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unraveling
28.Mar.2009
Welcome home
Speaking of the men (and women) in the moon, the Discovery has landed,
again. I just happened to see a headline moments before the 2nd pass
landing opportunity, and tuned into
NASA TV for the
last two minutes before touchdown. Awesome to see that thing coming in
for another perfect landing.
I was trying to imagine what it was like for Sandra Magnus
coming back to Earth, and gravity, after 129 days aboard the space
station. Heavy. Tiring. Exhilirating. I imagine.
In the video gallery, the recent conversation between the Discovery and
Space Station crews with President Obama and some schoolkids was a lot
of fun. (Link's on the photo.)
Lights out
Ok folks, this is it. Tonight. 8:30pm. Your time zone. You're going to
help save the earth by
turning off
your lights for an hour. Send a signal. To the man in the moon. (If
you have lights, that is.)
Folks in North Dakota, we're not asking you to participate, you do
whatever you need to to stay safe and warm. Oh, and if you happen to be
driving when the hour comes around, ah, go ahead and keep your
headlights burning.
I like my electrical hook-up, just like I like hot and cold running
water, natural gas heating, and a sewer system carrying certain waste
products smoothly away from my domicile. Can I turn off most of
my lights and leave everything else running? How about if I black out
the windows so the man in the moon can't see my house (unless he
sees into infrared, of course).
If I were of a mind to participate, here's what I'd propose: go cold
turkey. None of these half-measures. Go find your Main Breaker and
turn it off. And why just an hour? Go overnight. All day
tomorrow. (Could we do this sometime in summer instead of early
spring?)
Failing that, how about we use resources wisely, and in
moderation? Ok good, we've been doing that for decades.
10 or so kWh of electricity a day. About a third of average around
here.
27.Mar.2009
Owyhees (and a lot more) Wilderness
NewWest:
Crapo,
conservationists laud passage of public lands bill
Ridenbaugh Press
Passage of the omnibus
2C etc.:
Why I love the Owyhees
KTVB:
What
the wilderness bill means for Idaho
Down the fortboise memory lane:
24.Mar.2009
Bloviating our way to prosperity
I don't watch Lou Dobbs, but I was prompted to have a look at
his conversation with ID-01 Rep. Walt Minnick about the woe-is-us
federal budget situation. I'm still not smart enough to know what we
ought to do, but the idea of Blue Dogs and Republicans working "across
the aisle" in a bipartisan manner strikes me about as fantastical as any
other dreams of bipartisanship.
"As soon as we can get an economic recovery" is of course the heart of
the matter, and how we get there is anybody's guess.
What I was struck mostly about was Dobbs in his big, beautiful suit and
comfy chair, pontificating about what a terrible state we're in because
we don't produce anything and the budget is way too big. And what were
you going to do to help, exactly?
Then there's the fact that "the mortgage business" threw
the old rules out the window on the way to skimming fees off the
unwell-to-do, buying real estate with no money down, bundling the
resulting "paper" into increasingly inscrutable "instruments" to the
point that we're now looking for a way out that doesn't involve
admitting that (a) too many people took on too much debt, (b) there
are penalties that have to be paid, and (c) pretty much all the people
who brought us to this point are still running the show.
Yesterday's scheme that sent the market fibrillating was to sell "toxic
assets" for 7 cents on the dollar (which alright, that's probably a
little low), with 7 cents "match" from the government, and an 86 cent
"loan" from the government. But if the assets were worth the $1 they
say they are, we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?
Is this a "match" like the good old days of 401k's? And is the FDIC
going to cover the whole loan?! If it seems too good to be true, it
probably is. We can only hope that it's not as
bad as Matt Taibbi's reporting, though.
"The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that
followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They
cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for
decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of
connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence
and systematically weaken financial regulations."
The reality is, while George W. Bush and Richard B. "Dick" Cheney and
their pals were dilligently protecting the Homeland from any more
box-cutter equipped Saudi whackjobs flying airplanes into large
buildings, the financial strength of the greatest economy in the solar
system was being systematically looted.
The World Trade Center collapsed after a terrorist attack in late summer
2001. The center of world trade has collapsed after a terrorist attack
that started in the late 1990s and has yet to run its course.
And as outrageous as the millions of dollars in bonuses are, the most
incredible aspect of this debacle is how ultimately miniscule was the
bag of silver coins collected by the people who sold us out. For some
tiny fraction of a percent of the overall damage, they have
mortgaged—quite literally—our children's, grandchildren's,
and great-grandchildren's futures.
And this terrorist attack is hardly over. The Blue Dogs and Lou Dobbs
are going to have to learn how to bite if they're actually going to move
us in the direction of prosperity instead of simply providing a
sideshow.
