And these are the guys in the same party!
Idaho Reports
had a hell of a show tonight. Highlights, loosely paraphrased:
Ward: Bailouts bad. Very bad. My opponent is "somebody who defends
illegal aliens."
Labrador: It's a shame my opponent who defended the Constitution hasn't
got around to reading it.
Ward: I'm the outsider candidate, and I've got a great political
organization already.
Labrador: I've got experience fighting the federal government, and I
know what to do. "It's not something my handlers told me to do."
But we can all agree on the pernicious nature of the 17th Amendment.
(You know, the one that established direct election of United States
Senators by popular vote.)
Didn't see that one coming!
More
highlights,
from Betsy Russell (but of course you can watch it for yourself, on
Idaho Public TV).
The future of offshore drilling
The NYT
Room for Debate feature on "What the Spill Means for Offshore
Drilling" is an interesting read, giving multiple perspectives on the
disaster. It leads with a nasa.gov satellite image of the now 100km wide
spread of oil in the Gulf.
From David Burnett, director of technology for the Global Petroleum
Research Institute and research coordinator for the Petroleum
Engineering Department at Texas A&M:
"Within our little world of energy exploration, the recent Gulf of
Mexico rig disaster is equivalent to NASA's Challenger loss. We are
devastated by our human losses, dismayed by the financial fall out and
(personally) somewhat betrayed by our own technology. That rig was on
the cutting edge of technology with triple redundant systems to detect
and intervene to avoid such blowouts."
Reserving capacity to act
We have been offered a great Learning Experience by this
Financial Dislocation which lined the pockets of so many on
Wall Street (no news there) while fleecing the credulous on Main Street
(no money down! Also not news). Now that the glorious rising tide of
real estate lifted every slap-dash raft with better than neutral
bouyancy, and then ran out, the tide turning on the Bay of Funds to
leave us to gyre and gimble in the wabe, what lessons, exactly, did we
learn?
Meanwhile, as the Eurozone continues its implosion, and Republicans pump
the anti-deficit, anti-government organ using it as an example,
Paul Krugman offers a more thoughtful analysis of
the
Euro Trap, noting that governments being able to act
to respond to crisis is essential to mitigating the inevitable damage
from free market fandangos.
"[W]hen each European nation had its own currency[,] costs could be
brought in line by adjusting exchange rates—e.g., Greece could cut
its wages relative to German wages simply by reducing the value of the
drachma in terms of Deutsche marks. Now that Greece and Germany share
the same currency, however, the only way to reduce Greek relative costs
is through some combination of German inflation and Greek deflation. And
since Germany won’t accept inflation, deflation it is.
"The problem is that deflation—falling wages and prices—is
always and everywhere a deeply painful process. It invariably involves a
prolonged slump with high unemployment. And it also aggravates debt
problems, both public and private, because incomes fall while the debt
burden doesn't."
29.Apr.2010
Clash of the Titans
High above this mortal realm, the giants of the American Enterprise
Institute fight over name-calling. As I understand the story so far,
Ornstein began with "Is not!" and Gingrich replied "Is too!" Now,
Onstein answers
in The New Republic: Is not!
I'm glad we got that settled.
28.Apr.2010
That's a "mind map," actually
The comments bucket had already filled up (701) by the time I got to
reading Elisabeth Bumiller's popular item,
We
Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint. The "PowerPoint diagram
meant to portray the complexity of American strategy in Afghanistan
certainly succeeded in that aim," reads the caption.
Ok, first of all, this is the first time I've seen someone use
PowerPoint to generate
a mind map, and my
guess is it's not very well suited to the task (but someone made it
work, with considerable effort).
Secondly, while the snarky caption is accurate enough, the underlying
problem of the complexity of using the military to "help people" is not
made worse by attempting to portray it. Mind mapping is a useful tool
for ideation, like brainstorming, and not an end to itself.
I think it's probably a good thing that there were at least 3 drafts of
an attempt to diagram counterinsurgency dynamics. The question is
not why are we using PowerPoint, but then what happened with the
analysis? What action should we take? Did we take? What happened?
Now what? Use the best tools you have to figure it out.
A better, bigger picture than mine
I had private pushback from a more knowledgeable source, regarding
my "so that" in the previous post, the implication that the AIG bailout
was particularly intended to benefit Goldman Sachs. (Just a
helpful coincidence that the Treasury Secretary at the time and
architect of the bailout, Henry Paulson, was the former head of the
"great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly
jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money," as
Matt Taibbi so memorably described the firm.)
Try Bethany
McLean's take as she writes a book with Joe Nocera of the NYT about
the financial meltdown. She finds plenty of blame to go around,
but the buck stops with "our government," the only entity with a "duty
to protect us from the greed" of the various dubious actors intent on
making as much money as possible for themselves.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift
Supervision, the Federal Reserve, the S.E.C., and of course
Congress itself, the body that "repealed the Glass-Steagall Act,
which separated investment and commercial banking, yet failed to update
the fraying regulatory system."
Doing away with regulation was all the rage back then, eh? Let the
market work! Get government off our backs!
Ok, we gave that a try. Now what?
Taking it in the shorts
That Lloyd Blankfein is so smart, it cooked all the hair off the top of
his head. A friend forwarded an excerpt from an unnamed newsletter,
commenting on
yesterday's 10 hours of testimony.
"We will only summarize: Goldman proved once again they are the smartest
guys in the room. Goldman essentially decided before everyone else, the
mortgage market was going to crumble, and they acted as they were
supposed to. They executed their business model and risk management
policies, upholding their responsibility to shareholders."
He's so smart, he brought a two-ream ringbinder with him to the
Senate Permanent Subcommittee (on Investigations) of the Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and I bet he knows
everything inside
its 901 pages.
He's not smart enough to make people feel good about having been taken
to the cleaners over the last couple of years, though. It's not a good
sign when you have Senator John Ensign of Nevada refining the complaints
about Wall Street gambling with "the better analogy" of having someone
playing a slot machine while the "guys on Wall Street are tweaking the
odds in their favor." At least Nevada slot machines take your money
fairly and consistently. With Goldman Sachs, they keep dreaming up new
ways to take your money, some of which are detailed in that stack of
paper there. Here's Blankfein in a November 2007 email, Exhibit 52:
"Of course we didn't dodge the mortgage mess. We lost money, then made
more than we lost because of shorts."
Goldman Sachs obtained (you can't say "made," because the only thing
they make is "financial instruments")
$15
billion net income over the last year. Some shorts. Pretty much 100%
of that net income derived from the U.S. taxpayers bailing out A.I.G. so
that the failed insurance firm could pay off Goldman's credit default
swaps at full price.
"...think of the people of Wall Street as a bunch of wild, out of
control fraternity boys, drunk on money and power, making stupendous,
unimaginably big bets with your money on events you have only a dim idea
about. When these bets pay off for the frat boys they have staggering
paychecks. If things go bad, you—Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer—might
wind up picking up the tab."
What I'd like to be doing on Saturday
This just in on the Brundage
MountainPowder Alert email list: 6 inches of fresh snow
overnight, it's 16°F at the summit this morning, and there's and
another 6 to 12 in the forecast this week. They're closed midweek, but
opening for one more hurrah on May Day.
