The Soulpass Project

This is part of an email thread that took place last month (starting the night of Bush’s address to the nation regarding the economy), published with permission. Michelle Ranville was the professor for an economics course I took last semester at Old Dominion University. If you happen to go to ODU and need economics credits, I would highly recommend taking her courses.

This is part of the email I sent:

Well, I’m sure you’re aware, and more informed than myself, about the whole economic crisis thing, complete with Presidential address tonight.

We had discussed in class about Bush’s stimulus package being a bad idea, and it made perfect sense about it being a bad idea. Apparently a part of Barack Obama’s idea for a response to the crisis is issuing another stimulus package… I could be wrong about the details of that, but I was curious, if you get a couple minutes at some point, about your thoughts on that… Thanks!

This is her insightful response:

Ah, the economy… Such a poignant topic and one that we are so helpless over at this point — at least as citizens. I saw this $50 billion stimulus package deal that Obama presented. Knowing nothing more about it, I would have to say that it really misses the point. In this situation, this would be equivalent to firing a pellet gun at a charging elephant — no effect whatsoever, and a waste of pellets.

What it boils down to is that during a time of inflation and serious structural problems in the banking and housing sectors, a fiscal stimulus package is not a good fix because it will put upward pressure on prices, but won’t jumpstart the economy because most investors are aware of these other problems and are not incited to start loaning money (and hence creating jobs) because of a little additional consumer spending. Indeed, the 2nd quarter GDP figures reflected this. Consumer spending rose by about (I can’t quite remember the exact figure right now) 6%, but investment spending (businesses) fell by 11%. Remember in class we said that this was the best indicator of economic health? Overall, GDP grew… but the fact that investment spending fell so sharply reflected the fact that the Spring stimulus package was just masking deeper issues. Apparently, the most important of these “issues” is that unregulated investment titans were able to buy up all that risky mortgage debt and convert it into all sorts of fancy investment packages (ask a finance person about this, or read more about it here), and then suddenly people stopped paying their loans. They were not regulated by the Fed and allowed to take more risks than commercial banks (the kind where “we” deposit money), because they did not directly handle individual deposits. This was poor rationale for not regulating them though, because although they didn’t handle “our” money directly, they did do business with commercial banks. For example, they could buy and sell investments to the “Wachovias” and the “Bank of Americas,” thereby entangling the financial institutions that we rely on to loan money (for business investment) in this mess.

Apparently, there are more than $40 trillion dollars in these “credit default swaps” flying around right now (which are basically insurance policies against the bad mortgage debt — the reason for AIG’s bankruptcy is that they were insuring risky debt and the debt went bad). There is not enough collateral to back them. When Johnny can’t pay Susie, Susie can’t pay Bobby, and Bobby can’t pay Timmy… and so on, and so on. $50 billion can’t even scratch this problem. The only thing that is going to fix it is an unprecedented move by the U.S. government (i.e., the bailout) to inject faith back into the economy. The Fed is going to have to promise loans to anyone who needs them to remain solvent. Even if they don’t actually do it, it is the promise that counts to get banks feeling safe enough to start loaning money again. Unfortunately, the Fed not only has to calm domestic investors but also investors all around the world…especially since we will rely largely (if not completely) on foreign entities to loan us the money to pay for this enormous bailout. If they think that we are a poor investment (which seems likely at this point), there wont be any loans to fund it… As you probably know, I am not a fan of large-scale government intervention, but this time, I think it is our only option — and it’s not even a guarantee. To let it continue is sure to lead to a massive recession.

In short, no, a $50 billion stimulus package is not gonna cut it, unfortunately.

Bush Rejects Tax on Surging Oil Company Profits. ‘Nuff said.

