No Oil for Pacifists

According to the New York Times, which started a story about state employee furloughs with this paragraph:

Licenses for same-sex marriages were supposed to be issued in Iowa starting this Friday. But because of a crimped state budget, court employees will be on mandatory furlough that day and the courts will be closed. Gay couples cannot start filing for their licenses until Monday.

If all you have is a hammer, all you see is a three day delay for Peter to marry Paul.

(via TigerHawk)

Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu testifying before the House Energy & Commerce Committee, April 23rd:

REP. CLIFF STEARNS, R-Fla.: Last September you made a statement that somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe, which at the time exceeded $8 a gallon. As Secretary of Energy, will you speak for or against any measures that would raise the price of gasoline?

SEC. CHU: As Secretary of Energy, I think especially now in today’s economic climate it would be completely unwise to want to increase the price of gasoline. And so we are looking forward to reducing the price of transportation in the American family. And this is done by encouraging fuel-efficient cars; this is done by developing alternative forms of fuel like biofuels that can lead to a separate source, an independent source of transportation fuel.

REP. STEARNS: But you can’t honestly believe that you want the American people to pay for gasoline at the prices, the level in Europe?

SEC. CHU: No, we don’t.

REP. STEARNS: No. But somehow, your statement, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," doesn’t that sound a little bit silly in retrospect for you to say that?

SEC. CHU: Yes.

(via Climate Depot)

What's the correlation between atmospheric CO₂ and temperature?:


source: Letter to Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Apr. 14, 2008)

The letter was signed by Hans Schreuder (Analytical Chemist), Piers Corbyn (Astrophysicist), Dr Don Parkes (Ecology) and Svend Hendriksen (1988 Nobel Laureate), and also is here.

(via Doug Ross)

I'm a month late in mocking "Earth Hour," when liberals douse the lights so they can see no evil. As a make-up, here's a cogent critique of last year's self-righteous fest:


source: The People's Cube

From the April 29th Wall Street Journal:

On the home front, there can no longer be any such doubts. Mr. Obama talks the language of pragmatism, but his program has revealed a man of the left. He clearly views the financial crisis and the liberal majorities in Congress as a rare chance to advance the power of the state in American life. The only two comparable moments in the last century were 1965, which gave us the Great Society, and 1933, which bequeathed the New Deal. Mr. Obama's goals are at least as ambitious, resuming the march toward the European welfare state that was stopped by what Democrats like to call the Reagan detour.

His main method here is to make the federal government the guarantor of middle-class security. He wants to make a college education a new entitlement, regardless of the cost. He wants state-financed health-care available to all, even if it means jamming a $1 trillion bill through the Senate with 51 votes. And he wants a cap-and-trade tax that would punish the main current sources of U.S. energy and hand Washington a vast new source of revenue.

Oh, and by the way, he also wants to fix the financial system, run the auto industry, and build a nationwide, high-speed rail network. And on the seventh day, he rested.

The success of the global Islamisist Jihad only partially reflects its terrorists and suicide bombers. They are aided by some reluctant seriously to debate and address the issues, and legions of apologists who--though they claim not to side with violent extremism--make Jihad seem almost acceptable. The latter sort have been especially prevalent in the current debate about the definition and uses of torture. Guardian and BBC journalist Simon Jenkins is one:

The massacres in New York, Bali, London, Madrid and Mumbai were horrible but politically insignificant. They lacked even the IRA's policy-changing programme. They were a howl of rage from a deranged fanaticism, threatening lives and property but not the security of any state. They are best treated as accidents of globalisation.

This justifies Jihad while labeling any armed response as mere jingoism. I agree with Norm Geras:

Objectify and minimize: terror to be treated as an 'accident' of globalization, as mere rage and derangement. He could equally treat torture as an accident of the war on terror or, by tracing out causal continuities, as itself an accident of globalization; he could see it as rage and derangement. But Jenkins wouldn't. He wouldn't dream of writing of the use of torture by Western governments in such terms, and rightly not.

For a section of the Western commentariat, real threats, carrying the weight of moral responsibility, only ever come from (loosely speaking) 'us'. Those attacking 'us', on the other hand, can be objectified and minimized. New York, Bali, London, Madrid and Mumbai -- Jenkins himself begins a list of infamy that could be extended -- but 'politically insignificant'. The lives taken, the bodies broken, the families bereaved -- 'politically insignificant'. So you say. It is good that not all the friends of democracy think so.

BTW, Democrat lawyer/journalist Stuart Taylor is one of better sort of friends of democracy, and his current National Journal column is a useful antidote to the view of the war from Jenkins' ear (historical pun).

UPDATE: the Supreme Court overturned the Jackson case after all!

In Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U.S. 625 (1986), the Supreme Court reversed two criminal convictions where--after being arrested and charged--the (indigent) defendants requested that they be represented by counsel but, before an attorney arrived, waived their Miranda rights and confessed to the crimes. This extended a prior decision interpreting the Sixth Amendment to exclude a confession obtained from a suspect not yet charged with a crime but after he asked for a lawyer. The Jackson ruling--written by John Paul Stevens, coincidentally the sole Justice remaining from the 1986 Court--found that "the reasons for prohibiting the interrogation of an uncounseled prisoner who has asked for the help of a lawyer are even stronger after he has been formally charged with an offense than before." 475 U.S. at 631.

Last Tuesday, President Obama's Solicitor General Elena Kagan, speaking for the Federal government, filed a brief urging (at 6-7) the Court to overrule Jackson:

Although the Sixth Amendment affords criminal defendants a right to counsel at certain critical pre-trial stages, the Amendment should not prevent a criminal defendant from waiving that right and answering questions from police following assertion of that right at arraignment. Jackson serves no real purpose and fits poorly with this Court’s recent precedent; although the decision only occasionally prevents federal prosecutors from obtaining appropriate convictions, even that cost outweighs the decision’s meager benefits.

The issue, raised in a case called Montejo v. Louisiana (07-1529), was considered at the Court's April 24th Conference and -- ultimately -- on Monday the court decided not to address the issue.

Two points:

1. A few lefty bloggers have complained about the Administration's position. But there's little "buzz." Can you imagine the outpouring of outrage had the Bush DoJ advocated overruling Jackson?



2. Is the Administration more concerned for the welfare of unlawful combatant detainees than American criminal defendants?

(via Doug Ross)

Noemie Emery writes about the left's mooted "truth commission" in the May 5th Weekly Standard:

Let's get at the truth too about the word "torture," which to different people, means different things. Some think "torture" means standing on the 98th floor of a burning skyscraper and realizing you have a choice between jumping and being incinerated. Some think torture is being crushed when a building implodes around you. Some think torture is not thinking you might drown for several minutes, but looking at burning buildings on television and knowing that people you love are inside them. They remember that being crushed, incinerated, or killed in a jump from the 98th story happened to almost 3,000 blameless Americans (as well as a number of foreigners), and that 125 Pentagon employees were killed at their desks, while many survivors suffered terrible burns. They think the choice between stopping this from happening again by slapping around or scaring the hell out of a cluster of brigands, or leaving the brigands alone and letting it happen again, is a no-brainer. . .

The first job of a president is to safeguard his country and fellow citizens, which Bush did, to the apparent dismay of the opposition. Usually, an investigation takes place after someone has failed in his duty, to find out what went wrong so that it can be changed and improved on. But no attacks on U.S. soil in the seven-plus years between September 11, 2001, and January 20, 2009, is a record of success. Do the Democrats want to find out what went right, and then change it, to avoid repetition? The way that they're going, they probably will.

Commenter "Thai" recently praised British socialized medicine:

The UK's NHS NICE is probably the fairest health care system on the planet. I would think conservatives would love it.

Keep that in mind as you read this Daily Mail (U.K.) story:

A mother-to-be has been turned down for free dental treatment -- because the surgery will not accept that she is expecting.

Sarah Luisis, 27, who is five months pregnant, has been told she needs to provide more proof that she has a baby on the way.


source: April 24th Daily Mail

That is despite the fact that she has a big bump, a doctor's certificate, antenatal notes and ultrasound pictures of her unborn child.

