The role of the United States in climate disruption is far greater than most people realize. Not only does the U.S. emit more carbon dioxide (CO₂) than any other nation besides China, not only does the U.S. have one the highest per-capita emissions in the world, but the U.S. economy also accounts for a massive amount of emissions released by the rest of the world too. S&R has investigated just how much CO₂ the United States economy is actually responsible for, and the results suggest the real emissions are 20% greater than official estimates.

Every product and service requires energy, and thus carbon. Commercial agriculture requires petroleum or natural gas-based fertilizers and diesel fuel for planting and harvesting. Manufacturing requires energy to extract raw materials, petroleum to transport those materials to a factory, energy to convert those materials into products, and yet more petroleum to transport the products to end users. Even services like housecleaning or website hosting have an energy cost, the former in the creation of the chemicals and electric cleaning tools and the latter for the server (a product with its associated energy cost of creation), the electricity used to run the computer, and the energy consumed in constructing the computer center that houses the server have energy costs. And in all cases, the energy cost to create the product or service creates carbon emissions.

Given this, the amount of CO₂ that a product or service indirectly emits in its creation, transport, and use can be estimated. And by extension the total amount of CO₂ produced by the combined products and services (gross domestic product, or GDP) of a nation can also be estimated. When the total CO₂ produced by a country by the country’s GDP, the amount of carbon emitted per unit of economic production can be determined. This is called “carbon intensity.”

The carbon intensity of the United States in 2006 was 0.52 metric tons of CO₂ emitted per thousand dollars (indexed for inflation to the value of the dollar in 2000). For comparison, the carbon intensity of Iceland in 2006 was 0.31 metric tons of CO₂ emitted per thousand dollars, and the carbon intensity of Russia was 4.54 metric tons of CO₂ emitted per thousand dollars.

The fact that carbon intensity varies from country to country is a function of the country’s energy mix and overall productivity – more coal or oil burned for electricity or heating produces higher carbon intensity, and lots of manual labor producing valuable products produces a higher carbon intensity too. Large amounts of manual labor producing inexpensive products produces an extremely low carbon intensity, as witnessed by the very low carbon intensity of 0.10 metric tons of CO₂ emitted per thousand dollars from Cambodia.

From carbon intensity, the amount of CO₂ produced in the process of creating the goods and services that the U.S. exports – and that other countries export to us – can be estimated as well. The result is the following graph:

Figure 1

Figure 1 shows the 15 nations who “export” the most CO₂ to the United States in goods and services that the U.S. use as part of our economy. In essence, anything the U.S buys that says “Made in China” is part of the U.S. economy, and so the carbon emitted in the creation of that product belongs to the U.S. economy as much as the carbon emitted in manufacturing a Ford Focus in Detroit. Figure 1 represents the balance of carbon, imported CO₂ from other nations to the U.S. minus the CO₂ the U.S. exports to them, as determined from the nations’ carbon intensity. It’s clear from the figure that China contributes by far the most CO₂ to U.S. carbon emissions.

In words, Figure 1 says that the U.S. exported over a billion metric tons of CO₂ to the rest of the world in 2006.

Figure 2 below illustrates data in a similar fashion, but as a percentage of total U.S. carbon emissions:

Figure 2

In this case, U.S.-generated emissions as a percentage of total emissions attributable to the U.S. economy have fallen steadily since 1985, from a high of 97.8% to 79.3%. This means that the U.S. economy has offshored 20.7% of our CO₂ emissions to the rest of the world at the same time the United States has offshored production, services, and jobs.

If the U.S. is no longer generating a significant amount of our CO₂ emissions, that means that the official carbon intensity of the Untied States (0.52 metric tons per thousand dollars) is actually much higher. And if this is the case, that means the reduction in carbon intensity that many people are pleased about is at least partly an illusion. Figure 3 below illustrates how much an illusion the regular improvements in U.S. carbon intensity actually is:

Figure 3

Figure 3 shows an unpleasant fact – as U.S. businesses have offshored more and more of the U.S. economy’s CO₂ emissions to parts of the world where the carbon intensity is higher but labor is cheaper, the economy’s real carbon intensity has actually worsened since it hit it’s all-time low in 2001.

