j_b

April 5, 2004 A Heretical View of File Sharing By JOHN SCHWARTZ The music industry says it repeatedly, with passion and conviction: downloading hurts sales. That statement is at the heart of the war on file sharing, both of music and movies, and underpins lawsuits against thousands of music fans, as well as legislation approved last week by a House Judiciary subcommittee that would create federal penalties for using what is known as peer-to-peer technology to download copyrighted works. It is also part of the reason that the Justice Department introduced an intellectual-property task force last week that plans to step up criminal prosecutions of copyright infringers. But what if the industry is wrong, and file sharing is not hurting record sales? It might seem counterintuitive, but that is the conclusion reached by two economists who released a draft last week of the first study that makes a rigorous economic comparison of directly observed activity on file-sharing networks and music buying. "Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates," write its authors, Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School and Koleman S. Strumpf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The industry has reacted with the kind of flustered consternation that the White House might display if Richard A. Clarke showed up at a Rose Garden tea party. Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America sent out three versions of a six-page response to the study. The problem with the industry view, Professors Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf say, is that it is not supported by solid evidence. Previous studies have failed because they tend to depend on surveys, and the authors contend that surveys of illegal activity are not trustworthy. "Those who agree to have their Internet behavior discussed or monitored are unlikely to be representative of all Internet users," the authors wrote. Instead, they analyzed the direct data of music downloaders over a 17-week period in the fall of 2002, and compared that activity with actual music purchases during that time. Using complex mathematical formulas, they determined that spikes in downloading had almost no discernible effect on sales. Even under their worst-case example, "it would take 5,000 downloads to reduce the sales of an album by one copy," they wrote. "After annualizing, this would imply a yearly sales loss of two million albums, which is virtually rounding error" given that 803 million records were sold in 2002. Sales dropped by 139 million albums from 2000 to 2002. "While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing," the professors wrote. In an interview, Professor Oberholzer-Gee said that previous research assumed that every download could be thought of as a lost sale. In fact, he said, most downloaders were drawn to free music and were unlikely to spend $18 on a CD. "Say I offer you a free flight to Florida," he asks. "How likely is it that you will go to Florida? It is very likely, because the price is free." If there were no free ticket, that trip to Florida would be much less likely, he said. Similarly, free music might draw all kinds of people, but "it doesn't mean that these people would buy CD's at $18," he said. The most popular albums bought are also the most popular downloads, so the researchers looked for anomalous rises in downloading activity that they might compare to sales activity. They found one such spike, Professor Oberholzer-Gee said, during a German school holiday that occurred during the time they studied. Germany is second to the United States in making files available for downloading, supplying about 15 percent of online music files, he said. During the vacation, students who were home with time on their hands flooded the Internet with new files, which in turn spurred new downloading activity. The researchers then looked for any possible impact in the subsequent weeks on sales of CD's. Professor Oberholzer said that he had expected to find that downloading resulted in some harm to the industry, and was startled when he first ran the numbers in the spring of 2003. "I called Koleman and said, 'Something is not quite right - there seems to be no effect between file sharing and sales.' " Amy Weiss, an industry spokeswoman, expressed incredulity at what she deemed an "incomprehensible" study, and she ridiculed the notion that a relatively small sample of downloads could shed light on the universe of activity. The industry response, titled "Downloading Hurts Sales," concludes: "If file sharing has no negative impact on the purchasing patterns of the top selling records, how do you account for the fact that, according to SoundScan, the decrease of Top 10 selling albums in each of the last four years is: 2000, 60 million units; 2001, 40 million units; 2002, 34 million units; 2003, 33 million units?" Critics of the industry's stance have long suggested that other factors might be contributing to the drop in sales, including a slow economy, fewer new releases and a consolidation of radio networks that has resulted in less variety on the airwaves. Some market experts have also suggested that record sales in the 1990's might have been abnormally high as people bought CD's to replace their vinyl record collections. "The single-bullet theory employed by the R.I.A.A. has always been considered by anyone with even a modicum of economic knowledge to be pretty ambitious as spin," said Joe Fleischer, the head of sales and marketing for BigChampagne, a company that tracks music downloads and is used by some record companies to measure the popularity of songs for marketing purposes. The industry response stresses that the new study has not gone through the process of peer review. But the response cites refuting statistics and analysis, much of it prepared by market research consultants, that also have not gone through peer review. One consultant, Russ Crupnick, vice president of the NPD Group, called the report "absolutely astounding." Asked to explain how the professors' analysis might be mistaken, he said he was still trying to understand the complex document: "I am not the level of mathematician that the professors purport to be." Stan Liebowitz of the University of Texas at Dallas, author of an essay cited by the industry, said the use of a German holiday to judge American behavior was strained. Professor Liebowitz argued in a paper in 2002 that file sharing did not affect music sales, but said he had since changed his mind. The Liebowitz essay appeared in an economics journal edited by Gary D. Libecap, a professor of economics at the University of Arizona, who said that his publication was not peer reviewed, though the articles in it were often based on peer-reviewed work. Professor Libecap said he attended a presentation by Professor Strumpf last week, and said the file-sharing study "looks really good to me." "This was really careful, empirical work," Professor Libecap said. The author of another report recommended by the industry said that the two sets of data used by the researchers should not be compared. "They can't get to that using the two sets of data they are using - they aren't tracking individual behavior," said Jayne Charneski, formerly of Edison Media Research, who prepared a report last June that she said showed that 7 percent of the marketplace consists of people who download music and do not buy it. That number is far lower than the authors of the new study estimated. "There's a lot of research out there that's conducted with an agenda in mind," said Ms. Charneski, now the head of research for the record label EMI. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/technology/05music.html?amp;ei=5062&en=4e24671a9d56027c&partner=GOOGLE&ex=1081742400&pagewanted=print&position=

