Month: June 2002

So much to blog, so little time

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

But I’ll try to get in what I can before they kick me out of the library in half an hour. Gene Healy and Eve Tushnet have already summarized more or less what happened at the blog roundtable I attended last night.

Naturally, none of the very perceptive questions Healy asked were answered by any of the panelists, but moderator’s questions are usually ignored in these types of situations. Stan Evans did a great job of bluffing his way through the discussion, since he clearly had no idea what the hell people were talking about half the time. I’d look over in his direction as someone else was talking and he’d have this bemused look on his face.

But he made some very good points that apply across all media, and one thing he said particularly struck home with me. One thing I find attractive about the blogosphere and opinion writing in general is that I love the attitude. I can pick and choose what I agree with, creating a feedback loop that reinforces what I already think in an entertaining and informative way.

However, there is still this real world of supposedly objective, mainstream journalism that libertarians and free-marketeers need to crack. It’s not good enough to just be blogging in reaction to the latest blunder in The New York Times, or writing an opinion column, or publishing in places like Reason. Those things definitely have their place, but I kind of realize two things about myself and my career at this point: The first is that I’m not any better as a writer than the folks who work for Reason or Cato or any of the traditional ideological organs of libertarian and free-market thinking. I’m certainly not any smarter, or even as smart. I’m not needed there, and frankly I’m not wanted there.

But where I can do some good, I think, is at the small suburban paper where I’ll be the one voice asking the tough questions that don’t get asked about zoning laws, taxes to pay for schools and so on. And I don’t mean as a columnist, but as a reporter who is skeptical of government and of politicians and is looking to show how so many government policies lead to bad results. That I think I can do, and there I think can be of some value.

That’s where I stand now, anyway. I could change my mind in five minutes, and ultimately it all depends on who is the first to offer me a job. Will it be you?

One more thing, on personal info on blogs: I love it. But then again, I’m a nosy sort of person. If someone is a good writer and an interesting person, even the very mundane can be entertaining or insightful. If you like a blogger enough to read about his views on politics, then why shouldn’t his views on bank hassles be of equal interest — if he or she delivers them in the same well-written fashion?

By the way, the Fund for American Studies has a sweet place. Very fancy digs. And free drinks and free dinner. Not bad. I’ve got to find more of these things around town. Here I am sitting at home eating macaroni and cheese like a sucker.

Web site of the week: Audiogalaxy

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

For KRTeens

When Napster finally bit the bullet and filed for bankruptcy last June, teen music lovers scrambled for alternatives to the once-popular music-swapping service. Many have turned to Audiogalaxy.com (http://www.audiogalaxy.com).

Unlike Napster, which ran afoul of the record industry and the law for allowing its users to trade copyright-protected music, Audiogalaxy.com makes an effort to block copyright-protected songs.

The site gives 25 megabytes of free server space to new artists who don’t mind giving away their music for free as they struggle to make a name for themselves. In addition to their tunes, you can read profiles and concert reviews of many of the acts, submitted by Audiogalaxy users.

The site is organized by category, so you can find out about site-recommended artists in genres ranging from rock to hip-hop to electronica.

However, the main reason people visit Audiogalaxy.com is to make use of its extensive search engine. Although many music files are blocked because they violate copyright law, many others sneak through.

If you’re a music fan, you’ll love the selection offered by Audiogalaxy. But hurry! You might want to log on before the record industry finds a way to shut this site down too.
___
© 2002, McClatchy/Tribune Information Services

Kennedy slams GOP Medicare prescription drug plans

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

WASHINGTON — Sen. Edward M. Kennedy attacked Republican Medicare prescription drug proposals Tuesday, charging they were not generous enough to meet seniors’ drug needs.

The president’s proposal "doesn’t even pass the laugh test," Kennedy said. As for the House Republican plan unveiled Monday, the Massachusetts Democrat said "it doesn’t work in terms of substance and in terms of the delivery mechanism, it fails."