Correction: Saint from the comments below indicated that I had made two errors. Saint’s first claim is that I forgot to add the monetary value of imports into GDP while adding the CO₂ value of imports. The second was that the trade values I was using are valued in current dollars rather than “real” dollars (indexed for inflation to the value of the dollar in the year 2000). I have not been able to verify Saint’s second claim since the link provided in the comment doesn’t point to anything that I can find saying “current” dollars, and I used the Census Bureau’s foreign trade data anyway, but did verify that I had made the first error. However, if I assume that I’ve made the second error that he claims and when I corrected the data for the first error, Figure 4 was the result:

Figure 4

Note that, even corrected for a possible error in using current vs. real dollars, the difference between the two graphs is a drop in carbon “offshored” in 2006 from 20.7% in the erroneous graph to 18.3% in the corrected graph. Not insignificant, but not enough to change the overall conclusions of this analysis.

Update

As a result of comments, I choose to run the numbers for the purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rate as well as the market exchange rate (all the graphs above). The result is Figure 5 below.

Figure 5

Figure 5 was done under the same assumptions as the corrected Figure 4 above. Note that the official carbon intensity is actually worse than the actual carbon intensity until 2003 or 2004. In fact, in 1991 and 1992, the U.S. exported a small amount of CO₂ under this model. This graph shows two periods of significant offshored CO₂ growth – 1997 to 2000, and 2001 to 2006, with the latter far outweighing the former. The data file for both Figures 4 and 5 is here (zipped .xls).

These figures illustrate a vitally important conclusion – the U.S. economy demands a huge amount of CO₂ emissions beyond it’s borders. The U.S. has essentially offshored its GHG emission problem to the rest of the world, turning their economies into dumping grounds for our own air pollution. Yes, they’ve been paid well for it in U.S. dollars that helped raise the standards of living in the affected countries. But this also means the U.S. has a responsibility to help those countries clean their dirty energy houses.

After all, wouldn’t you want your neighbor to help rake up all the leaves he blew from his yard into yours?

Methodology

S&R acquired the US GDP data, carbon intensity data related to energy production and gas flaring, and U.S. imports and exports from the data repositories listed below in sources and then performed the calculations that resulted in the graphs above. The Excel file of these calculations is available here (zipped Excel file) for anyone wishing to verify the calculations.

The EIA data on carbon intensity is only from the consumption of fossil fuels and flaring of gas – it does not include agricultural emissions, for example. In addition, the calculations are for carbon dioxide alone, excluding methane, ozone, HCFCs and other long lived greenhouse gases.

This analysis assumes that all units of production for import and export are equivalent in terms of CO₂ emissions, while this is certainly untrue. However, given the large variety of imports and exports, and thus a large variety of CO₂ emission profiles, S&R believes that this assumption is reasonable.

The estimates of imported (and exported) CO₂ are equal the carbon intensity multiplied by the value of the imports, with the net amount of CO₂ generated by other nations on behalf of the U.S. defined as the CO₂ imports minus the exports.

Finally, all nations have data from 1992 until 2006, but only major trading partners have data from 1985 until 2006. This produces an error in the data from 1985 to 1992. Given that over 90% of all emissions are via major trading parters such as China and Canada, this error is believed to be relatively small.

Sources:
US GDP information (Excel file)
Energy related carbon intensity (Excel file)
Data on trade for all countries back to 1992, major trading partners back to 1985 (zipped Excel file)

Crossposted: SolveClimate.org, ClimateProgress

The Washington Post reports that Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection are launching one of the most expensive advocacy programs ever. The We campaign will run over the next three years and cost $300 million, of which about half has already been raised. The goal of the campaign is to change ingrained habits and behaviors directly if possible, but primarily through legislation.

“This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public’s sense of urgency in addressing this crisis,” Gore said. “I’ve tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it.”

League of Conservation Voters president Gene Karpinski, whose group is supporting the effort, said he’s optimistic the “We” campaign will succeed in a way that traditional environmental groups have not. “It heightens both the urgency and the sense we can get the job done with the broad middle that will make the difference,” Karpinski said, “while having the resources to communicate in a sophisticated way, in a more expansive fashion than the community has done before.”