Miss Luisis, of Hornchurch, Essex, is desperate to see a dentist after enduring weeks of agony with bleeding gums.

But the only way she can afford crucial treatment is through maternity cover from the NHS.

Britain's National Health certainly promotes equality, but a universal right to bad healthcare is not fair--and hardly a conservative goal.

(via Don Surber)

From Townhall's Glenn Foden:


source: Townhall

• Lawrence Summers, Obama's National Economics Council chair and once Clinton's Treasury Secretary, interviewed by FOX News' Stuart Varney on February 9, 2009:

  VARNEY: Do you think that this stimulus package will save us from economic catastrophe?
  
  SUMMERS: I do.
  
  Without this stimulus package, without an effort to backstop the economy, we are going to be caught in a vortex of declining employment, falling incomes, reduced spending, increased financial distress, less lending, reduced employment, reduced spending, and so forth.
  
  This package...
  
  VARNEY: Does it save us from a Great Depression?
  
  SUMMERS: This package -- this package, combined with a -- the -- a robust financial recovery program, of the kind that Tim Geithner -- Secretary Geithner -- is going to announce tomorrow, in my judgment, offer the best possible prospect of arresting the decline.
  
  To be sure, there are enormous uncertainties. We are going to have to keep monitoring this economy. Problems that were not made in a month or a year are going to take a long time to fix. But what we know is that there are now millions of people who need work -- 600,000 more in January alone -- and that there is tremendously important work to do in our country: Creating a green economy, repairing schools, so that our kids have a decent chance to learn to compete in the 21st century, making our health care system work, and that it has to be the right thing to do to bring those without work together with work that badly needs to be done.

• Lawrence Summers, Obama's National Economics Council chair and once Clinton's Treasury Secretary, interviewed on PBS April 21, 2001:

  [T]he idea that a huge spending program is the way to stimulate the economy, or the idea that the way to get better at high tech is for the government to take over the technology industries, these kinds of ideas basically have become passé because they've been disproven; they don't represent a reading of experience. So the debates that we have are within paradigms that are set by research, whether it's how best to use marketing incentives to help the environment, [or] whether it's how best to have fiscal policies to help the economy. The political debates take place within a universe that is shaped by the development of new ideas. Of those new ideas, none is more important than the rediscovery of Adam Smith and the idea that a decentralized system relying on price signals collects information and provides much more insurance than any kind of centrally planned or directed type of system.

(via The Corner)

The new consensus suggests that Antarctic ice is increasing. But guess why?: human activity! As reported in the April 23rd Australian:

Sea ice around Antarctica has been increasing at a rate of 100,000sq km a decade since the 1970s, according to a landmark study to be published today.

The study by the British Antarctic Survey, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, says rather than melting as a result of global warming, Antarctica continues to expand.

The fact that Antarctic ice is still growing does not in itself prove that global warming is not happening. But the BAS says increased ice formation can be explained by another environmental concern, the hole in the ozone layer, which is affecting local weather conditions.

But the absence of an ice melt overall does put a further question mark over extreme claims that the world faces precipitous rises in sea levels because of the melting polar ice caps. . .

The BAS, which discovered the ozone hole in the mid-1980s, has drawn on data from international agencies, including Australia's three Antarctic bases.

BAS project leader John Turner told The Australian yesterday that cooling had been recorded at the Australian bases and elsewhere in east Antarctica. He said satellite images indicated the ozone layer had strengthened surface winds around Antarctica, deepening storms in the South Pacific area of the Southern Ocean. This had resulted in a greater flow of cold air over the Ross Sea, leading to more ice production.

While sea ice had been lost to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula, sea ice cover over the Ross Sea had increased.

Dr Turner said the research results indicated why the extensive melting of ice in the Arctic was not occurring in Antarctica.

"While there is increasing evidence that the loss of sea ice in the Arctic has occurred due to human activity, in the Antarctic, human influence through the ozone hole has had the reverse effect and resulted in more ice," he said. As the ozone hole repaired itself as a result of measures in place to reduce chlorofluorocarbons in the stratosphere, the cooling in Antarctica was expected to be reversed.

"We expect ozone levels to recover by the end of the century, and by then there is likely to be around one-third less Antarctic sea ice," Dr Turner said.

Marc Sheppard of American Thinker rightly observes:

Outstanding play, that. . .

The selfish actions that melt northern sea ice would do the same to southern sea ice were it not for yet another group of our selfish actions. What exquisite eco-perfection. . .

Of course, as with all things which dare stall the symptoms of the impending global warming doom predicted by their infallible climate models, this one too will be conveniently short-lived and therefore depicted to in no way preclude immediate and extreme action.

(via Maggie's Farm)

Jim Lindgren at the Volokh Conspiracy looked at differences between states with high and low unemployment. Here's my chart of the results:


NOfP table via Volokh


Lindgren explains:

In the six states with the highest unemployment rates, the average top state income tax bracket is 8.05%. All but Michigan have marginal tax rates of at least 7% (and Michigan has a very high unionization rate).

On the other hand, the average top tax bracket for the six states with the lowest unemployment is only 4.4%, with 4 of the 6 states having a top marginal rate of 5.54% or less.

Further, union representation averages 14.1% in the six high unemployment states, with a median of 17.4%. All but the Carolinas are among the most unionized states in the nation (and the Carolinas have relatively high marginal income tax rates of 7% and 7.75%).

Putting this together, 3 of the 6 states with the highest unemployment (California, Oregon, and Rhode Island) have both high marginal income tax rates and high union representation. Michigan has high unionization but moderate marginal income tax rates, and the Carolinas have high marginal income taxes, but low unionization rates.

Among the 6 states with the lowest jobless rates, 4 have low unionization rates and no state income tax or modest marginal rates and a fifth (Nebraska) has average income tax rates and low unionization. The exception is Iowa, which has average unionization rates (13%) and high marginal income taxes (8.98%).

Also, check out Carpe Diem's analysis of another common indicator of state economic outlook.

Friday's post about MoveOn.org reminded me of this from a year ago:


source: The People's Cube

Responding to a healthcare post, reader OBloodyHell recently commented about the level of U.S. spending:

We CHOOSE to spend more. There's no Health Authority out there holding a gun to anyone's head and "making" anyone spend more. The level of medical attention -- and the level of technology applied to it -- is VASTLY more than we've spent in the past.

And we do make that choice as much because we can as because we want to. People want to be active longer in their lives, so they actually GET knee-joint replacements in their 80s (Yes, *80s* -- I know someone who did exactly that), something unheard of at any age a mere 50 years ago.

That ain't cheap -- not to develop the ability, nor to implement it.

The McKinsey Global Institute recently quantified healthcare spending among some OECD nations:


source: McKinsey charts, page 2

Some of McKinsey's data are questionable--for example, their page 4 already has been rebutted here and here.

Rod Liddle on the Church of England in the Arpil 11th Spectator (U.K.):

The Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, gave up something rather more substantive for Lent -- and he won’t be succumbing on Saturday either. He’s given up being a bishop for good, unless we can persuade him otherwise. In future he intends to work for the benefit of Christian people who suffer religious persecution in foreign lands -- in other, less elegant words, he is going to be socking it to the mozzies. It is remarkable that he should be forced to leave his current position in order to fight for the human rights of persecuted Christians; you might have assumed that being a Church of England bishop was a pretty good platform from which to undertake such work. As it is, he will not have the full force of the Church of England behind him; he will be, so far as Lambeth Palace is concerned, an ex-parrot.

We do not hear very much from the Church of England about the plight of Christians, and particularly Anglicans, in hostile foreign environments. Under the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the church does not like to make too much of a fuss about murdered priests in the Sudan, the constant fears of samizdat believers in Riyadh, the continued state persecution in Turkey, the perpetual discrimination in Indonesia and Malaysia and Bangladesh. Or about the Punjabi Christian dragged before a court in Pakistan accused of having sent a blasphemous message on his mobile phone, the Muslim hordes screaming for the death sentence outside the court. The thousands of Christians in Bauchi, Nigeria, watching their homes burned to the ground and their leaders attacked by, again, Muslim mobs. The beatings and murders in liberated -- yea, praise the lord! -- Afghanistan. We don’t hear much about that stuff from anyone, be it the BBC, our politicians or most notably the Church of England.

