You see, a lot of people in America think there's a trust, in this sense - that we take your money through payroll taxes and then we hold it for you, and then when you retire, we give it back to you. But that's not the way it works.

There is no "trust fund," just IOUs that I saw firsthand, that future generations will pay - will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs.

The office here in Parkersburg stores those IOUs. They're stacked in a filing cabinet. Imagine - the retirement security for future generations is sitting in a filing cabinet.

-President George W. Bush, Parkersburg, West Virginia, April 5, 2005

Well, the filling cabinets at the Bureau of Public Debt sure aren't empty, in fact by the end of 2009 they contained about $2,540,348,000,000 in treasuries. However, the point George W. Bush was famously attempting to make is that the social security trust fund is an example of the government essentially loaning money to itself. By contrast, as of January 2010 the US owed about $3,706,000,000,000 to foreign countries. While the amount of debt owed to foreign creditors has more than doubled since 2004, it is projected to go even higher in the coming years, which could have serious economic and political consequences. One big reason for our growing reliance on foreign debt is that the amount of debt financed by the social security trust fund via payroll taxes is leveling off and starting to decline:

Operations in quarter
ending Mar. 31, 2010
[In billions]
Income $172.9
Outgo 174.1
Difference -1.2

Operations in 2009
[In billions]
Income $807.5
Outgo 685.8
Difference 121.7

Lifting the income limit on social security taxes would reverse that trend. One way to think of the social security trust fund is that it's an investment in government. This is an idea that might horrify some, but consider the alternative. Would you rather have trillions of dollars in treasuries owned by the social security trust fund, or trillions of dollars in treasuries owned by foreign entities who might not always agree with our national interests? By failing to adequately fund social security, we're ensuring that there is not enough money available to invest in its trust fund either, which means the government must look elsewhere to service its growing debt.

There are other reasons to fix projected social security shortfalls. Both in terms of payroll taxes paid and benefits received, social security accounts for about a fifth of the federal budget each year or around four percent of Gross Domestic Product. It's a massive program, and it will only grow in the future, whether we fix it or not.

As the Associated Press reported on March 17, 2010, "For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits - billions more each year. Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes - nearly $29 billion more." However the Brookings Institution adds some equally important details:

Social Security derives revenues from three sources: payroll taxes levied on covered earnings, earmarked income taxes levied on benefits, and interest earnings on reserves. According to the Social Security Trustees' annual report, released in May 2009, revenues from these sources in calendar year 2010 were projected to be, respectively: $701 billion, $26 billion, and $120 billion, for a total of $848 billion. Expenditures were anticipated to be $709 billion....

And reserves will grow for years to come. CBO anticipates cumulative surpluses of well over $1 trillion in the next decade. Surpluses boost reserves; Social Security’s ‘accumulated revenue’ is going to grow, not shrink. Eventually, of course, the retirement of the baby-boom generation and their attendant benefit claims will cause outlays to exceed total revenues and the trust funds will indeed begin to shrink. According to last year’s trustees report, reserves would be exhausted in 2037.

In other words, although we've stopped contributing to the trust fund, it's still accumulating value through interest paid by the federal government. That interest is paid for by foreign debt, not taxes, which makes the overall debt even worse.

To avoid exhausting the social security trust fund or going deeper in debt, one idea that has received support from George W. Bush, Lindsey Graham, Barack Obama, Peter Orszag, and others is raising the payroll tax cap. Currently, only the first $106,800 anyone earns is subject to the %6.2 payroll tax for Social Security. While their solutions vary, they all agree lifting the limit will make a difference. According to the Wall Street Journal, "As executive pay has increased, the percentage of wages subject to payroll taxes has shrunk, to 83% from 90% in 1982. Compensation that isn't subject to the portion of payroll tax that funds old-age benefits now represents foregone revenue of $115 billion a year. Social Security Administration actuaries estimate removing the earnings ceiling could eliminate the trust fund's deficit altogether for the next 75 years, or nearly eliminate it if credit toward benefits was provided for the additional taxable earnings."

