Zonitics

2010-03-11T18:11:00.000-08:00

Education, the Wisest Investment

This past Sunday, the Arizona Republic ran a front-page article on the rising default rate for student loans in Arizona. While the article does make a passing reference to the rise in such defaults among community college students, it places most of its focus on the defaults among the various private post-secondary students.

Just to be clear, in Arizona private post-secondary education doesn't mean idyllic campuses set among the ivy and hardwood trees where discussions in the liberal arts is conducted in the dead language of the day (remember Wednesday is Attic Greek!) Rather with a few small exceptions, private means occupational like truck-driving or mortuary science or if you want comprehensive University of Phoenix.

In other words private means profit and it is there that the article takes with its reporting of recruiters paid by the number of students enrolled and students with tens of thousands of dollars in loans and stuck in dead-end job. All that was missing was a tracking indicator for University of Phoenix stock.

However you don't need to look at occupational training for people with heavy loan burdens with no job prospects.... why not look at all the private colleges outside of Arizona, set among the ivy and hardwoods? You think anyone from a given New England liberal arts college sat down with a prospective English Lit major and told them that in exchange for four years and $100,000 in tuition that their job prospects out of college might be along the lines of working the espresso machine at the local coffee shop?

Or do you think they took their money and explained to the student what a great education he or she would receive and how it would prepare them for a life of something.... plus there was always grad or law school to learn a practical trade.

Or better yet, do you think anyone from the Republic walked down the street to the ASU School of Journalism and informed the students there (who are racking up debt even if it is at a public school) and informed them of their miserable job prospects?

2010-03-11T18:06:00.000-08:00

Hiatus

Sorry for the delay between postings but I have been doing unspeakable things to earn a living the last few months...

... and no it wasn't male prostitution which actually would have been a step up.

2010-02-22T18:00:00.000-08:00

Good Sticks Part 1

I'm really not in favor of all things turned to "11" on the dial at all times. There's no reason why all deserving teams should be in the NCAAs every year, no reason why the #1 and #2 football teams ranked in the polls have to meet every year, and no reason why the best athletes have to be in every Olympics.

However in the case of the latter, I am sure glad that they are for Olympic hockey.

Nothing beats high-level international hockey for sheer intensity. Nuttin'... not international basketball, not the World Cup, and certainly not the 3-man synchronized skeleton on the half-pipe combined or whatever nonsense is a medal sport these days.

My first exposure to international hockey was my first night in Canada when I was exposed to the Canada Cup which was the only venue, given that the NHL didn't release players to the Olympics, for the top international talent to play. The Canada Cup was (sadly) supplanted by the World Cup which was stellar in 1996 and finally in 1998 the NHL released its players for the Olympics.

So here we are. More on this tomorrow

2010-02-21T19:24:00.001-08:00

Father John Would Be Spinning in His Grave...

... except for the fact that he isn't dead yet.

As it impossible as it seems right now I distinctly remember the song sheet this morning had "A Mighty Fortress is Our God."

2010-02-21T17:45:00.000-08:00

GPLETS and Gravy

This is an old topic that Espresso Pundit helped to break and that I touched on eons ago but I see GPLET has emerged yet again into the news. However you won't find it in the local media, but instead have to go read about it in a Washington-based paper.

GPLET, Government Property Lease Excise Tax, is used by several cities in Arizona as an economic development tool. A developer will transfer title to a building and associated property to the local city government and the city leases the now-government property back to the developer. After a number of years (usually several decades) the title reverts back to the developer.

The advantage to the developer is that the GPLE paid to the city government is considerably smaller than what it would have paid in property taxes. The advantage to the city is that it gets the particular property developed.

So who loses?

Well you and me for one. As the report on GPLET from the Goldwater Institute makes plain, the tax burden is simply shifted to other taxpayers. Who else loses? Well for that you have to dig a little bit deeper into a story about the hotel industry in downtown Phoenix.

There are 3 major hotels downtown. One, the Shearton, is owned by the city. The second, the Wyndham, will be placed under a GPLET as part of a deal involving a major renovation.

So that leaves only 1 hotel, the Hyatt, still paying property taxes. Yet in the report, Phoenix Deputy City Manager David Krietor notes that the Hyatt receives other benefits from the City to help make up for that omission.

So there you go as long as everyone is taken care of when it comes to sweetheart tax deals, except for me and you of course. It's not the shifted tax burden that gets me, it's that losing out on city-provided goodies for downtown properties is for suckers and the politically powerless.

2010-02-08T18:00:00.000-08:00

New Orleans.... Pah!

I was going to write about the Phoenix Convention Center but I will leave that to another day because my target today is the city of New Orleans.

I know New Orleans is America's favorite city given the Saints' victory last night and were the emotional favorite but why? Let's review the possibilities for why New Orleans might hold a special place in America's heart:

1) President Jefferson's quest to buy New Orleans is what led to the Louisiana Purchase and our westward expansion.

The statute of limitations ran out on this about 100 years ago and the the only reason why Jefferson wanted to buy the city in the first place was to drop the hammer on those French customs and dock officials in New Orleans who were blocking the trans-shipment of American goods.

2) New Orleans offers unique a unique Cajun cuisine and culture.

I can get my fill of that culture anytime I want by going to Disneyland and plus I get to ride the Pirates of Carribean in the same trip and without the oppressive humidity. If I want real good French cuisine I can always go to Montreal.

3) New Orleans offers a bacchanalian, Latin-like outlet to enjoy hedonism in an otherwise puritanical North America. Plus you have that great roguish element that we all enjoy from afar but that we would never tolerate in our own backyard.

Been to Vegas? Read the paper lately about Chicago? I can gamble in the former and enjoy fewer mosquitoes in the latter.

4) New Orleans deserves our sympathy because of Hurricane Katrina.

That's it, that's why everyone pulls for them.

Note it's not because of the hurricane in of itself because Mississippi suffered far more damage from the storm. Rather it's because of the levees that broke from the effects of the storm; levees which were poorly engineered and which were administered by a balkanized and corrupt political system

The people of New Orleans deserve our sympathy in much the same way the people of Hati do but that doesn't make the city itself an object of veneration. New Orleans has been a den of humidified vice and corruption since, well, just about forever.... it's first good and last governance came with the imposition of martial law during the Civil War. The docks have moved north of the city and as the Tragically Hip reminds us the whole darn city is sinking and I for one do not want to swim.

So why has America embraced such a cesspool?

Is it because we embrace losers? Heck no... did America embrace the Cardinals last year?

Is it because deep down we know that not only is New Orleans doomed but that Saints, playing in such a small market, is also? Before Katrina, the Saints were prime moving materiel for LA and after the storm the owner was all but begging to keep the team in San Antonio. Now that the team has won, it's stuck for the time being and when enough time passes for it to be politically correct to moved out of that small market cesspool, another team would have grabbed the LA market.

So there you go.

Tomorrow's victory parade for the Saints will not be so much a celebration as a swan song.

Time to let them swim.

2010-01-28T18:47:00.000-08:00

The Magic of Greg Patterson

At first I misunderstood this post by Mr. Patterson until I realized his intention.

First, I have been reading Patterson's Espresso Pundit for years and when it come to readership to say he dwarfs mine is an understatement. So I have alot of respect for him. He's a guy who has taken on the the hubris and over-sized egos in the dead-tree press and Democratic Party and helped bring them down to size. He constantly brings home the pertinent facts of how the traditional media is a dying industry.

So what to make of this post in which trumpets the fact that he was named one of the "10 Most Influential Arizonans of the Decade" by the Arizona Capitol Times? A little hypocritical self-aggrandizing for being named in the dead-tree press? At first I thought fame and fortune had led our fearless pundit astray.

It took me a minute to realize that much like all the times he mentions when he is going to be on TV that he is actually making fun of his popularity in the very media he rakes over the coals and that he continues to be the outsider fighting against the entrenched dinosaurs of the information society. You can tell he agonizes whether it would be immodest, a characteristic that is as distant from him as monogamy is to Tiger Woods, on whether he should even write about this recognition.

Well played sir, well-played. Jonathan Swift would be proud.

2010-01-28T18:23:00.000-08:00

The Magic of Steady Eddie P

A few days ago I received a newsletter from my Congressman, Ed Pastor.

Said newsletter starts off with the header "District Projects Funded", proceeds to a front-page article entitled "Federal Funds Secured...", and then just goes from there. Page after page of headlines such as ....

"Phoenix and Glendale crime-fighting enhanced with federal funding boost...."

"$150,000 for Guadalupe seniors' transport..."

"Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS receives $300K for community project...."

Now you might ask why is the federal taxpayer funding projects that are so local nature; isn't that the duty of the local citizenry to cough up the dough? Yet that is how Mr. Pastor has built a two decade long career in Washington, by bringing home federal dollars to his district. Of course by the same token, taxpayers in his district are funding community centers, local police, and senior bus trips in places like Iowa and Arkansas so fair is fair.

We ship our tax dollars to Washington so we could then feel grateful when our elected officials manage to bring some of that money back home. Why not just directly fund the local and state government to implement those projects and skip the middle man? Because then people like Pastor would be out of a job.

It's sort of like going for the evening, being forced to use the valet service to park you car and then you are expected to tip the valet guy for doing something you would prefer to do yourself.

Other items of interest from Mr. Pastor's letter....

1) Phoenix is receiving $ million for "continued environmental and community outreach efforts required by the FTA related to a(n) Light Rail Corridor Extension." It's nice to secure federal money to pay for something mandated by the federal government in order to build a project that would have had a chance in hell of being built without federal money.

2) Mr. Pastor takes credit for supporting such programs as Cash for Clunkers, the American Clean Energy and Security Act ("Cap and Trade"), as well as "... to continue Congress' work to... lower the deficit." Seriously.

3) Not a peep about health care. When you are so secure in your district that you can win by 30 points and you don't say a word about health care, and this was probably was probably pre-Scott brown, well you know where things are going.

2010-01-24T19:07:00.001-08:00

You Just Cannot Find Good Zombie Cheerleaders These Days....

.... even in Chandler.

El Gringo is back.

2010-01-24T18:47:00.000-08:00

The Decline of Western Civilization- Part 2

Instant replay.

Remember when you played sports as a kid, maybe it was for the school or some league or maybe it was just down the street with the other kids? There would be some blown call by whatever schlub was refereeing the game, perhaps they missed a foul or thought that past the given time of the afternoon that every pitch in the dirt was a strike. You would get mad, go back to the bench and what would your coach or team captain say?

"Suck it up, it's part of the game."

So why the growing fascination with instant replay in all sports at the college and professional level? Why the quixotic quest for the perfect call, to erase the fallible effect of human judgment? Seems kind of silly doesn't it? In baseball, it's limited to home runs but with the precedent set of getting the call right why not players involving runners on the base paths? In college football every play is under review by officials. At least the NFL for the most part throws an element of gamesmanship into the mix by requiring the coach to request a review, but even in that league all plays in the last few minutes of each half are automatically reviewed by the officials

I say Bah.

As a kid you learned fast that life wasn't fair and that the guy behind the plate or in the zebra shirt wasn't some sort of omniscient, let alone benevolent, god. You learned that Fate was capricious, that despite your best efforts that a stroke of bad luck could cost you the game.

You learned to play on through the injustice like a man and just like that scene in Deadwood, you learned that life was full of misfortune and that sometimes you got to dish it back.

There's no instant replay in life and there should be none in sports.

2010-01-21T08:24:00.000-08:00

One Year of Obama

In honor of the first anniversary of Obama's inauguration I was going to write about the major events of the past year and how it was all interconnected but then I realized that was going into too much detail so I decided on this....

Until Obama's inauguration, most people didn't know what sort of White House we were going to get; hope and change and all of all that meant you read into him what you wanted. Some thought we would get a lurch to the left in terms of policy while others thought that we would get a form of technocratic competency.

Instead we got none.

As I wrote yesterday, the main substantive achievements of the Obama Administration have been to jack up the deficit and intensify the war in Afghanistan, not exactly something either the competence or leftist camps would want. The major policy goals of the Administration, from economic growth to the environment to health care remained unfulfilled. That is despite large majorities in the House and Senate.

To top it, when Obama took office he had an incredible opportunity to not only set the agenda in terms of goals but also in terms of the policy outlines needed to achieve them. However from the outset he outsourced substance of those policies to Congress which is dominated by old leftist warhorses from the last time the Democrats ran Congress... come on does Nancy Pelosi, Harry Waxman, or Barney Frank scream hope and change and a post-partisan America?

Yet those are the people, not the Obama Administration, who wrote the initial substance to health care, cap and trade, and the economic stimulus. Obama came into office with a big-time mandate for change and instead did little but act as a salesman for whatever sausage churned out by Congress.

2010-01-20T19:46:00.000-08:00

If You Start to Take Vienna....

Obama's dropping poll numbers might be getting ink (or pixels or electrons) in the media but I think the reasons for that focus are misplaced. There's nothing inherently wrong with dropping poll numbers in your first year if you take on alot of tough issues and make headway; political capital exists to be spent and there is no time to spend it like your first year in office.

What should be analyzed is that Obama's numbers have dropped like a rock and he has accomplished.... what again?

Okay he got the stimulus passed and he boosted domestic spending and we all know how hard it is to get Congress, especially a Democratic-led Congress, to spend money being the tightwads that they are but then what after that?

Cap and trade, his signature environmental and energy legislation? Going nowhere in the Senate.

Health care? Equally dead.

Guantanamo Bay? Still open.

Education? If there was any legislation stemming from all that high fallutin' rhetoric in last year's State of the Union Address I haven't seen it.

Enhancing our image in the world? Well if that means effective diplomacy ask Russia, Iran, and China if the Obama's universal "reset button" has made them more amenable to us?

On the other hand Iraq seems to be doing rather well, good job Mr. President.

Oh that stimulus money and all the domestic spending? That will drive the federal debt to levels that make George W. look like a fiscal hawk? Wasn't that supposed to stimulate the economy? So I guess that didn't work either.

When you spend political capital, you should get a result either in increased poll numbers or in enacted policies. Given that just about every explicit policy goal that Obama has set out to accomplish, with the exception for now being prosecuting the war in Afghanistan, has not been met.... Obama has done the equivalent of liquidating the family assets and using the resulting financial capital to buy beer and Twinkies.

If you are going to wreck your Administration to pursue unpopular policy goals, then at least get your goals met.

2010-01-19T18:52:00.000-08:00

What Brown Can Do For You

Some thoughts on Brown's big win in Massachusetts...

1) How long will it take for people start to hollering that Brown is a RINO or some sort of notion that he is a squish like Snowe or Collins? I'm guessing about 12 months, after the Democratic debacle this November and power shifts more from the Ben Nelsons and Mary Landrieus of the world to Republican moderates like Brown and Snowe. Just keep in mind people Brown was probably the most conserative Republican who could have won tonight.

2) Relating to the point above.... keep in mind that this election was held not only during a time of economic hard times with growing disatifaction with the Democrats and Obama but also with one of the worst candidates in memory. Her lackadaiscal campaign style, verbal gaffes such as the Curt Schilling quote, and actions like attending the fund raiser in Washington with health industry representatives.... and it was only a 7 point win. Bluest of the blue states and the Democrats lost.

3) What happens to health care overhaul? I think regardless of what happened tonight, it was dead for the simple fact that the race to pick the elected successor to Ted Kennedy, to whom this legislation was so near and dear and in this bluest of states, was so close. I've been hearing alot of posturing by Democrats and how they would force through the legislation regardless bu that's nonsense because the election showed any Democrat who might be wavering that it's a far bigger electoral danger to vote for health care than against.

Let's say Brown lost and the Democrats tried some sort of conference maneuver meaning votes in both the Senate and House. I think the Democrats not fall below what they need in the Senate and House as those who are running in 2010 and facing tough elections bail on the issue. Now I think given that a number of House Democrats were allowed to vote against health care in order to build street cred in their competitive districts, I think you would need about 25 defections. However if your choice is between angering Nancy Pelosi or having to get a real job after November which would you pick?

The same legislative vote counting logic holds true with a Brown win except you have one less vote in the Senate. Say they go with a Senate vote before Brown takes his seat, if that is even possible; I think the Democrats get the worst of both worlds by being exposed as the crassest of opportunists and would still suffer enough defections in the House and Senate to lose anyway. If there's anything worse than being corrupt, it's being corrupt and incompetent.

