Miscellany: 4/30/13

Quote of the Day
Fortune does not change men,
it unmasks them.
Suzanne Necker

CAGW Porker of the Month

FHA Commissioner Galante

I saw a movie on cable over the weekend where the protagonist has very bad short-term memory and repeatedly falls in love with the same woman whom he doesn't quite remember after prior encounters. You would think after politicizing the mortgage credit process by threatening to sue banks whom did not lend to politically favored but credit-risky applicants with little or no skin in the game (e.g., a traditional 20% down payment) which exacerbated the housing bubble, with the GSE's guaranteeing a significant proportion of these loans, socializing the costs of mortgage write-offs to taxpayers, Democrats would be properly chastened. But instead:

Commissioner Galante’s FHA has, according to the Post, been “urging the Justice Department to provide assurance to banks … that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default,” while encouraging the same banks to utilize home loan programs that insure banks against losses. In the event of default, taxpayers would be on the hook.

Remember this news item  from last November?

An independent audit set for release Friday estimates that the mortgage insurer, which has more than $1 trillion worth of loans in its portfolio, has burned through its capital reserves because of bad mortgages. The $16.3 billion shortfall is more than expected.

“While the loans made during this administration remain the strongest in the agency’s history, we take the findings of the independent actuary very seriously," said Carol Galante, the FHA's acting commissioner.

Yeah, right, Ms. Galanta.

And, on a related but different story, before you get swept up in the hopes of a new housing bubble on Fed-manipulated interest rates, you might consider what Doug French of LFB terms "zombie homes":

According to RealtyTrac, there are 300,000 vacant homes currently in the foreclosure pipeline. Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac, tells American Banker, “We call them zombie foreclosures.” That seems appropriate. The biggest mortgage owners and servicers are zombies — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase.

The problem, of course, is that the municipalities and homeowners associations will be filing judgments against homeowners who thought they had lost their houses and are trying to move on with their lives. As Ms. Berry writes, “If a servicer has not taken title to the property, cities instead end up tracking down the former homeowner to pay for liens, upkeep, and taxes. These former homeowners could also be on the hook for overdue homeowner association fees, past-due insurance, and the mortgage debt.”

This way, some banks can manage the amount of “other real estate owned,” or OREO, on their balance sheets by not taking title. Also, if banks hustle to get these homes on the market, they will nip the housing recovery in the bud.

“I have long been convinced that the current run-up in home prices is a false high,” senior staff attorney at the Empire Justice Center Ruhi Maker, a New York nonprofit, tells American Banker. “Once all these foreclosures are through the system, we could see another decline in prices.”

Got that? By not completing the foreclosures, the banks don't have to drain their cash flows by paying back taxes, maintaining property, etc., the obligations of which still fall on the back of the original homeowner, whom by walking away thought that he was in the clear. They could still pass along obligations to the new owner by foreclosing and selling but they would then have to take the loss plus there is so much inventory, dumping the inventory too quickly could counter-productively push down home prices, exacerbating their balance sheet woes. I see the banks trying to muddle through, playing for time to deleverage, and deferring the day of reckoning.

Reason's Nanny of the Month

Surprised that a NYC suburb would ban casual dining establishments? Yet another elitist restriction on consumer choice....



Anti-Competitive Dentistry

The next thing you know, instructional demonstrations at hardware stores will be targeted by tradesmen...



Property Rights Erosion: A Seawall Against the Government Tsunami?



It's the Spending, Stupid!

From Ron Hart last November:

• In the Democratic vernacular, taxes have changed to "revenues." Long ago they replaced the word "spending" with "investments," especially when wasting money on Solyndra and the like. They think we are stupid.
• When Bill Clinton so famously "balanced the budget" with the Internet boom and all the taxes from those stock sales, the GOP and Newt Gingrich passed a budget (yes, Congress used to do that) of $1.7 trillion in expenditures. Adjusted for inflation, our federal government would be spending $2.3 trillion today and collecting $2.5 trillion in "revenues," resulting in a $200 billion surplus. 
• Democrats, who believe we have a "revenue" problem instead of a "spending" problem, must also think they have a bartender problem, not a drinking problem.

Depending on the issue progressive ideologues do seem to understand the national debt but apply the issues in a very arbitrary fashion: for example, published estimates of nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan made the dubious assumption that spending is at the margin, and the high-end estimates include debt service. In reality, Defense (and I myself have disagreed with nation building) spending accounts for less than 25% of total spending and is not a driver of future spending; in fact, Obama has repeatedly wanted to use declining expenditures in nation building as "spending cuts": by this smoke-and-mirrors accounting, the winding down of any federal project (say, completing the Hoover dam) is a "spending cut" to be offset by empire building the federal bureaucracy.

Many conservatives thought that if you starved the beast, progressives would have to scale back their statist ambitions. In fact, with the Federal Reserve buying the equivalent of a large portion of new Federal debt and manipulating interest rates, which lowers the budgetary implications of higher cumulative debt, this is not working; the Democrats have sought to scapegoat Bush for their spending frenzy since taking over control of one or both chambers of Congress from 2007, a period over which federal spending has expanded by over a trillion dollars a year. And those massive deficits don't include adequate funding for entitlements; by accounting standards, we are understating our deficits.

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Lisa Benson and Townhall

Musical Interlude; My Favorite Groups

Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, "Spirit in the Night"

Miscellany: 4/29/13

Quote of the Day
20% of what you do accounts for 80% of the value.
Vilfredo Pareto

Smoke and Mirrors: Stupid Government Tricks

When I used to watch David Letterman, he had a recurring bit called 'stupid pet tricks'. (He probably still does.) He also has had 'stupid human tricks'; I don't know if he's included government economists and statisticians in that group. A simple Google search shows that I'm not the only person whom has thought of substituting 'government' into the boilerplate.

If you thought federal statisticians aren't simply satisfied with manipulating employment and inflation statistics, there's good reason: they still have enough lipstick left to put on a pig. Take, for instance, GDP....

According to MSN:

Starting in July, the U.S. gross domestic product will officially jump by 3%. The change isn't due to some miraculous economic event but rather from a shift in the way the government looks at statistics in the digital age."We’re capitalizing research and development," [an associate director at the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis] Moulton told the Financial Times, "and also this category referred to as entertainment, literary and artistic originals, which would be things like motion picture originals, long-lasting television programs, books and sound recordings." The revisions will make the U.S. one of the first countries to adopt a new international standard for tallying up GDP figures. 

Gary North's sarcastic response is priceless:

This is the cost-of-production theory of value resurrected from the conceptual grave!

I guess this means that sinking dry holes are productive.

Well, why not? The government counts government expenditures as productive. Dry holes are surely as productive as the federal government. Probably they are a lot more productive. Think Iraq. Think Afghanistan.

This rewriting of economic history will be funded by the government.

Don’t call this a conceptual dry hole. Call it government productivity.

IPPON!

Ron Paul, "Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston", Thumbs UP!

