Friday, September 30, 2005
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Bet you never made this connection... |
Frederica Mathewes-Green on Polanski's Oliver Twist:
While David Lean's inimitable Oliver Twist (1948) drew its energy and menace from the original illustrations by George Cruickshank, Polanski drew inspiration from another leading Victorian illustrator, Gustav Dore. Where Cruickshank's depiction of tragedy was grotesque and cartoonish, Dore's was muted, balanced, strangely serene. So Polanski shows us scenes in which the setting sun fans out in parallel rays on the sky, and when lightning strikes it does so in visible zig-zags. I lost count of the number of times Oliver and companions were black silhouettes against the light as they trudged down the dark and narrow streets. What this version of the story lacks in tension it makes up in beauty.
Okay, for advanced credit: up to the present what classic film remains most famous for having been energized by the graphic imagination of Gustav Dore?
Here's a hint. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:02 PM |
|
Cost of the "twin deficits"... |
Students of international finance: here's the answer to that burning question keeping all of you from sleeping for the past two weeks.
Background for newcomers: we've been agonizing over this classic diatribe, and what's finally caught our attention is the question of what -- what exactly, in dollars and cents compared with GDP in toto -- it is costing us to (a) tolerate a federal government that spends more than it taxes and (b) import more in goods and services than we export.
The answer to (a) is simply interest payment on what's normally called the "public debt." The answer to (b), somewhat harder, can be measured at least in part by the net value of all United States interest payments to/from rest-of-world. (Extra credit: since the current account is "closed" by the capital account and this represents changes in asset ownership, the actual "costs" of this ownership can be measured by net flows of interest payments.)
Here's the chart, computed with historical and forecast data from fairmodel:
Kind of interesting (no pun intended) how those exchange rate adjustments and interest rate declines work in real life, no?
So, you know like they say in the vulgate: ne timeas. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:50 AM |
Friday, September 23, 2005
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How to achieve full energy independence in fifteen years... |
Here's the EconoPundit national energy policy.
1. Impose an immediate and permanent oil import tax set on a sliding scale between $95/bbl and current world price. If world price is $70, the tax is $25/bbl. If world price sinks to $35, the tax automatically rises to $60/bbl.
This tax is permanent. Energy costs as seen by households and businesses will initially rise substantially but will quickly stabilize and won't fluctuate even one tiny bit from year to year. What now goes "up and down" is import tax revenue, not domestic energy costs. It is possible there are massive cost reductions in many if not all areas of production to be realized if energy costs are permanently and credibly stabilized.
2. Spend some of the new massive revenue on whatever redistribution is necessary to ease the transition to the new economy. Spend some of it on alternative energy and conservation. Spend some of it on lowering other taxes here and there. Heck, I don't care.
3. Spend the rest on speeding the development of domestic recoverable oil shale. James Perry, who provided this link, describes the situation as follows:
The largest known oil shale deposits in the world are in the Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Estimates of the oil resource in place within the Green River Formation range from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels. Not all resources in place are recoverable. For potentially recoverable oil shale resources, we roughly derive an upper bound of 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and a lower bound of about 500 billion barrels. For policy planning purposes, it is enough to know that any amount in this range is very high. For example, the midpoint in our estimate range, 800 billion barrels, is more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.
At current rates of consumption these deposits would keep a U.S. petroleum-based economy going for another 100 years with no oil imports. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:40 AM |
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
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Remember The Day the Earth Caught Fire? |
Via Glenn Reyonolds and Powerline, the news that polar ice caps are melting. On the Planet Mars.
Powerline suggests this experiment:
Mars Global Surveyor data suggest what I think would be a relatively simple experiment: Why not place thermometers in a few locations on Mars, equipped with radio transmitters that would send temperature data to Earth or to a spacecraft? You'd have to take into account the two planets' different atmospheres, of course; the atmosphere on Mars is thin, but consists almost entirely of carbon dioxide. In time--it would take more than a few years' observations, obviously--such an experiment would settle once and for all the question whether human activities are making a significant contribution to climate variations on Earth.
But he's not thinking. We don't need thermometers on Mars because we can already see the results of what the thermometers would measure -- shrinkage of the polar ice caps. What else causes this except increased sun activity? Huh?
UPDATE: And doesn't the thermal emissions spectrometer already provide a good three year time series of surface temperature as a simple by-product of everything else it measures? |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:12 AM |
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
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And in New York dollars it's $58.49 per hour... |
Via Kaus we see journalists and public officials continuing to make fools of themselves by not remembering a simple fact: cost of living varies from city to city.
Kevin Drum reports:
Rep. George Miller of California, senior Democrat on the House committee that oversees labor law, said the move would allow employers to pay "poverty wages" as they rebuild from the hurricane.
"The administration is using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives," he said in a statement, noting the prevailing wage for construction in New Orleans was about $9 an hour. "At under $9 an hour, workers certainly won't be able to rebuild their livelihoods," he said.
Kevin Drum adds his own very personal, patronizing touch with this little note:
NOTE FOR THE MATH CHALLENGED: $9 an hour is about $18,000 a year. The prevailing wage wasn't about to create any new millionaires on the Gulf Coast.
Okay, what should we make of all this? George Miller is from the 7th Congressional District -- I believe his home base is San Francisco. That city's cost of living index number is reportedly 217, as compared with a New Orleans number of 89.