Too much analysis has been fixated on how could the Democrats otherwise find that 60th Senate vote if Brown won instead of trying to figure out how many votes they would lose in both houses of Congress. We're about to see if the Congressional Democrats can withstand the urge to panic and that's when the real rout for November will begin

2010-01-14T13:31:00.000-08:00

The Lujanesque Strategy of Arizona Democrats

I was discussing yesterday's post with a buddy of mine who asked if I was implying that Rep. Lujan was an idiot given my mocking of his op-ed. I replied not at all, that given the format of that day's op-ed page, with pieces by each party leader of the 2 chambers in the Legislature, that Lujan had to write something. It's just like with Sherlock Holmes who illuminated the fact that the dog didn't bark, I found his lack of substance to be enlightening.

Look the State of Arizona is in the fiscal crapper. If I went back two years, I'm sure I could dig up JLBC analysis that by now would predict we would be bouncing back revenue-wise.... but of course we aren't. The rainy day fund is long gone, funds have been swept, agency budgets have chopped been repeatedly chopped, and we burn through hundreds of millions in lines of credit faster than the ASU football team could win games.

Also for the past 12 months, both political branches of government have been run by the Republicans. Forget the fact, and the media largely has, that through inaction by Napolitano that the resulting fiscal mess was even worse than it should have been. The Republicans now own the problem and are expected to fix it and with all the tricks used up we're down to some politically deadly combination of spending cuts and tax increases.

You think the minority party in the Legislature wants to touch that pile of crap with a 10-foot pole? Heck no, that's the luxury of being in the political minority; you can attack targets of opportunity without the same sense of responsibility. Back during Napolitano's first term, the Democrats could achieve their political objectives by using her veto pen as a backstop and then lure over enough moderate Republicans to create ad hoc majorities on given issues. Now they can sit back and let the Republican fiscal initiatives founder on fissures within the GOP caucus.

The political up-side to this is not only do the Democrats remain relatively untainted but by making Governor Brewer and the other Republicans look incompetent, they pave the way for a Governor Goddard come November. Don't think so? Then why haven't the Democrats voted for the sales tax referral?

The down-side of this strategy is by sitting on the side-lines, Arizona cotinues to slide toward fiscal ruin but that's the Republicans fault.

2010-01-13T08:41:00.000-08:00

We'll Call It "Lujanesque"

I haven't done a proper fisking since the days of Jonny Talton but after reading this op-ed piece by Arizona House Minority Leader David Lujan I couldn't resist. It's nice to know when the state is facing a fiscal crisis of epic proportions in an election year that Arizona Democrats stand tall in the saddle.

Let's begin.

Arizonans watched Republican lawmakers and the governor fail last year to solve one of the biggest budget deficits in history - and they continue to take our state down the wrong track.

Wow. There's so much to pick apart here that I'll have to leave some things like "wrong track" for another time but allow me to point out the two obvious points. First when Mr. Lujan says, "one of the biggest budget deficits in history" he means "biggest STATE budget deficits in ARIZONA history" because he needs to distinguish it from the "biggest NATIONAL budget deficits in AMERICAN history" that we see was created by Democratic lawmakers and the President in Washington .

Second, Governor Brewer came into office when again? Oh that's right January, more than half-way through the fiscal year. So she inherited one of the largest STATE budgets in ARIZONA history from who again? Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano that's who.

Janet spent the previous 18 months ignoring the mounting deficits and then when her bag of tricks was just about to run empty, she quit and took off for Washington leaving the mess for someone else to clean up and take the blame.

So for Janet Napolitano the system worked.

It's not surprising Arizonans are aggravated with the Republican majority of lawmakers and their wrong priorities, driving our state into more debt, eagerly cutting education and jobs and harming middle-class families across our state.

"Eagerly cutting education...." Yes it's too bad that the Republican lawmakers (women too!) don't each grow Snidely Whiplash mustaches and cackle as they tie education, jobs, and middle-class families to the tracks in front of the oncoming locomotive.

House Speaker Kirk Adams.... super villain!

We begin 2010 with more than $3 billion in the red because Republicans and Gov. Jan Brewer refused to employ common-sense solutions.

Wow only common-sense solutions stand between us and fiscal nirvana? I thought we were $3 billion in the hole because of a historic collapse in the housing market and the fact that revenue has been dropping for 18 months after then Governor Napolitano said the downturn will be short-lived.

Anyway go on Rep. Lujan! What do we need to do to the close the second largest budget deficit in the country? What pearls of common-sense wisdom will you throw in front of the Republican swine?

It makes no sense that country-club memberships and spa treatments aren't subject to sales tax, while middle-class families pay sales tax on clothes and school supplies. Closing loopholes are //is a smart budget-balancing solution that Republicans refuse to use.

So taxing country-club memberships and spa treatments is your answer?

Republicans also cut funding to the Department of Revenue, resulting in cuts to staff who go after tax cheats. Arizona now is losing $220 million in collections and is set to lose a projected $300 million more.

I love how people use numbers to support their own ill-conceived beliefs, 73% of all people see right through that practice.

Two quick points for Rep. Lujan.... first how do you come up with the figure $220 million lost in tax collections? Second, how much of that money do you honestly hope to get back even under the best of circumstances? Even your sainted Janet Napolitano, she who misunderestimated the amount of money we could generate off photo radar cameras by a multiple of 3, thought that hiring 112 more Revenue employees to go after tax cheats wouldn't generate more than $50 million or so.

Maybe the trick is to position those 112 employees outside of country clubs and spas.

Currently, big corporations receive thousands of dollars in accounting credits for fling their taxes, while most middle-class families pay an accountant to do their taxes. Eliminating this tax loophole would save the state millions.

How do you get from "big corporations receive thousands of dollars" to "save the state millions"? Is this some sort of New Democrat math? Do you mean big corporations EACH receive thousands of dollars when they "fling" their taxes?

Actually most middle-class families probably aren't paying for a CPA per se but here's a wacky idea that Rep. Lujan could propose which would save Arizona taxpayers millions...

Simplify the tax code so Arizonans don't have to pay millions to accountants or tax preparers to do their taxes. It irks me that the government writes the tax code in such a way that we citizens often have to pay experts to figure out how much we need need to pay in taxes or how much of that interest-free loan that make to the government every other week (called withholding) we can get back in terms of a refund.

However, I get the feeling for Rep. Lujan it's not so much about saving taxpayers money as it is for everyone to pay their fair share.

The budget is too big to solve from one side of the aisle, and if Republicans would work in a bipartisan way, we could balance the budget without doing irreparable harm to Arizona's future.

If the Republicans would work in a bipartisan way in the same way the Democrats haven't voted for the sales tax referral.... or come up with any ideas outside of taxing spa treatments

Solving the budget and protecting middle-class families and kids requires making cuts to wasteful non-essential services, using federal stimulus dollars, closing tax loopholes and implementing tough immigration reform. But Republican lawmakers, who have been in office for too long, and Brewer, refuse to meet us halfway. It's time to walk down the middle of the road toward a stronger Arizona

All I have heard the past 12 months or so from House Democrats is that there is no more budget fat left to cut and that we are now cutting into muscle or bone or some sort of ligament tissue. So where's that list of non-essential services?

Also the first thing I think of when I see the terms "saving the budget" and "tough immigration reform" in the same sentence is cutting services to illegal immigrants coupled with deportation and the day I see that proposed by an Arizona Democrat is the when I see pigs fly through blizzard conditions in Hell. I guess Rep. Lujan cannot be any more specific on this in the same way he is regarding taxing spa treatments and country club memberships.

2010-01-11T13:13:00.000-08:00

The Difference Between Memorable and Tragic

Of all the aphorisms I have heard, one of my favorite is "the difference between comedy and tragedy is often time and distance."

Well people are saying that the Cardinals 51-45 OT playoff win is "memorable" but given that the Cards yacked up leads of 17 and 21 points I would say the difference between memorable and tragic is an uncalled face-mask penalty.

2010-01-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

The Wisdom of Admiral Ackbar

After drinking beers with fellow bloggers yesterday, I have come to the conclusion that the Republicans taking control of Congress after the 2010 mid-terms would be a catastrophic mistake; on the surface it looks like a good idea but you peer a little deeper in you realize it's a trap.

The mistake of 1995 for the Congressional Republicans was that they generated the perfect storm of the momentum of a historic win, an ambitious agenda, and a White House held by a president who badly needed a foil to position himself against. Under the best of circumstances, it's hard enough to govern the country from the legislature and 1995 was hardly the best of circumstances. You know the rest; Newt and the Gang tried to pick a fight with Clinton, Willy Jeff used them to triangulate against, and the result in 1996 was cakewalk for Clinton-Gore.

So in a perfect world, where your exact wishes could come true, here's what the Republicans should wish for this November.

1) Pick up seats in the House and Senate, say get to 47 or so in the Senate and maybe 200 or so in the House.

2) Back off in Nevada, let Harry Reid win.

3) Find some races in vulnerable blue strongholds and pick them off, Massachusetts would have been perfect if it was in November.... but 1 Senate victory in Massachusetts is worth 3 or 4 House pick ups in the South.

The reason for these 3 wishes is for solid policy reasons as well as tatical politics.

The real prize for the Republicans is 2012, not 2010. Remember the great mistake of 1995 when Newt and the Boys were ascribed responsibility without the commensurate authority. It would be close to impossible for the Republicans to pick-up a large enough majority in 2010 to be able to effect the kind of conserative agenda they want, but if they gain organizational control of Congress even by the slenderest of margins they provide a public foil that Obama can work against.

I mean having responsibility but no authority is no way to go through life.

Second, Harry Reid as the Senate Majority Leader is the gift that keeps on giving for Republicans. He hits that rare trifecta of looking ineffective, corrupt, and a chronic victim of foot-in-mouth disease. The man makes Bill Frist look a genius. Is it really worth giving up all of that for a Republican senator from Nevada?

Third, I'm guessing that if you pick up enough Republican seats in the House that Pelosi's iron grip on her caucus is going to start cracking. Committee assignments and other carrot/stick techniques work great for a Speaker if it looks like you are going to run the House for the next decade but they start to look less effective if your members are worried about saving their own electoral skin. If the Republicans can cut the Democrats' margin down enough to "put the skee r" in them perhaps they can pick up a working majority on key issues.

Just like a team that starts the season with a big winning streak, you can peak early. Let's be cool about things as there is still a long way to go.

2010-01-09T07:09:00.001-08:00

Zombie Kennedy

Way back in 2000, then Senator John Ashcroft lost his bid for re-election to the deceased Mel Carnahan. Rather than fight his loss on the solid legal basis that you cannot have a corpse win an election, Ashcroft conceded the race based on the principle that you cannot legitimately hold an office if you get less votes than a corpse.

This is well-known in my family as the Political Law of Corpse Legitimacy with my brother later adding the famous "Cook County Exception."

So what to make of this in the tightening senatorial race in Massachusetts?

The first is simple, if controversial: Get it through between the time the polls close and the new senator is sworn in.

Sen. Paul Kirk, currently in the seat, told reporters today he would vote for a health care bill even if Massachusetts voters elect Brown.

“Absolutely,” Kirk said, according to the State House News Service, when asked if he’d vote for the bill even if Brown captures the seat. “It would be my responsibility as United States senator, representing the people and understanding Sen. Kennedy’s agenda and the rest of it."

There are three things that you need to know about using the words "senator" and "Paul Kirk" in the same sentence.

1) Paul Kirk was appointed to fill Kennedy's seat after the Senator's death last year.

2) Kirk was appointed because he was a long-time Kennedy aide who would act as basically Kennedy's zombie surrogate

3) Kirk was only able to be appointed because the Massachusetts legislature suddenly changed the law in order to fill the tactical needs of the Democrats regarding health care legislation, inserting an appointee instead of keeping the seat open for a popularly elected official.

In short Kirk is a place-holder with no political legitimacy of his own, in fact he is in Roland Burris' class when it come to legitimacy given that he holds his seat based on discredited political shenanigans. Ted Kennedy might have been a giant of Massachusetts politics but the mojo died with the man.... we know Ted Kennedy, we followed Ted Kennedy, and Paul Kirk is no Ted Kennedy.

I think it's a pretty fair assumption that if the Republican nominee wins the Massachusetts Senate seat in the next 2 weeks, it will be because of opposition to the health care overhaul bill. So where does Kirk get off believing he has the legitimacy to vote for that same bill in between the time of the election and the Republican being sworn in? Because he happened to hold the seat at the time based on a corrupt deal?

Corrupt deal? Yep... because otherwise why wouldn't the Democrats wait until the special election was held and a properly elected senator with a fresh mandate was elected to fill Kennedy's seat before a final vote on the bill? Because at the time the Massachusetts law was changed, the Democrats were hell-bent on ramming through on partisan lines the biggest piece legislation in decades and they felt it was safer to rely on a political appointee rather than chance the electorate.

So an appointee acting as a surrogate for a corpse, holding office based on a corrupt deal, just said that he would contradict the will of the voters before his duly-elected successor could take office. If the Republican Scott Brown does win in Massachusetts, I would get him down to Washington the very next day with an eviction notice for Paul Kirk and if I were the Republicans I would use Zombie Kennedy as the symbol of the corrupt Democrats for the 2010 mid-term elections.

2010-01-08T09:45:00.000-08:00

The Decline of Civilization, Part 1 – The College Bowl System

Here we are ¼ of the way through January and what do I notice on the TV at the gym last night?

College football.

My kids are amazed (or just bored to tears and hoping my stories will lead to ice cream if they feign interest) when I tell them how the bowl system worked when I was their age.

First in the old days there were fewer bowls so getting invited to one meant something; unlike today where college football is more akin to the NBA and NHL in that more than half the teams get to go to some form of post-season. Nothing watching Wyoming play in front of less than 25,000 at the “New Mexico Bowl” and needing double OT to avoid having their record fall below .500.

Hey look at the bright side Wyoming fans; you dug deep and beat the likes of Florida Atlantic and Weber State to just get those 6 wins you needed to be bowl-eligible. Unlike say those losers at Michigan in 1972 which lost only 1 game all season, but in those days you had to win the Big 10 title to even go to a bowl and since that 1 loss was to Ohio State.... well too bad so sad Big Blue, you stayed home.

Second there was a rough ordering to the quality of bowls in that the closer the bowl game was to New Year's Day, the better it was. You started off with your Independence and Blue Bonnet Bowls in December, then your Sun and Holidays Bowls toward the end of the month, and then early New Year's Day you had the Gator Bowl until you finally got down to the real meaty bowls played by conference champions like the Cotton, Rose, Orange, and Sugar. In later years you had some party crashers with bowls that managed to squeak in and play early in the day like the Fiesta and Florida Citrus but those were still quality games.

Family tradition would dictate that my mother would kick my brother and me out of the house by half-time of the Cotton Bowl for an hour of exercise in the yard; otherwise we would be in front of the TV for a good 12 hours that day. Family tradition also dictated that this one hour of exercise would be filled with a rousing game of football; they still talk about my impersonation of Earl Campbell that led to my brother getting his face split open and the resulting trip to the hospital for stitches.

Anyway in regard to rough ordering of bowls.... so what we were they playing the other night, nearly a week past the Rose and Sugar Bowls and long past when your HOA requires you to take down your Christmas lights? The GMAC Bowl featuring Troy State and Central Michigan. That game was the warm-up for the national championship?

I know it's all about money, both in terms of the number of bowl games and stretching them out to fill ESPN's television schedules but are we really better off as a country for giving a mediocrity like Wyoming or Texas A&M a bowl payout or allowing traditions like the “New Mexico Bowl”to exist? Couldn't Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank satisfy their nefarious urge to over-regulate the economy by instead stepping in and stopping this nonsense.... okay maybe not Nancy and Barney but you get the idea.

At the rate things are deteriorating, one day in the distant future my boys will be telling their children about the good old days of the “St. Petersburg Bowl by Beef 'O' Brady” and when the bowl season ended before pitchers and catchers reported for Spring Training

2010-01-07T16:10:00.000-08:00

On the 13th Day of Christmas

Okay I'm back, it's only been what? 9 months? Yeah I know I have taken leaves of absences before but this one was a doozy and it wasn't like you guys were screaming for me to start writing again so well.... hey.

Where in the heck was I all this time?