Idiots. I just read on the Forbes web site that the “Newly Crowned Miss Iraq Fears for Her Life.” (article link down, last checked 10/5/07)

My thought process as I read it:

• Hmm, a beauty pageant in Iraq? This doesn’t sound right. Very suspicious. Wouldn’t this go against the basic value system over there as it is currently?
• Does this have something to do with “liberating” the people? Is this something related to the “reconstruction” process and the war?
• Isn’t something like this a bit premature? Shouldn’t they have expected a disaster to occur?
• Interesting. This story could easily have the effect of making Americans feel sorry for the people of Iraq, and encourage them to put more support behind the “liberation” process, the war in general, and Bush Jr.
• Searching the fine print for “this advertisement was paid for by the Bush Administration.” Yeah, this is definitely a classic example of conservative media injection.

I’m sure a lot of people are fearing for their life in Iraq right now.

“Liberal media” my ass. The widespread use of the catch-phrase “liberal media” is in itself an illustration of why it’s not the case.

The pageant was the first to be held in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to ABC. The network said organizers are hoping to send the winner to the Miss Universe pageant, being held in Los Angeles on July 23.

We’re not even closed to finishing this war, and Iraq is already starting to become poisoned by Westernization. Sad, sad, sad.

A little chuckle, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Quagmire: quagmire is an English noun, derived from “quake” + “mire”, meaning literally “shaky, miry ground.” (See swamp.) It is frequently used metaphorically to describe military campaigns characterized by small hope of victory, poorly-defined objectives and/or no clear exit strategy. Its use in political debate emerged during the Vietnam War. More recent users of the term may choose it specifically to allude to the Vietnam conflict. Many opponents of the Iraq war refer to the conflict as a quagmire.

Despite his past outlook on related matters (he seems to have a hard time making up his mind), President Bush and his cronies have continuously refused to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

Some people seem to believe that a timetable implies a date written in stone on which all traces of U.S. Forces must be completely out of Iraq. That’s not the way I see it, and I don’t think it is even be reasonable to assume that they are talking about a complete “cut off date.” The people that want you to believe that have started spouting the term “cut-and-run.” I see a timetable as a goal, and it would be really nice to see some goals set in regard to this mess.

If you ask an Iraqi native, or even a U.S. soldier stationed in Iraq, there’s a reasonable chance that he or she will be in favor of a timeline and/or withdrawal. But, alas, I guess it’s not up to them.

I read an article in the L.A. Times that kind of left a negative (and misleading) vibe about the Democratic plan for Iraq. Get this… One complaint that was cited is that “it established no timetables, or targets, for reducing the U.S. military commitment there.” Firstly, that’s not exactly true. The Democratic proposal states:

Ensure 2006 is a year of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with the Iraqis assuming primary responsibility for securing and governing their country and with the responsible redeployment of U.S. forces.

Read: Work on transferring security management to the new “Iraqi government,” and start finding other things for many of our troops to do as quickly (this is 2006) and responsibly as possible. It may not be completely concrete, but it’s a lot more encouraging than what we’ve been hearing, and it’s certainly a target. The main issue is that the “right” was complaining when people were suggesting a timetable, and now they are giving flack with claims about an absence of a timetable. I do find it humorous that Bush seems to be giving up on his job two years before his term will be up. But it’s no laughing matter that the Democrats came up with a plan for Iraq, and the Senate GOP stole it, rebranding it as their own:

[Senator John W.] Warner [(Republican of VA and chairman of the Armed Services Committee]) said he decided to take the Democratic proposal and edit it to his satisfaction in an effort to find common ground between the parties on the issue.

The primary differences between the party approaches regards fixing dates for a withdrawal. The Democratic plan called for the administration to provide “estimated dates” for redeployment of American troops once a series of conditions was met, with the caveat that “unexpected contingencies may arise.”

But Republicans said that provision was cutting too close to setting a schedule for withdrawal. “We are not going to have any timetable,” Mr. Warner said.

The Bush administration claims that the recovery process for New Orleans will take 25 years. That’s a long time. Sure, no one expects it to be an overnight process, but it seems that a reasonable effort could see significant progress a lot sooner than that. It makes me wonder about the priority level they assign to domestic issues.