So Kevin please note -- if only for those, you know, numerically challenged folks -- if San Francisco's $9/hr represents $18,000 per year in San Francisco, in New Orleans it represents just a tad under $44,000 per year. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:04 AM |
|
Oops... |
A few weeks ago we went to see this genuinely stupid movie based on a John LeCarre novel about evil drug companies cutting corners by testing drugs on unsuspecting poor African villagers. I argued testing like this was expensive and unlikely.
Oh, wait...You say testing like this is being done? By the Clinton Foundation?
So Magaziner has spearheaded a program through the Clinton Foundation that serves as a kind of anti-AIDS-drug broker for developing countries. Magaziner's team persuaded Indian drug makers to verbally commit to provide untested antiretroviral therapies from Indian drug manufacturers for $140 per person per year. Despite the questionability of giving poor Africans medicines of indeterminate efficacy, the announcement was widely hailed in the media as a breakthrough. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:50 AM |
Monday, September 19, 2005
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Just like, uh, you know, Iraq?... |
What hubris! We thought we could bring capitalism to East Germany. Heck, we're just shoving capitalism down their throat:
The results mean that in retrospect Germany might have passed a tipping point about the time the country unified with its lost eastern states in 1990 after the collapse of communism. One out of five people in the new Germany now lives in the east, a region that massive subsidies and government intervention have failed to revive. The angry and frustrated voters there make different political choices than their western counterparts. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:06 AM |
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From the "boy am I underpaid" desk... |
A good friend notified me about an important WSJ article last week -- and I've finally found it reproduced online here:
...there were some surprises. Despite the turmoil in the airline industry, the average hourly pay for pilots was $113.82 last year, up 15.6 percent from 2003 and the highest for any job category measured. Economics professors, in response to the popularity of the subject and the relative scarcity of professors available to teach it, came in second, with average hourly pay of $63.98, up 1.9 percent from 2003. In third place were medical doctors, with average hourly pay of $57.90 last year, up 9.4 percent from 2003. (Emphasis added) |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:49 AM |
Sunday, September 18, 2005
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New plan? |
Yesterday, Donna Brazile declared "I Will Rebuild With You, Mr. President."
Yesterday, Bill Clinton is reported to have criticized the BBC (and by extension the MSM) as follows:
There is nothing factually inaccurate. But ... it was designed to be almost exclusively a hit on the federal response, without showing what anybody at any level was doing that was also miraculous, going on simultaneously in a positive way...
And as this is written (8am Sunday morning, central time) Bill Clinton is scheduled to appear on both Meet the Press and ABC Sunday Morning.
Is he going to to stake out a dramatic centrist position (presumably in aid of Hillary 2008) based on relief/rebuilding support and limited condemnation of partisanship? How far will he go, and how dramatic will it be?
UPDATE: Duh...
UPDATE II: Good commentary at Powerline:
This has never happened before. Until now, both parties have recognized a patriotism that, at some level, supersedes partisanship. Consistent with that belief, former Presidents of both parties have stayed out of politics and have avoided criticizing their successors. Until now. The Democrats appear bent on destroying every element of the fabric that has united us as Americans.
Clinton's vicious attack is even worse in the context of his wife's Presidential bid: it is fair to assume that he was motivated not only by partisanship, but by his own desire to re-occupy the White House, and, most likely, wield once more the levers of power. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:03 AM |
Saturday, September 17, 2005
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Former employee tells all... |
Most of the union picketers protesting Wal-Mart have never worked there. I guess the UFCW slipped up, however, and put one guy formerly employed by Wal-Mart into the position of being interviewed about what Wal-Mart is really like as he protests (for $6/hr without benefits) outside:
...standing with a union-supplied sign on his shoulder that reads, Don't Shop WalMart: Below Area Standards, picketer and former Wal-Mart employee Sal Rivera says about the notorious working conditions of his former big-box employer: "I can't complain. It wasn't bad. They started paying me at $6.75, and after three months I was already getting $7, then I got Employee of the Month, and by the time I left (in less than one year), I was making $8.63 an hour." Rivera worked in maintenance and quit four years ago for personal reasons, he says. He would consider reapplying.
Interestingly, the same union used this tactic not only against Wal-Mart, but also against the same small family-owned stores the Wal-Mart picket claims to be protecting -- for the most part, it would appear, without support of the workers themselves.
So what's the headline? "New technology allows unions to hire temps to carry out non-strikes without worker support"?????
UPDATE: The links to Chicago's indymedia.org/newswire posts detailing worker dissatisfaction with UFCW activity are now mysteriously not working. Here's one pro-boycott article describing the situation.
UPDATE II: Here's one of the now-restored "vanished" posts (just in case it disappears again):
Well, I went back to the Treasure Island in Old Town, and first talked to the union guys in front asking me to boycott the store, because, they said, the management wanted to cut health care for the employees.
Then, I went in and talked to everyone I could, cashiers, baggers, deli workers, guys putting up cans on the shelves, guys working in the vegetable department, etc. I tried to be suble and talk to them when there was no one else around (in case they were reluctant to talk in front of their bosses etc. I've been shopping there for a long time, so these guys pretty much know me, have seen me with peace pins on, etc., know that I'm not a spy, or whatever. Anyway, I'm not a Union expert, nor a reporter, but to a person, everyone said that they didn't want those guys out there, that they're not employees of the store, that the Treasure Island employees were supposed to be able to vote on the new contract, but were never allowed to (i.e. by the union), and that they didn't want the new contract because it would mean LESS coverage for the workers, not more.
