Bull in the china shop is too delicate a metaphor to describe what's
going on with the Idaho Transportation Department's collusion with
Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil to turn the north Idaho route along the
Clearwater and Lochsa river into a "high and wide" corridor for moving
grossly oversized equipment fabricated overseas from the port of
Lewiston to Alberta's tar sands. Even after they expanded the highway
and added turnouts they haven't been able to push their "test load"
through without taking out trees and power lines.
"Eyewitnesses report that pruning crews have been taking down any tree
limbs that are less than 30 feet above the roadway and closer than 3
feet to the fogline along the entire length of the highway. Some of the
trees mutilated are 3000-year old cedars in
the
Devoto Memorial Grove."
Here's
what their contractor did to a Ponderosa pine too close to commerce.
And a
full
story from Tuesday about the contested-case hearing that started in
Boise this week.
Heavenly days
In Japan, they have two lovely words for the movement of powerful elites
between government "regulatory" agencies and industry:
amakudari, or "descent from heaven," "allows senior bureaucrats,
usually in their 50s, to land cushy jobs at the companies they once
oversaw." And amaagari, "ascent to heaven," brings retired or
active engineers from industry into cushy government jobs.
Here, we just call it commuting.
Couldn't help but think of Richard B. "Dick" Cheney's peregrination from
the Department of Defense to Halliburton and back as I read about
nuclear safety becoming a victim of
government and industry collusion in Japan.
"is grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory,
obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, libellous, invasive of
another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically objectionable,
disparaging, relating or encouraging money laundering or
gambling, or otherwise unlawful in any manner whatever."
Let the games begin
Last I saw ORLY, it was humorous l33t for "oh really?" but it turns out
somebody actually has that for a name. Orly Taitz, who I further find
out (I am so behind) is
the
Queen of the birthers as of ... July 30, 2009?
I simply must get out more often.
Way back then, she had "a staff of five to process the thousands of
friend requests she receives each week." What, were they doing
background checks or something? Accept, accept, accept, accept, I think
I could do about 10 or 20 a minute, and easily get through 5,000
a day if I had to. (Maybe I should apply for a job in
Taitz-ville.)
Anyway, it's
not
like evidence could stop a good conspiracy theory. Apart from the
unrivaled drama of the Donald's supersonic hairdo and his very proud of
himself performance in an airport hangar, there was the quieter
spectacle of Republican "leaders" Eric Cantor and Mitt Romney
complaining about Obama taking the trouble to put a stake in the
controversy for all but the firmest of the True Believers.
You just can't please some people. So we should be grateful that the
Donald was very, very pleased, even if he was mostly pleased at himself,
and even if he usually is.
We all can be pleased that whether he's only pretending to be serious,
or seriously imagining he's a pretender, there will be
comedy tonight, "the paranoid style in American politics will endure."
Still,
"History will be more unforgiving and see the birther conspiracy more
clearly than we have in our contemporary debates. It will be hard to
miss the fact that so much time and energy was spent trying to prove the
illegitimacy and un-American-ness of our first black president. It will
seem shameful. And it is."
27.April.2011
Wayne Hoffman's finest hour
The sorry state of Idaho politics was aptly captured in the
Statesman's op-ed page yesterday, two "other views" on what our
Governor has done toward nullification of the
Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The first is
from
Wayne Hoffman, former newsman, former aide of one of our whack-job
representatives in Congress, and now executive director of a "research"
foundation that enjoys its secrecy and non-profit tax status while
shamelessly shilling for corporate interests of various sorts. He says
his "No. 1 priority was to prohibit the operability of Obamacare in the
state of Idaho" at the start of this legislative sesssion, and
celebrates his success, along with that of State Senators Monty Pearce, Steve
Vick, Russ Fulcher, Chuck Winder and Sheryl Nuxoll and House
Representatives Vito Barbieri, and Judy Boyle.
Mostly, his measure of success is the "apoplectic response" from
editorial page editor Kevin Richert (who Hoffman calls "my friend" and
"an editorial writer"; go figure), anything that Richert dislikes must
be good. "We'll be watching to make sure agencies don’t come up with
silly excuses to implement Obamacare," Hoffman writes, so have no fear
that the PPACA's consumer protections will kick in, and best of luck
shopping for insurance.
The second op-ed was from House Minority Leader John Rusche, a retired
pediatrician and former senior V.P. and chief medical officer of Regence
BlueShield of Idaho, with the mild headline that the Governor's
executive order
could
disadvantage some Idahoans.
Only "could" because it all depends on what our headman does or doesn't
sanction with waivers, and whether anyone working for the state has the
temerity to ask for one. Rusche writes
"The U.S. health care system is unsupportable as it is. It costs twice
as much as that of any other country and delivers poorer results. And
that is before the big bulge of baby boomers hits it. Modifying how
health care is delivered is really more important to our country than
how the financing flows. Without participating in these Affordable Care
Act initiatives, Idahoans and Idaho businesses will be left behind.
There is no other system transformation effort around."
"Twice as much as any other" may be overstated, but
not greatly. There is nothing in
the Idaho Freedom Foundation's "research" effort, let alone its policy
advocacy that hints at "system transformation." Their business is
government sabotage, pure and simple. If blather about the Tenth
Amendment gets it done, fine, whatever. This is your little brother
kicking whatever blocks you stack one upon the other, gleefully,
uselessly.
26.April.2011
All we have to fear is fear driving us crazy
Couple of senior members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a "personal"
capacity, if you can imagine such a thing, provide a
National
Strategic Narrative to address the questions of where the United
States is going in the world, and how we might get there.
Foreign Policy magazine provides the
short
introduction:
"The report says Americans are overreacting to Islamic extremism,
underinvesting in their youth, and failing to embrace the sense of
competition and opportunity that made America a world power. The United
States has been increasingly consumed by seeing the world through the
lens of threat, while failing to understand that influence,
competitiveness, and innovation are the key to advancing American
interests in the modern world."
In the words of the narrative, we cannot isolate our own prosperity
and security from the global system.
"This begins at home with quality health care and education, with a
vital economy and low rates of unemployment, with thriving urban centers
and carefully planned rural communities, with low crime, and a sense of
common purpose underwritten by personal responsibility."