sure let's ignore the tax rate for the richest men in america then you can declare whatever you want about the tax system then you can trend the data whichever way you want too, and show us a positive slope while you ignore that the top 1% has a rate 4% lower than it did in 1979, which is a greater decrease than for anybody else. and ignore as well that said tax rate has been decreasing since 1995. also note that the positive slope for the years in between is an artifact due to the tax policies of your personal hero (reagan). it is interesting you did not plot the lower quintiles (i can't see the plots btw), then everyone would have seen that reagan lowered taxes for the wealthy only (in fact, effective tax for the lowest quintile increased during the reagan years) in other words you are compartimentalizing data sets because it suits your argument. to argue that the tax system is more progressive not only do you misrepresent the cbo data but you don't consider local and state taxes. wow, how clever.

i am neither confused nor being an obscurantist. i wasn't discussing the seattle times article but rather your claim that "the progresssive nature of our tax system has in fact increased". i'll repeat again that the cbo data alone is insufficient to address this claim because it also needs to be subdivided to see what's going on within the upper 1% (johnston says that everyone but the uber rich is getting screwed)). still, the cbo data shows that the upper 1% had the largest decrease in total federal tax rate of all percentiles which hardly shows that the tax system is now more progressive. moreover, pp contradicts himself since he now says there is evidence we are now close to a flat tax system. how could a flat tax system be progressive? whether pp was discussing 25 or 30 years worth of data is mostly irrelevant to this discussion.

PP conveniently ignore the salient points: a) the real income of the lower quintiles have at best remained steady over the last 30 years (according to several serious studies it appears to have actually decreased by 7%) while the income of the top 0.01% has increased 600% percent (these numbers don't include capital gains so imagine the real increase). b) meanwhile according to cbo data the total effective tax rate has decreased less for every percentile than the top 1%. How can pp say taxes are now more progressive than 30 years ago? thus the main point made by johnston (article pasted in this thread: click here ) is when looking at subdivisions of the upper 1%, and especially the upper 0.01%, which cannot be observed from the cbo data linked to by pp. another salient point is that the cbo numbers do not include all excise taxes which are often by definition not progressive. also note, the cogent argument made by pp: "typical bs". how can you argue against that? huh? anyhow, here is part 2: "perfectly legal " interview

cutting through the rhetoric of tax "relief"

can you actually read? it's not readily obvious you know. "These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing"

an interview with the translator mentioned by chuck. worth reading. why isn't this in the major media? http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/31/1616221 i am not sure why speculating that someone deliberatly ignored the terror threat is necessary. bush a) ignoring the terror threat to pursue his agenda and b) using 911 to push through his agenda is a much more likely explanation.

i did not know what to make of that comment. the parenthesis following the sentence could indicate he does not believe it himself?

