I’m reading this a month late, but it still bears notice:
A St. Louis city leader frustrated with the police response to rising crime called Tuesday on residents to arm themselves to protect their lives and property.
Alderman Charles Quincy Troupe said police are ineffective, outnumbered or don’t care about the increase in crime in his north St. Louis ward. St. Louis has had 157 homicides in 2008, 33 more than last year at this time. . .
Troupe said that when he and residents approached a district police commander last year, they were told “there was nothing he could do to protect us and the community … that he didn’t have the manpower.”
Police did not immediately return requests for comment. Chief Dan Isom told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he understands Troupe’s frustration but doesn’t support citizens arming themselves.
Carrying guns, he said, is not a “recipe for a less violent community.”
Senate Democrats are realizing that they have no choice but to seat Roland Burris, despite his tainted appointment. (Via Instapundit.) Experts have been saying so for some time.
Illinois Democrats could have resolved the problem by providing for a special election, but scuttled the idea at the urging of Democratic Leader Harry Reid and others. The integrity of the system must be put in its proper place, you see. Integrity is important, but not so important as to risk losing a Democratic seat.
Obama said Tuesday the deficit appears on track to hit $1 trillion soon. Speaking to reporters after meeting with top economic aides, Obama said: “Potentially we’ve got trillion-dollar deficits for years to come, even with the economic recovery that we are working on.”
He wants Congress to approve a stimulus plan of about $775 billion.
The federal deficit was about $455 billion when the last fiscal year ended on Sept. 30, 2008.
So Obama plans to double the deficit his first year in office, and leave it there for years to come. We’ve tried all four combinations in recent years, and it seems the only way to get fiscal sanity is with a Democratic President and a Republican Congress. Well, let’s get right on that.
POSTSCRIPT: I may not have actually written it here, so let me write it now. The stimulus plan will not work. Why? Because Keynesianism is just plain wrong today. Keynesianism applies in the extremely rare circumstance that there should be deflation, but wages fail to fall. Arguably, this applied during the Great Depression, which is what Keynes was trying to explain. It does not apply today, nor will it ever apply with a remotely competent central bank. Obama’s stimulus package will not stimulate anything; it’s just a trillion-dollar boondoggle. But, the economy will probably recover anyway, and the stimulus will probably be given the credit.
UPDATE: The trillion dollar deficit only lasted two days. Now it’s $2 trillion.
Jay Nordlinger has a long piece up on the increasing intrusion of political commentary into what ought to be pleasant, apolitical social or cultural occasions. (Via Instapundit.) It resonates a lot with my own personal experience, but I think he misses one point. Nordlinger suggests that the ranters are assuming that everyone in the group is a leftist like them, or are at worst indifferent to the feelings of any non-leftists. In my experience it’s worse than that; the ranters do so with the deliberate intent to make those who disagree uncomfortable.
Does this happen from the right as well? I can’t say, as I’ve never flown in circles where conservatives and libertarians are a sufficient majority for it to happen.
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.
And:
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.
How much effort, and how many human lives, have been wasted trying to make peace with these people?
A few weeks ago, the Economist had a story on universities that tried to employ the “Yale model” for investing their endowments without actually knowing what they were doing:
The model may also have been adopted by endowments that were too small for it. “You need to be very big and very diversified, and to be sophisticated enough to understand the risk management of complex investments,” says Anthony Knerr, who advises universities on funding strategies. Some of the hardest hit may be smaller endowments that adopted a “Yale-lite” strategy that they did not really understand. They may also have been unable to invest in the best hedge funds and private-equity firms, which have (until now) been able to pick and choose between investors.
But this is 2009; no one should have to suffer the consequences of one’s own bad judgement any more. So the latest institution to look for a Federal bailout is the University of Virginia.
Once the shenanigans begin, you know you’ve seen this movie before. Somehow, some way, the Minnesota Democrats are going to end up with the seat. The similarity to Washington 2004 is striking. “Found” ballots, improperly handled absentee ballots, and — of course — lots of Democratic precincts with more ballots than voters. Plus, Minnesota has invented a new trick, “missing” ballots that no one can produce at all, and are nevertheless counted. The Wall Street Journal goes though the latest embarrassment to our democratic system.
In Washington State, the state Supreme Court ruled, essentially, that it is impossible to overturn a corrupt election. Specifically, it ruled that it could not overturn the results of an election unless the plaintiff could produce specific individuals who had voted illegally. The mere fact that the election was clearly fraudulent (since many Democratic precincts had more ballots than voters) was not enough.
Plus, it’s worth remembering that Minnesota makes no effort to prevent illegal voting. ACORN submitted countless fraudulent voter registrations, and we are to believe that none of those, not even a few hundred, turned into fraudulent votes?
UPDATE: Power Line says the comparison to Washington 2004 is unfair.
Certainly the media has been trumpeting doom and gloom for ages; well before it had any justification for doing so. The more interesting question is when they’ll stop. The economy can’t get good until President Obama’s policies have been in effect long enough to be given credit, so probably late-2010. They don’t want to wait too long after that, unless they want to try for an FDR 1936 scenario (“re-elect me, because the economy is still terrible”), which is probably too risky.
For some time now, the regime in Tehran has shown signs of urgency, sometimes verging on panic. Of late, the mullahs have organized raucus demonstrations in front of numerous embassies, including those of Egypt (with chants of “Death to Mubarak”), Jordan, Turkey, Great Britain, Germany and today (imagine!) France. These demonstrations were not mere gestures; the regime’s seriousness was underlined on Sunday, the 4th, when it offered a million-dollar reward to anyone who killed Mubarak (the Iranians called it a “revolutionary execution”). Significantly, the announcement came at a rally of the Basij, the most radical security force in the country, at which the Revolutionary Guards official Forooz Rejaii spoke. The Egyptians take it seriously; they have been on alert of late, looking for the possibility of a Mumbai-type operation in Cairo or elsewhere.
At the same time, the regime intensified its murderous assault against its own people, most notably hanging nine people on Christmas Eve, and assaulting the headquarters of Nobel Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi.
This intense tempo of activity bespeaks alarm in Tehran, which is fully justified by a number of setbacks. First of all, the dramatic drop in oil prices is devastating to the mullahs, who had planned to be able to fund terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East, Europe and the Americas. Suddenly their bottom line is tinged with red, and this carries over onto their domestic balance sheets, which were already demonstrably shaky (they were forced to cancel proposed new taxes when the merchant class staged nation-wide protests). No wonder they seize on any international event to call for petroleum export reductions. Just today they called for a drastic reduction of oil shipments to all countries that supported the Israeli military incursion into Gaza.
Second, their terror strategy has not been working as well as they wished and expected. Most American and European analysts have not appreciated the effect of the defeat of al Qaeda, Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards in Iraq, but you can be sure that the high and mighty in Arab capitals have taken full notice. . .
Third, despite all their efforts to crush any sign of internal rebellion, many Iranians continue to publicly oppose the mullahs. A few weeks ago, students at universities all over the country demonstrated in significant numbers, and as one Iranian now living in Europe put it to me, “they were surprised that the regime was unable to stop the protests, even though everyone knew they were planned.” This is the background for the new wave of repression, accompanied by an intensification of jamming on the Internet, and an ongoing reshuffle of the instruments of repression; Khamanei and Ahmadinejad have no confidence in the efficacy or blind loyalty of the army or of large segments of the Revolutionary Guards. Most public actions are carried out by the Basij, who are judged more reliable, and repression is less in the hands of the traditional ministries than in new groups freshly minted in the Supreme Leader’s office. . .
