The quick summary on tonight's
Newshour was that Congress
scrambled to adjourn "just weeks ahead of the midterm election." That's
"weeks" as in 4½ weeks, otherwise known as "a month."
But while they're scrambling (and sending out a ton of emails begging
for last minute, end-of-quarter contributions), there's another deadline
tonight: the end of the federal government's fiscal year. And just as
with every year in recent memory, the basic job of Congress,
appropriating money to run all the departments and agencies in the
federal government, did not get done. Stand by for one "continuing
resolution" after another.
Here's an idea: if Congress doesn't get the budget done on time,
their salaries stop getting paid until they do. What do you
think?
28.Sept.2010
Koch snorts "Fiorina!"
Not-so-secret
(any
more) Tea Party moneybags Koch Industries PAC is hosting a
fundraiser
for Carly Fiorina in the California Senate race. $500 for
run-of-the-mill schmucks, double that if you want to be a "host," or
$2,400 to be a "sponsor." (Or if you're representing a PAC, make it
$1,000, $2,500 or $5,000.) My favorite of the prospective "hosts" is
Plastypac, the political action committee of plastic surgeons.
US Senate broken: Jim DeMint takes over
Our expectations for the world's greatest deliberative body (as they
like to think of themselves) have been plunging ever lower, but a
Republican from South Carolina may have taken them to
rock
bottom:
"DeMint's staff informed all Senate offices yesterday that he plans to
hold all legislation that hasn't been 'hot lined' by the end of business
on Tuesday, forcing each piece of legislation the Democrats hope to
address before the election to overcome days' worth of procedural
obstacles."
Apparently this has been SOP for the whole Obama administration. Jeff
Merkley (D-OR),
quoted on Huffington Post: "It is my understanding Jim DeMint
has had a standing hold on everything throughout this two year
process."
With the 2010 campaign heating up, and one of the hottest topics being
the cries to make the Bush-era tax cuts permanent, this might be a good
time to ask
How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy? David Cay
Johnston answers, on Tax.com: "[In 2008 dollars,] total income was
$2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes
had stayed at 2000 levels."
"The tax cuts did not spur investment. Job growth in the George W. Bush
years was one-seventh that of the Clinton years. Nixon and Ford did
better than Bush on jobs. Wages fell during the last administration.
Average incomes fell. The number of Americans in poverty, as officially
measured, hit a 16-year high last year of 43.6 million, though a
National Academy of Sciences study says that the real poverty figure is
closer to 51 million. Food banks are swamped. Foreclosure signs are
everywhere. Americans and their governments are drowning in debt. And at
the nexus of tax and healthcare, Republican ideas perpetuate a cruel and
immoral system that rations healthcare -- while consuming every sixth
dollar in the economy and making businesses, especially small
businesses, less efficient and less profitable."
But hey, it's not all bad news:
"The number of people reporting incomes of $200,000 or more but legally
paying no federal income taxes skyrocketed in the second Bush term. A
decade ago it was fewer than 1,500 taxpayers; in 2000 it was about
2,300. This high-income, tax-free group jumped to more than 11,000 in
2007 and then doubled in 2008 to more than 22,000."
27.Sept.2010
Op{-Ed Ch}Art
I guess I'm part of the Op-Ed generation, coming of age about the time
the New York Times invented that thing. Their
Op-Ed at 40 series has been deconstructing the phenomenon with the
help of the participants. Today's offering,
Four Decades of Art is remarkable, both for the art and opinion it
celebrates, and for showing the next step we're in the middle of,
the Op-Video.
Older and wiser
It's a nice genre, the giving of wisdom from the older generation to the
young. But the wider the gap, the more falls into it along the way. You
need to be closer to the problem to really (be seen to) understand.
So, graduate students, with
advice for college freshmen.
From the obvious ("try lots of things") to the difficult ("break up soon
[with your high school sweetheart] because you are likely to break up
over Thanksgiving, anyway"), to the overreaching ("universities are
places where facts are made") and the technologically astute:
"When you leave your room for class, leave the laptop behind. In a
lecture, you'll only waste your time and your parents' money, disrespect
your professor and annoy whomever is trying to pay attention around you
by spending the whole hour on Facebook."
26.Sept.2010
Time bending
Eric Schmidt, Google CEO,
on Charlie
Rose Friday night: "There are 24 hours of YouTube video uploaded
very minute."
Levity couldn't hurt, couldn't it?
Stephen Colbert's a little too much for my taste for a full half-hour
show, but in small doses and with the right jokes, he can be funny.
So, 10 minutes
testify
before a Congressional subcommitee, what the heck. The line that got
the biggest laugh (even from that stone-faced aide sitting on his right
shoulder)?
"I trust that following my testimony, both sides will work together
on this issue in the best interests of the American people, as you
always do."
Representative King—who's from Iowa, and says he knows corn—,
challenged the verisimilitude of Colbert's actual field labor, and
certainly some of the stunt was over the top, but there was a message at
the end, for all those who have ears to hear. One good idea could make a
productive day up on Capitol Hill (not even counting that "work together
in the best interests of the American people" idea; that's a good one,
too).