Well I had some pressing personal business to take care of and time just flies. Yeah some people may use the term “pressing personal business” as an euphemism for “major prostrate surgery” but not me.

However despite the lack of major surgery, the past 9 months was a pretty ghastly experience that only daily doses of Maker's Mark saw me through (Mom was always smart about things like that.) You know that Nietzsche quote “That which does not kill us makes us stronger”? That sounds pretty good and I'm going to say that's what I got out of the last year or so though to my mind if you had the lower half of your body eaten by a shark like Felix Leiter did in Live and Let Die I'm not sure you would be stronger for the experience.

Maybe Goethe said that instead of Nietzsche, when it comes to German philosophy I am grateful that I have forgotten far more than I ever remembered

Why did I come back?

Because after all this time, I am now tanned, rested, and ready and just a little bit pissed off.

Oh also because over the past 9 months I got a puppy.....

and also a cat....

So there you go a puppy and a cat. That really doesn't explain anything but they are pretty adorable except when the puppy was teething and started chewing on the cat's head.

Now if we can find out what happened to El Gringo, we'll be set. The last I heard he was fighting off zombie cheerleaders in Chandler... serves him about right.

2009-04-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

Holy Week Continues....

I am sure Father John wouldn't agree with this, in fact he could probably organize an ecumenical beat-down on me for suggesting this.

However I must say it.

I must say that Easter doesn't conclude until at least the day after the blessed day when all the Easter candy goes 1/2 price. In fact, here's where my beatdown is going to come from, there is almost something spiritual about it. On Monday before I went in, I stopped by a Wal-Mart and joined 4 other people who were busy scooping up 25-cent Cadbury cream eggs. We all laughed as we discussed how much of the candy was going to make it home to the kids (none) and what happened to all the peeps (none available.) The best part was when one person left with their stash and called out "Same time, same place next year!"

Yeah baby.

If you're really gutsy you can try waiting another week for the prices to get to 75% off. Years ago at the old Smith's grocery at Alma School & Warner, three weeks after Easter they still had a shopping cart full of peeps at 10 cents a box. Man that was a find.

2009-04-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

ASU and Obama

Hey ASU, just give the President an honorary degree. After all you gave some government minister from China one, why not President Obama?

There seems to be alot of confusion about the purported decision to not award an honorary degree. Was it because he was a sitting politician and ASU has a policy that prohibits such awards? Was it was because he hadn't yet completed his "body of work"? Was it just a bureaucratic snafu with the commencement people and the honorary degree people not on thee same page?

Okay here's some thoughts....

First, if you invite the President to give the commencement address and the commencement speaker usually gets an honorary degree, then not giving him one is insulting. Best to not have him speak in such role at all rather than snubbing our nation's head of state.

Second, honorary degrees are a racket ginned up by universities in order to derive some sort of implied pro quid pro or to bask in the reflected glory of the person. Like Hall of Fame elections, better to keep such moments too rare rather than too plentiful, I mean better that than say giving a degree to Robert Mugabe. ASU pursued the President for commencement speaker because it would derive benefit; my guess the President accepted because he's going to get his own political benefit from the trip, probably pitch immigration reform. I seriously doubt he came to visit Sparky the Sun Devil.

Third, take your pick whether he's not getting a degree because of his "body of work" or is it because he's a sitting politician but now would be a nice time to make an exception. In fact, it seems that there will be a reversa l giving the perception that ASU is getting its arm twisted.

To top it, ASU will rename one of its major scholarship programs after the President because... why? He has no ties to the state or the university, in fact for all I can figure next month's speech will mark the first time he's been on campus. He also has no tie direct tie to the scholarship program or has no active yet initiative for higher education. So by all means let's start renaming things after him... how about Wells Fargo Arena?

Yep thanks to ASU what should have been a moment of pride for the state has instead turned into a farcical show of backpedaling, bungling, and kowtowing.

My predictions:

1) ASU will end up giving Obama a degree

2) In addition to the degree and the scholarship program, I expect ASU will also provide some sort of other trinkets.

3) ASU will throw some people under the bus , think of ASU Media Director Sharon Keeler as a burnt sacrifice of atonement.

2009-04-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

Three Levels of Fame

There are 3 levels of fame when it comes to the Internet punditocracy (right-wing version)

First there are those like Hugh Hewitt, Mark Steyn, and William Kristol whose reach extend to all sorts of print and electronic media.

Then there are those bloggers who those forementioned people think highly of and thereby gain international recognition. Like Arizona's own ExUrbanleague

Then are those who are able to say that have drunk beer and eaten nachos with the those internationally famous bloggers who the likes of Mark Steyn, Hugh Hewitt, and William Kristol think highly of... that would be me.

Mom taught many life lessons but I don't think basking in the reflected glow of certain bloggers is one of them. You know what though? It's hard to find a more talented group of guys than the ExUrban boys and I know you cannot find a better group of people anywhere. So hats off to them for good work and if you haven't read their posts on pirates or on Vikings than why haven't you?

2009-04-10T20:42:00.001-07:00

HOA, Arizona

After my post earlier this week regarding Arizona cities and Jack in The Box someone reminded me of similar behavior in the Valley of the Sun, or more specifically Mesa.

Back during the Krispy Kreme craze, the local franchisee wanted to open a store in Mesa, I believe out by Power Road or Red Mountain area. Krispy Kreme has a fairly unique color scheme which is almost tacky but it works for them because they serve... donuts. Well if I remember correctly the City of Mesa wouldn't let them put the color scheme the franchisee wanted, not enough earth tone.

If you live in the Phoenix metro area for any length you notice two things about the buildings. First there is no lack of earth tone in the color of buildings, in fact you can drive for miles and not see anything but browns and tans. Second while it is a fine place to live, the words "Mesa" and "upscale community" aren't often used in the same sentence. Why Mesa felt it needed to act as an HOA in terms of colors of retail establishment seems like a poor use of public resources and an intrusion of private property.

Moving on to another fine example of Mesa and intrusions on private property....

On the southwest corner of Main and Country Club, across the street from a more famous business, there now stands a coffee shop. However a few years back that building used to be a Winchell's donut shop. Now I don't know what it is with the City of Mesa and donut shops, but apparently this donut shop ran afoul of the City because of the amount of signage in the windows. To the surprise of the average citizen, not only did Mesa have an ordinance which restricted the amount of window space that could be covered with commercial signage but they actually had inspectors on the street who would measure the signage in windows. Well Winchell's had too high of a percentage of its windows with signage, thought to be honest it might have been stuff painted on the windows, and rather than dying of public embarrassment Mesa pressed its case.

Nice to know that at a time when many of its agencies were struggling for funds, Mesa found the funds to enforce window signage in donut shops.

I am sure there are plenty of other examples and in more cities than just Mesa but that sort of gives you a flavor. Somebody once said along that a government that had the power to give you everything you wanted had enough power to take away everything you had. I guess a corollary to that is that a government that had both the will and resources to function as a HOA is a government that has gotten too big for its britches. Something to consider with all the government budget cutting going on.

Oh and the famous business on the other side of Main Street from Winchell's? That would be Bailey's Brake Shop.

2009-04-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

The Guns of Binghamton

From CNN.Com, Police Defend Response to Mass Shootings:

Authorities defended the timeliness of police response to Friday's massacre at an upstate New York immigration services center as funerals were set to begin Sunday for two of the 13 slain.

"No decisions by the police had any bearing on who died," Broome County District Attorney Jerry Mollen told reporters Sunday.

The first officers arrived at the American Civic Association about three minutes after the first emergency calls were made Friday, according to a timeline by the Binghamton Police Department.

Officers did not enter the building for about 40 minutes, police said.

"No one was shot after police arrival, and none of the people who had been shot could have been saved, even if the police had walked in the door within [the] first minute," Mollen said. "The injuries were that severe."

I am sure (or hope) there will be a full investigation as to the 40 minutes delay but the question that quickly comes to mind is how did the police know without entering the building that none of the people who had been shot could have been saved? From the media accounts I have read, there was no police presence, no officers or equipment, inside the building until the SWAT team entered after those 40 minutes. So how were they so sure without the ability to eyeball the victims?

Everytime there is one of these shootings, there are the inevitable calls for furthering restricting private control of firearms (yes there is the 2nd Amendment but there are ways around that.) These calls are predicated on the assumptions that not only is it better for law enforcement agencies to have these weapons than private individuals, but that those enforcement agencies are able to protect us and willing to put their lives on the line to do so.

The reason why you still see people, more than 7 years after the fact, wearing "FDNY" hats and shirts is because on that September day all of those New York firemen looked up and saw their death in those burning buildings and went in anyway.

I hope, really hope, that the Broome County DA was right but I still don't how they came to that conclusion until it was too late.

2009-04-07T18:24:00.000-07:00

Catching Up on Sports

Various things from the sports world that happened during my 2 -week "furlough"....

Jay Cutler. For background on the schmuck check out his Wikipedia page but let me try and bottom-line it for you. Cutler wanted out because he felt dissed by management for trying to trade him. In his favor, he's a 3-year professional QB who threw for more than 4,000 yards last year and went to his first Pro Bowl. You would also think from the press coverage of this story that he's the second coming of Marino or Elway.

The truth is he played last year for a pass happy coach and for a team that had such a lousy defense that it had to score in bunches just to stay competitive. In fact is you look at his game log, you see that his performance was far from stellar during the last part of the year when his team nosedived. Good player? Yes but right now he's accomplished as much in his career, with his 17-20 lifetime record, as Scott Mitchell. Scott who? Exactly.... enjoy your new life in that aerial juggernaut known as the Chicago pass offense.

Other news....

I know things are bad in Michigan and Michigan State had a good run and all but by half-time of last night's NCAA championship game I was sick of hearing about how everyone in Michigan was being taken on a magical carpet ride away from their troubles. I know sportscasters look for angles they can beat into the ground, but that was a little much. Win or lose, you still wake up to tomorrow.

Finally and somewhat related....

When I watch sports, I am taking a break from the world. Sports, even on the level of high school baseball, provides for great competition and story lines but overall it's not the real world. The game ends, we go home or turn off the TV, and the world is the same as we left it. The world would be an easier place to understand if there was a rule book, you enemies wore uniforms, and somebody kept score but reality is messier than that.

Sports provides a diversion, an escape. So when sportscasters and writers, who making their very living by describing this diversion we call sports, try to bring real world events into their commentary in order to push a pet political position I have to object. If I wanted reality, I would stick to the front section of the paper. If you the sportswriter could write on weighty social issues, you would be writing for that front section. No instead you are consigned to write about grown men making millions playing the same game as my kids. Bless your hearts, I love what you guys do but please leave issues like the Binghamton shootings alone. You hear me Peter King?

My 2 cents about Mr. King's opinion that the shootings demonstrate that there are too many guns on the streets? I have a feeling that some of the people trapped in that building wished there was at least one more gun in the world and in their hands.

2009-04-05T19:02:00.000-07:00

War Against The Clown

The average citizen has limited, if any, contact with their city government. Outside of library, park, or the emergency services it's pretty mysterious. So if you are not involved in a crime in some way, have your house on fire, or need a copy of "My Pet Goat" city government is just some distant thing that tends to hold their elections at wacky times.

That is until you want to to do something crazy... like build on your property or open a business. Then you enter some strange some circle of Hell. Coyote Blog has a number of posts on the subject, from what it takes to serve coffee to remodeling his pool.

Then there is Jack in The Box

Now not all go for the power of Jack, but the food has helped me meet my business travel budget and I like the ads. Years ago when I lived in Chandler, the local franchise at the corner of Chandler & Arizona Avenue won a special place in my heart for resisting the power of city-backed developers.

Then I read this:

Those flat-roofed, chunky Jack in the Box restaurants built in Valley downtowns during the 1960s and '70s have been thorns in the side of urban redevelopment since disco balls went out of style...

... Phoenix and Mesa forced the chain's downtown spots to rebuild and move or leave.

Municipal officials have complained that Jack in the Box restaurants that went up when hippies were groovy don't fit in with modern multi-story clusters of upscale condos, shops and restaurants.

I think that's sweet that private businesses, ones that apparently are doing well enough to remain in business since "disco balls", have been forced out of their prime locations because local city officials want to replace them with visions of Richard Florida's new urbanism. So it's not enough to jump government hurdles to start a business, but then you have to remain in the good graces of local bureaucrats to stay in business. Note the article doesn't say the Jack in the Box restaurants had health or business problems, they were simply tacky and in the way.

Then lo and behold guess which Jack franchisee is causing problems again...

The 30-year-old Jack in the Box in downtown Chandler was supposed to be demolished and moved years ago after city planners decided in 2000 that a restaurant represented by a huge white head with a pointed nose and party hat "does not meet the intent of 'dining' within the City Center District designation."

May I never get on the wrong side of a city government's intent.

Darn city officials, probably all milkshake hating extremists

2009-03-22T18:39:00.000-07:00

A Kind Word For Janet Napolitano

Homeland Security Secretary (and former Arizona Governor) Janet Napolitano is getting heat from the right for these comments made during an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: Madame Secretary, in your first testimony to the US Congress as Homeland Security Secretary you never mentioned the word "terrorism." Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?

Napolitano: Of course it does. I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word "terrorism," I referred to "man-caused" disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.

Some have remarked that this places terrorism on the same level as obesity or car crashes. In all fairness, I took it a different way. After 10 years of Napolitano holding high-level state office here in Arizona, I have noticed she combines the charm of pit bull with a tendency to indulge inpolicy wonkiness. You see the wonkiness in the part above, you see the pit bull in the part below:

SPIEGEL: This sounds quite different from what we heard from the Bush administration. How will the new anti-terror policy differ from the previous one?

Napolitano: Our policies will be guided by authoritative information. We also have assets at our disposal now that we did not have prior to 9/11. For example, we are much better able to keep track of travellers coming into the US than we were before. The third thing is to work with our international partners and allies to make sure that we are getting information and sharing information in an appropriate and real-time fashion.

Leave aside the fact that the information sharing and entrance screening she refers to were initiated by the previous administration she so derides, that's just the pit bull talking. The key is the elaboration of "nuance" with a healthy dose of supervisory systems and cooperation. Terrorism won't be forgotten by Napolitano's department, it will just be managed like any other program.

Now if there isn't a terrorist attack under Napolitano's watch, or at least for a decent interval afterwards, then she gets off scott free for the "man-caused" remark. If we get hit, then that remark will become her political epitaph. Actually Homeland Security is a pretty thankless job; much like a baseball umpire if you are doing well nobody notices you but if you screw up you end up with you picture next to Michael Brown's in the history book. However that's the price Napolitano was more than willing to pay to bail out on the fiscal crisis she helped create in Arizona.

So anyway I'll let the remark go and hope (and pray) that I'm given no reason to resurrect it in the future.

2009-03-21T19:53:00.001-07:00

Newspaper Bailouts, AIG, and Art

The one great reminder of the whole AIG bonus controversy is what happens when government, whether bureaucrats or elected officials, start to get involved in the operations of private organizations. You take bailout money, whether through acceptance or by force, and all of the sudden your inner operations are thrown open to all sorts of meddling and grandstanding.

If you go back a few decades, remember the controversy over how grants were being used by the National Endowment for the Arts? With all the meddling and grandstanding about people wondering why taxpayer dollars were being used to fund projects that they considered obscene? People cried censorship, I wondered why such free thinkers and boundary pushers wanted federal dollars to begin with.

Keep that in mind when the next group starts pawing around, crying in distress for some federal funds to help them through a tough time... like newspapers. They don't even necessarily need money to become compromised, maybe just a little bending of the rules.

I especially enjoyed the plea for all sorts of federal subsidies from that former bastion of free thought, The Nation. Seriously, if we provide anti-trust exemptions and tax credits for newspaper subscriptions what happens the next time The New York Times blows the cover on a top-secret national security program? What about the chairman of a key congressional committee dealing with such newspaper subsidies?

Common folks, you accept taxpayer money you are going to be subject in some way to government influence and control.

(h/t Coyote Blog)

2009-03-21T19:51:00.001-07:00

Ships Passing in The Night

This year I filled out my first NCAA bracket and my interest is the lowest it has been in the nearly 30 years I have been following the tournament.

