May 2, 2007
COMPACT FLUORESCENT DIMBULBS
I hate for this to become a hobbyhorse, but beware when zealots, politicians, and big business decide to get into bed with you, because when morning comes around, you always wind up being the one with a sore ass and pushed onto the floor without a blanket. I rehashed the idiocy of the current state of compact fluorescent bulbs back in January [see NOT THE BRIGHTEST BULB (OR IDEA) IN THE PACK, 1/03/07]. My point then was that maybe big businesses like Wal-Mart should stop trying to cram more-expensive products down consumers' throats by browbeating suppliers, and maybe try using their market presence to encourage the purchase of products people actually want. I mentioned that Wal-Mart execs trying to misguidedly save the world today will find themselves hauled before Congress 30 years from now to explain how they used their market dominance to force consumers to purchase more-expensive products that turned every landfill in the country into a hazmat site.
Consider this story from last week's Financial Post. A woman installing a compact fluorescent light bulb in her daughter's bedroom accidentally broke it. Concerned, she called Home Depot to see what she should do because she'd heard about the danger of mercury to children. Eventually she got passed along to an environmental agency that recommended a hazmat cleanup contractor that sealed off her daughter's bedroom like she was hiding E.T. in her closet and eventually handed the woman a $2,000 bill. For a broken lightbulb.
Let's multiply that by a 100 million households in the U.S. and I can't wait for the fun. Why don't we just decorate our dinner tables with fizzling sticks of TNT and be sure to depart on our post-prandial constitutionals before our dining rooms are kill zones? Better yet, let's have the government mandate that. I frankly think the hazard of a broken fluorescent bulb is probably overblown, otherwise the giant ones we'd always break against a dumpster in the alley behind a store I worked at when I was a kid would've left me brain damaged; but then perhaps it did.
I'll admit that CFLs are good for things like lighting broad areas harshly from places that would make replacement a pain in the ass. Consumers already gladly shell out the extra dough for long-lasting bulbs in such circumstances. If you want their use encouraged and widespread on a voluntary basis, I recommend using 1% of the energy and money spent touting shitty lights as great and encouraging the adoption of fragile household poison bombs, and put it towards building a better product that people might want to buy because it make sense, saves them money, and they actually want them.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 11:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 24, 2007
NEW LEVELS OF GOV'T PATERNALISM
Mayor Bloomberg seems to be looking abroad for his policy proposal ideas recently. His big Earth Day initiative was to timidly raise the concept, and then come out full-bore in favor of congestion pricing in Manhattan. It would involve charging drivers $8 to use Manhattan's busier streets from 6am to 6pm. London started a similar program just two months ago.
Now Bloomberg is down in Mexico studying a program dubbed Conditional Cash, but called Opportunidades south of the border. It involves the government paying poor people for attaining certain goals, like seeing a doctor regularly, making sure your kids attend school, and following proper nutritional guidelines. Actually, only women can receive the money. It's assumed Mexican men will just blow the cash on tequila and cockfights.
If this sounds like government paternalism taken to an extreme, that's because it is paternalism--literally. This amounts to the Mexican government giving its citizens an allowance as long as they've done their chores and eaten all their vegetables. Why is Bloomberg looking for good governance ideas in Mexico, anyway. He's the Mayor of New York City, for chrissakes.
Tagged: allowance, bloomberg, mexicoPosted by Lexiphane at 3:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 24, 2007
MANHATTAN LOSES GRIP ON GAY-REPS-FOR-ISLAND-BOROUGHS MONOPOLY
This may be the answer to a trivia question some day: 2007 is the year that Staten Island may elect its first openly gay representative to the State Assembly. The politically Red Borough that usually elects Republicans in a city of Blue State voters, Staten Island is holding a special election following the death of John W. Lavelle, who represented the 61st Assembly District for Staten Island's north shore. Unlike the rest of Richmond County, the north shore of Staten Island generally tilts Democratic and this Tuesday's special election could elevate openly-gay Matthew Titone to the State Assembly. Titone is opposed in the race by Rose Margarella, running on the Republican and Conservative Party lines, and Kelvin Alexander, who is running on the Independence Party line. Given that Margarella and Alexander will split the fiscal and social conservative vote, Titone will likely win the race despite his radical gay platform:
Mr. Titone said that his election would indeed be “an exciting thing,” but that he was most concerned about finding ways to increase health care financing in the borough, reducing class sizes in the Assembly district’s schools and making prekindergarten programs available for all 4-year-olds.
Alright, his radically moderate centrist-Democrat platform.
There is another special election on Staten Island this coming Tuesday. Assemblyman Vincent Ignizio was elected to the City Council in a special election February 20th, so his south shore seat must be filled. Democratic leaders feel that their candidate, John S. Mulia, has a chance in the heavily Republican 62nd Assembly District. His Republican opponent is the unfortunately named Louis Tobacco, who was nominated after frontrunner Chester Asbestos dropped out of the race for health reasons*.
*Made that last part up.
Tagged: assembly, gay, politics, staten islandPosted by Lexiphane at 11:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 23, 2007
PUBLIC INVASION OF PRIVACY
I present a pleasant view of a tropical beach becaue I am about to broach the subject of private vs. public ownership of corporations. Whoa!! whoa!! Drop the mouse and/or razor blade! Stare at the pretty picture to the right if you feel it'll calm you, but this might be interesting.
In very short order, this is the difference between a public corporation and a private one:
A public corporation is like a democracy, where any person who owns a share in the company can have his say. They'll be ignored of course, until they can garner enough votes to make a difference on the corporate board, but even the tiniest voters can be a pain in the ass to management. Also, the management of public companies are rewarded the most when they give the voters what they want: smooth, uncomplicated, unvarying earnings growth. When they vary from this scheme, management is severely punished.
Voters/shareholders are a fickle lot.The costs associated with this are pretty high.
Management has to spend a good portion of its time making every portion of its financial transactions visible and understandable to outsiders. They also have to incur legal fees every time some individual or group of investors feels they've been misled and lost money in a company's stock. In short: shareholders are a whiny bunch of pissant second-guessers who are nothing but trouble.
A private company is like a medieval fiefdom. The ownership class may consist of one or a number of individuals. One may even buy into ownership class in the privately-held fiefdom. But business is conducted as ownership sees fit. There is no public voice though. If you don't like the way things are going, you can be invited to take your money and get the hell out--don't forget to leave your profits at the door. Free from the clamoring voices of jackass shareholders who know as much about your business as they do about their rotisserie baseball leagues, you can carefully plan for longterm investment and success, especially with all the savings you've accrued from not having to deal with public ownership.
This is only interesting because it's one of those instance where you'll see dyed-in-the-wool free marketeer capitalists swiveling their heads, not sure which way they should turn. On the one hand you've got the public force of numerous decision makers dictating "the market" decision on whether one should do this or that according to your share price. On the other hand, you've got individual profit-minded businessmen making the decisions that they feel is in their (as owners) best interest, without the meddling of know-nothing jackasses and detestable government regulators.