So, what to say? I'm pretty much a knee-jerk liberal, and am a union employee, myself and believe in almost every liberal cause, including unions, But, in this case, I think this particular union is screwing these guys.
If you know otherwise, let me know, but please don't spout cliche liberal pro-union mantras from your computer room: as I'm all for unions; BUT instead go and talk to the employees at that store and find out what's really up. I'm tired of Maxist cant, or abstract theories. [The employees] seem to be happy with the management, and not happy with the union that's supposed to represent them.
To do otherwise is just to retreat to comfortable cliches, and not get at the truth. I.e. NOT all management is evil, and NOT all unions are working for the benefit of the employees, (hey, we're talking about REAL life!) but instead are just concerned about their union jobs. And that's exactly what several of the workers told me, that this union was just interested in their union jobs, and not concerned at all with the welfare of the employees at Treasure Island who they are supposed to be representing. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:19 AM |
|
Polls and Propaganda |
It is now evident there's a massive discrepancy between what evacuees tell private individuals and face-to-face interviewers on the one hand, and pollsters on the other. What can be called the "ABC Nightline response" now seems the norm for personal contact. Polling tells a different story:
Running somewhat counter to this is another public opinion poll, this one of evacuees in Houston, conducted by the Washington Post...The sample is overwhelmingly black (93%), and 92% come from the city of New Orleans. Many of the results are similar to those from polls of blacks nationwide: 70% disapprove of President Bush's handling of Katrina, while only 15% approve. Doing somewhat better but still poorly are Gov. Kathleen Blanco (58% disapprove, 27% approve) and Mayor Ray Nagin (53% disapprove, 33% approve).
Polling always forces respondents into the position of seeking the "right" answer -- either the answer they think the pollster wants, or the answer those reading the poll are seeking. Polls are like the tests we took in school. We can't help but think there are right and wrong answers. This is why almost any war will always be on the "losing side" in any poll. (Who is in favor of war?) And in a similar vein: what kind of dolt would be "satisfied" with any government response to any crisis? |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:22 AM |
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
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I'm in favor of open and free trade, but... |
This is where I draw the line.
And this is only part of a larger problem, of course.
Via Memeorandum.
UPDATE: For context and overview go here. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:22 AM |
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
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Yet again, is it just me? |
| The JEC (ostensibly nonpartisan) has an excellent update on the economic effects of Katrina. (But doesn't that "secret" name of the pdf file reveal a little bit of partisan feeling perhaps?) |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:12 PM |
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I know it's supposed to stay there, but... |
| What exactly did all those policemen do in Las Vegas? |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:10 AM |
|
It's the same the whole world over... |
Propagandizing against supposedly mean-spirited conservatives continues, even while New Orleans emerges as more evidence of welfare state failure:
We still only have anecdotal evidence to go on, and we can be hopeful as the death toll remains far below the thousands originally predicted. But it's reasonable to surmise that Sen. Kennedy is correct about those who wanted to leave: Most people who could arrange for their own transportation got out of harm's way; those who depended on the government (and public transportation) were left for days to the mercy of armed thugs at the Superdome and Convention Center. It was an extreme example of what the welfare state has done to the poor for decades: use the promise of food, shelter and other necessities to lure most of the poor to a few central points and then leave them stranded and nearly helpless.
This isn't a failure of President Bush's compassionate conservatism. Nor is it evidence that Ronald Reagan's philosophy of smaller government is fatally flawed. If LBJ had won his war on poverty, Ninth Ward residents would have had the means to drive themselves out of New Orleans. Instead, after decades and billions of tax dollars have been poured into big government programs, one out of four people in the Big Easy were still poor. That is an indictment of the welfare state and all its antipoverty programs.
I want everyone to realize this is a world phenomenon. For years -- when the desirability of the social programmes was 99% accepted by all parties -- I wondered whether there weren't too many genuinely frightening similarities between the typical small Newfoundland outport and Chicago's Cabrini Green.
Now -- at least in Canada -- it has become mainstream to point to these very similarities. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:15 AM |
|
And this, too, is the fault of George Bush... |
Looting in Gaza:
Some of the looting seemed likely to harm the Palestinians' ability to build a viable economy after the withdrawal. Despite high hopes that the Palestinian Authority could create jobs by maintaining the sophisticated greenhouses left behind by the settlers under an agreement with the World Bank, pickup trucks loaded with rubber hosing and other materials used in irrigation could be seen driving away from the greenhouses last night as other looters headed in to grab more.
Jihad Abu Eidah, a senior official in the Palestinian Interior Ministry, watched the pillaging of Netzarim and worried it was likely to give the beleaguered Palestinian Authority another black eye. He said that initially the PA was "reluctant to intervene and upset the people," but acknowledged that by yesterday afternoon it had carried on too long.
"The whole world is watching and asking if we are a people who deserve independence." |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:52 AM |
Sunday, September 11, 2005
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Those who ignore history are condemned to be dummies... |
| Bruce Bartlett sees lots of Katrina parallels in the Great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He suggests anyone interested start here for lots of info. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:22 AM |
|
Oh. Wait... |
As you read this be sure you find statements from all the companies that were capable of doing this construction work but were passed over because they weren't politically connected.
The great thing about a free press is it always finds statements from competing companies who could have done the work but didn't get contracts because they had fewer political connections.