Go figure

2009-03-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

A Run on Whiskey and Revolvers

Well judging from my e-mail, yesterday's post caused a stir so here's a little bit more

The other week, Senator Grassley caused a stir by stating that he would feel better about the AIG bonus fiasco if the executives involved either committed suicide or resigned; while he was talking about the Japanese way of leaving I think he would have been satisfied if the people involved simply retired to a room with a bottle of whiskey and a loaded revolver.

The suicide part of Grassley's comment is what caused the public uproar but if you take it in the context of the overall statement with the words of "resign" and "or" you can see that he was talking about a lack of accountability in the business culture. AIG executives, who I seriously doubt are still employed, drove the company into the ground while making a pretty penny in salary and bonuses and whose only punishment, social or criminal, is to while away their copious free time spending their even more copious dollars. To take Grassley's comments and apply them retroactively, such people should have (after they cleaned out their offices) handed that revolver and whiskey and asked if they wanted to do the right thing.

Now let's turn the accountability one step further and apply it to the political arena.

There's a gross lack of accountability when it comes to politics and the AIG bonuses. Not just in terms of who slipped in the bonus language into the "stimulus" bill or who suggested it in the first place or the fact that the very same legislators who are screaming the loudest about are the ones who voted for it last month. Nope, I'm talking about bigger fish. I'm talking about societal accountability.

For various reasons, right and wrong both, we decided to bail out certain companies rather than allowing them to proceed to bankruptcy. Both the wrong and right reasons centered around the notion that such companies were too important to allow to fail. Once we started pouring money into them, politicians and the media began to see them as government property and started to look askew at how those bailed-out companies were spending money on large salaries, meetings, and other perks. Right or wrong, that sort of attention was inevitable.

The problem with that attention was that it distracted public debate from the critical question, which was what we were going to do with those companies. The prevailing notion was that these bailouts were a temporary step; they would be cleaned up of their toxic assets and put back onto the street as going concerns. If that was to be the case, then the companies would need smart management and smart management in those industries tend to get paid outside of the GSA wage scale.

So here's the lack of accountability part. Apparently some people in Treasury knew that the AIG people would need to get paid, if not to keep them from heading for the door then for contractual reasons. That's why it looks the language was inserted. Perhaps the politicians that be, going back to the previous administration last fall, should have arranged a different structure for the bailed-out companies but they didn't... this was the game they had chosen to play, turning them into quasi-public entities. However in their attempt to run Wall Street from Washington, it never occurred to the people in the Bush and Obama Administrations or in Congress that things work differently in New York than in Washington.

In other words they didn't have the guts to explain to the public, to take the political heat, that the people on Wall Street that they had grouped as a single class and dehumanized as villains would have to still be employed and paid a very handsome (though reduced) compensation if these bailed-out companies were going to be righted and sent back out onto the Street.

If you in Washington cannot do what it takes to bail-out companies, then maybe you shouldn't have taken that route. Maybe you should have thought through the implications of your actions and the fact that you tack to the political winds before you started pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the private sector. Nope you didn't, you spent first and then started looking for the political pinata later which just makes everything worse.

So where's the accounatbility for Washington?

2009-03-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

Congress, AIG and Confusion

I am trying to understand this whole political firestorm about the AIG bonuses.

The so-called stimulus package, Obama's signature legislation and passed by the Democrats, contained a provision that would ensure that the AIG bonuses would be paid.

So when those AIG bonuses were paid, as authorized by law, the same Democrats who passed that law suddenly go ape poop and scream how outrageous it was that something that they had authorized actually occurred. Their solution is to go pass what amounts to a bill of attainder to punish people who benefited from what the Democrats so specifically authorized.

Huh.

So what am I supposed to conclude about this? I guess I have a number of options...

1) I can conclude that no one actually read the massive "stimulus" bill and that it contains more ticking political time bombs and fiscal cluster f***ks that are just waiting to go off. I mean how funny it is that Congress and the White House is getting so uptight about something that is so clearly spelled out?

2) I can conclude that given that Dodd inserted that AIG bonus language, that the good Senator from Connecticut seems to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the financial industry, and the way he slipped the language in that the $800 billion "stimulus" package is just an invitation to more political graft and corruption.

3) I can conclude that given the way the Obama Administration and the whole Congressional leadership is running around trying to find anyone, just anyone, to be a scapegoat that there seems to be more concern over an amount of money equal to Mark Teixeira's new contract with the Yankees than getting $800 billion in spending right.

So let's see in choosing among political incompetence, fiscal incompetence, and political corruption I can conclude that the AIG bonus issue is all three!

2009-03-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

Dropping the Hammer

Around the time of the election, I posited that in any future battles between an Obama White House and a Democratic Congress it would be the latter that would win. After all the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Obama even launched his campaign and they could claim they made him rather than the other way around.

At first I wondered a bit if I made the right call. Right after the election, Obama selected Congressman Rahm Emmanuel to be his chief-of-staff. Emmanuel not noly was a congressional critter, but he was the brains behind the Democrats taking the House in 2006. Combine that with his past experience in the Clinto White House and I thought that he might be the man to help Obama control Congress.

I guess not.

First indication of what was going to happen was when Obama allowed Congress to write his administration-defining legislation, the stimulus bill. Between his inaguration and the bill's passage, the man who got elected to the world's most powerful office on the platform of hope and change basically acted as the chief majority whip on a bill essentially written by David Obey.

Now you have Obama's presser on earmarks and the omnibus bill.

Keep in mind the omnibus bill everyone is so worked up on is this year's budget bill, not next year's. Pelosi and the gang has kept government going on continuing resolutions for the past 5 1/2 months so they could get bypass the Bush Administration and land this sucker on Obama's desk. So for the past 4 1/2 months, since his election, Obama has known the day would come when he would be tested on this bill regarding his earmark pledge.

So what did he do?

He called the bill old business left over from the previous administration, despite knowing that the bill was designed for his signature, and promised to work on earmark reform after he signed it. If you remember after he signed the travesty of a "stimulus" bill he promised the country a future of fiscal restraint.

Less than 2 months into office and he's already getting pushed around by the likes of Pelosi and Obey. How embarassing. I cannot wait until years from now when the stories come out of how the critters up on Capitol Hill dropped the hammer on the Obama team and told them how things were going to work.

2009-03-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

Perhaps Not The Wisest Choice

From the East Valley Trib:

Indicted Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley has been appointed by the White House to a task force to help implement the economic stimulus package signed last month by President Barack Obama, and wants a judge's permission to travel to its first meeting next week.

I know Stapley is the current President of the National Association of Counties and I have doubts about those indictments, but with all the problems the Obama Administration has had with its nomination process (with the tax cheating, corruption probes, conflicts of interest) you would think they would pick someone uhhh you know... less inidcted.

2009-03-10T18:34:00.000-07:00

The Bear and NATO

Alot of things after the past week but perhaps one of the most troubling and least publicized was what exactly is the Obama Administration doing in Europe?

There were alot of chuckles after Secretary of State Clinton's gaffe with the Russian Foreign Minister, with the gift of a button that said "overcharged" instead of "reset, but the idea of "resetting" relations with Russia needs to be put into the larger context of Administration and Russian actions.

First Russia is a declining power. Its demographics are in the tank with a population that is both shrinking and growing less ethically Russian. Its recent economic turmoil should remind us that any Russian economic strategy is tied to commodities and not any information-based or manufacturing sectors; its recenet stability has been resting on theonce pricey fumes of crude oil and little else.

Second, Russia may be declining but it has chosen to reclaim its role in its former sphere of influence in both the "near abroad" and Eatsern Europe. Witness its invasion of Georgia, its computer warfare against Estonia, and threats against both the Cezechs and Poles over missile defense. In many ways the situation is analogous to the one we faced in the late 1980s as we tried to manage the decline of the Soviet Union except this time the Russians will probably not go into the good night like the Soviets did. To also being back the 80's, Europe is now even more tied to Russian energy.

So you would think with the last stand of the agressive Russian bear that the Obama Administration would want to keep its NATO powder dry. Perhaps countries in the Russian near abroad like Georgia and Kygyrstan are beyond help, but certainly not Europe.

Okay Europe is a region in decline and NATO has shown itself to be pretty toothless as an expeditionary force, but the key parts of NATO are pretty formidable and those parts are Britain and "New Europe"- the Czechs and the Poles. The Poles and Brits have sent troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan and they, unlike those from other NATO countries, fight. The Czechs and Poles have both, despite withering pressure from the Russians, agreed to host the key elements of the US missile defense system.

These countries are our staunchest allies in what soon may be a troublesome region. So what does the Obama Administration do? First after the Poles and Czechs stick their necks out for us, both understand that Russia is much closer than the US, we then turn around and offer missile defense as a bargaining chip. If that didn't get them worried in Warsaw and Prague, we then make a stunt of some corporate knick knack offering to "reset" relations with Moscow. Both Waraw and Prague understand what it is like to be a bargaining chip when great powers meet and wish to reset things.

The was the curious story of what happened when the head of government of the other pillar of NATO came to visit President Obama. British Prime Minster came bearing gifts for Obama that showed the rich history of cooperation between the two countries; a history that spanned the bequest of American civilization, multiple wars, and a joint stand against the greatest tyrannies in history.

In return, Obama gave DVDs of American movies and in general gave the perception that he couldn't be bothered.

Now in fairness to the President, his people claimed he was "tired" due to his laser-like focus on the economy but it's not like Washington has a pucity of staff drones. You would think if the White House really sort of cared, it would have delegated the planning of the British PM's visit to some assistant deputy associate secretary of something; somebody who would have actually cared to do a good job. So I'm not buying the tired thing... a president needs to multitask; instead I'm buying the theme of malign neglect.

So at a time when Russia is acting like a general pain in our back side our approach is to kiss up to them while at the same time pissing off the key members of our anti-Russian alliance?

2009-02-27T12:28:00.000-08:00

The Washington Cash Cow

There's been alot of inked spilled about the growing centralization of power and resources in Washington at the expense of the rest of the country, but it really didn't hit me until this morning when I was reading the sports pages (web pages mind you.)

The Redskins just signed DT Albert Haynesworth for a 7-year, $102 million contract. Yeah I know the length and total dollar amounts of football contracts are just play numbers given that such contracts are guaranteed but then key in on the important number... the guaranteed money. I have read the contract will pay a guaranteed $41 million overall with an estimated $33 million coming in the first year. On top of it Washington signed a cornerback for $22 million guaranteed.

That's alot of money and makes you think, with the financial tsunami about to wipe out a big chunk of professional sports, who all is paying for the luxury boxes and premium seats at Redskin games?

2009-02-25T10:36:00.000-08:00

For a Few Clips More

After watching President Obama's speech last night and going back and reading the transcript, I've found it a rich deposit of YouTube clips to mine for later political gold. So which statement do you think Obama will regret the most?

1) "Now, let me be clear. Let me be absolutely clear,..... If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, a quarter-million dollars a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime."

Really not one single dime? I mean when the George H. W. Bush said the "Read my Lips" hyperbole he was in the middle of an election campaign, what's Obama's excuse for overpromising? He's after all and "I repeat", "absolutely clear"

2) And that's why I've asked Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort, because nobody messes with Joe.

You can come at this two ways. First I doubt anyone on this side of the Almighty and my Mother would be able to lead a "tough, unprecedented oversight" of that stimulus package let alone a gaffe-prone, 35-year Washington insider who hasn't run anything bigger than his campaign staff.

The second way is by having the President emphasize "nobody messes with Joe" it means just the opposite; it's like having your parents call out the neighborhood bullies. Mr. Biden may very well be the first Vice President to be found someday hanging from the flagpole by his underwear.

3) "In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry."

Okay this is probably the least likely thing to get clipped but as I have written before, the building of the transcontinental railroad really didn't being until after the Civil War had ended.

One final thing. At the gym this morning, they had CNBC on next to CNN on the bank of TVs. CNN showed the results of a poll that something like 90%+ of respondents were some degree of positive on the President's speech while at CNBC it showed the market dropping like a rock.

2009-02-20T14:04:00.000-08:00

Steve Kerr and the Taking of Vienna

I know the NBA is dead to me but this is just too good pass up...

For most of the past 4 seasons, the Phoenix Suns had been playing an up-tempo form of basketball; "seven seconds or less" to get up a shot. It was fun to watch, the Suns tasted success, and all were happy.

However as any kid who ever played organized basketball on the East Coast could tell you, such an approach doesn't win championships. It seemed every kid I ran into heard the same lecture as I did from my coach, the Denver Nuggets of the late 70s and early 80s were fun to watch but they weren't going to win titles The Nuggets with Issel and English were an early forerunner of the approach the Suns took, fast-paced offense with little desire to go into the half-court, no defense, and most importantly no championships.

This time last year, that's where the Suns were going. Under Coach D'Antoni, the Suns were successful but there was no way they were getting past the conference championship, let alone taking the title. Suns GM Steve Kerr had one of three choices to make: ride the current approach and taste regular season success but another early playoff exit as the window on the team closed, get on with blowing-up the team and rebuild a possible NBA championship from scratch, or try to tinker with the current approach by adding some muscle and defense in order to stretch the current window another year or two.

As we know he went with option 3, trading Marion for Shaq in order to position the Suns with enough muscle and toughness to get the remaining nucleus posied for a championship run. It didn't work as the Suns went out of the playoffs early. It then seemed Kerr went to option 2 by letting D'Antoni and his run-and-gun approach go to New York and hiring a more deliberate, defensive-minded coach in Terry Porter.

The problem was the team's personnel was still built around D'Antoni's system. Steve Nash, while entertaining on the break, cannot defend a wet noodle at the other end. Amare's game is more focused on space and found it hard to operate in the new, more deliberate half-court game with Shaq taking up space in the paint. So with personnel mismatched to the coach's style, you figure something had to give and given that the coach was new, you figured it would be the personnel; the front office would show some patience with the team and let Porter have a chance to work through the growing pains.

So here's the feckless part...

Steve Kerr, less than a year after doing one U-turn with the team turned around and executed another U-turn instead. The players revolted against Porter and he was fired, to be replaced on an interim basis with Alvin Gentry who was to reimplement the more wide-open style Kerr had abandoned and try to salvage the season. In turn, there were strong rumors that the Suns were heavily involved in trade talks right before the deadline but not to get tougher and more defense-oriented in order to continue building for a championship. The strongest rumor was that the Suns were going to deal Shaq, who they got a year ago for his toughness and defense. In fact the word is the only reason the trade with Cleveland didn't go through was that the Suns wanted Szczerbiak whose contracted expired this year as opposed to Ben Wallace whose contract expire next year.

There's an old saying, attributed to Napoleon that went something like "If you are going to take Vienna, take Vienna." In other words the worst thing is to do is start do something and then change your mind midway through the process and try to race back to the status quo ante. If Kerr kept the team together for another year and let it flop in the first round in the playoffs again, he would have had the juice to blow up the team and rebuild in the mold he wanted. If Kerr wanted to rebuild the team around the toughness/defense angle, then he should have known that there would be teething problems and been willing to suffer through them.

No, instead he blew up the exciting "seven seconds or less" and then when that decision proved unpopular and the team struggled for half the season he chickened out.

2009-02-17T12:52:00.000-08:00

For the Help of Peachy

Wretchard has an excellent post on some of the strategic dilemmas facing the Obama Administration with its decision to escalate the Afghanistan War. The post covers some of the main themes that Wretchard has been writing about for the past year

1) As Obama seeks to escalate the war, he is also escalating the difficulties in supplying the troop presence int hat country. As the old maxim goes"amateurs study tactics while professionals study logistics."

The problem in Afgahnistan is that all routes into the country cross touble spots. To the west lies Iran, to the east lies Pakistan, and to the north lies countries who not only have a mixed record on human rights but also lies within Russia's historic sphere of influence. As the route across Pakistan becomes more problematic, Russia has put the squeeze on the northern route by bribing Kyrgzstan to close its main air base to Americans. This leaves Uzbekistan, with whom the Bush Administration cut ties with after its government killed hundreds of civilians. So to fight the "good war," Obama will have to start by cutting deals with some very bad people

2) Each of the three players mentioned above have other interests in regard to the United States that they can use their proxmity to Afghanistan to gain leverage. Russia and Pakistan have interests on its NATO border and with India respectively and Iran of course has its nuclear program and ties with terrorist groups. By escalating the war, Obama will give each of those powers an ability to levy a toll on the US for its good behavior.

