Special Analysis: A Comment on Cookies

Mainstream media news outlets are reporting that the National Security Agency has been deploying cookies into the computers of visitors to the agency's Website. The controversy surrounds the persistence of these cookies past the user's session when the Website is visited. Reports by news sources like CNN and Yahoo include statements by the NSA that the type of cookie being written to visitors' hard-drives was supposed to be only of the "session" variety, which would be deleted when the user closed his or her browser, but that a software upgrade was responsible for the unintentional installation of a "persistent" (or "permanent") cookie, which remains on a user's computer. Bloggers have picked up the story and commented about the implications of this activity by a U.S. spy agency.

A "cookie" in computer terminology is a small file written onto a computer user's hard-drive. The cookie is usually created by a javascript routine embedded in the code of the Webpage. When a person goes to a Website, it is very likely that the server holding the files for that site will put one or more of these cookies into a special directory on the visitor's computer. Not surprisingly, the directory in which these cookies are saved is called "Cookies," and each user of a particular computer will have his or her own sub-directory with this name.

A cookie contains information in text and code. This information allows the host server of the Website to know certain things about the user, especially about that user's previous interaction with the Website. For example, a simple cookie might be nothing more than a notification of when the user last visited the Website. That way, when the user visits again, the server knows the person has been there before. This might be useful for something like, say, a new versus returning visitor welcome message or site introduction window.

Note, by the way, that the word "person," here, is a bit fuzzy. For the most part, a server sees a computer, not a human being. Cookies can personalize the interaction to some extent, but a server computer generally can't tell who is on a visiting computer. The visiting computer, itself, is uniquely and clearly identified by its so-called "IP address," where the "IP" stands for "Internet protocol." The human at the computer could identify himself or herself by certain information entered on, say, a form; but even then, there is still a lack of complete certainty at the server level regarding who exactly is sitting at the machine during a given session. Eventually (and quite possibly now with very sophisticated programs), the actual person will be identifiable, but that's not much of an issue for the time being. For all intents and purposes, only the computer can be identified with any degree of certainty by a server. A cookie can help narrow down who exactly is on a computer. If two people use the same computer but have different accounts on it, then the cookie set for one user would not be in the "Cookies" folder of the other person; hence, a server that had already tagged the IP address of the computer could further narrow down the actual user by reading a previously set cookie that only one of them had.

There are many ways to classify cookies. Simple cookies generally store a cache of information based upon the very appearance of the visitor at the site or upon options and preferences the user has specified once there. An example of the latter is when a visitor can select certain display preferences (like color scheme, size of fonts, etc.) for a Website. That information would be stored in the cookie for that Website so that, when the visitor came back, those preferences would be loaded automatically. Some cookies set automatically while others build information based upon what you do.

You might have noticed that some Website, especially some blogs, have a "Remember me" checkbox: if you check it, a cookie will be set in your computer. This cookie holds the basic form information about your name, your e-mail address, your homepage, etc. The cookie will ensure that this information will be filled in automatically every time that form is displayed after the cookie is initially set.

The automatic form fill-in is a very common application of cookie functionality. It saves people having to fill in the same information every last time they have the same form come up.

This could be a worrisome situation. You might be thinking, "But I put credit card information into those forms. Is that information sitting in a cookie file that anyone could read?" Yes and no: yes, the information might be there; but no, the information isn't readable because it's encrypted, so only the originating Website would have the "key" to decrypt and read the code properly.

The complexity of a given cookie mostly has to do with how much information it stores, the kinds of information it collects, and the manner in which the information is retained for later use. Cookies, in and of themselves, are nothing but text files. They can't do anything but hold information for later retrieval. By themselves, they can't run around on your computer and look for all kinds of other information; but that doesn't mean they can't have that information put into them. Other programs can work with cookies to build an impressive laundry list of interesting and exciting facts about a computer user. In particular, Java and ActiveX scripts can do all kinds of snooping, then either report the results directly to a server or put those results into a cookie or other file for later retrieval or broadcast.

Cookies also, by their very existence on a computer, tell a story. Each cookie has a name, usually something like Joe@hotdog.txt. The "Joe" is the name of the user as the computer sees him. (His name might not be Joe, but at some time in the past, probably during the installation of the operating system, he told his computer to call him "Joe." If Joe never gave himself a name for his computer to use, it would probably call him "default," which is why some people see all their cookies start with that word.) The part after the "@" is the domain name of the Website that set the cookie. In this case, we know from just looking at the cookie's name—not even opening the cookie to see what information it contains—that the computer user named "Joe" went to www.hotdog.com.

Suppose we saw Joe@hotdog[1].txt and Joe@hotdog[2].txt in the cookies directory. That would mean the Website www.hotdog.com set not one but two cookies.

Perhaps you see the privacy issue. The cookie directory is a free listing of every cookie-deploying site Joe has visited. Oh my gawd! Look at some of those cookie names: Joe@lolibimbo.txt, Joe@boweltroublenow.txt, Joe@whosyerdaddy.txt, Joe@manhoodextendersolutions.txt, and other unfortunate entries.

Gracious. Our friend Joe does get around, if only in his imagination in cyberspace. The cookie directory is by its very listings a profiling resource. (In Joe's case, the profile is clear: L-O-S-E-R!)

Let's crack open a cookie to see what's inside. It's a text file, so nothing fancier than plain old Microsoft Notepad is appropriate for viewing the contents, which we find to be a combination of numbers, words, and strange bursts of unintelligible characters. Never mind the unintelligible part: that's usually nothing but computer language the Web browser and server understand. The numbers are likely to be the output from counters of one kind or another: how many times the user has visited, how long the last visit went on, etc. Long strings of numbers often show the manner in which the particular cookie generator records information about preferences set by the users, the environment on the computer the server detected on the last visit, and sometimes encrypted data. There should also be at least one date somewhere in the code, but this might not be easy to recognize in the mass of numbers, percent signs, and strange-looking garbage. One date is important: the expiration date of the cookie, the time when the cookie is no longer valid. This is set by the javascript that's in the code for the Web page that set the cookie. Web browsers keep an eye on expiration dates to know when to get rid of cookies. Here at The Dark Wraith Forums, for example, the expiration date is in the year 2040, which means your host doesn't want that cookie getting wiped out until the year 2040. Your host here figures you'll either be dead by then or you'll have moved on to something more interesting than coming here.

