11.03.06
Bob Ney picks up paycheck, so he can resign
Bob Ney, the corrupt (i.e., GOP) Representative from Ohio, pled guilty to various crimes and will serve time. But he wouldn’t resign from the House. Why? If he stayed in office until 1 November, he would get one more $13,000 paycheck. He got it, and so he now has resigned. What a little shit.
UPDATE: Nancy Pelosi calls it like it is:
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California on Friday criticized the GOP for letting Ney wait weeks to resign after his guilty plea.
“The Republican leadership has allowed Bob Ney to receive his paycheck and benefits for seven weeks after his admission of guilt to criminal conspiracy charges,” Pelosi said in a statement. “It is an embarrassment to this institution and an insult to the American taxpayer.”
Ney pleaded guilty in October to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud, deprive his constituents of honest service and violate his former chief of staff’s one-year lobbying ban, and a second count of making false statements to the House. Prosecutors have said they would seek a prison term of up to 27 months and $60,000 in fines at sentencing.
Raising the minimum wage will help the economy
Via Political Animal, we have a chance to look at the effects of raising the minimum wage: Oregon did it in 2002, with conservatives making their typical doomsday predictions of what would happen. And, the Wall Street Journal reports, no doomsday came to pass. The WSJ is, of course, a conservative newspaper. I trust that now conservatives will shut up about this.
Kevin Drum points out, “It’s worth noting that virtually all the evidence on the anti-minimum wage side is either anecdotal or theoretical. The evidence on the pro-minimum wage side is concrete and statistical. You can decide for yourself which kind of evidence to believe.”
If Democrats succeed in retaking one or both houses of Congress next week, a top priority will be increasing the minimum wage for the first time since 1997. That raises a persistent question: Does lifting the minimum wage destroy so many jobs that it hurts more than it helps?
In 2002, voters here raised the state’s minimum wage — and mandated automatic annual increases to keep up with inflation. Oregon’s 100,000 or so minimum-wage workers are paid at least $7.50 an hour, a rate that will increase to $7.80 in January, well above the federal $5.15 minimum.
On Tuesday, voters in six other states are considering raising the minimum wage, all of which would index minimum wage to inflation as do Oregon, Washington, Florida and, beginning in 2007, Vermont. Democrats see the minimum wage as a way to bolster their base, much as initiatives on gay marriage and other cultural issues boost Republican turnout.
During the 2002 debate in Oregon, foes of a minimum-wage increase argued that it would chase away business and cripple an economy that traditionally had higher unemployment than the national average. “With so many Oregonians already unemployed, raising the minimum wage and then increasing it annually would devastate our economic recovery,” Bill Perry, head of the Oregon Restaurant Association, wrote at the time.Four years later, though it is impossible to say what would have happened had the minimum not been raised, Oregon’s experience suggests the most strident doomsayers were wrong. Private, nonfarm payrolls are up 8% over the past four years, nearly twice the national increase. Wages are up, too. Job growth is strong in industries employing many minimum-wage workers, such as restaurants and hotels. Oregon’s estimated 5.4% unemployment rate for 2006, though higher than the national average, is down from 7.6% in 2002, when the state was emerging from a recession. Read the rest of this entry »
EXTREMELY cool: Presidential words
Via Boing Boing, this Web site lets you see the words favored by Presidents since the beginning of the nation. Move the slider at the top to see earlier Presidents. (The starting point is George W. Bush’s State of the Union address in January.) Extremely interesting to see which words are used most often. “Terrorist” is a very big favorite of George’s.
GOP to terrorists: “Here’s how to make an atomic bomb.”
This is incredible: the Bush Administration has posted on the Web instructions on how to make a nuclear device. The guy responsible: Pete Hoekstra, Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who was wanting to investigate every Democratic staffer to see what he could find. Better he should investigate himself.
The GOP really is totally incompetent at governing. Totally. What they’ve done in Iraq is just the tip of the iceberg. And how is the rebuilding from Katrina going?
Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”
Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.
Early this morning, a spokesman for Gregory L. Schulte, the American ambassador, denied that anyone from the agency had approached Mr. Schulte about the Web site.