I have long argued that the Iranian regime is fundamentally hollow, that much of its apparent strength is bluster and deception rather than real power and resolve. At a minimum, it is a regime that must constantly fear for its own survival, not because of any willful resolve from its external enemies but because of the simmering hatred from its own people. This is a moment when those people are, as so often in the recent past, looking for at least a few supportive actions. If the West is now convinced that Iran is the proximate cause and chief sponsor of Hamas’ assault against Israel, it should demonstrate once and for all that we are prepared to fight back.
Ledeen has been arguing for those supportive actions for a long time. In his 2002 book, he argued that the Iranian regime could be overthrown without military action, principally by diplomatic efforts to strengthen its internal enemies. Unfortunately, President Bush failed to do anything about Iran, leaving the problem to President Obama.
Is there any reason to believe that Obama is up to the task? His promise to meet unconditionally with Ahmedinejad is cause for pessimism, but it’s clear Obama knows that pledge was a mistake. Typically, he was unable to admit his mistake, but he did backpedal in every possible way, so we can view the pledge as withdrawn.
Moreover, the idea of overthrowing Iran without military action would have to be attractive to Obama, who needs to show that he is serious about national security but nothing at all like President Bush. His National Security Advisor, Jim Jones, is well-regarded in the right circles and should give him good advice.
It looks like the probe into New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s business dealings must be going somewhere after all:
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has withdrawn his name from consideration as commerce secretary for President-elect Barack Obama, citing an ongoing investigation about business dealings in his state. . .
The decision is the first serious political hit for one of Obama’s Cabinet nominees and comes just as confirmation hearings begin next week.
Richardson said he would remain governor of New Mexico “for now.”
During the Democratic primary last year, I thought it was very strange that Richardson didn’t do better, since he was manifestly more qualified than everyone else who sought the nomination (and particularly the three the race settled down to). I figured there must have been a problem with Richardson that wasn’t known to the public. It looks like there was.
It hasn’t been much noticed, but the political ground is already shifting under Big Labor’s card-check initiative. The unions poured unprecedented money and manpower into getting Democrats elected; their payoff was supposed to be a bill that would allow them to intimidate more workers into joining unions. The conventional wisdom was that Barack Obama and an unfettered Democratic majority would write that check, lickety-split.
Instead, union leaders now say they are being told card check won’t happen soon. It seems the Obama team plans to devote its opening months to important issues, like the economy, and has no intention of jumping straight into the mother of all labor brawls. It also seems Majority Leader Harry Reid, even with his new numbers, might not have what it takes to overcome a filibuster. It’s a case study in how quickly a political landscape can change, and how frequently the conventional wisdom is wrong.
Paradoxically, it’s Mr. Reid’s bigger majority that is now hurting him. In 2007, he got every Democrat (save South Dakota’s Tim Johnson, who was out sick) to vote for cloture. But it was an easy vote. Democrats like Mr. Pryor knew the GOP held the filibuster, and that Mr. Bush stood ready with a veto. Now that Mr. Reid has 58 seats, red-state Democrats in particular are worried they might actually have to pass this turkey, infuriating voters and businesses back home.
Another reason to oppose the Burris Senate appointment (other than the whole Blagojevich corruption mess); ProPublica reports that he sought the death penalty for a man known to be innocent:
Public fury over the governor’s alleged misconduct has masked the once lively debate over Burris’ decision to continue to prosecute – despite the objections of one of his top prosecutors – the wrong man for a high-profile murder case.
While state attorney general in 1992, Burris aggressively sought the death penalty for Rolando Cruz, who twice was convicted of raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. The crime took place in 1983.
But by 1992, another man had confessed to the crime, and Burris’ own deputy attorney general was pleading with Burris to drop the case, then on appeal before the Illinois Supreme Court.
Burris refused. He was running for governor. . .
Once Burris assigned [Deputy Attorney General Mary Brigid] Kenney to the case in 1991, she became convinced that Cruz was innocent, a victim of what she believed wasprosecutorial misconduct. She sent Burris a memo reporting that the jury convicted Cruz without knowing that Brian Dugan, a repeat sex offender and murderer, had confessed to the crime. Burris never met with Kenney to discuss a new trial for Cruz, Kenney told ProPublica.
This sounds pretty bad, if true. In the end, the Illinois Supreme Court gave Cruz a new trial, at which he was acquitted.
Not only has the Treasury Department decided it can spend TARP money on whatever it wants, it has apparently also decided it can spend as much as it wants:
The Treasury Department has committed nearly $10 billion more than the $350 billion Congress has authorized to date for the financial-sector rescue package, which could constrain how the incoming Obama administration deploys the rest of the fund.
Treasury’s announcement Monday that it is directing $6 billion to auto-finance company GMAC LLC brought to $358.4 billion the total funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program that have been pledged to a variety of programs and guarantees. That suggests Treasury is tapping into the second half of the $700 billion set aside in October before it has been released by Congress.
Why let a little thing like legal authorization stand in the way of a good bailout?
A new paper shows that gun ownership correlates with various measures of freedom and prosperity. It strikes me as not too surprising that gun rights would correlate with other freedoms.
There are many oft-quoted indicators of Russia’s suffering economy — the nation’s international reserves have fallen by more than 25 percent since August; the major stock indices recently plummeted by 70 percent; and the ruble has been sliding — it’s now selling at exchange houses for about 30 to the dollar, compared with 23.5 five months ago.
Beyond those figures and the analysis of financial experts, however, on the streets of Moscow — a city that has known much tumult during the past century — there is for many Russians a deep sense of fear, a feeling of being underneath a gathering, dark wave of hard economic times.
Only last spring, downtown Moscow was a place where Russia’s nouveau riche walked out the door of boutiques with fists full of bags from Hermes, Cartier and Gucci. . .
That was before the war with Georgia in August, which kicked off an exodus of foreign capital; the global financial crunch, which dried up lines of credit used by heavily leveraged Russian businessmen; and, finally, the crash of oil prices that had underwritten much of the boom.
In its latest war with Hamas terrorists, the IDF has begun to offer videos of their operations, presumably in part to show the world the care they are taking, and in part to show what they are accomplishing. Either way, Hamas and its sympathizers don’t want you to see them.
First, they induced YouTube (owned by Google) to take down the videos. They are finally back up now, under a content warning. In the meantime, Power Line decided to host some of them on their site. About an hour later, Power Line was under a denial of service attack. Fortunately, Power Line’s service provider was up to the challenge, and they were back up shortly.
You can subscribe to the IDF channel here. Here is their latest:
Note the trail of a rocket cooked off by the blast.
Ilya Somin comments on an egregious use of eminent domain for private purposes:
If the Chronicle’s description is accurate, this is a typical case of the use of eminent domain for the benefit of private interest groups under a thin veneer of advancing the public interest. . . Texas law allows the condemnation of almost any property for nearly any plausible-seeming reason presented by government officials.
You may wonder how this could be. After all, Texas is one of 43 states that adopted a new eminent domain reform law in the wake of the massive public backlash after the Supreme Court’s hugely unpopular decision in Kelo v. City of New London. The answer is that Texas’ 2005 law is one of many that purports to constrain eminent domain without actually doing so. Although the new statute forbids takings that transfer property to private parties for “economic development,” it allows essentially identical condemnations that promote “community development.”