3) After you add up the costs of the first two points along with the fact that the Taliban has the strategeic advantages of a local opium economy and an international border to shield them, you have to ask is this really worth it? To answer that depends on whether you think the center of gravity in the war against radical Islamic terrorists lies along the Pakitsan-Afgahnistan border or in the Arab heartland.

Well I'm sure Richard Holbrooke has it all figured out.

2009-02-13T19:01:00.000-08:00

Playing the Mystic Chords of Memory….Like a Kazoo

Before I begin this rather lengthy piece, I would like to make one thing clear. Politicians have been wrapping themselves with the events and figures of the past for as long… well perhaps as long as there have been politicians. So when President Obama continues to wrap himself with the legacy of Abraham Lincoln well I usually just roll my eyes and let it go.

However in reading what the President said at Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield on the 200th birthday of the Great Emancipator, I must strenuously object. Obama has not just wrapped himself in the glory and aura of Lincoln which is in part his due given the day and his position, but he has distorted the man’s legacy in order to use it as a club to beat his current day enemies.

After some opening remarks about the significance of the day and the man who he has come to honor, Obama provides a statement that Lincoln was purported to have written in 1854.

"The legitimate object of government," he wrote, "is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves.

Obama then asks where did Lincoln’s devotion to Union, to which he gave his last full devotion to, come from?

But he also understood something else. He recognized that while each of us must do our part, work as hard as we can, and be as responsible as we can – in the end, there are certain things we cannot do on our own. There are certain things we can only do together. There are certain things only a union can do.

Only a union could harness the courage of our pioneers to settle the American west, which is why he passed a Homestead Act giving a tract of land to anyone seeking a stake in our growing economy.

Only a union could foster the ingenuity of our farmers, which is why he set up land-grant colleges that taught them how to make the most of their land while giving their children an education that let them dream the American dream.

Only a union could speed our expansion and connect our coasts with a transcontinental railroad, and so, even in the midst of civil war, he built one. He fueled new enterprises with a national currency, spurred innovation, and ignited America’s imagination with a national academy of sciences, believing we must, as he put it, add "the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery…of new and useful things."

I will come back to this in a moment because the money graph is coming:

But in recent years, we’ve seen the pendulum swing too far in the opposite direction. It’s a philosophy that says every problem can be solved if only government would step out of the way; that if government were just dismantled, divvied up into tax breaks, and handed out to the wealthiest among us, it would somehow benefit us all. Such knee-jerk disdain for government – this constant rejection of any common endeavor – cannot rebuild our levees or our roads or our bridges. It cannot refurbish our schools or modernize our health care system; lead to the next medical discovery or yield the research and technology that will spark a clean energy economy.

Only a nation can do these things. Only by coming together, all of us, and expressing that sense of shared sacrifice and responsibility – for ourselves and one another – can we do the work that must be done in this country. That is the very definition of being American.

It is here that the recent re-incarnation of President Obama is on full display; where we no longer see the promised bi-partisan healer but rather a warrior on the attack against the unnamed other who would put the nation at risk in order to line their pockets.

Neither Obama nor anyone else has been able to pick one Republican of any stature who has displayed “this constant rejection of any common endeavor,” such commonality would presumably include national defense and that massive pork-laden transportation bill a few years ago. Americans of different partisan stripes may disagree on the type and extent of common endeavor but only the most isolated libertarian has claimed that there is no need for “any common endeavor.”

There is much to parse here. Note his depiction that that the “next medical discovery” and “research and technology” can only come from the effort of government; despite the fact that my local pharmacy is lined with medications that were all produced by the private sector. Note his contrasting of those who would reject government and would rather it be “divvied up into tax breaks, and handed out to the wealthiest among us” with “only by coming together, all of us, and expressing that sense of shared sacrifice and responsibility…. That is the very definition of being American.”

So where does Obama get off by constructing a strawman and then exhorting us to burn it like a Salem witch? Where does he get the idea that government is needed to create all things good and common?

By using and distorting Lincoln’s historical legacy.

Let’s start with his citing of Lincoln at the beginning… “"The legitimate object of government," he wrote, "is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves” The rest of the quote is this:

There are many such things---some of them exist independently of the injustice in the world. Making and maintaining roads, bridges, and the like; providing for the helpless young and afflicted; common schools; and disposing of deceased men's property, are instances.

But a far larger class of objects springs from the injustice of men. If one people will make war upon another, it is a necessity with that other to unite and cooperate for defense. Hence the military department. If some men will kill, or beat, or constrain others, or despoil them of property, by force, fraud, or noncompliance

So while Obama was using Lincoln's quote to justify all sorts of national programs and to involve itself in the minutiae of its citizens daily life, what Lincoln was mostly after was to defend the population from enemies and criminals. If you subscribe to the view that the $800 billion “stimulus” package, funded by debt, amounts to intergenerational theft then you will be amused by the “despoil them of property” part.

However the misuse of Lincoln does not end there Keep in mind that Lincoln often wrote and spoke about “union” but did so in the context of American nationhood, citizenship, and the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. He didn’t speak or write of “union” as a means of collective action through government bureaucracies or the involvement of the national government in the details of its citizens' lives. Keeping mind that through the early part of the 20th Century the primary contact most people had with the federal government was the post office, I think Lincoln would have found the notion of “union” that Obama puts in his mouth rather strange.

Let’s go back to the section I cited above and look more closely at what President Obama said:

Only a union could foster the ingenuity of our farmers

Sort of Clinton’s “It Takes a Village.” I never knew it took a country to foster to ingenuity of 19th Century farmers

Only a union could speed our expansion and connect our coasts with a transcontinental railroad, and so, even in the midst of civil war, he built one.

Uhhhh no, the railroad wasn’t “built” until 4 years after Lincoln’s death. In fact except for some road work in the Sierra Nevada, major work didn’t even begin until 3 months after his death.

He fueled new enterprises with a national currency, spurred innovation,

The national currency and spurring innovation bits didn’t just emerge because Lincoln thought they were good ideas to stimulate the economy; they came about because of the needs of the Civil War economy.

...and ignited America’s imagination with a national academy of sciences, believing we must, as he put it, add "the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery…of new and useful things."

I missed the part of how the NAS “ignited” 19th Century America’s imagination, probably right up there with the feds fostering ingenuity. Perhaps I need to re-read Edison’s biography. The key part here is “the fuel of interest to the fire of genius…” which had nothing to do with the creation of NAS in 1863 but referred to remarks Lincoln made 4 years earlier regarding the need for intellectual property law so that innovators could make money from their invention. The "fuel of interest" wasn't lighting up little schoolchildren's eyes with the magic of science (see Arizona Science Center) but rather making moolah for inventors.

It's like Obama created some sort of Zombie Lincoln, making Old Abe say things and do things he really didn't. No doubt during next year's Lincoln Birthday celebration, Obama will drag up some quotes claiming that the 16th President was really in favor of nationalized health care and carbon credits.

A few closing remarks here.

A politician should always be careful about using a ceremonial function to make partisan political attacks especially when such attacks involve untruths and gross distortions.

A politician should be careful when making such partisan political attacks to avoid using icons of the party he is attacking

A politician should avoid distorting the record of one of the country’s greatest heroes (Lincoln would have been in favor of the stimulus bill?) in order to push a current piece of legislation.

The staff member who thought giving a speech like was a good idea should be found out and banished to the deepest basement of the Fargo Federal Building.

2009-02-12T16:10:00.000-08:00

Criticizing Michelle Obama

When I have the radio on in the car, I'll often listen to NPR. Mind you there is always something in the programming that gets my blood pressure up a few notches but I find it useful and somewhat informative (though for not always the obvious reasons.)

I have always felt that NPR's programming is geared toward the bien pensant for the left; yeah they may haul on a Kristol every now and then but their idea of a normal conservative point of view is to bring in David Brooks. Well that's okay, I know it's "public radio" and has taxpayer support but I think conservatives have managed to build competing media institutions like talk radio so you sort of factor all of that in and just shrug the shoulders with it.

So what to think of the recent Juan Williams-Michelle Obama problem?

Juan Williams has been a fixtures on NPR for a number of years and under contract with Fox News for even longer. Say what you want about Fox but it is at worst of the same ideology-driven formula as NPR, appealing to a certain sector of the spectrum while still claiming objectivity in its news reporting. Apparently Mr. Williams said on Fox:

"Michelle Obama, you know, she's got this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going," said Williams. "If she starts talking, as Mary Katharine [Ham, a conservative blogger] is suggesting, her instinct is to start with this blame America, you know, I'm the victim. If that stuff starts coming out, people will go bananas and she'll go from being the new Jackie O to being something of an albatross."

To which Bill O'Reilly replied.... "She's not going to do that."

Well apparently that caused alot of hubbub with the NPR listenership which generated a shocking 56 e-mails to the NPR ombudsman, Alicia Shepard. Ms. Shepard goes on to inform us that this isn't the first time that Mr. Williams has offended the NPR faithful as she received 378 e-mails last year from listeners who thought he "dishonors NPR" and is an "embarassment to NPR" for his comments on Fox. Ms. Shepard tells us that by comparison she received only 6 complaints so far this year regarding Cokie Roberts, though I wonder how many she received last year ... probably based on the prose of Ms. Roberts "Founding Mothers" I would hazard to say the howls of complaints reached into the thousands.

Now I know this what ombudsmen do, respond to reader complaints, but NPR has an estimated 20 million listeners over the course of a week so getting 376 e-mails over the course of a year shouldn't be a trigger for alarm; sort of like tracking the national mood based on letters to the Arizona Republic.

To Ms. Shepard's credit, she states that she feels much of the criticism comes from the fact that Mr. Williams appears on Fox. She allows Mr. Williams to state his case which is what he said about the First Lady has been reported elsewhere in outlets such as The Atlantic and Politco, hardly mouthpieces of the right-wing conspiracy. Good for her and I think she is doing her job in an admirable way. However she then mentions the action that NPR management took in response to what Williams said:

As a result of this latest flap, NPR's Vice President of News, Ellen Weiss, has asked Williams to ask that Fox remove his NPR identification whenever he is on O'Reilly.

Why? Because of 56 e-mails or because of something else? Is it because Fox and O'Reilly are icky? Is it because who he criticized or where he did his criticism? If either is the case then what does that say about NPR?

2009-02-11T13:49:00.000-08:00

Blacklisting Myself (From Sports)

Let's see what's going on in the world of sports...

Brett Favre retired, again. I cannot talk about that because I banished him to the outer regions when he was unreitiring last year. So I cannot talk about that.

The NBA All-Star game is coming to town this weekend. Good for Phoenix but I've already declared the NBA dead to me for holding cities hostage for new publicaly-supported venues, so I cannot talk about that either. I see that the Grizzlies may on the move again after leaving Vancouver for Memphis. Given the ongoing search for new arenas by moving to smaller and smaller markets, I'm taking bets on when the NBA will return to Sheboygan and Waterloo

So it's true that steroids were taken by A-Rod? Thank g*d. Cannot stand him so I won't talk about the story.

And that was the week in sports

2009-02-10T16:52:00.000-08:00

The Indispensable Man

I know this is being said right now in more high falutin' places than this but allow me the honors to chime in.

Geithner, with his tax cheating and all, was confirmed for his cabinet post while Daschle had to withdraw because we were told that El Tim was "indispensable" for correcting the financial woes that threaten to plunge the world into a cross of the Bronze Age and Age of Disco.

So after his first big policiy initiative not only does he get laughed at by a bi-partisan group of lawmakers but the Dow then proceeds to drop by 4.6%

2009-02-10T05:47:00.000-08:00

Seeing the Doctor for Ideological Blockage

I loved the term "ideological blockage" that President Obama used during his press conference last night. Like concerns about the spending and tax package that are grounded in differences in policies and outlook are problems to be cured through either a doctor or a plumber rather than normal aspects of a healthy democracy.

Given that there is more than way to skin the cat... er.... use the power of the federal government to "stimulate" the economy why is the President casting opponents of the specific plan in Congress as harmful to the interests of the country. People used to criticize George W. for "with us or against us" rhetoric in regard to international terrorists, but I don't hear many peeps from them on the current occupant of the White House saying that those like me who hate the current bill because it's Daviid Obey's Christmas list essentially want to flush the country down the toilet.

Here's the thing that's most troubling, all of the rhetoric. all of that painting the opposition as the "other" (I never seem to hear specific names of those of who are pushing only tax cuts instead of spending) is just so unecessary.

The spending and tax "stimulus" bill is, contrary to the perception the President gave last night, not being held up in Congress but roaring through. It just cleared the big hurdle in the Senate by meeting the cloture vote. The next big step for proponents is to make sure that the bill isn't loaded up in conference with all things the 3 pro-bill Republicans in the Senate hated. In other words nothing needs to change for the President to win.

Plus what was more bipartisan? The 3 Republicans in the Senate voting for the bill or the 11 Democrats in the House voting against? I guess the Senate by a narrow percentage but you could claim opposition to the bill was bipartisan almost as much as its support.

So why is the President in full campaign-attack mode on a bill that is already well on its way to passage? Is all of this about passing the bill or rather counting coup for developing political capital?

2009-02-09T10:37:00.000-08:00

Howling from Pain

The wife and I went to a Coyote games the other night and we had a good time; hockey is the best sport to see in-person.

When the Yotes arrived in town back in 1996, we already had been told that the Diamondbacks were going to come in a few years so we were on our way to being one of those rare 4-sport towns. I hate to tell you but based on what I just saw at the arena we are probably close to being a 3-sport town.

Ever since they arrived in the desert 13 years ago, the team has lost money. It's been rumored the current ownership group will lose close to $45 million this year alone and more than $200 million total since 2001.

Did I mention this is the third set of owners since the team set up shop here? The first was the group involved in moving/stealing the team from Winnipeg, that squad came Stanley Cup-contention ready. However the team had to play in the Suns' arena which wasn't configured for hockey and in which crucial revenue streams went to the Suns instead of the ice dogs. To top it Colangelo not only controlled the Suns, he also controlled the city-owned arena and refused to make the critical improvements to allow for an effective hockey-watching experience. So the team was sold to developer Steve Ellman who tried to use the prospect of a new arena as an anchor tenant for a new publically-supported real estate development. After playing footsies with Scottsdale for years and turning the Los Arcos shopping mall into a gaping hole in the ground, Ellman was able to cut just such a deal with Glendale.

I should have added that had Ellman not bought the team, there were strong rumors that Paul Allen would have bought it instead and moved it to Portland.

The Coyotes got their new Glendale arena built and opened... right before the NHL went through a year-long lockout. Soon thereafter, Ellman sold the team to the trucking magnate Jerry Moyes.

So let's go through this. That's 3 ownership groups in Phoenix in 13 years, 4 if you include the Winnipeg owners that sold the team right before it was moved. The team's fan base was located in the East Valley of the Phoenix area so when the team moved 19 miles further west to its new arena in Glendale, it core fan base was looking at 75 to 80 mile round trip drives to watch the games with the first part of that trip (30 to 40 miles) in rush hour traffic. Third, not only has the team lost money since 2001, it probably lost money every year since it was here.

Well apparently Moyes is done with the financial red link, not least because his trucking business has fallen on hard times. The NHL has stepped in to keep the team afloat and headlines in the hockey press alternate between investors refusing to take the plunge after looking at the Coyotes' books and "NHL Commissioner dismisses talk of Coyotes' demise." Personally I would love to look at the books if only to learn how a team could lose upwards of $45 million when they play in a league that has a salary cap of $54 million.

However more than the headlines and the past history, you can tell a team is nearing the end when....

1) The announced attendance was 15,229 with a capacity for hockey 17,799; I would say maybe half of those people showed up. Up shot was the lines at the bathroom were short and the ratio of areana staff to fans was extremely high. We were amazed by the skill of the arena cameramen because everytime they showed shots of the crowd up on the scoreboard you could hardly see an empty seat.

2) The only sections that came close to being filled were the two sections located below the concession stands that were part of "free food night."

3) You look at the schedule of upcoming games and wonder if you should buy tickets in advance for games toward the end of the season. Yeah it's that bad... given that there seems to be a massive penalty clause in respect to the City of Glendale if the team actually moves my guess is the team is going to be disbanded sometime in 2009.

The stench of death.