When I surf the web, I’m always looking through the eyes of a web developer. This has something to do with the fact that I develop websites. Not everyone knows exactly what he or she is doing when it comes to this stuff; when it comes to things such as government sites, however, the development team certainly should! Somewhat recently, I’ve discovered an interesting and humorous trend. At least I think it’s interesting and humorous.

First, let’s start the demonstration by taking a look at the official websites of two of the most prominent, opposing political parties in the U.S. If you browse with Firefox, consider opening them in new tabs so that you can easily come back here and read on.

1. Democratic Party (or view a cached copy from 1.27.2006)
2. GOP (or view a cached copy from 1.27.2006)

First, you might notice how clean the Democrat’s site is versus the GOP’s. We still have not scratched the surface of the real differences.

Accessibility

Any design should keep accessibility in mind. Especially a government site. There is actually a law in place about this:

From the Wikipedia article on the Section 508 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973:

Section 508 requires that electronic and information technology developed, procured, used, or maintained by all agencies and departments of the Federal Government be accessible both to Federal employees with disabilities and to members of the public with disabilites, and that these two groups have equal use of such technologies as federal employees and members of the public that do not have disabilities.

Most experienced web developers today use (X)HTML for content (what you read), and CSS for presentation (graphics and design). The idea is to separate the two, and experienced designers consider it a web standard. The practice has numerous, important benefits.

To put it simply, democrats.org adheres to these standards, and gop.com does not.

If your browser has the functionality of disabling stylesheets on a page, try it with the websites of both parties. If it doesn’t, I have set up mirrors so that you can see the effect. Again, you’ll want to open these in tabs, otherwise you can use your back button.

1. Democrats.org unstyled
2. GOP.com unstyled

People that are blind need to use screen readers to surf the web. Adhering to accessibilty standards is all about making it as easy as possible for provisions such as a screen reader to effectively cater to those with disabilities. It’s an important thing to keep in mind when designing a site, and that’s why the law is in place. Can you see where the Democratic site is far superior in this respect? Moving on…

There are resources on the web that can test a website to see if it holds up to accessibility standards. I tested both sites for Section 508 as well as WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative from the W3C; A more comprehensive effort than that of the U.S. government) compliance. It’s not easy to adhere completely to these standards, but we try as best we can.

First, let’s look at Section 508. Where the tested aspects applied, Democrats.org failed in five places, and passed in two. GOP.com failed in six places, and passed in one.

For WAI, Democrats.org failed in seven places, and passed in seven. GOP.com fails in nine places, and passes in six. It should also be noted that for many of the aspects tested, the number of errors for GOP.com is very lengthy.

Design

Let’s not stop at accessibility. As important as it is, there’s more to a website than that. There are right ways and wrong ways to put together a site, regardless of whether or not it appears to display properly.

There are validators out there to test for design quality as well. The most commonly used validators for (X)HTML and CSS are provided by the W3C.

At the time of this writing, Democrats.org produces 17 errors, and GOP.com produces a whopping 143 errors! That’s a lot of errors, and this is not including any warnings.

As far as CSS, one of those 17 XHTML errors on Democrats.org causes the CSS parser to abort. Even though the error doesn’t cause the page to display improperly, they should still fix that. Compliments to them, though, for designing in XHTML (”the next generation of HTML”). It is considerably more of a challenge to write valid XHTML than it is to write valid HTML, in which GOP.com is coded.

When forced to validate, the CSS on Democrats.org produces nine errors. GOP.com’s produces twenty. The W3C CSS parser also produces “warnings,” but those generally serve as reminders to be sure that the designer has not overlooked something; for the most part, and in this case, they should be ignored.

In conclusion, the Democratic Party should be applauded for the attention to detail paid in the making of their site. The design team certainly knows what they are doing. The Republican Party, on the other hand, needs to get with the program, and in more ways than one.

You may also want to try comparing College Democrats with College Republicans. Or, try some unofficial sites: Progressive Democrats of America and Vote Republican. As a side note, John Kerry’s 2004 campaign site was significantly better than Bush Jr.’s.

This trend is no joke; Democratic websites are better than those of Republicans.