In a bizarre twist, corrupt Illinois Gov. Blagojevich has decided to appoint a Senator after all, and in an even more bizarre twist, his appointee actually wants it:
Gov. Rod Blagojevich is expected today to name former Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate.
The action comes despite warnings by Democratic Senate leaders that they would not seat anyone appointed by the disgraced governor who faces criminal charges of trying to sell the post, sources familiar with the decision said.
Shortly after Obama’s Nov. 4 victory, Burris made known his interest in an appointment to the Senate but was never seriously considered, according to Blagojevich insiders. But in the days following Blagojevich’s arrest, and despite questions over the taint of a Senate appointment, Burris stepped up his efforts to win the governor’s support. . .
Blagojevich’s criminal defense attorney Ed Genson had said Blagojevich would not name a Senate successor to Obama.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Andy Burnham says he believes that new standards of decency need to be applied to the web. He is planning to negotiate with Barack Obama’s incoming American administration to draw up new international rules for English language websites.
The Cabinet minister describes the internet as “quite a dangerous place” and says he wants internet-service providers (ISPs) to offer parents “child-safe” web services.
If he stopped there, it might be no big deal (although, to be clear, web filtering doesn’t work). Alas:
His plans to rein in the internet, and censor some websites, are likely to trigger a major row with online advocates who ferociously guard the freedom of the world wide web.
However, Mr Burnham said: “If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that Governments couldn’t reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now. It’s true across the board in terms of content, harmful content, and copyright. Libel is [also] an emerging issue.
“There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it.”
So we are explicitly talking about censoring content the Government doesn’t like. The talk of libel is particularly alarming, given that the UK has apallingly low standards for libel. Will they go as far as Australia and China? The plans aren’t clear.
At least it’s “not a campaign against free speech.” Good of him to tell us that; otherwise we might get confused.
There’s no indication here whether the Obama Administration is interested in participating. I doubt it. Obama is smart enough to pick his battles, and censoring talk radio appears to be a higher priority for him.
UPDATE: Mea culpa, I didn’t read carefully enough. The rejected truce was proposed by France, not Hamas. Still, it might have been worthwhile for the Post to mention that both sides rejected it, not just Israel.
If Israel is at war, it must be time for accusations of a “disproportionate response.” (For example.) Israel, you see, really ought to keep the intensity of the war at a proportionate level, that is, one that Hamas can match. Israel should not try to win.
But let’s be honest, Israel isn’t really supposed to launch a proportionate response either. They are just supposed to curl up and take it. Hamas is allowed to fire rockets into Israel; they’ve got it coming. (What makes Israel so special? I can’t quite remember.) If they get tired of it, they can leave. I’m sure the Israelis can find somewhere else in the world where people will be happy to have them. . .
On a less sarcastic note, I’m happy to say that many people seem to be catching on to the “disproportionate response” crap (in America anyway). For example, this editorial from the Chicago Tribune. And this statement from Barack Obama.
Also, here’s an interesting article about how Israel prepared for its current war with Hamas, which was inevitable from the day the “cease-fire” began. And, Michael Ledeen places the war in context. (Via Instapundit.)
UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru has an insightful comment on what a sensible doctrine of proportionality would be:
Critics of Israeli military action say that it is “excessive” or “disproportionate” to Hamas’s provocation. But that’s the wrong way to think about proportionality in war. The traditional just-war standard is that military action should be “proportionate” in that it causes fewer harms than it seeks to prevent. That’s a sane and sound moral standard. It does not mean that military means must inflict only as much pain as the enemy has inflicted.
The newfangled proportionality standard has several perverse implications, not the least of which being that military victories would almost always be considered morally illegitimate.
The United Auto Workers may be out of the hole now that President Bush has approved a $17 billion bailout of the U.S. auto industry, but the union isn’t out of the bunker just yet.
Even as the industry struggles with massive losses, the UAW brass continue to own and operate a $33 million lakeside retreat in Michigan, complete with a $6.4 million designer golf course. And it’s costing them millions each year. . .
Managing the course may become a burden for the union. The UAW covers costs for the Reuther Center from the interest it earns on its strike fund, according to tax documents, but massive losses in the past five years have forced the union to make heavy loans to keep the center afloat. Critics call it a poor investment for a group with over $1.25 billion in assets.
The Chicago Sun-Times has a very strange story about discussions between Rahm Emanuel (Obama’s designate for Chief of Staff) and Illinois Gov. Blagojevich. Apparently, Emanuel did not only discuss a replacement for Obama in the Senate, but also one for Emanuel in the house. Emanuel was looking for someone to keep his seat “warm” for a few years until he returned.
This is strange for at least three reasons: (1) It’s not a reasonable request to make, (2) it shows a lack of commitment to the incoming administration, but most importantly (3) the governor has no power to appoint members to the House, so it’s unclear what Blagojevich could have done for Emanuel anyway. (Is there any state where the governor can appoint House members?)
Progress is being made on a Spaceguard-style system to watch the skies for dangerous asteroids:
Until now, these efforts have been carried out with existing telescopes, and researchers think they have found about three-quarters of the 1,000 or so neighbouring asteroids that have a civilisation-wrecking diameter of 1km or more. But to locate the rest, and to look for smaller objects that could still wreak local devastation, they need more specialised tools.
This month they will start to get them. On December 6th the University of Hawaii will activate a telescope designed specifically to look for dangerous asteroids. It is called PS1, a contraction of Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System, and it is the first of four such instruments that will be used to catalogue as many as possible of the 100,000 or so near-Earth asteroids that measure between 140 metres and a kilometre across. . .
The other three telescopes should be completed by 2012, at a cost of about $100m for all four. They should take about ten years to catalogue 90% of the remaining dangerous asteroids thought to be out there.
I refer, of course, to Dan Rather and his faked documents about George Bush’s National Guard service. Dan Rather is trying to promote the idea that the documents were never proven to be false, and NPR is happy to be of service in his endeavor. (Via LGF.)
It’s complete nonsense. The documents were shown to be bogus in a variety of ways, most obviously by the typography, but also by formatting and content. Although it has been suggested that typewriters existed that could have produced documents somewhat like the Rather memos (this is disputed), and Killian (the purported author) might even have had access to such a machine, it beggars belief that Killian would have used such a machine to produce a typeset-quality memo to file that no one was ever supposed to see. (Never mind that Killian’s family asserts he never wrote such memos in the first place.)
But even if we suppose that Killian might have used such a machine capable of kerning and superscripts, it has never been plausibly suggested that he would have (or even could have) used it in a manner that precisely matched Microsoft Word’s default settings:
Neither let us suppose that suppose that Rather (the hero of NPR’s story) was an innocent dupe in the affair. For example, Rather endorsed CBS’s claim that the documents were obtained from an unimpeachable source (pdf, pages 164-166). In fact, as Rather well knew, the documents were obtained from a man named Bill Burkett, who is (to put it delicately) a nutcase.
Moreover, let’s not suppose that the whole affair resulted simply from overzealous pursuit of a big story; it was clearly an attempt to influence the election. CBS agreed to Burkett’s demand to coordinate the story with John Kerry’s campaign. (See also the Thornburgh report pages 64-65.)