Attend an Oracle customer conference with forty thousand collected geeks
in San Francisco. Named with Orwellian style by a company that's
acquired 66 companies in the last 5 years (including the once sort of
mighty Sun Microsystems), "Open World" featured "downtown tents covering
parts of Howard and Mason Streets house alcohol-soaked evenings
sponsored by Fujitsu, fully stocked candy bars and Lego playpens where
people win prizes from Google for interesting constructions," "Services
Serum smoothies" from Dell's juice bar, and bus rides to Treasure Island
for concerts with the Black Eyed Peas, Don Henley and the Steve Miller
Band, according to
Ashlee Vance's report.
Along with his America's Cup, Larry Ellison had a trophy (co-)President
to show off, the former Chairman of the Board, CEO and President of HP,
who's now
cleared
to compete after coughing up $14 million-ish of his parting
gift.
24.Sept.2010
Insight to the Middle East
Jon Stewart's interview with King Abdullah II of Jordan, not quite 20
minutes, half of which aired in last night's Daily Show
broadcast:
part 1 and
part
2. Plenty of the same old bleakness in the political tales, but
one way out, at least:
"There's an old saying that there's enough religion in this world for us
to hate each other, but not enough religion for us to love one another.
If you truly believe in God—our God, your God, my God, the
Christian God—it's the same God... the basic tenet that binds us
all together is, the love of God, and the love of your neighbor, and
your brother."
A new contract on America
Oh wait, it's a
"Pledge"
this time, even though the players and ideas are all recycled from the
last time we had the Republicans take over Congress. I got a charge out
of the visuals, rolling it out at Tart Lumber in their shirtsleeves
(except for that one guy who didn't get the memo and still had his tie
on). Back to their roots? Building a fresh start? The only problem is
that, as
Jon Stewart and his video editors deftly illustrated, "this thing's
not even a sequel, it's like a shot-by-shot remake!"
"We are not going to be any different than we've been," says that man
who would be Speaker, at an event paid for by taxpayers. Call it the
Party of "No" ideas. And them the
Foundering Fathers.
Top of the agenda is to make sure the best of the best keep their low
tax rates now and forever. Reining in the deficit? Not so much.
WaPo's editorial board: the Pledge "mixes irresponsible
tax cuts with implausible spending caps and unspecified actions to
control entitlement spending. The resulting concoction is a profile in
cowardice."
This remake seems to have even
less substance than the original, in fact, providing something to
wave on the campaign trail while miming solidarity with the Tea Party,
a.k.a.
one of the most successful scams in American political history.
That'll be a pretty good description of John Boehner at the front the
Wedge in the lumber yard if the voters fall for this thing, too.
In terms of
measuring the yardage of this scam,
"Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has done the math.
As he points out, the only way to balance the budget by 2020, while
simultaneously (a) making the Bush tax cuts permanent and (b) protecting
all the programs Republicans say they won’t cut, is to completely
abolish the rest of the federal government: 'No more national parks, no
more Small Business Administration loans, no more export subsidies, no
more N.I.H. No more Medicaid (one-third of its budget pays for long-term
care for our parents and others with disabilities). No more child health
or child nutrition programs. No more highway construction. No more
homeland security. Oh, and no more Congress.'"
23.Sept.2010
Tax dodger invited off House Tax Committee
The Ethics Committee convened from the Idaho House couldn't agree on
any outright violations committed by Rep. Phil Hart (R-Athol), but they
did agree—unanimously—that
he should be booted off the Revenue and Taxation Committee. That was
after they offered him the chance to resign, and his lawyer said
you're not the boss of he. It's now up to our Speaker of the House,
Lawerence Denney, to decide his fate.
Dustin Hurst's report of yesterday's Committee action for Idaho Reporter
here, and the Idaho Statesman... was missing in action. They gave the call
for Hart's ouster a tiny blurb on page A7 this morning.
"While the U.S. certainly still has its costly environmental challenges,
such as the growing concern over natural gas extraction from 'fracking,'
our environmental regulators have largely reversed the types of trends
seen today in China and Alberta. Moreover, smart U.S. companies have
realized that a healthy environment leads to a healthy economy. Last
year, the Harvard Business Review concluded that sustainability
policies are the 'motherlode of organizational and technological
innovations that yield both bottom-line and top-line returns' even in a
severe recession."
He cites an estimate by the
International Fund for China's
Environment that "China must spend at least 2% of its GDP annually"
for environmental remediation of decades of pollution. Rapid economic
growth does not generally foster careful deliberation and efficiency,
either; there's little reason to suppose their current practices are all
they should be. Given our own history, it would be truly remarkable if
they were.
And
this just in: "On July 20th, the chief economist of the
International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol,
told
the Wall Street Journal that China had overtaken the United
States to become the world's number one energy consumer," producing and
consuming three times as much coal as the U.S. does. (We're still
outburning the Chinese per capita though, 4:1, down from 9:1 at
the turn of the century.)
21.Sept.2010
Train time
Not quite the same as seeing it roll out under steam power, but a train
is a train. Lots more pictures taken this morning, and some video of UP
844 standing ready, and then being pulled out of the Boise Depot back to
Nampa where it would be in the lead once again. The departure was spot
on time today, anyway. A friend said she and her husband saw it
at Black Cat Road (westbound?), then chased down to Kuna to see it
again, eastbound.
Not exactly must-see TV, but my first video posted on YouTube. (I had to
settle for FtBoise; the onion people are squatting on the fortboise
channel.) You can check out Saturday night's freight blasting through
Notus over there,
too.
Unanswered question by the gal passing by near the end: "why were those
passenger cars empty?" UP couldn't be bothered to try to sell tickets,
apparently. Freight is better behaved.