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P76794.asp

fw: 2 pages worth of posts and this is all you found to say? on another note, you are either a very slow learner or clueless; in my experience, most people learn rather quickly how to avoid embarrassment ...

alright! give it time to heal properly, the mountains are not going anywhere.

tele_nut's professional expertise is practical security. he may have opinions about other topics but a) he has no known proven record in dealing with these topics, and b) he is a direct participant to events in iraq and his opinion should be considered in that light. as such his testimony is no more than a data point in the entire set necessary to form an idea of the iraqi situation. how much weight you want to give his opinion is a personal choice that is hopefully based on objective considerations but don't expect everyone to follow suit.

that's rich coming from you war is peace, dude! what is clear is that you can't support your initial statement.

amy goodman refers to 2 articles published a few days ago in the independent: Britain's secret army in Iraq: thousands of armed security men who answer to nobody and Occupiers spend millions on private army of security men

drop the tar and feathers dude. both your capacity of observation and your reading comprehension are letting you down. a) the introduction to the link is straight off the democracy now website and b) nowhere in said intro does anyone describes tele_nut as a mercenary (you don't think they personally know tele_nut, do you?). the interesting part though is that you make that connection. hm ...

Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk reports live from Baghdad. Fisk describes the "grotesque, gruesome, terrible" attacks in Fallujah, the contracted mercenaries that have infiltrated Iraq: "They swagger in and out with heavy weapons, with automatic weapons and pistols as if they're cowboys" and the deteriorating situation throughout the country: "The violence and the insecurity, the sense of anarchy is greater." http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/31/1616230

go to icy bay and paddle/hike for a week.

hm ... i am not sure i understand. for the purpose of income comparison over time, the numbers are expressed in year 2000 dollars which means that inflation is accounted for. in turn, over the long term, inflation is the evolution of the cost of the cpi basket.

From the CBO study: "... CBO does, however, include in its measure of household income realized capital gains reported on individual income tax returns, but it does not adjust those gains for inflation because of limitations in the data." neither studies mentioned in the nyt article (cbpp's and the one by the National Bureau of Economic Research, aka Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez's) are cbo studies. however they appear to be partially based on cbo data. the piketty and saez paper is not available for free however the appendices are (http://www.nber.org/data-appendix/w8467/w8467-app.pdf). you'll note that the timelines of income shares are based on table A1. the income shares in table A1 do not include capital gain. moreover, here is paul krugman's comment on the piketty and saez study: "According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez--confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget Office--between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. (Those numbers exclude capital gains, so they're not an artifact of the stock-market bubble.)" http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040105&s=krugman

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994831 Net music piracy 'does not harm record sales' 18:28 30 March 04 NewScientist.com news service Internet music piracy is not responsible for declining CD sales, claim the researchers behind a major new statistical study. Felix Oberholzer-Gee at Harvard Business School in Massachusetts and Koleman Strumpf at the University of North Carolina tracked millions of music files downloaded through the OpenNap file-trading network and compared them with CD sales of the same music. [...] The most heavily downloaded songs showed no decrease in CD sales as a result of increasing downloads. In fact, albums that sold more than 600,000 copies during this period appeared to sell better when downloaded more heavily. [...]

will: the mentioned study is based on after tax income, which does not include capital gain, so your comment about the 90's bull market does not really apply. some items are indeed cheaper but others such as housing and social security are a lot more expensive today. jjd: data used for the study is cbo data and census data. this is what the cbpp has to say about census data: "Conclusions about changes in income disparities should not be based on Census data alone, as the Census data miss substantial amounts of income received by people at the top of the income scale. For example, the Census data do not include capital gains income, a large source of income for high-income individuals. IRS data show that in 1998, some 72 percent of capital gains income went to the 1.7 percent of tax filers with the highest incomes, those with adjusted gross incomes exceeding $200,000. In addition, the Census Bureau places an upper limit on the amount of certain types of income counted for any individual, regardless of that individual's actual income. The highest salary that the Census Bureau records is $999,999. An individual with a salary of $10 million is recorded as earning $999,999. (This is done to preserve confidentiality.) Finally, the Census data are based on a voluntary survey of approximately 50,000 households. Since those with very high incomes are a very small portion of the population, the Census survey does not pick up many of these households. Better data on income disparities are compiled by the Congressional Budget Office. These data are contained in a major CBO study published in May. (Historical Effective Tax Rates, 1979-1997, Congressional Budget Office, May 2001.) CBO combines the Census data with data from actual tax returns that the Internal Revenue Service compiles and produces a data series that makes use of the best features of both data sources." thus, the study concludes that the after tax income of the lowest earners fell over the last 30 years, despite what census data says.