"The" firmware issue
After my desktop's disk drive went inexplicably incommunicado Saturday
night, and my #1 computer guy whisked it away to see what he could do,
between the two of us, we learned that there are apparently a ton of
Seagate drives with this problem. The drive gets into a "busy" state and
from then on refuses to talk to the outside world. The 750GB drive was
bundled in a Gateway box and sold to us in mid-2009, and it turns out
this problem was
well known months earlier. Nothing like keeping up with, um,
critical firmware updates or anything. Somewhere in the contents
listing there may have been the information that there was a Seagate
drive inside, but maybe not. It "just worked" for a couple of years,
right up until it "just stopped working" on Saturday.
Once your drive's OTL, the likes of us end users can't apply that saving
firmware update any more, it has to go back to the shop. My mind rolled
back to the disk drive field repair facility I helped design and build
in the 1980s. Good times! They'll "flash" some new firmware in there,
and poof! It'll be just like Easter Sunday.
We hope.
Otherwise, the
Data Recovery Services might
be able to get something back, for something between $700 and $3,000.
But hey, "No Data - No Charge Guarantee." And no guarantee, either.
I got through to a phone agent in short order, the big rush having ended
a while ago? And after ascertaining that yes, the drive's serial number
was "one of those," and yes, I've got the symptoms, he dropped into a
canned script telling me about how they'd try to fix it for no charge,
and I'd just have to enter into a little contract, did I want to do
that?
Well yeah, I'd like to get my data back and have the drive work again.
He walked me through the web form for the return authorization, down to
Describe the circumstances of the failure or inaccessibility and any
remedies tried where he instructed me verbatim text to enter:
This case [my case number] has been validated per the firmware
issue.
"Sign" and date it, press the UPS button to generate a prepaid shipping
label (and get a tracking number assigned), and away we go. At this
point, the process seems exceptionally well-oiled, they must have had
a lot of practice. I sure hope the repair goes as well.
25.April.2011
Two Easters
My friend Keith Arnold is on the sabbatical of his life (so far), and
after a remarkable
9 weeks abroad
he's back home in Denver, but free to look around in a new way.
His description of
attending
two very different services yesterday
is fascinating. The first one has a lot in common with the Roman
Catholic church I grew up in, in spite of a slightly incredible name:
"the Self-Ruled Antiocian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese; Diocese of
Wichita and Mid-America Western Rite Vicariate."
The second was something I've only known through depictions in the
media: a packed house of 1500, professional sound, light, and video,
auditorium seating, "two gospel soloists, guitar, bass, piano, drum kit,
and 100+ singers standing on risers singing from memory."
"More than a dozen states are currently considering legislation
weakening the clout of organized labor. In many of those states, SPN
think tanks have been pushing for similar prescriptions for years via
'research' papers, policy recommendations, and talking points that are
widely distributed to lawmakers."
Speaking of keeping score
I guess with no funny pages, the New York Times has a reason to
keep Ross Douthat on? His
Case
for Hell makes Pascal's Wager look bush league. Atheists are OK
(thanks, Ross!), but if you believe in God, you have to accept Hell,
too. Because just look at Tony Soprano.
Let's broaden the discussion
Or, as Paul Krugman puts it, consider
taking a
hike. Since
"effective federal tax rates at every level of income have fallen
significantly over the past 30 years, especially at the top. And, over
all, U.S. taxes are much lower as a percentage of national income than
taxes in most other wealthy nations."
If the Bush-era tax cuts were really intended as "a way to dispose of a
large budget surplus," mission accomplished! About 10 years ago. If
they were really intended as a way to give the wealthiest among us a leg
up, we've accomplished that mission as well, in spades.
Paul Ryan's plan is a giant leap beyond cynical. I mean, giving the
front half of the baby boom a free pass on Medicare as it is? And
the indefensible "making the Bush tax cuts permanent" (or the even more
popular cast of fighting against the "tax increase" of letting them
expire, as initially agreed to, and now waived, once).
The
People's Budget from the Congressional Progressive Caucus deserves
at least as much airtime as Ryan's (or the administration's).
Eliminates the deficit within a decade without gutting the social
safety net befitting the greatest economy in the history of the
world.
Keeping score
On this gray day in late April, rain has made the grass of our morning
view an astounding, deep green, setting off two lipstick-red
tulips,
budded against the wet, such that every time I look at them I do a
double take. Can there really be a that red, set off so vibrantly
against that green?
Yesterday, we spent the whole morning in church, singing for both
services. Three choir pieces, culminating in the beautiful setting of
e.e. cummings' "in time of daffodils" by David Dickau, and for the
benediction, I read "i thank You God for most this amazing day."
The slim purple-covered paperback of cummings' poetry is one of the
books that has been in my possession longest, those words that first
spoke to me, this is poetry.
In all modesty, I pegged the meter in the first service, and in the 60+
minutes leading up to the benediction, singing, listening to other
readers, two soloists, the homily, I knew what was coming, and was
simmering with the thrill of anticipation. Almost the same thing had
happened when I read it aloud on Wednesday, and on Saturday, just once,
for "practice," with an audience of one. The practice is the same as the
doing, the being, the ears awake and eyes open.
Which is kind of an odd segue to comment on
being defined by numbers in a data-heavy society, but as someone
who wades in an ocean of numbers for work and play, the two seem snugly
spun together. If I had a book to sell, I guess I'd be watching that
number, but the novelty of watching hits on my blog wore off about 7 or
8 years ago, at least. The occasional personal response is frankly
more interesting, and when I get one heartfelt message that something
was useful, or moving, or appreciated, that means all the world for
its moment. What Emily Dickonson said.
Not to say that watching other people keep score isn't fascinating.
Keep it up!
23.April.2011
D.C.'s undead voucher program
As part of the crazy budget wrangling,
"House Speaker John Boehner won from Democrats a small, weird
concession: the renewal and expansion of the District of Columbia's
school voucher program. Known as the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship
Program, it was the first federally funded voucher system. Congress ran
it from 2004 until 2009, when the Obama administration began to wind it
down. The District—already the epicenter of aggressive
school-reform measures—woke up last Saturday morning and found
that its old voucher program had returned." More in
Pema
Levy's report, on The American Prospect.
Vouchers were the previous wave of "school reform," founding on the twin
shoals of unconstitutionality and ineffectiveness. But apparently it's
"conservative" to keep flogging an idea that's legless, and still.
Why not send Sheriff Joe?