There must be a ton of video of this thing on the web, all of it better
than mine. Here's a nicely finished one made by two guys
chasing the Portland
Rose along the Columbia River. Nice to see it in high-speed action,
and to hear beautiful whistle!
Republican plan: choke and sabotage
They say that misery loves company, and the Republicans in Congress
have a lot of misery to share over losing their attempt to utterly block
healthcare insurance reform. The next "best" thing is apparently to
chip away at the law, by withholding funding, attacking specific
provisions, sabotaging the Internal Revenue Service if they have to.
Here's a twist: they "may try to undo some cuts in Medicare" too?
Apparently anything that the Democrats have enacted is something
they are against, even if
they were for it before they were against it (or against it before
the Democrats were against it). Confusing. Duplicitous. Stupid.
20.Sept.2010
Portland Rose in Boise
Went down to the Depot to see the public relations vehicle, on a perfect
day for a bike ride, cool, bluebird day at the end of summer, and just
right to show off the old passenger livery of the Union Pacific.
There was a big crowd in the middle of Monday, some folks from the
original Age of Steam, and a lot of grandkids in tow. Everybody wanted
to see more than what we were allowed to, which was the Souvenir Car
(we've already had our once-in-a-lifetime visit to that, thanks), and up
a steel staircase to rest an elbow on #844's padded cab windowsill and
chat with the Fireman, looking after the low heat keeping the burble
on.
The fellow throttling the visitors at the bottom of the stairway told us
he was a volunteer, and that there was a sizeable queue of people
willing to do this kind of work for free and an occasional train ride.
No doubt, they get to go inside the train, which we all did
not.
The paint is in tip-top shape, signed by the craftsman on one spot, and
I noticed another where it said "Amtrak." (Noticed that name on one of
the Timken bearing end caps, too!) Amtrak's happy to extend its own
public relations, sort of, and let UP keep their cars in good repair,
hauling them around for show, with no passengers? Hmmm. The volunteer
also told us that they usually stay in hotels when they travel around;
once in a while somebody'll stay with the train, but not usually.
I also learned that once they cleared Nyssa (OR) yesterday, they put the
hammer down and "made up for lost time," explaining why my attempt to
intercept west of Caldwell yesterday failed so miserably. Their speed
limit is legislated to 79 mph, we were told, and the track between Nyssa
and Nampa allowed them to get most of that.
So much public affection for trains, but no apparent way to make a
business out of passenger transportation. It's exciting, but not
convenient enough for people of the Age of the Automobile. The
slogan painted on one of those Amtrak cars, "Pround Heritage / Powerful
Future / Building America" gave it a baggage of considerable irony.
Jacket, forty-nine ninety-five
Timely combination of threads in Marc Johnson's post
about poverty in America as la crème de la
crème party like it's 1928,
sending their generous donations to the folks waving the Taxed
Enough Already banners. Our "strange paradox," as Sadhbh Walshe put in
the Guardian is that "the party that is accused of doing too
little to combat the crisis [of growing poverty] is poised to suffer
heavy defeats in the upcoming mid-term elections by the party accused of
doing nothing at all."
We're an optimistic nation, always looking forward, more keen for
rags-to-riches stories than the ones about going from middle-class to
homeless with one accident, health crisis, or bad real estate deal.
And we don't have a lot of patience for complexity, which gives a
decided advantage to those willing to work the details to their benefit.
If you're not writing the fine print, it's not going to be on your side.
Ed Lotterman's column today describing how
tax
reform has fallen by the political wayside in favor of
a
hostage situation is a case in point. Gaming the system is not
productive work, whether it's done retail, or wholesale. It's not going
away because it continues to pay for the practitioners.
As for the threads mentioned at the end of Marc's post, I haven't seen
the ink-and-paper NYT in a while, so no Macy's ad for me, and when I
looked online, I couldn't find the animal print mink, or anything in
four-figures. I'm sure they're out there, though: advertising is
aspirational, whether it's for clothing or politicians.
I'll tell you what's all over my house
Squirrels. But we're not getting any useful work out of them. They're
just chasing the acorns that start raining down on the roof about this
time of year. If you need any acorns, or any small oak trees, let me
know. As for Colin Powell's house, I'm not surprised to hear that
his office now says he "misspoke" on Sunday, talking about
illegal immigrants:
"They're all over my house, doing things whenever I call for repairs,
and I'm sure you've seen them at your house. We've got to find a way to
bring these people out of the darkness and give them some kind of
status."
Instead of all over his house, on Monday, they're "the many service
contractors who work in my neighborhood, using mostly immigrant workers,
who do good work. Some may well be 'illegal.'"
And as for who's looking after our landscaping, maintenance, and what
not, it's mostly us, doing our own work. As I suspect is the case
for the vast majority of the Meet the Press audience who spewed
their Sunday morning coffee when they heard our former Secretary of
State say illegal immigrants were all over his house.
19.Sept.2010
Live steam in Boise today!
Motive power from last century is on the high iron today. You can
track
it from your browser (Moving East near MISSION, OR at 9:03:31 AM PDT),
and see how close to the
5pm scheduled arrival in Boise they'll meet.
Or take your time and visit it on display tomorrow at the Boise Depot.
If your appetite needs whetting, Marie Watkins' piece that ran in
The New Haven Leader (Missouri) back in 1984 might work,
Eight
Seconds with Eighty-Four Forty-Four. (It's since been renumbered
back to its original, 844.)