The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.
“For the U.S. to toss a match into this flammable area is very irresponsible,” said A. Bryan Siebert, a former director of classification at the federal Department of Energy, which runs the nation’s nuclear arms program. “There’s a lot of things about nuclear weapons that are secret and should remain so.”
The government had received earlier warnings about the contents of the Web site. Last spring, after the site began posting old Iraqi documents about chemical weapons, United Nations arms-control officials in New York won the withdrawal of a report that gave information on how to make tabun and sarin, nerve agents that kill by causing respiratory failure.
The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents — most of them in Arabic — would reinvigorate the search for clues that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. American search teams never found such evidence.
The director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, had resisted setting up the Web site, which some intelligence officials felt implicitly raised questions about the competence and judgment of government analysts. But President Bush approved the site’s creation after Congressional Republicans proposed legislation to force the documents’ release. Read the rest of this entry »
Bush: The wrong man for the job
Via Dan Froomkin, this perceptive column from Newsweek:
It is a favorite theme in American lore, one we hear about from the time we are kids in school: how incredibly lucky we have been in our leaders at critical moments in history. How lucky we were to have had those brilliant and brave Founding Fathers hanging together in Philadelphia in 1776 (else they would have hung separately). How lucky that our first president was an upright fellow like George Washington, refusing the monarchical powers that were offered him and opting for a republic. How lucky that we elected a homely fence-splitter of world-class leadership ability, Abe Lincoln, when the country was breaking up, and just as lucky that Franklin D. Roosevelt was there during our dire rendezvous with destiny in the 1930s and ’40s. How lucky we were to be led by a failed haberdasher who turned into a genius statesman, Harry Truman (not Henry Wallace!), as the cold war began; and just as lucky that an unprepossessing former B-movie actor, Ronald Reagan, managed to grasp exactly how to end that war.
What a glorious couple of centuries it has been, all held together by this great string of luck. “The Lord looks after drunks, children and the U.S.A.” went the old saying, and it seemed true. But the thing about luck is that, eventually, you run out of it. Everybody craps out in the end. And that is what has happened to us. As Americans go to the polls Tuesday we must confront the fact that we have become a luckless people, all across the political spectrum.
Was there any more mind-boggling bit of historic bad luck than what happened after Election Day 2000, when those 537 votes in Florida wobbled, then stayed in George W. Bush’s column? Never mind what kind of president Al Gore would have been—he would have been adequate, I suppose, but so would have most Republicans—it is hard now to avoid the conclusion that Bush was precisely the wrong man at the wrong time. Perhaps Bush would have been OK fighting another kind of war, a Jacksonian Battle of New Orleans-type war. But at a moment in history when we faced the most subtle sort of global threat, when we needed not just a willingness to use military force but a leader of real brilliance—someone who would carefully study a little-understood enemy—we got a man who actually took pride in his lack of studiousness. No surprise: Bush never once presided over a grand-strategy session to divine the nature of Al Qaeda, and he ended up lumping Saddam and every Islamist insurgent and terrorist group with Osama bin Laden. He ensured that a tiny fringe group that had been hounded into Afghanistan with no place left to go—one that could have been wiped out had we focused on the task at hand—would spread worldwide and become a generational Islamist threat.
And at a time when we needed a world leader who understood the nuances of burden-sharing in the international system, we got a president who so badly wanted to be a cowboy and not his father (offending even some Texans: “all hat and no cattle” is the term they use down there) that he proudly declared he doesn’t “do nuance.” Bush stomped around huffily in his first term, talking loudly and carrying a big stick, in the process all but trashing a half century of carefully nurtured American prestige. No surprise: he alienated a world we desperately needed on our side, thus leaving America alone with all the burden and generations’ worth of bills to pay. Now we face two serious rising threats, North Korea and Iran. And having squandered our attention, resources and prestige on a trumped-up threat, Iraq, we are simply too weak and friendless to confront them as they should be. That’s what I call bad luck. Read the rest of this entry »
My apartment
This post is primarily for my kids, who are curious to see what the apartment looks like when it’s not a complete wreck. You may want to skip.