"When one considers the comparatively extensive system of congressional
checks and balances that goes into the spending of every dollar in the
budget via the normal appropriations process, what's happening in the
Fed amounts to something truly revolutionary — a kind of shadow
government with a budget many times the size of the normal federal
outlay, administered dictatorially by one man, Fed chairman Ben
Bernanke. “We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million
amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion
about who has been receiving this $3 trillion,” says Sen. Bernie
Sanders. “It is beyond comprehension.”"
Three trillion, with a T, that means me and thee are on the hook for
$10,000 apiece. Thankyouverymuch.
23.Mar.2009
"With them words"
Idaho's House passes the sovereignty bill, led by an illiterate and
ignorant man supposedly representing St. Maries.
How droll. When we need government to do something useful as
never before, they're putting on useless political theater.
19.Mar.2009
Great Depression 2.0
An excellent, long, thoughtful piece about why the current thrashing is
wrong-headed, and what we should be doing instead:
No Return to Normal by James K. Galbraith, in the Washington
Monthly.
First we need to set aside all the modeling and prognostication built on
"normality" as defined by what happened in the last 3 or 4 decades. How
many times have you heard "since World War 2" or "since the Great
Depression" lately? The computer models don't really cover the
pre-computer era.
"For the first time since the 1930s, millions of American households are
financially ruined. Families that two years ago enjoyed wealth in stocks
and in their homes now have neither. Their 401(k)s have fallen by half,
their mortgages are a burden, and their homes are an albatross. For many
the best strategy is to mail the keys to the bank. This practically
assures that excess supply and collapsed prices in housing will continue
for years. Apart from cash—protected by deposit insurance and now
desperately being conserved—the American middle class finds today that
its major source of wealth is the implicit value of Social Security and
Medicare—illiquid and intangible but real and inalienable in a way that
home and equity values are not. And so it will remain, as long as future
benefits are not cut....
"A brief reflection on [the history of the Great Depression and recovery
from it] and present circumstances drives a plain conclusion: the full
restoration of private credit will take a long time. It will follow, not
precede, the restoration of sound private household finances. There is
no way the project of resurrecting the economy by stuffing the banks
with cash will work. Effective policy can only work the other way
around."
Lots more. Read it.
18.Mar.2009
Was that wrong?
Diebold admits
audit logs in ALL versions of their software fail to record ballot
deletions.
Moral hazards
I guess Congress is reading my blog:
the
House is set to propose the 90% tax rate on bailout-ee bonuses I
suggested a couple days ago.
I started thinking about a new angle before I heard that news today. One
of the first things you learn in Business Law is that fraudulent
contracts are not enforceable. While loan originators were writing
mortgage contracts as fast as they could, keeping the fees and
offloading the risk as fast as they could, the banks taking on the risk
were buying insurance from AIG. And the folks at AIG who were
selling the insurance (but mostly it seems, the top of the
management pyramid) were writing internal contracts for the bonuses
they'd receive for "performance."
But if you're selling insurance you can't make good on, needing an
unfathomably large federal government to keep you from going under, and
"guaranteeing" bonus payments; how can that not be fraud?
Idaho's 1st District Congressman, Walt Minnick,
says we should go ahead and let AIG go down:
"(W)e should now withdraw taxpayers' support and let AIG go bankrupt,
let a federal bankruptcy judge void these ill-advised bonus contracts,
sort out the losses, and bring in new, qualified management to properly
manage AIG free of one more nickel of taxpayer support."
I'm not smart enough to know if that's a good idea or not, but I imagine
there are some tens of millions of US taxpayers who'll think so. The big
boys at the top are telling us we can't let another big outfit "fail,"
but they've already failed at pretty much everything except
passing out golden parachutes. Somehow their continued business is
essential to our collective well-being?
It's hardest to accept that argument when your personal economics is
not built on debt, or insurance purchased for "investment," as
opposed to essential protection. Save for retirement, pay as you go,
live within your means... those used to all be touted as virtues, but
they've been so dishonored in the breach that we built a banking system
around the negation of all those values. And an insurance layer on top
of that.
And now we can't live without it. We're told.
St. Paddy's Day ♣
Late night news (and opinion) roundup
Bill Schneider:
Public Lands Bill Back on Track. After the Senate beat Coburn, the
House misunderestimated its supermajority. Plan B: Stuff S.22 into
H.R.146 (the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 Battlefield Protection
Act of 2009), and try again.
Beeb:
Pious 'fight
death the hardest'.
Stephanie Cooke:
A
Nuclear Waste. We need an Energy Department, not just a Nuclear
Energy Department.
Thomas Friedman:
Obama's Real Test will be selling still more bailing out, to keep us
all afloat. AIG bonuseers could help by voluntarily refusing their
$millions. (Sadly, the chances of a 5-figure schoolteacher forgoing a
significant chunk of her pay seem much higher than a 7- or 8-figure
"insurance" exec taking one for the team.)
George sets example for Dick
Work the speakers' circuit for your post-position gravy, but don't
give it away. Say nice, bland things about your successor.