The remarks were made after a speech in which Kennedy proposed 12 programs intended to further his longtime goal of universal health coverage.

"The only thing worse than not passing a Medicare prescription drug reform would be to pass a phony program that undermines the coverage that already exists," Kennedy said.

Kennedy supports a Senate bill that would cost $500 billion, while the House Republican bill before the Ways and Means Committee would tally $350 billion.

Apart from cost, a major difference between the GOP and Democrat plans is how the drugs would be delivered to Medicare beneficiaries. Republicans would have patients buy coverage from HMOs or private insurance companies, while Democrats would cover the drugs directly as part of the existing Medicare program.

"The benefit package is just going to be structured by the insurance company," Kennedy said of the Republican plan. "It’s not a serious effort."

Republicans and Democrats also differ on deductibles, monthly premiums and coverage limits.

Kennedy’s proposal was dismissed by Christin Tinsworth, a GOP staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee.

"We’ve constructed a generous, reasonable and responsible plan to provide help for seniors with their prescription drug costs," Tinsworth said. "Right now, seniors aren’t getting any help. We’re saying they should get help. We’ve constructed this bill within the $350 billion allocated to us in House budget resolution. (The Democrats) are just kind of doing whatever suits them."

House Democrats have proposed an $800 billion prescription drug plan, which Tinsworth called "a pie-in-the-sky press release proposal."

Kennedy was optimistic that Senate and House Democrats could easily work out the $300 billion that separate their plans.

"The differences between the Democrats in the House and Senate could be worked out in about half an hour or 45 minutes," he said.

During his speech at the National Press Club, Kennedy proposed measures aimed at reducing the number of uninsured Americans. He also proposed requiring any business employing more than 100 people to offer health insurance equal to the coverage that members of Congress and the president receive.

Kennedy also proposed or expressed support for the following measures:

— Expanding eligibility in the Children’s Health Insurance Program to the parents of low-income children.
— Working on mental-health parity legislation.
— Making Medicaid available to non-poor families.
— Requiring medical providers to adopt electronic bill processing.
— Adding funds for diabetes and stroke research.
— Authorizing the FDA to further regulate the sale and advertisement of tobacco products.
— Making it harder for pharmaceutical firms to keep generic competitors off the market.
— Toughening regulations on direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising.
— Creating a federal government index of leading "family health" indicators, including health coverage, child poverty and high school graduation rates.
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© 2002, McClatchy/Tribune Information
Services

How hypocritical can you get?

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

I guess that’s a rhetorical question, but I have an answer for you. Take Fred Barnes. Please. He spoke to an IPJ group last Sunday, I think it was, on whatever he wanted to talk about, I guess. There was no topic.

So he rambled on for a bit about what you should read to stay up on the news, that you had to get a fresh angle on stories, and that print was the most influential medium in D.C. Don’t do TV, he said. “Sure, the money’s nice, but it just takes up time you could be using to write.” OK. Then why do I see him on TV three times a day? Why has he made his whole career off peddling second-rate opinion columns but jumping in front of a camera every chance he gets.

Learn to practice what you preach, Fred. Jeez. Yeah, the money’s nice. Just say so, then. Don’t pretend like someone’s twisting your arm, making you do TV when you’d gladly be earning less money and remain completely anonymous like most scribes in the nation’s capital. Ah, well.

9/11 reform is a joke

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Does anyone seriously believe that promoting the ineffectual Office of Homeland Security to cabinet department-level status will make a difference? Cato’s Ivan Eland calmly and coolly obliterates the arguments for a Homeland Security Department in this Newsday op-ed. Eland concludes:

Consolidating even more numerous disparate and sometimes dysfunctional agencies into a new department is likely to result in the same problems and a burgeoning secretarial bureaucracy to attempt to control the whole unwieldy cacophony.

Uh-huh. Dubya just wants something done. It’s the story of his entire presidency — appearance over substance. But I suppose that should not come as a surprise, except to conservatives who actually thought it made a difference whether Gush or Bore was elected.