POSTSCRIPT: The Rathergate affair transpired before I started this blog, so I want to thank Rather for reviving it and giving me a chance to play. NPR, on the other hand, should be ashamed of themselves.
In an interview with Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, CNN’s morning anchor John Roberts was deeply offended by the suggestion that he might support a candidate. Wurzelbacher laughed out loud at Roberts’s statement “Hey, I’m not out there stumping for anybody, I’m a journalist.”
Wurzelbacher backed off, saying that he didn’t know about Roberts specifically. He needn’t have. As Glenn Reynolds reminds us, John Roberts was the one who committed a classic Kinsley Gaffe by saying “we” when asking Paul Begala how Democrats should respond to Republican attacks.
To hear the city’s spin, Seattle’s road crews are making “great progress” in clearing the ice-caked streets.
But it turns out “plowed streets” in Seattle actually means “snow-packed,” as in there’s snow and ice left on major arterials by design.
“We’re trying to create a hard-packed surface,” said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation. “It doesn’t look like anything you’d find in Chicago or New York.” . . .
The icy streets are the result of Seattle’s refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.
“If we were using salt, you’d see patches of bare road because salt is very effective,” Wiggins said. “We decided not to utilize salt because it’s not a healthy addition to Puget Sound.”
By ruling out salt and some of the chemicals routinely used by snowbound cities, Seattle has embraced a less-effective strategy for clearing roads, namely sand sprinkled on top of snowpack along major arterials, and a chemical de-icer that is effective when temperatures are below 32 degrees.
Seattle also equips its plows with rubber-edged blades. That minimizes the damage to roads and manhole covers, but it doesn’t scrape off the ice, Wiggins said. . .
Between Thursday and Monday, the city spread about 6,000 tons of sand on 1,531 miles of streets it considers major arterials.
The tonnage, sprinkled atop the packed snow, amounts to 1.4 pounds of sand per linear foot of roadway, an amount one expert said might be too little to provide effective traction.
“Hmmm. Six thousand tons of sand for that length of road doesn’t seem like it’s enough,” said Diane Spector, a water-resources planner for Wenck Associates, which evaluated snow and ice clearance for nine cities in the Midwest.
Spector and snow-control experts in four cities said sand is typically mixed with salt and used for trouble spots.
“The occasional application of salt is probably not going to have a lasting effect” on the environment, Spector said. But she cautioned it’s highly dependent on where it’s used, how often and how much is applied.
Seattle’s stand against using salt is not shared by the state Department of Transportation, which has battled the latest storms in Western Washington with de-icer, 5,800 tons of salt and 11,500 cubic yards of salt and sand mix, said spokesman Travis Phelps.
Many cities are moving away from sand because it clogs the sewers, runs into waterways, creates air pollution and costs more to clean up.
Its main attraction is that it typically costs less than one-fifth the price of salt, according to Spector.
Fake environmentalism, which lowers quality of life while not actually helping the environment, is par for the course in Seattle today.
David Kopel points out a new article by David Hardy appearing in the Northwestern Law Review that discovers an error in a 2006 article by Saul Cornell advocating a collectivist interpretation of the Second Amendment. Cornell’s article cited an 18th century legal treatise in support of the idea that the Second Amendment is about state militias. However, Cornell’s article failed to notice that the passage it cited regarded the Article 1 grant of militia powers to Congress, not to the Second Amendment. (Not too surprisingly, the section on militas in Article 1 is about militias.)
This is interesting, because Justice Stevens uncritically cited Cornell’s erroneous article in his Heller dissent (in footnote 32) to buttress his argument for a collectivist interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Pretty shoddy work by Stevens’s staff. With the responsibility for authoritative interpretation of the US Constitution, you might hope that Supreme Court justices would verify their sources. (ASIDE: Lest I be accused of the same error, let me admit that I have not read Cornell’s article, as it does not appear to be available free on the Internet. But then, I’m not on the Supreme Court.)
The New York Times is planning to launch a new “Instant Op-Ed” next month that will allow the paper’s Web site to post immediate expert viewpoints on breaking news, according to Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal.
“Our Op-Ed now is very rapid response, but it is at the most the next day,” said Rosenthal. “We are looking at a way to take advantage of the expandability of the Internet, the back and forth of it and the instantaneous nature of the Internet. Taking ideas that have existed in Op-Ed form and giving them a robust position online.”
Rosenthal said three editors, among them former editorial writers, are teaming up with a Web producer to oversee the initiative. He said the team is gathering a list of numerous experts on a variety of issues to be ready to provide quick comments, essays and columns on issues or stories that come up in the news. He said the idea is to have a group that provides opinions soon after news occurs, with a solid Web space dedicated to them.
Yet another review of the origins of the financial crisis. (Via Instapundit.) Nothing especially new here, but a very succinct account, plus a panning of a terrible NYT article that discusses the origins of the financial crisis without even mentioning the Community Reinvestment Act.
A Greek epidemiologist makes the striking claim that articles in top journals are more likely to be wrong than ones in lesser ones:
IN ECONOMIC theory the winner’s curse refers to the idea that someone who places the winning bid in an auction may have paid too much. Consider, for example, bids to develop an oil field. Most of the offers are likely to cluster around the true value of the resource, so the highest bidder probably paid too much.
The same thing may be happening in scientific publishing, according to a new analysis. With so many scientific papers chasing so few pages in the most prestigious journals, the winners could be the ones most likely to oversell themselves—to trumpet dramatic or important results that later turn out to be false. This would produce a distorted picture of scientific knowledge, with less dramatic (but more accurate) results either relegated to obscure journals or left unpublished. . .
The assumption is that, as a result, such journals publish only the best scientific work. But Dr Ioannidis and his colleagues argue that the reputations of the journals are pumped up by an artificial scarcity of the kind that keeps diamonds expensive. And such a scarcity, they suggest, can make it more likely that the leading journals will publish dramatic, but what may ultimately turn out to be incorrect, research.
Dr Ioannidis based his earlier argument about incorrect research partly on a study of 49 papers in leading journals that had been cited by more than 1,000 other scientists. They were, in other words, well-regarded research. But he found that, within only a few years, almost a third of the papers had been refuted by other studies. For the idea of the winner’s curse to hold, papers published in less-well-known journals should be more reliable; but that has not yet been established.
I’m not familiar with Ioannidis’s research, so I can’t comment specifically, but there’s some room for skepticism. There are refutations and there are refutations. Did the refutations of these papers refute their specific findings, or the more general conclusions they drew from those findings? If it’s the latter, one could argue that there’s really no problem.
Still, it’s good to work in a field where you can prove your results with mathematical certainty (and, increasingly, with mechanical verification).
In a truly dangerous ruling, the Calfornia Supreme Court has ruled that California’s Good Samaritan law, intended to protect good-faith rescuers from liability, applies only to medical professionals. Any ordinary person who sees an accident in California (or a drowning child, an injured hiker, etc.) is now on notice not to get involved.
In the specific case, a woman who pulled another woman from a car was sued for injuries the latter woman incurred in the rescue. The rescuer alleged that the car was at risk of explosion, which the plaintiff contested, but the decision did not rely on any finding of fact in regard to that.
The “broken windows” theory suggests that leaving petty crimes unaddressed leads to a sense that law and order have broken down, which in turns leads to more serious crime as well. According to the theory, fighting petty crimes such as vandalism, littering, and panhandling helps to improve public safety. The broken windows theory has been applied with apparently spectacular results in places like New York City, but some still question its effectiveness, suggesting that other factors were responsible for those drops in crime.