All we got down here in the valley was
a gigantic thunderstorm with hail and what sounded like a 5-minute
long continuous roll of thunder at one point.
27.Apr.2010
The real story behind the new Arizona immigration law
At least
Greg
Palast's theory certainly could be real: it's about who's voting
down there.
"What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style
show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US
citizens all, who are daring to vote - and daring to vote Democratic by
more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted,
Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or,
if you like, tortillas."
He goes on to describe the "racially loaded purge of
the voter rolls that would have made Katherine Harris blush," led by
then-Secretary of State Jan Brewer.
"Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer's command, no fewer
than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanic, were blocked from
registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one
in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications
rejected.
"That statistic caught my attention. Voting or registering to vote if
you're not a citizen is a felony, a big-time jail-time crime. And
arresting such criminal voters is easy: After all, they give their names
and addresses.
"So I asked Brewer's office, had she busted a single one of these
thousands of allegedly illegal voters? Did she turn over even one name
to the feds for prosecution?
"No, not one."
But wait, there's more! A federal prosecutor was sent to track down
those illegal voters, and investigated more than a hundred complaints.
In two years, he couldn't find a single prosecutable voter fraud
case.
So... Karl Rove saw to it that he—David Iglesias—was
fired.
Expensive entertainment
Max Abelson gives us a fine taste of the
Circus
Fabulous! held in the Senate Finance Committee today.
"The sound of the photographers' clicks was gargantuan. The Goldman Sachs
opening statements were proud. “I would not have stayed if the people I
worked with did not have high ethical standards,” former mortgage
department head Dan Sparks said."
Just goes to show how wrong you can be.
In case you didn't see enough of Eyjafjallajökull
A friend emailed a link to
this collection from the Boston Globe. Awesome stuff. Brings
back lots of memories of Mt. St. Helens, which erupted at least as
spectacularly, 30 years ago next month.
Speaking up for the Idaho Judiciary
We don't often get contested races for judge in the state, so
having state District Judge John Bradbury run against Supreme
Court Justice Roger Burdick adds some interest for our May 25 primary
election. (It's the "final" vote for the the judicial race.)
And then when Bradbury spoke up with a list of particular complaints,
most of which had nothing to do with his opponent.
Burdick's fellow Supreme Court Justice
Jim Jones responded to the accusations made against Idaho's
Judiciary (as seen linked by
Eye on Boise), by setting Bradbury straight on a few facts.
Such as Bradbury's claim that "in the last three years, twenty-two
district and appellate judges retired early so their successors could be
appointed and avoid an election."
That's true if by "three years" you mean "since Jan. 1, 2007,"
and by "twenty-two" you mean "twenty" and by "retired early" you mean
"died, resigned to accept another judicial position or to pursue private
employment, or retired" and by "so" you mean "and as a result."
Should a Supreme Court Justice be more careful with the facts than
Judge Bradbury seems to be? I think so, yes.
26.Apr.2010
Stick a fork in McConnell: he's done
Seriously, the Party of No is going to try to
block financial reform while it complains about the problems of
"one party rule"?
They're on the wrong side of public opinion, the economic interests of
the country, and their own self-interests, led by the minority
leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. My prediction is that after
the Republicans don't do nearly as well as they'd hoped to in this
fall's election—or maybe sooner—they'll find a reason to put
someone else in charge.
I say that without knowing much about the clubby dynamics that
determines such things, so I don't know who's next in line. But
McConnell's got to go.
25.Apr.2010
Just imagine
Invitation from Tim Wise:
Imagine if the Tea Party was black. "Whoever gains the most insight
into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins."
"Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon
Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol
and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition.
And imagine that some of these protesters—the black
protesters—spoke of the need for political revolution, and
possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn't like
were enforced by the government?"
H/t to my friend Heywood on Facebook.
23.Apr.2010
The bendable straw part is pretty weird
You can still get $100 tickets to watch
Sarah
Palin's speech to a fundraiser in Oregon on a big screen in the
overflow room. The Lane County Republican Party's $250 a seat Lincoln
Day Dinner at the Hilton Eugene is sold out though, as is the $1,000 a
pop "chance to mingle" and pose with her.
Some of the requirements of her engagement include first class airline
travel (or a "Lear 60 or larger" private job), a suite and two single
rooms in a deluxe hotel (Hilton Eugene OK for you?),
ground transportation will be by SUV or black town cars second choice,
no thin or see-through lecterns, and they "must be stocked with two
bottles of sealed, still water with bendable straws."
"All audience questions after the speech must be prescreened and posed
by a designated representative."
If you're
a truck driver in Phoenix, and especially if you're a truck driver
in Phoenix with brown skin, the
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it's "standard operating
procedure" to demand a birth certificate, or else they'll handcuff you
and haul you off.
"A government job isn't a real job."
I don't mind Vaughn Ward
being supported by his wife while he campaigns for a government job
that pays $174,000 (that's
only $174,000, thanks to Russ Feingold), nor do I mind that she
happens to work for a quasi-government agency, or that said agency
played an enabling role in the expansion of the real estate bubble.
I don't mind that he's had, and still has a government job
either, and I respect his service in the Marines and the Reserves.
It's the offhand, narrow-minded, and deeply stupid talking point that
waves a hand across everyone who works for the government,
and disrespects their work.
The Statesman's Dan Popkey followed up yesterday's story with
Ward's response, today. "I never thought... that my wife would be
attacked," reads the subhead. Um, yeah, she was attacked by
having her employer named. Seriously, you're a Marine, you want to be
in the U.S. Congress, and you're going to call this an attack?
Let's try something more substantial. The government has become the
majority stockholder in the Federal National Mortgage Association, and
chipped in $76 billion to keep the "government sponsored entity" out of
bankruptcy. Ward asks:
"But are you telling me that Fannie Mae survived because of the bank
bailout? I don't know."
Gosh, that might be a good thing for him to find out
before, oh I don't know, the primary?
Update:
IdaBlue puts some good whacks on the Fox News talking point
piñata, enumerating a few of the jobs that Ward tells us "aren't
real."
Bending culture, in a good way
My friend Dave Peckham is trying to raise money to support the work
of his
Village Bicycle Project,
helping to bring affordable transportation to Africa, with no paid
administrative staff and over 12,000 volunteer hours donated last year,
in 5 countries. It's an amazing nonprofit enterprise.
He came to the "Sages" group I look after to talk about VBP yesterday,
and how it goes about the tricky process of engendering sustainability
with development aid. In ten years, they've shipped 100 container-loads
of bicycles and bike parts to Ghana, and held 300 one-day workshops,
teaching the basics of repair and maintenance. They sell the bicycles,
and those who go to the workshop get a 50% discount. From the "How We Do
It" page:
"Giving away bikes (or anything) diminishes the value and floods the
market, which puts local merchants out of busines. Bikes often end up in
the possession of the powerful instead of the people who can put them to
the best use. By selling bikes at half price, we can deliver two bikes
for the same price as giving one bike away for free."
The way he put it in his talk yesterday was more striking, and seems to
explain a lot of how things work here as well as in African
villages:
"The wealthy get in the front of the line whenever there are
handouts."