"...She hit with such a blithering force that it caused terror to rise
up and go forth. Black thunder swept all breath away and the air roared
with mocking anger...."
Update: Amusing that from the Union Pacific's perspective, the
capital of Idaho is known as "near KUNA, ID," where it arrived about
3½ hours late. It was a clean miss for me, after I'd tracked its
slow progress through eastern Oregon and along the Snake River, then
decided to give chase to get pictures before dark. I met another foamer
at a grade crossing in Notus, but his clever little 3G phone was
outwitted by the UP website, which shunted him to an uninformative
"mobile" siding and left us looking the wrong way for the train that had
come and gone.
Jeanette heard the beautiful sound of the whistle from our house,
stepped outside in the twilight to listen to another era.
18.Sept.2010
Closed book and constant noisemaker
What better place to visit the universe of Sarah Palin than
Vanity
Fair? I had no idea that Michael Joseph Gross had featured her
until I was reading about Friday's
"Ronald Reagan Dinner" in Iowa.
In her regular speech, I see that Ms. Palin is happy to characterize the
whole of the "lamestream media" (excepting herself?) as "cowards,"
"striving for personal power."
Seems confessional.
I'd like to see her go mano a mano with Ted Rall, or Amy Goodman, or any
of reporters who have been willing to work in Iraq or Afghanistan. Or
even a writer for Vanity Fair, for that matter. That 2008 go with
Charlie Gibson left one hell of a mark. I haven't heard anything about
her history that speaks to courage on her part. Taking
a
shot at Karl Rove hardly qualifies, that guy's like a speed bag
for Republicans and Democrats alike, isn't he?
In Vanity Fair, I think Gross had me at an "audience of
4,000 people clapping their hands in time to The Battle Hymn of the
Republic," but there's lots more.
"With few exceptions—mostly Palin antagonists in journalism and
politics whose beefs with her have long been out in the
open—virtually no one who knows Palin well is willing to talk
about her on the record, whether because they are loyal and want to
protect her (a small and shrinking number), or because they expect her
prominence to grow and intend to keep their options open, or because
they fear she will exact revenge, as she has been known to do. It is an
astonishing phenomenon. Colleagues and acquaintances by the hundreds
went on the record to reveal what they knew, for good or ill, about
prospective national candidates as diverse as Bill Clinton, George W.
Bush, Al Gore, and Barack Obama. When it comes to Palin, people button
their lips and slink away."
Definitely worth reading to understand what's behind the signature red
suit stirring up the culture these days. And when you finish, you'll
want to read
the author's response to criticism about the article as well.
15.Sept.2010
Derek cheater!
Never been a Yankees fan, but I did think that Derek Jeter was a class
act and a superstar and all that. But what's this? They're in pennant
race with the Tampa Bay Rays, behind in a close game, 2-1 in the top of
the 7th, relief pitcher for the Rays just in, Jeter's going to try to
bunt his way onto base, and an inside pitch seems to hit him.
Gosh, is he hurt? I hope he's OK!
But wait for the replay... and we saw the ball hit the bat
before it hit him. That's called a "foul ball" the way I learned
baseball. And Jeter's act, pretending, ah, something's hurt? Couldn't
be his hand or his elbow 'cause the ball never touched
those things. It hit the bat, and then grazed his hip.
And Jeter pretended like gosh, I got hit by the pitch. But he knows what
happened. And he knows he just cheated to try to win a stupid baseball
game.
So much for the respect I had for the guy.
Next batter hit a home run, so the cheat was worth at least one run,
maybe both of them, since the pitching wouldn't have been the same with
the bases empty.
Update: the Rays' Dan Johnson punched another 2-run home in the
bottom of the 7th, negating Jeter's cheat. Jeter made an error, and
struck out to lead off the 9th.
Rays win, cheat fails.
Republican cannibalism
Christine O'Donnell and I agree on one thing, even if we might not
say it the same way: Karl Rove is a spent gasbag with a long history of
spouting "unfactual" information. She's looking forward, to things
like "how we're going to defend the homeland of our security."
We're not likely to find out if she can be elected as dog-catcher
(Delaware's state GOP chairman thinks not), but she is going to be
on the Delaware ballot for the U.S. Senate. This is indeed past the
politics of personal destruction, and into potential destruction on a
broader scale. To say nothing of entertaining!
Chummy tax deals are a way of life; what good is the influence you're
buying if there's no return on investment? Less common is to have the
curtains opened on the back rooms and have sunlight streaming in.
Rep. Shirley Ringo (D-Moscow) is working on the drapes, with
help from former employees of the Tax Commission, and now
former Idaho Supreme Court justice Robert Huntley taking on the
case in which
"...there is a strong possibility that the conduct which has been
reported by the eight present and former auditors discloses actual
criminal activity by way of appropriation of public funds in violation
of the Idaho Statutes and the Constitution."
Seems like it should be our Attorney General's job to get after this,
but last we heard, there was nothing to see here, just move along:
he said the secret tax deals were legal, a couple years ago.
Now the District Court will be sorting out at least some of the
unanswered questions.
14.Sept.2010
Printing in 3-D
Back in my day, we were starting to use
stereolithography
for prototyping, and the occasional pattern for a cheap mold and a short
run of not-so-precise parts. Things have moved along, with better (and
cheaper) machines to do the "printing," and better polymers for the
finished parts, including the neat trick of fabricating an
assembly by using a 2nd polymer for temporary support and then
dissolving it away. Check out the video accompanying
the
New York Times story by Ashlee Vance.