You might expect the C of E to feel at least a little bit uncomfortable that Anglicans were being strung up or burned alive in the middle east and elsewhere. But it does not seem to be an enormous issue for the prelates. The problem being that it would bring Rowan, and the church, into conflict with the very Islamists with whom they are thoroughly enjoying their important ‘inter-faith dialogues’, by which they seem to set so much store. These inter-faith dialogues have never, ever, to my knowledge, touched upon Islamic persecution of Christians: all the traffic is in the other direction, and the Church of England thinks it is all going swimmingly.

The C of E is very pleased and proud of its inter-faith dialogues -- largely, I suppose, because when conducting them it always adopts a strategy of total capitulation, much as it does before any and every assault upon its ideology, be it from Islam or from the decadent depredations of modern Britain.

There may be another reason for Nazir-Ali’s Lenten undertaking, then. It may be that he is sick to the back teeth of the leadership of the Church of England. He has not said that he is, but he is a polite and affable chap apparently. But he has had this to say recently; he has lamented a ‘gradual loss of identity and cohesiveness in (British) society’ which he feels is down to the abandonment of biblical values. He thinks that we reside in a ‘values vacuum’. He has also complained that British people suffer from a ‘historical amnesia’ -- by which he means that we prostrate ourselves to apologise for slavery while forgetting that we also ended slavery, while the Africans cheerfully continued with it.

We forget to celebrate our tolerance and diversity, our willingness to allow the freedom of speech and the freedom of worship. Nazir-Ali concluded by saying: ‘The church is seen simply as the religious aspect of society, there to endorse any change which politicians deem fit to impose upon the public.’ You could not get a better description of the Church of England today, I would argue. It is a church which has manipulated itself into a position whereby it can accommodate any adjustment to its own faith and ideology in order to make sure that it is in step with what it believes to be popular thinking.

BTW, I agree with Spectator commenter "Manfredo":

This is all fine and good, but "Yes, Prime Minister" nailed the C of E on all these points 20 years ago in an episode in which the perfect C of E prelate is described as a "cross between a socialite and a socialist," the question is debated whether believing is God should disqualify a candidate for a bishopric, and a cleric is said to describe the Bible as "a sort of Christian version of the Koran".

Those observations then had the same effect on the "church" that these observations now will have--none at all.

From Yaakov Kirschen's Dry Bones:




source: Dry Bones April 22nd

UPDATE: below

As I've shown, the war on terror isn't the prime driver of increased government spending--it's entitlements. In Friday's Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer agrees, and questions whether Obama can fix it:

What is obviously required is entitlement reform, meaning Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. That's where the real money is -- trillions saved that could not only fund hugely expensive health and education programs but also restore budgetary balance.

Except that Obama has offered no real entitlement reform. His universal health-care proposal would increase costs by perhaps $1 trillion. Medicare/Medicaid reform is supposed to decrease costs.

Obama's own budget projections show staggering budget deficits going out to 2019. If he knows his social agenda is going to drown us in debt, what's he up to?

He has an idea. But he dare not speak of it yet. He has only hinted. When asked in his March 24 news conference about the huge debt he's incurring, Obama spoke vaguely of "additional adjustments" that will be unfolding in future budgets.

Rarely have two more anodyne words carried such import. "Additional adjustments" equals major cuts in Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.

Social Security is relatively easy. A bipartisan commission (like the 1983 Alan Greenspan commission) recommends some combination of means testing for richer people, increasing the retirement age and a technical change in the inflation measure (indexing benefits to prices instead of wages). The proposal is brought to Congress for a no-amendment up-or-down vote. Done.

The hard part is Medicare and Medicaid. In an aging population, how do you keep them from blowing up the budget? There is only one answer: rationing.

Why do you think the stimulus package pours $1.1 billion into medical "comparative effectiveness research"? It is the perfect setup for rationing. Once you establish what is "best practice" for expensive operations, medical tests and aggressive therapies, you've laid the premise for funding some and denying others.

It is estimated that a third to a half of one's lifetime health costs are consumed in the last six months of life. Accordingly, Britain's National Health Service can deny treatments it deems not cost-effective -- and if you're old and infirm, the cost-effectiveness of treating you plummets. In Canada, they ration by queuing. You can wait forever for so-called elective procedures like hip replacements.

Rationing is not quite as alien to America as we think. We already ration kidneys and hearts for transplant according to survivability criteria as well as by queuing. A nationalized health insurance system would ration everything from MRIs to intensive care by myriad similar criteria.

The more acute thinkers on the left can see rationing coming, provoking Slate blogger Mickey Kaus to warn of the political danger. "Isn't it an epic mistake to try to sell Democratic health care reform on this basis? Possible sales pitch: 'Our plan will deny you unnecessary treatments!' . . . Is that really why the middle class will sign on to a revolutionary multitrillion-dollar shift in spending -- so the government can decide their life or health 'is not worth the price'?"

Read the whole thing. And see Ronald Brownstein writing in the National Journal:

Obama wants to expand government's reach to confront a wide range of challenges, such as health care, for which he is devising a universal coverage plan with congressional Democrats. In the survey, though, the upper-income groups supporting Obama generally don't look first to government for solutions. Overall, those polled split evenly -- 40 percent to 40 percent -- when asked whether ideas to improve their financial situation are more likely to come from business or government. But senior managers, the self-employed, knowledge workers, and the affluent all tilt sharply toward business. Likewise, those high-status groups are more inclined than the country overall to view personal action, rather than government programs or business initiatives, as the best way to achieve greater security in paying for retirement, maintaining a stable income, and accumulating assets.

Health care, in two respects, conspicuously departs from this pattern. First, the country overall leans relatively more toward government and less toward personal action (such as lifestyle changes) as the best way to ensure affordable care. And, in contrast to their view on other issues, the high-status groups are as likely as everyone else to look primarily to government for solutions. Drew Altman, president of the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, says that the number to watch in the health care debate is the percentage of people who think that reform will make their family better-off rather than worse-off. In the Heartland poll, the first group was roughly twice as large as the second. Most upscale groups divided about the same way. That's encouraging for Obama.

Still, given the priority they place on autonomy and their skepticism about Washington, these better-off Obama supporters may be especially sensitive to charges that his initiative will reduce choice by increasing government control over health care. Avoiding the Big Government label that helped sink President Clinton's universal coverage proposal may be critical not only to Obama's sustaining approval for his reform plan but also to his solidifying his unusually diverse coalition of support.

MORE:

Obama is preparing to enact his healthcare policy without bi-partisan support:

Potentially removing a major obstacle to the sweeping health care legislation sought by President Barack Obama, senior Democrats on Capitol Hill have reached broad agreement on a plan to prevent Republicans from blocking such legislation later this year, according to congressional officials.

The plan, which would use special provisions of the budget process to prevent a GOP filibuster in the Senate, threatens to sow outrage among GOP lawmakers and could complicate Democrats' efforts to push through the rest of their agenda.

But the president and his allies on Capitol Hill believe their decision to use the so-called budget reconciliation process will allow passage of the kind of health system overhaul that has eluded Washington policymakers for generations. . .

Adding health care to the list of measures that will be treated as part of the budget resolution process would allow Democrats to pass health care legislation with 51 votes in the Senate instead of the 60-vote supermajority normally required to avoid a filibuster.

With at least 58 Democrats in the Senate, that would all but guarantee that Democrats would not need a single GOP vote in the House or the Senate.

(via The Corner, Doug Ross)

Defending windmills from complaints of bird watchers, the CEO of Vestas is quoted in last week's Washington Post voluntarily demonstrating he's an idiot:

Ditlev Engel, president and chief executive of the Danish wind-energy company Vestas, said anecdotal evidence about birds being caught in turbine blades and other environmental horror stories do not usually hold up under scrutiny.