Given the horrid play of the special teams (gave up 4 power play and 1 short-handed goal), I would say the highlight of the evening was a tie between the play of the pee-wee hockey teams during the first intermission and the work of the girls who came out during the television timeouts to clean up the ice - I mean if the Yotes played with half of their efficiency they would be tops in the division.

2009-02-07T14:21:00.000-08:00

No Country for (Those Who Say No) Men

Saw this link from Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion that goes on to equate passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (with "card check" and all) as consistent with the "... big theme within the Hebrew and Christian scriptures."

So the secret ballot is the tool of Satan? Who would have thunk it.

Turning to the New York Times, I see this article entitled "Senators Reach Deal on Stimulus as Jobs Vanish" where the sense of urgency and fear just ooze through every sentence and paragraph. Substitute "stimulus" with "Patriot Act" and "jobs vanish" with "fears of terrorism mount" and you can start to see the gist.

Oh you think I'm tossing around the fear angle in a haphazard way? Look at one of the more responsible Democrats had to say:

“Our country can’t wait another day for another approach,” said Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat who is a leader of the bipartisan coalition that worked out the agreement.

So those elected representatives who actually want to read the bill, have serious concerns about it, and want to discuss its merits- you know what we elect representatives to do in a great democracy- are putting the country at risk by not hurriedly passing a bill that wouldn't put most of the money on the street before the next World Series.

The country cannot wait... another day.... for another approach. Or maybe it's President Obama.

So let's add the patriotism angle to pushing a partisan agenda, oh you think I'm going overboard?

Mr. Obama called Ms. Collins and Mr. Specter, as well as Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, another Republican expected to support the deal, to acknowledge they were acting against pressure from their party and, one official said, to thank them for their patriotism in helping advance the bill at a critical time.

Notice the explicit use of the word "patriotism." If you are patriotic for supporting the bill then everyone understands that the the speaker in question implies that those who oppose the bill are not patriotic.

Calls to religion, calls to patriotism, calls to forego democratic debate and oversight in order to come to agreement on what basically amounts to a downpayment on the Democrats' next version of the Great Society (the down payment part was taken from the President himself.)

Now I find all of those calls foolish and somewhat laughable and will file them away as part of my ongoing political education under "political tactics, bare knuckled." However we just spent the past 8 years having the Republicans lambasted for supposedly issuing these types of calls- for God, for patriotism, shutting down the deliberative process in the name of national emergency- and whether you thought they did it or not in order to prosecute the War on Terror or national security. However it only took the Democrats less than 3 weeks to make the same calls in order to pass David Obey's pork-laden Christmas tree of a bill.

So tell me, if you were one of those people who thought that George W. Bush was going to usher in the dark fascist night for America by using God and the threat of national catstrophe to shut down debate, what do you have to say about this? Or does the end justify the means?

2009-02-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

About What I Said Yesterday...

I was reminded by someone that when I wrote that post yesterday about how analogous the operational problems facing the Obama Administration were to those of Clinton, that I had forgotten the most important point. That Clinton started on the upswing not when he got the operational kinks out but when the economy started to do an up-tick and the Republicans gained control of Congress. Not only did Newt and the boys take some shine off the Republican brand during the governmental shutdown of 1995 but by having the other party in control of Congress, it seemed the Clinto Administration was restrained from following through on its worst instincts- like trying to reform health care.

Anyway the basic point holds true, there is alot of time between now and November 2012 so let's not go around with any "implosion" statements.

However...

I watched President Obama's speech to the Dem House retreat and I was shocked by the tone. Yes it was a speech to the faithful but one that was picked up for a national (though limited) audience. He was angry and defensive, trying to paint the Republicans as the ones to blame for holding up the stimulus package and putting the economy at risk. So let's go through this and pick it apart:

1) The Democrats control both chambers of Congress, already won in the House, and are in the process of picking up the few Republicans they need to stop a filibuster (which McConnell has already said he will not do ); in fact a final vote will probably come by Monday. So who exactly is holding things up? Olympia Snowe for not caving even faster?

2) I guess when Obama talked about "bi-partisanship" he meant not reaching common ground with the other party, but rather the Republicans caving-in and accepting every Democratic proposal as is otherwise he would throw a presidential hissy fit.

3) As far as the emergency aspect of this.... most of the money won't be spent until next year. Alot of people gave in over TARP because they were told that the credit markets would seize up if we didn't start throwing money from helicopters by the end of the week. According to the schedule of the"stimulus" package, not only won't we be throwing the bulk of the money out the window by the end of the next week we wouldn't have cut the purchase orders on the money-showering copters until Thanksgiving.

4) Coyote Blog put it best... how on earth did a newly-elected president who ran on being a transformative figure in American history go to being Nancy Pelosi's chief whip in a matter of 17 days?

So given all of this, it may take more than I thought to make this work.

2009-02-05T19:17:00.000-08:00

Let's Not Be Premature

For all of you who are waiting for the Obama Presidency to implode, let's think about this for a little.

First some historical perspective. Go back to the first several months of the Clinton Administration; the media was rife with stories of how the man was toast. How his people were just either newbie kids dragged in from the campaign team or kitchen cabinet hicks drawn from Arkansas. You know how this story ended, the man went from being toast to a popular two-termer.

Second, there are problems but problems that can be fixed. First you have campaign staff who have been promoted to the White House and aren't cutting it. That press guy Gibbs? Man he is awful, worse than George Stephanopoulus was in those early Clinton months. Next somebody on the senior staff level is giving Obama bad advice concerning the bailout. You just got elected to the most powerful job in the world on the mantle of hope and change and you get Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of probably the lowest-regarded Congress in history, to write your keystone legislation (the stimulus bill)? Whose bright idea was that? Was it Emmanuel or was it Jarrett or Axelrod? I would say the latter two as the Chief of Staff is more of a gatekeeper but Rahm was brought in for his congressional ties and a good deal of the problem right now is Congress. Well I don't see the three of them going but get rid of Gibbs as an example to encourage the others... as they say kill the chicken and make the monkey watch.

Oh and one final thing on the previous point. Get someone in who either doesn't have a Chicago ear for ethics problems or has enough clout to be able to put their foot down when they see one, but the vetting process by the Obama people is comical.

Finally I'm taking wagers on when David Gergen will be called in to take a senior staff position at the White House in order to "save the Obama Presidency." I'm saying May 1. Say what you want about George W., but at least he didn't let that man into the West Wing.

2009-02-03T12:51:00.000-08:00

The Train to Nowhere

Coyote Blog picked up an article that I had missed...

The Mesa Link debuted the same week as light rail. For now, Link involves a fleet of 10 buses. Each $756,000 vehicle carries a transponder to coordinate traffic lights and keep the bus on schedule for a 12-mile run in 45 minutes.

It’s the start of a much more ambitious program.

Over the next few months, the Regional Public Transportation Authority, which coordinates Valley Metro bus service, will build stations and add technology to the Mesa line to give it more of the pace and feel of a train.

As Warren picks out, Mesa Link runs just as fast as the light rail system and at a capital cost of 1/30 the price.

If I remember correctly there is supposed to be some sort of study on the current rail system before more mileage is built. I wonder if this will come up. Even better, with both systems being lit up at the same time, I would like to get the local heavy hitters who backed light rail to answer why light rail was built instead of a more creative alternative (paging Richard Florida.) If the question was posed, I bet the answer falls into one of two categories:

1) "We sold light rail to the public as a transportation system when in fact we saw it as a development project and fancy bus-like contraptions like Mesa Link wouldn't get the development component done...."

or the more likely response...

2) "Light rail is what the feds were paying for at the time..." That's the answer I usually get from such people along with the additional excuse that the federal money had to be used to drum up local support. Leaving aside that hundreds of millions of local tax money was used to match the federal dollars.

So if light rail was the locally supported option, despite its high cost and inflexibility, because the feds were willing to spring the money what does that say about federally funded transportation projects let alone all the capital projects in the massive federal "stimulus" bill?

2009-02-02T13:58:00.001-08:00

Thoughts of The Week That Was

I was asked for my comments concerning the past week while I was away...

First and most importantly, the Super Bowl. You have to do the right thing and congratulate the Steelers for making the plays when they had to; that final touchdown was just real pro and they deserved to win.

However going into the game I thought the Cards had a very good chance. I watched the Steelers play the Eagles earlier this year and Philly whipped them like a rented mule. People, both fans and media, had talked them into believing that Rooney/Tomlin/Big Ben were the second coming but I had a feeling that given the right circumstances, they could be had and they almost were. The difference in the game ended up being that freak interception run back at the end of the first half which was at least a 10 point swing. The Steelers did nothing for the first 27 minutes of the second half in terms of offense; they only scored 3 points during that time and the fact they even scored those 3 was due to a couple of ticky tack personal foul calls.

The other big point is how the Cards played. I hate the term "moral victory" which is usually used when they are about to lower your coffin into the ground. The Cards were 2 1/2 minutes from one of the great Super Bowl victories of all time and instead who has 95% of today's front page coverage? That's what happens when you get close but don't make it, no one cares and deservedly so. Having said that I was very pleased with the Cards, not so much for making the Super Bowl as for the toughness they displayed both in this game and during the NFC Championship. There were times during both games when they looked dead and buried and you just knew the writers in the booth were finishing the Cards' epitaph. Instead of folding and playing the foil to a great stories by the Eagles and Steelers, the Cards crawled out of the grave dug for them and fought back. In all the years I watched the Cards, I never expected to see that spirit and determination and I was surprised and very happy to see it this postseason

The FY2009 budget...

For all the people who are bellyaching about the fact that the budget process was rusghed and done behind closed doors, you have a point and I hope to see a better process for the FY2010 budget. I think everyone, not just lawmakers but also the public, need to understand the choices involved in what promises to be a very bloody and wrenching process.

Having said that, those bellyachers need to keep things in perspective. The FY2009 budget was unbalanced from the day it became effective 7 months ago and the previous governor and the Democrats in the Legislature who wrote it did nothing to correct the problem. I don't know when the point of no return would have been on the budget, the date after which if the budget hadn't been fixed that the state government would have to turn the lights off for part of the fiscal year, but such a date would have become a distinct possibility. The deficit had to be fixed and it got fixed and it took less than 3 weeks under the new legislative leadership (or if you like less than 2 weeks of the Brewer Administration) to get it done.

Finally...

No I'm not going to say anything about the siutation in Kentucky and elsewhere where people are suffering in freezing weather without power and heat and FEMA has yet to arrive except to say that a certain someone we all know here in Arizona now heads the Department of Homeland Security and has FEMA under her superivision. Those of us who remember her response to the gas pipeline break in 2003 that cut off 70% of Phoenix's gas supply or her lack of unflappability whenever things didn't go her away (see her response last month to Arizona Treasurer Dean Martin) shouldn't be surprised. You cannot bully an ice storm or scream at it to get it to do what you want.

2009-02-01T05:59:00.000-08:00

You Thought I Was Exaggerating

The other week I wrote a post entitled "Killing Hope, Puppies, Children, and Kittens" that extended a thought that the Republicans will be pilloried as monsters for trying to close the state budget deficit through spending.

Well I got an earful on that... that perhaps I was exaggerating just a bit. I was told that yes, it will be a point of partisan controversy given that the Democrats proposed closing the gap through smoke and mirrors but I was being hysterical by claiming that the Republicans will be attacked as baby killers.

Oh really?

From one of the lead op-eds in today's East Valley Tribune, Budget Cuts Reminiscent of Ancient Sparta.

Just so we're clear about the Sparta connection, the writer is not talking about standing up to the barbarian hordes and dying a heroic death like int he movie "300" but rather the Spartan tradition of infanticide, leaving babies-to-die.

Republicans as baby killers, in one of the two main newspapers in town.

Leave aside the lack of analysis of whether state revenue, even with the tax cuts the writer pillories, has outpaced inflation and population growth. Leave aside the fact that the writer works at ASU, one of the targets of the proposed budget cuts.

Is this any way to enrich the public debate?

2009-01-31T13:14:00.000-08:00

Can't Anyone Play This Game?

Remember during the campaign when Senator Joe Biden said it was patriotic for wealthy people to pay more taxes?

Remember when President Obama pounded on Wall Street types for pulling down big bonuses while their firms were taking in taxpayer-funded bailouts?

Well Mr. President and (now) Vice President Biden, what about cabinet officers taking in big government paychecks while skimping on their taxes?

So with Geithner and Daschle caught on their taxes right at a time when their party is looking at handing out hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars (well borrowed dollars) to favored constiteuncies? For years Republicans have been cirticized for liking big government as long as they could borrow for it, now I guess we can say Democrats like big government as long as they don't have to personally pay the taxes for it.

Couple of thoughts...

First, take the Geithner and Daschle messes. The only reason we know of them is because they were appointed for cabinet posts, so how many other unppointed tax cheat are out there? Should we take Scrappleface's suggestion and expand the cabinet so it's large enough so we could get more tax cheats to own up?

Second, what's up these cabinet appointments? Cannot anyone vet them? Add in the Bill Richardson fiasco which only a top secret spy or someone who lived in New Mexico for the past few years would ever know about and you have to wonder who approves of these appointments.

Third, what does that say about the tax system? Back as an undergrad a prof made the remark that the difference between the old US and Italian tax systems was that the former had alot of deductions because they expected you to be honest while the latter had few deductions because they expected you to cheat on them... I have the feeling we as a country just found out how rotted out our system is. It reminds me of what another prof said... in an era of big government it's the middle class that gets screwed because the lwoer class doesn't pay taxes and gets government benefits while the upper class learns how to manipulate the system

2009-01-23T10:04:00.000-08:00

The Guns of January

With the all the screaming from the universities and K-12 on the proposed budget cuts, I have a question...

At what point does the FY2009 budget, no matter what scenario, pass the point of no return in terms of balancing it?

Let's look at the facts.

Let's say the FY2009 budget is about $10.2 billion, roll-over adjusted.

Next week is the last week of January, meaning the fiscal year is almost 60% of the way complete. I don't have the latest Treasurer's report in front of me so let's assume (big assumption) that spending is done equally across the fiscal year; that means a little over $4 billion left.

The deficit for this fiscal year stands at $1.6 billion or so and will probably get larger... let's say $1.8 billion to be on the safe side

Cash available... about $670 million or so in fund transfer from tapping Rainy Day Fund and sweeping the other asset accounts. Let's also assume another $400 million (another big assumption) from the feds as part of the bailout (oh the humanity.)

That leaves us about $730 million short, which has to be made up either with spending cuts or tax increases. Let's keep the assumption that no one wants to raise taxes... so we're going to cut the whole amount.

Man I made alot of assumptions but bear with me. Assuming the feds come up with the money, assuming that spending is equal throughout the fiscal year, assuming the deficit doesn't get larger than $1.8 billion, and not counting any interest payments we'll have to make tapping any line of credit to make up for cash flow problems... that means we need to cut about 17% of spending to make the books balance by the end of the fiscal year.

The Republican leadership in the Legislature thinks they can get a budget through by next week, but let's say members of the Republican caucus quail in the face of the pressure brought by those affected by the cuts and slow the process down. What happens then? What happens if we get to February and there's no deal done? Then using the same assumptions, we're down to cutting the same amount from $3.39 billion or 21% cuts.

If they couldn't make it work with 17% cuts, I cannot see them making it with 21% cuts and the longer this goes on the more the pressure will grow for some way to bypass those types of spending cuts in favor of the previous governor's suggestions of liquidating state assets and accounting gimmicks.

That is of course if the budget can even be saved at that point.

So if this going to happen, then it will have to happen quickly otherwise...

2009-01-21T11:38:00.000-08:00

The Pride of Chandler

I knew Eagles QB lived in the Phoenix-area but I didn't know it was Chandler. I'm not surprised because everyone knows that Chandler is truly the reincarnation of the Garden of Eden, the place where "rainbows end." Not like Scottsdale.... nope.

Apparently some local residents decided to show their Cardinals pride by destroying Mr. McNabb's lawn.

Rex Michael Perkins, 37, of Chandler, and Ryan Hanlon, 29, of Gilbert, were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage on Sunday after police questioned Perkins about the sign that said: “Go Cards” on one side and “Beat Philly” on the other, Chandler police said.