The intersting thing is that one is not clearly more beneficial than the other. The higher the costs a government may place on a public corporation, the more attractive it may be to go private. The costs of being private, however, is that one cuts one's company off from the market-intelligence of a million sources, carping or otherwise.
The reason I brought all this up is that two papers whose editorials are usually bent at the same angles went in different directions this morning.
The Wall Street Journal's article is (Bah! article is only availble via subscription) here. It's in favor of the beauty of market ownership to create a self-sustaining and self-regualting model of profitability. This opinion piece at The Sun goes the other way by praising a billionare who runs his company exactly as he wants it.
NB: One would think that one model is more disposed to criminality than the other. A publicly-owned corporate executive with his profits tied to a stock price so he can cash in on options may be incentivized to falsify or distort financial statements. A private, or controlling, owner can decide to loot a company's resources through extravagance or other malfeasance because there is no external check on his actions with any weight. I can say with no authority but a hint of suspicion that the uber-meta-market regulates ALL OF THIS so that privately conducted chicanery and publicly held jackassery inform the greater world of their benfits and costs. The result is the result. That's the market as one big world correction.
Anyway, all this has been in the news lately, so this has been a Lexiphane.com heads up.
Tagged: finance, private, publicPosted by Lexiphane at 12:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 22, 2007
THE LAW, THE CASH, AND THE PUBLIC GOOD
A few weeks ago, I wrote about what a bad idea it was to align economic interests with a propensity to increase jail populations [see REAPING WHAT WE'VE SOWN, 3/3/07]. I know; it's a fairly far-fetched idea that law enforcement would allow itself to be slowly affected by base matters such as cash on the table, political pressures to provide it, or political pressures to demand it. On the other hand, sometimes one doesn't have to go that far up the ladder for examples:
On January 1, caps on the amount of overtime a police officer can accrue were removed, leading to a spike of more than 10,000 more arrests than in the same 2 1/2 month period in 2006. Two weeks ago the caps were restored at 60 hours of overtime a month, and the arrest rate has since dropped, sources said.
The NYPD is quick to provide an explanation for the increase:
The police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said at a budget hearing on Tuesday that many of the new arrests were due to a narcotics initiative at the beginning of the year, but a spokesman could not be reached yesterday to clarify the details of the initiative.
That sounds reasonable, except for the fact that this particular article is about how courts are so clogged with cases of no consequence that a lot of arrested people are being released due to legal restrictions on how long one can be jailed before being charged. Also, the lede of the article described a 15-year-old girl who was held for 30 hours in a NYC jail for passing between two subway cars while the train was in motion. Up until this was made illegal two or so years ago, I did the same thing every single day for 10 years.
If cops can get paid for arresting someone for doing anything illegal at the end of their shifts, when it can net them an extra few hundred dollars of overtime a month, expect an increase in law enforcement harassment beyond what is prudent or reasonable.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 20, 2007
CAN HE SHOW US THE WAY?
The LA Times ran an interesting Opinion piece yesterday. While I'm generally a fan of Spike Lee's work and find a good deal of validity to the concept, I don't think I was familiar with his theory of the "Magic Negro" stock character in films. In his opinion piece, David Ehrenstein writes that Barack Obama is filling the role of the Magic(al) Negro in the drama that is an election cycle in American poltics:
The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia.
He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.
Wikipedia's definition gets more specific:
The magical negro is simply a plot device to help the protagonist get out of trouble, typically through helping the white character recognize his own faults and overcome them.[3] In this way, the magical negro is similar to the Deus ex machina; a simple way for the protagonist to overcome an obstacle almost entirely through outside help. Although he has magical powers, his "magic is ostensibly directed toward helping and enlightening a white male character."[5] It is this feature of the magical negro that is most troubling. Although the character seems to be showing African-Americans in a positive light, he is still ultimately subordinate to whites. He is also regarded as an exception, allowing white America to "like individual black people but not black culture."
I have to admit that I think Ehrenstein may be onto something here. Even Barack Obama's past lends to his characterization as a Magic Negro. Obama grew up in Hawaii, a place that is viewed as being veritably Edenic and unspoiled by any of the ugly problems that face the rest of the world and the U.S. in particular. One can hear these concerns echoed in regards to questions of Obama's "authenticity" as a black person. His persona seems to have sprung sui generis from an American dream archetype, unsullied by any intimations of America's less racially inclusive past. White Americans can take comfort that at no point is Obama going to assume the role of racial buzzkiller, a la Al Sharpton, by finding out his great-great-great grandfather was a slave owned by Jimmy Carter's great aunt's cousin's next door neighbor in Georgia.
There is only one problem––for Obama––when it comes to playing the role of the Magic Negro, if the stock character is being correctly applied. The same way that the character comes out of nowhere, as Obama has an extremely short history as a national political figure, it's also required that he or she exits stage left in short order, either by dying or, as in the case of Bagger Vance (pictured above), literally disappearing. If the pattern holds true, then Obama will make some significant contribution to redeeming the Democratic Party in the eyes of the public, then will politely fade away at the appropriate time––magnanimous and benificient. I'll presume that that is not the goal Obama and his supporters are hoping to achieve.
Posted by Lexiphane at 5:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 16, 2007
I GUESS I SHOULD BE FLATTERED
The folks at Great Firewall of China have designed a system to allow people to see if their favorite online sites are censored by the Chinese Communist government.
How it works
We’ve opened a website in China and route your url request on greatfirewallofchina.org through to our server in China. The server in China opens the url and the result is send back. Our testing is only based on one server on one location in China. We have different backup servers in different locations in China might one go down. Other locations and other servers may give you different access to the various websites.
I tested Lexiphane.com and yes, it is censored by the Chinese government. Who knows how that government's firewall operates, really? I doubt anyone in China has even tried to access my site. Perhaps some filter just picked up on something stridently anti-communist I wrote sometime in the past. In case anyone is watching right now, we may as well make it justified:
People of China, Censorship stinks and so does your Communist government. Overthrow your party dictators and enjoy the freedoms you and everyone in the world so richly deserve and are entitled to.
Bite me Commies.
Tagged: censorship, china, commiesPosted by Lexiphane at 1:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 14, 2007
BLOOMBERG: CAPITAL AND CAPITOLS
Mayor Bloomberg was in DC yesterday for major financial summit being held at Georgetown University. Some, like former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, said that he sounded like Bloomberg's ideal capitol may be more DC than Albany.
Straying afield of the boardroom talk that dominated yesterday's conference, Mr. Bloomberg prompted a former Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, to remark that the mayor's forceful commentary "sounded like something a presidential candidate would do." The reference to Mr. Bloomberg's rumored White House hopes drew laughter from the red-faced mayor and a smattering of applause from the Georgetown University crowd.
The mayor later acknowledged that though he has denied his intention to run for president, he has done little to tamp down speculation that he may enter the race. A former adviser, Esther Fuchs, was quoted as saying last week that there was an "80%" chance Mr. Bloomberg would run as an independent if the two parties nominated "extreme" candidates.