Sometimes I think I live in Wonderland (where's Alice?) I go to a purported libertarian Republican blog and find almost as many articles covering Islamist radicalism as some neo-con blogs; I go to an alleged Tea Party news portal, but I find populist news items critical of immigration and abortion, the Obama Administration (e.g., Benghazi), etc. Granted, I can argue a pro-liberty critique on these topics, generally limited government. pro-market people are interested in scaling back government on both the domestic and international policy.  I didn't find a single news item on either portal referencing the heavy-handed police state tactics in the Boston terror manhunt. For that matter, except for certain personalities like radio host Alex Jones and liberal comedian Bill Maher, the response has been muted at best; Reason has done a couple of pieces (e.g., here: apparently, most sampled Boston respondents were willing to throw the liberty of other people under the bus), I really haven't heard major national figures raising the topic, while I have in a couple of segments over the past week. I was curious: I thought I was like the boy observing the emperor is wearing no clothes.

We have facts like this one, which should disturb anyone evolved beyond lynch-mob mentality:

The FBI’s not saying what led police to fire on the boat where Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding, as they reveal he was unarmed while hiding in the boat during a stand-off that lasted an hour and a half. The hunt for a suspected bomber may have been something new for the media, but the indiscriminate shootings shouldn’t be. In Ohio late last year, cops fired 137 shots in about 20 seconds into a car after a chase that started because one cop thought he heard a gunshot. No guns were recovered and the driver and passenger were both killed. And in February, during another manhunt, for ex-cop Christopher Dorner, the LAPD fired more than a hundred times into a truck that was a different make and model than Dorner’s. The two women in the car, a mother and daughter aged 71 and 47, weren’t seriously injured. 

And where are my fellow fiscal hawks about a third of a billion dollars spent by G-men over the manhunt? Keep in mind--it wasn't the G-men whom found the suspect; he was discovered by a resident finally allowed to go out into his own backyard and noticed his boat cover had been tampered with.

Ron Paul does not fail us; he's written another brilliant essay: A sample:

Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.

Three people were killed in Boston and that is tragic. But what of the fact that over 40 persons are killed in the United States each day, and sometimes ten persons can be killed in one city on any given weekend? These cities are not locked-down by paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.

Defending Dr. Biden: Cooke, "Diagnosing Dr. Biden: The second lady exemplifies a bloated class of people with irrelevant, unimpressive titles", Thumbs DOWN!

The Vice-President's wife has an EdD; now frankly I have enough disgust with the general state of public education today and dubious Master's degrees that are little more than a ticket to a substantial teacher pay raise without a scintilla of evidence of relevant improved educational performance or productivity. I'm not exactly sure what value there is in an education doctorate given the status quo of our international mediocrity. But I am not going to pass judgment on Dr. Biden's record of research and teaching without reviewing it.

This is not the first time I've looked at this issue; I have a vested interest on this topic because, unlike Barbara Boxer, I earned my title: there's a lot of sacrifice--for 3 years after my MBA, I worked half-time teaching for a stipend that barely covered expenses, I took a number of tough courses (I remember one research design class where I was one of 2 A's in a room largely filled with other PhD students: ask me what I think of today's grade inflation), I had to pass a 2-day written comprehensive exam in my major field, a half-day exam in my minor field,  and an oral comprehensive exam (and I had no copies of past exams or even usable advice; I was simply told to expect anything and I would do just fine). Then I had to conceive and propose an original research project and put together a dissertation committee: I had to defend my dissertation proposal and then carry out the research. In my case, that included data collection involving several companies in the Houston area, easier said than done. I then had to defend the resulting dissertation.  That's what gave me the right to put "PhD" after my name or to be referred to as "Dr. Guillemette". I'm not saying everyone does the same thing; for example, I know of people whom have done an offshoot study off their chairman's research program. That wasn't the case for me.  I didn't even get to enjoy my commencement  day. A number of immediate family membeeers attended, but not one brought a camera with him (and the university didn't photograph the event either).

Charles Cooke's snarky column I found offensive because it's a disrespectful attitude which I find more the rule than the exception in America .  I unsuccessfully fought at UWM to get them to allow consideration of IT professional/managerial experience in MIS PhD program admissions.My research topics focused on practical issues in the profession, I brought current topics into my classroom lectures,  but when a recession ended my academic career,  I found many practitioners are/were openly contemptuous and dismissive of "ivory tower/can't function in the real world" academics .

Just a short example to make my point: a few years back I was getting gift solicitations from UH--which addressed my MBA degree, not my PhD. I found that odd; when they followed up with a phone solicitation, I asked why. The confused solicitor promised to check. I was later told that apparently a number of similar dual degree graduates preferred to go by their MBA as "more prestigious".

Professionally and personally, I don't insist on using the title; it depends more on the context. In academia I would. I normally consider its use in non-academic contexts to be indicative of good manners and much-appreciated respect. Some professors (e.g., Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek) don't like the custom (but if you look at his signature letters to the editor, he lists his endowed chair at George Mason University, etc.) I don't recall "Dr. Phil" McGraw, a psychologist, getting questioned on this issue (please don't call me "Dr. Ron").

But let me respond to the general point posed by Cooke. What he doesn't realize is that the term "doctor" was originally used in an academic contexts. For example, Catholics have referred to "Doctors of the Church", and they were NOT physicians. No doubt Cooke didn't take Latin in high school: (Latin doctor, teacher, from Latin docere, to teach). Eventually certain professional degree programs (including MD) similarly assumed the title of doctor, without the same commitment to original research and university teaching.

Answers.com has a good summary and I'll quote:

PhD is a Doctor of Philosophy, MD is Doctor of Medicine although both are addressed by the title of Dr. A doctor of Medicine is trained to administer medical treatments to patients who come to her/him for help. A PhD was originally an academic degree, and it still is. The PhD has a similar course requirement for the respective field of study; however the PhD program requires a PhD student to also provide a significant contribution back to their respective field of study also know as a dissertation or doctoral thesis. Bluntly put the PhD has a higher status academically than any professional doctorate (MD, DO, etc.)

And just for Cooke's benefit, not one person using the title in addressing me has ever confused me with being a medical doctor; I've never been asked for free medical advice, and no matchmaker has ever fixed me up with a girl with the hope of having a doctor in the family.

What is Cooke's problem with showing Mrs. Biden a little respect for her academic accomplishment? Talk about sweating the small stuff; it's a few seconds in introductions. I suspect it boils down to professional jealousy, and it's petty behavior. It's like some average or short-statured  people ridiculing tall people. The reality is most of us secretly wanted to be tall, all other things being equal, but it wasn't in our genes. I myself never teased tall kids; maybe it's because I was a bit of a geek and also got teased over my "Einstein" hair.

What Kind of Education Choice?



Gosnell Trial Closing Arguments

In two and half hour closing, #Gosnell atty McMahon says  no "scientific evidence" any  babies were alive when necks snipped. - jdmullane 

The picture I'm getting of this late-term abortionist defense attorney is the prosecution is "racist" and his multi-millionaire client is a philanthropist provider of free health care, a pillar of the community. Again, he's making the preposterous case that Gosnell went around severing the spinal cords of already dead babies (Matthew Archbold makes the same point here; some charges were dropped earlier when the judge apparently dropped some charges on the basis some of Gosnell's employees/prosecution witnesses were not suitably medically credentialed to attest to babies being born alive.)