Why is adding money to the social security trust fund important? For one thing it would restore public trust in the future of the program, but more importantly it would help restore the trust in US treasuries. As former CBO director Robert D. Reischauer explained, finding a solution for Social Security “would send a very important signal to the world,” that they can keep faith in the US and the US treasury. Just as important, it would be bringing in more money each year to help offset other debts already held and reduce the interest that we owe to foreign governments. Instead we'd be paying ourselves.

So what's an extra $115 billion or so a year? Well, over ten years, allowing for inflation and economic growth, that could mean as much as $2 trillion. Combine that with other savings and you start seeing positive signs:

The federal budget deficit for March showed a dramatic decline Monday because of a much lower estimate by the Obama administration of how much the financial bailout program will ultimately cost.

The Treasury Department said the March deficit totaled $65.4 billion. That compares with a $191.6 billion deficit a year ago. But $115 billion of the improvement was due to the administration's lower estimate of the cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

$115 billion here, $115 billion there, pretty soon you're talking about a lot of money. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities gives a pretty clear picture of the source for our current deficits, "Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration — tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs."

Which also gives us a pretty easy solution. Reverse those policies by withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan then letting the Bush tax cuts expire. However, the scope and timing of our withdrawal from Afghanistan is still unclear, and President Obama is only planning to allow the tax cuts to expire for those earning over $250,000 a year. Politically, that might make a lot of sense, but financially it's a mistake and will make it hard to bring the deficit under control in the future, especially if Congress decides to make the cuts permanent.

If the tax cuts are allowed to expire after all, the Congressional Budget Office projects the following deficits over the next five years if things go as currently budgeted and the tax cuts expire as scheduled:

Year - Deficit
2010 - $1,349 Billion
2011 - $980 Billion
2012 - $650 Billion
2013 - $539 Billion
2014 - $475 Billion
2015 - $480 Billion

In terms of GDP, the CBO predicts:

Looking beyond 2011, CBO’s baseline projections show outlays remaining between 22.3 percent and 23.3 percent of GDP (compared with 24.1 percent in 2010) (see Summary Figure 2). Continued economic growth will allow payments for unemployment compensation and other benefit programs to subside, and discretionary spending is assumed to increase slowly. However, the retirement of more members of the baby-boom generation and rising health care spending per person will cause outlays for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security to continue to grow fairly rapidly.

The baseline projections show revenues rising to 20.2 percent of GDP by 2020 (compared with 14.9 percent in 2010), with most of the increase stemming from individual income tax receipts. Almost half of the increase in those receipts relative to the size of the economy can be attributed to the expiration of provisions originally enacted in the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), as well as other expiring tax provisions; the remainder is due to the economic recovery and structural features of the individual income tax system.

In other words, that is only a gap of about two or three percent of GDP. Lifting the cap on wages taxable for social security would reduce that gap even further, by $115 billion the first year, almost one percent of GDP annually. Combined with the resulting interest savings and measures such as Medicare savings from heathcare reform and reduced defense spending, it is conceivable that the deficit could actually be brought under control if economic growth returns and our leaders turn their focus to our future and the debt.

Stepping back from the past few frantic days on nuclear weapons issues, it is useful to realize how much has been accomplished. The last two weeks have arguably been the two most eventful weeks on reducing the dangers posed by nuclear weapons since the advent of the nuclear age.

• On March 29, President Obama, together with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen, announced that the U.S. and Russia had reached agreement on the “New START” nuclear reductions treaty.

• On April 6, the United States released the results of a year-long review of nuclear weapons, called the Nuclear Posture Review.

• On April 8, Presidents Barack Obama and Dimitry Medvedev signed New START in Prague, Czech Republic.

• On April 12-13, the President convened leaders of 47 countries to agree on steps needed to secure and safeguard vulnerable nuclear materials and to cope with the worldwide terrorist threat.