"Do people think it's better all those birds are breathing CO2? I'm not a scientist, but I doubt it," said Engel, whose company is expanding its U.S. manufacturing and distribution operations. "Let's get the facts on the table and not the feelings. The fact is, these are not issues."

Engel apparently thinks the danger of greenhouse gases is that they're toxic, a view I had thought confined to the EPA.

(via Planet Gore)

It's tough choosing between these two:

The Business Insider, April 21st:

As expected, the New York Times's business operations began burning cash this quarter (until now, they had remained cash-flow positive). The company has recently made several wise moves that have postponed the date at which it will run out of cash. But the situation is still critical.

At the current rate of cash consumption, assuming no one-time expenses (highly unlikely), we estimate that the company will max out its current borrowing capacity in 4 quarters. At that point, it will owe about $1.2 billion in debt. This estimate does not include any payments on the company's $600+ million pension and benefit obligation, of which $181 million is due next year.

The bottom line: The New York Times Company remains on the brink of insolvency. There are also at least $1.5 billion of claims ahead of common shareholders of the company's assets should it file for bankruptcy.

Thomas Edsall on The Puffington Host, April 22nd:

At a time when New York Times managers are forcing all employees to take a five percent pay cut, and demanding even larger sacrifices from the NYT-owned Boston Globe, top executives of the beleaguered newspaper received substantial bonus and fringe benefit payments over and above their salaries, according to a proxy statement released on March 11.

These bonuses and benefits to top Times company executives have provoked growing resentment among Times staffers, and frank anger from Globe reporters who have been warned by Times executives that their paper will be folded if they do not come up with $20 million in pay cuts and layoffs. . .

According to the New York Times proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, corporate president and CEO Janet L. Robinson received a total compensation package valued at $5.58 million in 2008, up well over a million from the $4.14 million she received in 2007, and the $4.4 million she received in 2006.

Robinson's $1 million base salary has remained the same for three years. In 2008, Robinson's total compensation included, in addition to her base salary: $1.6 million in stock awards, $1.5 million in options, a $35,000 bonus, $562,500 from the non-equity incentive plan, $898,171 from the "Change in Pension Value and Non-qualified Deferred Compensation Earnings," and "other compensation" of $46,368.

I thought about setting up one of those poll-thingies to let readers vote, but I never learned how to code polls. Besides, why choose when the Schadenfreude is sublime in both?

(via Tigerhawk, Half Sigma)

From Thursday's DC Examiner:

Alanis Morissette has been dethroned as the top lefty who doesn't understand irony. That title now belongs to the "progressive" pressure group MoveOn.org, which is sponsoring a net petition that reads in full:

No one is above the law. It's time to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute the architects of the Bush-era torture program.

BTW, the URL DontMoveOn.org appears to be available.

(via TigerHawk)

From CATO's Chris Edwards:


source: CATO Tax & Budget Bulletin 56
Edwards explains:

Federal spending is growing by leaps and bounds. The budget hit $3.9 trillion this year, double the level of spending just eight years ago. The government is also increasing the scope of its activities, intervening in many areas that used to be left to state and local governments, businesses, charities, and individuals.

By 2008, there were 1,804 different subsidy programs in the federal budget. Hundreds of programs were added this decade--ranging from a $62 billion prescription drug plan to a $1 million anti-drug education grant--and the recent stimulus bill added even more. We are in the midst of the largest federal gold rush since the 1960s. . .

It is very sad that the nation founded on individualism and limited government has more people than ever suckling at the federal subsidy teat. President Barack Obama has proposed a wide range of new subsidies in energy, health care, and other areas. If enacted, they would take America further away from the individual reliance, voluntary charity, and entrepreneurialism that made it so prosperous in the first place.

(via The Corner)

As reported by Reuters:

The 2009 Atlantic hurricane season will produce 11 tropical storms, of which six will become hurricanes, WSI Corp predicted Monday.

The Andover, Massachusetts, private forecaster reduced its forecast from the one it issued in December, when it said the six-month season starting on June 1 would see 13 tropical storms, including seven hurricanes.

The lower forecast was due to cooler water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and a fading La Nina cool-water event in the eastern Pacific, the forecaster said.

WSI predicted that two of the six hurricanes would be "major" storms of Category 3 or higher on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity. Such storms are the most destructive type, with sustained winds winds of greater than 110 miles per hour (177 km per hour).

Another prominent storm forecaster, Colorado State University, also reduced its forecast recently.

The CSU research team founded by forecasting pioneer Bill Gray predicted the season would see 12 tropical storms, including six hurricanes. It cited the same reasons, cooling tropical Atlantic waters and weakening La Nina conditions, for the lower forecast.

(via Planet Gore)

Teacher Hal Colebatch in the April 21st Australian:

Britain appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. . .

The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the "global baggage of empire" was linked to soccer violence by "racist and xenophobic white males". He claimed the English "propensity for violence" was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were "potentially very aggressive".

In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.

Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government's anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: "If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you." Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: "If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings." It took him five years to clear his name.

Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher's first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: "It's racist, you're going to get done by the police!" Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge. The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: "An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form."

A 10-year-old child was arrested and brought before a judge, for having allegedly called an 11-year-old boy a "Paki" and "bin Laden" during a playground argument at a primary school (the other boy had called him a skunk and a Teletubby). When it reached the court the case had cost taxpayers pound stg. 25,000. The accused was so distressed that he had stopped attending school. The judge, Jonathan Finestein, said: "Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? There are major crimes out there and the police don't bother to prosecute. This is nonsense."

Finestein was fiercely attacked by teaching union leaders, as in those witch-hunt trials where any who spoke in defence of an accused or pointed to defects in the prosecution were immediately targeted as witches and candidates for burning.

Hate-crime police investigated Basil Brush, a puppet fox on children's television, who had made a joke about Gypsies. The BBC confessed that Brush had behaved inappropriately and assured police that the episode would be banned.

A bishop was warned by the police for not having done enough to "celebrate diversity", the enforcing of which is now apparently a police function. A Christian home for retired clergy and religious workers lost a grant because it would not reveal to official snoopers how many of the residents were homosexual. That they had never been asked was taken as evidence of homophobia.

Muslim parents who objected to young children being given books advocating same-sex marriage and adoption at one school last year had their wishes respected and the offending material withdrawn. This year, Muslim and Christian parents at another school objecting to the same material have not only had their objections ignored but have been threatened with prosecution if they withdraw their children.

This is precisely the sort of "democratic despotism" De Tocqueville warned against (from Democracy in America, Book II, Section 4, Chapter VI):

[T]he species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it.

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.

(via The Corner)

I have not blogged much lately because I have been doing a fair amount of traveling. These days it means paying an extra $2.50 per trip for service the Transportation Security Agency provides in keeping terrorists from hijacking planes. So, I don't mind paying for the service, but I do mind paying for rude service.

Have you ever spoken with the TSA agent working the line? Ever asked them a question, 'what's the holdup?' or 'Hey while you are staring at the x-ray screen can you send the other bag down, the one that passes? Yes, that one, so I can put my shoes on?'

Asking a TSA agent to do something for you will get you a blank stare, at best, and a curt and surly growl more often than not. I've decided to engage them when I can to find out if the grouchiness is universal. I'll ask you, dear readers, to engage them as well. Here is what I found out.

There is no 'customer service' training at the TSA. There is: Revolutionary new intel and threat-based training and new uniforms have been rolled out in every airport in a concerted effort to increase security. New Uniforms -- Wow! Peer Review Program implemented for the TSO workforce which will allow TSOs to have workforce issues and selected actions reviewed by a panel of their peers. Peer review: just like lawyers have! TSO pay for performance awards, totaling $87M in pay raises and bonuses for 99% of TSA Agents. You know who else earned a government bonus?

Yes, there are all those things, but no customer service training, as I found out last month... more on that later

TSA Agents bypass security. Did you know that? They are not screened, they walk right through security with duffle bags, lunchboxes and jackets. That's right, the captain of the plane you are flying on -- who needs no weapon to hijack the plane -- he passes through security screen, but TSA agents just bypass the checkpoint.