Some cookies will have your name and other information. HaloScan, the commenting system preferred by many bloggers, writes a cookie to the user's hard drive that has the information you enter to put in comments, as well as identification information, counter output, and other stuff.

Some cookies record entry page, some record exit page. It all depends upon the sophistication of the script that writes the cookie.

Can a cookie set by one server be read by the servers of other Websites you visit? The answer is in the affirmative, but remember that cookies are written by scripts, so a reader from a non-originating site would have to understand how information was being laid out in a particular cookie to translate the contents into meaningful data. It's not as easy as just having a server look in the "Cookies" directory to rummage around and get all kinds of great information. Scripts to make cookies can be pretty generic, so it's not that difficult in some circumstances for one server to detect and understand a foreign cookie's content. However, if a cookie has encrypted information, that's a whole different issue since a snooping server would have to be able to crack the encryption to get to the interesting information in a foreign cookie. More importantly, it's not as easy as it might seem to get at a cookie that doesn't have the same domain name as the site being visited. It's not impossible; but it's definitely not just like clicking on a directory on your local computer.

Returning to the matter of the NSA setting cookies, a little bit of knowledge goes a long way. The brouhaha that started this week has to do with the fact that the NSA was setting cookies that didn't get deleted when a visitor closed his or her Web browser. In other words, the NSA cookies were "persistent" instead of "session" cookies, which means they didn't have immediate expiration. So-called "session cookies" are no more or less "safe" than persistent cookies, the ones that stay on the computer and don't get deleted at the end of a Web browsing session. A session cookie won't be able to keep track of, say, how many times you've visited the NSA Website, nor will it be able to keep track of other surfing habits you have.

But the point is this: the type of cookie the NSA was setting is rather irrelevant. Once a cookie reports an IP address to its "mother," that information goes into a database. When the visitor unknowingly enters more information to an old (persistent) cookie or unwittingly causes the creation of a new (session) cookie, that information gets sent to the "mother," which then adds it to the database, which keys to IP addresses. In other words, the snooping goes on whether it's one cookie staying there persistently or a string of cookies, each associated with a single session. This means just about anyone could have a profile being built up in that (purely hypothetical, of course) database at the NSA or wherever else profiling of people is an on-going practice.

And on another point, going to a government Website and being shocked that the agency sponsoring the Website engages in snooping is a bit silly. It's sort of like walking into a cage with rabid lions and being quite offended when they eat your hind leg. This is the era of the neo-cons: they run this government, and they're not nice people. They have no use for personal privacy; and they're quite literally out to rule the world and to do so through mendacity, violence, and lies. They don't play by rules ordinarily anticipated by members of a civil society that greatly values and jealously protects personal privacy and individual liberty.

They just don't.

In any interaction with their kind and their government, expect that you will be treated to the full power, ferocity, and ill will of technologically-enhanced Medievalism.

More to the point, though, cookies are a terribly inefficient means of snooping. Even when they're used, to be clear and compelling threats, they usually need to work in conjunction with ActiveX or Java routines. (And don't confuse Java with javascript; they're not the same.) Cookies are the poor-man's Peeping Tom devices. They can, to a certain extent, be used for tracking and other backroom work, but there are far more effective ways to use the Internet to spy on people. Many are the suckers who buy anti-spyware software packages that tout thousands and thousands of "spyware" implementations they remove, but such claims are misleading. All those anti-spyware packages are doing is collecting lists of known cookies, then including them in the "spyware" that's going to be removed. That's not entirely a bad thing, however, since cookies that are deployed in marketing networks ultimately build marketing profiles of Internet surfers, and this might not be desirable for some people who have quaint ideas about personal privacy. The Anti-Spyware Software Review Website describes in some detail how this game works, but to consider that type of profiling as tantamount to government spying through your computer is just not reasonable.

The National Security Agency is a cream-of-the-crop spy operation; it has some of the best spooks that money and calls to patriotism (or coërcion) can buy; and it has a black-box budget. Anti-spyware and cookie deletion utilities bought at Elmer's Discount House o' Software aren't going to stop spies who want to know what you're doing; and manually going into the cookies folder on your computer, finding a cookie with the name "Joe@nsa.txt," and deleting it does not in any way, shape, or form give you bragging rights for outsmarting the National Security Agency.

If spies want you to know they've been in your computer, they'll make it so you can see that they've been there. If those same spies don't want you to know they've been there, they'll make sure you don't.

This is related to the matter of why it is that the U.S. releases people from detention where they've been tortured, knowing full well those people, once they're freed, are going to run around screaming, "I've been tortured! I've been tortured!" If our good national security folks don't want it known that someone was tortured, it won't be known. In the same way, if our good national security folks don't want it known that they've been watching you, then you won't know.

In most instances, when we "discover" something the spies have been doing, it's either because they don't care or more likely because they want to advertise, and all the howling upon discovery of the obvious gives them a megaphone at the same time the howling throws in the value-added red herring for their purposes.

To believe otherwise is to assign to our spooks the same level of stupidity possessed by our President and his cabal of crooked, incompetent cronies. Rest assured that, unlike George W. Bush, the operational-level folks at the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, and all the other agencies of ill intent are not stupid, nor are they incompetent.

They are dangerous, mean, frightening, untrustworthy, vicious, and nasty; but they're not stupid.

These high-end law enforcement and spying community men and women are not in some grand sense worthy of idol-worship. They are people who will hurt you if you get in their gunsites. The nearly god-like status to which some people assign a spy like Valerie Plame is misplaced: she, like all excellent spies, did work that in some instances would make your blood curdle. As necessary as spycraft is to the survival of the state, as art and science it is a scythe that does not discriminate between you and anyone else considered an enemy of the state. Should it ever become the case that what you do constitutes work contrary to national security, you will know that you've been followed, profiled, tagged, tracked, and fully quantified. The only problem is that you will know it once it's too late.

The NSA cookies, persistent or session as they may be, are not the focal point of any domestic spying agenda, nor are they even the tip of the iceberg. They just aren't. To think otherwise is to stare at penguins bobbing in the water and argue about the significance of the danger they pose to the hull of the Good Ship Personal Freedom while that good ship, itself, is sinking because of the massive underwater charges that were detonated beneath it.