According to the press release:

The We campaign’s first television ad, titled “Anthem,” highlights the historic nature of the challenge and the need for a society-wide commitment to finding comprehensive solutions. The ad draws a dramatic parallel between the collective spirit of American leadership that helped us win the Second World War, overcome segregation and put a man on the moon to the spirit needed today to solve the climate crisis. The ad will run nationally on network and cable channels, including placements on shows such as American Idol, House and Law & Order.

Naturally, however, there are a number of organizations that are already spending money to blunt the impact of this campaign, ranging from the coal-industry astroturf non-profit Americans for Balanced Energy Choices to the conservative/libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Myron Ebell, who directs energy and global warming policy for CEI, said the fact that Gore feels compelled to run such an elaborate ad campaign highlights the extent to which his conservation message has failed to resonate with the American public. “He’s spending a hundred million dollars to convince the American people to make sacrifices that he and his elite friends are not willing to make,”

Ad hominim attacks on Al Gore. To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, you know you’re arguments are weak when….

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The state of California has an economy that, if it were a nation, would be in the top ten largest economies in the world. So what happens in California tends to impact what happens in the rest of the U.S. This is why, when California applied for an EPA waiver that it needed to limit carbon emissions from motor vehicles, car manufacturers fought it tooth and claw (and that’s why the Congressional investigation and lawsuits now facing the EPA over the waiver denial are going to be hard fought). Because of California’s national influence, when the state requires it’s electricity providers and motor vehicles to become greener, it changes things nationwide. And there have been a number of stories recently about how California is doing exactly that.

First, the Contra-Costa Times reports that there is renewed interest in building more nuclear power plants in the state as a means to reducing the state’s carbon emissions, but that there are a number of impediments to doing so. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to change the state laws that prevent the construction of new reactors, and while the story quotes Emily Christensen, spokeswoman for Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), as saying “We aren’t even looking at the possibility of building any more nuclear power plants. We have no plans to do so,” there are other interests in California outside the incumbent utilities who are interested in going nuclear – such as the Fresno Energy Group, a group devoted to building a nuclear power plant for the city of Fresno and then selling the surplus to PG&E or other cities nearby.

Southern California Edison (SCE) is required by California law to produce 20% of its electricity from renewable energy sources like solar and wind by 2010. According to The New York Times, SCE is going to be installing 250 megawatts on large industrial and commercial rooftops over the next five years and hopes to have enough capacity installed by August of this year to take some of the strain off existing power plants during the summer usage peak. The Times reports that SCE will own the solar cells and lease the rooftops from the building’s owners. Leasing arrangements have been proposed as a way to improve the economics of solar power, since they don’t require the building’s owner to front the high costs of solar. Given that commercial and industrial rooftops alone would provide tens of thousands of megawatts of power while still limiting the expense of new transmission line construction, this is excellent news both for California and for the solar power industry.

There was some mixed news on the subject of zero-emissions and low-emissions vehicles last week. The LA Times reported that the state Air Resources Board voted to reduce the number of zero-emissions vehicles required from automakers over the next few years. The state had previously required sales of 25,000 zero-emission vehicles from 2012 to 2014, and that was dropped to 7,500. However, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports, the Board also voted to require sales of 58,000 low-emissions vehicles over the same period. It’s not clear to me that the hybrid vehicle requirement will actually mean anything, though, given that there was over 67,000 hybrids sold in California alone in 2006.

———-

Popular Mechanics reports that Global Research Technologies has developed a material that absorbs carbon dioxide (CO₂)as air passes through it. It is capable of passively pulling CO₂ out of the air directly, but once material is saturate, the CO₂ has to be removed from the material, a process that requires energy. It’s this energy requirement that makes this invention more of a curiosity than a practical atmospheric CO₂ scrubbing method, but with wide scale solar power or a catalytic method to extract the CO₂, it could become more economically and environmentally feasible – especially if, as the article suggests, conversion of CO₂ into easily buried solid carbonate minerals becomes a viable sequestration method.

———-

In an interesting turn of events, a story at Canada.com reports that carbon tariffs on goods from nations that don’t have carbon emission limits could reverse offshoring, the process by which manufacturing is sent overseas. Essentially, if the U.S. applies a carbon tariff to goods from China and developing nations, that tariff will increase inflation and slow the economic growth of developing nations, but much of the inflationary hit could be reduced by pulling manufacturing back home, or at least in to countries that have similar carbon taxes or cap & trade systems.