If any agent wanted to, he or she could bring in a dozen handguns. A half-dozen hand grenades. A thousand rounds of ammo. Three working together, well I don't want to think about it. These are the same self righteous smug smart-ass agents that, well some are just plain rude. How long before one of 'em goes postal?

Last month, as I am putting my shoes back on, one of them tripped and fell into my back. I didn't see him coming, he slammed into me and it surprised the Hell out of me, So, I'm like 'whoa what's happening?', and he's like checking his uniform to see if it wrinkled or something, and I'm like 'are you chasing a bad guy or something?' and he's like 'uh... I tripped on the seam in this fake wall' and I'm looking at the seam in the fake wall and wondering how anyone can trip on that and he says he's sorry but in that insincere way, as if I ought to be more careful about where I put on my shoes. So, I retort, as in 'you ought to slow down a bit around here'. He didn't like that so he had more words for me such as 'take a chill pill' and then turned his back on me.

I hate it when people turn throw off an insult then turn their back on you, and Officer Sourpuss can't treat me like that, no matter how much I deserve it.

I went and had a little chat with the supervisor. Turns out these clowns get zero training on working with the public. None. Nada zip. According to the supervisor, they "don't need customer service training because they are not providing customer service." WHOA. TIME OUT. What do you call security service you perform for me, the paying public? I shelled out $2.50 -- each way mind you -- for that service.

So, he wants to know if Officer Crabby did it on purpose. No, I don't think Officer Friendly meant to trip-slip and fall into me on purpose, he perhaps was aiming for the X-ray machine and a six-week-long-workman's-comp-sponsored-relaxation-by-the-pool, except I broke his fall. Maybe that's why he has a sad attitude. The super's response was essentially that Officer Slipnfall doesn't need to be polite when he nearly takes out my coccyx.

I find that a little hard to believe, so, I rooted around on the TSA website. Here is what the TSA says about customer service:

Among other things, TSA's pay-for-performance system: Reinforces organizational values: technical proficiency, customer service, communication, teamwork, integrity, ongoing education, continuous improvement, dependability, professionalism, and strong leadership competencies. They also say "Most importantly, you are an essential part of what we do. We strive to balance security with the necessity to treat each of you as if you were our only customer."

Huh? As if you were our only customer? As if?

Then there is a 'service commitment'

Our culture provides passengers a secure and pleasant travel experience. We achieve this through highly-competent and dedicated customer service teamwork and respect. We strive to earn the respect and trust of all airline passengers.

So, it seems there is plenty of talk about customer service, but the TSA supervisor at Denver... well, I guess he didn't read the memo...

These same smug public servants, some of them have a serious attitude problem, 99% get the 'performance incentive' and they get a free pass to bring in any contraband they want into the secure area.

And that is just wrong.

Special note to Officer Crabpuss: I hope you enjoy the apple juice you just confiscated from that old lady. Just don't trip and fall into her, she's a lot more delicate than I am, and you are liable to end up on the wrong end of a lawyer with her.

And to think about it, with me, next time. If I only had a brain instead of a conscience. ('Oh! My BACK').

P.S. If any TSA agents want to respond, I welcome the response. I just need for you to pass through our security check first. On the serious note, these men and women work hard, it isn't their fault no one ever actually teaches them treat us as if we were their only customer, the people that pay their salaries.

I find it incredible that it is legal to buy influence of our lawmakers. The entire lobbying industry dilutes the ability of you and I and Joe BagOfDoughnuts to get what we want from Congress. Corporations have money, and most have more money than you or I do, and that effectively shuts you and I out of the legislative and executive processes. As The Corner observes today, "...my view is pretty much that lobbyists seeking unearned wealth via government [coercion] are reprehensible, while lobbyists who are trying to protect themselves against political predators are okay." I dunno about that... how can you really tell the difference? They all look the same to me.

The real outrage today is this: some corporations are using bailout funds to buy that influence.

General Motors Corp... devoted $2.8 million to lobbying in the first quarter of 2009. It has received $13.4 billion in government loans and could get $5 billion more... Failed insurance giant American International Group Inc. and banks Citigroup Inc. and JPMorganChase & Co. each reported spending more than $1 million to influence the government as they lived off federal money this year...Other major recipients of money from the so-called Troubled Assets Relief Program also had substantial lobbying costs in the first three months of this year, including:

• Bank of America Corp., which reported spending $660,000 lobbying while receiving its $45 billion in help;
• Wells Fargo & Company, with $700,000 in lobbying costs and $25 billion in bailout money;
• Goldman Sachs, which spent $670,000 while receiving its $10 billion;
• Morgan Stanley, which spent $540,000 while also getting $10 billion in assistance;
• PNC Financial Services Group, spent $135,000 -- nearly double what it did at the end of last year -- on lobbying while receiving a $7.8 billion lifeline;
• U.S. Bancorp spent $170,000 on lobbying and got $6.6 billion in government aid.

Question: Where is the so-called mainstream media on this one? Why are they not pounding AIG with black eyes, like they did with the congressionally approved bonus money?!? Why are they not pounding on Congress for accepting this clearly tainted money? Can you say 'kickback'? It is an outrage!

Answer: Because the money is not going to productive individuals, but to keep an unproductive Congress in power. The press doesn't dare object to that!

There ought to be a law that says 'if you accept money from the government for doing nothing (i.e., welfare or corporate welfare) then you don't get to vote, or because you run a screwed up business and are on the government dole (i.e. bailout), then you cannot lobby.' Of course that would disqualify almost the entire agriculture industry from lobbying... it really isn't a bad idea...sigh...

Oh well. At least corporations can't pay off the judiciary, so we still have that check and balance working for us. They can't pay them off.

Can they?

From the April 21st Quarterly Report of the Special Inspector General of the Toxic Assets Relief Program, on TARP and the Troubled Asset Lending Facility and Public-Private Investment Program (at 6-7):

• Expansion of TALF: The announced expansion of TALF to permit the posting of MBS as collateral poses significant fraud risks, particularly with respect to legacy residential MBS ("RMBS"). SIGTARP has made a series of recommendations to mitigate these risks, including, among others, that Treasury should require a security-by-security screening for legacy RMBS; that any RMBS should be rejected as collateral if the loans backing particular RMBS do not meet certain baseline underwriting criteria or are in categories that have been proven to be riddled with fraud, including certain undocumented subprime residential mortgages (i.e., "liar loans"); and that Treasury should require significantly higher haircuts for all MBS, with particularly high haircuts for legacy RMBS.

• PPIP Fraud Vulnerabilities: Aspects of PPIP make it inherently vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse, including significant issues relating to conflicts of interest facing fund managers, collusion between participants, and vulnerabilities to money laundering. SIGTARP has made a series of recommendations to address these concerns, including, among others, that Treasury should (i) impose strict conflict-of-interest rules upon Public-Private Investment Fund ("PPIF") fund managers, (ii) mandate transparency with respect to the participation and management of PPIFs, including disclosure of the beneficial owners of the private equity stakes in the PPIFs and of all transactions undertaken in them, and (iii) that all PPIF fund managers have stringent investor-screening procedures, including comprehensive "Know Your Customer" requirements at least as rigorous as that of a commercial bank or retail brokerage operation.

• Interaction Between PPIP and TALF: In announcing the details of PPIP, Treasury has indicated that PPIFs under the Legacy Securities Program could, in turn, use the leveraged PPIF funds (two-thirds of which will likely be taxpayer money) to purchase legacy MBS through TALF, greatly increasing taxpayer exposure to losses with no corresponding increase of potential profits. Such an expansion could cause great harm to one of the fundamental taxpayer protections in the original design of TALF by significantly diluting the private party’s personal stake, the "skin in the game," and therefore reduce their incentive to conduct appropriate due diligence. Treasury should not allow Legacy Securities PPIFs to invest in TALF unless significant mitigating measures are included to address the dilution of this incentive, which could include prohibiting the use of leverage for PPIFs investing through TALF or proportionately increasing haircuts for PPIFs that do so.

(via Wizbang, TPMMuckraker)

I'm a bear -- I admit it, I am glass-half-empty when it comes to the markets. Today I'm sharing opposing views of where the market is headed: you decide.