Wait a second. You say there are no statements from competing companies? Uh, let me see here... |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:21 AM |
Saturday, September 10, 2005
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Those who ignore history are condemned to be blasted into radioactive dust... |
Don't be fooled by those who will claim this new document situates the US as the first nation with a semiofficial nuclear first strike policy.
Iran was first. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:51 PM |
|
Opportunism on which side? |
Tim Worstall points us toward some New York Times economic thinking truly worthy of Monty Python's dumb younger cousin.
Only a little checking on the internet turns up evidence the Davis Bacon Act protects a small minority of privileged workers by enshrining into law the (then and partially-still) lilly-white labor aristocracy of the 40's and 50's. The same checking also uncovers lots of evidence the Act raises construction costs and lengthens project times by seriously complicating hiring procedures. What's most "shameful" in all this (to use NYT-language) is the editors' assumption readers can't easily check on the internet to find the other side of the argument.
Labor advocates will charge Bush is opportunistically tampering with labor law -- in effect, using the Katrina disaster to further weaken organized labor's position.
They'll do so at risk of sounding like opportunists themselves, however. The Bush side of the argument appeals to intuition. Most Americans would agree any labor law to which the rebuilding process is subject should be as simple as possible. If the NYT is going to argue against this intuitively obvious proposition, it should do so without invoking junk economics (e.g. the laughable statement "lower wages invariably mean lower productivity").
UPDATE: Typically snobbish and insular, the NYT indignantly quotes New Orlans wage rates ($9.04-$14.30 per hour) that might actually not seem so bad to some of us dumb workers here in flyover land.
The meaning of all this depends on cost of living, which the New York Times assumes its readers haven't heard of. Do the arithmetic yourself to see what I mean. That "low" $14.30 per hour in New York prices translates to $58.49/hr in New Orleans prices. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:58 AM |
Thursday, September 08, 2005
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You gotta understand, it's all interconnected... |
| This is caused by global warming, right? |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:17 AM |
|
Housing policy that dares not speak its name... |
Most Chicagoans knows the bitterness accompanying the policy dispute over whether to tear down low income housing projects like (what was once called) Cabrini Green. The angry dispute was over a simple sociological construct: "culture of poverty."
David Brooks now asks we apply Chicago lessons to New Orleans.
Just wait. Expect to hear the same angry (and arguably racist) responses we heard in Chicago.
UPDATE: More (possibly more than you want or need) here. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:57 AM |
|
Those who planned and those who didn't... |
An upcoming important story is how major private employers got their workers -- high and low paid alike -- out of New Orleans independently of the ineffective public sector.
They not only planned and executed evacuation. They also made provisions for bringing workers back with housing and all other necessary temporary infrastructure. And they're taking care of their workers during the interim.
This may prove as much a triumph of the private sector as a failure of the public sector, but you wouldn't know it if you read this description. The actual story is one of deliberation, planning, and rationality. The language used to tell the story suggests something entirely different. Companies are "pitching in," we're told. Thousands of employers have been "forced" into providing disaster relief. Some have suddenly "found themselves" in the business of feeding and housing employees for weeks to come:
Chevron Corp. established Camp Pascagoula near its Pascagoula refinery in Mississippi to house as many as 1,500 employees and their families. More than 300 refinery workers lost their homes, said spokesman Michael Barrett.
The 500,000-square-foot tent city, equipped with satellite communications and medical services, will operate as long as needed, Barrett said.
At the state fairgrounds in Baton Rouge, a one-acre Sprint City has sprung up to house about 200 technicians and engineers from surrounding areas who are working 14-hour days to restore Sprint's networks.
A counselor is on site from Chicago-based employee-assistance firm ComPsych Corp., which is helping clients with a wide range of things, from setting up hotlines and providing relief supplies to crisis counseling.
Don't MSM learn anything as they listen to each other? You can't suddenly "find yourself" "forced" to "pitch in" by housing and feeding 1,500 people. YOU CAN ONLY DO THIS IF YOU HAVE PLANNED FOR IT.
UPDATE: Someone should point out to Bob Herbert the poorest of Chevron's employees weren't "shamefully neglected" by their employer. There's a lesson lurking here. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:10 AM |
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
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With all due respect, you can't just... |
Mickey Kaus thinks this is easy:
My friend has been trying to get a health reporter interested in the idea--a reporter who, in turn might get someone else with access to the data to run the numbers. But with modern computer and search technology, shouldn't there be a simpler way--an open database of longitudinal medical histories, searchable by anyone with a modem and a hunch.
Well, all I can say is there's limited health information in the U Mich PSID (more like health insurance and disability info than morbidity, I think), but anyone who just casually tries to "run numbers" even with a "modern computer and search technology" may be surprised at how, uh, complicated the whole thing actually is. The PSID, like (I'm told) most longitudinal health databases, includes not only simple raw observations but also weights relating sample frequencies to the population at large.
The observations, I'm afraid, can't validly be processed by normal small sample techniques. Rather, the weights have to be dragged along. For some procedures (calculation of means, median, sorting by quintiles or deciles) this is only slightly more complicated than normal. For other procedures -- regression and correlation for example -- things are less straightforward.
Anyway, we'll see how the new grad students do with all this in just a few weeks. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:08 AM |
|
Pitfalls of research based on secondary sources... |
From Powerline:
Poor Paul, always a day late and a dollar short, apparently didn't get the memo.
Still, if I were writing a column that I expected to be read by many thousands of people--oh, wait, I do--and if I were going to rest my column on a single "example" on the basis of which I intended to charge government officials with "lethal ineptitude," I would do a little fact-checking. Sadly, however, research is something of which Paul Krugman is simply incapable.