Regardless of how deeply flawed that last metaphor was, the point is this: if you criticize this Administration, assume that you are being profiled. Assume that the profiling goes on in your Internet travels and pleasure as well as in your real-world life. As a corollary, assume that, if you really do come to be regarded as a threat to national security, you will pay. And if you believe that the "rule of law" will ultimately win the day and that your free-speech right of protest against the government will be upheld, you might be gruesomely surprised to learn that history—not the kind in movies and fantasy novels, but in real life—has no special fondness for the good guys.

On the other hand, character-building through suffering is woefully underrated these days.

And living forever is terribly overrated.




The Dark Wraith encourages you to have a great Internet experience tonight and always.

A Christmas Card for You

Click here to read my Christmas card to you.


The Dark Wraith bids you a good journey.

Treasury Secretary Calls Clinton Budget Surplus "a Mirage"

Bloomberg reports that Secretary of the Treasury John Snow has told reporters that the federal budget surplus that marked the end of the Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton "wasn't a real surplus" and that "[President George W. Bush's] legacy will be one of having significantly reduced the deficit in his time." Snow made the stunning claim that the Clinton budget surplus was "a mirage."

The graphic below is derived from data provided by the Congressional Budget Office. The value for 2005 is as projected by the CBO. The data used do not take into account the effect of inflation because the essential character of the dynamics of the net federal budget cash flows would not change: positive numbers remain positive, and negative numbers remain negative even when they are adjusted (that is, divided) by an index. Furthermore, "adjustment" methods being used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on raw price data present certain challenges concerning the accuracy with which the consumer price index and the producer price index are reflecting actual inflation at the retail and wholesale levels, respectively. The essential results of the analysis presented below are nonetheless robust to the choice of nominal or real (i.e., inlfation-adjusted) federal budget figures.


As if gearing up to rewrite history, some neo-conservatives are now claiming that certain government tax revenues were "unusually high" in the last years of the Clinton Administration. This line was delivered by none other than a senior economist from Goldman, Sachs & Co., who was quoted in the Bloomberg article. The claim that some anomaly was behind the Clinton era budget surpluses is entirely out of line with the graphic above and the data, which clearly show not a one-time-only surplus, but a sustained, long-term fiscal discipline that started immediately upon Clinton's ascendancy to the White House and remained the regime in the nation's fiscal house until the very end. Those same numbers demonstrate the sea change that occurred when the neo-conservative policies of tax cuts and war-based fiscal stimulus became policy under George W. Bush.

To highlight the dramatic and incontrovertibly fundamental policy shift toward growth driven by massive federal budget deficits caused by tax cuts, separate linear regression trend lines can be calculated for the respective Clinton and Bush Administrations' net federal budget cash flows.

In the graphic above, the blue line indicates the trend for the Clinton Administration. It has a slope of approximately 70, which means that the federal budget was gaining a net cash inflow of about $70 billion (nominal) annually over the eight years of the Clinton Administration.

On the other hand, the green line indicates the trend for the Bush Administration. It has a slope of about —117, which means that the federal budget deficit has, under the neo-conservatives, been suffering a net outflow of $117 billion (unadjusted) annually, which is opposite to and almost twice the rate of the Clinton Administration's net federal budget trend line slope.

This is no mere "mirage," as Treasury Secretary Snow would have people believe. The trend lines are in opposite directions, and those trend lines represent the cumulative effect of sustained net cash flow changes that reflect, at one level, policy priorities and, at a deeper level the different degrees of responsibility with which two, separate administrations and their politically influential allies have carried out their duties to manage the fiscal house of the federal government of the United States.

The graphic at left below presents the 1993 to 2005 federal budget surpluses/deficits as a percentage of gross domestic product, as displayed in Table 2 at the CBO historical federal budget data Webpage (with the 2005 projected value provided in Table 1-1 at the CBO Webpage presenting current federal budget projections). Using the same trendline analysis as above (and taking into account a growth of the economy that may be fueled to some extent by creeping inflation in the projection for 2005), the numbers re-inforce those presented above: during the Clinton Administration, net federal budget cash flows grew at an annual rate of 0.90% of GDP; during the current Administration, net federal budget cash flows have been falling at an annual rate of 1.01% of GDP. Again, the trend lines are in opposite directions.

The legacy of the Presidency of George W. Bush will be other than that claimed by Treasury Secretary Snow, and his assured insistence that Mr. Bush will have "reduced the deficit" serves no other purpose than to reduce the credibility of an Administration and its supporters who have already materially demonstrated an incapacity to manage fiscal policy in a manner consistent with any reasonable metric of control, care, and responsibility.



The Dark Wraith awaits a time when the nation has leadership that does not defend its mismanagement by claiming a better President's results were a mirage.

Special Report: Feds Question Student for Requesting Book of Mao Tse-Tung Quotations

The Standard-Times of New Bedford, Massachusetts, reports that a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth student was interviewed by agents for the Department of Homeland Security based upon his interlibrary loan request for Mao Tse-Tung's The Little Red Book. The student was preparing a paper on totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, and he had planned to use the book in his research. Fearing further problems with federal law enforcement authorities, the student asked The Standard-Times to withhold his name from the news article, and his professors have similarly shielded his name, although they, themselves, have allowed their names to be put into print regarding the story.

The student said the agents told him that the book he requested was on a "watch list," and his "significant time" overseas, coupled with his request for the book, triggered the escalated level of scrutiny given to him. Provisions of the Patriot Act allow federal law enforcement authorities to compel surrender of library records based upon so-called National Security Letters, which function as extra-judicial subpoenas for documents and electronic records from libraries and other original sources of information regarding the reading, Internet surfing, and other information-gathering activities of individuals conducted at libraries. It is not clear the extent to which review of interlibrary loan requests would require such Letters.