MaxedOutMama gives the bearish view:

• The Japanese are waiting hopefully for the Chinese economy to rebound, and have much longer to wait.
  
• The Europeans think that the US may be rebounding, and that this will at least presage their rebound at the end of 2009. Fat chance.
  
• The Chinese want the US and Europe to start spending again, but have conceded that this is unlikely to happen to the needed extent, and are trying to implement medical coverage for the broad population in order to boost internal spending. That could start paying off 2-3 years from now, and if it pays off enough, it might help to defray the cost of funding the imploding banks.
  
• Many of the emerging countries are showing signs of escalating weakness, which is rough on SE Asia because they had been big consumers of electronics and appliances. See Singapore's Q1 annualized -19.7% GDP figure, and consider that Singapore's exports to Malaysia dropped over 20%.
  
• The Brits are standing around with a stiff upper lip, waiting to be introduced to the recovery, which British government officials maintain has something to do with windmills.
  
• Sarkozy is preparing to blame all of this on Obama (some things never change),because he refuses to attack Iran, and Bush, because he did attack Iraq.
  
• The Germans are preparing to expand their already expansive government job support program (see description at the end of this article), so that their big industrials can cut employment in order to maintain profitability (and the ability to pay on their loans).
  
• The initial effects of lower interest rates (implemented in most economies) on consumer spending for durables are on average fading after 3-5 months.
  
• Obama of the US sees glimmers of hope for the economy aside from the continued job losses and economic contraction. These glimmers appear to be emanating from windmills and that cute little desktop thingie Obama got from the Austrian Economic Minister.

Her bottom line: "It further suggests that Chinese internal capital needs are going to grow for several years to come. I don't really know who we are going to get to fund our government borrowing."

MoM that is a scary thought. I would reply with, well perhaps we can pay the Chinese in golf-courses, but, no the Japanese bought most of those, and the Chinese don't even play golf it seems. Caddyshack. Yes! Finally got my Caddyshack mention. I just had to work that into a post somewhere.

On the bullish end is the Calafia Beach Pundit -- hey you can't help be a little bullish if you live on the left coast at a hippie beach. Here is what Scott Grannis has to say:

In my view, the origins of this latest rally can be found in a variety of indicators: sharply lower swap and credit spreads; higher commodity prices; rising shipping rates; quantitative easing by the world's central banks; lower implied volatility in stock and bond options; a steep yield curve; surprisingly strong profits at banks and brokerage firms; a surge in home resale activity; historically low mortgage rates; a relaxation of mark-to-market rules; a decision by the Obama administration to back off from its headlong dash to implement cap-and-trade and universal healthcare; and push-back from the Senate on Obama's request to cut deductions on charitable contributions, to name just a few.

Scott, whom we have mis-quoted before, mostly on his musings of Argentina is a financial professional, unlike MoM. I respect his views of Argentina, but Scott -- you have it all wrong. The bears are going to win the rest of this year, and here is why: The market will not turn around until the S&P 500 earnings are forecast to normalize. The P/E ratio should be somewhere south of 15 -- but right now the forecast S&P 500 P/E ratio is north of 23. Would you buy the S&P 500 right now at a P/E of 25? I wouldn't, and I say the market will be bearish until real values are found in equities. That will happen when the dividend on the S&P 500 is better than 6% (currently 3.3%).

I'm with MoM -- Scott I like you but you are wrong this time. Remember, the wealthy have the ability to wait until true values exist. When gold is cheap, they buy gold. When diamonds are cheap, they buy diamonds. When real estate is cheap, they buy real estate. When nothing is cheap, they buy nothing. The real wealthy people can afford to wait, and they will. You should too.

Now: sell in May and go away.

Violence in Mexico has spiraled out of control. As has the seemingly inseparable myth that most of the weapons used in Mexico come from the United States. Or, in other words, America's allegedly "permissive" Second Amendment is killing Mexico.

The new Administration is perpetuating the fable. In March, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted part of the responsibility, "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians." On April 16th, in a joint press conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, President Obama specifically blamed America:

A demand for these drugs in the United States is what is helping to keep these cartels in business. This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border.

Last week's New York Times uncritically repeated the talking point:

Federal agents say about 90 percent of the 12,000 pistols and rifles the Mexican authorities recovered from drug dealers last year and asked to be traced came from dealers in the United States, most of them in Texas and Arizona.

UPI and the Chicago Tribune said the same.

Are the Administration and the liberal media right?

No. Confederate Yankee's Bob Owens has long been in the vanguard of exposing this lie. Even before Obama's speech and the media's sympathetic parroting, Owens linked to this April 2nd FOX News report:

There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:

It's just not true.

In fact, it's not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.

What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

Still, it turns out that that figure, too, is wrong, according to FactCheck.org:

[T]he Fox figure of 17 percent is based on a misreading of some confusing House subcommittee testimony by ATF official William Newell. The Fox reporters come up with a figure of 5,114 guns traced to U.S. sources in fiscal 2007 and 2008. That figures to 17.6 percent of the 29,000 figure for guns seized in Mexico, as given by the country's attorney general.

The 5,114 figure is simply wrong. What Newell said quite clearly is that the number of guns submitted to ATF in those two years was 11,055: "3,312 in FY 2007 [and] 7,743 in FY 2008." Newell also testified, as other ATF officials have done, that 90 percent of the guns traced were determined to have come from the U.S. So based on Newell's testimony, the Fox reporters should have used a figure of 9,950 guns from U.S. sources. That figures out to just over 34 percent of guns recovered, assuming that the 29,000 figure supplied by Mexico's attorney general is correct.

Even that number is too low. At our request, an ATF spokesman gave us more detailed figures for how many guns had been submitted and traced during those two years. Of the guns seized in Mexico and given to ATF for tracing, the agency actually found 95 percent came from U.S. sources in fiscal 2007 and 93 percent in fiscal 2008. That comes to a total of 10,347 guns from U.S. sources for those two years, or 36 percent of what Mexican authorities say they recovered.

The mistake the Fox News reporters made was to focus on some numbers given by Newell and Hoover in separate testimony, regarding numbers of guns traced to specific states. But not all guns traced to the U.S. can be traced to specific states. The Fox numbers are "a subset" of the actual total traced to U.S. sources, one official said.

Conclusion: No one should minimize the deadliness of south-of-the-border violence, nor the consequences for America should Mexico become even more of a failed state. But on his world apology tour, Obama shouldn't blame America first, implicitly indict the Second Amendment, or try to solve Mexico's problems by changing U.S. law, as the Washington Times editorialized:

Numerous sources of weapons supply Mexican crime syndicates. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar filled with AK-47s from China, shoulder-fired rockets from Soviet-bloc manufacturers and fragmentation grenades from South Korea. In the past six years, more than 150,000 Mexican soldiers have deserted from the army, with many taking their standard-issue Belgian-made M-16s with them. Drug runners, who by trade are adept at smuggling, have the ability to sneak weapons across borders from anywhere they want.

The Obama administration has proposed spending $400 million to stop U.S. guns from going to Mexico. A major part of this plan would be to clamp down on gun shops in America. As with all gun control, new laws will not stop the criminals from getting guns but will curtail the rights of law-abiding individuals and businesses.

It continues to be an outrage that the media won't fact-check liberals or lefty arguments with which they agree--especially since the truth was available before Obama's press conference. And it's truly strange that when Obama makes America responsible for another country's anarchy, MoveOn.org doesn't say a word.

Nordyke v. King, No. 07-15763, Slip Op. at 4496 (9th Cir. Apr. 20, 2009):

[T]he right to keep and bear arms is "deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition." Colonial revolutionaries, the Founders, and a host of commentators and lawmakers living during the first one hundred years of the Republic all insisted on the fundamental nature of the right. It has long been regarded as the "true palladium of liberty." Colonists relied on it to assert and to win their independence, and the victorious Union sought to prevent a recalcitrant South from abridging it less than a century later. The crucial role this deeply rooted right has played in our birth and history compels us to recognize that it is indeed fundamental, that it is necessary to the Anglo-American conception of ordered liberty that we have inherited. We are therefore persuaded that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment and applies it against the states and local governments.