Julian donkeyboy

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

So I finally met up with longtime Internet buddy Julian Sanchez last night after work. I met him at a bar called Stoney’s and he introduced me to a bunch of folks from Cato, including Jerry Brito and Gene Healy.

Then we split up for a while and I met Julian and his girlfriend later on at a party at the home (I guess) of Kevin B. Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy. You’ve probably seen their ads in public affairs magazines like Reason, The New Republic, National Review, etc.

I used the downstairs bathroom and Zeese had a very funny sign posted right above the toilet: “Certified Urine Drug Tester,” or something to that effect. It was a legit poster, too — I imagine a friend got it for him as a practical joke. I don’t recall the exact wording. Anyway, I met a bunch of Koch fellows there, as well as LP campus coordinator Marc Brandl, for whom I can’t locate a Web site at just the moment. All were very friendly and we had some fun conversation and a few beers, too, of course.

Then I took a cab home and went to some parties around the dorms at Alumni Square here in Georgetown, which naturally weren’t as libertarian-infested and therefore less interesting.

Hmph. I might go to this. I am free Wednesday night.

So far, so humid

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Actually, the weather has been refreshing the last couple of days — in the 70s and low 80s with grey skies and light showers. So it’s been much more tolerable than it was before. Unfortunately, there are no 24-hour labs here as I thought. Well, I guess the labs are theoretically open, but you are supposed to swipe the GoCard through this machine for the door to open. But we have the new and improved GoCard which, apparently, does not work with any of the old and still unimproved card-reading machines.

Which means I’m more or less limited to the library for blogging. And they’re closing off access to the computers at least at 5:30 p.m. There are these three Macs in the student center which doesn’t close until midnight, but you have to stand up to to use them, and with only three they are occupied much more often, naturally.

So far, work has been fun. Working at KRT is kind of a meritocracy. The editors aren’t going to say, “No, don’t work on that — we don’t have space,” because it’s a wire service and they can move as much copy as they want on to the wire. But it’s a meritocracy because however good or timely your story is determines whether it gets picked up by the member papers.

So I’m pretty sure I had a story about Senate Democrats attacking Bush’s Social Security plan published yesterday, but I have to look it up on Lexis-Nexis to make sure, as KRT does not track its stories.

And I’m working on four or five other stories right now and also wrote a couple of very brief Web site reviews for this “Hotlink” feature they run.

As for classes … they’re three-hour lectures, and they’re tough. Tuesday and Thursday nights from 6 to 9 p.m. I have economics class. That’s after an 8-hour working day. And these are lectures, all the way through. The chairs are uncomfortable and there’s no time to eat or change into comfortable clothing after work. Those 12-hour days are killer.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday morning we have a guest speaker or speakers every week, followed by a three-hour class in ethics. That’s pretty brutal. So I have no energy to do any reading for class during the week, which means I’ve got to do it all on the weekend, in addition to laundry, shopping, etc.

Jeez, don’t I have it terrible? And here I thought all those kids dying of AIDS in sub-saharan Africa were badly off.

Here’s an interesting tidbit. The boss of one of my roommates, Daniel Epstein (who’s from Houston, by the way) , apparently started the IPJ program and he told Daniel that pretty much everyone who applied was accepted. No surprise, really. I always thought the application process was a little less than rigorous.

Once you’re here, though, they wear you ragged. We are told repeatedly that these seven weeks will just fly by. Well, it’s just more than a week since I’ve arrived and it feels like two or three. So I hope it does start flying by soon. I want to get back home.

Democrats assail Bush’s Social Security proposal

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

WASHINGTON — Warming up what will likely be an oft-heard campaign theme this fall, Senate Democrats on Thursday attacked President Bush’s Social Security reform proposal to allow individuals to invest a part of their payroll taxes in the stock market.

In a letter to President Bush signed by 49 Senate Democrats and independent Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey charged that Bush’s plan would "substantially reduce the level of guaranteed Social Security benefits."