Perkins and Hanlon also allegedly poured diesel fuel in McNabb’s yard in the 4100 block of South Purple Sage Drive to read: “Go Kurt,” and “Go Cards,” causing an estimated $2,000 in damage, Chandler police Sgt. Joe Favazzo said.

So how were these miscreants caught?

Police were able to track down the pair after they discovered a sticker containing the home address of one of the men on a cardboard sign left in McNabb’s yard.

How sad. How pathetic.

2009-01-21T10:59:00.000-08:00

Killing Hope, Children, Puppies, and Kittens

What did I tell you? Already the media is painting the Republican Legislature as a bunch of child-hating monsters for wanting to cut, in part, education spending in order to balance the massive budget deficit.

First we have Laurie Roberts in the Republic:

OK, raise your hand if you're happy with Arizona's budget plan, the one put out last week by Republican leaders.

Because as we all know everyone is always happy with the options available when trying to cut a budget deficit...

The one that guts one of the nation's most woefully underfunded school systems and debones the universities. The one that eliminates all-day kindergarten and health care for 63,000 kids. The one that slashes services to autistic children and the mentally ill and old people and, oh yeah, abused babies. Applause? Anyone?......

..... A path, by the way, that runs right over the youngest, the oldest and the weakest among us.

Well, considering the bulk of the budget dealt with things such as education and ACHCCCS it only makes sense that many of the cuts will fall on those aspects of the budget. As for the "youngest, the oldest and the weakest" well if there are parts of the state budget that involve giving oodles of money to the "strongest, prime of life, and the strongest" then let's cut that first. Oh there isn't a part of the budget that serves that community, oh, okay.... so basically what part of the budget can we cut that avoids the "youngest, the oldest and the weakest"? Prisons or would it be wise to be cut the budget involving the "strong, malicious, and respect-for-the-law-challenged" among us ?

So if you cannot cut anything, where does that leave us?

On to Republic reporter Casey Newton down at the Capitol...

As a feisty Capitol press corps pressed the leadership to consider tax hikes, Senate President Bob Burns said his top priority was to reduce spending.

Hey did you remember outgoing Governor Napoltano's budgets saying anything about tax increases? Nope, they were filled with what even Ms. Roberts says are "...fund sweeps, borrowing, and other maneuvers..." SSoo why wasn't a "feisty Capitol press corps" getting after the leadership to consider those "maneuvers" from her budgets? Is it because the press already knew such maneuvers were a joke and that her budgets weren't worth the paper they are printed on? Better yet why didn't a "feisty Capitol press corps" get after Napolitano to "consider tax hikes" in those budgets? Oh, it was because she had already left town with a one-way plane ticket to her confirmation hearings in Washington.

If you want to another example of a member of the Capitol press corps full of great ideas and snark for the Republican Legislature, check out Howie Fischer's piece (h/t Espresso Pundit.) Why, Howie asks, cut spending when you can raise taxes? I don't remember him being so helpful to Napolitano.

Gosh it's great the press is helpful and feisty when it comes to tax increases, but where was this great surge of energy, say, last week?

To top it, victims of the budget cut are already making plans to close the Washington Monument. That reference is in regard to a common tactic used by government agencies when threatened with budget cuts; they don't try to find the least essential program to cut first , no instead they'll have to eliminate the most popular programs first. Check out ASU President Michael Crow's threat to close ASU Polytechnic... which just happns to be one of Senate Appropriations Chairman Russell Pearce's pet projects.
they proclaim that if the cuts are enacted they'll have to

2009-01-19T13:22:00.000-08:00

Things I Haven't Discussed

I have been asked why I have refrained from commenting on certain issues. So here goes...

The upcoming Obama Presidency. I didn't want to jump on the guy because first he hadn't even taken office, I know there are people in this country who in the past have liked to condemn a man for such things but hey I'm old fashioned, I'll judge a man by what he does not what he says. Second, I think I like the man's cabinet picks better than those who voted for him.

Btw... we'll say a prayer for him tonight and tomorrow. Whether you voted for him or not he will be the president as of tomorrow and right now that isn't a job I'll wish on anyone.

Light rail...

I think I have said it before. Congratulations to Metro for getting the job done on schedule and what looks to be on budget. I will be intersted to see what the ridership looks like say, 6 months from now, especially in comparison with the Red Line bus route which the rail follows. I know that even if ridership numbers are int he pits that it won't stopt he $100 million per extension from going in, heck I know that low ridership will be seen as a justification for expanding the system, go figure.

One question though, why do I have to pay for a separate ticket to ride the rail and the bus? Why cannot there be a common transfer for both? Shouldn't the bus and rail systems be integrated as one?

Photo radar...

All the hub bub about it being used for revenue generation as opposed to safety, the move to get it banned... all old news and I cannot say it any better than others. My point is that when the current Governor proposed the plan as a way to balance the budget, she said it would generate $90 million in revenue the first year and $120 million the second. Now in her recent budget proposals she has given numbers of $50 million the first and $75 million the second. Why do I think the actual numbers will be even less than that? Why do I think the photo radar numbers are as much a mirage as all of her budget numbers?

I know I'm being a cynic.

2009-01-18T18:52:00.000-08:00

The Sucker's Choice

As I was watching Horizon Friday night it occurred to me that the media and the Democrats are presenting soon-to-be Governor Brewer with a choice. First a little background.

Current Governor Janet Napolitano has released both an updated FY2009 and FY2010 budget. As expected it greatly differs from the budget options presented by the Republican Legislature. While the Legislature goes heavily on cuts, Napolitano's approach goes back to her old modus operandi of low-balling the size of the deficit, using roll overs and other budget gimmeckery, and with the added new dash of securitizing revenue-generating assets.

Horizon host Ted Simons put forth a theme I have been hearing alot of recently... that Brewer has the choice of either following one of those two options. On one hand, the "draconian" cuts of the Republican legislators (need I remind you of the low reputation of the Legislature?) or the much more moderate tone of Napolitano who happens to not only enjoy high poll numbers but was elected with a crushing electoral mandate.

Come on Jan, what are you going do? Follow the lead of the cool kids or hang out with those radical legislaive losers? You follow the losers and enact those "draconian" cuts and there will be a story every day on how they will affect little children and their puppies and kittens and we'll make sure any mention of those "draconian cuts" will be preceded by the statement that you approved of them. Oh... also once a week we'll be sure to mention that you reversed the policies of your predecssor who just happened to be one of the most popular governors in the state's history while we also remind everyone that no one elected you.

It's a sucker's choice because if Brewer does follow Napolitano's policies, not only will she become politically isolated but at best she'll get none of the credit and at worst have to make even more "draconian" cuts during 2010 as the state careens toward bankruptcy in an election year.

So here's my suggestion.... when you get sworn into office this week, use the moment of your inaguration to lay out to the people of Arizona the dire fiscal situation and explain to them that tough choices need to be made. Like it or not, Brewer will own the solution for the budget deficit from the moment she takes office so she needs to lay the rationale for her actions from the very beginning. She doesn't need to directly attack her predecessor or even use her name, the moment Napolitano resigned to take another job, the moment she left her post during one of the biggest crises to ever hit state government, it was as if she no longer existed. Take a few minutes to directly address the people of Arizona and lay out the situation.

Explain that...

We're facing one of the greatest crisis of state government in Arizona's history.

We're in the middle of multi-year fiscal drought and rather than treating the budget like fiscal recovery is just around the corner, that the best projection is for a return to the revenues of 2007 sometime around 2012.

That the State of Arizona must have a balanced budget every year, unlike the federal government, and that this necessity limits the options for dealing with the deficit.

That previous attempts to deal with the budget defcit, while done with the admirable goal in maintaining state services, can no longer continue because they put off the necessary measures in favor of short-term tactics that will cripple the state budget for years to come. Explain the consequences of financing school construction, K-12 roll-overs, and securitizing Tobacco or the Lottery. Relate the consequences of such actions in terms of personal finance, which most people can relate to. Explain that the prior attempts to balance budgets involved gimmicks like photo radar.

Explain that you will do whatever is necessary to maintain state services, but that in part due to measures taken over the past 12 months the State is facing fiscal disaster. You might want to pick up Treasurer Dean Martin's comments that we'll soon have to borrow money to keep the state agency lights on. You might want to allude that if things aren't soon fixed, even greater disaster looms.

So the question is Governor Brewer, are you going to accept the sucker's choice that the media and Democrats are offering you or are you, to mix metaphors, going to change the rules of the game?

2009-01-18T18:47:00.000-08:00

Feeling the Hate

There are alot of memorable moments from the Cardinals Super Bowl run; however, the best may be from today's CBS halftime show...

Shannon Sharpe did a quick summary of the game, made some sort of favorable remark regardign the Cardinals, and then turned to Boomer Esiason.

The look on Boomer's face? Sheer hate.

More than 10 years later and the man cannot let go.

2009-01-15T15:32:00.000-08:00

Thinking of Khan

A mish mash of thoughts...

How do you deal with the nation's largest state budget deficit (as measured as a percentage)? The Appropriation Chairmen for the Arizona Legislature outline the options for an effective, non gimmicky, approach. The best part is in the last slide which, in a refreshing change from the hopes and prayers of the last few budgets, propose a budget plan that would exceed the projected FY2009 shortfall in order to provide some buffer to future economic shocks. No word on the promised budget from Governor Napolitano who is in Washington wrapping up her hearing for Homeland Security.

How bad are Philly fans when it comes to the dark pit of the soul? Forget about booing Santa Claus as that was fully justified. Instead see this comment to a post in Galley Slaves regarding what would happen to Philly sports fans if the Eagles won the Super Bowl:

Winning will not change the icy heart of the Philly fan. After the game, my brother-in-law claimed that the only thing better than the Eagles winning the Super Bowl would be having Andy Reid fired at the post-game victory celebration.

That feeling is pretty widespread by the way. I heard they still booed Mike Schmidt during his Hall of Fame induction speech.

And finally to Khan

Ricardo Montalban just passed away. He was the sensation when I was in grade school, not because anybody watched Fantasy Island as that was past our bed times or was after Lobve Boat or soemthing but because of his Chrysler car commercials. The man exuded class and taste and all of in my class could do great imitations of "rich Coreentheean leather." One weekend my Dad brought home a company car that just happened to be a Chrysler Cordoba; rather than trying to get him to do a Smokey and the Bandit with the company wheels like we used to do, my brother and I just wanted to sit in the back with the car parked in the driveway. When I returned to school that Monday with the report that I had actually experienced the wonderful leather, I was treated like the great explorer Stanley returning to London after venturing to the heart of Africa.

My other great memory was during a boring car ride to New Mexico. There used to be signs along the highway proclaiming some upcoming historical landmark and exhorting me to turn the AM radio dial such and such frequency. Well after several such trips I finally broke down and turned the dial to discover that the frequency in question had a recording Mr. Montalban doing a documentary of each historical site I was passing. Wonderful. Then again he would sound wonderful reading cooking recipes or announcing the hog competition at the Marion County Fair.

Some other Montalban thoughts here and here.

2009-01-13T17:21:00.000-08:00

Just So You Know

I know you love my posts on the budget, so here's one more. This one is based on today's Finance Advisory Committee presentation down at the Legislature for the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.

You really don't have to read very far into the presentation, especially Mr. Pollack's wonderful images and pictures, to get the basic gist of the 4 Sector Consensus. General Revenue will return to FY2007 levels in....

...FY2012.

That's how bad of a hole we're in so unless you want to change the Arizona Constitution to allow the State to start carrying debt, Governor Napolitano better explain how she planned on exceeding revenue for 4 straight years or by planning each budget like the economy was going to turn around mid fiscal year "Let's assume a growth in revenue of..."

Yech

Oh for even more joy read on int he presentation for State Treasurer Dean Martin's report on the State's cash flow. I know he's just "grandstanding" and all but we're looking at a $1.4 to 1.6 billion deficit this year with an awfully big chunk of the money already spent and therefore not recoverable by spending cuts. Let's move beyond the ability to get bank loans to solve the cash flow problem that's coming in a month or two, I don't know how you will get the books to balance by the end of the fiscal year

You know things are bad when the only bright spot in the Valley this year is the Cardinals

2009-01-13T07:04:00.000-08:00

Blagopolitano

What do disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and Janet Napolitano have in common?

The use of their high elected office as a personal possession as opposed to a public trust. While the former has done so in a criminal manner and the latter has not, both are unethical.

First speculation about Blago and where he goes from here...

He hasn't resigned or apologized or anything, he totally looks like he is going to fight it out to the bitter end. This could all be posturing, as he tries to negotiate the best deal possible with the feds, but let's say he takes this trial what could his possible defense be? I bet he puts the whole political system, not just Chicago, but everything on trial. Yes he got caught on tape doing a pro quid pro on the open senate seat, trying to maximize his personal gain but what did he mostly talk about? Promises of people to raise campaign funds for him, sinecures after he left office... it wasn't quite a Duke Cunningham who while in office received buckets of cash in exchange for explicit favors.

The whole premise behind McCain-Feingold and Clean Elections was that money in politics corrupts, to receive a campaign contribution involves the potential for some sort of corrupt pro quid pro. The whole controversey surrounding earmarks is based on this premise. Blagojevich can argue that the only difference between him and the rest of the political system was that he caught on tape explicitly discussing these deals... his argument that his crime wasn't so much in the deal themselves but for the indiscretion that he exposed the hidden sausage factory to the public.

The other aspect of the crime is that Blago is guilty, without a doubt, of using his office for personal gain as opposed to the public welfare. The open senate seat was just another thing he could "sell" like a piece of pork... whether it was to benefit him personally or his future political prospects. He treated public office as something he had title to and could wheel and deal like it was a knick knack on E-Bay. Tell me though on what basis is Governor Patterson of New York is trying to fill the open senate seat there? Best person for the state who is available? Or who might support him politically in the future? Or a rival for the 2010 election who could be gotten out of the way?

Now we turn to Arizona Governor Napolitano. No corrupt deals to expose here, I'll just assume (and rather safely) that for a poltiician she's as pure and innocent on such matters as new snow. However her great lapse was that for the past few months (at least) she has treated her office as a piece of private property rather than as a public trust.

A few months ago when she was nominated to the post of Homeland Security, everyone knew that she wouldn't be confirmed until (at least) the new administration took office. She then announced that she wouldn't resign until her new post was confirmed, treating her current job as the top elected official in Arizona as a safety net.

In another time and age, such a stance would be tolerable. However Arizona in the midst of its worst financial, and soon to be political, crisis in a generation. The State is projected to run out of money several months short of the end of the fiscal year and will have to resort to borrowing, if it legally can, in order to keep the lights on. The budget that generated this mess was unbalanced from almost the day it took effect. Leave aside that the budget will probably be in deficit for at least the next 2 fiscal years after this one leaving open the only possibilities of massive spending cuts and/or tax increases.

Leave aside the future fiscal years. Leave aside the fact this current year crisis is almost an exact replay of last year's crisis, just with fewer options. Given that this budget was running unbalanced from the day it took effect, would Governor Napolitano acted differently if she knew she would have to be around to clean things up? Would she have let the State get to the point where it will have to beg banks, during the worst national financial crisis in 75 years, for loans to keep the lights on past March if she was still going to be in office?

Back when the FY2009 budget hit the public fan in early October, she announced plans to call the Legislature into session after the November election in oder to fix it. The session was never called as there was no consensus on hwo to fix the budget. Now legislators are a tough lot at the best of time to get a consensus on and times are tough, but if Napolitano planned to be here after January don't you think she would have found way, even by knocking heads together, to get a session in place and a partial budget fixed?

Arizona budget deficits are tough to eliminate; the State cannot take on debt so the only ways to fix them without raising taxes is to cut spending. The earlier in the fiscal year you cut spending, the better it is; however, we now have at best 5 months left, spending cuts will no longer do it alone. We will either be selling assets, raising taxes, or dependent on the feds for a bailout. Yech.

Personally I think alot of political careers will be ended over the next 12 months as our elected officials take the brutal steps necessary to get the budgets balanced. However Napolitano's career will still remain viable because she will have escaped the consequences of her actions (or inaction.) To top it off, she has chosen to remain in office as a lame duck during this critical time not to provide the necessary leadership and forge solutions, but as a safety net in case her nomination went askew.

Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. She did none of the three. Legally she could do that, but by any means of public service she hurt this state by treating her office as property she could dispose of as she pleased rather than as a public trust that she could hold only as long as she could properly execute it.