(via SCOTUS Blog)

This is a guest piece from regular reader OBloody Hell, prompted by a post earlier this month about the over-hyped claims of cost-effective solar power on the roof of the Denver Museum of Science and Nature:


UPDATED: below



As expected, President Obama is pushing for more "renewable" and "sustainable" energy sources. The underlying justification--beyond the Green assertion "we can't do this forever!!" (as though any product of civilization is perpetual... rode on a chariot lately? Climbed on a horse to get to work?)--is the unproven and questionable reasoning of Anthropogenic Global Warming. The claim is, if we continue to put CO₂ into the atmosphere as we have, using fossil fuel sources (i.e., coal and oil/natural gas), the CO₂ released will drive the earth's temperature rapidly and uncontrollably upward.

Ignore the seldom-mentioned science that CO₂ represents only 5 percent of greenhouse gases. Never mind that there is limited evidence for the notion that CO₂ forces temperature. Overlook the reality that global temperatures aren't increasing very fast at all. Forget the fact that a proven technology, nuclear fission, can easily meet all the world's energy needs for an indefinite period of time without producing so-called greenhouse gases. Any or all of these points suggest that the current energy sources are adequate--or would be if we exploited all available resources and the price of oil stays relatively high.

Still, the Greens say only solar and wind are "clean" enough. Now, the "cleanliness" of solar power is unproven, dependent on ignoring two entire segments of the total energy cycle -- the creation of and disposal of the solar power mechanisms. Also, a strong case can be made against wind power, but it's not as clear and self-evident as the case against solar. But those aspects are beyond the scope of this discussion.

And enviros also say that the under-performance of renewables--including solar--is a product of the energy industry's lack of incentives. This presumes that profit-making corporations aren't interested in profits. That alone explains why renewables require subsidies for the last 40-odd years, and want more. Now, if renewables haven't been viable without tax dollars for that long, there must be something wrong. One obvious conclusion is that the left doesn't understand economics at all.

In support of this conclusion, we find that Obama has increased the subsidies for Wind Power and Solar Power. "Hundreds, even thousands of new, Green jobs!!" we are promised. And yet all of them are dependent entirely on undeveloped technologies which don't currently exist, and, given the history, aren't going to exist. This is unlike nuclear, which would certainly and unquestionably promote a vast array of high-paying technical and skilled-labor positions -- a "maybe" job vs. a known certainty job... and one with excellent pay.

"Pie, meet sky. You two should have a lot in common."

But there's a more fundamental and insoluble flaw in the entire notion of solar power as a large-scale energy source -- one which flies in the face of Green "common sense." (Come on -- how often do you actually encounter real "sense" in a liberal position? I mean really.) This post shows that solar is unlikely ever to be a large-scale, cost-effective energy source at all -- because, in simple fact, the energy in question is far, far too diffuse..

The absolute maximum amount of power available from the sun at the earth's surface is called the solar constant. It represents how much solar energy is directed toward the earth, without consideration of the atmosphere, cloud cover, or the conversion efficiencies of solar systems. It's the best-case amount of energy one could realize in ideal conditions, after applying all possible human ingenuity anyone can ever -- ever -- apply to the problem. It's a physical ceiling; without space-based collectors, as unavoidable a limit as the speed of light. Just as E=Mc² is the maximum possible for any matter-to-energy conversion, so, too, the solar constant defines the maximum possible energy derivable by the conversion of solar power.

It's true that "solar constant" is a bit of a misnomer, since it's not really "constant" but varies consistently (within a few percentage points) based on the actual brightness of the Sun (which varies) and the Earth distance from the Sun (which also varies -- the Earth's orbit isn't a circle but an ellipse, as you might recall from science classes). But it averages a bit more than 1.3 kW/square meter, measured outside the atmosphere. When you also take into account the absorptive qualities of the atmosphere (not including cloud cover), it drops to roughly 1 kW/m² at high noon with the Sun directly overhead. The sun's apparent position at noon varies from 23 degrees South (December) to 23 degrees North (June). It's less at other times and other locations, especially beyond the tropics, where sunlight is filtered by still more atmosphere. But, I'll presume the 1 kW/m² estimate for solar energy at the earth's surface under ideal conditions--it's close enough to the top end to be just and fair, and it does make the calculations a bit easier.

Now, the total power generation capacity of the USA from all sources, is just a hair short of 1 TW (terawatt). Assume for a moment that we could convert 100 percent of the sun's energy striking the earth into power (somehow). One TW divided by 1 kW/m² means that powering America by solar--under perfect conditions--would require not less than 1 BILLION square meters of solar collectors. Let me restate that: one Billion. It really is that simple.

Just for simplicity's sake, let's abbreviate a "Billion Square Meters" as a "Giga Square Meter", or "Gsqm". So, to restate the issue, to replace U.S. generators with ideal solar power would require a collection area of not less than a full Gsqm.

Of course, ideal solar power doesn't exist in the real world. So 1 Gsqm underestimates the actual area required, for several reasons:

1. Cloud cover: Hugely significant, but not easily estimated, since it depends on where we situate the solar collectors and so forth, plus the type of cloud cover affects the level of power output possible. I'm going to set this aside as an exercise for the reader, since other impediments, as we will see, will be adequate to make solar power blatantly unattractive even without considering this.



2. Day/night cycle: The Sun's only there about 50% of the day. Indeed, in the winter, when power demand is most critical, it shines a lot less, as little as 35% of the time in many US latitudes. Taking the average leads to an obvious 50% factor, which means we're going to have to cover 2x as much area -- so now we're looking at two Gsqm.



3. Conversion efficiency: When Greens promote solar power, they usually focus on one of two approaches: solar thermal or solar cells (several other options typically are ignored, including one which has far more potential than either of these two). Solar thermal uses the sun's energy to heat something (often water) in a conventional generator, often concentrating the sun's rays in a small space using mirrors and such. Solar cells directly convert the sun's energy into electricity, bypassing a conventional generation system.
   
   Both suffer from unavoidable technical limitations on the efficiency of converting sunshine into power. Solar thermal conversion efficiencies range (depending on how measured) from under 3% to just over 30%. Solar cells (photovoltaics) typically operate at conversion efficiencies of around 25%, with best case currently around 40%. And best case, large-scale, practical engineering limits for all energy types, not just solar, seems to be in the vicinity of 60% to 70%.
   
   Let's be generous and presume solar cells that can produce 50% conversion efficiency AND be manufactured in industrial, high-volume quantities (there's a toxic waste issue I'll mention later in regards to this, but we'll ignore it for the moment). Even with that optimistic assumption, though, that means we'll have to lay down TWICE as many cells, so that we're now talking about four Gsqm.



4. Transmission-line losses: As of 1995, these were about 7.2% -- that is, for every 1kW you pump into the grid, your plug at the other end only gets about 928 watts out. Small, but hardly trivial. And 92.8% efficiency means that we'll need 4.3 Gsqm covered.



5. Storage inefficiencies: That day/night cycle means you're going to have to do something about the other 50% of the day. People still need power, even when the Sun is down. Assume that, oh, 30% of your total power is used at night. The average storage system at best tends to get about 50% creation-to-storage-to-reuse efficiency -- which means that you're going to have to generate an additional 15% just to deal with that problem. That bumps up the required area to 4.96 Gsqm. -- round it to "5 Gsqm" for simplicity.

So, accounting for some of the real world -- but not cloud cover -- we would need to find five billion square meters in the U.S. where we could deploy "little blue cells." That's a huge number, hard to really wrap one's head around. Five billion square meters is a lot of meters, we grasp, but, really, what "is it" in real-world terms. A big pond? Central Park in NYC? A big lake? What?

Well, the conversion factor for a million square meters is 0.386 square miles -- so, since five billion is 5,000 million, that means that 5 Gsqm is 5,000 x 0.386, or about 1,931 square miles of area. But again -- how much is that?