Barring a massive seachange in the way parties nominate their candidates, I would up that figure to a 99.9% chance that Bloomberg would have to run as an independent. I'll give one reason apiece for why he wouldn't be nominated by Republicans or Democrats. The hardcore leftists that control the early stages of their party's nomination process––characterized by sites like DailyKos––loathe Bloomberg. They hate him for inviting the Republicans to hold their 2004 convention in New York City and they hate him even more for the way he effectively used the police to prevent the usual urban anarchy that accompanies large protest movements descending upon a city. Bloomberg has a major problem with the Republican Party that only widens when he gets into the general electorate. It is an intractactable problem that he will not be able to talk himself out of and is sufficient to torpedo any believable chance that he could win a nomination, let alone office. Mayor Bloomberg is fiercely anti-2nd Amendment. He cloaks this in a mantel of being against illegal guns, but I suspect his concept of what should be considered legal involves only the guns that reside in the holsters of law enforcement and bodyguards. Democratic legislators followed this anti-gun impulse like lemmings off a cliff in 1998 and learned a bitter but valuable lesson: Americans own guns and most Americans don't think there's anything wrong with their neighbors owning guns. About half of all households in the U.S. own guns and 80% of all U.S. States allow the concealed carry of weapons in public unless the person is found mentally unstable or his a criminal record.
If Bloomberg runs it will have to be as an Independent. As a dyed-in-the-wool liberal in almost all areas save for economic, his candidacy would brutalize the Democrats at the polls and hand the Republicans the Presidency in '08 in a way that would make Ralph Nader look like a total piker.
Tagged: bloomberg, democrats, guns, independent, nyc, president, republicans, rncPosted by Lexiphane at 8:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 13, 2007
MIND THE GAPS
This morning Gothamist.com pointed out a story that happens to be the rarest of occurences in The New York Times's reportoire: a piece about a caring mother, a sick infant, a giant insurance company, and an expensive Manhattan hospital . . . where absolutely no one is to blame for anything:
This is a small tale of the city, of a worried mother and of her new son, born ill. No one has done anything wrong in this story, not the doctors, not the nurses, not the hospital, not the insurance company.
Yet something is not quite right, and it has driven a fretful mother to extremes.
The story goes on to tell the tale of Nicole Carey, a Long Island woman who travelled 90 minutes to deliver her baby at the Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Following the birth, there were complications: her son's lungs filled with fluid and Nicole developed blood clots in her uterus. After her blood clots were successfully dealt with, Nicole Carey was free to leave the hospital, but her son Preston had to remain in the perinatal intensive care unit. Is any parent really free to leave at that point?
Carey's insurance company had no reason to continue paying for her bed in an expensive private hospital––she was fine. Yet she wanted to remain close by to nurse her son every few hours and in case his condition took a turn for the worse, or the better.
For more than 115 consecutive hours, as of a 1:30 p.m. interview yesterday with this reporter, Mrs. Carey remained in the visitors’ waiting room on the sixth floor, pacing, reading and sleeping on a sofa between two soda machines and a snack machine.
Sympathetic doctors and nurses eventually let her shower in the hospital's staff facilities and after almost five days she took Preston home. That is about all The New York Times has to say about the subject, for once (and thankfully) failing to conflate it into some big-story trend. The story itself does raise the conundrum of parents with sick children in a hospital far from home.
It made me think of The Ronald McDonald House Charities, formed in 1974 to offer parents of sick children a place to stay close to the hospitals where their children were being treated––primarily in neo- and perinatal care facilities. It seems like one of those perfect societal-care roles that an organization can step in to fill, when the mission doesn't fall under the purview of government, insurance, or healthcare providers. Donations can be made to the Ronald McDonald House Charities here.
Posted by Lexiphane at 5:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
LET'S SAVE THE OUTRAGE THIS TIME, ALRIGHT?
The New York Sun has an article today filled with some of the most disingenous belly-aching I've heard in some time. Right from the headline, one can sense that the head on this argument is more Coors Light than Guinness.
Ban of Liquor on St. Patrick's Riles Railroad Commuters
What commuters would these be exactly? On a Saturday? Could it be the throngs of Irish-for-a-day drunkards who make almost all public transportation in and around NYC a vomit-filled nightmare? Clinging to the increasingly absurd notion that the Irish are still some sort of discriminated-against ethnic group, as if this was the "ol' sod" during the Troubles, is patently ridiculous:
"It definitely looks like stereotyping, and that's what the MTA should be faulted for," state Senator Martin Golden, a Republican of Brooklyn who is Irish, said. "Some people do get out of control, but to focus on that day, and on certain segments of the population like that, is totally wrongheaded."
Mr. Golden said the MTA should lift what he dubbed a discriminatory liquor ban that assumes Irish revelers are more out of control than other groups when celebrating their holidays.
"And I'll fight any man who claims otherwise!" was not added by Mr. Golden.
A VP of a fraternal Irish police organization involved with the parade––of all people!––complained that a booze ban on March 17th was discriminatory because enforcement wasn't equally strengthened during the Gay Pride or certain Hispanic Day parades. Alright buddy, and everyone always says that it's "A Day When Everyone's Queer!" during the Gay Pride celebration; when legions of knuckleheads under the age age of 25 flock from far and wide, donning rainbow pants and drunkenly singing old Madonna favorites. You think you 're being unfairly discriminated against? Try holding a parade when every business and residence on 5th Avenue boards up their windows and doors with plywood and lock up their daughters, lest they be ravished by some scary Dominicans hoods. I think this is one occasion when we can put down the bottle for just an hour or two and stop whining. As for the stereotypes, try to get past them when weaving between cops and firemen relieving themselves just off 2nd Ave next Saturday, while stepping over the hundreds of empty bottles and cans littering the streets of the East Side, and as a you see some teenager with vomit down the front of his shirt holding onto a building as he waits in line to be denied entry to yet another bar.
(Photos courtesy of a Google search that turns up thousands of links associating St. Patrick's Day with drunken behavior.)
Tagged: drunk, mta, nyc, st. patrick's day, subway, vomitPosted by Lexiphane at 8:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 8, 2007
WATER POLO ANYONE?
I wouldn't be surprised if sports journalists have some sort of inferiority complex. More than likely they were the scorekeepers in high school and college, rather than the athletes themselves. Once they've graduated to a professional career in journalism, however, they continue to get short shrift from their peers who look down on sports reporting as a necessary sop to the masses: it's not like sports are important or serious. That's why sports writing is always so jam packed full of metaphors for life. It's not enough to celebrate exciting pastimes. Sports must be conflated to big-picture status. More often than not, this inclination results in silliness like the latest cover of Sports Illustrated at right.
The next time a ball game gets rained out during the September stretch run, you can curse the momentary worthlessness of those tickets in your pocket. Or you can wonder why it got rained out -- and ask yourself why practice had to be called off last summer on a day when there wasn't a cloud in the sky; and why that Gulf Coast wharf where you used to reel in mackerel and flounder no longer exists; and why it's been more than one winter since you pulled those titanium skis out of the garage.
Hmmm, I'm going to ditch Ockham's Razor and guess 'catastrophic global climate change?'
And therein may lie the great value of sports. What happens in an arena so familiar and beloved may sound an alarm we will hear and heed. At a time when so much in our lives is linear and digital, from the economy to technology, sports still run in graceful cycles, marking time in rhythm with the seasons.