Infanticide: It's Not Just Gosnell

I loathe how  "Doctor" Santangelo  talks about letting the baby expire, i.e., die, as if a baby is carton of milk. And comparing a prematurely delivered baby to a terminal-stage cancer patient? A baby is not a cancer; he or she is a gift from God. I'm not a lawyer, but this seems to be, at minimum, criminally negligent homicide.

“[What if the baby is born alive?] Technically – you know, legally we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive.  But, you know, it probably wouldn’t.  It’s all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point.  Let’s say you went into labor, the membranes ruptured, and you delivered before we got to the termination part of the procedure here, you know?  Then we would do things – we would – we would not help it.  We wouldn’t intubate.  It would be, you know, uh, a person, a terminal person in the hospital, let’s say, that had cancer, you know?  You wouldn’t do any extra procedures to help that person survive.  Like ‘do not resuscitate’ orders.  We would do the same things here.”

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of  Gary Varvel and Townhall

Political Humor

A woman in Florida is being praised for turning in over $36,000 in cash to the police after finding it on a golf course. Authorities are saying it's a selfless move, while the woman is like, “Good. Because I found $80,000.” - Jimmy Fallon

[The IRS signed her up.... Now we know why, according to GAI, Ohama spends over twice as much time on golf and vacation as on meetings on the economy.]

The United States Treasury announced that they will put into circulation a newly designed $100 bill in October. Of course, by that time, it should be worth about 50 bucks, but that's Ok.- Jay Leno

[Unfortunately, it costs them more to print one....]

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, "4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)"



Cool Science: Medical 3D Printing

(HT Carpe Diem) Everything From Implantable Ears To Personalized Cancer Treatment....

Miscellany: 4/28/13

Quote of the Day
Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
Ambrose Bierce

Earlier One-Off Post: Bill O' Reilly and the Boston Terrorism Situation

Education Choice, Disadvantaged Kids, and College Acceptance



Rand Paul Does a Good Job Summarizing the Case for Liberty Politics



FDR's Executive Order 9066:
An Abuse of Power That Will Live in Infamy
Korematsu v. United States: An Abomination

Courtesy of Constitutional Law Prof Blog

George Will this past week wrote one of his characteristically brilliant essays about one of the worst SCOTUS decisions in history.  Fred Korematsu, an American of Japanese descent, did not comply with local authorities enforcing the WWII internment order and was convicted of a federal crime. He appealed on constitutional grounds; the government insisted that the order was not racially motivated, that Japanese Americans on the West Coast were signaling to Japanese ships. The Court ruled 6-3 that there were extenuating circumstances in upholding the conviction. The Court's only remaining GOP nominee, Justice Jackson, wrote this dissent:

 Korematsu was born on our soil, of parents born in Japan. The Constitution makes him a citizen of the United States by nativity and a citizen of California by residence. No claim is made that he is not loyal to this country. There is no suggestion that apart from the matter involved here he is not law abiding and well disposed. Korematsu, however, has been convicted of an act not commonly a crime. It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived. [...] [H]is crime would result, not from anything he did, said, or thought, different than they, but only in that he was born of different racial stock. Now, if any fundamental assumption underlies our system, it is that guilt is personal and not inheritable. Even if all of one's antecedents had been convicted of treason, the Constitution forbids its penalties to be visited upon him. But here is an attempt to make an otherwise innocent act a crime merely because this prisoner is the son of parents as to whom he had no choice, and belongs to a race from which there is no way to resign. If Congress in peace-time legislation should enact such a criminal law, I should suppose this Court would refuse to enforce it.

Let me continue from a post on a Jackson website:

Korematsu’s case stood for almost 40 years until Professor Peter Irons with the help of Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga, researching government’s archives, stumbled upon secret Justice Department documents. Among them were memos written in 1943 and 1944 by Edward Ennis, the Justice Department attorney responsible for supervising the drafting of the government’s brief. As Ennis began searching for evidence to support the Army’s claim that the Internment was necessary and justified, he found precisely the opposite -- that J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, the FCC, the Office of Naval Intelligence and other authoritative intelligence agencies categorically denied that Japanese Americans had committed any wrong. Other memoranda characterized the government’s claims that Japanese Americans were spying as “intentional falsehoods.” These official reports were never presented to the Supreme Court, having been intentionally suppressed and, in one case, destroyed by setting the report afire. It was on this basis -- governmental misconduct -- that a legal team of pro bono attorneys successfully reopened Korematsu’s case in 1983, resulting in the erasure of his criminal conviction for defying the Internment.

I acknowledge there was a  Congressional apology with a $20K payment per survivor (77,000 American citizens and 43,000 legal and illegal resident aliens were affected by the order) approved by the Senate and signed into law by Reagan, and Korematsu was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Clinton in 1998. But there's unfinished business: Professor Irons wants SCOTUS to repudiate its original decision. (Thumbs UP!)

What motivated George Will to give us a history lesson? The argument of certain populist conservatives and others wanting to treat the surviving Boston terror suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a naturalized citizen, as an enemy combatant, i.e., deprived of constitutional rights.



Rocky Mountain High 
Taxes Colorado....

Clap for the Taxman...He Gonna Take State Spending High

Various proposals aim to tax recreational marijuana sales up to 30%.... My former UH students kidded (I think) they rated my exams by how many beers it took to forget them. Taxpayers may soon rate their state legislators by how many joints it takes to forget how much they're paying in taxes...

My personal opinion--a mind is a terrible thing to get wasted.



Is This America? Footage From the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Search

Some reports alleged if you weren't home, the police would break in (no warrant), and if you were home, you did not have the option to refuse their searching your house or apartment. I have seen footage of groups of up to or more than a dozen law enforcement officers in a group--in a sweep for just one man. Some people were no doubt more terrified confronted by groups of armed lawmen than a college student on the run.





Political Humor



Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, "Blinded By the Light"

Bill O' Reilly and the Boston Terrorism Situation

I've written one-off opinions on a couple of clueless conventional progressive Time columnists lately, and it's only fair that I take on Bill O'Reilly (as I have in the past, e.g.,his populist advocacy of oil price conspiracies, opposition to oil product exports, etc.) I want to focus this commentary on his last Monday's commentary (below), in part because he argues against positions I've taken in the blog (not directly but conceptually).



As for the female Muslim journalist (Amina Ismail), asking  Obama White House Press Secretary Carney about an Afghanistan incident involving civilian tragedies and basically whether America herself isn't guilty of terrorism, O'Reilly is correct in labeling the incident as one of collateral damage, but I don't like the nature of discussion, where he was dismissive, i.e., "these things happen when you're in a war". American leadership knows that it won't win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people through such tragic, counterproductive mistakes. Carney response was, unsurprisingly, evasive and, in my opinion, amateurish. I would have said, "No, our intent was not to spread fear among the Afghan people; it was a tragic error. Sometimes mistakes are made in war, including friendly fire, where troops are killed or maimed mistakenly by people on the same side. What we need to do is to learn from our mistakes and eliminate or at least minimize the chance of repeating them in the future." Of course, the young journalist would not be satisfied with the response, because bombs are bombs, and the intent is largely lost on the victims and survivors. The effect on civilian population is similar: there but for the grace of God...; am I next?