All of my readers know how I feel about the Bush tax cuts. I’ve never liked them–not from day one. They were too costly, too skewed to the rich, and did too little to make the tax system more efficient. I disliked them even more as a Democratically-controlled Congress during the Bush Administration couldn’t muster the courage to let them expire as scheduled when challenged by the Republican charge of “the largest tax increase in American history.” But the final kick in my stomach was when a new president who campaigned on the “change” we could believe in promised to continue the same tax cuts that he himself criticized as being fiscally irresponsible and yet not his fault.

So of course I want President Obama to break his stupid campaign promise to extend the Bush tax cuts for all households with incomes below $250,000. The tax cuts are still unaffordable (CBO shows that even the <$250K portion would cost $2.2 trillion over ten years–all but around $400 billion of the full complement of Bush tax cuts), would still go mostly to the rich (high income households “march” through all the lower tax brackets after all and hence get the highest dollar benefit of lower-bracket rate reductions, and they also benefit the most from the lower rates of taxation on capital income), and would still do nothing to broaden the tax base to make the system more efficient....

So when the President says he wants to get the deficit down to 3 percent of GDP by 2015, most of the heavy lifting will have to come from higher taxes–and I mean higher taxes other than the higher taxes on the rich that the President already proposes in his budget and that were already included in the health reform bill. And these additional higher taxes will have to come despite the President’s promise to not raise taxes on those households with incomes under $250,000....

I get back to my position that the easiest way to stick with current-law baseline revenue levels (which get us close to the 3 percent of GDP deficit goal) is to stick with current law, where all of the Bush tax cuts expire as scheduled at the end of this year. No taxes would need to be reformed, and in fact no tax legislation would need to be passed and signed! Of course, a better way would be to stick to current-law revenue levels by reforming the tax system–broadening the tax base to make it more efficient so that marginal tax rates would not even have to come up and we could still raise more revenue to achieve our deficit goal. But people (regular people and policymakers) seem to forget that if we let the Bush tax cuts expire, in the “worst” (or laziest) case we just go back to Clinton-era tax policy, which really isn’t so bad. In fact, if you go back to the “desperate” paper and Table 3, the first two columns on the left in the bottom bank show marginal tax rates if the Bush tax cuts expire (those Clinton-era tax rates of 15, 28, 31, 36, and 39.6 percent), and if those rates are raised proportionately (and just a little) to achieve the 3 percent of GDP deficit goal. The marginal rates in that “break tax promise, keep deficit promise” scenario are 15.5, 28.9, 32.0, 37.1, and 40.9. I would argue that this structure of tax rates would be much better for our economy as a whole than the “Obama dual promise” rates that go up to that Laffer-esque 77 percent at the top and yet are barely lower at the bottom and middle.

I spoke to the White House over the weekend and they indicated that the president's package will not be a new White House plan, but a compromise between the House and Senate bills. That is to say, the White House expects that the House and Senate will have a compromise plan by February 25th.

That's not necessarily surprising: The two chambers were pretty close to agreement on a compromise package before Scott Brown's election threw everything into chaos. Presumably, that'll be dusted off for this meeting. The Republican response to this is that they're demanding that the House and Senate refrain from coming up with any unified plan before the summit, which is sort of an odd argument. In essence, the Republican position is that a free and frank exchange of ideas sounds great as long as the Democrats don't bring their ideas.

The fact that Republicans are making bizarre requests to change the rules of the summit rather than just ignoring the gambit altogether suggests they've not figured out how to deal with the event. This is the first time since the Massachusetts election, in fact, that's it's been them, rather than the Democrats, who've seemed confused. The White House deserves some credit for that, and we'll see if they can keep congressional Democrats in line long enough to press the advantage.

You can download the full letter here (pdf).