The above paragraph pretty much sums up the inanity of the whole article. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Seriously, what the hell is that supposed to mean? I understand what "linear" and "digital" mean conceptually. I fail to see how those words contribute to any type of coherent statement about what the author is discussing. I guess in the end it doesn't matter. Throw a bunch of nonsense into a pot, mix it together, alarm readers, give them outlets to action, feel self-satisfied, and we're done. Eco-journalism at its most regular.
Tagged: global warming, journalism, sports, sports illustratedPosted by Lexiphane at 9:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 3, 2007
REAPING WHAT WE'VE SOWN
Critics of liberal immigration policies that either turn a blind eye towards illegal migrant workers who come to the U.S. to work or would reinstate a Braceros program that would formalize and screen temporary foreign workers contend that this incoming population serves only to depress wages for native U.S. workers. Without the downward pressure on wages exerted by foreign workers, domestic employers would be forced to pay U.S. workers more, or so the logic goes.
The shortcomings of this argument are multi-fold. The first is the assumption that U.S. producers would continue their efforts stateside with higher labor costs. In the case of agriculture, a farm can't up and move to another country, but owner/operators could decide to mechanize or simply stop farming altogether. More than likely, the large costs of mechanization and the higher input costs of domestic labor would serve to force smaller farms to either shut down or sell out to larger corporate farming interests. Secondly, agricultural work is almost by definition seasonal and requires a transient population of workers who are willing to travel to where the work is currently located. Such populations tend to be rootless and without property--not generally the profile of a U.S. citizen. Restrictive immigration measures may gain some politicians votes and the support of die-hard nativists, but they could also serve to choke the life out of some farming communities unable to attract laborers willing to harvest crops.
Colorado finds itself in just such a predicament after it passed strict immigration rules that target migrant laborers necessary to the state's farmers. These workers are now fleeing the state and farmers are desparate for hands in the fields. How desperate has the situation become? Colorado is reinvigorating the prison farm concept, where the state sells the labor of its prisoners.
In a pilot program run by the state Corrections Department, supervised teams of low-risk inmates beginning this month will be available to harvest the swaths of sweet corn, peppers and melons that sweep the southeastern portion of the state.
Under the program, which has drawn criticism from groups concerned about immigrants’ rights and from others seeking changes in the criminal justice system, farmers will pay a fee to the state, and the inmates, who volunteer for the work, will be paid about 60 cents a day, corrections officials said.
Concerned about the possible shortage of field labor, Dorothy B. Butcher, a state representative from Pueblo and a supporter of the program, said, “The workers on these farms do the weeding, the harvesting, the storing, everything that comes with growing crops for the market.”
“If we can’t sustain our work force, we’re going to be in trouble,” said Ms. Butcher, a Democrat.
The program will make its debut in Pueblo County, where farmers have been hit hard by the labor shortage. Frank Sobolik, director of a Colorado State University extension program that works with farmers in Pueblo County, said he expected that about half of the 300 migrant workers employed by area farms might not return this season.
“There’s a feeling, a perception that these laborers won’t be back because it’s safer for them to find work in other states,” Mr. Sobolik said. “The farmers are really concerned. These are high-value crops we’re talking about here with a high labor requirement.”
Forget the fact that the quality of labor by prisoners likely working against their will will probably be substandard; there are more serious concerns about such programs. Aligning economic interests of the state and private businesses in a way that has them benefit from the cheap forced labor of imprisoned citizens presents incentives to abuse the criminal justice system in horrible ways. This occurred in the South after Reconstruction, when emancipated slaves who found themselves unemployed were often arrested on charges like "vagrancy" and sent to prison farms or chain gangs, where their labor was contracted out and they were essentially re-enslaved. Given the disproportionate number of minorities in our current prison systems, do we really want to send them out into the fields?
Appearances aside, it provides a much more insidious and invisible tilt to the criminal justice system where everyone but the accused benefits by having him sent to jail. Labor shortages will quickly be responded to by get-tough-on-crime campaigns. Decriminalization or tolerance of otherwise non-destructive behavior towards others will be met with increasingly draconian penalties. It will never appear as dramatic or as obvious, but it's a dangerous system to put into place.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 9:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
NYC POLITICS BORING
Sure, our current mayor may be a billionaire too good to reside in Gracie Mansion (a considerable step down from his UES mansion) and Rudy's moved on to run for the Presidency, but NYC apparently has nothing on Philadephia when it comes to political antics. In the long tradition of embarassing brothers of successful politicians (e.g. Roger Clinton, Billy Carter), Philly Mayor John Street's brother Milton Street may take the cake. It may be the City of Brotherly Love, but one gets the sense that there is probably little politicial love lost between Milton and the Mayor.
The Philadelphia Daily News reports that would-be mayoral candidate Milton Street had pledged to discontinue his run for the office now occupied by his younger brother if he failed to attract 5,000 supporters to a rally yesterday. He quickly backpedaled on the promise when about 2% of that number showed.
"I know I said that if I didn't get 5,000 people out here today I would not run. But there's something within me... I got to keep going. I got to keep on pushing," Street said to more than 100 people assembled outside City Hall.
Apparently a good portion of that crowd was from the media and passersby wondering who the man was crooning to electric organ music beside a coffin.
During an emotional 45-minute speech, Street unveiled a coffin to emphasize the city's homicide problem; sang a hymn, "If I Can Help Somebody," and said a prayer. A keyboardist played soft organ music in the background throughout.
Street said that he was going to have a band play but that two of the musicians were shot and killed yesterday morning. Police said they were unable to confirm his claim.
If that last paragraph didn't make you laugh at loud or at least crack a smile, something is wrong with you. Seriously though, Milton Street is concerned about crime and willing to crack down on the scourge of nearly all urban environments: hardworking immigrant small business owners.
Stopping violence was the focus of Street's comments. He said he would place a curfew on corner stores as part of his anti-crime effort.
"You have these stores run by the Asians staying up until 2 in the morning," he said. "I'm going to shut them down by 9 o'clock... . What business do you have if you're not selling drugs?"
While that was supposed to be a rhetorical question . . .
A man in the crowd yelled, "Wonton soup!"
Dark forces are currently aligned against candidate Milton Street.
"There's all these movements out here to keep Milton Street off the ballot," Street said atop a stage on the west side of City Hall before the crowd of mostly news media and passing gawkers. "Let the voters decide."
Some of these movements include a federal tax evasion investigation related to $2 million in consulting fees paid to Street related to Philadelphia International Airport, a recent arrest for outstanding traffic warrants, and questions about whether he even meets residency requirements to run for Mayor.
Someone paid Milton Street $2 million in consulting fees.
If his run for office doesn't pan out, Street plans to continue to employ his oratorical strengths in some manner or another.
"I have some options," Street said. "I mean, there are some other things I can do. I may do some talk radio. People have expressed an interest, without me giving out a lot of information, about me doing some talk radio. As a job. So I need a voice. So I guess I'll position myself where I can best have my voice heard."