Reading Devin Burghart's remarkable account of
Tea
Time with the Posse: Inside an Idaho Tea Party Patriots Conference
generates a mix of revulsion and fascination. Can this really be
happening? I mean, I see and hear about craziness in the people in this
state, and what passes for government, but this crazy?
It used to bother me that the FBI infiltrated political organizations,
but I hope they've been keeping up their program with the Tea Parties,
the revived John Birch Society and others.
Here's NE Washington talk show host Laurie Roth whipping up the troops,
"stopping in the middle of her talk to engage an audience member in a
discussion about whether impeachment, arresting president Obama, or a
military coup would be the best solution."
Roth: "We have to, we can't try, we have to get him out in
2012."
Audience member: "why wait? ... He's an illegal president
now."
Roth: "He should be impeached."
Audience member: "He can't be impeached, he's not a citizen."
Roth: "How would you get him out?"
Audience member: "By having the authority of five governors, five
senators, march on the Supreme Court, who have abdicated their power and
authority to simply render that he is not a legal president. And send
the US Marshals to arrest him."
Roth: "I couldn't agree more. What we need is a move like Zelaya
in Honduras. We need the military, we need somebody to do that, or
impeachment, or something like you said. We need something more than
we've had."
Birtherism, racism, nullification, Islamophobia, the Articles of
Confederation somehow superceding the Constitution, Idaho's own Rep.
Phil "Artful Dodger" Hart, "spinning a tale of monetary usurpation and
impending financial apocalypse," selling his idea of "a parallel gold
monetary system to the Federal Reserve based on gold and silver."
The list wouldn't be complete without a healthy dollop of climate
change denial.
Ex-Californian moved to Montana Ed Berry preceded the no-host bar and
banquet, explaining how climate change is "an excuse for the federal
government to take over the states," and the means to "make us slaves to
the New World Order."
"Like Glenn Beck without the chalkboard or the tears, Berry spent much
of his talk pinning the conspiracy on George Soros. Berry claimed that
Soros is an 'atheist with skewed morals,' that he 'owns Obama,' that he
'owns the media' which he uses to brainwash people, and that he controls
the Republicans."
Ok, Soros owning the Republicans is a new one on me. Give they guy
credit for imagination.
Last but not least, there's the plan to get "Sheriff First" legislation
in every which way, caling out the county sheriff as "chief law
enforcement officer in the country."
It's a full-bodied, nut-flavored stew.
Burghart and the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights
have a ton more in their detailed report of
Tea Party
Nationalism.
21.April.2011
New candidate for evil empire?
Now that Apple has surpassed Microsoft in market cap, do we have a new
bogeyman? Two programmers said their research showed that Apple iPhones
and iPads began
tracking
and storing their locations in a hidden file since iOS 4 came out,
a year ago.
David
Pogue considers how alarmed we should be. It's not Apple that's
tracking you, just the devices you bought from them. And hey, maybe
you'd like to know where you've been! (Maybe your spouse would, too.)
But as someone with "nothing to hide," he's in the "get over it" camp of
the privacy debate.
"[A]ccept it: Yes, Big Brother is watching you. But he's been watching
you for years, well before the iPhone log came to light, and in many
more ways than you suspect."
"And you know what? I’ll bet he's bored to tears."
All the same, Pogue's assessment that the "location log was incredibly
difficult to access" is well below his usual technical standard. The
"Unix programming skills" he describes are not all that special, and
there are plenty of folks rooting around every nook and cranny of
devices to find interesting things. And yeah, they write apps to make it
available to everyone else, too.
Update #2, a week later:
See there,
Pogue says, nothing to see, just move along. (Even though parts are
"not entirely convincingly.")
Trashion Show
Ok, here's a fun event on the Boise State University
Culture
Calendar tomorrow night:
"Friday, April 22 - Trashion Show. Student Union Jordan Ballroom at 7pm.
This event takes 'dressing trashy' to a whole new level; come watch
models strut their stuff in environmentally conscious recycled
materials. Tickets at the info desk. $3 general admission, free
for students."
Honey, I killed Medicaid
The way
Ian
Millhiser reads C.L. "Butch" Otter's
Executive
Order from yesterday, Idaho's Governor may have just shrunk Idaho's
governmental enterprise by one-half. He quotes from the letter Assistant
Chief Deputy A.G. Brian Kane wrote to my Representative, Elfreda
Higgens, in February, regarding drafted legislation being considered by
the House State Affairs Committee then, RS20315:
"As a purely voluntary program, Idaho's refusal to comply with the
expanded provisions within the PPACA could potentially result in Idaho
exiting the program and losing the existent federal matching funds. This
could create a situation where individuals presently covered would no
longer be covered, yet still require medical treatment, which likely
would be required to be provided for and paid for through some
non-federal means. This situation, in turn, could create an intense
burden on the State's budget."
Otter's Order does provide a waiver process, so if what looks like a
multi-$billion blunder was unintentional, there's a way out. But now we
have to wonder: was it the Governor's intention to kill Medicaid
in Idaho? It would certainly delight the Tea Party-ish proponents of
nullifying government, the Vito Barbieri and Wayne Hoffman.
Update:Kevin
Richert's take, for the Idaho Statesman. Since the Governor
has done most or all of nullifying "Obamacare," as he apparently likes
to call it, we're going to get to find out what "Ottercare" can do
for us. Best hope you don't get sick.
develop.idaho #2 - social vision
Karl Meinhardt was listed on the program as "Social Media Visionary and
author," a title which makes the eyes roll, but I did enjoy his rapid
fire presentation about tapping the chaos of social media (to make
money), even though I'm not really interested in doing so. His most
provocative point was that social media traffic has overtaken porn.
We're in the midst of THE BIGGEST CONVERSATION IN THE HISTORY OF (our
corner of) THE UNIVERSE. "The news finds us" now.
Customers, Employees, Products, Partners are a CONVERSATION.
"Social is not BUYMYPRODUCTBUYMYPRODUCTBUYMYPRODUCT, it's about sharing
the <3" (an emoticon which just yesterday morning was not in my
emoto-cabulary). Like John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, sharing his duck
calling prowess on YouTube, certainly qualifying for Non Sequitur of the
Day. Or Week.
TV advertising is dead. 90% (he said, probably making up the number, but
still) of people skip over ads with a DVR. (I can assure you that *I*
skip over at least 90% of ads with a DVR.)