A question that some ask: “Have you read all those books?” My standard answer: “All but that blue one right there.” True answer: “No. That’s why I have them: to read.”
The photos (from left to right, top to bottom) take you on a tour of the apartment. First is the entrance hall, which opens from the courtyard. The living room is in the back, as it were, so it can look out over balcony to see Monterey Bay.
First room is on the right: the study, three views. Then, across the hall on the left is the bedroom: three views. The the living room: first, as you enter. Then, back toward the entrance, and a view from the dining-room alcove.
Then the dining room and, from the dining room, the kitchen.
Obviously, much remains to be done. The Trader Joe’s paper bags are to be filled with books, to go to the library. But, still, it’s a start.
Snug Megs
Now that the weather’s turned cooler, Megs is once again enamored of her Cozy Cushion, as you see. Nothing like a warm nap on a rainy day.
Krugman is right
Why are we sending troops to be killed and to kill Iraqis (including the civilians: “collateral damage”) when the GOP-protected companies have pulled in all the money they can? Notice how the GOP Congress has taken steps to assure that there will be no investigation of how this money was spent wasted. The GOP at work: screwing the public, protecting Big Business.
Bechtel, the giant engineering company, is leaving Iraq. Its mission — to rebuild power, water and sewage plants — wasn’t accomplished: Baghdad received less than six hours a day of electricity last month, and much of Iraq’s population lives with untreated sewage and without clean water. But Bechtel, having received $2.3 billion of taxpayers’ money and having lost the lives of 52 employees, has come to the end of its last government contract.
As Bechtel goes, so goes the whole reconstruction effort. Whatever our leaders may say about their determination to
stay the coursecomplete the mission, when it comes to rebuilding Iraq they’ve already cut and run. The $21 billion allocated for reconstruction over the last three years has been spent, much of it on security rather than its intended purpose, and there’s no more money in the pipeline.The failure of reconstruction in Iraq raises three questions. First, how much did that failure contribute to the overall failure of the war? Second, how was it that America, the great can-do nation, in this case couldn’t and didn’t? Finally, if we’ve given up on rebuilding Iraq, what are our troops dying for? Read the rest of this entry »
Credit card tsuris
I hate it when credit cards are compromised. First I got a couple of emails from eBay saying:
Dear eBay user:
As a courtesy and for your safety, eBay notifies you whenever your credit card is used for certain activities on the site.
Once you have a credit card on file with us and the same card is used again for certain activities on eBay, we will send this notice to let you know that the credit card has been used.
These activities include using the same credit card to:
* register an eBay account using an anonymous email domain such as Yahoo or Hotmail,
* set up a selling account,
* update the credit card information on another account that uses the same card,
* gain access the Mature Audiences category, or
* place a bid over $15,000.If you did not use your credit card for any of the above reasons, please confirm with all members of your household as well as friends or business associates that they have not recently used your creidit card on eBay.
If you are still unable to explain the use of your card, please report the potential unauthorized account activity to us by taking the following steps…
So I took the steps and also looked at my credit card account. A mystery charge of $1 had been made for what turned out to be a company that does time-share rental/exchanges. Not me. So now I’m on hold to India while the customer service person “researches” how I can close this account and open a new one. :sigh:
Dangers of drugs
A perfectly legal—but dangerous—drug: alcohol. Of course, it’s regulated and taxed. Why not marijuana?
Although alcohol consumption plays a role in about 31 percent of homicides, only 1.4 percent of TV news reports on murders mention alcohol. Only 12.8 percent of TV news stories on traffic accidents mention alcohol, while 34 percent of accidents involve drunk drivers. I’ve often wondered why people who’ve consumed many drinks still drive at high speeds, where at best they’re likely to get caught for drunk driving, and perhaps this is part of the reason.