sobering: perfectly legal sorry for the long post but here is the complete article for the people who don't want to register. 'Perfectly Legal' By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON Published: February 1, 2004 n 1977, the richest 1 percent of Americans had as much to spend after taxes as the bottom 49 million. Just 22 years later, in 1999, the richest 1 percent-about 2.7 million people-had as much as the bottom 100 million Americans. Few figures derived from the official government data on incomes present more starkly the growing chasm between the rising incomes at the top and the falling incomes at the bottom. Those in the top 1 percent saw their average income, adjusted for inflation to 1999 dollars and after income taxes were paid, more than double from $234,700 in 1977 to $515,600 in 1999. Meanwhile, the 55 million Americans in the poorest fifth of the population lived in households whose average income fell from $10,000 in 1977 to $8,800 in 1999. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal group that advocates for the poor, calculated these figures from the sophisticated income data that the Congressional Budget Office began collecting in 1977. Studies by other economic research and advocacy organizations made similar findings using other official data. Across the political spectrum, economists found the same basic trend: the rich really are getting richer and the poor really are getting poorer. Looking more closely at the top fifth gives a hint as to how incomes were changing in the last three decades of the twentieth century. Think of a ladder with 100 rungs. The poorest person in America stands at the bottom and the person with the biggest income stands at the top, with everyone else taking their place on the rungs in between. Between 1973 and 2001, those whose income ranked them above 80 percent of Americans but below the richest 5 percent-those on the eightieth up to the ninety-fifth rungs-saw their share of national income rise almost imperceptibly. The Bureau of the Census calculated that in 2001 they earned 27.7 percent of all income, up from 27 percent in 1973. The top 5 percent did much better. Their share of the national income grew by more than a third, from 16.6 percent to 22.4 percent. There is the suggestion of a pattern here, of those at the top of the ladder having so much added income that it is reinforcing their position, holding the middle class in place and squeezing those at the bottom, whose incomes were falling. While the Bureau of the Census did not break the numbers down further, many others did. The National Bureau of Economic Research, the nonprofit organization that makes the official decisions about whether the country is in recession or expansion, published the most extensive analysis. The bureau's president is Martin A. Feldstein, the Harvard University economics professor who was President Ronald Reagan's chief economics adviser. He is a leading proponent of supply-side economics, the idea that economic growth is most likely if taxes on high earners are lowered and more capital can be invested. Economists of every political view rely on the bureau's data and reports because of its reputation for analysis based on facts. Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, both French economists, wrote a paper the National Bureau of Economic Research published in 2002 that examined in fine detail income and wealth data for the years 1917 through 2000. They relied mostly on the National Income and Products Accounts, the most comprehensive economic data the government collects, and on tax data. Their study focused not on all Americans, but on those who made the most and how they fared compared to everyone else. There are many ways to measure income. First we will consider what Piketty and Saez found about the portion, or share, of income going to people at each income level. That is, how big each income group's slice of the pie was. Then we will examine the average incomes of people. They drew their first line between the top 10 percent and the bottom 90 percent. Overall the bottom 90 percent lost ground. Their share of national income fell from two thirds to slightly more than half. And their average income, adjusted for inflation, was essentially the same in 2000 as in 1970. The average income for the bottom 90 percent in 2000 was $25,035, which was $25 less than three decades earlier. The top 10 percent of Americans had done very well since 1970, or so it seemed at first blush. These 11.3 million households, comprising roughly the population of California, saw their share of national income grow by almost half, from just under 33 percent in 1973 to just above 48 percent in 1998. When examined more closely, however, a curious trend appeared. The figures showed that the higher the income group, the larger the income gains. Piketty and Saez cut off the top 10 steps on the ladder and divided the top 10 percent into ever-smaller segments of the population. They examined those on the rungs from 90 to 95. Their share of the national income was flat. Next came the slightly smaller group between rungs 95 and 99. Their share grew by 19.5 percent. Next the professors sliced off the top rung on the ladder, the top 1 percent or about 1.3 million households, roughly