It's not just redistribution though, shipping goods depreciated by one
culture that has more than it needs, to another that has less. Beyond
the investment of time and effort to make the piles of parts useful,
there is the effort to educate, and empower women and girls in
particular. One of VBP's volunteers, Brittany Richardson, describes the
experience of teaching girls to ride
in her
blog:
"Aminata, Salamatu, Moleh, Mabinty, Kadija, Ajaratu and Abibatu. The rock
stars of the class. These 7 students from the Bakhita school have become
so good in their riding skills, we have begun small rides through town.
Taking the group outside the compound builds important skills in
coordination, steering, control, braking, turning, listening and
looking. Not to mention building confidence. As we road down Port Loko
road, it was pretty sweet to hear the women on a nearby porch cheering
for tiny Ajaratu...."
Earth Day
Ok, that was actually a lot of fun
I was feeling like there was nobody in the Egyptian that I knew,
spotted one guy across the room and thought ok, one guy. There's
getting to be a lot of space in the twenty-something, thirty-something,
and forty-something categories, none of which I'm in any more.
But the generous intermission (fueling
Table Rock
sales, handily) gave me time to circulate, and find a half dozen people
to have pleasant conversations with, and one intense one.
The Tweetdeck scrolling along the left side of the screen was the only
entertainment for me while I waited for the show to start, and as my
niece so succinctly observed, Twitter sucks. (I'm sure there are good
things about it, and the question of "ib4 lovefest or circle jerk?"
was certainly open at the time, but "There is a problem - don't panic,"
and "Rate limit exceeded," meh. Ok, here:
the Ignite Boise 04
Presenters) It's possible to grab attention without
deserving it, as I scribbled on the back of my ticket, having brought no
electronic devices with me, unlike 99% of the other attendees, who
captured bad pictures of the theater, thumbed urgent messages, and
played shared games while getting "phone tans," as another tweet
noted.
Ultimately, I can see the attraction of the medium. 5 minutes, 20
slides, 15 seconds each, not in the presenter's control, a lively crowd
clammering for they know not what sort of entertainment. There were a
couple that plodded through in PowerPoint read-bullet-point style ("I
don't know what's on the next slide, wait for it"), one that had too
many, too similar slides making kind of a downer subject even more of a
downer, a Tea Party-ish dude who got the most negative crowd reaction of
anyone, and a bravura performance by Matthew
Cameron Clark of Boise Contemporary
Theater who pulled off his presentation in spite of the slides going
dark. Oh, and Wendie Gone
Feral, live.
Come on baby light my fire.
Thanks to Chris at TreasuredValley
offering his early admisssion tix for grabs and me getting first in that
line. I haven't been on the inside track before this, and standing in
line to maybe get in isn't really my thing. But
that option is still there for
you.
I hear people who twitter just tweet like mad about this kind of thing.
Are those butterflies I feel?
Head spinning. Make it stop. Donate now.
Mr. Republican Comedy, Michael Steele, has jumped the shark countless
times, but today's fundraiser email can't be deleted without comment.
He's complaining about Obama being the "Fundraiser-in-Chief,"
"crisscrossing the country shaking down his fat-cat pals for campaign
cash."
That Grand Old Party of small donations from grassroots leaders needs
your help to correct this frightening imbalance. You can help fight the
"Obama/liberal special interest money machine" by making a small
contribution. (I think they'll accept large ones too, though.)
You can check their
interactive chart
to see how your state is doing. (Idaho's goal is $1,338, and they're
already 0.6% of the way there, with $8 donated. No doubt more is on the
way.)
21.Apr.2010
Strong President, strong country
Thomas Friedman: "[A] weak America is like a world with no health
insurance—and a lot of pre-existing conditions."
"While Obama’s health care victory prevented a power outage for him, it
does not guarantee a power surge. Ultimately, what makes a strong
president is a strong country—a country whose underlying economic
prowess, balance sheet and innovative capacity enable it to generate and
project both military power and what the political scientist Joe Nye
calls 'soft power'—being an example that others want to
emulate."
The Lupus of News
I think when you get skewered by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show,
hitting back with an unfunny, self-righteous, and badly argued reply, and
inviting another round is...
comedy gold!Fox News' Bernie Goldberg played straight man
this week.
"Ok, two things. One, not all of us have your guts, Bernie. It takes a
tough man to walk into O'Reilly's lion's den and criticize liberal
elites.
"And two, to say that comedians have to decide whether they're comedians
or social commentators, uh, comedians do social commentary,
through comedy. That's how it's worked for thousands of years. I
have not moved out of the comedians' box into the news box.
"The news box is moving towards me."
Tempestuous teapot
Looks like Wayne Hoffman won't be accepting the comment I offered on his
diatribe over the supposed
mainstream
media "outrage" over conservative-sponsored news. As creative
writing, it's fine, but given no actual basis for imagining said
outrage, let alone "hysteria," or "bombardment," it has the problem of
being so totally FAKE as to be laughable.
He really should have saved the ghost of the Hindenburg for something
with a bit more actual drama in it.
You can judge the "hysteria" yourself, in
the
Eye on Boise post, including John Miller's AP story. Looks mighty
fair and balanced to me, and it also looks like 4 people worked on what
the AP put out.
Hoffman can't bring himself to discern the difference between being
"agenda-driven" and having an opinion about anything. I don't know
about the Missoulian's support for a land deal, drunken driving
ordinances or opposition to a "ban on congressional pork barrel
spending" but I'm not seeing an agenda in that list, other than perhaps
Hoffman's: no to land deals, drunken driving ordinances and spending.
"Pork barrel" is superfluous; if Hoffman has ever voiced support for
any government spending, I missed it.
Any support whatsoever for government constitutes "statism," the real
agenda the traditional media are "promoting, soliciting and
supporting," in Hoffman's reality.
We can agree on one point: "the most important, and perhaps only,
measure for a news organization is content." I've been paying attention
to his Idaho Reporter
as I do to the Statesman, NewWest, the
Spokesman-Review and others. His count of stories
covering last Thursday's Tea Party events supposedly demonstrates the
"superior job" his two reporters are doing?
"Story" #1:
2 pictures, one paragraph ("a large crowd"!). More coverage later
today!
Story #2: nice collection of signs (no misspellings!), interview
snippets with participants.
Story
#4: when I first saw Dustin Hurst's summary, it said
"According to estimates, approximately 1,300 people showed up," and I
posted a comment wondering whose estimates he was using (and also why he
didn't make his own). It's been edited to say "approximately 1,235
people showed up," which I'm pretty sure is the first time a "reporter"
has modifed his work to add sarcastic precision in response to my
criticism. He also changed "roars of applause from the thousands
gathered," and its contradictory "estimate" of attendance to simply
"roars of applause from the crowds." (He didn't address my inquiry about
what a "roar" of applause sounds like.)
I guess
story
#5 is the one where Hurst researched the fact that "rally-goers
lived up to their battle cry by not imposing extra costs on the Boise
Police Department," by holding their rally on a weekday. Which, uh, Tax
Day always is. In spite of his headline ("Rally-goers avoid extra
costs") and 2nd sentence expressing action by organizers, Hurst
responded that "nowhere in the article did I say event organizers
specifically picked a weekday to avoid costs."
Here are the results of my unscientific observation of Hoffman's
satellite: his premise, that "mainstream media's increasing abandonment
of state government news" has created a demand for alternatives, is
demonstrably false in Idaho. If it were, it's far from evident that
his two reporters could pick up the slack, nor that more coverage
of Tea Party rallies is our most pressing, unfilled need.