It'd be a shame if anything happened to your nice little world there...
That's the subtext of Dmitry Medvedev's announcement that
Russia plans a
"comprehensive military rearmament," to include
"first of all [their] strategic nuclear forces."
The Russian economy is so flush that they're ready to spend $140 billion
on bluster? I guess that would be scarier if it weren't less than we've
already spent bailing out an insurance company, but it does seem rather
last-century to be talking about a new nuclear arms race. I suppose the
only thing that's missing from the news is Medvedev to say "Bush started
it!" Which unfortunately is true enough.
Tim Whewell reports
inside
Russia's military, and makes us wonder if this is not more about
corporate restructuring than an arms race. "Staggering cuts" of up to
200,000 jobs sounds more like this century.
Ides
Good news or bad news
Depends on your point of view: if you think the U.S. doesn't spend
enough on foreign
aid, you should be pleased to know we've more than doubled it, by
having AIG send
$58 billion of the bailout cash
we gave them to foreign banks.
This is really, really stupid
From part 2 of Nicholas Kristof's columns on
Pathogens in Pork: Seventy percent of all antibiotics in the
U.S. go to healthy livestock.
Not because they're sick, but because it allows packing them together in
more compact Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), and to put on
weight a little faster. "Nontherapeutic use." If you were trying
to breed antibiotic-resistant organisms, you could probably come up with
a better way to do it, but this way seems good enough.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)
"already kills more than 18,000 Americans annually, more than AIDS
does," and at least one strain has made itself home at hog farms.
"Research by Peter Davies of the University of Minnesota suggests that
25 to 39% of American hogs carry MRSA."
Frankly Dick, we don't give a damn
Hey, lookit who's talking:
CNN gave Richard B. "Dick" Cheney some airtime, which he applied to
telling us to be very afraid. Now that we're not torturing suspected
terrorists, we're at risk some more! Of course the evidence to support
his claims is "still classified," so we'll just have to take him at his
word, and ignore pretty much all the evidence that coercive
interrogation actually doesn't work.
Let's have a calm counterpoint, shall we? Local attorney
David Nevin spoke with Marcia Franklin on this week's Idaho Public
TV Dialogue. Nevin's done some defense work, and has some of his
own classified knowledge that he can't talk about, but he can put in a
good word for the rule of law.
And as far as I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
deserving a pardon, we're going to take that with a grain of salt
from the guy who ordered the dirty work, and who deserved
impeachment, or at least an indictment.
Stink Tank
The former President wanted it to be the Freedom Institute, but the
latest plan is to call it
The
George W. Bush Policy Institute. And it's not really clear if it's
going to be part of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, or
"just next door," since wouldn't you know it, the post-Bush team wants
to rewrite the code of institute governance the same way they rewrote
the Magna Charta, Constitution, and Geneva Convention. On the one hand,
they don't have a team of lawyers in the Attorney General's office to
right secret memoranda anymore, on the other, it's just a wimpy informal
understanding that's in their way this time.
The building might look just like one of SMU's, we're told, but
I'm thinking rather than recycled Greek, the GWBPI needs a Post-Modern
expression in the worst way. One of those things with a crumpled-up
piece of paper for its maquette.
Unhappy anniversary
"It's been a year since the collapse of Bear Stearns. To commemorate the
unhappy anniversary, which marked the beginning of the global financial
collapse, the Op-Ed editors asked
five former employees to share their memories of the firm."
Gosh, it's only 0.2%
But still,
$286
million in bonuses seems a bit much for a company that's sucked
$170 billion from the taxpayers, and is now 80% nationalized.
"Lawyers said the firm was contractually obligated to pay them."
Nice contract if you can get it, eh? Executive "retention" comes ahead
of the owners of the company (both the old ones, and the new
ones). The newly government-appointed chairman tells us that
"We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead
and staff the A.I.G. businesses—which are now being operated
principally on behalf of American taxpayers—if employees believe their
compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the
U.S. Treasury."
If these are pre-existing contracts, it's not clear they having anything
to do with "the best and the brightest." More like "the greediest and
most culpable." Too big to fail, legally bound to pay for failure, and
incapable of cleaning house... is there anything whatsoever that's
right with this picture?
How about if we write a new chapter of the tax code that says if you
work for a company that's required more than $100,000,000,000 in
taxpayer funding to stay afloat, your bonus payments above, I don't
know, $100,000? (to be really generous) are subject to a
90% tax rate. We can honor the contracts, keep most of the money
where it belongs, and even let a little socialism trickle down to
some unworthy executives.
14.Mar.2009
Oregon poised for pot progress
Randy Stapilus reports on Oregon's House Bill 3274, proposing to
have their "Department of Human Services establish and operate [a]
marijuana production facility and distribute marijuana to pharmacies for
dispensing to medical marijuana cardholders and designated primary
caregivers."