I for one hope to hear a lot more from candidate Street
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 11:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 23, 2007
WORST--BUT MOST APT--ANALOGY EVER
I didn't watch the State of the Union address this evening on account of more pressing matters, like watching Veronica Mars and cleaning out my sock drawer (really!) Maybe I'll read the text of the address later. God knows I'll be inundated with all range of opinions about it in the media for the rest of the week at least. I did skim through Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) remarks that served as a nominal rebuttal. Of course, these things are not rebuttals, but carefully worded statements putting one's party in the best possible light while in direct opposition to everything the President has just said. Anyway, from the skimming of the rebuttal it looked pretty good until the end, when Webb made one of the worst possible historical analogies in the purpose of furthering his case.
As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. “When comes the end?” asked the General who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War Two. And as soon as he became President, he brought the Korean War to an end.
That's a great story Senator, but unfortunately the Korean War is technically still in progress. North Korea never signed a treaty agreement with U.N. powers, but only agreed to a cease-fire and the establishment of a demilitarized zone between the North and the South. The U.S. still requires and maintains a significant military presence in South Korea, a country that developed into a nation with a First World economy and democratic institutions while under our constant protection. North Korea, on the other hand, we left in the hands of a megalomaniacal dictator who turned his nation into a prison camp where mass starvation is a fact of life and tool for quelling political dissent. Power was assumed by his son at the time Kim Il Sung's death; a son who by most observations appears quite insane. I'm sure the North Korean people (not discounting the millions who died under Kim Il Sung and then his son) really appreciate our quick exit from an unfinished conflict.
In 1959, Gregory Peck starred in a Korean War movie called Pork Chop Hill. It is about U.S. troops' bloody efforts to capture and hold what appears to be a rather insignificant pile of dirt and rock on the eve of the planned cease-fire as final territorial decisions were being sorted out. Towards the end of the movie, Peck's character--a lieutenant--is asked by a private what the hell they're fighting and dying for. The war is as good as over. Why won't the North Koreans just sign the damn cease-fire and stop the senseless slaughter of hundreds of U.S. and Chinese soldiers? Peck answers--and I am totally paraphrasing from memory here--that "they're waiting to see how much we want it. How many soldiers would the U.S. being willing to sacrifice, because to them the number of their dead is inconsequential." The fight over Pork Chop Hill isn't about a few acres of land, it was about the North Koreans--acting as a proxy for the Soviets and the Chinese--testing the U.S.'s military and political resolve for future purposes.
They got the message. Soviet and Communist Chinese continued to bankroll and supply anti-Western movements throughout that region of the world for the next half a century, eventually giving us the Cambodian genocide and the Vietnam War, whose death toll of American servicemen was so great that the Korean conflict became known as the Forgotten War. It was not forgotten by the Communists. 50 years later North Korea has progressed only in that they posess the ballistic missile technology to hit the continental U.S. and are on the verge of becoming a nuclear power. It also showed that the U.S. would back down from conducting a thorough war by not striking significantly along the Chinese border with North Korea--it was Chinese troops that were dying on the 38th parallel in Korea--out of political nicety. Yes, Eisenhower stopped the fighting in Korea. But he set the stage for the necessity of decades of constant military involvement around the world throughout the Cold War.
Draw your own parallels to our current situation. But how do you think voters would feel about a ceasefire and negotiated partition of Iraq along religious lines if they knew that it would mean U.S. troops remaining in that country for the next fifty years? Because that is exactly what Eisenhower delivered when he fulfilled his campaign promise. There is no cut and run without victory. There is just cut and stay. And stay. And stay.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 10:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 15, 2007
MODELS OF WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN
From a dank vaulted storage room on Randall's Island, architectural models that used to grace the headquarters of Robert Moses's Metropolitan Transportation Authority have been removed, refurbished and are prepared to go on display at three different museums int the city. They offer an opportunity to get a sense of the scale of the projects Moses was attempting and the civic debt we owe to the people that thwarted some of his more horrifying grand plans. The New York Sun reports:
This scale model with Matchboxsize poplar buildings was recently salvaged from an enclosed vaulted storage space under the Triborough Bridge on Randall's Island. It will be on public view for the first time along with other models as part of a threepart exhibition, the most comprehensive ever, about Moses and New York City — " Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Road to Recreation," opening January 28 at the Queens Museum of Art, " Robert Moses and the Modern City: Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution," opening January 30 at the Wallach Gallery of Columbia University, and " Robert Moses and the Modern City: Remaking the Metropolis," opening February 1 at the Museum of the City of New York. A related book, " Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York," co-edited by the curator of the three-part exhibition, Hilary Ballon, and Kenneth T. Jackson, will be published simultaneously by W.W. Norton.
Some of Moses's projects seem downright insane from a historical perspective. Rather than viewing the city as a destination to be reached and inhabited, Moses appears to have viewed the city as an obstacle to be razed in order to get someplace else more quickly.
At times, Moses could make the building process look all too easy. The model of Moses's proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway, which was to connect the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges to the Holland Tunnel and West Side Highway, has a portion with Lucite handles whereby one can simply lift a neighborhood out and replace it with part of the expressway. Ms. Ballon doubted that inserting the expressway in the city could be done in such a simple, benign manner without spillover effects to neighborhoods. It certainly was not the way the preservationist Jane Jacobs saw things, Ms. Henry said.
The Mid- Manhattan Expressway would have carved a corridor along 30th street, an area chosen to avoid Grand Central Terminal, Penn Station, and Herald Square. This proposed elevated six-lane highway, Moses boasted, would solve "the worst problem of traffic strangulation in history." As explained in the book accompanying the exhibit, groups like the fur industry, Murray Hill Home Owners Association, and Midtown Realty Owners Association vigorously opposed it.
Moses's Brooklyn-Battery Bridge would have demolished Castle Clinton in Battery Park. The proposed Long Island Sound Crossing provoked the town of Rye to commence a lawsuit and Oyster Bay to donate 3,100 acres in the path of the bridge as a wildlife refuge to the federal government. Most famously, Jacobs helped halt a highway from running through Washington Square Park, an idea Lewis Mumford likened to "civic vandalism."
The Queens Museum exhibit is the one I'd like to see the most, because I've never seen its existing scale model of the city known as The Panorama.
The models of the Mid- Manhattan Expressway and the Long Island Sound Crossing were made by a company called Lester Associates. The Queens Museum exhibition on Moses will coincide with the reopening of the most famous model made by Lester Associates, the huge sprawling panorama of New York that spans 9,355 square feet, making it the largest architectural scale model in the world. Consisting of 890,000 buildings, the panorama took a couple hundred people three years to build by hand. (As though in a Saul Steinberg cartoon, Nassau County and New Jersey are painted in black with no buildings.)
935,000 square feet! That is HUGE! I'd make the trip to Queens County for that alone.
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January 14, 2007
"GIMME AN O! GIMME A V! . . ."
What would that eventually spell? Overreach, of the judicial variety. The New York Times reports on the lack of enthusiasm over a judge's ruling that female high school cheerleaders must be present at female sporting events in equal measure to male sporting events. This means that some cheerleading squads no longer travel to boys' team away games to accomodate the girls' team schedule and oftentimes, the distaff cheerleaders aren't really welcomed by the women on the court.