Republicans have gotten much mileage by railing against the insurance mandate, and it's a key point of contention with the teabagging Right. But the dirty little secret is that Republican senators really don't want it to go away -- it is, after all, an epic giveaway to the health insurance industry.

So Republicans are salivating at this win-win opportunity -- keep their corporate lobbyist friends happy, while also having a potent campaign issue with which to beat the crap out of Democrats.

The mandate puts the government in the untenable position of forcing everyone to buy a shitty product from private companies enjoying monopoly protections. Funny how all the measures that helped people in this reform bill were stripped out, but the one that screws over many people and bails out a failed industry (that doesn't even need a bailout) somehow has no problem staying in. Yet another symptom of a broken government.

So here's the deal -- a progressive should step up with an amendment to strip out the mandate. He should get a non-Wall Street Republican to join him, be it Tom Coburn or Jim DeMint, one or more of those guys. And then force a roll call vote on the issue.

Republicans are then forced to make a genuinely difficult position. If they vote "yes" on removing the mandate, they help make the health care bill less electorally toxic, helping Democratic electoral chances in 2012, while also pissing off their insurance industry pals. If they vote "no", then they are exposed as being just as culpable on the issue as the Democrats driving their party off a cliff. In addition, the teabaggers will be incensed, and as we know by now, they're not shy about primary challenges.

So who will step up for the Democrats? Sanders? Franken? Brown? Burris? And who will join them on the GOP side? Coburn? DeMint? Gregg?

As a bonus, we'd get some good ol' fashioned "bipartisanship" we could all believe in.

Thank God all of George W. Bush's press conferences were scripted.

German politician accidentally opened Berlin Wall:

When his fellow Communist leaders decided on new travel regulations, Mr. Schabowski was out of the room. Later that evening he skim-read the executive order, stuffed it in his briefcase, and headed off to meet the world's media.

Pressed on the meaning of the new travel policy -- When did it come into force? Did it apply to West Berlin? Did people need a passport? -- the flustered apparatchik rustled his papers and gave confusing answers that led the news media to believe the border was open, with immediate effect.

The result, once East Berliners had seen that night's news on West German television, was chaos at border crossings across the city.

At Bornholmer Strasse, one of the main checkpoints in central Berlin, confused border guards couldn't get clear orders on how to deal with the crush, and debated whether to open fire. Instead, they opened the barrier, and the Berlin Wall was history. The events have been chronicled by Hans-Hermann Hertle, a historian who specializes in the fall of East Germany.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Under heavy international pressure, President Hamid Karzai conceded Tuesday that he fell short of a first-round victory in the nation’s disputed presidential election, and agreed to hold a runoff election with his top challenger on Nov. 7.

Flanked at a news conference in Kabul by Senator John Kerry, the head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Kai Eide, the top United Nations official in Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai said he would accept the findings of an international audit that stripped him of nearly one-third of his votes in the first round, leaving him below the 50 percent threshold that would have allowed him to avoid a runoff and declare victory over his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah.

“I call upon this country to take this as an opportunity to move this country forward and participate in this new round of elections,” Mr. Karzai said, according to the English translation of his remarks, adding that he was grateful to the international community for its help.

Mr. Karzai called for continued international assistance in securing the country for the next round of voting. He did not express regret about the widespread fraud that a joint Afghan-international audit committee ruled Monday had occurred among the ballots marked in his name, but said the fraud would be investigated.

By MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writer Mary Foster, Associated Press Writer – 54 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

Barack Obama visits New Orleans to assess storm recovery

Thursday 15 October 2009

Barack Obama yesterday made his first visit to New Orleans since becoming president, to hear directly about the city's efforts to recover from Hurricane Katrina. At least 1,600 people were killed in Louisiana and Mississippi in the 2005 disaster, and damage in the blighted area has been estimated at about $40bn. By the time Obama took office the US government had earmarked $126bn to rebuilding Gulf Coast communities affected by Hurricane Rita, as well as Katrina. A press aide said yesterday that Obama's administration had now freed up billions of dollars in aid for the region and helped cut red tape.