“Throw $40-$50 US per tonne carbon costs into an environment of triple-digit oil prices and you suddenly redefine the meaning of competitiveness,” [Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets] wrote. “In a whole swath of manufacturing industries, ranging from chemicals to primary metals, energy costs and their carbon trail, not labour costs, will soon become key.”

…

Ultimately, a carbon tariff could reverse current trade and offshoring patterns, Rubin said.

For people concerned about the economic and manufacturing health of the U.S., this report (available here) supports the proposition that reducing carbon emissions can also be good for jobs and the economy if done properly. The main concern, however, is to ensure that it doesn’t automatically relegate developing nations to being “developing” perpetually.

After the debacle of last September’s murder of Iraqi civilians, many Americans held out hope that Blackwater, former Navy Seal and right wing evangelical Erik Prince’s guns-for-hire to the Busheviks operation located in the Great Dismal Swamp of eastern North Carolina had been exposed and might be forced into decline and eventual disenfranchisement.

A new article in Mother Jones warns us not to be sanguine – or naive about such a happy possibility occurring. Like Phillip Morris, Blackwater has simply devised another name and plans to continue business – and, like Altria (not to be confused with nutria, although such plagues abound all around us, it seems), that business will be same as it ever was.

Blackwater has now set up a new front er, subsidiary, headquartered in the Barbados (that haven for businesses seeking to evade taxes because, after all, we wouldn’t want Blackwater to pay taxes on the money it gets from American taxpayers through sole source contracts with DOD, State, and OHS) called Greystone. This new company has taken over many of the operations that old Blackwater did – but in a more corporate, low profile manner:

One contractor we spoke to said he was present when Greystone managers arrived to claim their office space at Blackwater’s Baghdad headquarters. They were a different breed from the ‘yee-haw cowboys’ that filled Blackwater’s ranks, and their tattoos indicated backgrounds in elite military units like Marine Recon, the Navy seals, and the Green Berets. ‘They didn’t talk to the other Americans,’ he said, let alone foreigners. ‘They had different bodies, different mentalities, and used different language. They had a different professional attitude.’ – Mother Jones

Prince has taken his operation upscale – with more professional operatives executives working in a more close to the vest manner than Blackwater presented.

While all of Prince’s and Greystone’s machinations are too complex to recount here (I strongly recommend the MJ article to you), we should note two important elements of Blackwater’s Greystone’s new corporate strategy. The first is finding new revenue streams for his companies:

In his most ambitious moments, Prince has set out a vision in which his companies would act as for-profit peacekeepers, working with the United Nations and other international organizations in conflict areas around the world. Even Blackwater’s marketing materials are infused with the imagery of global humanitarianism; one of the company’s recent ads shows a tiny malnourished infant being spoon-fed and proclaims the company’s intention to ‘provide hope to those who still live in desperate times.’ – MJ

Yes, you read that correctly. Erik Prince has aspirations to privatize the military operations of the United Nations. He’s not content to be the private army security service of record for the US government – he wants to rule serve governments around the world.

The other important element in the move to Greystone is motivated by that most dear of concepts in the corporate world – cutting operating costs:

In addition to prospecting for international contracts, Greystone has become Prince’s primary recruiter of foreign military muscle. On its website, the company says its operators are drawn ‘from the best militaries throughout the world’ and represent ‘numerous nationalities.’ Its reliance on foreign recruits, it claims, is a matter of ‘cultural sensitivity’ and ‘awareness.’ What the PR materials don’t say is that Greystone, along with other security companies, likely outsources its work overseas for the same reason many other businesses do—it brings down costs and helps bypass bothersome regulations. ‘They’re going to pay these people a lot less, and they’re not going to respect the same type of employee and labor rights that U.S. nationals would require,’ says Erica Razook, an Amnesty International lawyer whose work focuses on private-security contractors. – MJ

Given that Prince sees an important role for Blackwater in the US in times of “national disaster” (as evinced by Blackwater’s role in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina), we may well see foreign mercenaries in our streets at some point in the future. If so, it may be that Americans will finally recall their ancestors’ response to Hessians brought in by the British in Revolutionary times – and respond appropriately.

Or maybe not – after all, we’re being trained to submit. So maybe Blackwater’s Greystone’s thugs security forces won’t have to pull out a tired old gag line like “We don’t need no stinking badges” for us.