What I do fault the Administration and the Democratic Party for was running on political rhetoric that our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan was "breeding new generations of terrorists"  And then, once Obama is in power, he has largely extended Bush's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan; in fact, he has more than doubled American casualties in Afghanistan, and he has radically expanded drone strikes, including in other countries (e.g., Yemen and Somalia) which have not attacked us. Obama is micromanaging kill lists. There are often civilian casualties.

"But here is something even provocative, former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw apparently putting some of the motivation for the Boston bombings on his own country."

BROKAW: I think we also have to examine the use of drones. That the United States is involved in and there are a lot of civilians who are innocently killed in a drone attack in Pakistan and Afghanistan and in Iraq. And I can tell you having spent a lot of time over there, young people will come up to me on the streets and say we love America, but if you harm one hair on the head of my sister, I will fight you forever. And there is this enormous rage against what they see in that part of the world as a presumption of the United States.

The excerpt came from last week's Meet the Press. Here is preceding context before O'Reilly's excerpt:

But there are a couple of things to remember here, David, I think for all of us. With the death of Osama bin Laden, Islamic rage did not go away. In fact, in some ways it’s more dangerous. This is a perfect example. You can’t get intel on the lone operator. So, there’s a lot that we still need to know about what motivated them obviously. He’s a Chechen, but their beef is with Russia, not with us. But he’s also a Muslim. And the fact is that that Islamic rage is still out there.....We have to work a lot harder as a motivation here. What prompts a young man to come to this country and still feel alienated from it, to go back to Russia and do whatever he did and I don’t think we’ve examined that enough? I mean, there was 24/7 coverage on television, a lot of newspaper print and so on, but we have got to look at the roots of all of this because it exist across the whole subcontinent, and the-- and the Islamic world around the world. 

Brokaw openly admits that he doesn't know what motivated the late Tamarlan Tsarnaev (his obvious reference, not Dzhokhar. given the reference to the 2011 trip to Russia. I do think the initial post-USSR Chechen independence movement was led by a secular leader but it has transitioned to a more radical Islamic nature. I think O'Reilly is confusing motive with justification; police and prosecution might look for a motive for murder; that doesn't exonerate the murder. The fact is, many Muslims around the world don't agree with American military and foreign policy. And drone strikes have sometimes resulted in the deaths or injuries of innocent people, not terrorists. Is it fair to regard incidental loss of lives as intentional? Of course not. Brokaw isn't looking to defend radicalized Islam but to describe or explain it. There's no doubt that the death of innocent victims will be used for propaganda and recruitment purposes by radical groups. They may also plant false rumors.

 Let me get this straight, Tom. We shouldn't use drones to attack al Qaeda leadership or Taliban terrorists hiding in the mountains of Pakistan? We shouldn't do that?So how exactly would you fight the war against terrorism, Tom? Do you want to invade Pakistan? Is that what you want to do? Or do you want to sit back and let terrorists hatch their plots and watch Americans die at home and on the battlefield?

I'm nor Brokaw. But we have the rule of law: bombing another country is an act of war. We have not declared war on Pakistan. So, no, we should not be bombing Pakistan before first honoring our constitutional requirements. The war against terrorism is an international effort; we are not the world's policeman; we don't  have an infinite budget. We need to be prudent and accept our limitations.

Now, it is worth noting that during World War II, USA did target civilians in Japan and Germany. It did what it had to do to win the war to deal with Tojo and the Nazis but now we have cadre of Americans who for some reason don't feel that the USA has a right to defend itself. Every decent person laments civilian casualties anywhere. But again, in war, they happen.

That's a false choice. Tell me, Bill: does the Boston incident give us the right to fly drones over Chechnya, an annexed part of Russia? You're a simple man, Bill; surely you can answer that question. Of course, the US has a right to defend itself. But there is a difference between frittering away national resources on an open-ended, unbounded war overseas and focusing on the mainland--and there can be unintended consequences to our meddling and/or aggressive actions overseas.

It's very easy for O'Reilly  to dismiss civilian casualties as inevitable. Personally, I strongly disagree with the firebombing of Dresden and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (I am aware of the rationalizations. The reason O'Reilly is bringing them into the conversation is because he thinks that he has Brokaw caught (Brokaw has famously called the generation which fought WWII as the "greatest generation"). I have not heard or read Brokaw's account of these events which cost the lives of literally thousands of civilians, but he could consistently agree with the overall goal while at the same time disagreeing with certain specifics.

Will a scaled-back American footprint overseas eliminate threats to domestic security? First of all, a balanced review of terrorism shows a wide variety of political (left and right-wing) and religion-affiliated groups, many of which have been domestic. Second, it is true a dominant source since 1977 has been Islamic extremism.  There are no guarantees, and it could be that that Islamic extremists are motivated by differing motives, including domestic policies..

Miscellany: 4/27/13

Quote of the Day
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. 
I don't believe in circumstances. 
The people who get on in this world are 
the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, 
if they can't find them, make them.
George Bernard Shaw

The Conservative Future Project

One of the smears I despise is the characterization of conservatives as anti-science, anti-evolution, etc. It simply isn't true; for example, Pope Francis is a former high school chemistry teacher. This isn't to say there isn't a vocal minority, particularly on the single issue creationist front; I have used this blog to blast any ideological tampering with public school curricula, whether it's creationists, climate change alarmists, multiculturalist ideologues, etc.

I'm enthusiastic about all sorts of projects, including the development of synthetic organs and plastic blood: imagine, for instance, recurring issues of limited supply for people with rarer blood types. . I've been pushing to shrink the critical path of FDA and patent approvals.

This is an excerpt from their biotech page:

• Expounding upon the positive, ethical, and utilitarian implications of augmentation and advanced gene therapy
• Analyzing ways to reduce the often crippling burdens that FDA Phase I and II clinical trials place upon biotechnology companies, especially for small businesses.
• Evaluating onerous tax burdens placed on small biotech companies, like the medical device excise tax (MDET)
• Produce a white paper incorporating anticipated scientific and medical advancements in order to better prepare strategies to streamline their legalization for testing and commercialization.

The Disability Industrial Complex

Probably the best-known example of social security disability fraud personally involved the most notorious fiscal hawk in Washington--Tom Coburn (R-OK). Coburn had hired a local tree trimmer to do some physically demanding work around his property. After the work was complete, the worker asked Coburn to make the check out to his mother; he explained that he had filed for social security disability  Coburn reported that he managed to convince the man to withdraw his application. (There is a group of lawyers dedicated to help people fight for disability claims. Here is an example of a vested-interest blogger whom basically argues, in the context of Coburn's tree trimmer, that the world is complex, e.g., some disabled people can do work over short periods of time, but it's not sustainable. Yeah, right: the man wasn't trying to mislead the government about his health and his ability to work; he knew  getting paid by Coburn would be a red flag for investigators.)