Given that the targeted student's submission was made at a public university, the loan request likely went through one of the many such public networks that exist within the United States. Academic and other libraries participate in such interlibrary systems in order to provide patrons with broader access to literature than might be available within a given library. Many libraries, including those at the University of Massachusetts, subscribe to multiple services. The interloan library networks, generally governed by the Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States, have been a particular boon to smaller libraries without the resources to have vast collections on site and available for end users. Additionally, academic libraries—especially those at small, satellite campuses and at community colleges—can offer far greater opportunities for study, research, and general enjoyment to their students and faculty. The public nature of many of these interlibrary loan networks creates the possibility, however, that requests submitted through them are a matter of public record and are therefore open to scrutiny by law enforcement authorities without the need for either judicial or extra-judicial sanction.

Particularly troublesome, however, is the apparent ability of federal agents to survey these records and pick out information from what constitute many thousands of loan requests submitted on a daily basis.

Two broad possibilities can be conjectured. First, the Department of Homeland Security and perhaps other federal agencies simply have access to these networks, and document loan requests are being subjected to "keyword" searches that trigger "flags" based upon a "watch list" maintained by the federal law enforcement community. Second and more ominous is the possibility that requests are being fed into a database, which then applies more sophisticated analysis that includes the construction of a "threat matrix" based upon, among other criteria, the titles of literature requested, the individuals making the requests, the libraries from which requests are being made, and the types and patterns of literature that have been requested over a period of time by a given person. The fact that the student was interviewed based upon more than just the title of the book he wanted might indicate that some version of the second analysis is in use.

Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the Federal Bureau of Investigation was contacted for information or comment regarding this article. (Yeah, right. Like I'm really going to call the FBI and say, "Hello, Mr. G-Man, sir, I'd like to ask you some pointed and probative questions about just what you guys think you're doing snooping into people's interlibrary loan requests." Sure, I'll do that; and I'll let you know what I find out just as soon as I get back from the rendition trip to Romania. The Dark Wraith might be odd enough to occasionally refer to himself in the third person, but he's not stupid enough to volunteer for a session with some very bad man named Omar who lacks many teeth and wears thick rubber gloves.)

As a matter of prudence, those seeking literature through interlibrary loan networks should be aware of the risks involved. Although it is unlikely that law enforcement authorities would provide a comprehensive list of literature that could trigger an escalation of analysis by authorities, it is clear from the incident involving the University of Massachusetts student that literature about Communism or writings by Communists are within the scope of the triggers. Further reports by individuals of interviews following interlibrary loan requests might reveal other types of literature that could be on a law enforcement watch list. More broadly, it is unclear whether or not the watch list is applied only to interlibrary loan requests or if the actual purchase of books through private vendors, particularly those selling online, is subject to scrutiny, as well. The latter means of accessing literature would, of course, not be a matter of public record in the same way as would be requests posted on an interlibrary loan network; but the curious reader might want to click on the graphic at the top of this article to go to the Barne's & Noble Webpage offering a nice book of quotations by Mao Tse-Tung, arguably the most successful despot of the 20th Century. (That book of quotations, above, essentially is The Little Red Book in translation, by the way.) Should the viewing of that page or the purchase of the book through that site trigger a non-custodial interview by law enforcement authorities, it would be appreciated if the incident were reported to the author of this article. Should the review or purchase lead to a custodial interview or more serious trouble, the author will understand the lack of feedback on the matter.


The Dark Wraith awaits any information that affected readers can provide.

Special Blog Post: The Second Year

As some of you noticed, The Dark Wraith Forums passed the one-year mark on December 13, 2005. Actually, the Website existed before then, but the blog was born on that day, so it stands as the best point of reference as far as origins go.

For a time, I considered quietly and without ceremony shutting down the blog at the end of the day yesterday. It has for years been my way to slip out a back door when my task is complete, my purpose has been served, or my work is unproductive and more of a detriment than a contribution. A few days ago, I decided I wouldn't be ending this project—not now, not for some time to come. I'm not finished, not just yet, anyway. This blog will not win awards, and it will not be hailed by the mainstream media or the giant blogs; and that's all to the good: rabble-rousers and street preachers are terrible guests at dinner.

Coming up in the second year will be many things I cannot predict. Unfortunately, most of those will be disasters, but that's why humans were equipped with the ability to have unmitigated hissy-fits. As far as things predictable are concerned, here are a few of the plans:

The Dark Wraith Forums will launch an Internet radio station. It will begin as a modest effort, with little more than short news and commentary segments interspersed among long, daily feeds of really bad music that will offend the sensibilities of even the most tone-deaf listeners.

The first book based upon articles from this blog will be published. It won't be just a reprint of posts, although that will be the main meat of the thing. When you read it, you'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll walk away saying to yourself, "People actually paid money for this drivel?" If it's any comfort, no legitimate publisher would come within a mile of a blog book like mine, so the publication will go through a vanity publisher. That will spare me the degrading experience of seeing the book ranked behind The Nude Karl Rove.

The Dark Wraith Forums will remain a one-person affair. Team blogs are powerful draws because they offer readers more posts, more variety, and more content. It's just not my way to be much of a team player. However, readers will be treated to guest authors. As much as I'm a writer, I'm also a publisher. Talent merits exposure.

Other things will come, some I have in mind now, some I can't imagine. This much is certain: if you stop by here from time to time, you'll find something to read. Tonight, just a little poetry.

Comes soon the time, blacken th' sky;
     the Horsemen ride—many shall die.
Slips in the thief, blind be our eye;
     hold shut the door, hear not the cry.
Anon we pay, in blood for hate:
     to Judgment soon, no more to wait.
An age of war, no use for faith;
     'Bring forth the dark!'... so bids the Wraith.



And now begins the second year of The Dark Wraith Forums.

Analysis: A Head-Banger Primer on Tax Cuts and Job Formation

This is a repost and enhancement of a portion of the Open Forum of December 9, 2005.

As part of a tax-cut bill now subject to reconciliation with a Senate version, the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday approved legislation to extend for an additional two years the "tax relief," originally set to expire in 2008, on capital gains and dividends that Republicans had enacted in 2003 with the blessing of the Bush Administration. The capital gains and dividends tax cut extension, part of a broader package now before the Congress, will cost an estimated $21 billion dollars of which the overwhelming percentage will accrue to those making over a million dollars a year. In fact, George Yin, chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, explicitly stated to the committee that extending the tax cuts on dividends and capital gains would "benefit predominantly higher-income people." One can imagine the Republicans thinking to themselves, "Well, duh!"

