dan collier

Lawrence Lessig has endorsed Barack Obama, and I think this post is an interesting analysis of the race.

Even if it is possible that an “experienced” politician could reform the system, the experience of HR “Lincoln Bedroom” Clinton is not likely to manifest that zeal for reform. She and her husband prospered from that system. Why would they ever work to dismantle it? She asks in her final 2-minute plea to Iowa: “Who is ready to be president and ready to start solving the big challenges we face on day one?” That’s not the question. The right question is this: “Who sees fixing the corruption that is government as the most important challenge we face on day one, and who is likely to have the will to do it?”

Lessig is not describing corruption in the bribe sense, but corruption in the economy of influence sense he described here. Lessig argues the most pressing issue facing the US Government is that “our government can’t understand basic facts when strong interests have an interest in its misunderstanding.”

I join Lessig in hoping Obama gets a chance, and can withstand the pressure if elected.

Update:I posted the wrong link at the top of this post. The correct one is there now, and here

’08 Candidates on Executive Power – The Boston Globe elicited responses from candidates for president about executive power. You can look at answer in a couple different ways, but direct comparison seems best for some of them.

Does the Constitution permit a president to detain US citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants?

Does the president have inherent powers under the Constitution to conduct surveillance for national security purposes without judicial warrants, regardless of federal statutes?

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Who said what about whom? – The New York Times has this visualization tool to see which candidates other candidates are talking about the most.

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The Post-Steroid Record Book Annotation System – Roger Clemens may claim he never used performance enhancing drugs, but he’s guilty of a few of these.

The Official YFSF Record Book Annotation System

* = Steroids
! = Amphetamines
$ = Gambling
|| = Cocaine
~ = Alcohol
? = Before integration
# = Before expansion
. = Dead ball era
? = Wore glasses
† = Crazy religious freak

Der Spiegel Online, the largest European weekly magazine, has an interesting story about the recently concluded negotiations concerning the fate of Kosovo’s unhappy union with Serbia. The US, apparently not yet threatened by Vermont secessionists, is in favor of independence for Muslim-majority Kosovo. A two-state solution is also supported by 26 of the 27 EU member states. Not suprisingly, Russia is allied with the Slavic Serbians and objects to self-declared independence.

The implications of self-declared independence for Kosovo are both big and small. In former Yugoslavian territory Bosnia-Herzegovina, twelve years after the Dayton Agreement ended the war an EU envoy still governs alongside local representation and ethnic Serbian separatists threaten the long-term future of the nation. In Kosovo, at the very least, NATO would continue to provide military security. Meanwhile, in European countries dealing with secessionist groups, like Spain, Belgium, and Russia, the outcome will either weaken or strengthen the independence movements. While the situation may not draw as much attention as nuclear arsenals in Pakistan or Iran, it is worth remembering that the first and last major European armed conflicts of the twentieth started in the Balkans.

On the first page of the Spiegel article, there is this interesting German perspective on resurgent German foreign clout:

It’s rare that the European Union chooses a single diplomat to represent its interests. When it comes to the Middle East conflict or the Iranian nuclear program, the Germans always have a seat at the table, but so do other countries. Sometimes it’s a preventative measure designed to ensure that Germany, Europe’s dominant economic power, doesn’t overshadow the prestige-hungry British, French and Italians. But despite their neighbors’ fears, the truth is that the Germans have no qualms about being part of a collective endeavor.

Kosovo, though, is a different story. The war over the small, poor Serbian province in the spring of 1999 marked a turning point for German foreign policy. For the first time since its establishment in 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany took part in an armed conflict.

In a related serious but more amusing dispute, Greece and Macedonia, another former Yugoslavian nation, continue to fight over the name Macedonia.

An update about the Money magazine “Millionaires-in-Chief” article I wrote about a couple days ago. The article is now up at CNN Money. Here is the text, and here is the more interesting part: “Where they got it… and where it goes.”

The January 2008 issue of Money magazine has an interesting article titled “Millionaires-in-Chief” on the finances of some of the candidates for President. It is not online (yet?), but the most interesting part is the following information:

Candidate	2006 Income	Net Worth
Hillary Clinton	$12.1 Million	$34.9 Million
John Edwards	$3.7 Million	$54.7 Million
Rudolph Giuliani	$17.0 Million	$52.2 Million
John McCain	$3.9 Million	$40.4 Million
Barack Obama	$991,000	$1.3 Million
Mitt Romney	$37.6 Million	$202 Million
Fred Thompson	$9.4 Million	$8.1 Million

The group above is what Money, a Time-Warner publication and CNN partner, states are the “top White House contenders” in ’08. The idea that Fred Thompson is more popular or likely to win than Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul seems far-fetched. Perhaps Huckabee, Paul, and Dennis Kucinich were all left off the list because they are not millionaires. If so, that is a shame because Obama’s comparatively modest $1,300,000 net worth is an endearing trait in a presidential contender.

Barack Obama addressed that issue in a recent meeting with The Boston Globe’s editorial board:

And he argued that his relative newness is an advantage because he’s only four or five years removed from dealing with balancing his credit cards and a year removed from buying his own groceries — he’s still connected to the daily aspirations and concerns of Americans.

Obama, whose campaign promises a new kind of politics, said he and his wife Michelle talked about that a couple of days ago.

“She said, ‘We’re still pretty normal.’ ”

Also presented in the Money article are the top book sales for the same group of candidates. Hillary sold the most with 1,384,000 copies of “Living History” (2003). Barack Obama was second with 1,080,000 copies of “The Audacity of Hope” (2006). Rudolph Giuliani was third, having sold 836,000 copies of “Leadership” (2002).

Update 10 Dec 2007: The article is now up at CNN Money. Here is the text of the article, and here is the more interesting part: “Where they got it… and where it goes“.

Privacy – a short video by Ze Frank. If you haven’t seen The Show with Ze Frank, you should check that out too.