Ironically NPR has published some interesting work on this issue here. There are a couple of key exhibits in the piece: one shows a correlation between unemployment and disability fillings, and the second shows that health claim categories have changed in distributions over time. For example, nearly 40% today involve back pain or related issues--nearly 4 rimes the percentage 50 years ago; mental health has also exploded. The following example from the author (Chana Joffe-Walt) is telling:

Four years ago, when I was working as a reporter in Seattle, I did that story. I stood with workers in a dead mill in Aberdeen, Washington and memorialized the era when you could graduate from high school and get a job at a mill and live a good life. That was the end of the story.

But after I got interested in disability, I followed up with some of the guys to see what happened to them after the mill closed. One of them, Scott Birdsall, went to lots of meetings where he learned about retraining programs and educational opportunities. At one meeting, he says, a staff member pulled him aside.

"Scotty, I'm gonna be honest with you," the guy told him. "There's nobody gonna hire you … We're just hiding you guys." The staff member's advice to Scott was blunt: "Just suck all the benefits you can out of the system until everything is gone, and then you're on your own."

Scott, who was 56 years old at the time, says it was the most real thing anyone had said to him in a while.

Scott tried school for a while, but hated it. So he took the advice of the rogue staffer who told him to suck all the benefits he could out of the system. He had a heart attack after the mill closed and figured, "Since I've had a bypass, maybe I can get on disability, and then I won't have worry to about this stuff anymore." It worked; Scott is now on disability. It wasn't just Scott. I talked to a bunch of mill guys who took this path -- one who shattered the bones in his ankle and leg, one with diabetes, another with a heart attack. When the mill shut down, they all went on disability.

Joffe-Walt also mentions a doctor whom asked about his patients' education level: he was more likely to judge disability for those people without a college degree, i.e., more employable. (Of course, that's not a valid reason for a medical opinion--I consider that a violation of professional ethics, if not aiding and abetting fraud.)

Forbes' Avik Roy puts some numbers to this scam: about $200B a year. The program will exhaust its trust fund in about 3 years. Roy cites a study debunking the usual rationalization that it reflects an aging Baby Boomer population; much more prominent factors are Reagan's approval of liberalized health criteria (1984), benefit generosity, and overall economic conditions.

Fascinating exchange below, but as just one response to the former social security commissioner Michael Astrue, I guarantee  numbers back in the mid-1990's did not reflect sustained low-economic/job growth under the Bush and Obama Administrations.

I think at minimum like Roy suggests, we need to revisit eligibility criteria, review morally hazardous compensation levels, and provide private-sector quality fraud detection procedures (if not outsource the effort to competitive bid)



Public Employee Pension Transparency Act: Thumbs UP!

GOP Senators Coburn (OK), Thune (SD), and Burr (NC) have a bill which puts states and local governments on notice there will be no federal bailout of their pension programs and will force them to be more explicit about unfunded pension obligations. I enthusiastically concur and would add I would like to see the same with federal pension schemes.

Coburn Puts the Spotlight on Federal Employees-In-Name-Only

We really need an end to public sector unions, period. You know when I'll be convinced there is a public sector employment problem? When schools run out of applicants for elementary school teachers, when there aren't waiting lists to get a federal government desk job, when government employees surrender their job security and retirement benefits for those "higher paying" jobs, at will, in the private sector.

I have worked with government workers at the local, state and federal level. My experiences aren't necessarily representative, but I remember working in an open cubicle in 2004 while a federal employee was loudly playing the latest JibJab video in his cubicle with other employees around him, and I overheard them talking about a work slowdown until "President Kerry" was in office. I had scheduled meetings postponed because employees, without the professional courtesy of notification, decided to go to work out at the gym or get her dog's nails clipped; we aren't talking about a lunch break--the middle of the afternoon. I have seen senior-level consultants, billing at higher rates, spending one-on-one time answering elementary questions on COTS functionality (with plenty of documentation and training materials available). I know one government worker whom was depending on me to figure out how many software licenses were in use at the base when I had access to only a fraction of servers and almost no paperwork. There have been hopelessly incompetent government project managers whom didn't understand broad conceptual issues (for instance, in one case an Oracle Application Server upgrade meant application reports had to be converted to new standard output types). In two cases I've had to deal with government  DBA's running obsolete backup scripts, in another case I know government network administrators whom never tested tape backups from a malfunctioning tape drive until a visiting vendor ran into a technical issue requiring recovery from backup.

I know of one ERP upgrade project where the city required 3 test upgrade cycles within 3 months before going live, and the consulting company not only had failed to complete one cycle within 6 weeks (in fact, they never even got to the point of running the upgrade driver patch), but a requisition order hadn't even been cut for a Microsoft compiler which was a prerequisite for payroll processing in the upgraded software; now clearly the vendor was at fault (the vendor project manager, who allegedly held a PhD but was vested in the hiring of incompetent project DBA's, was dismissive of my detailed concerns, attributing them to my being a "control freak";  my fear was a botched upgrade, leaving me firefighting problems for months after the project contractors rolled off, and I repeatedly requested that he have an independent DBA review my concerns), but the local agency IT manager and project manager were failing to monitor and control the process--and neither asked for my input. (I did give my input to my operational manager; I was the operational DBA whom had done multiple upgrades, with operational experience before and after upgrades; I was in daily project status meetings.)

In another case, I was alerted by a colleague that several of the servers I managed had rebooted; I caught a government auditor in the act of pulling out a tape drive out of my main production server rack; he was unapologetic, demanding to know the functionality of the device (Why are you messing with a piece of hardware you know nothing about? It's insane.) There were over 450 hourly workers in St. Louis depending on my main production server being up, and this guy didn't know what he was doing; he had not bothered to go through my civil servant boss in St. Louis or contact me. There is no excuse for his incompetence leading to the reboot of servers. He would have been terminated for cause in the private sector for that alone.

The previous list is just off the top of my head (I'll admit I've seen issues in the private sector, but they tend to be different in frequency, nature and scope--often involving bureaucracy and office politics).

In any event, Sen. Coburn thinks it's high time, given the air traffic controller furlough issue, we start looking at the costs of civil servants whom don't show up to work or are doing union work on the taxpayer dime. I agree.

Political Cartoon

Couttesy of Henry Payne

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

The Temptations, "Get Ready". This is the last of my Temptations retrospective. Next up: Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band.I didn't realize until I reviewed his discography that he has never hit #1 on the Hot 100. I used to buy each new album unheard, even indulgent ones like Nebraska--I wasn't a fan of his more acoustic pieces. I won't sample much from his political era material. I don't mind Springsteen having differing political views, but when he used his celebrity to promote those views and banal politicians, he lost me as a fan. I think the only original (vs. compilation) album I've purchased over the past 20 years is The Rising.