Furniture, fixtures, architectural models, prosethetic limbs, and
sure, why not, "a giant 3-D printing device for building houses."
13.Sept.2010
Non-starter
We've been living under the budget-busting tax cuts that the Republicans
wanted, passed, and signed into law. They upped the ante after taking
the country to war in Iraq. The only compromise was that they had to put
an expiration date on the raid on the Treasury.
It's not about God, or Country, or even Family Values. It's just about
the money, and the folks who have the most still want more, and Mitch
McConnell is their man.
We're all Kenyans now
Speaking of jaw-dropping self-involvement,
here comes Newt again, leveling a criticism so outside our
comprehension that only if you understand Belgian education policy in
the Congo could you begin to appreciate the infinitesimal chance this
man could return from Minas Morgul to assume an actual position of
power.
Been played
After the weekend, I'm thinking I need a full-on category for
"Fear Itself" rather than just recycling that headline every so often.
Wordsmith at Left Side of the Moon has the round-up on
what happens when someone undeserving solves the how-to-get-publicity
puzzle: the inevitable
remorse of the media. They're just doing what we want of them,
seeking out the sensational (and "shiny shiny shining thing").
The upside is the opportunity to combine "synergized," "wackdoodlery,"
"bamboozle" and
folie à
deux in
the
deconstruction. The downside is that some people will accept the
offer of dueling idolatries, and will go so far as to burn things in
protest of planned burning, and
kill people.
We do have
better angels among us, but the quiet attention we may pay to them
for an hour or two on the Sabbath is not keeping things from going off
the rails the other 6½ days a week.
"Do not attach yourself in an exclusive manner to any one creed, so that
you disbelieve all the rest: if you do this, you will miss much good;
nay, you will fail to realize the real truth of the matter. God, the
omnipresent and omnipotent, is not limited by any one creed, for He
says, 'Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah' (Quran 2.109).
Everyone praises what he believes; his god is his own creature, and in
praising it he praises himself. Consequently he blames the beliefs of
others, which he would not do if he were just but his dislike is based
on ignorance."
That news from the thirteenth century is still relevant today.
32 is still growin' up now
Not sure how
Taylor Swift figured that out, but now she's told all of the MTV
viewing audience. Just because you're "jaw-droppingly self-involved"
doesn't mean you're not pretty, glamorous, commercially viable,
newsworthy, anymore than it prevents you from stumbling on to insight
and setting it to music and glitz.
"There was a brief moment when the possibility flickered that this was
the cleverest scam of all time—wouldn't it have been great
if it turned out you could mash up Swift's hopelessly earnest song of
forgiveness and Kanye's hopelessly earnest song of self-flagellation,
and she was going to come out on stage, and they were going to perform
the funniest, most meta-funny duet ever? Wouldn't that have been
utter genius?"
Didn't happen at the VMA, but I'm sure someone has already mashed 2 and
2 together, to make... something "borders on the creepy," or heck, right
on over the shark.
11.Sept.2010
Pals around with lobbyists
He smokes, he golfs, he's an odd shade of orange, and who is he
representing, exactly? The
New York Times reports on who's tight in "Boehner Land."
The list includes Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds,
MillerCoors, UPS, Altria, Discover Financial. No mention of the actual
citizens who elected him from his district in Ohio. His "circle of
lobbyists and former aides"
"have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns over
the years, provided him rides on their corporate jets, socialized with
him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading
fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is
soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed."
His spokesman gets a mention of him being "a former small-business man"
but he's in to big business now, "[raising] $36 million for
Republican causes during this election cycle."
"From 2000 to 2007, Mr. Boehner flew at least 45 times, often with his
wife, Debbie, on corporate jets provided by companies including R. J.
Reynolds. (As required, Mr. Boehner reimbursed part of the costs.)
"In addition, over the last decade, he has taken 41 other trips paid for
by corporate sponsors or industry groups, often to popular golf spots.
Those trips make him one of the top House beneficiaries of such
travel...
"Mr. Boehner continues to travel to popular golf destinations on a
corporate-subsidized tab, although now it is paid for through his
political action committee, the Freedom Project. In the last 18 months,
it has spent at least $67,000 at the Ritz Carlton Naples in Florida, at
least $20,000 at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va.,
and at least $29,000 at the Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio,
federal records show, for fund-raising events."
Ah, so at least he gets some of his golfing in Ohio.
10.Sept.2010
A rich vein
Looking beyond this election cycle (and a couple more), serious
questions about our energy future confront us. On the occasion of our
new President assuming office last year, a former Wall Street trader and
hedge fund manager turned student of Natural Resources specializing in
Ecological Economics wrote him a letter. It's been reposted to The Oil
Drum, under the subject
"Yes We Could, But Are
We?" and while skimming along to get the gist, I came upon one
particularly hyperlink-rich paragraph that suggested (a) I wanted to read
what he had to say, and (b) it was going to take a little while to drink
it all in. Here then, as teaser, at least, the first paragraph of what
was under the heading THE BIG KAHUNA (DEMAND) (and a striking
satire of Ronald McDonald):
"Our species in general and Americans in particular have the
wiring and drive to be
consumptive machines. No matter how many goods we acquire over time, our
pecuniary
desires seem to increase faster than our acquisitions. Combine this
with our
mirror neurons (video), between-and-within-nation aspiration gaps
(based on biologic underpinnings of
relative
fitness), an evolutionary penchant for
waste, a
built in drive to
outcompete,
a culture that fosters keeping up with the Joneses with a high % of
Veblen goods, and
the result is a frenetic feedback loop that has a vast plurality of
Americans now
Jonesing,
many nearly broke,
obese, and a fair number realizing, without knowing the details, that something is amiss.