the population of Kentucky. This group earned more than a fifth of all the income in the country. The economists broke the top 1 percent down into ever-finer amounts, into minirungs on the ladder, the smallest of which represented a hundredth of 1 percent, or about 13,400 of the country's 134 million taxpayer households. They examined the bottom half of the top 1 percent. Their share of national income grew by 47 percent, which was more than twice the rate of the group just below them on the income ladder. The professors then looked at those on the minirungs from 99.5 to 99.9. Their share of national income grew even more, rising by 90 percent. Next came those on the minirungs from 99.9 to 99.99, just 120,000 households. Their share of national income more than tripled, growing 227 percent. Finally, the professors examined the very top rung, the richest 13,400 households. These are the people who made more than 99.99 percent of their fellow Americans. They had by far the biggest gains. Their share of national income in the year 2000 was more than five times what it had been in 1970. Back then this elite group received 1 percent of national income, while in 2000 it received more than 5 percent. Even more telling was how it had done compared to those fortunate enough to stand between the ninetieth and ninety-fifth rungs-the top group's share of income had grown almost 1,000 times faster. The average income of all households in 2000 was $42,700, while the 13,400 households at the very top had an average income of $24 million each or 560 times the average. It was not always this way. In 1970 the very top group had about 100 times the average. Clearly the only significant income gains over three decades went to a very narrow slice at the top. After adjusting for inflation, for each dollar of income in 1970 the top 13,400 households had four additional dollars plus a dime to spend in 2000, while the average household in the bottom 99 percent had only eight cents more per dollar. The enormous concentration of income among a very very few becomes even clearer with a simple comparison of income growth between 1970 and 2000. How did the top one hundredth of 1 percent compare to the bottom 99 percent? For each dollar of additional income going to each of those in the bottom 99 percent of Americans the richest each averaged an astonishing $7,500. Applying the National Bureau of Economic Research report to the incomes reported on tax returns in 2000 produces an astonishing result. The 13,400 top households had slightly more income than the 96 million poorest Americans. That is a chasm vastly greater than the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported when it said that the top 2.7 million had as much as the bottom 100 million. The data show that slices of the pie have changed, with a few getting a lot bigger share and many getting less. Now let's look at a second way to analyze the data by examining actual incomes, at what Piketty and Saez found about how much money people at each income level made in 2000 compared to 1970. What Piketty and Saez showed from the official government data was that two decades after the promise that lowering tax rates and reducing regulation would benefit everyone, the income gains were flowing straight up to the top of the income ladder. Even the derisive description by critics captured in the phrase "trickle-down economics" was not proving out. At the bottom there was less money for food, shelter and clothing. Four out of five Americans were making less or were no better off in 2000 than in 1970. People in the middle class and even those making more than 95 percent of their fellow Americans were working harder than ever and going nowhere fast. For those on the ninetieth rung of the ladder, average income in 2000 was $90,271, which, after adjusting for inflation, was a one-fourth increase from the $72,320 in 1970. In real terms incomes for those on the ninetieth rung rose at less than 1 percent per year, which was far less than the rate of growth in the economy. Those at the ninetieth rung saw their incomes rise at an annual average of less than $600 per year, compared to about $4,600 annually at the ninety-ninth rung and more than $672,000 annually for the top group, those 13,400 super-rich families. Money, it seems, was made to flow uphill. The great majority of Americans were, at least through 2000, having their pockets flattened or even drained, the value created by their labor flowing in a Niagara of greenbacks not to the affluent or even the merely rich, but to the megarich. But just as the liberals at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities had understated the chasm between rich and poor, so too did Piketty and Saez. The figures Piketty and Saez used were pretax incomes. But changes in the tax system had vastly expanded the ability of the megarich to save while those making less than $72,000 had their ability to save stripped away by rising Social Security taxes. In 1970, the top income tax bracket was 70 percent. By 2000 it had fallen to 39.6 percent-and it is now just 35 percent. Over those same years, however, the maximum Social Security soared from $327 to $4,724, figures that double if one counts the employer contribution. Internal Revenue Service reports show