Miscellany: 4/26/13

Quote of the Day
No matter what side of the argument you are on, 
you always find people on your side 
that you wish were on the other.
Jascha Heifetz

Some Comments on the FAA Controller Furlough Soap Opera

 I remember a few years back doing an in-person interview for a contractor DBA gig with an FAA vendor (I didn't get the job). I've done a lot of interviews at federal agency facilities, but I thought it was easier to get into Quantico (Marine headquarters) than this place. During the interview I brought up a matter close to the heart of any DBA: backups. (We use backups not only for disaster recovery but for purposes like refreshing test environments: we would never risk a production problem by directly inserting untested changes.) My contact implied something like a rolling 5-day window, with essentially no longer-term backups This seemed highly unusual, and I continued  questioning about the infrastructure. At some point, he mentioned that his company had requested relevant infrastructure, and the FAA told them, "Great idea, but we don't have the money. Here's an idea: take it out of the money we're already paying you, and we'll be happy to take ownership of the equipment." Of course, the conversation stopped there. But obsolete technology goes beyond IT infrastructure (see the video below).

Nick Gillespie points out that the federal budget has doubled since the Clinton Presidency. Yet I don't recall the hypocritical Dems moaning about the austerity under Clinton--a level the GOP isn't even asking for. Even if you control for inflation; spending is about 50% more. And yet a mere 1-3% of a budget cut is enough to cause furloughs at the nation's busiest airports? There are salient missing facts (I don't know what they are, but I'll know them when I see them): other agencies can find savings to cut without mass furloughs, but not the FAA. Surely the FAA hires more than air traffic controllers, there must be ways to consolidate/share existing personnel, e.g., from lightly used airports; and heaven knows what work rules or other collective bargaining nonsense plays a role. Poole doesn't directly say this in the video below, but making the system more state of the art could better leverage existing manpower.

Apparently even if we accept things at face value, why didn't Obama proactively ask for any necessary discretion in agency funding to make cuts? That's an issue of managerial competence. (The "solution" which has been adopted is not to increase the FAA's budget but give it more flexibility to shift funds across the budget managers didn't already have.)

This is not the first time we've heard of politicians micromanaging things. For example, DoD has to purchase equipment it doesn't want, can't close bases it doesn't need, etc. The same crap goes on with the USPS; it can't change prices, delivery policies, or shutter money losing offices

You already know the only reasonable response to this: PRIVATIZE IT. And in terms of the video below, as much as it pains me to admit it, even Gore got something right for once. (Notice how the progressives love it when the Canadians socialize their healthcare system, but not when they privatize their version of the FAA. )



A Casualty at the Boston Marathon Bombings:
Religious Liberty

From Jennifer Graham of the WSJ:

Close to the bombing site are Trinity Episcopal Church, Old South Church and St. Clement Eucharistic Shrine, all on Boylston Street. When the priests at St. Clement's, three blocks away, heard the explosions, they gathered sacramental oils and hurried to the scene in hopes of anointing the injured and, if necessary, administering last rites, the final of seven Catholic sacraments. But the priests, who belong to the order Oblates of the Virgin Mary, weren't allowed at the scene.

But it is a poignant irony that Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy who died on Boylston Street, was a Catholic who had received his first Communion just last year. As Martin lay dying, priests were only yards away, beyond the police tape, unable to reach him to administer last rites—a sacrament that, to Catholics, bears enormous significance.

Why? Because Women Don't Think the Laws Apply to Them....

On occasion, I've shared some experiences from my work experience. When I started working on my UH MBA, I was working in the now-defunct APL timesharing industry. [APL is a concise, powerful interpretive computer language introduced during the IBM mainframe era of the 1960's. APL was particularly suited for rapid application development; timesharing was a bridge solution before a company invested in new mainframes; we also provided an alternative to backlogged IT departments. In the Houston area, we mostly served the energy corporations. The industry disappeared by the time I completed my doctorate.]

My last boss in the industry was a narcissistic character and inept, unethical manager; I could write several pages, but a starting point was when he decided to move the branch office from within Houston's loop (closer to clients) to the northwest suburbs because it would cut down his commute. That wasn't all--we would only occupy part of the expanded office. He intended to set up his own (competitive?) operations staffed entirely by female programmers. An enlightened boss? Hardly; female programmers were "cheaper"--he was hoping to pocket any alleged wage difference. Let's just say I got in trouble when I found that he had taken my office chair during the move and put in his still vacant female programmers' room--and he had replaced mine with one that had a broken caster; I got caught swapping back my old chair.

I mentioned this incident in passing in a past post. One of our clients one month had a few thousand dollars left in his residual discretionary "use it or lose it" budget. My boss, always looking for ways to expand his monthly bonus, agreed to rewrite an application in exchange for "dollar-burning" the amount. (We earned revenue by metered computer time charges; We had a "dollar-burn" utility that was designed to do nothing constructive but rack up charges to a specified limit.) I think this predated my employment; in any event, the assignment was given to my principal colleague--and this is my point for bringing up the anecdote. APL is a very powerful language, and there were stylistic alternatives. Many APL coders had distinct coding preferences, not unlike some writers may prefer different fonts. My colleague redefined the task from addressing the client's wish for functional changes for stylistic changes in accordance with his own preferences. This was not what the client paid for--he never saw the code, just its functional results. So my boss, who by the way couldn't read a line of APL code, pulled the assignment from my colleague and handed it to me. (Not that my "what have you done for me lately" boss was happy about it: he would have me working on this month's bonus.)

I have zero patience for paternalist (or should I say, maternalist) obsession with surface-level characteristics of language, the self-appointed, morally self-superior people obsessed with controlling the behavior of other people, especially viewing generic terms through present cultural bias.

 This obsession with surface-level details I see as a mark of an inferior mind and is characteristic of many (if not most) progressives/social liberals like Barry Obama. (I'm not saying language isn't important. While I was a professor, I did not allow students to address me by my given name--it was "Dr. Guillemette" or "Professor Guillemette". I also try to respect other people's preferences; for example, Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek despises others classifying him as a "conservative" economist.)

Do you need any further proof of the inanity of modern ideological feminism? From  Reuters (my edits):

Washington state's governor signed into law [issued his imprimatur] on Monday the final piece of a six-year effort to rewrite state laws using gender-neutral vocabulary, replacing terms such as "fisherman" and "freshman" with "fisher" and "first-year student." Lawmakers have passed a series of bills since 2007 to root out gender bias from Washington statutes, though a 1983 state mandate required that all laws be written in gender-neutral terms unless a specification of gender was intended.

Several words, however, aren't easy to replace, said Kyle Thiessen, the state's code reviser [censor], who heads up the 40-staff Washington Code Reviser's Office [Office of Political Correctness] agency.

Washington state is the nation's fourth to boast of eliminating gender bias from its official lexicon, following in the footsteps of Florida, North Carolina and Illinois, [Democratic state Senator Jeanne] Kohl-Welles said.

Other states that have passed gender-neutral constitutional mandates include California, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Utah, Kohl-Welles said. At least nine other states are currently considering gender-neutral legislation, she said.