The theory of this kind of tax cut—painfully simplistic and dangerously misguided as that theory is—has to do with targeting fiscal stimulus on those people whose proclivities for the use of money are the most "productive" to economic growth. Rich people, according to this theory, will not only invest the tax savings, but they will also be more willing to move capital into investments that would otherwise be subject to taxation at unacceptably high rates. The capital thus flowing into productive investments will create jobs for average Americans, who will then earn more money, pay more taxes, spend more money, and thereby stimulate the economy. Essentially then, the rich will move benefits down the economic ladder, and those benefits will spread far and wide through the economy.

This is nonsense: it is predicated on several assumptions that tail off steeply in soundness, and it is to the credit of a thundering lack of economics training by the typical journalist that this silliness is actually taken as reasonable. It doesn't take much to expose these Creationists of economics to some withering scrutiny. Sadly, that scornful and rational eye is woefully lacking in its attention to the neo-conservative think-tank lifers and their Right-wing foundation grant-gobbling cousins in academia.

Let's hit three assumptions lurking behind the trickle-down drivel.

First, this old supply-side economics grind assumes that the marginal propensity of wealthy people to invest is high. That one's not too bad; but it makes facile use of the term "invest," and that's where the assumptive train starts down the long, greasy track to problems.

Second, trickle-down assumes that the investments the wealthy make will be primary capital investments. Just going out and buying stock is not an investment in the plant and equipment of a company; instead, it is an exercise in buying a security from someone else who's trying to unload it. Only if the money goes into a public or private offering of common stock, into a loan to a company (usually through the purchase of a bond the company is selling), or through some other investment vehicle by which a job-producing company then has more capital will the investment make business capable of offering new jobs on balance. Just throwing money "into the stock market" isn't going to create any jobs, much less will it induce broad economic activity to drive incomes up resulting in greater tax revenues flowing to the government. At best, wealthy people throwing money into the stock market will keep some stockbrokers current on their house payments and hypertension medications.

The supply-side chain of events that ends with federal tax revenues actually rising because of the economic stimulus of tax cuts was given diplomatic but roundly negative treatment by none other than the Congressional Budget Office as recently as late 2002 in the CBO document "Capital Gains Taxes and Federal Revenues". Not surprisingly, the soaring federal deficits since then, attended as they have been by round after round of tax cuts, are themselves a testament to the failure of the supply-side economics predictions that lowering tax rates would increase federal tax revenues. The Congressional Budget Office told Congress this, and Congress elected to ignore the analysis of its own, objective, professional analysts.

Now, even if an investor is putting money into primary capital market instruments, he or she could be providing funds to something other than a business enterprise. There are literally tens of thousand of government or quasi-government entities desperately howling for money: school districts that need to build new warehouses to minimally educate kids, municipalities suckered into thinking that a sports arena will really cause an inner-city Renaissance, and government-protected, corrupt, non-transparent mortgage re-sellers are but a few broad examples. But the biggest vacuum cleaner of available investment capital is the United States Treasury, which is sucking up money like it's going out of style from every corner of the Earth.

And the absurd part about capital invested in Treasury bills, notes, and bonds is that all the money flowing into the coffers of the federal government is simply replacing revenues the government has surrendered via tax cuts! And as the government goes deeper and deeper into debt, its appetite for money drives rational market participants to pump up the interest rates the government will have to pay. Uncle Sam will always pay whatever interest rate is necessary to obtain required funds, which means that, if businesses want to attract capital, they have to push the interest rates up that they're willing to pay. This makes it more and more painful for businesses to attract investors, and it drives businesses to abandon all projects but those that can clear a progressively higher hurdle rate for return on investment. Worse still, as the federal debt piles up, the service of it (the interest it must pay) becomes more and more onerous, thereby forcing the government to borrow at an accelerating rate to pay the interest on money it has borrowed in previous periods.

That spiral is, of course, exacerbated by further tax cuts that starve the government of even more tax revenues, which are the alternative to cash inflows from borrowed funds. Fortunately, a prudent government could cut spending, and the House of Representative—may God bless its responsible Members—is doing that to some extent. No, the black hole of endless and unproductive war will continue unabated; but the lower chamber of the federal legislature has approved spending cuts of as much as $50 billion, these savings to be made largely in programs like food stamps and other aid to poor families. Who says those Congressmen aren't responsible little heathen?

Returning to the assumptions underlying the theory of tax cuts for the rich, there's a third one, and it's a doozy, but it's a little more complex. Brace yourself, Hazel, we're taking the cargo elevator.

Even if an investor makes available to a corporation money by which the company can expand its operations, there is no reason to believe that such expansion will, in some lock-step fashion, create jobs; and in particular, there is no reason to believe that the expansion of production facilities will create jobs at living wages, or even that the jobs created will be offered in the United States. The extent to which labor is hired as production increases has to do with the relative scarcities of various factors of production, the production technology employed, the ability of the enterprise to locate the production facilities next to factors of production that give the most efficient (that is, the minimum-cost) factor mix, and numerous other considerations. Simply waiving a hand and claiming that money flowing to corporations creates "jobs" is baloney. The questions are actually pretty simple: how many jobs? at what wage rates? where? for how long? and to the detriment of what opportunities foregone by the placement of the capital where it has decided to land for the maximum return on investment?

What does all this mean? Clearly, it means that the Dark Wraith is the indispensible guide to learning why Right-wing and assorted other neo-cons who have come to befart our world are twits. They rely on appealing, simplistic declarations that the mainstream media cannot fathom as deeply flawed.

The bottom line is this: stick with the Dark Wraith, and you'll know a lot that you wouldn't have known otherwise. We're all still going to Hell: the greedy, corrupt, amateurish, war-mongering nerds of neo-conservative nonsense are resolutely at the helm of the Good Ship Iceberg Bait; but if you keep reading economics articles posted by the Dark Wraith, at least you'll understand that the sudden collision with the giant chunk of ice isn't the Happy Hour call for chilled margaritas.

Yes, good readers, we shall all go down with this economic ship, despite the spigot of Federal Reserve money pouring in at the top of the food chain to keep the deck chairs dry. And once the mixing of metaphors gives way to the inevitable sound of band instruments impersonating bubble machines, you'll know exactly what happened and why it happened.