20.Apr.2010
Looking for better angels
Rather than feeling buoyed by the patriotic fervor shown at
yesterday's "Patriots Day" rally, I'm wondering if this is the best
we can do. The U.S. government is a criminal syndicate? Armed
self-defense is what separates "free individuals from slaves"? I thought
it was
the Civil War that took care of that.
Considering
Michael Boss' recollections of 40 years ago when there was fighting
in the streets, I guess the message is that if only the hippies had been
packing heat, that would've turned out better?
19.Apr.2010
Symms sighted
Marc Johnson's
Who
Pays and Why is an interesting read. I'm not on the Idaho Freedom
Foundation's fundraising appeal list, so I appreciated the news that
one of their fundraising appeals went out with former Republican Senator
Steve Symms' boosting. We haven't heard much Symms in Idaho politics
lately, mostly because he's been a Washington D.C. lobbyist for the
almost two decades since he traded his Senate seat for a more lucrative
position.
It would make a lot of sense for the "full service government relations
firm" of Parry, Romani,
DeConcini & Symms (who "can help you become a significant player
in Washington") to bankroll Wayne Hoffman's "think tank" with
a little news on the
side. And no, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for Hoffman to
exhibit the same transparency that he wants to hold others to.
You can't be Mr. Coattails if you're not discreet.
Bill
Clinton:
"Americans have more freedom and broader rights than citizens of almost
any other nation in the world, including the capacity to criticize their
government and their elected officials. But we do not have the right to
resort to violence—or the threat of violence—when we don't
get our way. Our founders constructed a system of government so that
reason could prevail over fear."
Fire up the class warfare!
Is it too late to wish everybody a
Happy Tax Day? The National Republican Senatorial Committee didn't
really want you to be happy, though. Their cheesy "web video"
(um, aren't videos supposed to have action?) depicts two
seemingly happy and very white people who pay "one-fourth" and
"one-third" of their salaries to the federal government. (The happy
lady apparently doesn't make as much as the man who can't afford a
razor.) But by the end of the "video," guess what?
They're not really happy.
"Man I hate tax day," she says.
"You said it friend," he concludes.
Anyway, that's kind of last week, no point in sending the NRSC money
now. If you need something to feel good about this week, take
heart that it's still
Confederate
History month.
18.Apr.2010
Eyjafjallajökull makes ash of self
I'm not seeing that name in print a lot, even as the
tales of woe of European air travelers
multiply. Hard to spell, for one thing, and pronounce
("AYA-feeyapla-yurkul" maybe?),
travelers may know it as the "aye yi yi awful" volcano, if it
keeps making trouble for
what
could be a couple of years. It puts my own experience of a
day's delay in the ash cloud of Mt. St. Helens in perspective. (I spent
the night of May 18, 1980 in an Ellensburg church, with a hundred or so
other volcanic refugees.)
Here's
something I hadn't thought to try:
gently inserting a gold nanoelectrode through an algal cell membrane,
and into a chloroplast, to intercept electrons excited by light
in the middle of the biological chain of photosynthesis.
"Ryu said they were able to draw from each cell just one picoampere, an
amount of electricity so tiny that they would need a trillion cells
photosynthesizing for one hour just to equal the amount of energy stored
in a AA battery."
The news
that the S.E.C. has filed suit against Goldman-Sachs for
participating in a scheme to bundle together sure-to-fail mortgage
securities and then bet against them reportedly caused the stock market
to punctuate its week of upside with a very gloomy Friday. We
understand they all like "business as usual," but are we really to
understand that
this
its usual business?
"[Hedge fund manager John] Paulson handpicked sick, diseased pigs to be
made into sausage, then bet millions that the resulting sausage would
make people sick. Goldman, for its part, made the poisoned sausage (and
got paid), sold that sausage to its own unwitting customers (and got
paid again), and. like Paulson, bet millions that those customers would
get sick (and got paid yet again)."
It all depends how you ask the question
If you think the U.S. Congress is dysfunctional, you ain't seen nothing
like California's legislature. Forget about 60 votes to break a
filiubster, they need a full two-thirds of both houses to
either pass a budget or raise revenue via taxation. That sort of
minority power can lead to extraordinary incapacity. 37% of both
houses are "far-right Republicans" who have, as author and linguistics
professor George Lakoff puts it, "led to gridlock, huge deficits from
lack of revenue, and cuts so massive as to threaten the viability of the
state."
"Unfortunately, most Californians are unaware of the cause of the crisis,
blaming 'the legislature,' when the cause is only 37 percent of 'the
legislature,' the 37 percent that runs the legislature under minority
rule."
In a lengthy, detailed, and well-worth reading piece on Huffington Post
(with a h/t to Randy Stapilus on Facebook),
The
Poll Democrats Need to Know About,
Lakoff describes in detail the work of "perhaps the premier California
pollster," David Binder, in measuring the public's response to
different framing of a proposed solution. One the one hand, there's
"a 14-word, single-sentence initiative that went to the heart of the
matter," The California Democracy Act:
"All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by
a majority vote."
And on the other... it still remains to be seen, but former Governor,
Oakland mayor and now Attorney General Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown wrote a
"title and summary" for that initiative that goes like this:
"Changes the legislative vote requirement necessary to pass the budget,
and to raise taxes from two-thirds to a simple majority. Unknown fiscal
impact from lowering the legislative vote requirement for spending and
tax increases. In some cases, the content of the annual state budget
could change and / or state tax revenues could increase. Fiscal impact
would depend on the composition and actions of future legislatures."
Astoundingly, that wording is what would appear on the ballot if it
qualifies, and would have to appear on all petitions. What Binder found
in polling is that the original had almost 3-to-1 support, 73% in favor.
The garbled bureaucratese? 56% opposed. A shift of 69% for the same
question, framed differently.
If you don't get through all the details, at least jump down to
look at his conclusions, What Does All This Mean?
"[T]hese results show the effectiveness of the radical conservative
communication system operating 24/7 using the same effective framing
year after year. It operates on an unconscious level, slowly changing
the brains of those engaged (on either side) of the discourse that the
conservatives define. Their communication system is so effective, and
Democratic leaders have to deal with it so often, they too can get taken
in."
16.Apr.2010
A few tax facts
Contrary to what you may have heard, about 10% (not half, not
47%) of all households pay no net federal taxes. Three out of four
households pay more in payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare) than
in income taxes.
Social Security has been taking in a lot more than it's been putting
out (for many years), helping support the huge deficit in the
rest of the federal budget. Sort of. What's a
government-to-government IOU worth, anyway?
The wealthy (and especially the very wealthy) have had their tax rates
lowered more than any other group in the last 30 years, even as the
income disparity between them and the vast majority of workers have
barely kept pace with inflation.
David Leonhardt:
"So why are those radio and television talk show hosts spending so much
time arguing that today's wealthy are unfairly burdened? Well, it's hard
not to notice that the talk show hosts themselves tend to be among the
very wealthy.
"No doubt, like the rest of us, they don't particularly enjoy paying
taxes. They are happy with the tax cuts they have received lately. They
would prefer if other people had to pick up the bill for Medicare,
Social Security and the military—people like, say, firefighters,
preschool teachers, computer support specialists, farmers, members of
the clergy, mail carriers, secretaries and truck drivers."