SHARE YOUR IDEAS. Learn what people want. EVERYTHING YOU DO IS AN
EVENT. (Hence, your public relations department, Twitter.) FEEDBACK
is what allows you to AMPLIFY and FIND YOUR WAY. (He said "feedback,"
the rest of that sentence is me.)
develop.idaho #1a - free travel blog
One startup story: two friends in the financial industry broke out of
the mold, went one year globe trekker, found that existing social media are not
just the thing for the wandering technophile to keep family and friends
entertained with travelogue. (Or as they wrote their history, "they were
frustrated by the complexity of sharing their experiences ...")
"So, when they came home they decided to start a travel journal
company."
"Luckily for Nate and Natty, home happens to be Boulder, Colorado, where
the tech start-up scene was beginning to really heat up when they
returned. After teaching themselves how to program [with
Ruby on Rails, natch] in
leveraging their business backgrounds in New York, they were accepted
into the prestigious TechStars program, which provided great support and
mentorship as they created their company,
Everlater (a name that
Natty came up with, an anagram of e-Traveler)."
develop.idaho #1 - unprecedented potential
The Idaho Technology Council put on
a
little shindig yesterday, cramming a couple hundred+ of local
movers, shakers, coders, and some eager to be. (Students got in free.) I
enjoyed the full afternoon program and a little schmoozing,
unfortunately had another commitment that precluded sticking around for
the full-on tech.cocktail schmoozefest in the evening. The plan was to
highlight 13 local startups in the lively, large space of the Linen
Building, and give away drinks.
The organizers said they were worried at times that their idea was going
to flop. Attracting a couple dozen software geeks to come out into the
daylight and talk to each other in a less than fully structured
environment? But what do you know, it worked just fine.
I filled 10 pages of a notebook with jots and tittles, very old school.
A fellow well older than me had an iBook going for his notes, and an
iPad on the chair next to him recording the proceedings. My gadgetry is
so out of date!
Overheard in the warmup: "Ruby is about as magical as a language can be
... but you have to know what the naming conventions are."
"MobileDataForce has spun off 2 startups in the last two months."
Companies are looking for talent, and not finding enough of it around
here. Not enough talent? Or not talented enough?
One new arrival pointed out that the airline connections to get her
suck, and what is there for a single 26-year-old to do downtown?
Bob Lokken, giant in the Business Intelligence field, once CEO of
smash-hit local startup ProClarity, now founder and CEO of
WhiteCloud Analytics
("working on a niche problem - the U.S. healthcare system"),
talked about the UNPRECEDENTED POTENTIAL he sees in the platform shift
imminent in the intersection of cloud computing, new devices, the
explosion of data from social media and the next wave coming,
sensors.
Speaking of platform shift, did you know that APPLE is now #2 in the
world in Market Capitalization? I did not know that, but right on cue
yesterday afternoon there was the news that
Apple
Crushes Earnings Again, With 95 Percent Profit Growth.
20.April.2011
I know you are, but what am I?
The regular parade of fundraising emails has to go for
attention-getting, because lord knows, they get tiresome and
uninteresting after a while. If I had an irony filter on my email,
they'd never get through. Here's the presence of John Boehner, Speaker
of the House, for example:
"Last week, House Republicans passed a long-term budget by Chairman
Paul Ryan that would help boost job creation today and lift the debt
burden that threatens our children and grandchildren."
(Do you mean that symbolic action you knew would be DOA in the Senate,
and that was widely ridiculed for its lack of seriousness?)
"Unfortunately, the Democrats who run Washington aren't serious about
addressing our looming debt crisis."
Splutter what? Not serious, you say?!
"They believe it serves their political interests to try to demonize our
proposals to cut spending and preserve critical health and retirement
programs for future generations."
At least they're not demonizing you for not being serious, eh? Oh
wait.
19.April.2011
How many phonemes are you using?
"Language was our secret weapon, and as soon we got language we became a
really dangerous species." – Mark Pagel
I had a college friend from Belgium who delighted in learning American
idioms, and he was always interested in my explanations of their
nuances. In exchange, he tried to teach me a little Flemish here and
there, a task to which I was apparently unsuited. He tried to teach me
a particular
diphthong one day,
and after half a dozen tries, I had to give up. He explained that there
are some sounds that if you don't learn them as a child, you just can't
make.
I was reminded of that by the news of
a
fascinating paper on historical linguistics that suggests a pointer
back to the origin of language, based on decreasing variation with
increasing distance.
"Some of the click-using languages of Africa have more than 100
phonemes, whereas Hawaiian, toward the far end of the human migration
route out of Africa, has only 13. English has about 45 phonemes."
English, Dutch and German (and French, the 4th language, my friend
knows) are all about the same distance from the hypothesized origin
of language in southwest Africa, and about the same complexity; it seems
we both have a lot that's not in our repertoire.
Short-term memory
I've got a simple, two-color view of the stock market, thanks to the
iGoogle widget on my browser's home page. Down is red, up is green, with
a 3 major indices and a half-dozen individual stocks providing my proxy
to the world of investing. Yesterday, as you may recall, was sky-falling
RED, as the markets reacted to the S&P downgrade of the USA's future
creditworthiness.
Today, either cooler heads are prevailing, or they all moved on to
whatever news is next, and the picture is (mostly) restful green. Maybe
further reflection led to the proper reaction to Standard and Poor's:
burst
out laughing. And question the motivation.
The Business of America
Marc Johnson has a remodeled home for The Johnson Post,
Many Things Considered,
and it looks nice, even if he's keeping his comment facility closed.
(Like I'm one to complain about that?) Here's his
handicapping Donald Trump's chances
for the D.C. real
estate deal he's pretending to be interested in, examined through
the lens of the Roosevelt v. Wilkie race of 1940, the last time the
Republicans picked a businessman to lead their ticket:
"Donald Trump can command a lot of attention, as he is currently doing,
but he can't, I suspect, stand the intense scrutiny he will get if he
really becomes a candidate. The hair and wife jokes will continue and
when next year rolls around, Republicans will do as they have since
1944. They'll nominate a candidate with public sector skills and
experience."
Perhaps someone will object that George W. Bush was a "businessman," and
how much more all-American business can you get than investment banking,
multinational oil industry, an Ivy League network, and CIA connections
into the arms industry? Oh, and don't forget that Harvard MBA.
