Another socialist blog

NPR’s Marketplace did a story this morning about the rise of the urban farmer, which is just a cute way of saying, vegetable gardening. High food prices have encouraged a lot of people to grow their own tomatoes, for example. Stacey Vanek-Smith added up some costs to get into a small garden, and suggested that home gardeners might very well find themselves eating tomatoes that cost $64 each to raise. Bah. Here’s a comment I just sent to the producers of the show.

Stacey Vanek-Smith’s piece about tomato gardening was wrong even within the overly narrow confines of a strictly economic analysis of gardening.

1. Tomatoes are not a commodity. Anyone with tastebuds can appreciate the fact that the round red tomato-like objects at the grocery store don’t taste anything like a vine-ripened tomato. Commercial tomatoes are bred for their ability to withstand rough handling, not for flavor. They are harvested green and treated with ethylene gas to make them appear ripe. So even if home-grown tomatoes are more expensive than store-bought, who cares? It’s like telling me that home grown tomatoes are more expensive than paper towels.

2. Gardening improves both the soil, and the gardener. If Stacey sticks to her tomato project she’ll get exercise, fresh air, and a reminder that with patience comes reward. If her garden is organic, she will enrich a little plot of soil, improving its ability to hold carbon and rain water, among other benefits. It’s more than a retail transaction.

3. Stacey considered only the effect of the garden on Stacey, ignoring the value of her garden to the rest of us. If she grows her own, that’s less pesticides sprayed into the environment. Less fuel is consumed by tractors and tomato trucks, so less carbon dioxide and less demand pushing up my fuel prices. If the benefits to you and me don’t appear on Stacey’s bottom line, then the math is just wrong.

The House of Representatives has passed a bill that permits local police to demand the forfeiture in criminal proceedings of stuff used to violate copyright. That’s right. Instead of civil lawsuits for money, the recording industry wants to criminalize what they call copyright violation, and empower law enforcement to permanently seize any property they claim was used to violate copyright. This expands a government power that even some conservatives will acknowledge has been widely abused.

This is the future of property rights. They will own the property. You can only rent it.

Nine months of blog inactivity! That’s a new record, and hopefully it’ll stand from now on.

I’ve converted from Blosxom to Wordpress MU, since I was rebuilding the server anyhow, so it’ll have more features and will probably look sharper as well. I should have all the old posts converted by the weekend.

Those who are most cynical about the Bush administration are once again proven right: President Bush has commuted the sentence of convicted felon Louis “Scooter” Libby. Libby still stands convicted, but will do no prison time. It was not unexpected based on George W. Bush’s previous examples of immorality, lawlessness, and hypocrisy, but is still appalling. The rule of law has never in my life counted for less. Cheney and Rove and the rest of the gangsters in the White House are obviously convinced that they will be allowed to get away with any criminal act, and clearly they are correct.

There is a constitutional remedy for this, and it is the impeachment of the President. Cynics, myself included, predict the Democratic Party will never do it, that they haven’t the spine, that they are just as corrupt as the Republicans. It would be nice to be wrong about them, but I’m not holding my breath.

Working Assets has called for a boycott of the iPhone because customers will be locked into a contract with AT&T.

Handset locking sucks, and AT&T sucks more: These people are criminal traitors who helped wiretap the nation, neutricidal maniacs bent on wrecking the Internet, and convicted monopolists besides.

You will recall that Microsoft successfully dodged the consequences of its proven violations of antitrust law by the time-tested means of bribing politicians. The scandal continues. The top antitrust official at the Justice Department is none other than Thomas O. Barnett, who until 2004 was a top antitrust partner at the law firm that represented —wait for it—Microsoft! The firm handled several antitrust disputes for Microsoft, though Justice claims Barnett never worked on Microsoft matters. The NY Times says that “Ethics lawyers ultimately cleared his involvement” in Microsoft-related matters at the Justice Department, which makes me think they have an impaired sense of smell.

Barnett, in an unprecedented move, has sent a memo to state attorneys general supporting Microsoft against accusations of anticompetitive conduct brought by Google. This is not atypical; the Bush administration has repeatedly defended Microsoft against such accusations.