The Obamas
paid $1.8 million in federal income tax on $5.5 million income last
year, not counting the $1.4 million Nobel Prize money that they gave
away directly. (One of the benefits of the job: everybody and their
blogger can pore through your tax return.)
Yes, there's still the white elephant in the Tea Party living room, but
the top headline in today's Business section speaks volumes about the
flag-waving freedom criers who rallied (in the
tens and
thousands if not tens of thousands) on Taxes Due Day.
Not the big one on the front section,
Electric bills will shrink soon,
under which we read that expected monthly reductions of $3 or so
"should help boost consumer spending" and "contribute to the state's
economic recovery" (really, the front page headline?) but this one:
Idaho home reposessions up 677% over 1st quarter 2009. March had
1600 foreclosure filings in Ada and Canyon Counties, and almost 9% of
mortgages are 90 or more days behind in payments.
The tax-free wars of the Bush administration, and the "market based
solutions" which reached their zenith in The Great Real Estate Bubble,
with its cloak of consequence invisibility for anyone wearing a suit and
likely to testify before Congress were good times, while they lasted.
Now it's time to pay, and pay, and pay, and just because your taxes are
lower, or you've been receiving extended unemployment benefits, or some
kind of stimulus payouts doesn't mean you're going to get to stay in
that house if you can't find a job.
So why not put on a costume and head for the park on a sunny day in
April with the temperature into the 70s? If you live in Spokane, you
might even get
a
chance to see Idaho's Governor give a speech.
Update:
"Another_Perspective" connects the dots between yesterday's rally
and the economy,
in the comments of the Spokesman-Review story about Spokane's event:
"The crowd was mainly composed of middle age conservatives. Luckily
with all the nearby parking meters limited to 1½ hour, the ones that
showed up at 3:30 were packing to go home."
15.Apr.2010
At night
Looking up...
We noticed...
Things are not as they first seemed.
"Wanderers" signaled
we are not at the center of the universe.
That one, there, morning & evening "star"
Waxes and wanes
Just as our moon.
It revolves!
Not just round us, but around our sun.
And that broad swath of milky light spread from horizon to horizon,
a swarm of stars, like our profound and life-giving sun, but
unimaginably distant
unimaginably numerous
a Galaxy of "solar systems"
This uninmaginably vast universe?
No. Just a component. One of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF GALAXIES.
"[M]ost describe the amount they paid in taxes this year as 'fair.' Most
send their children to public schools, do not think Sarah Palin is
qualified to be president, and, despite their push for smaller
government, think that Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost.
They are actually more likely than the general public to have returned
their census forms, despite some conservative leaders urging a
boycott."
The problem with this country is not "us," it's "them." Them what
"lives for having children and receiving payment from the government for
having those children. They have no incentive to do any better because
they have been conditioned into it." (Is this guy describing the
denizens of Wall Street, I wonder?)
And guess what, they don't like Obama hardly at all!
"I just feel he's getting away from what America is," said Kathy
Mayhugh, 67, a retired medical transcriber in Jacksonville. "He's a
socialist. And to tell you the truth I think he's a Muslim and trying to
head us in that direction, I don't care what he says. He's been in
office over a year and can't find a church to go to. That doesn't say
much for him."
13.Apr.2010
Now that the euphoria has worn off
The Physicians for a National Health Care Program are not satisfied
with what we ended up with for "health care insurance reform,"
and if much of
what David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler have to say is on the
mark, few of us will be, either.
"The new law will pump additional funds into the currently
dysfunctional, market driven system, pushing up health costs that are
already twice those in most other wealthy nations."
Oh yeah, that.
"Private insurers win in the marketplace not through efficiency or
quality but by maximizing revenues from premiums while minimizing
outlays. They pursue this goal by avoiding the sick and forcing doctors
and patients to navigate a byzantine payment bureaucracy that currently
consumes 31 percent of total health spending."
It's actually quite odd that Republicans should be up in arms over what
passed. The idea of making people buy insurance to avoid implementing
a national health care system was Richard Nixon's idea long before it
was Mitt Romney's. It's too bad the partisan warfare over tactical
advantages having nothing to do with promoting our general welfare
ruled the day. It seems as true "after" reform as before that,
as the PNHP advocate, a non-profit, single payer national health
insurance program is the cure for what ails us. How do we get
started on that reform?
Frontline
has a broadcast of interest for this subject tonight:
Obama's
Deal. They bill it as "a sobering look at the push to reform health
care, revealing the realities of American politics, the power of special
interest groups and the role of money in policy making."
Or, sit down and don't be counted, whatever.
News is, some Republican whiz kids have realized that if their fellow
travelers boycott the census and don't get counted... holy enumeration,
Batman, we'll get discounted!
Looking for a convenient story to link to, searching on
Republican
Census, I was suprised to find
a page by yours truly atop the 6 million
results, and even more surprised to see that I'd written that back in
2006, for an earlier iteration of the bogus fundraising tactic
the RNC used again this year.
"If you've not yet mailed back your 2010 Census form, it's not too late.
Please answer the 10 easy questions. They're almost the same ones that
Madison helped write for the first census back in 1790."
Almost.
Ok, here's your news, in The Wall Street Journal no less.
Republicans Fear Undercounting in Census, because so many of their
people are too stubborn, or stupid, or hey, proudly patriotic but
weirdly misguided! to cooperate with the process.
40 years already?!
This coming Earth Day—a week from Thursday—marks
40 years since the first
one, coming from an idea of U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of
Wisconsin, in 1970.
Update:
The newspaper reminded me that it was also
40 years ago
today that those fateful words left Jack Swigert's lips
halfway between here and the moon, "Houston, we've had a
problem."
I'm no triskadecaphobe, but you might not blame the crew if
they got that way: Apollo 13, April 13th, and it was... a
Monday. Still, we got them back to earth, and made a great movie out of
it.
12.Apr.2010
Proudly leaning left
Glenn Beck, master of baiting, innuendo, and emoting, has found new and
damning (damning, I say!) evidence of
Obama's
suspect "foundation." No, not undergarments, we're talking about
the church(es) his grandparents went to. OMG!
"Obama has portrayed his mother's parents as conservative Methodist and
Baptists from Kansas. There's a problem with that. At some point they
changed, because when they lived in Washington State, his mother's
parents were members of the East Shore Unitarian Church, a left-leaning
congregation in Bellevue, near Seattle."
In the swirling miasma of the endless hours of TV time Beck must fill
up, there are Marxists and Reds and people with FBI files and "fellow
travelers" (Hello Joe McCarthy!) and hotbeds of radical leftists.
"It is amazing to me, this kid didn't have a chance to be rooted in the
Founding Fathers, this guy doesn't have a chance to actually think
anything but radical thoughts based on everybody on his life so far,"
Beck says, about the woeful situation of the teen-aged Obama.
And yet, he grew up to be President of the United States. Is this a
great country, or what? Even a clownish buffoon on Fox News can
give a nice
Unitarian Church free publicity if he wants to.