John Breaux of Louisiana was the only Senate Democrat not signing the letter.

There will be a 9 percent cut in guaranteed benefits by 2012 under the Bush plan and as much as a 45 percent cut by 2075, according to actuarial estimates by the Social Security Administration.

"Privatization is wrong," Daschle said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. "Social Security should be a guarantee, not a gamble."

A call to the White House press office for a reaction was not returned.

The Daschle and Corzine letter also asked the president to demonstrate his opposition to benefit cuts by repudiating the privatization reforms proposed by the Social Security commission he appointed last year.

"We think this is an important issue to be discussed before the election as a part of the agenda that the American people consider when they go to the polls this fall," Corzine said.

"The word ‘security’ in Social Security was intended to guarantee a floor," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. "There were not going to be winners and losers when it comes to Social Security, but when it comes to privatization, there are going to be losers."

Congressional Republicans countered that ignoring the looming Social Security crisis could lead to benefit cuts of 33 percent and payroll taxes of more than 50 percent.

"Senate Democrats continue using Social Security as a political battering ram to hide the fact they have no plan to strengthen Social Security," responded Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., a Florida Republican.

A Gallup poll released this month showed that 43 percent of Americans think Democrats would do a better job of dealing with Social Security, compared to only 33 percent for the GOP.

However, 55 percent of Americans told National Public Radio pollsters in March that they agreed with allowing individuals to invest a part of their Social Security contributions in the stock market, while 40 percent disagreed.

Senate Democrats are being shortsighted about the risks of the stock market, said Matt Moore, a policy analyst for the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis. While the rate of return from Social Security is only 2 percent, the stock market has averaged a 6.4 percent return over any 35-year period in the last 128 years, he said.

"The attacks they’re making are a distraction from the real issues," Moore said. "In 15 years they’re not going to have enough money to pay the funds. So we need to have an honest and open dialogue. You’ve got to have two sides talking. Only one side has proposed a solution."

When asked about alternatives to Bush’s plan, Levin advocated a bipartisan commission like the one formed in 1982 and headed by current Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan. By contrast, Bush’s commission "was clearly tilted toward those who favor privatization," Levin said.

That Bush selected people who agreed with him should come as no surprise, said Michael Tanner, a Social Security expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, from which three commission members and one staffer were drawn.

Tanner also said that in criticizing the Bush proposal’s cuts, Senate Democrats neglected to include the benefits individuals would be receiving from their individual retirement accounts.

"Under all the reform plans, benefits provided by the federal government are reduced, but you get money from your individual account," Tanner said.

"The Bush administration is trying to create the fiction that Social Security’s broken and needs to be fixed, when in fact the opposite is true," said Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., who was also at the briefing.

"Social Security is in good shape for the next three to four decades, depending on the economy, and it’s only their actions that threaten to break it sooner," he said.

Tanner disagreed, arguing that Social Security benefits are threatened by a $24 trillion unfunded liability over a 75-year actuarial period. He added that there is nothing to prevent Congress from decreasing benefits or increasing taxes to keep the system solvent.

Levin said Social Security is a "huge, significant, critical, fundamental issue," which should be debated, not "delayed until after the campaign, as the president desires."
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© 2002, McClatchy/Tribune Information Services

Down to the wire

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

So, IPJ finally told us about our internship assignments today. I will be working at Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services, a leading wire service that provides content to more than 365 newspapers aorund the country.

I’m not sure yet what I’ll be doing there, exactly, but all in all it sounds like a sweet gig. It’s certainly no Hog Farmer Quarterly.

By the way, the roommate whose internship with the International Fresh-cut Producers Association freaked me out actually got precisely the assignment he wanted. His major is something called agricultural marketing communications, and this gig is right up his alley. So good for him — and for me.

The folks I’ve met so far are very friendly, and my roommates are amiable fellows as well. Though, presumably, one should wait more than two days before judging the matter, as surely some bitterness of one kind or another will bubble up sooner or later.