It further proposes to tax marijuana dispensed by pharmacies at
$98 per ounce, but the brief description doesn't explain why there needs
to be a tax as opposed to just a sales price. If the state's
producing, they'd sell their production, wouldn't they?
Otherwise their plan for "a genuinely bipartisan, cross-ideological
deal," would be socialized medicine, too.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, eh.
Friday the 13th
So, Zeb Bell is a liar
I would've just thought he was mistaken, but since he made such a
big deal out of
calling someone else a liar, when he was flat out wrong...
just doesn't give us any reason to give him the benefit of the doubt
now, does it?
Filling
up 12 hours a week with stream of consciousness is a risky business,
and some of what comes out on "Zeb at the Ranch" reminds one of picking
up rocks down at the river, and seeing what crawls out from under.
Not to put too fine a point on it.
Why on earth would businesses want to advertise on such a show,
and why would anyone want to patronize
such
advertisers?
Was that a "tweet" or a "twit"?
A juror
punching away on his cellphone during a civil suit.
"Bad mojo" indeed.
What part of "Representation" doesn't he understand?
You can practically feel the derision dripping off state budget director
Wayne Hammon's dismissal of Nicole LeFavour's concern for bicycling
facilities in the state. "The future of Idaho is not contained in the
North End," he tells the Senator from the North End. She gets to expand on
her point of view, in her blog, and he... well, he's subject to some
derision from the likes of "fasteddy" commenting after
the Eye on Boise account of the dust-up.
I've bicycled well more than the average on Idaho's streets and
highways, and I've felt the sort of hostility Hammon has for nonmotorized
traffic directly: from chip-seal induced vibration, to having
people honk and shout "just for fun," throw things, and
run me off the road.
I'd say Hammon owes the good Senator and his employers an apology for
making an ass of himself.
12.Mar.2009
Honey, we shrunk your 401(k)
It was all fun and games between Jon "The Daily Show" Stewart and Jim
"Mad Money" Cramer until the latter came on the former's show, Then they
had the most gut-wrenchingly serious interview that's been seen, I
think, about the economic meltdown. You can watch the whole, unedited
episode
on the Comedy Central site: check it out. The money quote:
"CNBC could be an incredibly powerful tool of illumination for people
that believe that there are two markets. One that has been sold to us as
'long term', 'put your money in 401ks, put your money in pensions
and just leave it there, don't worry about it, it's all doing fine.'
Then there's this other market, this real market that's occurring
in the back room, where giant piles of money are going in and out, and
people are trading, it's transactional, and it's fast But it's
dangerous, it's ethically dubious and it hurts that long-term market, so
what it feels like to us, and I'm speaking purely as a layman, it feels
like we are capitalizing your adventure by our pension, and our
hard-earned (money), and it is a game that you know that you know
is going on, but that you go on television as a financial network and
pretend isn't happening."
You can also sample the
tsunami
of excuses:
"Can it possibly be true that veteran Wall Street executives like Messrs.
Cayne, Schwartz and Fuld—who were paid an estimated $128 million, $117
million and at least $350 million, respectively, in the five years
before their businesses imploded—got all that money but were clueless
about the risks they had exposed their firms to in the process?"
Bucket feeder
My grandfather loved the gray squirrels that habituated his backyard on
Newhall St. in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. He had a ledge by the kitchen
window that looked out to their small backyard, and they had a little
feeder on it. The small breakfast table was under the window, and so
morning mealtimes included entertainment.
Now here I am, a grandfather myself, and being amused by our red
squirrels, 1500 miles away. We take a slightly simpler approach to
feeding. There's the oak tree for one, which looks after them on its own
for much of the year. We collect a few gallons of acorns when it's time
to rake them up, and our "feeder" is one of the buckets, set out under
the spruce tree in the back yard.
These two were a hoot jumping up to the rim, diving in, popping up while
eating, and then repeating the drill.
10.Mar.2009
Come to our senses
In addition to genuinely dire straits for millions of people in this
country and hundreds of millions around the world, there is also the
fantastic opportunity of this moment. (I have no way of knowing
if things are any more dire for the billions of people at the destitute
end of the economic spectrum, but it seems likely things are no better
these days.) Two of many stories to consider:
Conspicuous Consumption, a Casualty of Recession, and
Tom Friedman's Sunday op-ed,
The Inflection Is Near? Friedman:
"We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more
and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more
factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more
and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more
and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build
more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more
and more Chinese..."
"We can’t do this anymore."
And from Shaila Dewan's article:
"Even those with a regular income are reassessing their spending habits,
perhaps for the long term. They are shopping their closets, downscaling
their vacations and holding off on trading in their cars. If the race to
have the latest fashions and gadgets was like an endless, ever-faster
video game, then someone has pushed the reset
button."
If "it's a little bit chic" to be pinching pennies, as one 30-something
surmised, we've been très chic for a lot of years. We
don't have to worry about being part of the problem by cutting our
spending, because our spending has never been inflated, really.