Boys’ basketball boosters say something is missing in the stands at away games, cheerleaders resent not being able to meet their rivals on the road, and even female basketball players being hurrahed are unhappy.
In Johnson City, students and parents say they have accepted the change even as they question the need for it.
Several cheerleaders there recalled a game two years ago, long before the complaint, when the squad decided at the last minute to cheer for the girls’ team because a boys’ game was canceled.
The cheers drowned out directions from the girls’ coach, frustrated the players, and created so much tension that the cheerleaders left before halftime.
“They asked, ‘Why are you here?’ ” recalled Joquina Spence, 18, a senior cheerleader. “We told them, ‘We’re here to support you,’ and it was a problem because they kept yelling at us.”
Title IX, the federal statute enacted to level the playing field between men's and women's athletic programs, has become a victim of its own success as it wanders into the realm of reductio ad absurdum in order to stay relevant. Proponents of Title IX are now reduced to ferreting out non-existent problems regardless of whether anyone wants a proposed solution.
Whitney Point is one of 14 high schools in the Binghamton area that began sending cheerleaders to girls’ games in late November, after the mother of a female basketball player in Johnson City, N.Y., filed a discrimination complaint with the United States Department of Education. She said the lack of official sideline support made the girls seem like second-string, and violated Title IX’s promise of equal playing fields for both sexes.
But, as the New York State Public High School Athletic Association warned in a letter to its 768 members in November, the education department determined that cheerleaders should be provided “regardless of whether the girls’ basketball teams wanted and/or asked for” them.
While most of the Title IX lawsuits are originating here in New York State, leave it to California to take the cake in demanding nothing less than total mental adherence to a new and better political mindset:
Last February, a statewide group of physical education teachers in California called for cheerleaders to attend girls’ and boys’ games “in the same number, and with equal enthusiasm” as part of its five-year goals.
Five year plans; goals of enthusiastic participation. This sounds like something Mao would have come up with during the Cultural Revolution. Good luck with all of that.
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January 3, 2007
NOT THE BRIGHTEST BULB (OR IDEA) IN THE PACK
The New York Times ran a piece yesterday on retailing giant WalMart's efforts to speed consumer adoption of compact flourescent light bulbs. Utilizing the clout it has with its suppliers, the company is strong-arming bulb makers into producing more energy efficient bulbs than the incandescents that have been the household lighting standard for basically the last century. And certainly, energy efficient bulbs would reduce energy consumption in the U.S.
A compact fluorescent has clear advantages over the widely used incandescent light — it uses 75 percent less electricity, lasts 10 times longer, produces 450 pounds fewer greenhouse gases from power plants and saves consumers $30 over the life of each bulb. But it is eight times as expensive as a traditional bulb, gives off a harsher light and has a peculiar appearance.
A big problem is that consumers don't really care for them. Compact flourescents have been on the market in some form or another since 1979 and according to the Times article, only 6% of U.S. households have even one of them plugged in for savings. Another problem is that disposal of millions of compact flourescent bulbs into landfills could release a signicant amount of poisonous mercury into the environment. Don't think that trial lawyers wouldn't jump all over that one. I can see WalMart execs 30 years from now hauled before some Congressional committee:
"Now, Mr. CEO, are you telling us that your predecessor used his formidable retailing organization's power to force consumers to buy a more expensive product that has now poisoned the water and air that our children are drinking and breathing today?"
WalMart execs are trying to forestall just such a situation by proposing recycling centers for consumers to drop off their used bulbs at WalMart stores. This idea brought to mind a speech I once attended that was given by Wayne Huizenga, then the owner of Waste Management International and Blockbuster video. Huizenga was a wonderful speaker and had a lot of interesting things to say. The theme of the event he was attending, however, was Socially Responsible Business, something I don't think the trash hauler and video rentor had given much thought to.
During the Q&A period, a young woman stood up and asked if he'd considered integrating Waste Management's disposal functions with Blockbuster's entertainment distribution functions. More specifically: would he consider putting recycling drop-off stations in his numerous Blockbuster stores so customers could drop off their empties while returning their movies. To his credit, Huizenga handled the question somewhat gently so as not to hurt a young woman's feelings. I got the impression that if this had been suggested by one of his employees, said employee would have been out on his ass and in the unemployment line before the meeting broke for lunch. The essence of Huizenga's reply was essentially "That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Why the hell would I want to turn my chain of family entertainment stores into waste transfer stations?" That is paraphrasing.
But some C.E.O.'s aren't content to provide millions of customers what they want or need. They've got vision, or visions of a better world shaped by their executive insight into what is best for that world and its inhabitants. Said people generally do less harm when their career ascension is limited to the corporate level of Store Greeters. WalMart C.E.O. H. Lee Scott Jr. is such a man. He is no mere merchant providing goods and services for a living. He is a pioneer and force for good! In fact, I get the impression that everything Mr. Scott does resonates with an exclamation point behind it in his mind. Including literally SAVING THE WORLD(!):
And it would have stayed that way unless Wal-Mart decided to go green. More than a year ago, Mr. Scott, the company’s chief executive, began reaching out to some of environmental groups, telling them that Wal-Mart, long regarded as an environmental offender, wanted to become a leader on issues like fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions.Mr. Scott viewed such a move as a way to use Wal-Mart’s influence to improve the environment, cut costs and, of course, burnish the company’s bruised image. In September 2005, Mr. Scott and Andy Ruben, Wal-Mart’s vice president for strategy and sustainability, drove 6,000 feet to the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire with Steve Hamburg, an environmental studies professor at Brown University, and Fred Krupp, the president of the advocacy group Environmental Defense.
At the summit, where scientists measure climate change 24 hours a day, the men discussed global warming, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer and what Wal-Mart could do about them.
“You need to look at what is being sold on the shelf,” Mr. Hamburg recalled telling Mr. Scott over a dinner of turkey and mashed potatoes. He began talking excitedly about compact fluorescent bulbs. “Very few products,” he said, “are such a clear winner” for consumers and the environment.
Soon after returning from the trip, Wal-Mart publicly embraced the bulbs with the zealotry of a convert. In meetings with suppliers, buyers for the chain laid out their plans: lower prices, expanding the shelf space dedicated to them and heavily promoting the technology.
Doesn't anyone pine for the days when "zealotry" was used with some negative connotations? I personally find fanatical partisanry on behalf of goals and groups somewhat disturbing. And don't tell me if that mentioned meal's menu included gluten-free rice cakes and tofurkey those details would've made it to print. "See, doomsaying scientists having dinner with powerful corporate executives is just plain ol' folks like you and me."
So Mr. Scott is intent on ramming compact flourescent light bulbs down his customers' throats. And if that means giving up valuable shelf space for educational displays, profits (and shareholders) be damned! Mr. Scott might want to give some thought as to why a product that's been on the market for almost 30 years, serves the environment, and saves customers money has not taken off. Such things generally "sell themselves" as the saying goes. I doubt it's lack of consumer education. It's probably because consumers don't like them.