H.B 1595 is a new provision on Oklahoma abortion laws that now requires, among other restrictions and requirements, an official record and reporting system of all abortions occuring within the state. This report will be available for anyone in the world to view, as it will be made public on a website as of March 1st. The Dept of Health, who among others has supported these new provisions, has declared that since the name and “personal information” will not be reported, there is no cause for concern or protest in regards to privacy issues. However, in reviewing the actual text of the law, the first 8 questions that will be asked and reported could easily be used to identify any member of a smaller community.

1. Date of abortion
2. County in which abortion performed
3. Age of mother
4. Marital status of mother
(married, divorced, separated, widowed, or never married)
5. Race of mother
6. Years of education of mother
(specify highest year completed)
7. State or foreign country of residence of mother
8. Total number of previous pregnancies of the mother
Live Births
Miscarriages
Induced Abortions

I guess it could be worse.

Plot summary of the Scarlet Letter:

The novel takes place during the summer in 17th-century Boston, Massachusetts in a Puritan village. A young woman, named Hester Prynne, has been led from the town prison with her infant daughter in her arms and on the breast of her gown "a rag of scarlet cloth" that "assumed the shape of a letter." It was the uppercase letter "A". The Scarlet Letter "A" represents the act of adultery that she has committed and it is to be a symbol of her sin—a badge of shame—for all to see. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester's husband, Roger Chillingworth, who is much older than she, and whose real name is unknown, has sent her ahead to America whilst settling affairs in Europe. However, her husband does not arrive in Boston, and the consensus is that he has been lost at sea. It is apparent that, while waiting for her husband, Hester has had an affair, leading to the birth of her daughter. She will not reveal her lover’s identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her subsequent public shaming, is the punishment for her sin and secrecy. On this day Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her child’s father.

From the AP:

WASHINGTON – The story of humankind is reaching back another million years as scientists learn more about "Ardi," a hominid who lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia. The 110-pound, 4-foot female roamed forests a million years before the famous Lucy, long studied as the earliest skeleton of a human ancestor.

This older skeleton reverses the common wisdom of human evolution, said anthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University.

Rather than humans evolving from an ancient chimp-like creature, the new find provides evidence that chimps and humans evolved from some long-ago common ancestor — but each evolved and changed separately along the way.

"This is not that common ancestor, but it's the closest we have ever been able to come," said Tim White, director of the Human Evolution Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

The lines that evolved into modern humans and living apes probably shared an ancestor 6 million to 7 million years ago, White said in a telephone interview.

But Ardi has many traits that do not appear in modern-day African apes, leading to the conclusion that the apes evolved extensively since we shared that last common ancestor.

Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin's "struggle between faith and reason" as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie.

The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution....

Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.

"That's what we're up against. In 2009. It's amazing," he said.

Guess he was not exaggerating. Here's the 2009 Gallup poll:

On the eve of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, a new Gallup Poll shows that only 39% of Americans say they "believe in the theory of evolution," while a quarter say they do not believe in the theory, and another 36% don't have an opinion either way. These attitudes are strongly related to education and, to an even greater degree, religiosity.

Even the Vatican accepted Darwin last year:

The Vatican has admitted that Charles Darwin was on the right track when he claimed that Man descended from apes.

A leading official declared yesterday that Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith, and could even be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. “In fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God,” said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture. The Vatican also dealt the final blow to speculation that Pope Benedict XVI might be prepared to endorse the theory of Intelligent Design, whose advocates credit a “higher power” for the complexities of life.

Organisers of a papal-backed conference next month marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species said that at first it had even been proposed to ban Intelligent Design from the event, as “poor theology and poor science”. Intelligent Design would be discussed at the fringes of the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, but merely as a “cultural phenomenon”, rather than a scientific or theological issue, organisers said....