Alternative
measures of 'keeping score' other than GDP concur that we are losing
ground. Fortunately, subjective well being studies show we are
equally happy as the
average Phillipino, yet use 39 times the primary energy. This I view
(as should you) as a great opportunity. In the end,
humans are 'adaptation-executors', not utility maximizers. (This is
really an ace in the hole - because it strongly suggests we do not need
the economic 'utility' machine to make us happy)."
I won't—can't—give it all away, but I will say that the
metaphor he chose to wind up his conclusions was quite apt for the
predicament he describes:
"Just ahead of us is a waterfall that few can clearly see. Even our
scientists are focused on measuring the water speed, distance to the
waterfall, building bigger canoes and larger life preservers, etc. But
one path that hasn't been duly considered, is just paddling towards
shore, and walking the rest of the way."
Fear itself
It's human nature to
misperceive the
magnitude of threats we face these days. Our brains and nervous
systems evolved from selection pressures acting over millennia, in an
untechnological world. Even though our great success in world
domination comes from sharing what we learn through our culture, our
limited individual experiences claim our greatest emotional
attention.
Bad information, whether it comes with the best of intentions, or
whether it's used for calculated ends, can lead to bad judgment and
self-inflicted injury.
Since strong emotion rarely accompanies our best thinking, it's not that
great a surprise to learn that the anger motivating expressions of the
so-called Tea Party is
built upon an illusion: "that government in general, and the federal
government in particular, has grown so large that it now dominates the
private sector and threatens our liberties and our economic
prosperity."
Turns out the "ever-expanding government sector"
isn't, actually, either in terms of employment, or as a fraction of
GDP. (To the extent the data presented are accurate, of course.)
9.Sept.2010
So big, so incompetent
If somebody lies about the little things, can you trust them about the
big things? Judy Woodruff was far too polite with former House majority
leader Dick Armey in
her interview with him on tonight's NewsHour, helping him flog his
new book, "Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto." (Kind of him to
write their manifesto for them, yeah?) Extolling the virtues
of the Tea Party people he wants to lead, Armey said:
"They're probably the kindest, gentlest, most gentle souls we ever saw.
We had a million of them in town last September, and they left the town
cleaner than they found it."
He referred to last year's September 12th rally, attended by something
less than one-tenth of a million people by independent, objective
reports. (But you know that whacky MSM, right?)
Armey thinks "government is just so big, so incompetent and
inefficient," one has to wonder why he personally was so ineffective at
changing that while he was part of it. Or why anyone would imagine he
can get it done now, from outside.
Teh crazy
Gail Collins explains a great deal by observing that a sizeable
percentage of the population "is and always will be totally crazy."
She says
5 percent, I've heard 1 to 2 percent, whatever. Like Margaret
Mead said, you only need a small group of people who should be
committed to change the world.
"So far, the people lining up to denounce the burning of the Koran
include the pope, Gen. David Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton. [And the President,
and the
Secretary of Defense.] On the Republican side, Haley Barbour, the
Mississippi governor and would-be presidential contender, stepped up to
the plate. ''I don't think there is any excuse for it,'' said Barbour at
a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.
"Unfortunately, Barbour followed up his bow to tolerance by suggesting
that the public's confusion over Barack Obama's religion is because of
the fact that ''this is a president that we know less about than any
other president in history.'' The governor claimed that Americans had
been particularly deprived of information on Obama's youth, while they
knew a great deal about the formative years of the other chief
executives all the way back to the way the youthful George Washington
''chopped down a cherry tree.''
"Let us reconsider the above paragraph in light of the fact that while
Obama wrote an entire book about his childhood, Washington never chopped
down the cherry tree."
"If someone wants to give me 18 or 20 million dollars today, it's all
theirs," Hisham Elzanaty says. "I'm a businessman. This was a mere
business transaction for me."
So, if it's all about sensitivity and respect, perhaps the most strident
of the critics can show how much they believe in American values, take
up a collection and buy out Elzanaty and his partners. Newt? Sarah?
'10.9.8
Building on faith
Good for Feisal Abdul Rauf: undeterred by the manufactured firestorm
of criticism,
the
building of Cordoba House in lower Manhattan will proceed,
"with the support of the downtown community, government at all levels
and leaders from across the religious spectrum, who will be our
partners."
"Above all, the project will amplify the multifaith approach that the
Cordoba Initiative has deployed in concrete ways for years. Our name,
Cordoba, was inspired by the city in Spain where Muslims, Christians and
Jews co-existed in the Middle Ages during a period of great cultural
enrichment created by Muslims. Our initiative is intended to cultivate
understanding among all religions and cultures."
No compromise
For a while there, the decade-long gambit of the Republican tax cuts
seemed to be playing out brilliantly. For politicians facing elections
every 2 years (or at most every 6), 2011 seemed an eternity away back in
2001 and 2003. We'd all be so used to the huge tax cuts that of course
Congress would have to make them permanent. (Even though they put the
deficit down a well? Whoops, forgot to factor in that $trillion war;
it was
supposed to pay for itself, remember?) Now here we are, on the verge
of that huge tax cut for the highest incomes expiring.