Of course, very few social phenomena have only one cause, but new research supports the hypothesis that “broken windows” policing may have contributed significantly:
A PLACE that is covered in graffiti and festooned with rubbish makes people feel uneasy. And with good reason, according to a group of researchers in the Netherlands. Kees Keizer and his colleagues at the University of Groningen deliberately created such settings as a part of a series of experiments designed to discover if signs of vandalism, litter and low-level lawbreaking could change the way people behave. They found that they could, by a lot: doubling the number who are prepared to litter and steal.
The idea that observing disorder can have a psychological effect on people has been around for a while. In the late 1980s George Kelling, a former probation officer who now works at Rutgers University, initiated what became a vigorous campaign to remove graffiti from New York City’s subway system, which was followed by a reduction in petty crime. This idea also underpinned the “zero tolerance” which Rudy Giuliani subsequently brought to the city’s streets when he became mayor.
Many cities and communities around the world now try to get on top of anti-social behaviour as a way of deterring crime. But the idea remains a controversial one, not least because it is often difficult to account for other factors that could influence crime reduction, such as changes in poverty levels, housing conditions and sentencing policy—even, some people have argued, the removal of lead from petrol. An experimental test of the “broken windows theory”, as Dr Kelling and his colleague James Wilson later called the idea, is therefore long overdue. And that is what Dr Keizer and his colleagues have provided.
Last month, President-Elect Obama proposed to create or save 2.5 million jobs. Although the press dutifully reported it as though it were a meaningful target, the “or save” phrase makes it impossible to measure whether he has succeeded. Whatever happens, so long as total employment doesn’t drop below 2.5 million, Obama can argue that we would have been 2.5 million worse off without his policies. Currently, 145 million people are employed, so the essence of his “ambitious” benchmark is for employment to drop by less than 98.3%.
Ah, but that was then. Now, Obama has increased his meaningless figure to 3 million jobs created or saved. With the new “more ambitious” goal, he’s only covered if employment drops by less than 97.9%.
In a landmark achievement, doctors have used stem cells as part of a process to create an artificial bronchus (the organ connecting the trachea to a lung). This is one of the first cases of an actual treatment using stem cells; most applications are still years away. Incidentally, the treatment used adult stem cells, so no ethical concerns attach to the process.
Anticipating a significant worsening of the business climate and tax rates in America, oil drilling and related companies are relocating elsewhere. (Via Instapundit.)
The mere anticipation of future tax hikes and regulation is cutting tax revenues right now.
[Business columnist Michael Hiltzik] could no longer write credibly about duplicity in the business world. There’s no place, he said, for dishonesty under the Times banner.
The LA Times in 2008:
Michael Hiltzik, one of the paper’s most prolific writers and distinctive voices, will return to being a columnist for the Business section.
The events of the last few days in Minnesota have been alarming, to be sure, but Kathryn Jean Lopez reports that matters may not be as grim as they appear.
Well, now we know what an “orderly bankruptcy” means. It means a bailout. GM and Chrysler get $17 billion, with essentially no strings attached. Officially, the loan will be called back if they don’t make reforms, but those reforms are not binding. Does anyone think President Obama will call the loan because the UAW doesn’t make concessions? Besides, even if he were to call the loan, the money will be gone.
Also, the first half of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program is now spent, without spending a single penny on troubled assets.
One final thought, if the TARP gives the President the power to give billions of dollars to whomever the hell he feels like, mightn’t that be an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power? Or is it just a terribly written bill?
UPDATE: Jim Manzi says we were still right to support the bailout. He says the equity injection was necessary and effective. (The TED spread does seem to bear out the latter.) He has no love for the auto bailout, though, and says Congress should be very reluctant to release the second half of the $700 billion.
President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had a deeper involvement in pressing for a U.S. Senate seat appointment than previously reported, the Sun-Times has learned. Emanuel had direct discussions about the seat with Gov. Blagojevich, who is is accused of trying to auction it to the highest bidder.
Emanuel talked with the governor in the days following the Nov. 4 election and pressed early on for the appointment of Valerie Jarrett to the post, sources with knowledge of the conversations told the Sun-Times. There was no indication from sources that Emanuel brokered a deal, however.
A source with the Obama camp strongly denied Emanuel spoke with the governor directly about the seat, saying Emanuel only spoke with Blagojevich once recently to say he was taking the chief of staff post.
But sources with knowledge of the investigation said Blagojevich told his aides about the calls with Emanuel and sometimes gave them directions afterward. Sources said that early on, Emanuel pushed for the appointment of Jarrett to the governor and his staff and asked that it be done by a certain date.
At least some of the conversations between Emanuel and Blagojevich were likely caught on tape, sources said.
Although with a zillion caveats, a low-cost strategy for fusion power has tested well in the laboratory:
The experiment, funded by the U.S. Navy, was aimed at verifying some interesting results that the late physicist Robert Bussard coaxed out of a high-voltage inertial electrostatic contraption known as WB-6. (The “WB” stands for Wiffle Ball, which describes the shape of the device and its magnetic field.)
An EMC2 team headed by Los Alamos researcher Richard Nebel (who’s on leave from his federal lab job) picked up the baton from Bussard and tried to duplicate the results. The team has turned in its final report, and it’s been double-checked by a peer-review panel, Nebel told me today. Although he couldn’t go into the details, he said the verdict was positive. . .
By and large, the EMC2 results fit Bussard’s theoretical predictions, Nebel said. That could mean Polywell fusion would actually lead to a power-generating reaction. But based on the 10-month, shoestring-budget experiment, the team can’t rule out the possibility that a different phenomenon is causing the observed effects. . .
If Polywell pans out, nuclear fusion could be done more cheaply and more safely than it could ever be done in a tokamak or a laser blaster. The process might be able to produce power without throwing off loads of radioactive byproducts. It might even use helium-3 mined from the moon. “We don’t want to oversell this,” Nebel said, “but this is pretty interesting stuff, and if it works, it’s huge.”
The Bush administration is seriously considering “orderly” bankruptcy as a way of dealing with the desperately ailing U.S. auto industry.
“The president is not going to allow a disorderly collapse of the companies,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said Thursday. “A disorderly collapse would be something very chaotic that is a shock to the system.”
But, she added, “There’s an orderly way to do bankruptcies that provides for more of a soft landing. I think that’s what we would be talking about.”
It may not be clear what an “orderly bankruptcy” is, but it is already clear it won’t work:
She said one of the factors delaying an announcement on an auto rescue plan is the continuing discussion between the administration and the various stakeholders who would have to sign on to a managed bankruptcy — entities such as labor unions and equity holders in addition to the companies themselves.
The automakers can’t be saved without major union concessions, and the unions have already made it clear they won’t make them. If the unions have to sign on, this plan is dead even before arrival.
California’s Democratic leaders were planning a vote today on a brazen proposal to raise gas, sales and income taxes through a series of legal maneuvers that would bypass the Legislature’s minority Republicans.
The Democratic gambit, announced Wednesday, would raise $9.3 billion to ease the state’s fiscal crisis by increasing sales taxes by three-fourths of a cent and gas taxes by 13 cents a gallon, starting in February. The plan would add a surcharge of 2.5% to everyone’s 2009 state income tax bill. . .