Conceding that the Church had been hostile to Darwin because his theory appeared to conflict with the account of creation in Genesis, Archbishop Ravasi argued yesterday that biological evolution and the Christian view of Creation were complementary.

I have a feeling the real reason the American distributors would not accept it is that they want him to go back and dumb it down a little. Maybe include a chase scene or some special effects.

Evolution (2001)

Directed by Ivan Reitman. With David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Orlando Jones. A firefighting cadet, two college professors, and a geeky-but-sexy government scientist work against an alien organism that has been rapidly evolving ever since its arrival on Earth inside a meteor.

When a meteorite falls to Earth two college professors, Dr. Ira Kane and Prof. Harry Phineas Block, are assigned the job of checking the site out. At the site, they discover organisms not of this planet. Soon the site is taken over by the government, forcing Ira and Harry to the side. As the new life-forms begin to evolve and start to get more and more dangerous, it's up to the two professors to save the planet.

Glen Canyon, Arizona, the present day. Wayne, practising at night in the desert for his upcoming fireman's exam, witnesses the impact of a meteorite. The next day, biology teacher Dr. Ira Kane and geology teacher Harry Block from Glen Canyon Community College manage to get to the meteorite, which is stuck in the ground at the bottom of a cave. By taking a sample, they discover a slimy blue fluid coming out of the meteorite. A little later, Ira Kane finds out that myriads of single-celled life-forms dwell in the fluid, evolve at an incredible rate, even while he's watching. What first seems like a sure ticket to Sweden for the Nobel Prize soon develops into a nightmare: By evolving and adapting at that unbelievably fast rate, the Aliens start spreading out, and the Military comes in. Now it all comes down to what Darwin so rightfully stated: Survival of the fittest. And no good idea in sight...

Distributors
DreamWorks Distribution (2001) (USA) (theatrical)
Columbia TriStar Film Distributors International (2001) (non-USA) (theatrical)

UPDATE: Darwin movie gets US distribution

The buzz surrounding Creation's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival prompted Newmarket Films (the same company that distributed The Passion of the Christ) into action, buying up the rights to distribute the Charles Darwin biopic in the U.S. Directed by Jon Amiel and based on Darwin's great-great grandson Randal Keynes' biography Annie's Box, Creation stars real life spouses Paul Bettany as Charles and Jennifer Connelly as his wife, Emma. The film focuses on the period of time when Charles was hard at work on his book On the Origin of Species, examining his struggle to find a balance between his theories on evolution, his devoutly religious wife's beliefs, and his own faith.

Announcing the acquisition Newmarket's Chris Ball stated, "We at Newmarket pride ourselves in getting behind important films that help open the door for discussion and conversation, as is the case with Creation. While Darwin’s name has come to symbolize one side of a debate between the scientific and the theological, Creation personifies the debate, with both sides contending, sometimes violently, within the man. In that sense, we believe that the film will appeal both to people of faith and people of science."

They plan to release the film in theaters this December.

From the New Yorker Magazine:

After Hurst had reviewed Fogg and Vasquez’s list of more than twenty arson indicators, he believed that only one had any potential validity: the positive test for mineral spirits by the threshold of the front door. But why had the fire investigators obtained a positive reading only in that location? According to Fogg and Vasquez’s theory of the crime, Willingham had poured accelerant throughout the children’s bedroom and down the hallway. Officials had tested extensively in these areas—including where all the pour patterns and puddle configurations were—and turned up nothing. Jackson told me that he “never did understand why they weren’t able to recover” positive tests in these parts.

Hurst found it hard to imagine Willingham pouring accelerant on the front porch, where neighbors could have seen him. Scanning the files for clues, Hurst noticed a photograph of the porch taken before the fire, which had been entered into evidence. Sitting on the tiny porch was a charcoal grill. The porch was where the family barbecued. Court testimony from witnesses confirmed that there had been a grill, along with a container of lighter fluid, and that both had burned when the fire roared onto the porch during post-flashover. By the time Vasquez inspected the house, the grill had been removed from the porch, during cleanup. Though he cited the container of lighter fluid in his report, he made no mention of the grill. At the trial, he insisted that he had never been told of the grill’s earlier placement. Other authorities were aware of the grill but did not see its relevance. Hurst, however, was convinced that he had solved the mystery: when firefighters had blasted the porch with water, they had likely spread charcoal-lighter fluid from the melted container....