Maybe we’ll just forget all that our country is and should stand for and become the mindless Gamma workers that all our current policies seemed aimed at making us.

Or maybe we’ll remember our Thomas Paine – and tell Erik Prince and his ilk get the hell out of our country’s business. And recommend to our neighbors across the world that they tell him the same.

“Wait,” you’re thinking, “is he saying we’re in recession? Surely not! I know it’s a worry, but no one’s actually said it’s official yet.”

Let’s take a look at the facts, then:

Citigroup, America’s largest bank, has been hit with a staggering $10 billion in losses this quarter. Naturally, the company is doing what all companies do as a first response to crisis–cutting thousands of jobs–and is begging foreign investors to pump cash into its reserves to keep it solvent.

Countrywide, America’s largest lender, reported spikes in delinquencies and foreclosures so severe that the company was looking at bankruptcy protection. It was hailed as a relief when Bank of America announced plans to buy the lender, but think about this–how bad is our economic state when our biggest giants in their respective industries are doing so poorly?

And what about the consumer, that bulwark of economic growth through spending? Well, thanks to a combination of collapsing home equity, high gas, energy, and food prices, and nearly insurmountable personal debt, consumers are falling behind on loan payments, credit card debt is on the rise, and retail sales are plummeting from lack of consumer spending.

If this isn’t a recession, it’s damn close, and like the wolf hungrily stalking its prey, will be upon us soon.

Back to Meyerson’s column. He accurately notes that the mazelike structures of current Wall Street investment strategies make it nigh-impossible to accurately oversee these transactions, which has led to so many billions of dollars’ worth of losses. Moreover, he also notes that without some serious infusion of jobs, cash, and direction from the government, this recession may deepen into a depression that will take years to recover from.

“Okay,” you may be asking, “but where can we get the money for such a thing? That’s going to be expensive!”

Well, here’s one simple idea–ending the war in Iraq immediately and bringing our troops home. Imagine what we could do with the influx of capital we’re wasting on a failed venture that has cost thousands of lives and tens of millions of dollars. I live in DC, so I used my own city as the basis for calculation:

Taxpayers in District Of Columbia will pay $2 billion for the cost of the Iraq War through 2007. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:

504,157 People with Health Care OR

3,465,229 Homes with Renewable Electricity OR

33,815 Public Safety Officers OR

33,333 Music and Arts Teachers OR

946,048 Scholarships for University Students OR

174 New Elementary Schools OR

6,801 Affordable Housing Units OR

620,958 Children with Health Care OR

266,133 Head Start Places for Children OR

33,333 Elementary School Teachers OR

29,432 Port Container Inspectors

Any one of these projects provides a golden opportunity for new jobs and economic revitalization for my city, or the even better long-term investment of raising kids with decent educations and the ability to make better lives for themselves. But we’ll never know, because that money went instead to turning a country into a protectorate of our empire just to keep the oil pumps working.

I said not long ago that in order to win, Democrats should run on the economy instead of Iraq, and I still hold to that. But I am rethinking that approach–instead of trying to push Iraq aside in people’s minds, Democrats and progressives should link the two together. Every dollar spent in Iraq, fighting a war started on a lie that has cost us immeasurably, is a dollar not spent on rebuilding our country’s prosperity, peace, and future solvency.

End the war, bring our troops home, and let’s get down to the equally painful business of rebuilding our country’s economic base and transiting us out from a system based on debt, consumption, greed, and graft. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. We don’t have any choice in the matter.

How did this ever come to pass?

Among other things, ES&S apparently not only lied about the true nature of the machines (that they were new, uncertified versions), but failed to disclose that the machines were partially manufactured overseas, and threatened to hold Bowen personally responsible if her investigations revealed any trade secrets. From the Chronicle article:

California only learned about the changes when an ES&S representative inadvertently mentioned the new version of the AutoMARK in a telephone conference call with state election officials. The company never even mentioned to the state or the five counties that changes had been made to the machines that were shipped, Bowen said.

The company already is facing a suit from San Francisco city officials angry that restrictions put on ES&S equipment used in the Nov. 6 mayor’s election cost the city an estimated $300,000 and delayed a final vote count for more than a week.