Sadly, unlike during the Crash of '29 and the following depression, the rich won't go down with this ship. The capital markets have too many lifeboats for any but the stupidest of the wealthy to get nailed this time. But if it's any comfort to you, they'll still be a little sore at the neo-cons for inconveniencing them with a recession that'll make people want to elect unrepentent Democrats and assorted Socialists. Elections are getting so expensive to rig these days.


The Dark Wraith has brought some cheer to an otherwise dull and listless weekend.

The Written Peace: Open Forum of December 9, 2005

Consider this a page insert to allow your host to make some notes and offer a few disconnected items. It is also a forum where you as readers may write comments as you see fit on whatever topics strike you as worthy of an audience.

First, if I haven't made the point for a while, I should now make it again. I do appeciate the level of commentary here at The Dark Wraith Forums. The article just previous to this Open Forum once again provided fertile ground for a discussion not ordinarily found in blog comments.

Enough said about the amazing groups that graces this all-night diner on the outskirts of nowhere.

You might have noticed down in the sidebar that there is now a robust column of advertisements. Yes, The Dark Wraith Forums has become rather the haven for capitalistic efforts. Since the advertisers occasionally pass through to ensure that their decision to be presented here was wise, I shall take this opportunity to thank them. The list is complete, save for one that has not yet completed its review. I am hopeful that the readers here will find a reason to click on one or more of the ads from time to time; and I am even more hopeful that the readers here find the choice of sponsors in good taste. Click on the ads: the companies are worthy, considering as first evidence that they found this blog meritorious of their approval.

A few blog mentions are in order. The blog American Regression is now gone. It took me awhile, but I finally tracked Gary down to his new blog, American Agenda.

A new commenter here, Progressive Traditionalist, has a blog called The Anti-Fascist. It's not merely a good read; it's a very good read.

You will note some other additions over in The Dark Wraith BlogRing. Journalist Rory O'Connor is now cross-rolling with The Dark Wraith Forums; his blog is called Media is a Plural, and he publishes exhaustive articles, often on subjects like Able Danger, which is one of my favorite little percolating footnotes in the weirdness of our time.

Another new entry is fatcat politics, which is like a treasure trove of online, progressive resources.

Other new entries include the ethereal and off-the-usual-trail blog, The Moon's Favors. It has a good color scheme, too: rather on the darker side.

You should also have a look at Debsweb. Follow it for a while, and you'll notice that the blogger, Debra, does more than just echo bigger blogs.

Also new since my last mention of blogs is The Fulcrum, apparently known to others here long before I became familiar with its author, Charles Perez.

And finally, I keep meaning to mention Eric Hopp's news and politics blog, Oh Well: A Commentary. He has begun to offer comments here, and I should hope that he'll continue to do so from time to time.

Speaking of commenters, the regular from BlondeSense named "Terrible" has finally posted here, and that's good news. A few other new names have appeared since last I welcomed people, including Donviti and Isabelita.

Finally, I need to direct a special note of gratitude to the blondes at BlondeSense, who are always gracious when I wander over there to post some comments. (There are a few places these days where my comments earn me rather uncomfortable silence from the crowd. Go figure that.) The hit meter has been spinning here at an increasing rate recently, and that is in no small part due to links Peter of Lone Tree has offered from BlondeSense. This does not, however, mean that Peter will be exempt from facing my latest, upcoming challenge, designed to get the attention of a certain Right-wing lunatic who vowed an enemies list that has yet to include any decent blogs. We'll see if my newest attention-getter garners any volunteers (gentlemen, are you listening?); and then we'll see if the Right-wing whacko to which I alluded above can ignore the Google-bait strangeness. (No, the challenge will not start right away: didn't you notice that I'm waiting for a reputable, prospective advertiser to finish reviewing this Website, for cryin' out loud?)

And, yes, I know I'm going to regret this challenge once it's too late to withdraw it.


In other news, the U.S. House of Representatives today approved legislation to extend tax relief on capital gains and dividends. That portion of the overall tax cut giveaway to the rich will cost an estimated $21 billion dollars of which the overwhelming percentage will be realized by those making over a million dollars a year.

The theory of this kind of tax cut, painfully simplistic and dangerously misguided as that theory is, has to do with targeting fiscal stimulus on those people whose proclivities for the use of money are the most "productive" to economic growth. Rich people, according to this theory, will use the money not taxed to invest, which will create jobs for average Americans, who will then earn more money, pay more taxes, and be more productive as citizens.

As I have noted in comment threads before, this is nonsense: it is predicated on several assumptions that tail off steeply in soundness. First, the old supply-side economics grind assumes that the marginal propensity of wealthy people to invest is high. That one's not too bad.

Second, it assumes that the investments they make will be primary capital investments. Just going out and buying stock is not an investment in the plant and equipment of a company; instead, it is an exercise in buying a security from someone else who's trying to unload it. Only if the money goes into a public or private offering of common stock, into a loan to a company (usually through the purchase of a bond the company is selling), or through some other investment vehicle by which a job-producing company then has more capital will the investment make business capable of offering new jobs on balance.

Otherwise, an investor could lend the money to a government or quasi-government entity, the biggest vacuum cleaner of which is the United States Treasury. But in that case, the money is simply going to replace revenues the government is surrendering via the tax cut anyway! And as the government goes deeper and deeper into debt, its appetite for money drives rational market participants to pump up the interest rates the government will have to pay. Uncle Sam will always pay whatever interest rate necessary to obtained required funds, which means that all interest rates go up, making it more and more painful for businesses to attract investors. Worse still, as the federal debt piles up, the service of it (the interest it must pay) becomes more and more onerous, thereby forcing the government to borrow at an accelerating rate to pay the interest on money it has borrowed in previous periods. And that spiral is exacerbated by a tax cut that starves the government of tax revenues, which are the alternative to cash inflows from borrowed funds. Of course, the government could cut spending, and the House of Representative, may God bless its responsible Members, is doing that to some extent. No, the black hole of endless and unproductive war will continue unabated; but the lower chamber of the federal legislature has approved spending cuts of about $45 billion, these savings to be made largely in programs like food stamps and other aid to poor families.