An Ohio State press release describes the study, conducted by Michael Slater, Marilee Long, and Valerie Ford:
They used statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration which estimated that 34 percent of accidents involved people who were legally intoxicated.The researchers then examined coverage of crimes and accidents appearing in a national sample of daily newspaper, magazine and local television news, as well as national television news during a two-year period (2002-03). They determined the percentage of stories that linked alcohol use to specific violent crimes, injuries and motor vehicle accidents.
In all, they analyzed the content of about 1,000 daily newspaper editions, 550 television news programs, and 72 magazine issues. Newspapers and television stations were selected so they represented all regions of the country, in cities of various sizes. Three news magazines — Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report — were also sampled, as were the three major television networks, CNN and USA Today.
One possible objection to the study could be that the researchers didn’t investigate the specific incidents to find out if alcohol actually was involved. But even if it turned out that alcohol wasn’t involved in these specific cases, the question of why the media isn’t reporting on alcohol-related crimes and accidents would still remain.
I suspect the absence of reporting may be related to the advertising dollars spent by companies that sell alcohol.
Cute trick for meeting notes
This is from Lifehacker, which got it from a commenter:
This is a trick I picked up when I was working as a consultant. This process quickly and efficiently sends out notes from a working session to all the collaborators. The steps are:
1. Capture whiteboard notes with your cameraphone.
2. Send your images to your laptop/PC via Bluetooth (or email).
3. Use CutePDF to “print” them to a PDF file.
4. Email PDF to all collaborators.
White-truffle blowout
If you never again click a link on my site, click this one. You’ll read the illustrated story of a $320 meal at Alain Ducasse’s restaurant. Do not miss this one.
The Iraqi view not represented
Greg Palast points out something about the story of the wounded Marine:
It was pure war-nography. The front page of the New York Times today splashed a four-column-wide close-up of a blood-covered bullet in the blood-soaked hands of an army medic who’d retrieved it from the brain of Lance Cpl. Colin Smith.
There was a 40 column-inch profile of the medic. There were photos of the platoon, guns over shoulders, praying for the fallen buddy. The Times is careful not to ruin the heroic mood, so there is no photograph of pieces of Corporal Smith’s shattered head. Instead, there’s an old, smiling photo of the wounded soldier.
The reporter, undoubtedly wearing the Kevlar armor of the troop in which he’s “embedded,” quotes at length the thoughts of the military medic: “I would like to say that I am a good man. But seeing this now, what happened to Smith, I want to hurt people. You know what I mean?” The reporter does not bother — or dare — to record a single word from any Iraqi in the town of Karma where Smith’s platoon was, “performing a hard hit on a house.”
I don’t know what a “hard hit” is. But I don’t think I’d want one “performed” on my home. Maybe Iraqis feel the way I do.
We won’t know. The only Iraqi noted by the reporter was, “a woman [who] walked calmly between the sniper and the marines.”
The Times reporter informs us that Lance Cpl. Smith, “said a prayer today,” before he charged into the village. We’re told that Smith had, “the cutest little blond girlfriend” and “his dad was his hero.” Did the calm woman also say her prayers today? Is her dad her hero, too? We don’t know. No one asks.
The reporter and his photographer did visit a home in the neighborhood — but only after the “hit” force kicked in the door. I suppose that’s an improvement over the typical level of reporting we get. In dispatches home by the few US journalists who brave beyond the Green Zone, Iraqis are little more than dark shapes glimpsed through the slots of a speeding Humvee.
Last month there was a big hoo-ha over the statistical accuracy of a Johns Hopkins University study estimating that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of this war.
I doubt the Iraqi who fired that bullet into Lance Cpl. Smith read the Hopkins study. Iraqis don’t need a professor of statistics to tell them what happens in a “hard hit” on a house. Of civilians killed by the US forces the Hopkins team found 46% are younger than fifteen years old.
I grieve for Lance Cpl. Smith and I can’t know for certain what moved the sniper to pick up a gun and shoot him. However, I’ve no doubt that, like the Marines who said prayers before they invaded the homes of the terrified residents of Karma, the sniper also said a prayer before he loaded the 7.62mm shell into his carbine.
And if we asked, I’m sure the sniper would tell us, “I am a good man, but seeing what happened, I want to hurt people.”