Because of concerns that the city’s aging voting machines could not read ballots marked in light-colored ink, Bowen ordered each ballot to be individually checked by an election official before it could be counted, a process that added days to the vote count.

Every time a company like ES&S fails to live up to the standards expected for running a smooth election, it sets back the otherwise worthy goal of fully electronic voting by years, if not decades. Every time what should be the responsibility of the public infrastructure is placed in the hands of a private company and they drop the ball, it makes voters that much more disenfranchised and uninterested in participating in the process. As I said in my debate with Daniel Castro over e-voting and audit technologies, these things need to work right the first time–there’s no excuse for putting out sloppily coded machines that are supposed to handle the essential task of ensuring votes are tabulated accurately.

The real kicker? California is trying to replace its ES&S contract with one from Sequoia Systems, another e-voting company that has its share of problems with defective machines and tabulation screwups that delay election results. It isn’t really much of a consumer choice when every choice amounts to eating a pile of feces or stabbing yourself in the eye with a fork, as my friend Joe would say.

We can and must do better than this. Our democracy deserves it.

ADDENDUM: I came across a great Ars Technica story about Andrew Appel’s look at balancing convenience and security in electronic voting. Excellent quote:

The solution, in Appel’s view, is to try to ensure that voting software is designed for security from the ground up, and has a voter-verifiable paper trail. He says that the biggest current problem is explaining best practices on security to the legislators that need to demand them. Unit testing, code analysis tools, and data validation tests could all help with the basic security of voting machine code, but it’s clear that the manufacturers of these machines aren’t going to adopt these practices unless they’re forced to.

Indeed.

There were periods when I didn’t think that. Are things ever going to settle down? When is some normalcy going to settle in in your life? It never really does.

— Vietnam War veteran Mike Kentes, who attended the Nov. 13, 1982, dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, says he believes he is better for his service although did not realize that until later in life.

I often wonder, if I hadn’t served, what would I have missed? I think my life became richer. You learn about yourself. . . . I know who I am.

— Vietnam War veteran Hugh M. Jordan, who attended the Nov. 13, 1982, dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.

— Ho Chi Minh, founder and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, to the French in 1946.

Once upon a time our traditional goal in war and can anyone doubt that we are at war? — was victory. Once upon a time we were proud of our strength, our military power. Now we seem ashamed of it. Once upon a time the rest of the world looked to us for leadership. Now they look to us for a quick handout and a fence-straddling international posture.

— the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, 1962.

We still seek no wider war.

— from President Lyndon Johnson’s midnight television speech after North Vietnamese gunboats attacked the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin.

It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.

— Ronald Reagan, interview with the Fresno Bee, 1965.

Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America — not on the battlefields of Vietnam.

— media theorist Marshall McLuhan, 1975.

When you say “radical right” today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.

—the late Sen. Barry Goldwater in a 1994 interview with The Washington Post.

To me, the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the bloodlust of Islamic terrorists. … We need a leader with a bold vision who is not afraid to tackle the challenges ahead.

— evangelical Christian and televangelist Pat Robertson endorsing Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, Nov. 7.

President Bush’s Actions are Moving Our Economy Forward
110,000 Jobs Created in September 2007
Over 8.1 Million New Jobs Created Since August 2003
Unemployment Rate Remains Low at 4.7 Percent

— from a scrolling graphic on the home page at whitehouse.gov.

It’s true, as the Bushies never tire of reminding us, that the U.S. economy has added eight million jobs since that 2003 tax cut. That sounds impressive, unless you happen to know that a good part of that gain was simply a recovery from large job losses earlier in the administration’s tenure — and that the United States added no fewer than 21 million jobs after Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich, a move that had conservative pundits predicting economic disaster.

— New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, Sept. 10.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You know, one of the things about these situations is you don’t really know till it happens. They’re — we are concerned about it; we get reports obviously from all the various sectors that you would expect. But I think, you know, you don’t really know. And what you need to do is have a set of principles and have a set of policies that advance our interests, and then work with a strategy to try and achieve them. And that’s what we’re trying to do.

— from a White House transcript headlined “Press Background Briefing on Pakistan and Turkey by a Senior Administration Official”; Nov. 5. The official was not identified.