Inside the Capitol, the strategy is considered revolutionary, because it would sideline the GOP. Though Republicans are a minority in both houses of the Legislature, they have repeatedly blocked tax increases and thwarted budgets they did not like, because California is one of only three states mandating a two-thirds vote for both budgets and tax increases. Achieving that threshold requires some Republican votes. . .
The plan hinges on a legal distinction made by judges that a tax is imposed broadly and used for general government purposes, while a fee is charged to users of a specific benefit provided by government, such as a road.
The proposal would employ an arcane loophole in state law that lets legislators pass a tax bill with a simple majority vote — if the bill does not raise more revenue.
The Democrats intend to do two things: eliminate some existing fees, including those on gasoline, and substitute tax increases that would include a 9.9% levy on oil extraction and the income tax surcharge.
Under the proposal, the Democrats would then reimpose the gas fees at higher levels; fees can be raised with simple majority votes. . .
Similar proposals have been considered in past budget crises but never acted on out of concern that they would unravel in court.
Helen Jones-Kelley, who illegally used a state database to spy on “Joe the Plumber” is resigning:
An Ohio agency director resigned Wednesday in the wake of a finding that she improperly used state computers to access personal information on the man who became known as “Joe the Plumber” during the presidential campaign.
Two other officials who were suspended from their positions for their role in the computer search will not be returning to their jobs, an agency spokeswoman said.
But, Jones-Kelley wants us to know that she is the real victim here:
Department of Job and Family Services Director Helen Jones-Kelley said in a statement accompanying her resignation that she won’t allow her reputation to be disparaged and that she is concerned for her family’s safety.
Sheesh.
For more disparagement of Jones-Kelley’s reputation, see the Ohio Inspector General’s report.
This isn’t the end of the story. There’s also Doug Thompson, who helped orchestrate the attempted cover-up at the Department of Job and Family Services, plus five other Ohio agencies that illegally investigated Wurzelbacher. Then there’s the question of why Ohio Governor Ted Strickland decided to stand by all these criminals.
Amid all the gloomy economic news, the New York Times brings us an encouraging report on social trends:
The number of black children being raised by two parents appears to be edging higher than at any time in a generation, at nearly 40 percent, according to newly released census data. . . .
According to the bureau’s estimates, the number of black children living with two parents was 59 percent in 1970, falling to 42 percent in 1980, 38 percent in 1990 and 35 percent in 2004. In 2007, the latest year for which data is available, it was 40 percent.
What accounts for the turnaround? The Times explains:
Demographers said such a trend might be partly attributable to the growing proportion of immigrants in the nation’s black population. It may have been driven, too, by the values of an emerging black middle class, a trend that could be jeopardized by the current economic meltdown.
The Census Bureau attributed an indeterminate amount of the increase to revised definitions adopted in 2007, which identify as parents any man and woman living together, whether or not they are married or the child’s biological parents.
The problem of illegitimacy and broken families had seemed intractable for decades, but the Census Bureau has been able to make a significant dent in it, at virtually no cost to the taxpayer, merely by redefining the word parents.
This is far from unprecedented, of course, but it’s a tragedy when we maim a word for political purposes. This was one of George Orwell’s major themes in 1984. On a less highbrow (but more entertaining) note, I’m also reminded of the Babylon 5 episode Voices of Authority, in which the Ministry of Peace’s political officer admits that Earth’s government has solved all its problems by rewriting the dictionary.
SEVEN months short of a presidential election, an immaculately robed Shia cleric living in comfortable semi-retirement is making Iranians hold their political breath. When Muhammad Khatami stepped down as Iran’s president three years ago, his plans to reform Iran in tatters, he gave every impression that he had left politics for good. Now, his friends attest, he is pondering a comeback. . .
Mr Khatami’s change of heart stems from his anger at what followed [his departure]. Elected on a platform of social justice, Mr Ahmadinejad has squandered Iran’s huge oil revenues on inflationary handouts, cares little for human rights and embarrassed many of his compatriots with his undiplomatic pronouncements, among them his suggestion that Israel should not exist. Many Iranians now remember Mr Khatami’s tenure, when the authorities relaxed their grip, just a little, on the ordinary Iranian and the president won plaudits for his charm and moderation, as a golden age.
During today’s press conference, President-elect [Barack] Obama brushed off a question from Chicago Tribune reporter John McCormick about the Blagojevich scandal, and what interaction any advisers had with the Illinois governor.
“I don’t want you to waste your question,” Obama said. . .
After a few attempts, the reporter finally followed up by asking who had the better jump shot: Obama or incoming education secretary Arne Duncan?
The jump shot question reads like a very clever protest, but the video cuts off before that part, so I don’t know if it was actually a protest or merely a softball. Kudos to McCormick if it was real.
Politico continues:
The interaction with McCormick stood out from previous meetings with the press. And speaking about the exchange on MSNBC shortly after, NBC Washington bureau chief Mark Whitaker said that reporters have not been aggressive enough during Obama’s post-election pressers.
Rich Lowry writes that Paulson’s conduct of the financial bailout borders on bad faith. Like Lowry, I reluctantly favored TARP at the time. Now we have egg on our faces, now that Paulson and Bush have apparently decided that their original plan is neither sufficient nor even worth doing. I definitely owe Tim Murphy an apology.
Scientists report an advance for the iPS technique:
Whitehead Institute researchers have greatly simplified the creation of so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, cutting the number of viruses used in the reprogramming process from four to one. Scientists hope that these embryonic stem-cell-like cells could eventually be used to treat such ailments as Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.
The earliest reprogramming efforts relied on four separate viruses to transfer genes into the cells’ DNA. . . However, this method poses significant risks for potential use in humans. The viruses used in reprogramming are associated with cancer because they may insert DNA anywhere in a cell’s genome, thereby potentially triggering the expression of cancer-causing genes, or oncogenes. For iPS cells to be employed to treat human diseases, researchers must find safe alternatives to reprogramming with such viruses. This latest technique represents a significant advance in the quest to eliminate the potentially harmful viruses.
The iPS technique is preferred because it does not involve killing embryos, and is also cheaper and easier. Researchers have long suspected they would be able to get the viruses out of the picture, so this development isn’t surprising.
There is one thing I don’t understand. Three months ago, Science published a paper showing how to create iPS cells with zero viruses. So how is one virus progress? It must be a technical detail that’s not coming out in the press release.
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal story on Google’s supposed softening on network neutrality has caused a furor. Lawrence Lessig, in particular, seems to have a fair complaint, that the WSJ portrayed his consistent position as some sort of a shift. Google’s protest, on the other hand, is much less convincing. Google has been deliberately muddying the waters on this issue, and is now reaping the consequences.
I explained what network neutrality is about in this post last April. The actual technical question is, what policy should routers (particularly ISPs) use when choosing which packets to drop? An absolutely neutral policy would prevent routers from preferring more important packets, even among packets from the same stream for the same user. Just about no one who actually understands the issue thinks this would be a good thing. Given that some discrimination is desired, the question is, what grounds for discrimination should be allowed? (And let’s please limit ourselves to ones that are technically feasible.)
Instead, companies like Google have been framing the issue differently. They say that the issue is about whether ISPs can discriminate against content providers by delivering their packets slowly or not at all. I know of no case in which this has actually happened. If it did, its customers would be outraged, because they are paying for Internet service they are not getting.