Update from Bellevue:
their Senior Minister sent a letter to the congregation about Mr. Beck's
providing publicity, wanting to let them know that "our church was in
the news for all the right reasons." Part of it:
"...Glen Beck's recounting of the history is
that he focuses on the fact that during the 1950's, one of the local
newspapers called East Shore the "little red church on the hill." The
congregation was unashamedly liberal in theology and social policy.
It held public forums on controversial issues including, reports Mr.
Beck, things like whether Red China should be admitted into the United
Nations. He also found it interesting that Dr. John Stenhouse, a
leader in the congregation, a founder of Group Health Cooperative and
the President of the Mercer Island School Board, was called a
Communist and brought before the House Committee on Un-American
Activities. During the controversy, East Shore stood behind and
supported the Stenhouse family."
Stand up and be counted
It's like a scene from a bad Western... Git offa my property, ya
damned REVENOOER or ahll fill yer hide with BUCKSHOT if'n ya
don't!
Richard L. Powell's next appearance—a command performance, no
less—will be at the Benewah County Courthouse
for a pretrial conference to see how much of 6 months in jail and a
$1,000 fine he'll be serving for
his exhibition of a deadly weapon to an audience of one: a U.S.
Census worker.
You can weigh in on the imbroglio over at
Huckleberries Online, where I found the story.
11.Apr.2010
The 70% solution
How can you me a Master of the Universe when you're only right 70% of
the time? Hey, nobody's perfect. This week's parade of
no one
to blame for anything is getting old in a hurry.
ProPublica and
This American Life teamed up to tell the
story
of the Magentar trade on today's show, one of the more interesting
twists in the increasingly familiar debriefing of Collateralized Debt
Obligations and Credit Default Swaps. Honey, they blew up the financial
universe, for a few hundred million dollars in individual
take-the-money-and-run, "innovation" on a previously unimagined
scale.
It seems slightly too fictional to have a company that was pumping up
Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction for the purpose of cashing in on
insurance contracts when they exploded to be named after a collapsing
star that develops an extraordinary magnetic field as part of its death
throes, but here we have life imitating art.
That 1992 loss to Bill Clinton and Al Gore, abetted by Ross Perot's
independent run, still smarts and
Dan Quayle's giving advice in a WaPo Op-Ed. On their website, the
headline's "Don't let the tea party go Perot," while the
Statesman put "Tea party members are the natural allies of the
GOP" over it when they ran it 6 days later.
The advice is to his party, and can be boiled down to this: co-opt
this movement, lest you find yourselves skewered this fall by a splitting
of the right-wing vote.
Other than that, there's a lot of interesting fantasy. Rather than a
response to economic dislocation and the election of the first non-white
as President, Quayle deems the Teas "a spontaneous and pointed response
to the Obama agenda," that ever so-slightly left of right-center nudge
we've experienced.
"After sweeping into power, Democrats assumed they had redrawn the
political map forever, and they took this as a mandate to remake the
federal government forever."
That's "forever" as in 2 or 4 years now? I'm having a déjà
vu from the late 90s when Republicans thought they'd redrawn the
political map and could impeach a President over sexual peccadilloes.
You'd think Quayle would have said something about what it was
that made Perot an attractive candidate. What was it that he and George
H.W. Bush were lacking, anyway?
Of course, the liberal media are at fault now and forever.
"Since the very first tea party gatherings, the national news media has
covered this movement in the only way it knows how—as something
grubby, impertinent and possibly dangerous. Of course, in any movement,
violence and unlawful behavior are always to be condemned without
reservation. But attempts to portray the tea partiers as a surly mob
have the contrived feel of a political strategy."
Yes, that's it. The great left-wing conspiracy!
"If this were a liberal crowd, they wouldn't be getting grief from
Washington—they'd probably be getting funding."
His list of presidential contenders for the next go is a bonus hoot. Who
is Mitch Daniels? John Thune? Mitt Romney, ok, but Bobby Jindal?
Seriously?
10.Apr.2010
Shared anonymity?
A certain "Lawmiss" was posting comments on the
Cleveland Plain Dealer's website, and a staffer of the news
outlet got suspicious, "who, when investigating the pseudonym, stumbled
on an e-mail address linked to [Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge
Shirley] Strickland. "
The judge's lawyer says she never commented on anything currently
pending, or ever before her court, and that the comments were actually
written by the judge's 23-year-old daughter. And for good measure,
Strickland is suing the newspaper for $50 million because it either
breached its privacy contract, or committed fraud.
NPR reports... but doesn't riddle us this: if the judge's
daughter has been effectively outed, what's the judge's case?
Does the Plain Dealer owe everybody and anybody who the judge
lets use her AOL email address the same obligations?
Checking the cleveland.com website's
user agreement
I can see all sorts of defenses for the CPD.
"You may not impersonate, imitate or pretend to be somebody else when
registering and/or setting up an account on the Website."
"You may not authorize others to use your Registration Information."
"You are solely responsible for all usage or activity on your account
including, but not limited to, use of the account by any person who uses
your Registration Information, with or without authorization, or who has
access to any computer on which your account resides or is
accessible."
It seems that the judge breached the agreement three ways to Sunday.
What's more, the
privacy policy
doesn't actually outline much in the way of privacy protection for the
user, that I can see.
They say "[W]e reserve the right to use the information we collect about
your computer, which may at times be able to identify you, for any
lawful business purpose, including without limitation to help diagnose
problems with our servers, to gather broad demographic information, and
to otherwise administer our Website."
I think Lawmiss will get her suit tossed. No legs to stand on.
9.Apr.2010
Ok with having a Bishop make your end-of-life decisions?
While I was raised Catholic, I left the church close to 40 years ago,
and have my own church now, thanks.
I also have made my own decisions about what kind of measures should be
taken on my (body's) behalf should I be incapacitated and diagnosed as
having an incurable condition or being in a persistent vegetative state.
I used the
State of Idaho's codified language to express those wishes, and the
short version is that I want "all medical treatment, care and procedures
withheld or withdrawn, including withdrawal of the administration of
artificial nutrition and hydration."
So it came as a bit of a surprise to read in
the Chicago Tribune story that
the Statesman picked up earlier this week that the director
of clinical ethics at Chicago's largest Catholic health care system
would say she has "never seen an advance directive that says, 'If I am
in a persistent vegetative state, I ask that you withdraw food and
water.'" The Statesman story says:
"Catholic medical institutions - including Saint Alphonsus Regional
Medical Center in Boise, Mercy Medical Center in Nampa and Holy Rosary
Medical Center in Ontario - are required to honor the
[U.S.
Bishops'] decision, issued late last year, as they do church
teachings on abortion and birth control."
Newly
enacted Idaho state law now provides your health care professionals
the "freedom of conscience" to override your explicit directive,
indemnifying them from civil, criminal and administrative liability.
Catholic Bishops apparently have the power to dictate organizations'
and individual's "sincere beliefs," so giving them the super-power of
Attorney.
8.Apr.2010
Costco FAIL
There are two kinds of people in the world: Costco members, and the rest
of us. Once upon a time when we needed new tires, and Costco (a) had the
slightly special ones we thought we needed, and (b) had a sizable
membership promotion discount, we crossed the divide between the two
camps, and became Members, for exactly one year.
The tires with the sign-up discount were a good enough deal that
anything beyond that was gravy, and I suppose we "saved" some money in
subsequent shopping trips, but I never liked shopping there. There's
just too much going on that's about doing things their way.