Q: Thank you. Dana, six years and $11 billion of the U.S. taxpayers’ money to Pakistan and (inaudible) and Pakistan has become a haven for terrorism. You think President believes really that this money has worked and —

MS. PERINO: Well, we know one thing for sure, which is that Pakistani officials have certainly helped us find individuals like — terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. That’s how we were able to get him and actually help prevent another terrorist attack. So there has been help; we cannot lose sight of that.

— exchange between reporter and White House press secretary Dana Perino at a Nov. 5 White House press briefing.

Air travelers are asking for trouble if they show up for a flight with 3.5 ounces of shampoo in their carry-on bags. But the Department of Homeland Security has decided that the government should not even trouble chemical plants to account for the storage of anything under 2,500 pounds of deadly chlorine.

— Nov. 7 New York Times editorial headlined “Chemical Industry 1, Public Safety 0.”

Nothing influences a person more than a recommendation from a trusted friend.

— Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, explaining its new “social advertising” program Nov. 6 in which “Facebook began selling ads that display people’s profile photos next to commercial messages that are shown to their friends about items they purchased or registered an opinion about.”

While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies.

— Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, excoriating Yahoo executives Jerry Yang, the chief executive, and Michael J. Callahan, the general counsel, for Yahoo’s role that led to the jailing of a Chinese journalist.

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues appearing Thursdays.

1. Paper audit trails have many limitations, which many discussions of paper audit trails do not consider.

My argument isn’t that paper auditing is perfect and flawless. Far from it. No system is perfect, and every technology is going to have the capacity for error and malfunction. No, my argument is that your policy paper espouses the idea of an “all or nothing” approach to vote auditing systems, where everything has to be electronic and supporters of paper-based auditing are “technophobes” (Your words, not mine), while glossing over the many substantial problems and dysfunctions found in current electronic voting technology. The fact that we’re still talking about paper audit trails and paper balloting in 2007 is a criminal indictment of how badly the electronic voting industry has failed to provide accurate, secure electronic systems, far beyond any reasonable expectation of error. This Techdirt article is a good summation of my point–instead of complaining about how long it takes to count paper ballots, we should be asking why these companies can’t create reliable, usable, and accurate machines.

2. We state in the paper that we want Congress to require that all e-voting machines have durable, independent, verifiable audit trails, but we should not mandate that these audit trails be paper. Many other (and arguably better) options exist, such as audio audit trails or video audit trails. Many of these other audit trail technologies work better for people with disabilities.

I don’t have an argument with this at all, as disabled-rights organizations have a legitimate beef over the fact that many old-fashioned paper-based systems can be difficult to use. Disenfranchisement of disabled voters due to inaccessible systems or processes is a serious problem that electronic voting or combinations of electronic and paper voting can address. But imagine if we tried to create a voting technology that was capable of ministering to the needs of every different type of disability, from the blind to the deaf to the paraplegic. Your think tank’s employers would scream bloody murder even more than they do over letting independent auditors look at their code. As it stands, many existing electronic-voting technologies are cumbersome to use for both the disabled AND regularly abled to use, which leads right back to the initial problem of voter disenfranchisement.

Why can we not use multiple forms of voter-verifiable and third-party verifiable technologies? Why can’t it be paper-based, audio-based, AND video-based? The more, the merrier, I say. Our democracy can only be better served by utilizing as many avenues for verifiable, accurate voting as possible.

3. Finally, what we really want is for better voting technology that allows “end-to-end verifiability” or “universal verifiability.” This is the cryptography that we discuss in the latter part of the report, in systems such as VoteHere and Scratch & Vote (not mentioned in the paper, but also an option is Punchscan). We say that this is the goal we should be working towards — fully verifiable voting systems where a voter can verify that his or her ballot has been counted in the final vote tally BUT cannot prove to another voter how he or she voted. If you do not understand how this could work, then read the paper. We explain the cryptography behind it — and if our explanation does not convince you, then we provide references back to the academic papers that first proposed these ideas.

Again, I did read the paper and I actually like how these technologies work, but that’s not the point I am making. I am completely in favor of adopting the state of the art in electronic voting technology on every level–but that, again, is not the point I am making. My point is embodied in statements of yours such as the following:

The success of these groups reflects the high degree of polarization and distrust in politics, as well as the
emotional investment many people have in elections. Many opponents of electronic voting machines are
motivated by a distrust of technology, anger at election results, and conspiracy theories about voting companies.