ASIDE: The Comcast-BitTorrent incident is no exception. BitTorrent is not a content provider, it’s a peer-to-peer protocol, and what Comcast was doing (slowing BitTorrent traffic) was to improve its customers’ experience, not shake anyone down. As it happens, its customers still weren’t happy, and it discontinued the practice. A better idea would have been for Comcast to throttle its bandwidth hogs directly. Why they didn’t do that is anyone’s guess.
Google has invited this problem by promoting the idea that ISPs should treat every content provider identically (never mind that this isn’t what network neutrality is about), and now asking for special treatment for Google. Make no mistake, what Google wants to do now (better caching) is reasonable. But it is at odds with their rhetoric of the past. Their current protestations amount to “we never really meant it.” Its all to the good that they didn’t mean it, but they shouldn’t have said it either.
POSTSCRIPT: By the way, ISPs are private business relationships between telcos and their customers. If I and my ISP agree that it would be best to prioritize some of my packets over others, no one has any business stopping us. If my ISP starts doing so against my wishes, I can find another ISP. The only problem arises when (like Comcast with BitTorrent) they do it and don’t tell me.
Peter Kirsanow asks a question I’ve often wondered. If card check is supposedly such a good idea for gauging union sentiment (as opposed to secret ballots), why not use card check to decertify unions as well? It’s hard to see any respectable argument for one and not the other. One might almost get the idea that Democrats want pro-union agitators to have the opportunity to intimidate workers but not anti-union ones.
Does Google intend to begin asserting editorial control over search results? According to the Register, they do. No direct quotes, though, so take with a grain of salt
Iran is no longer actively supplying Iraqi militias with a particularly lethal kind of roadside bomb, a decision that suggests a strategic shift by the Iranian leadership, U.S. and Iraqi authorities said Thursday.
Use of the armor-piercing explosives — known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs — has dwindled sharply in recent months, said Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, head of the Pentagon office created to counter roadside bombs in Iran and Afghanistan.
Metz estimated that U.S. forces find between 12 and 20 of the devices in Iraq each month, down from 60 to 80 earlier this year. . .
Asked if the elite Iranian Republican Guard Corps has made a deliberate choice to limit use of EFPs, Metz nodded: “I think you could draw that inference from the data.” . . .
The U.S. cites the spread of powerful EFP roadside bombs as the clearest Iranian fingerprint. U.S. military officers say they know the EFPs come from Iran because they bear Iranian markings and because captured militants have told them so. The workmanship is so precise they could only come from a modern factory with machine tools available in Iran but not Iraq.
EFPs account for only about 5 percent of the roadside bombs found in Iraq but 30 percent of the casualties, Metz said.
Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to be White House chief of staff, had conversations with Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration about who would replace Obama in the U.S. Senate, the Tribune has learned.
The revelation does not suggest Obama’s new gatekeeper was involved in any talk of dealmaking involving the seat. But it does help fill in the gaps surrounding a question that Obama was unable or unwilling to answer this week: Did anyone on his staff have contact with Blagojevich about his choice for the Senate seat? . . .
One source confirmed that communications between Emanuel and the Blagojevich administration were captured on court-approved wiretaps.
Since Emanuel’s communications with Blagojevich are on the wiretaps, we also should eventually know whether Jim Lindgren’s theory is true (that a bribe was solicited from Obama’s people). If so, I imagine we’ll soon after find out whether it was reported.
The big question in all of this remains, why hasn’t Obama just said what he knows?
Last June Ireland rejected European transnationalism, as Europeans do whenever they’re offered the chance. The EU almost managed to avoid any public vote on the Lisbon treaty, but that pesky Irish constitution stood in the way. Now, the Eurocrats are doing whenever the voters reject their plans — trying again.
In July, Irish public sentiment was overwhelmingly against a re-do but I guess things must have softened. Remember, the only thing that’s fine is a yes vote. Everything you need to know about the Lisbon treaty is summarized here.
Now that the auto bailout seems to have failed (I say “seems” because these bailouts are more resilient than a Hollywood horror villain), what’s next? Hopefully, bankruptcy. Chapter 11 is specifically designed for the situation that we hope this is: a workable business that buried under commitments it cannot meet. A bailout is not going to help them, because their problem is not liquidity. Their problem is that they cannot build a good car at a competitive price.
The average labor cost (wages, benefits, and taxes) at the big three automakers is over $70 an hour, and that’s before you figure in restrictive union work rules. (The UAW and its allies have run an aggressive effort to discredit this figure, saying that it figures in retirement costs for retired workers and other non-current expenses. The Heritage Foundation has an article showing that’s not the case.) With their labor costs, Detroit must either charge higher prices (which they cannot do) or trim costs in the cars themselves, resulting in a crappy product. The only way Detroit can turn itself around is to bring its exorbitant labor costs under control.
Republican lawmakers made this a requirement for their support of a bailout, but the UAW balked, thereby killing the deal. I’m a little puzzled by what the UAW is thinking. Do they think that they will do better under bankruptcy? It seems like they’re determined to go down with the ship, like the steelworkers before them.
Perhaps Detroit needs a car czar, but let him be appointed by a bankruptcy judge.
Jim Lindgren looks at the chronology of the Blagojevich scandal. He argues that it only makes sense if Obama’s team refused a bribe solicitation from Blagojevich. Coupled with Obama’s refusal to deny any contact between his staff and Blagojevich, it seems pretty clear what must have happened.
Lindgren speculates further that Obama’s people might have cooperated with the investigation. If so, that could justify his refusal to answer whether they had any contact with Blagojevich, and Obama will come out of this looking pretty good. On the other hand, it will look very bad if they failed to report it, and some more people will get tossed under the bus.
UPDATE: Lindgren’s hypothesis looks even better now, in light of Obama’s latest carefully phrased denial: “Our office had no involvement in any deal-making for my Senate seat. That I am absolutely certain of.” Note that he does not deny any contact, just deal-making.
I do wish he would come right out and say what he knows.
KHQA, a CBS affiliate serving western Illinois has retracted a month-old story about an Obama-Blagojevich meeting:
KHQA TV wishes to offer clarification regarding a story that appeared last month on our website ConnectTristates.com. The story, which discussed the appointment of a replacement for President Elect Obama in the U.S. Senate, became the subject of much discussion on talk radio and on blog sites Wednesday.
The story housed in our website archive was on the morning of November 5, 2008. It suggested that a meeting was scheduled later that day between President Elect Obama and Illinois Governor Blagojevich. KHQA has no knowledge that any meeting ever took place. Governor Blagojevich did appear at a news conference in Chicago on that date.
Now I assume that KHQA is telling the truth (now), because otherwise they are throwing away a great scoop. Also I think Obama is too smart to deny a meeting known to the press. But, why then did they report it in the first place? It would seem that someone was making stuff up.
ASIDE: KHQA calls this a “clarification”. I guess there’s no such thing as a retraction any more, because if there were, this would surely be one. Also, their article didn’t “suggest” that a meeting was scheduled; it openly asserted it.
Majority Democrats and the Bush White House finalized a deal to spend $14 billion on emergency loans for struggling U.S. automakers, congressional officials said — despite fierce opposition from some Republicans.
On Wednesday, the White House revealed elements of the $14 billion “bridge financing,” which would give until March 31 for the Big Three automakers to have a plan to make the firms “viable” or “the government gets its money back.”