Perhaps Krugman doesn't know that large naval vessels like the U.S.S. Bataan all have web sites. Perhaps he doesn't know that there is a tool called "Google" that would enable him to find the Bataan's web site in less than ten seconds. Or perhaps he just didn't care enough to go here and read up on the Bataan's contributions to hurricane relief efforts.
If Krugman had taken the trouble, he would have found that on August 30, the same day on which New Orleans' levees burst, precipitating the crisis, men and women from the Bataan were already in action, and by the following day they were busy saving lives... |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:29 AM |
|
One less thing... |
| Are they all like this? Does this mean we don't have to worry about galactic collisions anymore? |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:25 AM |
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
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LIbels debunked... |
Richard Baehr addresses the myth that rich whites were the ones who got out of town, leaving only poor blacks:
A little elementary math will address this canard. According to the 2000 census, New Orleans' population of 484,000 included approximately 136,000 whites, and 326,000 blacks. The white figure includes 7,000 Hispanics who classify themselves as white on the census forms. If 80% of New Orleans residents got out early – and this is the Mayor's number – then only about 97,000 residents remained. Assume all of them were black, (which of course they were not). That would mean that 229,000 blacks got out early, and 136,000 whites along with them. In other words, the successful mass evacuation substantially benefited black residents of the city.
At least 70% of black residents of New Orleans got out of the city before the storm (assuming 100% of those left behind were black), and undoubtedly more than that (since all those left behind were not black). It is almost certainly the case that the great majority of those who were left behind were black. There are obvious reasons for this, including the fact that New Orleans is overwhelmingly a black city to begin with. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:48 PM |
|
As the libels continue... |
The Chicago Tribune makes Barbara Bush sound like by Marie Antoinette by reversing the order of two statements in her otherwise a sad/ironic comment on New Orleans poverty.
She reportedly said:
What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality...And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.
How does the Tribune report the statement? Here it is:
Barbara Bush gets attention: The president's mom says Astrodome evacuees "were underprivileged anyway, so is working very well for them."
(That she found this fact to be "scary" is of course nowhere to be found.) |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:31 PM |
|
Ever expanding opportunities for humour... |
Mac Johnson, in the aftermath of Katrina, writes:
Nobody has any power in this world other than George Bush. Nobody has any responsibility. George Bush is now the navel of the world for his enemies. If a butterfly flaps its wings in Central Park, it's George Bush's fault. And the butterfly is racist. And it was blown there by Global Warming. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:58 PM |
|
This just isn't right... |
Rush Limbaugh just refered to "Mayor Neeeger, uh, Nagin..."
I suppose this could have been a genuine mistake, but to me (and I'm a fan) it sounded like a cute and absolutely disgusting coded joke directed at the small minority of those special listeners who would get a chuckle out of it.
UPDATE: Maybe it's me. Maybe I notice things too much. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:22 AM |
|
Call me Diogenes |
I search and search for someone -- anyone -- who can explain exactly how and why it is accurate to claim the U.S. has an "Empire."
These are, I think, two leaders in this field. I started reading hoping to find answers, but found nothing more than metaphor and simile. No, we don't literally have an empire, they say. It is as if we had one, but hey, don't we all agree, that's really the same thing, no? For example take this frustrating little nugget of wisdom:
And the United States is an empire not just because it has military bases all over the world. It's more than that. The United States projects its political institutions. It projects its culture. It is done not only through military power but also through corporations, non-governmental agencies. An empire in that sense is a multi-faceted thing. The key common factor--what all empires do is that they project their power beyond their own borders. And in that term, in that sense...
Uh, okay, but how about those military bases? Actually, they're not quite like the Roman outposts of old:
The Philippines asked us to get out of a base. We got out of the base, Subic Bay. The Japanese have asked us to behave differently and reduce numbers of troops in Okinawa. We've done so. I'm not suggesting that the United States is a puny little power among many other powers. Of course not. But I am saying that there's something fundamentally different in the way the United States deploys its power around the globe from the way the great empires in the ancient world did so or even Great Britain in the 19th century.
That sneaky United States! It actually maintains imperial power by vacating military bases when asked to do so! Almost, well, Rovian wouldn't you say?
I saw nonsense like this for years in connection with now long-forgotten radical politics in the Province of Quebec. The trick is to get your listers to first accept the metaphor of imperialism and then, before they have time to think, switch the discussion to socioeconomic policies appropriate in a context of literal (rather than figurative) imperialsm. Clever.
Meanwhile, I'm continuing my quest for an honest demonstration of U.S. imperialism. This isn't aesthetics. You can't validly review U.S. economy and history like Roger Ebert reviews a movie. How someone feels about U.S. military bases, popular culture, or McDonalds, in other words, is insufficient to establish that the United States can be validly called an imperial power. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:05 AM |
|
Former useful idiot reviews his life... |
I'm slowly and uncomfortably working my way through this article. Isn't it funny how some of those old pieces just didn't seem to ever find a spot in the multitude of Weavers Songbooks, Best of Pete Seeger, etc., collections? For example:
Though Seeger didn't formally join the Communist Party until 1942, the Almanacs' lyrics marched in lockstep with the party's views well before then. In keeping with the line adopted after the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact (which caused many U.S. party members to quit in disgust), for example, the Almanacs warbled against American entry into World War II, foreshadowing the preference for peace at any price that later characterized the McGovernite Left. "Franklin D., listen to me,/You ain't a-gonna send me 'cross the sea." The group continued in this vein into the late 1940s...