Returning to the assumptions underlying the theory of tax cuts for the rich, the third is the kicker, and it's a little more complex. Even if an investor makes available to a corporation money by which the company can expand its operations, there is no reason to believe that such expansion will, in some lock-step fashion, create jobs; and in particular, there is no reason to believe that the expansion of production facilities will create jobs at living wages, or that the jobs created will be offered in the United States. The extent to which labor is hired as production increases has to do with the relative scarcities of various factors of production, the production technology employed, the ability of the enterprise to locate the production facilities next to factors of production that give the most efficient (that is, the minimum-cost) factor mix, and numerous other considerations. Simply waiving a hand and claiming that money flowing to corporations creates "jobs" is nonsense. The questions are simple: how many jobs? at what wage rates? where? for how long? and to the detriment of what opportunities foregone by the placement of the capital where it has decided to land for the maximum return on investment?

What does all this mean? Clearly, it means that The Dark Wraith Forums is the indispensible guide to learning why Right-wing and assorted other neo-cons who have come to befart our world are twits. They rely on appealing, simplistic declarations that the mainstream media cannot fathom as deeply flawed.

The bottom line is this: read The Dark Wraith Forums, and you'll be better informed. You won't be any better off in any material sense, of course. We're still going to Hell in a handbasket woven by amateurish, war-mongering, corrupt fools; but at least you'll understand the physical dynamics as the rollercoaster careens down the shaft into the bowels of Hades, where awaits us the final and momentous encounter with the very nexus, itself, of evil. That's right: we're headed to the strategic planning room of the Republican National Committee.



The Dark Wraith wishes the road ahead weren't so inevitable.

Special Analysis: I Am Become Battle, How White Be My Tears

A generation and several of my lifetimes ago, becoming a soldier was for me supposed to be the turning point into manhood. I would be able to stand proudly before relatives who thought me weak, I would be able to crush those who had hurt me when I was a boy. Never again would I be a child: the military would make me a giant.

The wait at the disembarkation center went on for hours and hours, but the training would soon start. A bus would take us all to the place where good, strong men would show us all how to be good, strong men. They would teach us. They would be stern, but they would help us learn the ways of bravery, honor, and manliness. Those sergeants would be good to us, and their lessons would be good for us. The recruiter told me I'd do fine.

The bus driver talked with a corporal as we went down the road from the center to the base. Every now and then, that corporal would make some oblique comment back to us about how we were about to "get it," or something like that. He and the bus driver would start laughing almost hysterically.

After we went through the base gates, the bus driver pulled up to a group of uniformed men wearing big, Smokey-the-Bear type of hats. As soon as the bus stopped, the world changed. All at once, the door opened, the corporal stood up and started screaming at us, and what seemed like every one of those men who had been waiting for us suddenly boarded the bus yelling and cursing.

"Get your fuckin' gear and get off this bus NOW!"
"What th' fuck are you waiting for, little girl?!"
"Move yer ass, you fairy!"

We climbed off the bus as fast as we could, and more of those violent men were waiting for us down below, screaming, yelling, swearing.

"Where are you going, you piece of shit?! Did I tell you to go somewhere?!! Get down and knock me out twenty RIGHT NOW!"
"What th' fuck are you lookin' at, asshole?!" Get down and knock me out twenty!"

It made no sense. People were on the ground doing push-ups, other people were running nowhere because no one had told them where to run.

"You have walked the last step of your sorry-ass life, trainee!"
"I can't hear you counting! Start again!"

YES SIR!
"Don't you DARE call me 'Sir', you dumbass. You say 'ONE, Drill Sergeant; TWO, Drill Sergeant'; like THAT. Think your little cunt can handle it?"
"Where the fuck do you think you're going?! You don't go ANYWHERE, you don't do ANYTHING, unless I TELL YOU TO... YOU GOT THAT, MUTHERFUCKER?!"

Different drill sergeants were screaming different orders. Trainees were falling over each other. Some were crying hysterically.

"Aw, look at them tears comin' down. You wanna go home, now? WELL, YOU AIN'T. Your mutherfuckin' ass is MINE!"

ONE, DRILL SERGEANT... TWO, DRILL SERGEANT... THREE, DRILL SERGEANT...
"Yer gonna be one strong-ass trainee when I'm finished with you."
"What the fuck are you lookin' at?! You don't look at me, you fuckin' queer!"
"DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DISOBEY A DIRECT ORDER, BOY?"

"Is your name 'Tinkerbell'?!"
NO, DRILL SERGEANT.
"DON'T YOU FUCKIN' SAY NO T' ME, you piece-a-shit. If I tell you yer fuckin' name's 'Tinkerbell', that's yer name, Tinkerbell! An' that's gonna be yer name from now on!!"

Trainees stopped looking at anything. No one wanted to see someone being shaken by the lapels, no one wanted to see another guy crying, no one wanted to be there anymore.

It made no sense. None whatsoever. The madness, the confusion. They were all screaming different things at us. There was no ordering of the world in this place; it was just insanity stirred to bizarre proportions by men who had absolutely no self-control, who wanted to hurt us, who were hurting us.

And it didn't let up. As fast as we could run, they were right there at our sides screaming and yelling. It was coming from all directions. They got right in our way, and if we tripped and fell down, we got kicked violently by everyone else trying to keep moving forward.

Sounds all around us. Yelling voices, ear-piercing whistles, feet pounding the ground, men gasping for air, choking, vomiting, crying, sobbing.

It didn't make sense. It was madness. And it kept going on. One minute, there'd be no one around; then, all of a sudden, they'd all be there screaming and cursing, ordering us to do something. Standing in lines, the drill sergeants would suddenly be all around: two would gang up on one trainee, screaming at him in both ears, then punishing him for not obeying.

Tear gas training: trying to deal with putting a mask on, getting screamed at, snot and tears pouring out, ear-shattering whistles, more yelling, stumbling, coughing, puking.

Smoke: sounds coming from every direction and from nowhere, threats coming from everywhere, something to do that didn't matter because everything was madness.

Explosions, gunfire: thuds and pops. Ears deafened, nostrils burning, eyes welling up with tears, body aching, skin itching like fire from sweat and dust.

Then, nothing.

Then, more madness. Then nothing.

Then more insanity.

More chaos.

Not training. Learning.

I become acclimated to the confusion; I start to revel in it; I come to be a part of it.