Some people convince themselves it's a great deal, but I just don't
think so. There's too much attempted convincing going on, for one
thing.
Anyway, we're a season past the need for new tires on the Prius, and
when I dug out the old info from the glove box, I found out that this
second round of tires, like the OEM set, had worn out prematurely, by
about a third of the warranty. 60,000 mile warranty, 40k-ish miles of
wear. Their warranty says it's valid "for sixty (60) months from the
date of purchase or when the tire reaches 2/32 of an inch of less in
remaining tread depth regardless of age."
Ah, OK, so are our 5¾ year-old, worn-out tires covered, or not?
I tried calling. They don't answer the phone in the tire center. "If you
need information, please leave a message..." and who knows, maybe we'll
call back? I left two messages, priced what I could for new tires
on their website, contemplated how much "adjustment" they'd give us,
and a new $50 membership (with no inducements this time around), and
decided it wasn't worth the annoyance factor. I sure as hell wasn't
going to drive out there to get them to answer my questions (and to find
out whether they had suitable replacements in stock) because they
couldn't be bothered to answer the phone.
Other businesses will answer the phone, and I talked to a couple
of them, priced some alternatives, found
Firestone's adequate website, functional catalog and store locator,
and gave them the business. Same money, less travel time, better tires
than I would've got from the no-phone, members-only people.
Update: Costco MemberServices was interested enough to respond to my
"Contact Us" nastygram and ask me which store it was. I told them,
adding that as of 10:45am this morning, neither message I left had been
returned. Rather astounding discourtesy for a retail business. (Maybe
that's why they call themselves "Costco Wholesale Corporation.")
Taxed enough already?
Got our tax returns done "early" this year, a week and a day to spare.
Not sure what I'll do with all the extra time on my hands now. Oh, I
know, all those jobs I put off for the last week!
Between the vagueries of post-corporate economic life and our
semi-retired household, it's harder than ever to make sense of the Code
and its many inducements and disincentives. For many years, I attempted
to "figure it all out" on my own, modifying a multi-spreadsheet workbook
of the calculations that go into the forms and schedules, but (a) the
entertainment value wore off (about oh, 15 years ago now?) and (b) each
new bollox of tax legislation added more layers (I mistyped "lawyers"
there at first—ha!) upon the layers.
I'm not prepared to report any broad inferences out of my own
experience, but I do know that the Bush administration lowered our taxes
(mostly by increasing the national debt, it seems), and the Obama
administration has not reversed that trend. This year the federal
government promised (and delivered on its promise) to chip in $1,500
toward a high-efficiency furnace and air-conditioning system for our
domicile. The furnace was definitely due for replacement, and with its
first season mostly behind us, I can report it's been great to have gas
bills well below $100/mo. through the winter, rather than 2 or 3 over
that mark.
At some point last year, the government plunked a $250 "stimulus
payment" into our account. And now at tax time, we find
(or "TurboTax told me about," I should say)
Schedule M for "Making Work Pay," contributing the rest of $800 on
our behalf, based on our having "earned income from work." Let's hear it
for making work pay!
"The report calculates the [date] based on the total amount
of federal, state and local taxes collected nationally and total
national income, and comes up with an average tax rate of 26.89 percent.
Unstated, but obvious, is the obvious disclaimer: Your tax rate may
vary....
"In fact, average rates today for all taxes are much lower than they
were under President Reagan in the 1980s, by the Tax Foundation's own
admission."
If you haven't had enough numbers to thrill your soul, check out
Bruce Bartlett's report on
the
misinformed Tea Party Movement in Forbes. Or just go with the
bottom line (which Bartlett buries):
"Federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama
became president."
6.Apr.2010
Get your book on this weekend!
It's time for the whommer
Friends
of the Boise Public Library book sale this weekend!
Get on down to the warehouse (behind the main library downtown, between
8th and 9th), Friday (9am-7pm), Saturday (9am-5pm) or Sunday,
(noon-4pm), "half price day." If you're a member of Friends, you can get
in Thursday afternoon, for the 4-7pm Preview Sale. If you're not a
member... you can join at the door! (Minimum donation is $5, so if it's
nothing more than a Preview ticket for you, it's still a good deal.)
Cash or checks only. Additional books stocked throughout the day Friday
and Saturday. Fanstastic bargains, and a fun way to support the
development of our branch libraries. (The Friends raised more than
$130,000 last year!) First editions, coffee-table books, cookbooks,
local interest, thousands of LPs, CDs, VHS movies, sets of books, all
priced to sell.
Jeanette and I are both
Friends,
and she's one of the volunteers who "sort through about 100,000 items to
prepare for a sale."
The stupidity rule
It's time to talk about executive compensation, or as Andrew Ross
Sorkin's headline has it,
the
party favors. On Thursday, the former charirman and CEO of
Citigroup, and former Citigroup board member, top adviser, and U.S.
Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin are going to testify to our
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
"Mr. Rubin and Citigroup's other directors decided to pay the $12.5
million bonus knowing very well that Citigroup’s market value had
dropped by $64 billion during Mr. Prince's tenure.
"So the simple question for Mr. Rubin and Mr. Prince is, Why? Why would
you knowingly reward such failure? What is it about the culture of
Citigroup and Wall Street that encouraged you to approve such a large
party favor? Why was there reason to give a bonus at all?"
That Citigroup's board could, legally, share its stockholders'
wealth with their departing CEO was apparently demonstrated by a
Delaware judge who dismissed a lawsuit based on "the business judgment
rule," also known among some lawyers as the "stupidity rule."
"This rule, at its essence, means that no matter how [stupid] a board's
decisions proved to be, as long as they were not fraudulent and were
made in good faith, they were O.K. Even running a company into the
ground is O.K. as long as the board provided a 'duty of care.'"
Sorkin doesn't provide a translation for said "duty," but it seems to
boil down to anything short of whatever is beyond gross
negligence, or of course, outright fraud, which isn't so common, because
once you make your way to the pinnacle of banking, who the hell needs
fraud? You run a company into the ground and you get an eight-figure
parting gift.
Judge William B. Chandler III writes of protecting directors from
"the debilitating fear that they will be held personally liable"
for company losses, but that's hardly the issue. No one's trying to
extract the $64 billion Citigroup lost during Prince's reign from him.
It's not "liability" to limit compensation to sanity.
Fun factoid: "Even when there were Republicans in the White House, the
mail was still overwhelmingly anti-liberal," Mr. Mikkelson said.
And depressing conclusion from the Mrs.: "When you’re looking at truth
versus gossip, truth doesn’t stand a chance."
Sunday funnies
Cal Thomas is
pondering
a Newt Gingrich run for President (or as the Statesman recast it
yesterday, "What would Newt do?"). Cal thinks he will run. My guess is
that while he's got plenty of bellicose for a friendly interview, he
doesn't have enough fire in the belly to go for it.
"People are now much madder and sicker at the system than they were in
1994," he says, harking back to that benchmark year when the Republicans
took over Congress for a dozen years.
"People actually want an open, bipartisan, transparent process." So, the
Republicans' plan should be... "repeal and replace Obamacare in Feb.
2013."
And what about that "overheated rhetoric that could lead to violence
against public figures?"