The Republican playbook for Obama's first term has been simple, and
straight out of Reagan's era—Nancy Reagan's—"just say
no." Obstruct, impair, sabotage, and blame the party in power when
things go to crap, making enough noise to distract people from how much
blame belongs to Bush, Cheney, and the Republican-dominated Congresses
for most of their terms.
But there's nothing that Congress does that isn't subject to
negotiation, deconstruction, and reassembly. (Think "pet food" rather
than "sausage.") Obama's OK with the (relatively small) middle class
part of the deal, but
not
the "tax breaks for the wealthy" part. The Republicans can likely
prevent action before the election, but that means the fuse they lit way
back when will keep burning.
It's a game of Chicken, with most of the innocent bystanding voters
poised to be collateral damage one way or the other.
7.Sept.2010
The devil and Dr. Jones
Pastor in
Podunk plans anniversary book burning, and protestors in Kabul
return the courtesy (without waiting for any particular date), burning
an effigy of Terry Jones, along with the Stars and Stripes.
Yes indeed, our political discourse is rising to new heights of
religiosity. I'm sure a bright day will be dawning soon.
What's a little not-quite-sexual indiscretion when you made a ton of
money by firing people by the thousands? Larry Ellison says he wants
some of that "brilliant job" for his company!
Let's just say that if the HP Board didn't make its severance payout
contingent on non-competition, they just aided and abetted its
stockholders being taken to the cleaners yet again. Michael Capellas,
Carly Fiorina, Mark Hurd... quite the parade of gold-diggers, mining
the corporation's apparently bottomless pockets.
Update #2: It took HP less than a day to
file
a lawsuit against Hurd
because he couldn't possibly "perform his duties for Oracle without
necessarily using and disclosing H.P.'s trade secrets and confidential
information to others."
Labor Day
Glenn Beck's coming out
Taylor Branch sees Glenn Beck as
Dr.
King's newest marcher, and makes him sound positively inspired, and
inspirational.
It's a lovely portrait of last month's rally in Washington, and would
that it were true. It seems an awkward fit for the entertainment
business Beck has been in, but who knows, he may be ready to transition
into (or back to?) religion, and what he describes as a God-given
instruction to spark a new civil rights movement. It'll take more than
one day's worth of "peace with the liberal half of the American
heritage" for him to lead us to the promised land of constructive
politics, but I suppose stranger things have happened.
Business as usual, so far
Ten years ago, I was working in California and experiencing the result
of "innovation" in the "market" for electricity; we were having
forced load reductions, trying to dodge
rolling blackouts. Not because we were actually "short" of electricity,
mind you, but rather that a buggered market was unable to deliver the
juice for an appropriate price.
Given the choice of a public regulated utility, or an invisible hand
in the till, give me the regulated utility every time. Part 3 (of 5) of
The Fake Fire Brigade
Revisited on The Oil Drum adds more explanation than simple common
sense as to why it matters:
"[M]any things are either impossible or economically not feasible in
environments where grid stability becomes an issue. And even for
applications where it is theoretically possible to ramp them up and down
without efficiency or material losses based on energy availability,
there are significant social costs associated with
unpredictability."
As their graph of an "electricity availability index" against per capita
GDP shows, one of the things "not possible" is for a country to break
out of the bottom tier of economic development without stable
electricity.
Their concern is that our steady, ubiquitous delivery of electrical
power—"one of the most complex continuous endeavors of mankind,
and one where many poorer countries fail"—will be put at risk
by increasing the component of intermittently available sources:
"This grand plan—to maintain something that already now is highly
complex by adding multiple layers of complexity—is something we
are very concerned about. The overlying challenge is to keep a
flow-based demand system working while stochastic, non-controllable
flows gain a significant share of supply, and to do so without
jeopardizing grid stability, and at a price which is still affordable.
We believe that most people underestimate this challenge and that it
actually may be insurmountable."
"[T]his is what every [U.S.] citizen owns: 530 million acres, of
which 193 million are run by the Forest Service, 253 million by the
Bureau of Land Management and 84 million by the National Park
Service. The public land endowment is more than three times the size
of France."
For just the National Park properties, I've been to Arches, Badlands,
Bryce, Capitol Reef, Cedar Breaks, Crater Lake, Craters of the Moon,
Devil's Tower, Dinosaur, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Haleakala, North
Cascades, Olympic, the Presidio, Redwood, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone,
Yosemite and Zion. And maybe Great Smoky Mountains, but that would have
been when I was too young to remmeber.
That leaves a lot of vacations still to be had!
Department of Redundancy Dept.
We've been following employment numbers quarter-to-quarter, hanging on
the reports, and revised reports of how the economy is doing at getting
people back to work. The number is hanging tough around 10%;
1 in 10 people unemployed, if you don't count the folks who are
"underemployed" or the ones who have fallen out of the count (sometimes
as "given up," but it's probably more complicated than that).
What positive news there has been for most of the last decade has been
qualified by comparison to how many jobs are needed just to keep up with
population growth. Last December,
Paul Krugman figured that:
"to keep up with population growth over those 7 years [starting two
years earlier], the United States would have had to add 84 times 127,000
or 10.7 million jobs. (If that sounds high, bear in mind that we
added more than 20 million jobs over the 8 Clinton years). Add in the
need to make up lost ground, and we’re at around 18 million jobs over
the next five years—or 300,000 a month."