It's bigger than a park or a lake. To put in perspective, the STATE of DELAWARE is only 2,490 square miles. So we're talking about covering NOT LESS than 4/5ths of the land area of a small state with solar material. And this estimate still omits the effects of cloud cover, hardly negligible. Picturing the Earth with the clarity of a school-room globe ignores the weather. This is more typical:



So, once again, that number will go up, and substantially. I think a factor of 25% is hardly unreasonable. Shall we aim, then, to cover the ENTIRE state of Delaware?

What do you think the response of the Greens would be to a proposal to do that with concrete?? And no -- I, frankly, don't think that spreading it over a hundred locations would moderate the reaction. You make THAT announcement and they will scream loud enough to wake the dead. We know what Ted Kennedy did attempting to block construction of just one wind farm.

And imagining concrete isn't so far from the mark, either, since these panels do require a support infrastructure beneath them, which also require building and maintaining. Did I mention maintenance costs, yet? Because solar panels have to be cleaned fairly regularly, even if you ignore all the other matters. And, did you know what is the third most common cause of accidental death in the USA, behind automobiles and poisoning? Accidental falls, that's what.

How many more will die falling off a roof while cleaning solar panels? "Safe" energy, indeed.

"Head, meet Concrete. You should make quite an impact together."

Now, let's consider a couple of related issues:

1. Pollution: Solar cells are basically computer chips. Production of computer chips necessarily produces a substantial amount of toxic wastes. Right: "solar cells" are hardly the "clean, benign, environmentally friendly" thing they're sold so commonly as by the Greens. In reality, they produce some of the worst wastes on the planet. And we're talking here about an incredibly massive ramp-up of production quantities. Will our speculated "new" 50% efficient cell ALSO be much, much greener? Possibly, but that's yet another constraint you're placing onto two fairly big constraints, already: "50% efficient" AND "reasonable costs in industrial quantities".



2. Input: Production of computer chips is energy intensive. It takes energy to make them, and generally not a small amount. You have to obtain, smelt, and refine both some pretty common stuff (like sand) but also some fairly rare stuff (The term "Rare Earths" isn't always deserved, but is there for a reason. You can't walk around most places and grab chunks of rare earth materials for production). Why does that matter?:
   
   
   • You have to transport these materials to wherever you are going to make the chips/cells. Hardly cheap in industrial quantities.
   
   
   • Are these sources US sources? Are you going to trade in being dependent on oil producing nations for being dependent on rare earth producing nations?
   
   
   • This is not a trivial question, either -- there is substantial evidence that current cells (not the "optimal" ones we're assuming) are actually net energy sinks -- that is, the amount of power derived from them, from production to destruction, all things included, is actually less than the energy used to make them and dispose of them. That's current cells, but it's instructive about what needs to be considered here, which is usually called the "Total Power Cycle." In assessing cost effectiveness, one must include the energy required to create and dispose of your energy generation system, not just the active operating costs. Typical claims of solar power as "clean" and "cheap" entirely ignore the setup and disposal issues, which are hardly small. Once more, we find that the Left and the Greens fail utterly in basic economic concepts.



3. Lifespan: The typical fossil fuel power plant has a lifespan of about 40-50 years before it gets decommissioned as decrepit and/or overtaken by new technologies to the point where it might as well be decrepit. Solar cells, too, suffer from a life span. The functional lifespan of current solar cells is on the order of 20 years, after which the efficiency tends to drop off radically. This varies with cell type, but... were you planning on adding a FOURTH criteria to those ever-more magical 50%/cheap/green solar cells: longevity??? And this leads us to. . .



4. Disposal: We don't generally worry that much about disposal of solar cells, yet. But much like NiCad and Lithium batteries, we're going to have to recycle or dispose of these cells about every 20-30 years (let's be generous once again), and we're talking here about the open disposal/recycling of not less than 2000 square MILES of fairly nasty materials, and the replacement of same -- more often than we replace power plants in general.
   
   And that's just the USA. The USA's power production is about 4.2 TWhrs (Note: Watt-hours, not Watts, this is production, not capacity), China's is only a bit less, at 3.3, Europe's at 3.1, Japan at 1.2, Russia at 1.0, India at 0.665, and so on. What happens when the per-capita power demands of the world ramp up, to match the USA's? Current world power demands are 19 TWhrs, or almost 5x that of the USA -- so we're talking, about the world alone -- today, of covering FIVE DELAWARES with little blue cells. That's far more than the entire surface area of Lake Erie!!
   
   And where is that demand going to go when the third world stops wanting to suck on hind teat? How much land area are we going to cover with these things? How much toxic waste will it produce, both in creating and destroying them?

The fact is, the whole concept is just too inefficient.

This means that the money being spent is being utterly wasted. It cannot and will not produce either the kind of jobs it claims (those which are "sustainable" themselves because they pay for themselves without constant government subsidy) nor will it come even close to satisfying the growing worldwide need for more power. The same monies, put into encouraging a standardized nuclear design, with safety-inherent design features, would go far further towards both enhancing the US and world economies, but also towards solving the problems of getting the rest of the world up to the kind of standards of living we, in the USA, consider minimal. As NOfP previously has posted:


source: Wondermark, May 2, 2008

Such a standardized nuclear design could be a source of steady income for the USA for the indefinite future, and become the heart of a thriving industry in exporting parts and/or minor design mods for locale-specific conditions. Furthermore, this would this resolve any concerns about global warming, should they have any basis at all in fact. Instead of China and India having to choose between building the wealth of their peoples and producing greenhouse gases, they could, instead, license the design from the USA and produce power as needed. They could have both.

"Peasant, meet Cake. You'll like one another's company."

So, the notion of solar power panels or mirrors as a major energy source is not just questionable -- it's blatantly wrong-headed, based on myths, whims, desires, and a whole host of failed understandings of what the Sun is, how it warms the Earth, and how that might be utilized. There ARE ways to utilize the Sun which MIGHT be cost-effective -- but neither of the two obvious ones -- SPS and Ocean Thermal -- are getting much attention.

SPS requires a functional, industrial presence in space (which is one reason it might pay for itself, though it is a risky and expensive proposition and I'm not openly advocating it here).

Ocean Thermal might work and requires less pie-in-the-sky investment, because it essentially uses the vast ocean surface of earth as an undedicated collector of energy. For it, the diffuse nature of solar power doesn't matter, at least, not as much. The efficiencies it operates at isn't trivial engineering, but they are possibly cost-effective without magical tech developments like 50%/cheap/green/long-living solar cells. If we put money into development of this, it might bear worthwhile fruit.

Conclusion: Solar power, excepting possibly Ocean Thermal (and maybe SPS), can never be, and will never be, a serious, significant component of any rational power generation scheme in the USA or any other post-industrialized nation.

What Obama should be doing is to increase development of nuclear power by making the process of raising capital to build new plants easier, by streamlining the insane regulatory process (does it REALLY require hundreds of regulatory permits to be passed and signed off on, just to stick the first shovel into the ground? Could this not be reduced to a dozen or so covering exactly the same details?). To encourage the design and development of a standardized, safety-inherent system which could be mass-produced and mass-utilized. And to reverse course and sign off, finally, on a disposal process (presumably the one at Yucca) rather than decrying it.

Instead, as I have shown, what Obama is doing is pushing pie into the sky, trying to create a mythical "green" energy source from something which is anything but, and, more critically, anything but practical.

I mean... Delaware?

In better keeping with his goals, then, Obama probably should probably order the Department of Labor to introduce regulations creating and funding the Catapult Construction Corps. They can be manned by members of ACORN, with pies created by the NEA in new mandatory Home Economics classes ("Full employment for Home Ec Teachers!! Compulsory Civil Service For All Our Young Citizens!! The New O-Pie Corps!!").

Well, that would work at least as well as the current plans of the Administration, any way... And at least then we'd get to stand downrange of the catapults and get something nice to eat.

MORE:


Case in point. I repeat: go and tell the Greens you're going to cover Delaware with concrete, then sit back and watch their heads explode. It should be a great improvement on the next Rob Zombie or Uwe Boll film.


(edited for style, and substantial links added, by Carl)