The section headings of Kevin Phillips' book,
American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush,
provide the full outline: Family, Dynasty, Crony Capitalism, Covert
Operations, Compassionate Conservatism, Religion, Oil, Armaments
and War. The rich stew of our American melting pot.
Needless to say, Trump is a buffoonish piker in the Bush league.
18.April.2011
Feeling woozy
That paragon of index branding, Standard and Poor's (with of course no
guarantee of "accuracy, adequacy, or completeness of any information
used") came out with
a
Research Update on the United States of America, and they've got
some good news, and some bad news. First, the good news. Our AAA/A-1+
rating is affirmed! Woo hoo!
"The economy of the U.S. is flexible and highly diversified, the country's
effective monetary policies have supported output growth while containing
inflationary pressures, and a consistent global preference for the U.S.
dollar over all other currencies gives the country unique external
liquidity."
They also like our "flexible labor markets and a long track record of
openness to capital flows."
"In addition, its public sector uses a smaller share of national income
than those of most 'AAA' rated countries--including its closest peers,
the U.K., France, Germany, and Canada (all AAA/Stable/A-1+)--which
implies greater revenue flexibility."
But, um, the Magic 8 Ball says "not clear to us" when it comes to the
country's "very large budget deficits and rising government
indebtedness," so material risk! Could be rendered meaningfully weaker
than that of peer 'AAA' sovereigns. Call it AAA/Negative/A-1+.
Among other reader's comments to
the
news story is Boston AJ's:
"These guys put top ratings on packages of mortgages made to people who
could barely buy groceries, but now they are prognosticating on the
outcome of complex political processes."
While the market forecast may be uncertain, the political one is not:
everyone will be flogging the S&P report to suit his or her
preferred agenda as we go forward into complexity.
Question from Reince Priebus
The RNC Chairman wants to know how I'm celebrating Tax Day. (Just
another day, dude.) And, Can you afford FOUR MORE YEARS of Barack
Obama's presidency?
Sure, why not?
"Since he has been in office, our deficit has skyrocketed, the cost of
food and gas has gone up, and we have lost millions of jobs. And as if
taxes aren't high enough, President Barack Obama's new budget proposal
calls for an additional $2 trillion tax hike on American families and
small businesses to fuel his big government agenda."
Taxes aren't high enough, Reince; that's why the deficit is so
damn big. And the whole demonization thing isn't really working for me.
The new boss looks pretty much like the old boss, actually, and you and
your pals had no problem when the last guy was skyrocketing the deficit
and losing millions of jobs.
While maintaining a fixed idea about the world may be "conservative,"
if said idea
has
no factual basis, we have to start calling it "stupid" at some
point. Our perhaps "counterproductive" to be polite. But
being
polite could be counterproductive, too.
17.April.2011
Wouldn't you know it
Paul Ryan an Ayn Rand enthusiast, how perfect. Shouldn't he be in
business by and large, rather than government, then? Given
that he has gone into public service though, perhaps he could try going
toe-to-toe with
Maureen
Dowd, and find a witty riposte to this:
"[Rand] wrote about Nietzschean superheroes who made things. She died
before capitalism evolved into a vampire casino where you could bet
against investments you sold to your clients, and make money off
something you didn't own or that existed only on paper."
And then explain how the AAA of "atheism, amorality in romance and
vigorous support for abortion" fits in with his enthusiasm for
Rand's philosopy.
16.Apr.2011
Budget blather
Now that we have the FY 2011 squared away (we do, don't we?), it's
time to forge into the future.
The
RSC proposal having been narrowly defeated on the Republican side,
we're left with Paul Ryan's plan coming out of the House, and
the President's plan
coming out of the White House.
Seriously?
If you've seen plans for $9 trillion, or $6 trillion, or whatever in
budget cuts, and your eyes didn't just glaze over at absurdly large
numbers (because 2.5 trillion $1 bills laid end-to-end would reach from
your chair to the moon), you might wonder how you can cut that much out
of a $3.5T budget. Easy! Just multiply by however many years you
need to come up with your cockamamie headline.
That's right, the same team that turned in its homework 6½ months
late is rolling out plans not merely for FY 2012, but far into the
future. Five, 10, 20, however many years it takes to imagine a brighter,
bolder future.
Anyway, it's one thing to find out that Paul Krugman thinks your
proposal is
simultaneously ridiculous and cruel ("gone all-in for voodoo
economics"), another altogether when a pragmatic, Minnesota farmboy
turned economist
points at your
laughable assumptions and notes how you backed away from them after
being greeted with derision. Never mind the disingenuity of the
whole enterprise:
"The sad irony is that when we actually ran budget surpluses in fiscal
years 1998, 1999 and 2001, the Republican majority in Congress did not
support the achievement. Instead these very modest surpluses were
brandished as evidence American were overtaxed and were the key argument
for the 2001 tax cut once George W. Bush was inaugurated."
But the good news is, Congress has cleared out of town for, that's
right, their Easter recess (or as they list it slightly less religiously
on their
calendar, "Spring Recess"), spanning the week before and the
week after Easter. Nice non-work for a 6-figure salary if you can avoid
it.
15.Apr.2011
Missed it by *that* much
I hope they're not actually printing all the budget plans making the
rounds in D.C. of late, I'm afraid the Atlantic coast would be
deforested again. We've now got the right-center plan from the Obama
administration (but will the T.P. shut up about how he's a socialist?
Nooo), the right-right plan from Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan,
and the way-right (a.k.a. "fair and balanced") plan from the Republican
Study Committee, which mirabile dictu, just about passed the House
today, thanks to
the
Democratic Whip letting all the Republicans vote as they saw
fit.
That nice ploy almost worked to smoke out the balance of
extremism that's taken over the majority party over there, but with an
outcry
worthy of Question Time in the British Parliament, the GOP managed
to round up enough votes to quash the RSC budget.
New York City schools gave their latest chancellor the heave-ho after a
mere three months on the job, having failed,
as
Rudy Crew put it, in "her weakest suit—namely, she knew
nothing about running a school system." If only theories were as easily
put to rest as
Richard
Kahlenberg would like to think, we could dispense with the truly
cock-eyed notion that management acumen (real or imagined) trumps the
need for actual experience in the field of education.