They weren’t kidding about the humidity here. Luckily, I had the opportunity to appreciate the midday sun for more than an hour, as I waited in an unshaded, outdoor line to get my Georgetown University ID card, which inevitably has a stupid name. It’s called the GoCard. Whatever.

There are labs here open 24 hours a day, so that should give me plenty of time to blog, once I figure out how to log on to the system using the new password I was just given. Until then.

Oops! The Cap’n did it again

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Whether or not you like Cap’n Crunch Oops! All Berries, it’s pretty sensible that an accident at Crunch HQ actually resulted in the cereal. This is manifestly not the case with the Cap’n’s latest “mistake,” Oops! Choco Donuts.

You see, Cap’n Crunchberries were first introduced in 1967. They are a mixture of the regular yellowish things (biscuits, apparently) with some red things that are flavored like berries. But then, in 1997, there was a terrible accident. According to the Cap’n Crunch FAQ, it went down like this:

Despite popular belief, ‘Oops! All Berries’ did not come from an incident at Crunch Headquarters with some mischievous kids. This flavor actually stemmed out of the Capn’s promotion to Admiral. When the Cap’n was promoted, the Quaker Oats Company had to find new Capn’s to fill the positions vacated by the newly promoted Admiral Crunch.

During training at Crunch Headquarters, two new Capn’s — Cap’n Scrinch and Cap’n Munch — were trying to learn how to man the Crunch Berrie and Crunch Biscuit mixing machine that put the two flavors together in the Crunch Berries boxes. While trying to impress Admiral Crunch, they fought over the control handles, breaking them, and creating Cereal Boxes with JUST Berries. Thankfully, the Admiral had his Art Department slap together a box front for the new cereal, which is now enjoyed by millions.

Sure, it’s a little convoluted, but in the end this story makes some sense. In case you were wondering, the Admiral Crunch referred to above is the same guy as Cap’n Crunch. Apparently he was promoted to admiral after years of complaints from fans. It was this very accident that convinced him to resume his post as captain and, hence, a more hands-on role.

So now that the Cap’n is back on the scene, what kind of accident could possibly result in Oops! Choco Donuts? There’s nothing even close to chocolate donuts in any of the other Cap’n Crunch cereals. Certainly, you wouldn’t think that the folks working at Crunch HQ would be eating chocolate donuts for breakfast on the job. Even if they were, there wouldn’t be enough for a whole box of cereal, not to mention millions of boxes. And no broken lever could turn a box of regular Cap’n Crunch into a box of miniature chocolate donuts.

I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Cap’n Crunch history is filled with weirdness, such as his long battle against the Soggies. Naturally, I’m not the first person to complain about this sad, inexplicable and indefensible turn of events.

Mr. O’Reilly goes to Washington

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

As I just mentioned, I’m leaving for D.C. on Saturday, and I’ll be there through the end of July. Between classes, internship work and no PC in the dorm room where I’ll be living, the blog should slow down quite a bit. But do check in, as I plan to write about how things are going as well as whatever news catches my eye.

Hog Farmer Quarterly? If I’m lucky

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

So, you’ll recall that one of my reservations about doing the Institute on Political Journalism program was that I really didn’t know how good of an internship I’d get in D.C. Though I leave for the program on Saturday and classes start on Monday, I still have not been told about my internship placement.

But I’ve been in touch with one of my roommates who is also in IPJ and he said he’ll be working for the International Fresh-cut Producers Association. No joke. This is not to say that I expected to be working at the Washington Post or anything ridiculous like that, but I’m hoping for something better than to work for a lobbying group.

I also don’t mean to suggest that it won’t still be a valuable learning experience no matter where I work. At this point, I’m not in a position to turn down any writing experience, especially trade or business-related work which could come in handy when looking for a job here in Chicago.

But there’s a question of alternatives. I had other choices. I just hope this wasn’t a mistake.