Mr. Scott should use his considerable clout to pressure existing or start-up lightbulb producers to do something really innovative, like create a marketable product that people will want to buy wherever the hell it's located on a shelf. There's a reason one has to reach way up high to the top shelf to get your toilet paper: that shit sells itself. And given Americans' propensity to buy almost any piece of crap that might save them a few bucks down the line, building a better lightbulb that people might actually want shouldn't be that big a job.
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December 27, 2006
UNELECTED BUT NOT TO BE UNREMEMBERED
President Gerald Ford, Jr., the 38th President of the United States, died late Tuesday according to a statement from his family. No cause of death was immediately given, but the former President suffered from heart problems. Ford was the only unelected President and Vice President in the history of the country. He ascended to the office following the resignation of President Richard Nixon. His appointment as Vice President was dependent on confirmation by the Senate, as per the requirements of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. One of Ford's first statements as President would be his most memorable and came during his swearing in ceremony:
My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.
Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.
Earlier, he acknowledged with some humility the circumstances of his taking office:
I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers. And I hope that such prayers will also be the first of many.
Such modesty seems like it would be an unwise invitation to political attack these days, and it unfortunately would likely be taken as such. The AP's obituary of President Ford seems to do the man's life some justice. Obituaries, of course, are generally written some time in advance of their subjects' death. An indication that highlights the fact that Gerald Ford Jr. was the longest-surviving President (followed by Pres. Ronald Reagan) is that the primary author of the AP's obituary, J.Y. Smith, predeceased his subject by nearly a year in January of 2006.
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December 22, 2006
INTO THE SUNSET
(Photo by Karl Rabe for The Poughkeepsie Journal)
Just yesterday I closed a piece about painter Christine Lafuente [see HUDSON RIVER SCHOOLED, 12/21/06] by writing that I suspected her mother was former Mayor of Poughkeepsie and my high school AP Government teacher Colette Lafuente. I've been informed that assumption was correct and just last week the outgoing County Clerk is retiring. Lafuente ran and was elected County Clerk three years ago after hitting the term limit wall for the number of times one can serve as the Mayor of Poughkeepsie. Now she is retiring to warmer pastures, taking time to travel and spend more time with her family; (her husband unfortunately was killed in 2001 at the World Trade Center).
Lafuente announced her retirement as Dutchess County clerk last month, and the party had been in the works ever since.
"It's not going to be the same," said Stephanie Shaw, a DMV worker. "Everyone's going to miss her."
Only last month Lafuente received Dutchess County's first Athena Award for her professional excellence and commitment to community service. Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, was a protector of her city.
Lafuente's career has run the Dutchess gamut, from school teacher, to legislator and mayor, and finally, to clerk.
"I should have come to the county clerk office sooner," she said.
Her replacement must be appointed by Gov. George Pataki before he leaves office. Whoever he picks, I don't envy them. He or she will have some impressive shoes to fill. I know I'm with Lafuente's staff and the residents of Poughkeepsie and surrounding towns in wishing her well on whatever she plans to do next.
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December 8, 2006
JOURNALISM, BLOGGING AND GOVERNMENT REPRESSION
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) yesterday released a report detailing various governments' crackdowns on journalists or individuals accused of criticizing their rule.
When Iranian journalist Mojtaba Saminejad was sentenced to two years in prison for insulting the country's supreme leader, it was not for an article that appeared in a newspaper. His offending story was posted on his personal Web blog.
Nearly one-third of journalists now serving time in prisons around the world published their work on the Internet, the second-largest category behind print journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in an analysis released Thursday.
The bulk of Internet journalists in jail -- 49 in total -- shows that "authoritarian states are becoming more determined to control the Internet," said Joel Simon, the New York-based group's executive director.
What is alarming is that many of the so-called offending pieces that landed the jailed individuals in hot water weren't even published in their home countries, but through overseas outlets.
Tao, the jailed Chinese journalist, could have published his notes on state propaganda in the Chinese magazine in Hunan province where he worked as an editorial director. He chose instead to send an e-mail from his Yahoo! account to the U.S.-based editor of a Chinese language Web forum.
Of course, pieces could be filed under a pseudonym or anonymously to circumvent punishment of authors. Such tactics, however, dilute their authority and validity as an author's reputation for veracity and agenda cannot be properly evaluated by his or her audience.
The WNBC story about the CPJ report doesn't note whether or how the organization distinguishes between professional journalists or simply individuals self-publishing on the Internet. It is not an insignificant differentiation, as "the press" usually is afforded certain legal protections and precedents to secure its independence. In my mind, Internet self-publishers, of which bloggers are a subset, seem most historically reminiscent of pamphleteers. Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" was published and distributed in pamphlet form in 1776. The document argued for independence from England and the establishment of a constitutional republic. Incidentally, Paine would later be labeled an outlaw persona non grata in England for publishing anti-monarchist pamphlets supporting the French Revolution. The French themselves eventually threatened Paine with execution for his objection to the execution of King Louis XVI. The former escaped the country with the help of James Monroe, then serving as the U.S. Minister to France. Paine had no prior experience as a "professional journalist." He was a public intellectual. Opponents probably considered him a gadfly, governments an agitator. Attempting to make legal distinctions between the freedoms of ordinary citizens and an established press seems like a poor idea.
I'm not the only one who's given thought to the similarity of Internet self-publishers and Revolutionary-era pamphleteers.
CPJ's breakdown of jailed reporters by country with details concerning each case is available here.
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November 11, 2006
GOOD LUCK WITH ALL 'O THAT!
The Democrats got their wish fulfilled; and of course the saying is that you better watch out for what you wish for, 'cause you just might get it. With control of the House, Senate, and the dismissal of Don Rumsfeld, the Dems are basically out of punching bags. True, they could continue to pound away at President Bush and his VP Cheney, but that's going to seem pretty lame now that they have legislative power.
What kind of party wants to inherit a war they're insistent on losing? That was their platform: Iraq is un-winnable, based on the faulty leadership of our government. Well kids, now you have the rudder; steer us to victory or ignonamous defeat and embarrassment. The Dems have inherited a record-high stock market, stunningly low unemployment, fantastic economic growth with low inflation, and a war that's claimed a historically small number of lives with no further attacks on the U.S. Their response was to claim that Bush was Hitler, and that was about it.
Nancy Pelosi is now the House leader and frankly the funniest excuse for legislative leadership I've ever seen. Some claim that Clinton also oversaw an economic boom, but that turned out to be a chimera based on fraud and dissembling--well identifiable with the man himself. The Internet boom, Enron, and other major corporate scandals were of a piece with an ethos of "Fuck it, we're getting rich and getting away with it, aren't we?"
Bush inherited that economic clusterfuck, a massive terrorist attack, and continuing public criticism, yet still managed to keep the economy from faltering, the stock market from plummeting, and America from dumping into a Carter-esque malaise.
Now we have Nancy Pelosi, who looks like a female version of Tim Burton's interpretation of the Joker. Yesterday's punchline is now the head of the House. Don Rumsfeld was great and scary because he was an experienced government official with executive experience who'd just as soon cut your nuts off as look at you. Pelosi looks like a deranged PTA parent who's questioning your commitment to SparkleMotion. Good luck Democrats.