"Her tenure also exposed the shortcomings of the cult of the private
sector. Behind Ms. Black's appointment seemed to lie the assumption that
surely, if someone had succeeded in the rough and tumble of the private
market, doing well in the softer, less-well compensated public sector
would, by comparison, be a piece of cake. ...
[T]here was perhaps no greater repudiation of the cult of the
noneducator and private sector manager than Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s
choice of Ms. Black’s successor: former teacher and long-time public
servant Dennis M. Walcott, about whom Mayor Bloomberg said 'there is no
better person qualified to step into the job of chancellor.'"
Maybe in 5 or 10 years the news will reach Idaho, where we're trying out
a state Superintendent with no experience in education. Not that Idaho's
schools constitute
an enterprise on
the scale of New York City's, with and enrollment almost as large as
our whole state population, and an annual budget north of $20
billion.
13.Apr.2011
Back to the brink
Saw it mentioned that the Gingrich-led 1995 government shutdown had one
of those last-minute deals that then failed to get the "actual" vote
through, so
here
we go again, maybe. The House Majority Leader isn't sure he's got
enough of his people to pass it, after only 28 said no to the "bridge"
plan. Do we have another one of those bridges to Nowhere? The Minority
Whip says "my presumption is we don't know where our people are. I don't
think they know where their people are."
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the 175-member House Republican
Study Committee, said "while I respect that some of my Republican
colleagues will ultimately support this spending deal, I believe voters
are asking us to set our sights higher." By which he of course means
lower.
Oh and here's a surprise,
lobbyists won key concessions in budget deal, in some cases
carefully avoiding leaving any fingerprints.
"Everyone at the table says that someone else brought it up. They all
say, 'It wasn’t me.'"
"Will the Hollywood depiction of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel serve as some
sort of easy-to-read cultural thermometer? Will the film flop or will it
become the movie manifesto of America's nascent Tea Party?"
Film at 11, on the 15th.
Ayn Rand's Institute is hyping the "striking" parallels between her
fictional dystopia and the present day.
"In Atlas we see a world crumbling under the weight of government
interventions and regulations. The economy has ground to a halt. Each
day more businesses are shutting their doors. The government blames
greed and the free market and frantically imposes further controls. But
the crisis only deepens. Sound familiar?"
Actually, not so much. (Having Dick Armey's organization promoting the film
sounds like classic irony though, "imploring its followers to demand
that the movie be shown in more and more theaters." Buy tickets, kids,
that's all the he-man John Galt "demand" you need!) Here's what sounds
familiar:
a
Congressional budget deal made-to-order for Koch Industries.
"[I]s it just a coincidence that so many of the the things Republicans
demanded—and got—just happen to line up with the financial
interests of the billionaires who fund the Tea Party and much of the
"conservative movement?" Cutting money for the EPA, alternative energy
efficiency, high-speed rail, efforts to fight climate change—even
prohibiting NOAA from creating a Climate Service ... it reads like an
oil tycoon's wish list.
"[And this after] finishing pushing through another huge tax cut for the
rich. Always remember that tax cut deal any time you hear about
"deficits"—which were caused by tax cuts for the rich and
increases in military spending. ... this budget 'cut' deal increased the
military budget by another $5 billion. ..."
11.April.11
Pretty in plaid
Mitt Romney has announced he's ... exploring running for President.
Be still my heart. Just to show how snap, snap, snap, up-to-date he is,
he did it by talking to his supporters with a YouTube video.
If you've ever seen my wardrobe, you know I'm not a fashion snob, but
I have to say, brown suede jacket? Plaid shirt? No tie? His earthy tones
and pink-in-touch-with-his-feminine-side did match his backdrop, which
was that all-American ... high school track? You can almost imagine
people running around in circles down there, except that would have
been distracting eh, so they did it on a Saturday. Somehow, I was still
distracted, and hardly heard a word he said. Thank goodness for
the
transcript.
"It's time that we put America back on a course of greatness, with a
growing economy, good jobs and fiscal discipline in Washington. I
believe in America. I believe in the freedom and opportunity and the
principles of our Constitution that have led us to become the greatest
nation in history of the Earth."
As opposed to ... ?!
10.Apr.2011
Another feather in our cap
The only thing funner than collecting geographic confusion between Iowa
and Idaho (and Ohio) is collecting "far end of the political spectrum"
quips. Such as this from Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch,
lamenting Bob Dylan's sellout to Chinese puppetmasters, playing a
pre-approved set. (Maybe he, um, meant it to be ironic.)
"Imagine if the Tea Party in Idaho said to him, 'You're not allowed to
play whatever,' you'd get a very different response."
As quoted in
Maureen
Dowd's decrying Op-ed. But Dylan himself has long disclaimed
any status as "Big Bubba of Rebellion." And if you've heard anything of
his singing lately, I have to say, the joke was on 2,000 Chinese
apparatchiks in the Worker's Gymnasium in Beijing.
Here in Idaho, the Legislature is done, and the Tea Party will
presumably be melting back into the woods for a while. Some may head
down to Weiser for
the fiddle fest. (Warning:
that page's audio comes right atcha.)
With one hour to spare
Interesting
inside-baseball
account of last week's budget drama, by Lisa Lerer on Bloomberg
News. Makes for a sort of thrilling story, but wouldn't it be better as
a good novel than actual news about how our government is being managed?
The "playing chicken" metaphor came up often enough, so now we just had
a "successful" game of that, both sides swerving just in time to the
avoid collision and "learning" the wrong lesson: chicken is an exciting
game, and we can win some concessions. Before the late-night Friday
finale, the
pundits
on the Newshour recapped the increasingly familiar
melodrama:
DAVID BROOKS: I assume what they are doing—and I hope this is
true—they're just trying to show their bases that they're fighting
as hard as they can for them, and then, at the end of the day, in the
last minute or the last second, they will just cut a deal which has
probably been in the works and they knew they were heading toward all
along.
And so Boehner can say to his people, we fought for spending, we fought
for spending. And Reid and the Democrats can say we fought for a right
to choice. And then they will—but they will have known all along,
well, we will cut a deal when we have to. We have just got to say, we
fought hard for you.
JIM LEHRER: Would you go along with the thesis that, even if in
fact, later tonight, they do strike a deal, and they technically don't
shut the government down, or whether they do, that everybody involved is
going to come out a loser?
RUTH MARCUS: Pretty much. ...