When I left HP, 7 years ago this month, they were just starting to hit
their stride in the business of cutting jobs. The mergers and
acquisitions make the news, the subsequent reductions in force, not so
much. But like other large corporations, HP is shedding workers
wholesale. As Douglas McIntyre described last month, the 25 "leading"
companies— the
"Layoff Kings"—managed to eliminate 700,000 positions
between December 2007 and this July.
General Motors was in first place on the dubious top 25, 107,357 jobs
cut; Citigroup second, 73.056; HP third, 47,540. And on down the
line to Sun Microsystems (before it was acquired by Oracle),
Boeing, Chrysler, with 14,000 each.
3.Sept.2010
Singin in the choir
Nice story in the UU World magazine with several of my UUMN
choir director friends featured:
Choirs bring
a 'heart connection.' Interesting factoid included, from the
organization
Chorus
America: they estimate "more than thirty-two million adults [in the
U.S., I suppose] regularly sing in choruses, up from twenty-three
million in 2003."
Interesting estimate. In 7 years, participation in choral singing has
increased by 40%? So they claim. Chorus America also tells us that
"singing in [a chorus] is strongly correlated with qualities that are
associated with success throughout life... Greater civic involvement,
discipline, and teamwork are just a few of the attributes fostered by
singing with a choral ensemble."
Hey, never mind that confusion of correlation with causation, it's good
for you, trust me.
Oh lordy
The
review of the GoPro HD Hero camera is very, very positive, and the
accompanying video is cute and a lot of fun. And then down there at the
bottom, it says go take a look at
"some of the gorgeous videos people have uploaded to
Vimeo and
YouTube."
What he said.
That's one nifty little gadget, and a bunch of nifty surfers and base
jumpers.
2.Sept.2010
Gaffe-o-rama
I got the press release early today, but set it aside, thinking I'd
deconstruct the talking points later. Leave it to the professionals to
handle this business:
Kevin Richert pulls out the bullet pointer on the Idaho GOP's
attempt to castigate Keith Allred for taking undue credit for getting
the Idaho homeowner's tax exemption expanded back in 2006.
My favorite part is having Senate President Pro-tem Bob Geddes, and
House Speaker Lawerence Denney leading the finger wagging, given that
they both voted against the version that became law.
For his part, Allred is
quite gracious about the dust-up while quoting Idaho
Statesman writer Dan Popkey and the Republican chairman of the
Senate Local Government and Tax Committee at the time, Hal Bunderson,
to support his claim.
"I think the errors in today's press release were honest mistakes. In
the five years that I led The Common Interest, they tried to get their
facts right and we worked together well. I look forward to working well
with them again as Governor."
Speaking of honest mistakes, that House Speaker's name is a real
bugaboo. Even the **CORRECTION copy of the press release has it wrong,
two different ways. Join in the comment free-for-all on the topic at
Huckleberries Online.
Update:Eye
on Boise has John Miller's account for the AP Wire, providing the
"second correction" for the unfortunate GOP attempt to criticize Allred.
Those stubborn facts.
1.Sept.2010
Religions of the dead
The Latter-day Saints have this idea that people will appreciate a
ticket to paradise, even if it's posthumous. I'm kind of particular
about my own beliefs, so having someone revise my preference after I'm
not able to object has never attracted me very much, but what are you
going to do? (Word is, the Mormons believe "departed souls can accept or
reject" the offer. No offense intended.)
The positive way of looking at it is that it offers families the
opportunity of reuniting in the afterlife.
The downside is that
it might be taken as disrespect "to alter the religion of Holocaust
victims, who were murdered because of their religion."
"There is so much to hate about the Iraq war. The costs will never match
the hoped-for outcome, but that outcome remains hugely important: the
effort to build a decent, consensual government in Iraq is the most
important democracy project in the world today. If Iraqi Sunnis, Kurds
and Shiites can actually write a social contract for the first time in
modern Arab history, it means that viable democracy is not only possible
in Iraq, but everywhere in the region."
With the 2010 campaign heating up, and one of the hottest topics being
the cries to make the Bush-era tax cuts permanent, this might be a good
time to ask
I guess I'm part of the Op-Ed generation, coming of age about the time
the New York Times invented that thing. Their
Oh wait, it's a
"Pledge"
this time, even though the players and ideas are all recycled from the
last time we had the Republicans take over Congress. I got a charge out
of the visuals, rolling it out at Tart Lumber in their shirtsleeves
(except for that one guy who didn't get the memo and still had his tie
on). Back to their roots? Building a fresh start? The only problem is
that, as
He cites an estimate by the
Went down to the Depot to see the public relations vehicle, on a perfect
day for a bike ride, cool, bluebird day at the end of summer, and just
right to show off the old passenger livery of the Union Pacific.
The paint is in tip-top shape, signed by the craftsman on one spot, and
I noticed another where it said "Amtrak." (Noticed that name on one of
the Timken bearing end caps, too!) Amtrak's happy to extend its own
public relations, sort of, and let UP keep their cars in good repair,
hauling them around for show, with no passengers? Hmmm. The volunteer
also told us that they usually stay in hotels when they travel around;
once in a while somebody'll stay with the train, but not usually.
Ten years ago, I was working in California and experiencing the result
of "innovation" in the "market" for electricity; we were having
Timothy Egan:
