Hope is not a plan

In a reported titled Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit: Low Use and Small Dollars Impede IRS's Efforts to Reduce High Noncompliance the GAO looks at the amount and quality of use of the Advance Earned Income Tax Credit.

The traditional EITC was introduced in the 1970s to counterbalance Social Security taxes and make working a more feasible option for lower-income individuals. People who qualify may end up receiving a credit at the end of the year that actually exceeds their income tax on the year. Naturally, however, having to pay Social Security taxes up front all year can be a hard hit for the working poor. With that in mind, in 1979 Congress introduced the Advance EITC (AEITC), which lets you file a form with your employer and receive regular disbursements from your EITC throughout the year, simply added to your paycheck.

Although this sounds like a great option, only around 3% of eligible individuals used the AEITC option in the early 2000s. GAO was called on to figure out why, and to check on compliance issues (that is, are people receiving the AEITC who shouldn't?).

As can be seen in the summary charts above, few take the option, and most fail to comply with one or more of the program rules.

On the topic of getting people to use the AEITC in the first place, GAO concludes that IRS has tried to promote the idea with minimal effect. There's some suspicion that people prefer to receive a lump sum payment at the end of the year (the classic EITC) rather than being paid incrementally. Purely in terms of being able to earn interest on your money (or avoiding interest on debt by dint of being able to pay it off early) this is a poor decision. Given the option, the AEITC is the better choice.

On compliance issues, GAO points to a number of problems with compliance with AEITC rules. Major problems include:

• Failure of a would-be AEITC recipient to have a valid Social Security Number (20% of the noncompliance cases, which seems quite high)
• Failure to file a tax return (40% of noncompliance cases)
• Failure to report receiving AEITC (about 70% of cases)

Note that some cases involve noncompliance in more than one area, so these do not add up to 100%.

In other words, a number of people who do receive AEITC money receive it without fulfilling some of the basic requirements that help ensure that, for example, someone does not receive both AEITC money and classic EITC money. Suggestions to help resolve these issues include sending "soft notices" to recipients to remind them to fulfill the requirements, requiring employers to verify SSNs, and making a database of W-5 forms sent in (that's the form your employer sends to the IRS when signing you up for AEITC). All of these options are, naturally, limited by the available resources of the IRS. Should they be ineffective, GAO recommends that IRS refer the issue to Congress, who can then determine whether or not AEITC should be continued.

With all that said, however, the true take-home message for the many low-income workers out there is that 97% of you aren't taking advantage of the AEITC. Click here to find out if you're eligible. If you are, it seems like an awfully good idea to take the AEITC and get your money now instead of later.

This week, the GAO released a report on the progress of the Iraqi government toward various benchmarks.

The report was titled Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq: Iraqi Government Has Not Met Most Legislative, Security, and Economic Benchmarks. There is additional content in the associated Congressional testimony, which was released in parallel with the report, under the same title.

All the media coverage I've seen on this most recent GAO report emphasizes the failings of the Iraqi government. However, the more important punchline may be GAO, in its quiet way, saying that the Bush administration is misrepresenting progress in Iraq. They explicitly state that the administration's interim progress report in July overstated progress in many areas, most notably by suggesting that sectarian violence has diminished.

Specifically, the entirety of the decrease in overall violence is due to reduced attacks on Coalition forces. Attacks on civilians have actually risen slightly. In short, the Bush administration is lying, and sectarian violence persists.

See the extended for a full review and explanation.

The concept of blood diamonds is now reasonably firmly established in the American mind, and diamond distributors have been pressured into making at least a nominal effort to source their diamonds such that you don't end up buying a diamond that, somewhere back in its supply chain, funded the maiming of civilians.

The current war in Afghanistan provides a parallel situation that is, nonetheless, sharply different. Afghanistan produces almost all of the world's opium, largely from poppy fields in territories controlled by Taliban insurgents. Naturally, this means that the end of almost every heroin supply line ends with cash going directly to those insurgents, and by extension to car bombings, attacks on Afghani police, and suppression of local populations in Taliban-controlled areas. However, the illegal nature of the end product makes it strictly impossible to enforce any kind of pressure on the sourcing of the raw materials. You may be able to buy your engagement diamond from Canada, but you can't choose to buy your heroin from South Carolina instead of Afghanistan. The only remaining options, then, are interdiction and eradication.

Afghan police, with assistance from the United Nations, have been carrying out eradication activities -- or trying to, with the constant challenge that the poppy fields are defended by well-armed Taliban narco-insurgents. They've requested direct assistance from NATO forces in continuing these efforts, but as described in this al Jazeera article, NATO considers drug eradication well outside its Afghanistan mandate, and refuses to participate.

Overall, opium production is likely to continue in Afghanistan well past the cessation of the Taliban insurgency. As long as that insurgency continues, the terrain that supports the hiding of an insurgency will align perfectly with the terrain that supports illicit crop growth, and the money will continue to flow into Taliban hands.

Heroin is a terrible drug, and not one that I feel comfortable advocating pure legalization for, but it surely will continue to be a strategic problem for us if narco-trafficking continues to fund non-state opponents around the world.

In a semi-surprise move, Vladimir Putin sacked the current prime minister of Russia and has nominated as his replacement Viktor Zubkov. Zubkov is currently the head of a group fighting money laundering for the Russian government, and previously worked for Putin as part of the city government of St. Petersburg. Putin's ostensible reason is providing a new prime minister to help with the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections, but many suspect that he's setting Zubkov up as the next president. The suspicion then is that Putin would effectively continue to manage the country through Zubkov.

Certainly, Putin has acted in other ways to refocus power in Russia on himself and cut into chaos and democratic reforms. It wouldn't be shocking to find he had a game plan to continue to rule the country for quite a while (until Zubkov changes his mind about being controlled...).

al Jazeera article
CNN article

A little shy of a week ago, a group of Israeli jets apparently transited across Syria, possibly hitting a target in northern Syria before exiting across the Turkish border and heading home.

The Syrian authorities are livid. They say that the aircraft were driven off but that they fired their weaponry into a deserted area.

Outstanding theories about what the Israelis would have hit range from the reasonable (a Hezbollah arms factory) to the less credible (a stash of nuclear weapons program material being held for North Korea). Notably, the Israeli government apparently told the Syrian government it was scaling back Israeli forces in the Golan just ahead of the action, possibly to signal that the impending strike wasn't a prelude to war.

The clearest upshot of the entire incident, for now, is that American-made aircraft still beat Russian-made air defenses. Caveat emptor.

BBC article

For many years now, a major complaint about our extensive reliance on private security contractors in Iraq has been their careless neglect of civilians. Whereas our military forces institutionally take pains to avoid civilian casualties or even the appearance of disrespect for local traditions and feelings, private contractors are notorious for barreling everywhere at high speed and taking a shot at anyone who seems half threatening. After all, without any official oversight (which one imagines could have come from, say, the State Department), what's their motivation to do anything other than put their own safety first?

As described in Thomas Ricks' book Fiasco, contractors can end up undoing a lot of good relationship-building work done by our more attentive soldiers.

Now, the hammer has finally come down on Blackwater, following the alleged killing of eight civilians by Blackwater operatives during the defense of an American convoy that was under attack. This is preceded by other alleged killings of civilians by Blackwater personnel, but this is the first time the Iraqi government has taken major action in response to this kind of thing. It is, indeed, major -- they have rescinded Blackwater's operating license in Iraq and have ordered all Blackwater employees to leave the country immediately, with the exception of those involved in the alleged shooting.

If we don't lean on the Iraqi government to overturn this (and we really shouldn't), this may pose a large problem for the State Department. Of Blackwater's $800 million in contracts in Iraq, a good $300 million is said to come from a contract involving security for State Department employees. A number of non-security contractors in Iraq (perhaps KBR?) will also be left in the lurch if Blackwater pulls out.

We'll see in the coming week if Blackwater complies and actually pulls out, or if they go to their friends in State and elsewhere to request assistance in staying in country.

BBC article
al Jazeera article

At the tail end of this BBC article about the rescinding of Blackwater's operating license by the Iraqi government is a tally of civilian deaths in Iraq, as measured by various groups:

Sunday's violence followed the publication of a survey of Iraqis which suggested that up to 1.2m people might have died because of the conflict in Iraq.

However, these estimates are both far higher than the running total of reported civilian deaths maintained by the campaign group Iraq Body Count which puts the figure at between 71,000 and 78,000.

I've written about the original Burnham "600,000 deaths" estimate here. I believe it's credible. When that report appeared, the official American tally was on the order of 30,000 civilian deaths, a total that was supported by official Iraqi government figures until about a month later, when Iraqi Health Minister Ali al-Shemari gave a much higher estimate of up to 150,000 dead since the invasion, basing his count on bodies delivered to morgues.

It's worth noting that all "civilian death" estimates are necessarily fuzzy, because it's hard to firmly classify male dead as "civilian" rather than, say, "militia" or "insurgent." Based on extensive interviews and anecdotes I've read, I'm willing to ballpark the utter low-end cutoff of half the deaths being "true civilians" -- people without allegiance to specific armed forces. More to the point, as Thomas Ricks noted in a recent radio interview, the overall tally of "violent Iraqi deaths" is still the single most relevant metric of success and failure that we have. Whether it's militias torturing and killing innocent civilians in an attempt to ethnically cleanse a neighborhood, or two militia groups torturing and killing each other, an excess of violent deaths is a clear marker that things are not yet working properly.

A point to consider on violent deaths. Recent homicide rates in the United States are about 5.8 per 100,000 people, per year. If Iraq were merely as violent as the United States (as Mike Pence imagines it is), then we'd expect a baseline of about 1,600 violent deaths per year, or just under 11% of the actual rate if the 75,000 lowball figure is correct -- that's only 1.3% of the 600,000 or so estimate. So, even if we decide to believe the honestly implausible 75,000-dead estimate, that's still egregious when compared with the kind of violence American voters still fear and complain bitterly about to their politicians.

I'm willing to bet that no one you know personally has been tortured to death by a sectarian militia recently, at any rate.

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was well-known for her critical views on Vladimir Putin, especially on the military operations he launched against Chechnya.

Ms. Politkovskaya was shot last October outside her apartment.

Now, someone has been charged with her murder. Who is this entirely believable suspect?

Former Chechen presidential candidate Shamil Burayev.

According to Russian prosecutors, Burayev was part of a cabal of foreign interlopers (If he's foreign, does that mean Chechnya actually isn't part of Russia? Good to know...) bent on destabilizing Russia.

They're just not trying very hard these days. Of course, as they're playing to an internal audience starving for pride, they don't need to.

BBC article

In a report titled Sale of Magnetic Date Tapes Previously Used by the Government Presents a Low Security Risk, the GAO addresses the issue of the reselling of used Government data tapes, and the possible risk of exposure of sensitive data.

Spurred by claims from one company in the field that other media companies that buy magnetic media from the Federal Government were subsequently reselling it, the GAO investigated both that initial claim and the inherent risk of sensitive information being extracted from the media.

Their investigation revealed that at least one of five companies -- all unnamed -- admitted to reselling formerly Federal magnetic tapes, purchased from NOAA, the Federal Reserve, and the Air Force. They insisted that these tapes had been degaussed when that was feasible, although they noted that some tapes (those with servo tracks) would be destroyed by degaussing. These tapes were "cleaned" by repeated overwriting of the prior data.

The GAO investigators then tried to extract data from both degaussed and overwritten tapes. Using both commercial and forensic methods, they were unable to extract anything from the degaussed tapes. They were, however, able to extract some image data from the overwritten tapes. Their official opinion is that additional data could have been retrieved, but "this work would have represented a very expensive, intensive effort spanning months and, potentially, years."

I think they may underestimate the ability to successfully extract information from the tapes. That said, the tapes are resold unlabeled and in bulk. Any hopeful spy would be better served getting their data by some other method than the needle-in-a-haystack hope of trying to find something useful in unsourced, overwritten tapes -- so the GAO report is fundamentally correct. The risk from resale is low.

(Unless, of course, some lazy reseller stops cleansing the tapes appropriately. But shouldn't that be done by the Federal agencies before the tapes go out?)

This summer saw an outbreak of the economically devastating foot-and-mouth disease among livestock in the United Kingdom. Thanks in large part to a rapid and concerted response by the government, it was of relatively limited scope -- two farms, $100 million in economic harm.

(Let that sink in for a moment, that a well-handled FMD outbreak hit the UK for $100 million.)

Now, the infection has been traced not to a natural origin but to accidental release of FMD virus from a vaccine facility run by the Merial corporation and housed in a building managed by the UK government's Institute for Animal Health. Here's how it happened:

A two-step chemical strategy is used at Pirbright [the IAH facility] to prevent FMD from escaping in liquid waste. Both Merial and IAH first treat wastewater at their own buildings with a disinfectant such as citric acid. Then, a complex system of pipes takes the water to a shared effluent treatment plant, managed by IAH, where caustic soda is used to raise the pH to 12 and kill off any remaining virus during a 12-hour holding period. Finally, the liquid is released into the sewer.

As it happened, construction crews were digging holes around the leaks at the time, and heavy trucks--without proper IAH oversight--drove through the presumably virus-laden mud. Some of these vehicles later took a road that went very close to the first infected farm. From there, the farmer may have carried the virus to his herd.

Quoted from this article in Science magazine.

It's just these kinds of problems that are the big fear about facilities that work with pathogens. As the Science article discusses, a number of well-known pathogen research centers are also on the older side, and there are concerns that their infrastructure may also lend itself to these kinds of accidental releases. Add to this the possibility for procedural errors -- whether it's letting trucks drive through areas they shouldn't or forgetting to put in a new air filter in your anthrax research lab's exhaust system, and the worry is that an incorrectly managed research center may accidentally spawn the next pandemic.

It is not particularly comforting then, that Texas A&M has recently been gigged in a big way for substantial failings in their own biosafety procedures, including losing several vials of Brucella, the causative agent of the hard-to-treat Malta fever, and accidentally exposing a number of workers to Q fever. Texas A&M interim president Eddie Davis lamely defended TAMU's record by saying that "institutions under that same level of review would probably have findings that would be reportable to the CDC." He then praised the now-former biosafety compliance director for being "very loyal and competent." Competent would be good, but I don't see how loyalty to TAMU helps the rest of Texas if they're not maintaining proper safety.

It's common for people to shrug and move on in the face of regulation, doing just enough to comply. We have to remember, however, that screwing up the safety compliance in a pathogen lab is not the same as failing to maintain a piece of heavy machinery. The latter may result in a massive work accident, but the former might wipe out a city or all agriculture in the midwest.

This week in the United Nations, the bad blood between Russia and Georgia continued, as Russia complained about the deaths of two of its military officers and Georgia, in turn, asked what Russian officers were doing on formally Georgian soil.

Here's the argument in a nutshell:

"One has to wonder -- what was a vice colonel of the Russian military doing in the Georgian forests, organizing and leading a group of armed insurgents on a mission of terror?" the Georgian leader said.

Immediately following Saakashvili's speech, Russia's ambassador to the U.N., Vitaly Churkin, told reporters that the men were instructors at an "anti-terrorist training center" and were killed Sept. 20 by knife wounds and gunshots to the head.

This isn't the first time the Georgians have done something about Russians in breakaway Georgian territories. Just shy of a year ago, they detained two Russian "peacekeepers" in South Ossetia.

Although the Abkhazian conflict chiefly makes the news in its "role" as a proxy war between Russia and Georgia, it has an entirely different "life" online. Much like the summer war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Abkhazian conflict is played out in great detail and with much acrimony on YouTube, with videos coming from both sides.

This video from a pro-Georgian poster gives us a list of Georgians tortured and killed by Abkhazians as part of a "genocide" against Georgians:

Other videos have shown ethnic Georgians being pressed into forced labor on farms by armed Abkhazians.

This video from a pro-Abkhazian poster is simply a grab of a news story concerning a firefight between Georgian and Abkhazian troops that left several Abkhazians dead, but with the appended title "Abkhazian Soldiers are Kidnapped by Puppet Republic Georgia."

As much as I've read about the Abkhazian conflict (which started with a war of separation in the early 90s), I'm unclear on who Georgia is supposed to be a puppet of. If anyone can make a claim of puppetry, it's the Georgians, who can point to Russian advisers hanging out in both the Abkhazian and South Ossetian zones.

It's unclear what influence, if any, these YouTube wars have on the real wars they're prompted by, but they do serve as a far more accurate window into the thought processes of everyone involved than any reporting I've seen. Certainly, if you can stomach it, the comments on these videos tell of the level of distrust and anger present in parties to the conflict -- much as they did during the summer war, and much as I expect they will continue to do as this form of personalized reporting and propaganda continues to be so easy and accessible.

CNN article