8.Apr.2011
Worth someone else dying for?
The DSCC's view of the impasse:
"talks went until 3 a.m. with no agreement. The issue Republicans refuse
to budge on: defunding women's healthcare. Yesterday, Sen. Reid said
'the only thing holding up an agreement is ideology.' Republicans are so
against funding women's healthcare that they would shut down the federal
government over it."
"This is no longer about the budget deficit. It's about bumper
stickers." Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)
The NYT's view is that maybe they'll find a last-minute agreement,
who knows? "The two sides appeared to be only a few billion dollars
apart on the level of spending to be approved for the balance of this
year," in their battle over the rounding error of a $3.5 trillion
budget. And yes, the gray lady has the phrase "game of chicken" in its
coverage.
The euphemism of the day is "policy dispute," as in, given that we're up
against a deadline and more than 6 months late already, shouldn't we
take advantage of the crisis we've manufactured, and kill funding for
Planned Parenthood? Oh, and the regulatory power of the EPA while we're
at it.
7.Apr.2011
Preparing for Shiloh
We watched the episode of Ken Burns' Civil War that ends with
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address last night, and just thinking of it gives
me chills. Not to the same extent that it did in the run of
Doris Kearne Goodwin's
Team of Rivals,
one of the very few books I've listened to being read.
It's brought to mind by the economic war that the Tea Party has
undertaken on the federal government, and appears prepared to win a
significant battle, tomorrow.
And by Dave Johnson's commentary on the contest, wondering
who is our country FOR? We remember how Abraham Lincoln put it, but
through the mists of time and without connecting it to the present.
If you follow the money, the picture is clear enough, as he spells out
in a variety of time series, top tax rate, corporate tax revenue as a
share of GDP, payroll tax contribution rates, share of income for the
bottom 99.5%, concentration of income at the top, spending on lobbying,
and the defense budget. I'm guessing fortboise readers don't need to
follow the link to visualize any or all of those graphs.
Lobbying pays off, duh. In D.C. as in Boise, the corporate interests get
what they pay for, in helpful legislation, in rifle-shot tax code, in
lubrication to move money where it's the least encumbered by societal
obligation. Legislation is created by the corporations, it is of the
corporations, and it is for the corporations.
"Communities are being bankrupted, forced to lay off police,
firefighters, teachers, nurses and other essential people who work to
protect and help us. More and more working people are hurting, falling
ever further behind, losing or barely clinging to their jobs and homes
and businesses and health. At the same time big-company CEOs who cheat,
bankrupt their company, ship jobs overseas and fire white collar workers
by the thousands are not held accountable -- instead they are rewarded
with big bonuses."
But prosperity is just around the corner! By cutting government, by
shutting it down, by keeping those lazy government workers from
collective bargaining (or hell, just fire 'em), the economy will
magically surge anew.
Regarding the headline: it was 150 149 years ago yesterday and
today that the battle of Shiloh was fought, "the first big battle" of
the war as
the book by
Geoffrey Ward, Ken and Ric Burns put it.
"The bloodiness of Shilo was astounding to everyone. Out of 100,000 men,
over 20,000 were killed, wounded, captured, or missing. Shiloh had the
same number of casualties as Waterloo. And yet when it was fought, there
were another twenty Waterloos to follow."
6.Apr.2011
Shutdown bad
Now that Congress is past half a year late on agreeing to a FY2011
budget, what a great time to roll out a radical plan to restructure
everything, kill Medicare (but only for you 54-and-younger,
fiddle-dee-dee!), save $trillions! and so on. From the right side of the
Gang of Six, Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo posted
a perfunctory welcome, "look[ing] forward to reviewing the details."
From the middle side, Senate Budget chair Kent Conrad (D-ND)
fired
for effect:
"Representative Ryan's proposal is partisan and ideological. He
provides dramatic tax cuts for the wealthiest, financed by draconian
reductions in Medicare and Medicaid. His proposals are unreasonable and
unsustainable."
Not the least of the faults of Ryan's plan is that it discards important
chunks of the work of last year's Fiscal Commission. Crapo was a member
who endorsed the Commission's conclusions, so you would think he'd have
something more meaningful to say on the subject. Stay tuned.
Shutdown good
The end of Idaho's current legislative session couldn't
possibly come soon enough. The Republicans who run the joint are still
saying "this week," maybe tomorrow. One of the sticking points is
was the not quite resolved family feud over closing their primaries,
as Dan Popkey describes:
GOP
purification rite hits a snag. It seems that in rushing to close
out independents (and dastardly Democrat operatives, you know, the ones
who've achieved control ... over nothing whatsoever in state
government), the good old boys can't settle on who's going to be in
charge. Speaker Lawerence "sic" Denney thinks it's just fine and "simply
a practicality" to have the state party chairman have the final say,
all by himself.
Something about a deadline motivates alacrity: between that story and
6:42 this morning, Rep. Brent Crane of Nampa pushed a rewrite through,
and now it's
"a
political party" that will decide, not just the big man.
"We're here to try and fix this country's problems. And that mean--if
that means we have to go first and offer solutions, fine. If that means
we're giving our political adversaries a political weapon to use against
us, which by the way, they will have to distort, demagogue and lie to
use it, shame on them. We owe it to the country to give them an honest
debate."
So let me get this straight: you're ready for an honest debate in which
anyone who disagrees with you is distorting, demagogueing and lying?
Riiiight.
Déjà vu
The first time through, I'm pretty sure I watched the whole Ken Burns
Civil War series (just as I'm
pretty sure I fell asleep at some point in most every episode; is it
just TV, or Ken Burns that can make war soporific?). As they rerun the
series here at the sesquicentennial of our Union's blood confirmation,
the voiceover statement between the two one-hour episodes brought to
mind some of the craziness of this year's session of the Idaho
legislature, and the enthusiasm for the Tea Party
in this state:
"Don't go away. The Civil War will be back in a moment."
Patronage: the old-fashioned way
When I was 18 and holding a freshly minted high-school diploma, having
decided I wasn't going to start college right away, I went looking for a
good paying job in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, back in the day when factory
jobs were a damn sight easier to come by than they are now.
I don't remember how I learned about the opening at Milcut, Inc., but
the location was close enough for me to walk or bike there, the work was
within my ability, the pay good enough for my short-term ambition,
and the little competence test they had me take a breeze. The truth
was, and without any self-delusion, I was significantly overqualified
for the job. I imagined my test score made me stand out, and while it
might have, it was my surname that caught the eye of the president of
the small company, with whom I then interviewed.