You’re not going to win a lot of converts to your position by calling the opposition kooks and nuts, Daniel. You should know better. And any participant in a democracy should have an emotional investment in elections–it’s the cornerstone of what makes a democracy work. What is my point? Well, you actually make it for me a few paragraphs later:

In areas from online banking, to health information technology, to aviation, Americans trust computers every day with their lives and livelihood, not because computers are infallible, but because the benefits of technology significantly outweigh the risks.

What do all of these areas have in common? They can all combine modern and old-fashioned technology to provide the best of both worlds. I can bank online and get a paper printout of my bank balance. I can set up a doctor’s appointment online and he can keep a paper record of it in his office, while I print out a record of the transaction. Even in aviation–I can fly on a plane with a printed copy of my ticket that I bought and reserved online. This was the point I was making in my original post–that these systems work because of multiple avenues of verification. They all happen to be paper in this case–they don’t have to be, but the fact that they are is quite telling.

In sum, you haven’t really addressed any of the points I’ve made either–that your think tank’s support of a “no paper” position is mostly due to your being supported by tech industry heavyweights, that you do opponents of pure e-voting a disservice by insulting them, and that there doesn’t have to be an “all or nothing” stance in this issue. Our democracy demands safe, accurate, and reliable voting systems. They don’t have to be fast, but they DO have to get the job done and done right. Accuracy IS more important than convenience in this regard, and security–not to mention best practices–have to be endemic to the process.

Sen. Clinton, who now doubles as a presidential candidate, showed up four years ago in Buffalo, N.Y., in my back yard bringing with her a company that promised it might create up to 100 news jobs.

New York state has “lost 26,344 manufacturing jobs and 810 manufacturers since August of last year.” Western New York has been hit particularly hard, losing 3,000 manufacturing jobs — the good-paying kind — in the past year.

So anyone who promises to create jobs in and around Buffalo is literally promising to throw life preservers to men and women drowning in a job-loss nightmare.

So as a candidate for re-election to the Senate and in midst-dance about whether she’d run for president, Sen. Clinton brought to town Tata Consultancy Services and its promises of job creation.

A reporter for the Buffalo News called the local office of Tata recently and just asked, so, how my workers you got? “Ten.” Yep. Just 10. (Here’s a tip to politicians. Don’t give precise numbers. They can be checked.) And the PR hit gets worse …

According to the News, Tata, an Indian company, is one of the world’s largest outsourcing consultants. So not only is Tata not bringing in the promised 100 jobs, it’s shipping other jobs out of the country. The News quotes John Bauman, founder of the Organization for the Rights of American Workers:

She touted how she brought Tata to Buffalo – and in the meantime Tata is one of the biggest body shops in America, bringing cheap foreign labor to this country while exporting other jobs to India.

Consider this rolling text found on Tata’s home page:

To go far, first explore what is near.
Trust is built on a promise.
Insights into Certainty.
A torch well passed burns no one. [emphasis added]

Her critics are having a field day. Says Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology and author of “Outsourcing America”:

What she did was really pretty dumb from an economic development point of view. Tata destroys a lot more American jobs than it created [in] Buffalo.

The campaign’s response? Here’s Philippe Reines, Sen. Clinton’s spokesman:

Since her first day in the United States Senate, Sen. Clinton’s priority has been to support local businesses and entrepreneurs in order to spur job creation and economic growth throughout New York State, and this is just one of the literally hundreds of cases where she did so.

Sen. Clinton talks a good, if vague, game. Her campaign Web site says she’s all about “strengthening the middle class“:

In New York, Hillary championed tax incentives like wage credits for businesses and job creation in upstate New York and elsewhere. She also helped launch economic development initiatives to provide critical resources to small and micro businesses and helped launch a private sector venture called New Jobs for New York that makes venture capital available to New York’s innovators.

Perhaps more reporters at western New York’s newspapers ought to be calling to see what “critical resources” have been provided to “literally hundreds of cases” of “small and micro businesses” like Tata Consultancy Services. Those reporters should check what jobs — at what levels of pay — have actually been created in western New York.

At the very least, Sen. Clinton’s campaign ought to pay more attention to detail. Remember, it didn’t check on shady fundraiser Norman Hsu, either.