Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

The Mental Recession

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Former Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) got himself in some hot water last month by commenting that the U.S. is in the midst of a ‘mental recession’ rather than an actual, structural economic recession, and referred to us as a ‘nation of whiners’ with regard to our current economic woes. Gramm, who holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Georgia, was the national co-chair of Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign and was one of McCain’s top economic advisers, but stepped down from those roles about one week after making his comments. Senator Barack Obama’s (D-IL) presidential campaign seized quickly on Gramm’s comments in an effort to paint McCain as being out-of-touch with the economic realities in the U.S. today, and Gramm had become a liability.

President George W. Bush (R), always a fount of political wit, was caught weeks later at a private fundraiser saying that, “Wall Street got drunk—that’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras—it got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments.” Again, this was seized upon by the Obama campaign as an example of the Republican Party’s disconnection with reality.

The problem is that Gramm and Bush, while they did not present the facts in a particularly articulate or ‘politically correct’ way, were speaking the truth.

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Mt. Vernon Trail Conquered; Four Mile Run Trail Partially

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This is another biking update following up on my entry from last week. I’m continuing to increase the number of miles I can ride. Today I spent much of the afternoon on a ride and my milage total was a whopping 39.4 miles. This is a personal record running all the way back to some rides in the 40/50 mile range I did when I was in elementary and middle school.

I started at the Mount Vernon parking lot, which is the southern terminus of the Mount Vernon Trail, and rode north. I made it 10 miles, which was my goal, but felt pretty good so I continued on north on the trail until I reached the western end of the Four Mile Run Trail. I took off headed west on that trail, and went quite a few miles. It’s hard to find info about the Four Mile Run Trail online, but I’m guessing I rode about half of its 8.8 mile length (maybe even a bit more) before running out of steam.

The Four Mile Run Trail, which loosely parallels the eastern section of the W&OD trail (which I’ve already conquered), is very hilly and curvy and difficult.

So I rested a few minutes and rode back roughly by the same route (I skipped one super-hilly segment of the Four Mile Run Trail by jumping over to the W&OD), catching the southern edge of a thunderstorm and getting drenched just south of the Beltway, and survived. Next on my list: the rest of the Four Mile Run trail and the Custis Trail.

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Anthrax Attack Mystery Finally Unraveling

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After seven years, it appears that the mystery surrounding the 2001 Anthrax Attacks is finally beginning to unravel. Those attacks, in which weaponized anthrax was sent to various political and media offices, killed five and infected at least 17 others in September and October of 2001. Coming shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, many initially feared that the anthrax attacks were the beginning of a campaign of foreign biological terrorism. Over time, it became more and more clear that the strain of anthrax involved originated from U.S. labs and the attack was likely an act of domestic terrorism.

While Department of Justice officials had once named Dr. Stephen Hatfill, a researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland, as a ‘person of interest’ in the case. No charges had ever been filed. Hatfill sued the DoJ and various government officials for violation of his Constitutional rights and the Privacy Act, which the government settled out-of-court last month for $5.8 million.

It is now clear that the settlement with Hatfill was made to clear the way for the government to indict Dr. Bruce Ivins, another anthrax researcher who had worked at USAMRIID. Ivins committed suicide by overdosing on prescription Tylenol and Codeine on Friday. In the days since his death, information has been slowly released tying Ivins to the 2001 attacks, which were committed perhaps in a misguided effort to receive approval for human trials of an anthrax vaccine. Ivins has apparently had a history of mental illness and sociopathic behavior, and was scheduled to be indicted in the coming weeks in connection with the attacks.

There are still many unanswered questions, but the recent revelations have been a major break in a case that has, from the public’s perspective, been ‘cold’ for many years.

FCC Rules Against Comcast

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has formally ruled that Comcast’s initiative last year to ‘throttle’ BitTorrent file sharing traffic on their network was a violation of net neutrality rules. The FCC announced their investigation back in April. This marks the first time that the FCC has found a company to have violated net neutrality regulations. Comcast voluntarily ended their illegal practice in March of this year.

Many of those who call themselves economic conservatives, including the Bush administration, have expressed disagreement with the FCC’s findings. This, to me, is mind boggling. If you actually investigate what net neutrality is, you’ll discover that it is a very ‘conservative’ concept. If people pay for ‘unlimited’ Internet access, they should get ‘unlimited’ Internet access. The Internet is, in reality, akin to other mediums through which economic activity occurs, like telephones or highways. Telephone companies can’t sell ‘unlimited local calling’ and then charge you a usage fee for calling, say, a cable company in your area. Nor can they selectively refuse to connect calls they don’t feel like carrying on their system. Nor can they give price breaks to phone-related service companies and inflate service fees for cable companies. Nobody, not even these so-called economic conservatives, would support a phone company abusing its customers or providing selectively-degraded service in these ways, and yet they want to give Internet service providers authority to do exactly the same thing to the Internet.

I’ve purchased unlimited Internet access from Verizon Avenue DSL, and damn-it that’s what I should get. Verizon can’t tell me what I can and can’t use that network connection for, nor can they ‘throttle’ my usage on a whim, nor can they provide preferential bandwidth to sites that have paid into their bandwidth protection racket. The Internet became one of our society’s core economic engines in a large part because of net neutrality, and I guarantee that ‘economic conservatives’ don’t really want to ruin it by turning it into a giant ISP-directed toll road. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it until it finally happens, we must enshrine net neutrality in law before Comcast, Verizon, Cox, and others destroy the Internet for their own short-term benefit.

The views expressed in this post are mine and mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer, Web.com.

Marion Barry: A Perplexing Feature of DC Politics

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One of the most perplexing enigmas of the Washington, DC, city government is—and has been since 1971—City Councilman Marion Barry (D-Ward 8). Here’s a quick history of Barry’s political career:

  • Barry was on DC’s first elective school board from 1971 to 1974.
  • Upon establishment of DC home rule in 1974 Barry was elected to the City Council and served from 1975 until 1979. In 1977, during his time on the Council, Barry was shot by Muslim terrorists who had seized City Hall and two other buildings in the District.
  • In 1979, Barry became only the second home-rule Mayor of Washington, DC, and remained Mayor until his arrest and imprisonment in 1990. Barry was charged with three counts of perjury, ten counts of drug possession (crack cocaine), and one count of conspiracy. He was convicted only on one count of drug possession.
  • In 1993, less than two years after his conviction for possession of crack cocaine, Barry took the Ward 8 seat on the City Council. He had won election to the Council with 70 percent of the vote.
  • In 1994, Barry ran for Mayor and was elected the fourth home-rule Mayor of Washington, DC, serving from 1995 until 1999.
  • In 2004, Barry again ran for the Ward 8 seat on the City Council, winning the general election with 95 percent of the vote. Barry took office as City Councilman in 2005 and continues serving today.
  • Less than one year after election to the City Council, Barry was charged with failing to pay federal and local taxes. At the hearing, mandatory drug testing found marijuana and cocaine in Barry’s system. Barry was sentenced to three years’ probation on the tax charges and undergoes drug counseling.
  • In 2006, Barry was charged with driving under the influence and various other vehicular charges. He was acquitted on all counts.

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Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.