Some time after the job had been offered to me and I accepted, I learned
that he was in the same small-business owners' association with my dad.
Their collegial relationship was no doubt a big boost to my chances,
even though we both knew I wasn't likely to stay very long. I figured to
work through the winter and spring, at least. He might have been hoping
to get a useful year or two out of me? It was shorter than either of us
expected, as my girlfriend's wanderlust kicked in mid-semester, and we
hit the open road that April.
Between times, I punched the clock, earned my pay with some enthusiasm,
cut out gaskets and heavy equipment headliners, foam bushings for this,
that and the other thing, played Sheepshead for a nickel a point at
lunchtime, and went to the local tavern with my workmates on payday.
It's nice to see they're
still in business, moved a little further out of town, and now led
by Junior, who would have been about 16 when I signed on for my brief
tour.
What prompted this jolly trip down memory lane is the story in the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the son of a big donor to their
Gov. Scott Walker getting
a
cush government job he's totally unqualified for.
Well, he's got a high-school diploma, put in a couple years at UW,
worked for some Republican legislators, "helped run a legislative and
losing congressional campaign," collected a couple DUIs, a part-time
job here and there, and then starting at $64,728 a year and quick as a
wink promoted and make that $80k.
Nice work if you can get it.
Music from Nashville
Langston Hughes' words, Carl Marsh's music, the Rev. Jason Shelton's
conducting the Portara Ensemble singing "I've Known Rivers" at the First
Lutheran Church. (Mother Nature joins the chorus at one point: Jason
said there were "big time thunderstorms" in Tennessee yesterday.)
Jason's also posted video of the performance of one of his own
compositions, Child
of the Earth.
GOP's Paul Ryan thinking small. Very small
He's thinking
we
should cut $6 trillion from the federal budget over the next decade,
and wrap up by dismantling Medicare in 2022. But hey, all you
mid-to-late Boomers can keep voting Republican and don't worry about a
thing:
"GOP sources familiar with the plan stress anyone 55 or older now would
not be affected by the changes."
And if you like those Bush-era tax cuts that got extended at the last
minute, keep liking 'em! He wants to make them permanent. No additional
revenue? No cuts to the Pentagon? Some magic, apparently, and upping the
ante from last year's
National Commission on Fiscal
Responsibility and Reform "Moment of Truth," half again as much:
we'll see your $4 trillion and raise you $2T. A plan of this magnitude
(diminitude?) would need careful deliberation, don't you think? Or
...
"keep the forward momentum by moving the proposal quickly through the
House before it stalls at the Senate doors. The bill will likely get
marked up in committee Wednesday, and the Rules Committee plans to
outline the parameters for debate on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.
At that point, the House is expected to pass the resolution and send it
to the Senate."
RJ Eskow has boiled down the health funding side of the attack,
to
six convenient slides (one excerpted here). Looks like the only cost
containment will be giving everyone "half-off" insurance.
I guess in Republican parlance, that's a "Two for One" deal. You'll
still have Social Security, and Medicare, but you'll be sending your
Social Security check to pay for your Medicare.
Voilà! Problem solved.
4.Apr.2011
Academic freedom (and good behavior) at UW
Nice message from the University of Wisconsin's Chancellor
explaining a little bit about
academic freedom and open
records, after the state's Republicans came after Prof. Bill Cronon
because they didn't like what he was writing, demanding e-mails that
reference 20 words, terms and names of individuals related to current
political events. They'll comply with the law, if not satisfy the
fishing expedition:
"We are excluding records involving students because they are protected
under FERPA. We are excluding exchanges that fall outside the realm of
the faculty member's job responsibilities and that could be considered
personal pursuant to Wisconsin Supreme Court case law. We are also
excluding what we consider to be the private email exchanges among
scholars that fall within the orbit of academic freedom and all that is
entailed by it. Academic freedom is the freedom to pursue knowledge and
develop lines of argument without fear of reprisal for controversial
findings and without the premature disclosure of those ideas. ...
"To our faculty, I say: Continue to ask difficult questions, explore
unpopular lines of thought and exercise your academic freedom,
regardless of your point of view. As always, we will take our cue from
the bronze plaque on the walls of Bascom Hall. It calls for the
'continual and fearless sifting and winnowing' of ideas. It is our
tradition, our defining value, and the way to a better society."
And since the Wisconsin GOP is so concerned about the good professor,
they'll be delighted to
read this from the Senior
University Legal Counsel:
"You should further note that the e-mails that we have reviewed contain
absolutely no evidence of political motivation, contact from individuals
outside normal academic channels or inappropriate conduct on the part of
Professor Cronon. The university finds his conduct, as evidenced in the
e-mails, beyond reproach in every respect. He has used his university
e-mail account appropriately and legitimately. He has not used his
university e-mail account for any inappropriate political conduct. In
fact, none of the e-mails contained any reference whatsoever to any of
the specific political figures that you identified (except Governor
Scott Walker), nor do they in any way reference the proposed recall
efforts."
Talkin' 'bout my generation
How about a free listen of Paul Simon's new album,
So
Beautiful or So What? Yes, please! Thanks to
Fresh Air and WHYY and
Ken
Tucker's review (even though he finished it a little snooty),
I'm feeling the love.
They say it'll stream there in its entirety until its release on April
12. Get you some.
Mike Huckabee's more than just another roly-poly GOP aspirant to the
presidency; he is seriously disturbed to have something like this pop
out as "humor." No wonder the "United in Purpose" folks would edit it
out before posting. (Erik Eckholm politely ignored Huckabee's "joke" in
his
report of the "Pastors' Policy Briefing" for the New York
Times, too.)
One new arrival pointed out that the airline connections to get her
suck, and what is there for a single 26-year-old to do downtown?
,
provide the full outline: Family, Dynasty, Crony Capitalism, Covert
Operations, Compassionate Conservatism, Religion, Oil, Armaments
and War. The rich stew of our American melting pot.
,
one of the very few books I've listened to being read.
It's brought to mind by the economic war that the Tea Party has
undertaken on the federal government, and appears prepared to win a
significant battle, tomorrow.
by
Geoffrey Ward, Ken and Ric Burns put it.