Imagine a sustainable economy built on a focus on quality rather than
quantity, on thoughtful reduction, reuse, and recycling, where
"conspicuous consumption" was treated as a mild form of mental illness,
deserving sympathy rather than emulation. Gettin' down with the
Joneses.
Then instead of
a catty snipe about "fashion faux pas" (wearing the same dress
twice!) we might be reading about Idaho's first family's victory
garden.
9.3.9
New plan
Federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research is back
on, without the "false choice between sound science and moral
values" that the previous administration set up.
And while we're at it, let's have "a strategy for
restoring scientific integrity to government decision making" as
well. Selection and retention for science and technology positions in
the executive branch based on the knowledge, credentials, experience,
and integrity; what a concept!
Update:
Jeanette's high school classmate Irv Weissman attended the signing
ceremony, and was featured on
tonight's Newshour.
Off the hook
Say what you want about the RNC's chairman, at least
he's not boring. When George W. Bush was the de facto leader of his
Party, it had a Spokesman-in-Chief who could surprise and delight, but
the levers of power gave him the ability to intimidate and terrorize
(remember "Shock and Awe"? For a good cause, of course) as well.
Michael Steele, on the other hand, is all about entertainment.
One of my favorite lines from him is: "I’m trying to move an elephant
that's become mired in its own muck." Insightful, on the mark, and
picturesque. And finding out that he was recruited by Lee Atwater? You
couldn't make stuff like this up.
"And as tempestuous as the past month has been, Mr. Steele said in the
interview, Republicans should get ready for more. “I’m very
spontaneous,” he said, comparing working with him to riding a roller
coaster without knowing when the next dip or curve might come.
"“Be prepared; you have no idea,” he said. “Just
buckle up and get ready to go.”
7.Mar.2009
Who is that behind the curtain?
Gail Collins:
Steele Yourselves.
"Does somebody else want to be chairman of the Republican
National Committee? When it comes to good jobs, you’d think it would
come in somewhere around being elected office fire safety warden."
Taxation and Representation
Representative Phylis King (D-18) spells out her opposition to
increases of gas tax and registration fees: we're in tough times,
we're about to get stimulus money that has to be used in 3 years
("that should keep the ITD busy"), and:
"The biggest reason for me to say 'no' is that the Treasure Valley has
42% of the people and about 60% of the wealth (we are the economic
engine of this state), but we receive only 25% of the Highway
Distribution Money. That means that when we raise the reg fees and gas
tax, we, in the Treasure Valley, are paying for roads and bridges for
the rest of the state—which I don’t have a problem with. Yet
the single most important concern the Treasure Valley has identified is
a need for local option authority for public transit. We need to
start purchasing right-of-way for public transit now. In 10 years it
may be impossible to purchase right-of-way and it certainly will be a
lot more expensive.
"If the majority party wants my vote, they need to stop ignoring the
Treasure Valley! Clete Edmunson from the Governor’s office has talked
to me and I have made my position clear to him and to the Chairman of
the Transportation Committee that I will not vote for gas tax and
registration fee increase without a public transit component."
6.Mar.2009
Dear John
Delmar Stone, Executive Director of the Idaho Chapter of the
National Association of Social Workers has
a nice letter for Idaho Representative John A. "Bert," a.k.a.
"Foot-in-mouth" Stevenson (R-Rupert)
"You have much to learn about sexual orientation, sexuality, and the
importance of civil rights in a democratic republic. Our state is not a
theocracy and your role as a legislator is not to impose your church's
doctrine on your fellow citizens but to assist in expanding civil rights
for all people, including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender."
New billboard over Idaho
The Humanists of Idaho, the
Freedom From Religion Foundation, the
BSU Secular Student
Alliance, the Nontheist
Meetup group, and the Idaho
Atheists are making a statement for eastbound Fairview.
It's March 6, do you know where your federal budget is?
That would be the one for the fiscal year starting October 1st.
2008. In a few more weeks, half the year will be gone, and the Congress
hasn't passed a budget yet?
After the Republican Revolution of last decade, when Newt and his boys
were feeling their oats, they
shut down the government way sooner than this. Mid-November, in
fact, and then again in mid-December, with not enough warning for anyone
to plan a good vacation around it.
Since that backfired for both Republicans, and Congress in general,
they've figured out how to work around the problem with "continuing
resolutions," a.k.a. "stopgap measures." So well, in fact that
it
sounds like we could go the whole FY2009 without ever passing George
Bush's last budget.
Cornyn next to knuckle under?
The latest
missive from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, over
Senator John Cornyn's signature looks like criticism of Rush Limbaugh to
me, although he's doing his best to camouflage it as an attack on his
opposition:
"This is an outrage. It appears the Obama Administration has forgotten
that the salaries of White House staff are paid for by you the taxpayer.
To say nothing of the fact that this story reeks of hypocrisy coming
from a President who campaigned against these very cynical political
tactics last fall."