that from 1973 to 2000, when the Democrats were mostly in control of Congress, Social Security and Medicare taxes grew 82 percent faster than incomes. Because Social Security taxes applied only to the first $76,200 of wages in 2000 (and lesser amounts in previous years), this rising burden fell mostly on the middle class and the upper middle class. The rich got a tax break beginning when their wages passed the maximum subject to Social Security. On dollars above the Social Security ceiling an individual pays 6.2 percent less tax because Social Security is no longer deducted from paychecks. Employers get the same tax break. For the rich, the top 1.3 million households, the Social Security tax was inconsequential. The tax rate on capital gains, the source of more than half of income for the super rich, was 28 percent starting in 1987, fell to 20 percent in 1998 and then was lowered again in 2003 to 15 percent. Over the last three decades of the twentieth century the average income grew modestly, but the share of earnings going to income and Social Security taxes rose. At the same time the super rich saw their incomes skyrocket and, because their tax rates fell, they kept an even higher percentage than before. In addition, the rates at which state and local governments levied sales, property and income taxes all rose in those last three decades, eating into incomes. Those taxes tend to be regressive; that is, they tend to hit harder the lower one's income. Piketty and Saez's facts and figures show us what happened, but they do not say why these changes occurred. Understanding how this happened involves many issues because, in a nation as complex and diverse as America, there are many ways to collar a dollar. Some of these, as we shall see, involved pumping up compensation for those high in the corporate structure, no matter how it affected the company's workers and shareholders. These strategies, in turn, had an important side effect: creating a demand for corporate tax shelters, which helped shift the overall tax burden off capital and onto labor. By 2002, the portion of federal revenues coming from corporations was below 10 percent, down from a third in the Eisenhower years. The demand for tax shelters in turn encouraged an anything-goes morality about hiding money, both corporate profits and individual incomes, from the IRS. Some companies went so far as to renounce America as their headquarters, at least on paper, once they learned that if they used a Bermuda mailbox as their tax headquarters they could earn profits tax-free in the United States. Arranging to have torrents of money flow to a very few pockets also required putting immense pressure on Corporate America's front lines, the employees, to make the numbers demanded from on high. Even if it meant cheating people out of their wages or disability benefits, or foisting costs off onto the taxpayers, corporate managers were driven to produce the results the home office demanded or else join the ranks of the downsized. The cuts in regulatory agencies, and even in many law enforcement agencies, made such thievery easy. When people complained that they had been cheated out of overtime or even regular pay, the agencies had no resources to pursue the cases, even when there was a pattern of abuse by brand-name companies like Wal-Mart and Taco Bell. In all of this, both big corporations and those among the very wealthy who wanted to handcuff law enforcement-at least when it came to stealing by business practice-had as allies their good friends in Congress. Corporate America's effort to mold both political parties to do its bidding was increasingly successful as politicians needed ever more contributions to buy the television ads that got them reelected. Politicians insisted that no one bought their vote with their donation and that was true. But what donations did buy, every politician acknowledged, was access. That access meant that every senator and representative was listening primarily to the concerns and ideas of the super rich, of the political donor class. At the same time the forces arrayed on the other side-unions, consumer advocates and social service charities-had little to give and, except for the unions, were barred by law from making campaign donations. Continues...

Canción de jinete Federico Garcia-Lorca Córdoba. Lejana y sola. Jaca negra, luna grande, y aceitunas en mi alforja. Aunque sepa los caminos yo nunca llegaré a Córdoba. Por el llano, por el viento, jaca negra, luna roja. La muerte me está mirando desde las torres de Córdoba. ¡Ay que camino tan largo! ¡Ay mi jaca valerosa! ¡Ay que la muerte me espera, antes de llegar a Córdoba! Córdoba. Lejana y sola. quick translation: The rider's song Cordova Far and lonely. Black little horse, large moon, and olives in my saddlebag. Although I know the way, I'll never reach Cordova. Across the plain, through the wind, little black horse, red moon. Death watches me, from the towers of Cordova. The journey is so long! My brave little horse! Death awaits me, Before I'll reach Cordova. Cordova Far and lonely.

fritz wiessner: he did it all. highlights: discovered the gunks, did first ascent of waddington in 1936, devil's tower in 37, and almost summitted k2 (800' short) in 1939

forgetting the guidebook at home may help.