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August 12, 2006
SOMETHING TO GET BEHIND
Wow. The Times is really punching above its weight this morning! A second salient article about loathesome politicians in one morning. The second group is Prohibitionists, who if you can believe this, are still being fought against to get booze legalized in some parts of the U.S.
Attempts by Wal-Mart and others to allow alcohol sales in other places that remain dry — 415 counties in the South and in Kansas still prohibit such sales — are meeting fierce resistance from some church groups and religious leaders. They argue that returning to the days when liquor flowed will mean more family violence, under-age drinking, drunken driving and a general moral decay in the community.
Family violence, under-age drinking, and drunken driving are wrong. Wrong Wrong Wrong. Don't beat your wife. Don't let your nine-year-old get drunk. Don't endanger yourself or others by getting behind the wheel with a few beers in you. But "general moral decay"? Hells yeah! If that's a code word for helping getting some sex-action, I'm going to have to break with the party line! Sometimes bad decisions are the right decisions at any given point.
I'm kidding of course. Sexual irresponsibility can lead to severely regretful mistakes. If adults can't make decisions at all, however, they can never make good decisions and wind up not being adults at all. That's un-American.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 7:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
NEVER BET ON RED
It's hard what to make of this:
This was not a surprise. The site of Pol Pot’s cremation on this barren mountainside eight years ago is collapsing from neglect, its small fence broken, its low metal roof rusting and curling. But Pol Pot, who as the Khmer Rouge leader was one of the most brutal mass murderers of the last century, has become a sort of bookie for those who pray to him for numbers.
For many here in this former Khmer Rouge stronghold, he is the guardian spirit of the Dangrek Mountains, curing ailments and dispensing lottery numbers. People who live here say visitors have plucked the last bits of bone from among the cinders over the years and carried them home for good luck. A casino is being built nearby to capitalize on this spiritual bounty.
Actually, I guess it's not that hard to figure. Aged Leftists sticking to the dream aren't that different from broken ten-time losers at the gambling tables. "One more roll! Someday I'll be a winner!" They never will be though. It's a suckers game with the odds rigged to guarantee failure. Stupid commie murderers.
The article linked to above has people romanticizing the Khmer Rouge. I like to remember them as the quintessential example of strict adherence to Marx and Lenin's founding Communist ideology: a barbaric race to the lowest common denominator, where glasses were proof and cause for summary execution and everyone aspired to the the least they could ever hope for as a precondition of survival. It was a sociological reductio ad absurdum that resulted in the deaths of millions of people. I try not to hold hate in my heart for anyone, but I truly deeply loathe Communists. That may be officially old school, and I may be a bit young for the Red Scare, but I hold it as a personal quirk.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 6:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 11, 2006
EATING THEIR OWN
It's tough to be a Connecticut Democrat. After losing the Dem primary, Sen Joe Lieberman has pledged to run as an Independent.
Lieberman, one of the most well-known centrists in the U.S. Senate, made it clear he's no longer trying to appeal only to Democrats, but also unaffiliated voters and Republicans. Meeting with about three dozen supporters at a Waterbury pizzeria, he said it was "un-American" to make national security a "partisan political football" in light of the terrorist plot uncovered Thursday in Britain.
He's right of course, but it looks like he'll split Democratic voters and hand one of the state's Senate seats to a Republican. The cause of this is clear. The Democratic Party has been hijacked by a bunch of loons who probably believe the plot to blow up multiple British airliners was engineered by Dick Cheney. While the party consistently falters on the national stage--particularly because of distaste with this type of paranoia--the lunatic fringe insists on pushing its candidates in a direction more in line with their dialectic. And in line with losing. If it's any indication of future lack of success, Sens. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry have already endorsed Ned Lamont, the Dems' erstwhile nominee. Good luck with all of that boys.
UPDATE: Got an email from a Republican operator who I know knows a lot more than I do--as does almost anyone who opens a newspaper. Not anticipating this Dem debacle, the Reps are running a guaranteed loser saddled with a gambling/bribery problem before he even gets into office. Talk about putting the cart before the horse race! He's currently polling around 10% in what looks like a three-way, without the hot women, which is about the same as a Presidential assassin for all intents and purposes. My man feels that Lieberman will pull a walk-off win in the general election. You heard it here first.
Posted by Lexiphane at 8:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 10, 2006
WINNING STRATEGY: KEEP RUNNING AWAY FROM VICTORY
Oh for God's sake! I've said this a million times before and I'll say it again: "I could make millions of dollars helping the Democrats win the presidency"--or any half-assed national office. And while I may not be a card-carrying Commie, er Democrat, I think a healthy opposition is great for a healthy democracy.
Yet, Dems insist on purging their most viable candidates from the party. Joe Lieberman was a hawkish Dem, who recognized the threat of terrorism to our country. Many of his constituents were pulverized in a terrorist attack. That apparently cost him his party's nomination yesterday.
Since JFK, the knock against Democrats has been that they're unelectable because of a perceived softness on national security. Guess what? Joe Lieberman was the one Dem that was unimpeachable on that front, unless you want to descend into a fantasyland of "weakness is strength and acquiescene is love".
I can't wait until the Dem National Convention in '08! Perhaps the Democrats will actually have themselve sodomized on the podium by a foreign power. Who won't love to elect a President who's been taped choking on someone else's cock? I swear to God, this is the last time I'll say this: Democrats, get your shit together! You are a joke!
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June 29, 2006
NOONAN!
Commentator Peggy Noonan hits the nail on the head today, so to speak, arguing that Hillary Clinton's problem as a politician isn't that she is perceived as too soft because she's a woman, but that she is the least human of any popular candidate:
She doesn't have to prove she's a man, she has to prove she's a woman. No one in America thinks she's a woman. They think she's a tough little termagant in a pantsuit. They think she's something between an android and a female impersonator. She is not perceived as a big warm mommy trying to resist her constant impulse to sneak you candy. They think she has to resist her constant impulse to hit you with a bat. She lacks a deep (as opposed to quick) warmth, a genuine and almost phenomenological sense of rightness in her own skin. She seems like someone who might calculatedly go to war, or not, based on how she wanted to be perceived and look and do. She does not seem like someone who would anguish and weep over sending men into harm's way.
That's not something that would go over well in a debate from an opponent, but goddamn that is funny and true.
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May 21, 2006
ENOUGH ROPE
Possible Presidential candidate and former failed Vice Presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) persists in making an ass of himself with his characterization of the current administration:
Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., says George W. Bush is the "worst president of our lifetime," and "absolutely" worse than Watergate-tainted President Richard M. Nixon.
OK, I'm going to have to assume that Sen. Edwards was in a bad car accident and perhaps in a coma between 1977 and 1980. Or maybe the Senator is only 20 years old, which could possibly excuse the "lifetime" qualification [ed.: he's older than that.] Perhaps Edwards is just a complete ignoramus, unaware of the existence of former President Jimmy Carter, who I think holds the position of "worst President" by a country cornpone peanut farming mile.
Does Edwards not recall a ruinous economy, pathetic half-assed Middle Eastern misadv