Gingrich's response is all in violent metaphors. At least we hope
he's speaking metaphorically when he says "For people who are angry, the
correct response is to beat them," rather than referring to the
southerner's slave discipline manual of yore. All that overheated
rhetoric is simply "people objecting vociferously to being mugged" by
those who "deliberately bullied, bribed and abused the system," so...
there's no need to actually answer the legitimate question,
apparently.
Hello patriots!
The Statesman probably earned a month of derision from the neo-natives
for running
T.H.Breen's commentary for the Washington Post, moving the headline
from bland ("Whose Revolution is this?") to confrontation ("How real
patriots wage revolution"), setting it 48pt and above the Sunday Insight
fold.
And they pulled numbered bullet points out of the text for easy reading.
It shouldn't be too hard to recall Breen's four little points from
history: the '76ers promoted unity; protested not simply taxation, but
taxation without representation; were willing to make sacrifices
for the common good; and understood the need for organization and
discipline that sustains the rule of law.
"Modern Americans owe a tremendous debt to the ordinary patriots who
launched an insurgency that became a revolution that brought
independence. Simply put, without them there would be no United States.
The minimum repayment is to know their history. Anyone wishing to cloak
present-day complaints in that early generation's sacrifice ought to
understand how it managed during a severe political crisis to bring
forth a new republic dedicated to rights, equality and liberty."
2.Apr.2010
Real studs just carry chains
In spite of March segueing out like a lion and joining the April Fool's
joke with the weather, it's that time of year again when studded snow
tires are grinding away millions of dollars of good pavement. "That
time" includes pretty much all of the
seven (!) months of the year they're allowed in our state.
(The ITD's page shows our neighbors vary from 5 months, November-March, for
Oregon and Washington, to 8 months in Montana, and year-round in
Wyoming.)
Shawn Vestal, writing from Washington's "studliest city," notes that
even though studs make driving less safe at least as often as
they make it more safe,
a tax to help pay for their damage is a non-starter. Forget
about a ban; the last guy that tried for that found out that
"this is not totally a fact-based discussion. This is how people feel
about their safety." (This in spite of
Washington's own study reciting the long list of studded tires'
faults.)
Random sample
The results of the early season
Rasmussen poll look likely enough, with the typical knee-jerk Idaho
response toward the "R" column. Never mind the dismal state legislative
season just wrapped up, with
booster-in-chief deeming it "great", 60% of the 500 respondents
either "strongly" or "somewhat" approve of the job he's doing. The same
gross chunk—61%—either "strongly" or "somewhat" disapprove
of the job Obama is doing. And have a "favorable" opinion of the Tea
Party movement (58%). (A fat quarter "consider [themselves] a
part of the Tea Party movement.")
I passed on my chance to move the results 0.2% to the left, because
I pretty much give any call coming in with masked, funky, or bogus
caller ID information the stink-eye, and if the first thing I hear is an
obviously recorded/robot voice, I hang up. I do actually remember
hearing "Rasmussen" before I did, though.
My favorite two questions were:
Q: Regardless of how Congress is doing overall, does your local
representative deserve to be re-elected?
Oh yes, 2 to 1. ("Not sure" runs as strong as "No" though.)
And, Q: Generally speaking, would it be better for the country if most
incumbents in Congress were re-elected this November or if most of them
were defeated?
"Defeat would be better" wins by more than 4 to 1 (and only 1 out
of 6 "not sure" on this one).
So, guess what's going to happen.
(The
Statesman's story does a better job of presenting Rasmussen's
results than they do, although they only rendered their colorful
pie charts in ink, and just have boring tabulation down their web
sidebar.)
Update: a brief search for "judging pollsters rasmussen" turned up
some interesting analysis on the stochasticdemocracy blog, leading
with the "house effects for Obama disapproval," showing Zogby, Harris
and Rasmussen more than 5 point outliers (and Pew and CBS/NYT outlying
on the opposite side).
Pollster.com
digs deeper into the questions raised about Rasmussen's polling.
April Fools
Once and future health care insurance
The Statesman ran Mike Lukovich's
"Your kid is ugly" cartoon from last week today, getting aboard the
Obamacare = Romneycare bandwagon, now that it's OK to talk about
that. Idaho conservatives feel rather close to Romney, so it has them in
a bit of a bind.
Gail Collins
joins
the fray with a shout-out to our "winner of the Most Fun Name for a
Governor Award," who put himself out in front of the "we'll sue!"
movement with the help of the bill this year's Idaho Legislature
sent him for ceremony (and a little potato schtick).
"Idaho, you should not let your elected officials push the potato thing
so hard. The state has a lot more to talk about—lovely scenery, great
people, the world’s largest factory for barrel cheese, the smallest
number of doctors per capita in the country. And what about
your state fruit, the huckleberry?"
As the reality of the new health insurance law unfolds over the rest of
the decade, I expect it to have relatively little effect on my own
finances. Another year on my standalone policy, bought and paid for
without coercion and only the modest subsidy of being able to deduct the
premiums' cost as a business expense, no claims, and the new rate?
Increased by 40%, after 12 months going by with al the money
going from me to Regence, none coming back from them to me. It's a race
between what the market will bear, and the real government health
insurance, waiting for me if I survive to 65.
Whatever happens, I know for damn sure that C.L. "Butch" Otter
and the Idaho Legislature are going to be no help to me.
Ok, we can save money on that Deficit Commission
Now that we have a Democratic administration, up is up and down is down
again, and lower tax rates don't provide greater revenue to run
government. Contrary to what you may have heard at times over the last 3
decades.
Dave Johnson explains, summing things up in four graphs.
Mother Nature's chilly humor
8" of snow in the mountains above Boise two days ago, a foot and more in
central Idaho, a dash of winter just in time for "spring break."
I put on sunblock yesterday, and used it for an hour or two, before
being garnished with snowflakes and graupel, riding through medium-light
powder, and over "Sierra cement" by turns. (Speaking of which,
the Cascades
intercepted 2½ feet of snow this week.)
We're lucky with our crazy weather though, not having to boat down
highways the way they are back east. And no earthquakes of note.
A respite today, high 40s and mostly sunny (at least in the weatherman's
mind's eye) before another dose of winter tomorrow: snow level 3,300
feet, and more snow likely into the weekend.
That Lloyd Blankfein is so smart, it cooked all the hair off the top of
his head. A friend forwarded an excerpt from an unnamed newsletter,
commenting on
My friend Dave Peckham is trying to raise money to support the work
of his
I was feeling like there was nobody in the Egyptian that I knew,
spotted one guy across the room and thought ok, one guy. There's
getting to be a lot of space in the twenty-something, thirty-something,
and forty-something categories, none of which I'm in any more.
Here's
Yes, there's still the white elephant in the Tea Party living room, but
the top headline in today's Business section speaks volumes about the
flag-waving freedom criers who rallied (in the
Looking up...
News is, some Republican whiz kids have realized that if their fellow
travelers boycott the census and don't get counted... holy enumeration,
Batman, we'll get discounted!
It's time for the whommer
8" of snow in the mountains above Boise two days ago, a foot and more in
central Idaho, a dash of winter just in time for "spring break."
I put on sunblock yesterday, and used it for an hour or two, before
being garnished with snowflakes and graupel, riding through medium-light
powder, and over "Sierra cement" by turns. (Speaking of which,
