When I think Cleveland, like many a gay man of my era, I think Bette Midler and Live At Last recorded by Atlantic Records at the Cleveland Music Hall in 1977. Featuring those wonderful Sophie Tucker jokes. (Doug laughed out loud; and complained of typos.) An evocation of then (sans Sophie jokes)…