Instead of frittering away taxpayer money giving laws a pushing-on-a-string presentist face lift  which adds zero to the functionality of laws, which I consider a form of economic rent-seeking  for special-interest feminists, do something useful, like spring cleaning--repealing obsolete or counter-productive laws, stripping regulatory drag on business, and countless infringements on economic liberty... Stop engaging in bureaucratic trivial pursuit. (For an alternate take, see Carpe Diem.)

Isn't It Time for Medicaid Reform?

Reason has a great essay by surgeon Jeffrey Singer, How Government Killed the Medical Profession. Among other things, he rants about the square peg in a round hole Procrustean government coding processes, game playing with add-on charges to make up for money-losing more complicated procedures.



Food Trucks in DC Under Legislative Assault



More on Prairie Dogs vs. Property Rights



Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Gary Varvel and Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

The Temptations, "I Wish It Would Rain"

Miscellany: 4/25/13

Quote of the Day
The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart
this you will build your life by, and this you will become.
James Lane Allen

Misspelled Names--Again

I remember writing about this topic around the time of the underwear bomber.So imagine my "surprise" to hear that the  FBI had failed to detect the now deceased older brother Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's 2011 trip to Russia after an earlier Russian intelligence's tip about his radical Islam ties because his name was misspelled during trip processing. Depending on the computer software used, matches may be very specific--even a simple typo, case-change (capitalized characters or mixed case) won't qualify a match. But fuzzy match technology has been available in conventional software for years. For example, in Blogger and other Google applications, if I make a typo, the word is marked in the editor and correctly spelled alternatives are available via a right-click.

As a former MIS professor, I just don't understand how the FBI's was not tested for fuzzy match capabilities before the software was ever rolled into production; your system is one fat finger away  from public safety consequences.. One also has to wonder after the underwear bomber case, why there wasn't a comprehensive initiative by the Obama Administration across the national intelligence infrastructure--and if there  was, why the FBI gap persisted.

The Rand Paul Drone Kerfuffle

After Rand Paul's historic filibuster of the Brennan CIA chief nomination based on AG Holder's procrastination to his question over domestic attacks on citizens without, at minimum, court oversight of Bill of Right individual liberties.you would figure the last thing he would want to do is send a mixed message on a signature issue, but that's what he did on a Fox News segment (here's an overview by a conservative critic of Paul; I do not agree with the critic).

Paul now has been criticized--quite wrongly in my view--of flip-flopping. I do think Paul did a poor job of expressing himself, particularly in the context of attacking a liquor store criminal.

Let me address the issue more comprehensively. The original issue was executing an American terrorist suspect overseas without due process, at minimum without judicial oversight. In essence, Obama has been approving kill lists. Since the use of drones domestically is being promoted by the Obama Administration, do the same rules apply? Paul opposes either type of bypassing court authorization.

What I believe the conversation in the Cavuto segment references was the use of lethal force by law enforcement in apprehending a suspect. I think if and when a suspect threatens law enforcement with lethal force, there is a right of self-defense by the officer being threatened.  It's hard to see how most criminals are a threat to a drone. The first principle is that a policeman should consider the use of lethal  force as last resort. Paul seems to be suggesting is that once the police are under attack and the use of lethal force is justified, it doesn't matter whether the weapon is a gun, a sniper's rifle, from a police helicopter, or yes, even a drone.

Obviously the judge doesn't intervene directly in the middle of a gun fight. But it is not the function of law enforcement to serve as judge and jury. Would or should a drone have been been used in the case of the Boston bombers? Maybe for tracking, but I would have had road blocks heading out of Boston and a more thorough, less heavy-handed search.

Syria, Obama's Line in the Sand, and US Involvement: 
Don't Do It

The conservative websites were abuzz about Syria's rogue government, which has allegedly used chemical weapons against the resistance; I went on the neo-con Weekly Standard website briefly today, and it seemed to dominate all other issues. I think Obama was ill-advised to put a line in the sand; I suspect that he hoped Assad wouldn't risk further American involvement. Syria has all the elements that scream "be really careful of what you wish for". The use of chemical weapons is a crime against humanity, but I see this as more of a regional than American problem.



A Dubious Achievement Obama Hopes No One Will Notice

The shale revolution as Bakken and Eagle Ford exploration and production have offset slowing production elsewhere (e.g., Alaska) and lowered dependence on unfriendly foreign producers (not to mention moderating the trade imbalance). Obama's environmental policies have hampered attempts to close the gap by further putting obstacles in drilling new, more promising targets on federally-controlled property, both on-and offshore. Obama tries to take credit for new production off private- or state-controlled territory, including newly abundant natural gas, which have made more difference in reduced carbon emissions than all his alternative energy boondoggles and subsidies put together. Still, the chart below is hard to explain away to environmental ideologues.

Courtesy of Carpe Diem

Dedication of the Bush Library

George W. Bush is,  by any reasonable analysis, the most honorable and decent of the last 3 Presidents, inclusive. He made some some bad policy errors (among them, nation building in the Gulf Region, expanding an all but insolvent Medicare program, failing to veto excessive spending bills, naming Bernanke as Fed chief, starting us down the path of eroding individual liberties with the Patriot Act, failed to reform Fannie and Freddie, his handling of the economic tsunami was mistake-ridden, etc.) But he also provided extraordinary leadership in the aftermath of 9/11, nominated some very good, able judges, expanded free trade, and provided leadership on long-overdue tax, social security and immigration reform.



Epic Laffer Rant

I love Laffer''s blistering attack on whom I would call Warren "Bait-and-Switch" Buffett: in particular, the theoretical taxation of unrealized capital gains. Consider  the CEO's own company;

And then there’s the legendary investment adviser Warren Buffett, whose unique skills have created tremendous value for shareholders over the past 46 years. Berkshire’s per-share book value grew from $19 to $95,453 [last year], at a rate of 20.2% compounded annually.

Now there are all sorts of methodological problems with taxing unrealized capital gains--even if you get past liquidity issues, how do you know the future price of any asset: your house, the Picasso on your wall, never mind shares of businesses whose models will be undermined by future competitors or bad decisions. For more liquid investments, there are still issues: for example, if I buy or sell Coca-Cola shares from my retirement accounts, the lots would be quite limited and not material to the price of the security--but Berkshire Hathaway has a boatload of Coca-Cola shares, and unwinding that position would likely move the share price (down). Do we really want to encourage hit-and-run investment and discourage long-term ownership and investment?

Perhaps some innovative policies could be designed to encourage prepayment of expected future taxes,e.g., Roth-like asset accounts where taxes on assets are exempt from the listed beneficiaries or inflation-adjusted tax payment bonds.




Political Humor

A new report found that the worst job in the U.S. is being a newspaper reporter. They say it's better for writers to just focus on fiction and become a CNN reporter. - Jimmy Fallon

[..an Obama White House apokesman]

All five living presidents will gather for the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. President Obama says he hopes he can pick up some ideas for when he builds his. It's going to be called the “Blame George W. Bush Presidential Library.” - Jay Leno

[They have so much in common--two daughters, a love for drones, budget deficits, low employment and economic growth, immigration reform, losing the House of Representatives,...]