How on earth can John Cornyn smell any reek of hypocrisy with the
vapors he's been in down there in Foggy Bottom? And where was his
outrage when Bush and Cheney were using the people's Executive staff
for partisan errand boys? Did I miss his dudgeon over
the use of RNC
E-mail accounts to subvert the Presidential Records Act, and who
knows what else (since the emails went conveniently "missing")?
But Jonathan
Martin's piece at Politico spelled it out for him, so he could spell
it out for his fundraising targets.
If only the Democrats were smart enough to pull this off all by
themselves, but when the Chairman of the Republican National Committee
is playing along, first criticizing, then apologizing to Rush,
it's all upside. James Carville and Rush Limbaugh are in agreement:
"It's great for us, great for him, great for the press," Carville said
of Limbaugh. "The only people he's not good for are the actual
Republicans in Congress."
Oh and the American public, a steady diet of hateful bloviation isn't
particularly good for anyone who actually listens to it.
But since we're watching Kabuki here, the next scene would be John
Cornyn rushing back onto stage and sliding to the feet of the Master
with his face on the floor and his rump in the air.
5.Mar.2009
Freeconomics
How About Free?: "The Price Point That Is Turning Industries on Their
Heads," from Knowledge @ Wharton (which used to make you sign up for its
content, but now offers it "free").
I wrote Land of the Free 11 years ago,
when Netscape shocked the young world wide web by offering its browser
for the astonishing price of nothing. And now we've all gotten
used to that price, for news, magazines, for searches to answer most any
question, music, video entertainment... How do we all stay in business
when we don't want to pay for anything?
"Business isn't static, and it's less static today than it's ever been.
The great challenge the Internet poses is that it makes it possible to
very quickly shift the allocation of money in certain industries. It's
not easy to go through that kind of transformation, but that's life.
Successful companies are the ones that appreciate that."
Neighborhood rundown
Jim Hansen in the Idaho County Free Press:
Idaho
needs economic foresight, responsibility. "Idahoans are ready to
face the challenges of the present crisis and invest in a stronger
economic future. We deserve state leaders who will accept responsibility
and focus on preparing our state to be a full participant in the economy
of the future."
Gary Eller:
Rebuilding the GOP.
Eye on Boise:
They want how much for what?? "Melody Russell (no known relation to
me) wants $34,000 to pay off credit cards..."
A quick skim through just the 23 pages
Non State Agency Requests suggests that every boomer and booster
(and every school district) who's paying attention has put some sort of
request in. "Business OneStop" would like to sell us an "eGovernment
Economic Stimulus" to "[serve] as the 24X7 online destination for a new
or existing business, where business owners can log into their own
manageable virtual workspace from the convenience of their home or
office and complete critical state government transactions without forms
and long wait-times." For 6 million bucks.
Scott Thorne's Little Wood Ranch has a $35 million irrigation
project in mind. Red Carpet 21 has a "secret" solution to nation's
energy problems that will only cost $420,000. Dirt cheap! Murdock and
Walker Concrete proposes to "Pay back taxes, operating expenses until
May, 2009" for $45 thou. The Minidoka Bowman need $100 grand for their
"Archery Range, Trailer to haul portable targets." Micron Technology is
ready to put $100 million to work, to "establish long-term manufacturing
capacity" for Solar energy and LED lighting.
But $100 million here and a $100 million there adds up: to $4.75
billion in proposals. Not counting the
state agency
requests.
Ridenbaugh Press:
Death/dignity/details, with a link to the website for the state of
Washington's
Compassion & Choices website, for their Death with Dignity
Act.
Uncle Boise:
"Just think of us as an extension of your already dysfunctional
family."
The unequivocal notion
also sent me off to see the NYT's interactive Flash graphic,
Geography of a Recession. "Job losses have been most severe in the
areas that experienced a big boom in housing, those that depend on
manufacturing and those that already had the highest unemployment
rates." The counties "with housing bubbles" include Idaho's SW corner
(Owyhee?!, Ada, Canyon, Gem, and Boise Co., Nez Perce County, where
Lewiston is, and Kootenai Co., just east of Spokane.)
Weather Report
Did you hear me talking about violets and finches and shirtless sunshine
in the high 60s? Just kidding. We woke up to the lighter, quieter,
snow-covered neighborhood this morning, I hightailed it
up the hill for the best powder day
of my season. 3 new inches were on my car after I came back from 4 hours
in the woods.
More snow down to Boise's sub-3000' elevation at nightfall, and there's
talk of 7 to 11" up on the mountain overnight.
Woo.
Hoo.
4.Mar.2009
Your state sovereignty scorecard
New Hampshire:
not. Defeated 60-40 in the House.
Arkansas: nyet.
Tennessee:
filed for introduction
Kentucky: posted in
committee.
South Carolina S 424:
referred to Committee on Judiciary, and then to a subcommittee.