The sounds, the smells, the blinding lights, the pain, the degradation: none of it matters. Neither do I, as long as I do what I'm supposed to; and that's a good thing. My senses, my feelings—my very life—are irrelevant. All that matters is the task before me.



A generation and half a world away was a sprawling place called Fallujah, where lived people: men, women, kids, pets, birds, rodents, and a scattering of armed boy-men and their inspirational leaders. The thugs sort of had their way, occasionally brandishing old AK-47s they fired every now and then. The extent of their training was the harangue of their religious mentors and senior thugs, themselves perhaps seasoned to combat to the extent of hit-and-run operations they had survived in low-level conflict with an army of occupation. No really formal, widespread, intense, sustained training. Not much theory—just action... a lot of fervent belief... more than a little swagger borne of youth's sense of immortality, not just in the after-life, but in the here and now, too.

The battlefield is not three dimensions. Width, breadth, and height are only the most primitive of the axes of warspace. A battlefield is a large clutch of dimensions waiting to be opened, prepared for exploitation, availed of management.

The sonic dimension is a vast drum waiting to be pounded rhythmically, each pulse stunning the ears, confusing the mind. The thermal dimension is an oven waiting to be turned on, crackling the skin, confusing the mind. The shockwave dimension is an ocean of air ready to articulate concussive force through a body as if it were a thin curtain. The emotional dimension is a chessboard waiting for a master to play the fool into a corner of rage, confusing the mind.

The inventory of weapons is a list of fingers, each tuned to stroke one or more dimensions of that zone, each geared to construct a field ripe with enemy combatants ready to be killed.

The battle begins as a symphony of harmonics, with each dimension suddenly, violently revealing itself to the enemy. The dimensions curl down over his world, compressing it into an ever tightening sensorial experience for which he has no response save panic.

Artillery shells rip into houses and buildings, sweeping them into smoke and raining rubble. The smoke fills the air and burns the eyes. Small arms fire makes ZIP-ZIP-ZIP sounds. Snarling aircraft spit bright little stars that race to the ground and wreck the Earth. Blinding flashes crash through the retinae, mind-numbing explosions excavate the ground and obliterate more houses. Debris makes even the simple dimensions of width and breadth treacherous. Below trees and in the streets lie dead birds, killed by shock waves where they had been perched before they could take flight.

Screaming. Horrified screaming. Bullets and shrapnel make people scream. Kids bawl, old women wail. People hit by pieces of metal howl, sometimes uncontrollably. They run, they lie down, they writhe, they bleed to death. Usually, they get quiet pretty soon.

It's important, that screaming. In blinding smoke, it adds a mind-wrenching overtone in the repertoire of the sonic dimension. But bullets and shrapnel aren't as good as some other fingers to stroke that high note of horror.

To make smoke is one thing; to make it with white phosphorous is quite something else. Chemicals land on the skin like globs and bits of molten plastic, sinking in, making the skin bubble. Try to wipe it away, and the hands turn into raging pain, too. The flesh becomes something that falls away in smoke, ash, and chemical residue. The pain can't be stopped: it goes in, through, and out. White phosphorous kills; but far more importantly, it maims. Killing the enemy does not confuse his battlefield nearly as much as maiming combatants and civilians alike because it is those morbid wounds that cause people to become screaming, disruptive, insistent, shrieking, enraging, horrifying deterrents to the enemy's sense of order.

Maiming is a battlefield management tool.

Women holding pieces of their children run hysterically at you, past you, in front of you. Like you're supposed to do something. Touch one of those human tragedies, and you turn into a screaming, useless statistic, too.

A dog runs by making ungodly sounds, half of his hind quarter nothing but a charred bone. Kids screaming from somewhere in the smoke. Some old woman bawling prayer that doesn't even sound right. Part of her face might be gone.

Civilians, combatants, animals, all of them blisters, black ash, bones showing, red and purple, naked skin parading around all of those other dimensions of confusion.

Shrieks and quiet alternate; thuds, unearthly snarls, and dead calm dance in the tiny place left of you.

The smell of burnt human flesh wafts with the smell of smoldering wood and flaming gasoline.

Some places, the dead are charred bodies; other places, they're pieces smeared in pools and congealing streams of blood.

As the battle rages into the night, the stillness plays to the hand of chaos. Someone walks by, oblivious in his shock. The POP-POP-POP up ahead ends his misery. The sickening smell of burning flesh becomes the putrid pall of rotting corpses. Trucks drive wildly through the streets. Maybe a woman on the passenger side is holding something against her chest.

The BOOM a few minutes later might be that truck getting obliterated by a stand-off weapon.

They can see you at night. If you move around, you die. Trying to put together an improvised explosive device on a road might end with your head splattered away by a sniper.

The walls that were once houses are chambers of moans and prayers. Women kneel, rocking slowly, almost absently, before their little piles of bodies. Men and animals lie waiting for ambulances or other vehicles to take them somewhere that's probably going to get bombed anyway. Pops and whumps occasionally pepper the sonic landscape. When you can, you rig a body. Better still, you rig a wounded fellow combatant who's still alive: he says nothing as you lay him back down on the trigger that will set off the explosion when they come and kick him over.

You try your best to become part of the confusion; but you're not capable of creating the sustained chain that turns confusion into chaos. You just can't do that part. You don't have the training.

Burning straw and grass were used a long time ago; then it was burning oil. Eventually, chlorine gas would come along, as well as other chemicals: VX and other "nerve" agents. But the incendiary stuff is always the best. Magnesium doesn't go out, even if a victim jumps in the water. The jellies came along, and they were super. Napalm was outstanding, if somewhat unidimensional. White phosphorous is better: it's slower, it makes smoke and light as it rends flesh and bone. It builds confusion with every injury it has wrought.

We who use such weapons are acclimated to confusion; we revel in it; we are a part of it.

As we endow the arena of our enemies with confusion, we deliver to them a battlefield of chaos over which they have no control, for which they have no training, upon which they have no hope of domination. They are just unwelcome visitors to our home, temporary intruders in our world. We are not the instrument of chaos; we are chaos.

And as we are chaos, we are more than just the owners of the battlefield: we are the battlefield.




The Dark Wraith has offered his perspective.