Via Powerline. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:42 AM |
Monday, September 05, 2005
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NYT: New Orleans flood control projects "pork" |
Via Powerline and Don Luskin, we have exactly what the NYT used to say about those evil Bush cutbacks that reduced New Orleans flood control to a measly $43 million (which is, as was shown by EconoPundit, no more than $6M below the national average):
Anyone who cares about responsible budgeting and the health of America's rivers and wetlands should pay attention to a bill now before the Senate Committee on environment and Public Works. The bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and other water-related projects -- this at a time when President Bush is asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other important domestic programs. Among these projects is a $2.7 billion boondoggle on the Mississippi River that has twice flunked inspection by the National Academy of Sciences. The Government Accountability Office and other watchdogs accuse the corps of routinely inflating the economic benefits of its projects. And environmentalists blame it for turning free-flowing rivers into lifeless canals and destroying millions of acres of wetlands -- usually in the name of flood control and navigation but mostly to satisfy Congress's appetite for pork. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:41 AM |
Sunday, September 04, 2005
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Wins the argument every time... |
In certain quarters the uniform response to facts like these is "oh, there's plenty of blame to go around" (which actually translates to "oh, let's change the topic").
UPDATE: David Frum has encountered far worse. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:37 PM |
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In Memoriam Punditwatch |
Landrieu comes on to Stephanopoulos?
Precisely 8 minutes and 21 seconds into ABC's This Week, as George and Mary ride a helicopter over surrounding parishes and bash President Bush, the camera catches Mary Landrieu emphasizing her points with a gentle pounding of fist on Stephanopoulos' knee. It may be my imagination, but George seems to be fighting to keep his composure as he realizes yes, something is actually going on here.
UPDATE: And then during roundtable discussion, George Stephanopoulos earnestly asks Howell Raines why Washington didn't move buses, helicopters, whatever, down to get all the poor people out.
Earth to George: they didn't have to bring outside transportation in. They had resources they simply didn't use. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:26 AM |
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STATE OF LOUISIANA EMERGENCY OPERATIONS PLAN |
So what's the good of a "plan" if you don't use it?
Inspired by Drudge (who provides no link) we found this document, which says:
The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. However, school and municipal buses and, where available, specialized vehicles will be used to transport those hurricane evacuees who do not have transportation.
For anyone who missed them, here are the vehicles (you are invited to count them):
Why weren't they used?
UPDATE: Via Instapundit, Junkyard Dog has higher resolution air photos and a full count of 255 vehicles in the lot. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:17 AM |
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FOX VS. MSNBC VS. LA TIMES |
We switched back and forth between FOX NEWS and MSNBC for maybe two hours last night.
The contrast couldn't have been more clear. Both showed appropriate respect for the dead, the injured, the homeless, as well as the awesome powers of nature. But on FOX you saw energy, optimism, a kind of upbeat dance celebration that the worst horrors seemed finally over and done with. On MSNBC there seemed nothing but anger, indignation, and (interestingly) a kind of weary ennui in place of FOX's energy.
Maybe I'm reading too much into things, but I think you can see the same anger played-out to simple weariness in this article.
UPDATE: More evidence here: when you are able to take virtually any new information and automatically plug it into a rather hateful specific political ideology, a hurricane will burn you out. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:52 AM |
Saturday, September 03, 2005
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And we fought the first Gulf War for ... this? |
From Kuwait -- Kuwait -- comes this only-slightly warmed over, smelly little Islamic fragment of American angry left Rant:
"How sad I am for America. Here it is, poor thing, trying with all its might to lower oil prices which have reached heights unprecedented in all history. Along with America's phenomenal efforts to lower the price of oil in order to salvage its declining economy and its currency -- that is still falling due to the 'smart' policy America is implementing in the world -- comes this storm, the fruit of Allah's planning, so that [the price of] a barrel of oil will increase further still. By Allah, this is not schadenfreude.
"Oh honored gentlemen, I began to read about these winds, and I was surprised to discover that the American websites that are translated [into Arabic] are talking about the fact that that the storm Katrina is the fifth equatorial storm to strike Florida this year...and that a large part of the U.S. is subject every year to many storms that extract [a price of] dead, and completely destroy property. I said, Allah be praised, until when will these successive catastrophes strike them?
"But before I went to sleep, I opened the Koran and began to read in Surat Al-R'ad ['The Thunder' chapter], and stopped at these words [of Allah]: 'The disaster will keep striking the unbelievers for what they have done, or it will strike areas close to their territory, until the promise of Allah comes to pass, for, verily, Allah will not fail in His promise. ' [Koran 13:31]." (Emphasis added)
In case you're wondering, this was written by a high-ranking Kuwaiti official, working in what they call the "Ministry of Endowment." |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 3:44 PM |
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Who says we didn't plan ahead? |
Daniel (Commanding Heights) Yergin assesses the current situation:
The full extent of the Gulf of Mexico energy infrastructure is hard to grasp. Altogether, about 800 manned platforms, plus several thousand smaller unmanned platforms, feed their oil and gas into 33,000 miles of underwater pipelines, a good part of which eventually reaches shore at Port Fourchon at the mouth of the Mississippi. That adds up to 35% of domestic oil production (including oil from state as well as federal waters) and over 20% of our natural gas coming from off-shore. Add to that the 10% of U.S. oil imports that flow in through the same corridor, plus the string of refineries and pipeline networks that sprawl along the Gulf Coast, and you have a complex that constitutes our single most important energy asset.