One thing I’ll say for the Bushies: when you buy ‘em they stay bought.

Nuclear power is losing some of the stink it acquired in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster and the Three Mile Island accident. This rehabilitation is undeserved.

Most people I talk to are unaware of the fact that nuclear plant operators enjoy a fat subsidy from the public. In a real free market they would have to buy liability insurance like every other power plant operator, indeed, like every other business. But this isn’t a free market and nuclear power gets a special break, courtesy of the Price-Anderson Act of 1957. Price-Anderson sets a ceiling on the total damages that the nuclear industry’s insurance pool must pay in the event of an accident. The current value of the pool is roughly $12 billion, which sounds like a lot unless you know that the potential damage from a catastrophic nuclear accident is 50 times that.

A 1982 Sandia National Laboratories study, leaked to Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), quantified the consequences of a catastrophic nuclear power accident in the U.S. Besides potentially causing thousands of early deaths and cancers, an accident could cause as much as $313 billion in damages, or about $600 billion today with inflation. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident has cost Ukraine, Belarus and southern Russia an estimated $350 billion.

If you enjoyed paying for Hurricate Katrina relief, you’ll love getting the bill for the next nuclear disaster.

I’ve mentioned before that corporations oppose government invervention in the so-called free market, except when the free market doesn’t give them what they want. Here is yet another example, from corporate bad citizen Microsoft: the company claims that Linux and other free software products violate Microsoft patents and they expect that people will pay Microsoft for the privilege of using free software. The same company that flouts anti-trust law and bribes politicians would like everyone else to be more reverent about the law, which upholds idiotic patents along with reasonable ones.

The news is full of reports about the foiled plot to attach Fort Dix. It is being reported widely as a “terrorist” attack. Though many news organizations are being careful about it, the Washington Post called it a terrorist plot, and ABC News called the suspects a “terror cell” on their web site and used the word “terrorist” to describe the plot in their broadcast this morning. The FBI has been helping the media along, calling the suspects “homegrown terrorists”.

There was a time when the word “terrorism” had a clear meaning: killing or threatening to kill innocent civilians to achieve a political goal. Using that definition, the Fort Dix attack would of course not be terroristic, because the alleged targets were soldiers. This is not hairsplitting. Soldiers are capable of defending themselves, unlike civilians who generally can’t confront an armed opponent. They aren’t likely to respond to an attack by being terrified. If you don’t agree with that, then you must think Pearl Harbor was a terrorist attack.

But clarity does not serve the purposes of our government. So they use the word “terrorism” to describe almost any opposition to the U.S. Under the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, free speech activities can be construed as terrorist if the prosecutor chooses to do so. And blowing up innocent civilians? Depends on which side you’re on. Luis Posada Carriles is back on the street with his immigration charges dismissed, and his extradition unlikely. Who knows, maybe he’ll get a pardon and a medal.

Luis Posada Carriles faces trial this week for immigration fraud, a trivial charge for a man accused of bombing an airliner and killing all 73 people aboard. Posada enjoys a special status among accused terrorists: he’s a friend of the American right wing because he’s an anti-Castro militant and a former CIA operative.

That means he gets a pass on several terrorist bombings including the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, and a series of bombings of tourist hotels and other tourist sites in Havana in 1997. Or, at least, Posada gets as much of a pass as the Bush administration can arrange. The government is cooperating with the defense to bar potentially damaging evidence from Posasa’s trial, including any mention of his ties with the CIA. On the other hand, a grand jury in New Jersey is weighing evidence in the tourist bombing cases, and there is a growing international clamor for Posada to be extradited.

Both Cuba and Venezuela have demanded Posada’s extradition. The Bush administration has refused, on the grounds—wait for it—that Posada would face torture if he were extradited. As Jon Stewart has pointed out, this administration is no longer capable of doing anything that is not ironic.

It goes without saying that the director of the CIA in 1976, George H.W. Bush, who was Posada’s boss when the airliner was brought down, won’t be facing prosecution.