Washington HJM 4009: Read, and
referred to State Government & Tribal Affairs
Indiana SCR 0037:
in
committee
Kansas S 1609:
Referred
to Judiciary committee
West Virginia: been at since 2005, at least.
Some are hopeful for this session!
And so on.
Greg Demers effuses in The Cornell Daily Sun on Monday that
"at least 11 states have introduced legislation," cites one action
HJR
1003, passed the Okie House, 83-13. The Senate had a First
Reading the next day, then quiet.
The humanevents.com website headline writers are running ahead of the
pack, with
"eleven states
declare" over a story that says "at least 11 states have...
introduced bills and resolutions," within quotation that marks that
aren't attributed to anyone. (Then
this week
A.W.R. Hawkins quotes the site, from his article, which had the
unattributed quotation, and "five more." Ya gotta wonder...)
So, if any of these state Legislatures which apparently have so much
time on their hands to diddle with meaningless Resolutions were to
actually pass one of these, what would it mean?
Pretty much nothing. "We spit in your general direction."
Conspiracy theory
The Daily News dredged up a nice picture of Rush (captured with an
ever-so-slightly obscene gesture; I'm sure that was an accident) for
their piece about how
Limbaugh's
elevation is a Democratic plot. Lee Atwater and Karl Rove must be
smiling from their graves. (What? Oh, well, if he were
in his grave, I'm sure he'd be smiling from it, too.)
And Limbaugh? He's over the moon! It's just more publicity and more
gravy for him, and he's so certain that "conservatism, as articulated by me"
is the "antidote to Obamaism," that he's happy to take the tatters of
the Republican Party down to Davey Jones' locker with him.
Speaking of gravy, I've got
yesterday's Daily Show send-up of Limbaugh as Jabba the Hut
stuck in my head, and I really wish I could exorcise that. (Maybe
Bobby Jindal could help.)
3.3.9: a square day
It's not just our wingnut, it's a movement
"We think they oughta back off and let the states govern themselves a
little bit,"
sez Dick Harwood (R-St.Maries). (Many of us in this state are
waiting for some of that self-government stuff to land here, too.)
'Course, we're not talking about our 21-cents-on-the-dollar bonus
payment that we get back with every tax dollar we send to Washington.
And we're not—yet—talking about an actual Memorial from the
Idaho Legislature, with absolutely no force of law or persuasion
whatsoever; it's only made it through the House State Affairs Committee,
13-4.
(Checking...
13 Republicans, and 5 Democrats, hmm.)
But see here, where <blink> is still in style,
a majority
of the states have declared "sovereignty"? And gosh, the
same
story that Clayton Cramer was chirping last week about how Obama
"deliberately and repeatedly lied to America's 90 million gun owners
across the country when he insisted that he would not try to take away
anyone's firearms."
Batten the hatches!
Michael Steele agreed with me
"Yes, it's incendiary. Yes, it's ugly." But then 20 million dittoheads
all started hollering, and Steele had to
apologize.
He's really, really sorry.
2.Mar.2009
An ugly, ugly man
I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh, I don't watch Rush Limbaugh, and if he
came on to my TV screen, I'm pretty sure I would change the channel.
But curiosity got the better of me and the HuffPo headline,
Rush Limbaugh At CPAC: Doubles Down On Wanting Obama To Fail, sucked
me into a one minute and 55 second dose.
Physical beauty ain't all it's cracked up to be, and you can't judge a
book by it's cover, yada yada yada, but this vignette from the
Republicans' current leading ideologue speaks volumes about why we are
where we are, and why this man and the Party behind him have so little
to offer us.
Explaining his desire for Obama to fail in terms of a Super Bowl
metaphor didn't quite work for the CPAC crowd from what you can tell in
the audio. The goofus fans for one side or the other were cheering and
booing and missing the point so badly that Limbaugh had to shut them
up.
Never mind the idiocy of thinking what "common sense" it is for him to
want the leader of the country to fail the same way he wanted the other
team's quarterback to fail in a football game.
We hate this ideology, so of course we want it to fail. We don't have
to care about what's right, or how it turns out, because
we know we're right. So we'd rather shoot ourselves in the
foot—or head, what the hell!—than have a person and plans
that disagree with us actually succeed.
He's happy to project his own narrow-mindedness, his own Schadenfreude
on the other "team," too. "Did the, did the Democrats wanted the war in
Iraq to fail?" Big "yeah" from the red meat crowd, still riled from the
football metaphor.
Not that he's listening, but just to set the record straight:
this Democrat wanted us not to start
the war with Iraq. Having started it, and started sacrificing our
soliders, and slaughtering Iraqis, and dissipating our military
strength, I hoped for the best possible outcome. I wanted George Bush
out of office sooner rather than later, and I wanted us out of Iraq
sooner, rather than later. Not because I'm hateful and viscious, and
spitting mad, but because Bush was never qualified to lead the country,
and he drove it into a ditch, in large part because of the folly of
the Iraq war.