How badly damaged is the gulf complex, and how quickly can it come back? As an executive of a major oil company put it, "Our platforms and facilities are designed for a 100-year storm. But this storm was something else." Some of the platforms directly hit by Katrina are vividly damaged, and repair could take months, even longer--depending on the availability of people and materials. Platforms more to the west will turn out not to have been damaged, and, after inspection, will be ready to go.
Companies are already starting up some of the shut-in production. The LOOP--the offshore unloading port--is back in partial operation, much more quickly than would have been expected. The big question surrounds underwater pipelines. Their vulnerability to mudslides was a prime lesson of last year's Hurricane Ivan, and remotely operated underwater vehicles will have to methodically assess the damage. Initially, 1.5 million barrels a day of oil were shut down with both Ivan and Katrina. Within six weeks of Ivan, the shut-in capacity was reduced to just 200,000, which persisted for several months. But Katrina was worse than Ivan and hit more of the bull's-eye. Unlike Ivan, it also devastated a significant part of the onshore logistical infrastructure that supplies the offshore. That suggests a slower rebound.
Fortunately, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, with 700 million barrels, can compensate for an extended period for the missing oil. The SPR is certainly demonstrating its value here. Without it, people would be apprehensively asking how deeply into recession the resulting $80- or $90-a-barrel oil would push the U.S. While the trigger for its use is not what was anticipated, the SPR is proving its role--not as a tool of market management, but to offset a major disruption, protect gross domestic product, and maintain the viability of our economy. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:20 PM |
Friday, September 02, 2005
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Tales from the South |
This is so far out I hesitate to link to it and definitely won't quote it. (Makes one feel unclean for several reasons.)
Check out the comments as well.
UPDATE: Still more Tales from the South. Fox TV is reporting 50-100 firefighters and their families (kids included) pinned down inside a building by gangs firing on anyone trying to leave.
UPDATE II: I can't believe how fast these tales are coming in:
[Rev. Jesse] Jackson questioned why Bush has not named blacks to top positions in the federal response to the disaster, particularly when the majority of victims remaining stranded in New Orleans are black: "How can blacks be locked out of the leadership, and trapped in the suffering?" |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:23 PM |
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Katrina's economic impact... |
| The Joint Economic Committee has just issued a statement on the economic impact of Hurricane Katrina. Here it is. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:39 PM |
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You count them... |
Mayor Ray Nagin's voice cracks "with anger and anguish" as he "lashes out at the feds." And here are several hundred school buses the mayor never deployed to get people out when there was still time. At 50 people per bus, lots of people could have been moved to higher ground.
And he didn't use them, exactly, why?...
Via Drudge.
UPDATE: When myself and my family were ordered to evacuate prior to Hurricane Andrew, we were told where to go, whom to call if we couldn't get there, and what to expect when the final bus came by picking up everyone who was still left. Check out these similar reader comments at Powerline. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:14 PM |
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What it takes... |
More from The Corner:
I'm sick and tired of the media's treatment of the Katrina relief efforts. I run a trade association of tank truck carriers trying to assist in the relief efforts by transporting food and potable water. I'm in regular contact with many of the companies, and here are some "on the ground" facts:
1) Large trucks (80,000 lbs. gross weight) almost always have to use the interstates. For trucks attempting to come in from outside the area, most of those roads (approaching the disaster area) are either closed or have bridges out. The so- called secondary roads may be somewhat passable, but their bridges (over rivers and streams) are not built to sustain such loads. Simply stated, you can't get there from here.
2) Trucks domicled in those areas (because that's where the companies traditionally serve customers) are still underwater, thus the equipment is not accessible;
3) Nobody in their right mind is going to take loads of gasoline and fuel oil into a city controlled by unfriendly folks carrying automatic weapons. A tank truck loaded with 8,000 gallons of gasoline can produce a very impressive fire;
4) Those local trucking companies can't contact their drivers. There's no power, thus (even) cellular is unavailable, and many of the drivers' homes (in places like Kenner, Slidel, Metarie, etc) have been destroyed and families dispersed. I have one member with about 120 drivers and mechanics in that immediate area. To date, management has been able to contact 12. Those in the National Guard have been mobilized and are not available to drive.
5) Pumps -- needed to load the vehicles -- don't work because there's no power;
Finally, it's very interesting to see the media['s] not-so-subtly inferred racism. NO's neighboring communities, noted above, and others are mostly composed of middle-class white neighborhoods. They too were flooded with the same level of devastation and face the same food/water shortages. So far, they've been "off camera". I'm genuinely puzzled by this.
If only George Bush could join the Governor in a photo-op "cry-a-thon" all of these problems would go away. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:59 PM |
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And just in case you're cheered by the last post... |
More on the geopolitics of the closed ports:
New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize
By George Friedman
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During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories wouldn't come in, and the agricultural wealth wouldn't flow out. Alternative routes really weren't available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the prize.
Last Sunday, nature took out New Orleans almost as surely as a nuclear strike. Hurricane Katrina's geopolitical effect was not, in many ways, distinguishable from a mushroom cloud. The key exit from North America was closed. The petrochemical industry, which has become an added value to the region since Jackson's days, was at risk. The navigability of the Mississippi south of New Orleans was a question mark. New Orleans as a city and as a port complex had ceased to exist, and it was not clear that it could recover.
The Ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans, which run north and south of the city, are as important today as at any point during the history of the republic. On its own merit, POSL is the largest port in the United States by tonnage and the fifth-largest in the world. It exports more than 52 million tons a year, of which more than half are agricultural products -- corn, soybeans and so on. A large proportion of U.S. agriculture flows out of the port. Almost as much cargo, nearly 17 million tons, comes in through the port -- including not only crude oil, but chemicals and fertilizers, coal, concrete and so on...
The oil fields, pipelines and ports required a skilled workforce in order to operate. That workforce requires homes. They require stores to buy food and other supplies. Hospitals and doctors. Schools for their children. In other words, in order to operate the facilities critical to the United States, you need a workforce to do it -- and that workforce is gone. Unlike in other disasters, that workforce cannot return to the region because they have no place to live. New Orleans is gone, and the metropolitan area surrounding New Orleans is either gone or so badly damaged that it will not be inhabitable for a long time...
The displacement of population is the crisis that New Orleans faces. It is also a national crisis, because the largest port in the United States cannot function without a city around it. The physical and business processes of a port cannot occur in a ghost town, and right now, that is what New Orleans is. It is not about the facilities, and it is not about the oil. It is about the loss of a city's population and the paralysis of the largest port in the United States...
To summarize: this is very likely much more than a massive human refugee crisis. It may be the first stage of an international economic crisis as well. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:10 PM |
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Glad we were wrong... |
Hoo ha! The unemployment rate has fallen below 5%!!!! (This is great news and may represent the breaking of an important psychological barrier.)
Your next task is to google all those previous EconoPundit posts where we argued, on the basis of Ray Fair's now-classic "Testing for a New Economy in the 1990's" (here's a powerpoint slide show which omits the statistics and states the argument at the 101 level), that the U.S. "natural" rate of unemployment is 5.5%
UPDATE: And by the way, didn't we just point out there are as many a priori reasons to look for inflation-induced employment expansion as there are to look for stagflation? |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:30 AM |
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What we must do... |
Dick Durbin explains why a vote for John G. Roberts Jr. is in effect a vote for Jim Crow.
The implications are clear. First, defeat the Roberts nomination.
Then, amend the constitution so as to bar all judges with inappropriate philosophies from ever serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:01 AM |
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Tired of dry people whining... |
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but Ron Fournier seems to be insisting we take pork barrel spending from all around the country and send it to New Orleans flood control instead:
Just last year, the Army Corps of Engineers sought $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans. The White House slashed the request to about $40 million. Congress finally approved $42.2 million, less than half of the agency's request.
Yet the lawmakers and Bush agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-laden highway bill that included more than 6,000 pet projects for lawmakers. Congress spent money on dust control for Arkansas roads, a warehouse on the Erie Canal and a $231 million bridge to a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.
How could Washington spend $231 million on a bridge to nowhere - and not find $42 million for hurricane and flood projects in New Orleans? It's a matter of power and politics.
Alaska is represented by Republican Rep. Don Young, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, and Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, a senior member of the all-important Senate Appropriations Committee. Louisiana's delegation holds far less sway.
So are we to understand New Orleans never received a cent of wasteful pork barrel spending?
And check out the numbers. Fournier complains of $286.4 billion spent on 6000 "pork-laden pet projects." These are big-sounding numbers until you divide one by the other and find this amounts to about $48 million per "pork-laden project." (And I suspect some of this spending was actually worthwhile -- for necessary highways, or other states' flood control, for example.)
If it got shortchanged at all, New Orleans got shortchanged by roughly $6 million. Ron, stop whining unless you've got something real to whine about!
UPDATE: Oops! Just found most of the missing $6 million! (Scroll down to find it.)
UPDATE II: And by the way, what budget requests did the Army Corps of Engineers make for other (non-Louisiana) projects? Weren't these cut back as well? Doesn't the Corps (like all the rest of us) routinely inflate project budgets because it knows it can't get all that's requested?
UPDATE III: And now the Army Corps of Engineers says "underfunding" wasn't the problem anyway.
UPDATE IV: Captain's Quarters adds this:
And let's not forget that the levee system protecting New Orleans belongs to the people of Louisiana, not the feds. It protects one city; it isn't an interstate system such as the ones built along the Mississippi. Why didn't Louisiana fund its own improvements? What have they done about the situation except wait for the rest of the country to fund them? |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:12 AM |
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Democracy of the crowd... |
Elias Canetti, "Crowds and Power" (quoted here):
The most striking thing about mass flight is the force of its direction...Strange and widely dissimilar creatures who have never come near each other before suddenly find themselves together. In their flight all distances between them disappear, though the differences of course do not.
Franz Kafka, "The Airshow..." (from memory):
These things are usually handled quite democratically, unless there's no room at all, in which case it doesn't matter anyway. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:02 AM |
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They knew... |
| Here's National Geographic's 2004 prediction of the current disaster. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 3:41 AM |
Thursday, September 01, 2005
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By any other name it smells just as bad... |
| And Brian Krebs has now discovered a different form of looting. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:49 AM |
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Hey...Maybe we'll all learn something? Nah... |
In Slate, Jack Shafer complains about Fox coverage:
What I wouldn't pay to hear a Fox anchor ask, "Say, Bob, why are these African-Americans so poor to begin with?"
Clearly he's getting something from this experience that I'm missing. I suppose vice versa applies as well. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:10 AM |
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