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Steve Kelley and Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

The Temptations, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg"

Miscellany: 4/24/13

Quote of the Day
He who builds to every man's advice
will have a crooked house.
Danish Proverb

Lawsuit of the Year
(Let's Make It a Class-Action Suit)

From South China Morning Post:

Kunming mother sues US central bank over shrinking cash
She claims Federal Reserve has allowed her deposit of US$250 to lose a third of its value

Her attorney, her son Li Zhen, called the lawsuit "litigation for the public good" which aimed to stop the Fed from continuing its quantitive easing policy and promote people's awareness of their rights.

He filed the lawsuit alleging "the abuse of monopoly in issuing currency" last month at the Kunming Intermediate People's Court on behalf of his mother, Liu Hua

"Since the Fed is a private institution which enjoys a monopoly over the issuing of currency, US dollar holders can sue it for printing too much money," he said.

 Rickards on Real Money

What would make me bearish on gold, what would make me want to sell gold?

Well, if the President and the Chairman of the Fed came out and said, "We're going to raise interest rates, we're going to stop quantitative easing — in fact, we're going to reverse it a little bit — we're going to cut corporate taxes to zero, we're going to eliminate the capital gains tax, we're going to reduce regulation, we're going to make America a magnet for savings and investment. We're going to have an investment-driven model rather than a debt and consumption-driven model, and we're going to have positive real rates."

Amen... Rickards for Fed chair/President.



Some Criminals Drop Their Weapons;
Some Cops Drop Their Drawers...

Oh, some of the jobs done by (or should I say, to) public servants: ask Bill Clinton, aka President Zipper:

According to the video liner notes:

Homestead Police Department Detective Ronald DePellegrin claims his actions have been taken out of context, but the context we have comes from the criminal complaint written by DePellegrin himself. He writes that "Becky Dymon," a woman he found online and the target of his sting operation, removed her clothes. The undercover detective disrobed, and explains what happened next: "Becky started to perform oral sex on me, when I said oh shit, the cops were coming."

The brothers in blue stand behind him (how about the wife and kids?):

Carl Bailey of the Homestead Police Union argues that DePellegrin did nothing wrong. "In the course of officers doing undercover work, sometimes they have to do what they have to do to effectuate an arrest," says Bailey.

 Listen to a prosecutor rationalize entrapment:

District Attorney Stephen Zappala declared, "While it's not inappropriate for a police officer to take off his clothes in connection with a prostitution investigation, if an officer engages in a sexual act, this may constitute outrageous government conduct."

Apparently "outrageous" means if the prostitute had changed her mind...



On Politically Correct Kitchen Appliances

Williams Sonora has pulled pressure cookers from its Massachusetts stores in the immediately aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings (if any reader doesn't understand the relevance, the bombs used pressure cookers). A pressure cooker was designed to prepare food faster. I don't think any reasonable people should be upset at an appliance. I don't believe our military has been bombing targets with pressure cookers. Did we stop selling box cutters after 9/11? What about the nails, pellets, etc, which injured or killed people? Are hardware stores going to withdraw relevant items from inventory and deprive, say, carpenters of making a living?

I think this is yet another pushing-on-a-string sensitivity run amok, not unlike those store managers whom obsess that a cashier saying "Merry Christmas" (vs. say, some generic "happy holidays") will be a traumatic experience to non-Christians. (It actually annoys more Christian customers .) I don't get bothered by, say, sales of Passover or Cinco de Mayo (from a more ethnic perspective) foods.

Williams Sonora should not give others a propaganda victory, our changing our way of life, including shopping. If customers don't want to purchase pressure cookers, they won't--but they should have that option. And if Williams Sonora doesn't want to offer them, another vendor/retailer will.

Gov. Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Menino: New JOTY Nominees

I intended to write this criticism earlier. I did not agree with how there was a virtual shutdown of the city with  one fugitive on the run after a gunfight. (I'm a little confused by the details; maybe I've watched too much TV or movies but I assumed the first thing police would do is block escape routes and/or disable the getaway vehicle.)  According to NBC:

Dzhokhar -- the [surviving] brother who was wearing a white hat in the surveillance photos from the marathon -- got away when he drove the SUV through a line of police officers at the end of the street, Kitzenberg said.

Law enforcement sources told NBC News that blood found at the scene suggested Dzhokhar may have been wounded in the gun battle.

So we have a fugitive,possibly armed, but  he knows he's been identified. They know his vehicle (although, granted, he could try to carjack another vehicle). He's been wounded (granted they weren't sure; he can't go to a hospital). I think the last thing this fugitive is thinking about is another attack; his brother is dead, he's all alone, and he knows the law is after him. He did not expect this and he is operating by the seat of the pants.(This to a minor extent reminds me of the Zinkhan murder-suicide, where Zinkhan tried to disguise his own grave from the police.) He doesn't want to die (or he would have killed himself by the time they found him).

I am not arguing Dzhokhar wasn't dangerous, but when I hear the college kids are getting evacuated in their sleepwear and without even their glasses or wallets, the operation comes across as overkill and more like something we would experience under martial law or a police state, not America. I commuted into Chicago frequently when I lived in the suburbs, and Chicago has had its share of violent crime. But I never saw the city come to a standstill during a manhunt for a fugitive from justice.

Lawyers Say the Darndest Things

From the Gosnell murder trial:

Defense Attorney Jack McMahon argued that all charges should be dropped saying, “It’s ridiculous to say a baby is alive just because you see it move.”

Say what? One of the criteria in deciding whether a person is alive or dead is whether he moves on his own accord. Rigor mortis (stiffening of limbs, etc.) is a distinguishing characteristic of death  (McMahon is likely referring to testimony from an employee witness whom saw the baby's arm move around the time the doctor allegedly cut the baby's  spinal cord. It's not immediately obvious why Gosnell would perform this procedure on an already dead baby.)

I accept that Gosnell is entitled to legal counsel and a fair trial. However, I do not believe a state of denial establishes credibility.

Here are a couple of excerpts which discuss unrelated experiences with born alive babies from abortion:

I worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, and when we weren’t busy, I’d go out to help with the newborns. One night I saw a bassinet outside the nursery. There was a baby in this bassinet – a crying, perfectly formed baby – but there was a difference in this child. She had been scalded. She was the child of a saline abortion.

This little girl looked as if she had been put in a pot of boiling water. No doctor, no nurse, no parent, to comfort this hurt, burned child. She was left alone to die in pain. They wouldn’t let her in the nursery – they didn’t even bother to cover her.

I asked a nurse at another hospital what they do with their babies that are aborted by saline. Unlike my hospital, where the baby was left alone struggling for breath, their hospital puts the infant in a bucket and puts the lid on. Suffocation! 

and this excerpt from a 2002 article in the The Journal of Clinical Nursing:

In the case of late termination, the death of the fetus before delivery, though usual, is not inevitable except in rare cases of extreme physical abnormality[.] … At times the fetus will actually attempt to breathe or move its limbs, which makes the experience extremely distressing for nurses. Also, whereas the woman will probably go through this process once in her lifetime, nurses may go through it several times a year or even in the same week.

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Michael Ramirez and Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

The Temptations, "Can't Get Next to You"