One thing is crystal clear to me at this point: if the Republicans want
any chance of returning to leadership, they need to throw
Limbaugh and his dittoheads off the bus. If they can't figure out how to
do it, they're damned.
This is lambikins here
It's into the high 60s here today, unbelievable weather on the
2nd day of March. I went for a tennis lunch, and played without a shirt,
soaked up my first good dose of vitamin D in 4 or 5 months.
Bogus announced last week that they were going to close up shop on
April 11, which seemed like a long way out to forecast for a not
particularly good snow year. Today it doesn't feel like they'll be open
on March 11th, let alone through the month.
Honey, I shrunk the stimulus
Our Division of Financial Management Administrator Wayne Hammon showed
up to Idaho Reports
Friday night with his copy of the stimulus bill and
remarks about what Idaho might get out of it. It seems to be
considerably more compact than when our junior Senator was thumping it
on the podium earlier in the month.
I wonder if Risch or anyone on his staff has got around to
reading it yet.
Party like it's 1997
When the Dow went above 7,000 twelve years ago, I remember the general,
mild euphoria. A rising tide was lifting all boats, and even though one
business I'd been in was shut down, there was another one with new and
interesting work, and I was travelling around the world to do it.
The web was new and exciting, and I was on the inside of it, ahead of
the curve and bubbling to friends and family about how wonderful it all
was, and reporters were starting to write about "dot.com" and that
sphinxlike head of the Federal Reserve tried to poop the party crying
wolf about
"irrational exuberance," but no one had listened to him, and the
Republicans hadn't even imagined they could impeach the President they
so hated yet.
It never seems as much fun when the tide goes out, and the mud is
exposed, and weird bottom-feeding creatures are left blinking in
unaccustomed sunlight.
They're having a big snowstorm back east I hear, couldn't those traders
have just stayed home or something?
1.Mar.2009
People of color
Idaho's been mighty white for a long time.
The Census
Bureau estimated it was over 95% white in 2003. But while I was out
searching for a fan belt today, I stopped in to
Winco at oh yeah the prime time
of grocery shopping, late Sunday afternoon. (This is the
store—back when it was Waremart—that used to be the same
walking distance from our house as the Coast-to-Coast where I bought
that last fan belt, coincidentally.)
I knew the three things I was after and where they were (spread through
the store in that strategic retail way), and I lightly skipped around
couples and singles and families who looked like they were taking their
time, figuring it all out as they went along. Boise's current mix of
cultures and colors is a world apart from the rest of the state right
now; it's an exciting rainbow of people from all over the world. I had
the sort of thrill you might get from having angelfood every day for a
month and then biting into a lucious, dark carrot cake with cream cheese
frosting.
We're all meeting where we hunt and gather these days.
Don't make 'em like they used to
The winter of '08-'09 looks like it could be the end of the road for our
old furnace. A lot of design improvements have been made in the 46
years since it was new, but it's been pretty darn reliable, and
generally, if it ain't broke, you don't fix it, right?
It did need to be fixed, back in 1986, and we had a Jack of all trades
friend who tore into it, spent most of a day (or was it two?), ended up
putting in a new 1/4-hp fan motor. Then 11 years later, more trouble,
and Bob of Bob's Service Heating & AC worked on it, put in a new gas
valve.
A friend whose furnace didn't last a third as long was told by the guy
who replaced it that low-end furnaces last about 12 to 15 years on
average, and better ones 15 to 18.
Seems as if there might be some confusion about "life" and "time between
major service." That was certainly the case for the guy from A-1 who
showed up on Saturday after I called for help, my week ago "fix" having
turned out not to be on the mark. "Dude, you need a new system,"
he said, before futzing around a while, decreeing that "it's not moving
enough air" and talking about changing the fan pulley, or something.
Charged me the $118 I'd committed to, and left without changing anything
or fixing anything.
I was focused on the temperature limit switch which had been acting up.
Acting correctly for its intended safety function as it turns
out, turning off the gas when the plenum temperature was getting too
high, because there wasn't enough air getting through the system to move
the heat.
I finally figured it out today: the fan belt had loosened up, as it wore
out, over the last 11+ years. Shopping for a new one, I didn't have the
option of going to the nearby Coast-to-Coast; it went under years ago,
as did the Ace Hardware store that followed it. Home Depot? No belts.
The guy there waved his hands in the direction of an appliance repair
business that of course isn't open on Sunday. Wal-Mart. Seemed
unlikely, and sure enough: they have half a dozen belts for some sort of
lawn mowers. Fred Meyer? Used to.
So I came home and put the old belt back on, adjusted the adjustable
drive pulley (who knew!) half a notch bigger, tensioned the belt
properly, and let 'er rip... at least until I can track down a new one,
and then long enough to get us to spring, at least.
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
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Wednesday, 01-Apr-2009 10:33:04 MDT
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