The Innocence Project obtained, through the Freedom of Information Act, all the records from the governor’s office and the board pertaining to Hurst’s report. “The documents show that they received the report, but neither office has any record of anyone acknowledging it, taking note of its significance, responding to it, or calling any attention to it within the government,” Barry Scheck said. “The only reasonable conclusion is that the governor’s office and the Board of Pardons and Paroles ignored scientific evidence.”

LaFayette Collins, who was a member of the board at the time, told me of the process, “You don’t vote guilt or innocence. You don’t retry the trial. You just make sure everything is in order and there are no glaring errors.” He noted that although the rules allowed for a hearing to consider important new evidence, “in my time there had never been one called.” When I asked him why Hurst’s report didn’t constitute evidence of “glaring errors,” he said, “We get all kinds of reports, but we don’t have the mechanisms to vet them.” Alvin Shaw, another board member at the time, said that the case didn’t “ring a bell,” adding, angrily, “Why would I want to talk about it?” Hurst calls the board’s actions “unconscionable.”

...In 2005, Texas established a government commission to investigate allegations of error and misconduct by forensic scientists. The first cases that are being reviewed by the commission are those of Willingham and Willis. In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez’s approach seemed to deny “rational reasoning” and was more “characteristic of mystics or psychics.” What’s more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, “not only the standards of today but even of the time period.” The commission is reviewing his findings, and plans to release its own report next year. Some legal scholars believe that the commission may narrowly assess the reliability of the scientific evidence. There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person.”

I could be wrong, but I think credit card companies do the same now as well. They only decline purchases if they suspect fraud. If you go over your limit, they are glad to let you, then charge you a fee.

From the New York Times:

Not many people would knowingly pay more than $35 for a cup of coffee. But far too many people are getting saddled — with no warning — with outsized bills for minor purchases, under a euphemistically labeled “overdraft protection program” that most major banks have adopted over the last 10 years.

Before that, most banks would simply have rejected debit transactions, without a fee, when the card holder’s account was empty. Now, they approve the purchase and tack on a hefty penalty for each transaction....

Banks have historically covered bad checks for valued clients, who were invited to opt in to overdraft protection or to link their checking accounts to savings accounts or to lines of credit. But as more people began to use debit cards, the banks started to view overdraft fees as a major profit center and started to automatically enroll debit card holders into an overdraft program. Some banks instituted a tiered penalty system, charging customers steadily higher fees as the overdrafts mount....

Some bankers claim the system benefits debit card users, allowing them to keep spending when they are out of money. But interest rate calculations tell a different story. Credit card companies, for example, were rightly criticized when some drove up interest rates to 30 percent or more. According to a 2008 study by the F.D.I.C., overdraft fees for debit cards can carry an annualized interest rate that exceeds 3,500 percent.

From the AP:

NASA is charged with spotting most of the asteroids that pose a threat to Earth but doesn't have the money to complete the job, a federal report says.

That's because even though Congress assigned the space agency that mission four years ago, it never gave NASA the money to build the necessary telescopes, according to the report released Wednesday by the National Academy of Sciences.

Specifically, the mission calls for NASA, by the year 2020, to locate 90 percent of the potentially deadly rocks hurtling through space. The agency says it's been able to complete about one-third of its assignment with the current telescope system.

NASA estimates that there are about 20,000 asteroids and comets in our solar system that are potential threats. They are larger than 460 feet in diameter — slightly smaller than the Superdome in New Orleans. So far, scientists know where about 6,000 of these objects are.