The government gets its money back? How is that going to work?! The automakers are going to spend the money! If they were going to have $14 billion lying around on March 31, they wouldn’t need a bailout.
But let’s suppose it actually were possible for them to return the money. What is the likelihood that Congress will actually make them to so? They won’t have a workable plan, that’s for certain. (They’ve failed for decades to fix their companies; they won’t do it in three months just because Congress says they really really need to.) But why should we believe that Congress will be more willing to bury them in three months than they are now?
Senator Chuck Grassley said proposed legislation to help American automakers would put tax dollars on the line to assist participants in controversial tax shelters which have been shut down by both the IRS and Congress.
Grassley said the tax shelter bailout within the auto bailout is related to abusive leasing transactions called SILOs, where transit agencies have sold public transportation assets like rail lines, only to lease them back from purchasers, with the result of providing tax depreciation deductions to the purchasers. Such transactions were motivated solely by collection of fees on one side and tax benefits on the other, rather than any change to the services provided by transit agencies.
Questions are being raised about Obama’s connections with Blagojevich. David Axelrod (Obama’s campaign manager) in particular has been forced to retract a statement he made two weeks ago that directly contradicts Obama’s statement today that he never spoke with Blagojevich about his replacement in the Senate.
Signs remain, however, that the continuing investigation could still involve [Obama].
It appears that Obama friend Valerie Jarrett, an incoming senior White House adviser, is the person referred to repeatedly in court documents as “Candidate 1.” That individual is described as a female who is “an adviser to the president-elect” and as the person Obama wanted appointed to the Senate seat. Court papers say that “Candidate 1” eventually removed “herself” from consideration for the Senate seat.
In a Nov. 11 phone conversation with an aide, Blagojevich talked at length about “Candidate 1” and said he knew that Obama wanted her for the open seat but “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. (Expletive) them.”
One day later, Jarrett, a Chicago businesswoman who is one of three co-chairmen of Obama’s transition team and was a high-level adviser to his presidential campaign, made it known that she was not interested in the seat.
In light of that, take a second look at Obama’s exact words:
I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening.
and at Axelrod’s retraction:
I was mistaken when I told an interviewer last month that the President-elect has spoken directly to Governor Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy. They did not then or at any time discuss the subject.
Neither statement denies that a member of Obama’s staff might have communicated his wishes to Blagojevich. Combined with the wiretap evidence, that seems likely to be what happened. It also makes Axelrod’s error smaller and more understandable.
UPDATE: Katie Granju thinks they’re just plain lying. That’s another possibility. (Via Instapundit.)
ANOTHER UPDATE: My theory looks even more likely, in light of Obama’s refusal to say whether any subordinates had been in contact with Blagojevich. Obama said it would be inappropriate to say, given that it’s an ongoing investigation, which makes no sense unless his team might be tainted by the investigation.
By the way, there would be nothing wrong with Obama’s team having spoken with the Governor of Illinois about the appointment. Indeed, it would be expected. So, if indeed they did, why are they hiding it?
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has unveiled his plan to close a $1.6 billion budget gap. Key to the plan is a $450 million bailout from the Federal government. ($900 million over two years.)
It’s becoming clear now. Municipalities go to the state for bailouts. The states go to the Federal government for bailouts. The Federal government borrows money. What could go wrong?
Snark aside, this direction leads to the death of the federal system. We’re headed toward a system where the federal government does all the taxing and distributes the money to the states. Once the “federal” government holds all the purse strings, it will be completely in charge, just as it already is in so many areas wherein the states already depend on the federal government for funding.
Illinois Governor Blagojevich has been arrested for trying to sell Illinois’s senate seat:
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald on Tuesday accused Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich of participating in a “political corruption crime spree” that was a blatant effort to sell the state’s U.S. Senate seat in the latest “pay-to-play” scheme in Illinois politics.
Fitzgerald described the alleged behavior by Blagojevich, who was arrested Tuesday morning along with his chief of staff, John Harris, as “appalling.” He said his “cynical behavior” reached “a truly new low.”
“He has been arrested in the middle of what we can only describe as a political corruption crime spree,” Fitzgerald said in a news conference to announce the charges against the governor and his chief of staff. “This is a sad day for government. It’s a very sad day for Illinois government. Governor Blagojevich has taken us to a truly new low.” . . .
The series of allegations say that Blagojevich and Harris tried to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder. Fitzgerald quoted Blagojevich recorded during court-authorized wiretaps as saying, “It’s a ‘bleeping’ valuable thing. You just don’t give it away for nothing.”
Staggering. Five of the eight elected Illinois governors since Adlai Stevenson have been indicted.
I’m sure Pittsburgh could be more mismanaged, but it’s hard to see how. The Post-Gazette reports:
The market woes that are shrinking retirement plans have started pounding municipal pension funds, especially the city of Pittsburgh’s draining pool of investments.
At the end of November, the city’s fund held $261 million, down from $385 million at the beginning of the year, with half of that loss occurring in the last two months. That leaves the fund with just 29 percent of what it should ideally hold to cover its long-term commitments, according to state standards.
“It’s not good. But we’re trying to control what we can, and then ultimately will need help from our friends in Harrisburg,” said Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, after a pension fund board meeting yesterday.
A competent city government would save more when times are good, so it can ride out the bad times. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, became insolvent when times were good, and is looking for a state bailout now that times are bad.
Election officials began counting ballots late Sunday in one of Africa’s rare democracies, where voters are painfully aware of the example they are setting on a continent better known for coups, rigged elections and one-man rule. . .
A lot is riding on Ghana’s election, not just for the nation of 23 million but also for Africa as a whole. Like its neighbors, Ghana has a history of coups and one-party rule, but since the 1990s when coup leader Jerry Rawlings agreed to hold elections, it has been on a fast track to democracy. It has held four elections since 1992, first bringing Rawlings to power, then current President John Kufuor, who is stepping down after two terms in office.
When he does, it will mark the country’s second successive transfer of power from one democratically elected leader to another, a litmus test of a mature democracy that only a handful of African nations have passed.
Indicted U.S. Rep. William Jefferson suffered what may be the final blow of his storied political career in the most improbable way Saturday, when an untested Republican opponent took advantage of Louisiana’s new federal voting rules — and an election delay caused by Hurricane Gustav — to unseat the nine-term Democrat.
With the upset victory, Anh “Joseph” Cao, a eastern New Orleans attorney who fled war-ravaged Saigon as a child, becomes the first Vietnamese-American in Congress. He will represent a district that was specifically drawn to give African-Americans an electoral advantage and one in which two of every three voters are registered Democrats. . .
Though Jefferson will pack up his Capitol Hill office, he will remain in the news: Originally scheduled to begin last week, his trial is likely to start in early 2009.
Also in the cross-hairs of federal prosecutors are Jefferson siblings Betty Jefferson, the Orleans Parish 4th District Assessor, and political consultant Mose Jefferson, who were indicted last year on charges that they conspired to loot more than $600,000 in taxpayer money from three charities.
In a separate case, Mose Jefferson was indicted on charges that he bribed the former president of the Orleans Parish School Board.
City officials have ordered 22 New York churches to stop providing beds to homeless people.
With temperatures well below freezing early Saturday, the churches must obey a city rule requiring faith-based shelters to be open at least five days a week — or not at all.
There’s bureaucracy for you: rules ahead of common sense.
Posted by K. Crary 
Internet Scofflaw 
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