2009-01-12T18:00:00.000-08:00

About that Cursed Frogurt...

People have been asking me in light of the Cardinals' playoff run if I'm still sticking with the idea that the team is cursed... and the answer is yes. Cursed is cursed, every new success by the team is simply a new and diabolical way to get your hopes up before they are cruelly crushed. There's no hope, no escape, just misery past, misery being experienced, and endless eons of misery to be experienced.

If you think about it, the curse is actually irrefutable because nothing will dispel it, even winning a bunch of Super Bowls won't do it because all that success is just to get your expectations up. Really the escape from this is death.

Our only hope is to crush the hope of others (think Jake Delhomme is going to be starting next year?) How very Russian. I once asked my mother if we were Russian and she said no, it just comes from following Philly sports too long. It just gets into your blood, like malaria.

Having said that...

The last 2 weeks has been beyond awesome, so awesome that it's almost worth whatever dark nights of the soul await us. This is team that has underperformed ever since it cam to the Valley. Even when they went to the playoffs 10 years ago, they barely squeaked in playing a creampuff schedule, and beat a declining Cowboys team in the Wildcard. This year's team was a dead man walking, getting spanked by 40 points in New England. Instead of going down, they actually beat two quality teams in a decisive fashion... it's almost scary.

So enjoy it, because the success we're experiencing now we'll have to be repaid someday.

2009-01-10T16:12:00.000-08:00

Just Brilliant

Napolitano's political epitaph and the budget can wait until tomorrow, this is just too good of an idea to pass over. From Bill Simmons' column on ESPN.com:

(One other possible format change that we discussed in Monday's "B.S. Report" -- in the divisional playoffs, the No. 1 seeds get to pick which team they want to play. Why? BECAUSE IT'S IDIOTIC THAT THE GIANTS FOUGHT ALL YEAR TO WIN THE NO. 1 SEED, AND NOW THEY HAVE TO PLAY A POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS EAGLES TEAM INSTEAD OF A CARDINALS TEAM THAT WOULD HAVE A ZERO PERCENT CHANCE OF BEATING THEM!!!!!! Sorry, I had to go all-caps there. It's that dumb. So is Tennessee playing 12-5 Baltimore instead of 9-8 San Diego. I don't get it.)

Yep. If I were the Giants I would want the Cards instead of the Eagles, but that's the way it goes; the seedings are out of the teams' immediate hands and are instead dictated by records and division records.

One of the great scenes in all of sports is in baseball when a guy gets intentionally walked and then the next schlub comes to bat. How humiliating, but such drama because the guy who just got dissed as an easy out now has a chance for some payback.

Now how much better would it be after the last wild card game wrapped up on Sunday, the respective studio show then turned to the coach and GM of the number 1 seed to ask who would they pick as their playoff opponent, an opponent everyone assumed would be the easiest team to beat. Think of the drama surrounding the pick, think of all the headlines and smack talk throughout the week.

Now let's extend the concept to other sports. One of the (many) irritating things about the NBA is that as the regular season wraps up teams jockey for playoff position not based on record but based on who their opponent will be; sometimes it pays to be a lower seed if you can play the right team. Why not have a show, just like the draft, between the regular season and playoff
where the top 3 playoff seeds in each conference select who their opponents will be, selecting in order of best record first? Wouldn't you bust your butt a little harder to get a 3 as opposed 4 seed if you could pick out of a potentially difficult first round match-up? Or try to get a first seed so you can pick your opponent for the 2nd round as well?

Yes.

Make it happen.

2009-01-09T11:12:00.000-08:00

For a Few Posts More...

Three more posts on Janet Napolitano should just about do it, then hopefully that will be about it. Nothing I said before but let's call this a summarization of her political legacy or, if you will, her political epitaph.

If Napolitano magically vanished from the face of the planet after Election Day 2006, her legacy would have been secured while she was at the height of her powers. In 1998 she managed to win the Attorney General race after the Republicans committed fratricide in the primary. In 2002 she barely won her first gubernatorial race during tough economic times and the alt fuel scandal. In 2006 when she ran for re-election, she was dominant that her massive margin of victory was magnified by the fact that no Republican of prominence wanted to run against her. It capped off a first-term of gushing revenues that allowed her to run as both as a spender and tax cutter, a reputation of her being able to manhandle the Republican Legislature, and the perceived ability to effectively manage the executive branch.

Her political future was as bright as the June sun. What was the next step? Senate? Heck, for a while last year she was even talked about as a possible VP pick.

Now... in the early days of 2009, all of that seems like ash.

Let's forget about the popular opinion polls about Napolitano because much like the real estate bubble did, her poll numbers should be the next thing to pop. I'm going to ask you, what did she do? What are her prominent, "count-on-one-hand" achievements?

All-day kindergarten? Okay chalk that one up to her. Keep going... her little biotech capital venture fund? Okay, you got that too. Any ballot initiatives? After all with a Republican Legislature, that would seem to be a great place for a purported political Colossus of Janet to make her mark, to translate her hegemony into policy. Hmmmm.... TIME and state trust lands initiatives never even made the ballot due to technicalities. That's sort of like never making it to your Super Bowl game because you forgot when the game was being played.

What else? Managerial effectiveness? Okay throw out the prison standoff from a few years ago, the Veterans Home fiasco that happened twice under her watch, and the ongoing problems at CPS.... Anything else? Oh yes, she boosted spending and we see where that has gotten us.

I would say that her achievements, and therefore much of her legacy, rest on 3 things:

1) She was able to exploit differences within the Republicans in the Legislature, either by peeling off moderate votes or by simply stonewalling on issues like the budget until the Republicans caved. So in comparison to the Legislature, which is one of the most ridiculed public institutions in the state, she looks like a genius in comparison.

2) Her image as a moderate Democrat, the one who could run as both a spender and tax cutter, was only possible because the inconsistencies in her program were never exposed by being pushed back onto her base. Democrats didn't dare ask why taxes were cut instead of more money spent or why more ambitious programs weren't implemented because there was no one willing to stand up and speak. The critical time was in January 2006 when revenue was gushing in and it was clear that she would face no serious opposition to re-election, that would have been the time to start constructing some of the more transformative liberal programs that her supporters were hankering for... but she did nothing. She was completely unwilling to shave up a few points from her massive lead in order to translate that popularity into lasting policies.

3) She was in office during flush times. It's always better to be lucky than good and part of being lucky is to know when to be in office. Her election in 2002 was propelled in part by the tough economic and fiscal times back then and her re-election was propelled by the flush times of 2006. It doesn't take a political genius to win as an outsider in 2002 and as an incumbent in 2006, but some wanted to give her that label and so it stuck.

In short she was a tactician, not a strategist. Somebody willing to exploit current trends and weaknesses in the opposition and her own ranks in order to move an incrementalist agenda, either out of ideological disposition or out of innate caution born out of political ambition. There's nothing wrong with that and many a long and successful political career has been built on such an approach. It, however, is the antithesis of being a leader which is why at the greatest moment in her reign as governor, she will fail and bring the Colossus of Janet crashing down.

However that's tomorrow's story.

2009-01-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

In Praise of Boring

Imagine my amusement, and total lack of surprise, when in reading Forbes' list of the most boring cities in America to find out that Chandler is listed in the top 10. You will be completely unsurprised to learn that I lived in Chandler for 10 years and loved every moment of it, in fact to this day I believe it is there that "rainbows end."

Of course in fairness to Chandler I grew up in an area where the 3 big social events of the season were the first day of hunting season, the opening of the state agricultural fair, and the big high school wrestling match against Phillipsburg. So by comparison, to me the bright lights at the corner of Pecos and Arizona Ave. shine very bright indeed.

Okay the Forbes' article is not a really slam against the cities in question, just an analysis of which cities fail to generate headlines (as opposed to say Detroit) but if I was Mayor Boyd Dunn, I would put the moniker of "boring" on the city's seal.

Boring is safe and prosperous, where the kids are safe playing at night in the cul-de-sac.

Boring is low taxes. Not spending taxpayer money on "civic pride" projects like light rail or sport venues. It's not taking half of $800 million bond issue and spending it to spruce up a downtown that the average citizen visits maybe once a month.

It's not about building foolish things like popsicle stick skyscraper, 50-foot magnifying glasses, or giant escalators to nowhere.

It's about staying out of the news, which is all pretty much negative anyway, and doing remarkable things that never seem to get remarked upon.

Besides, if the people of Chandler want excitement they all know they can go at any time to Apache Junction. Anything goes there and usually does

2009-01-06T17:22:00.000-08:00

I've Got GMAC Bowl Fever

It's January 6th; they played the Fiesta Bowl last night, the Orange and the Sugar last week, and tonite they are playing the GMAC Bowl. There's something wrong with that.

When I was a wee lad, there was a definite structure to the college football season. A structure, a system, a hierarchy that made some degree of sense and that rewarded virtue. It went something like this...

If you were part of a college football team and you had a really good season, you got to do what pretty much all such good teams did... you got to play on past the end of the regular season. Not a playoff game like every other sport in every other league, but you got to go to a bowl game. It was a big deal, some colleges went many years, if not decades, between bowl games. You got to go some part of the country you usually didn't go to and play some team your school probably last played during the Johnson Administration.

There also was a definite hierarchy built into the bowl schedule; the better your season the closer you got to play to New Year's Day. If you were just good, you maybe got some game just before or after Christmas. If you were pretty good, maybe you got a game New Year's Eve or early New Year's Day; the Sun, the Citrus, or perhaps the Gator. Of course if you were really, really good, you played later on New Year's Day in the Sugar or Orange.

That was then, this is now.

Instead of bowl games being a reward for an exceptional season, invitations are handed out to one and all. Last I counted there were 34 bowls which meant that more than half of all Division I or FBS or FUBAR or whatever they call that classification of teams are going to a game. You have to have a real bozo of season (see ASU) to be sitting home.

Instead of having a nice heirarchy of schedule, we have games like the GMAC Bowl scheduled between the Fiesta and the national championship game. Rather than having the season build to climatic moment on New Year's Night with bleary-eyed fans, after previously watching that day the Citrus/Gator/Cotton/Rose/Fiesta Bowls, tuned into either the Sugar or Orange Bowl to see who would stake claim to the national championship, we instead have the season dragged out for a full week after New Year's. In the good ole days, last week's Orange Bowl snoozefest between Virginia Tech and Cincinnati would have led us to turning the channel to the Utah-Alabama Sugar Bowl as opposed to turning the TV off and spending quality time with our families.

Finally the bowls themselves have been NASCARed; not only have they proliferated like payday loan stores but they have acquired names that separate them from their communities and history. Don't get me wrong, corporate sponsorship may be a necessary evil but there is a world of difference between the FedEx Orange and the PapaJohns.com Bowl. Not only have new bowls emerged with such names, but older bowls have changed their names to things like Chick-Fil-A (Peach), Insight (Copper) and Capital One (Citrus.)

So here's my modest proposal. We all know why the bowl season has gotten out of hand, money. More games mean more programming. Corporate sponsorship brings in money and the more the corporate name is prominently displayed the more money it brings in. However we also know that college football survives because of the tradition and community it generates among its fans, dilute the product too much and the game just becomes a Saturday bridge between Friday Night Lights and the NFL. So we need to step in and save the bowl system.

Not a playoff system, I like a little bit of uncertainity and plus life is a little unfair. So every now and then we get some controversey, so what? We'll get just as much if we went to a playoff system because no matter if you go to a 8-team playoff or 4 bowls + 1 or whatever somebody will always complain they should be in the playoffs.

So here we go:

First raise the win-total to be bowl eligible from 6 to 8. 6 might have made a little bit of sense when most schools played an 11-game season but now with a universal 12-game schedule, it just means you can be a .500 team and playing in Champs Sports Bowl. If we raised the standard this year we would have cut the number of bowl elible teams by about 24 schools which means...

...we can cut the number of bowls down to about 22. That seems like a good number

However every year there seems to be a feel-good story about a school that comes from nowhere and pulls off a half-decent season which gets everyone excited. So let's throw in an exception, allow 4 teams in that get 7 wins but make them go some place that has a rinky dink name; the PapaJohns.com or San Diego County Credit Union Poinsetta Bowl or something. A team that hasn't been to a bowl game in 10 years would run through hell in a gasoline suit to play the PapaJohns while an LSU would reject the invite and that's just the point.

All games will be played by the close of New Year's (or Jan. 2 if New Year's falls on a weekend) with the exception of the national championship game which needs to be played the next day. No waiting a week, play the game, get it done, and move off the sports calendar

The only games to be played on New Year's will be quality events, no foolish corporate name bowls like Outback or Champs Sports. Capital One can stay if it restores either the Citrus or Tangerine in its name.

The GMAC Bowl will be forced to either change its name or be put of its misery, you just cannot have a bowl named after a corporation that is the recipient of government bailout money.

2009-01-02T20:50:00.000-08:00

Who Woulda Thunk it?

It's been a month or so since I blogged about the Arizona budget, so you're overdue. A more comprehensive piece in the near future, but for now a little something that indicates to me how some parties are going to try and play this thing out. This is what those guys with the scrambled eggs on their hats would call "battle space preparation."

Espresso Pundit linked the other week to a post at the Tucson Citizen which blames the FY2009 budget, the budget which the Democrats rammed through the waning days of June and immediately began running in the red, on the Governor getting the wrong economic forecast data. Well I'll let the author, Mr. Kimble who by the way is the paper's editorial editor, say it in his own words:

In January 2008, Gov. Janet Napolitano presented her proposal for the fiscal 2009 budget to the Legislature. That’s the budget for the year that is now almost half-over, running from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009.

Government budgets are only as good as government economic forecasts. And less than a year ago, the forecast for the Arizona economy was way, way off.

In January 2008, Gov. Janet Napolitano presented her proposal for the fiscal 2009 budget to the Legislature. That’s the budget for the year that is now almost half-over, running from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009.

In her budget message, Napolitano referred to “slow economic growth that we anticipate for much of 2008.”

----

The governor’s report also forecast growth “in each of ‘The Big Three’ tax categories”: sales tax, individual income tax and corporate income tax. Those forecasts were wrong, wrong and wrong.

The report concluded that the state would be able to “bridge the shortfall without significant disruption to the operation of State Government.”...

So far so good, nothing wrong here. There were plenty of people, not all Democrats, who in late 2007 saw the dip in state revenues as something temporary. At that time many people saw no need to seriously cut spending, just tap the Rainy Day Fund and say switch school construction over to financing and ride out this temporary storm. The presumption of Mr. Kimble's writing is that the Governor's poor budgeting was the result of poor staff forecasting as opposed to willful neglect.

However if you look further into Mr. Kimble's wording you note the sleight of hand. He discusses the Governor presenting a FY2009 budget in January 2008 and then proceeds to link the poor forecasts that went into that January proposal with the disaster of a budget that was passed in June. In other words nothing to see here as far as political culpability, no one could have seen this coming... like the January proposal was set in stone and everyone was taken by surprise by what happened later.

Nonsense.

Anybody who could read a simple accounting report knew that when the FY2009 budget finally passed in late June that at best would have to be revised sometime during the fiscal year. The situation had radically changed between January and June, after more months of fiscal red ink no one could say with a straight face that growth in revenue was around the corner. However that is exactly what the Governor's budget assumed, because if you believe that revenue will increase over the next year then you don't have to make deeper spending cuts.

Let's put it another way, if you took that budget with those revenue estimates into the private sector in order to pitch for cash, you would at best be laughed out the room or at worst be up on indictment for fraud. The budget was a fiction from the moment it was passed and I challenge anyone to prove otherwise.

Why did the Governor pass a budget that she had to know was a train wreck going to happen? Well in part that is what politicians, and also voters, often do; keep putting off decisions until there are no other alternatives (see California.) However, as I have written before, I think there is something more devious and self-serving here because with the restrictions on debt in state budgets, you really cannot kick the budget problem down the road for very long. The only logical answer was that Governor Napolitano was hoping for a Democrat in the White House and that she would be to skip town before she had to come up with a real solution to the budget deficit.

That's where the battlespace preparation comes in and a topic for another post... this is about going over the past 12 months and assigning (or in this case absolving) blame in preparation for the budget battle royale that will kick off in a few weeks.

Flatly put, Mr. Kimble is wrong and he knows it. Napolitano knew which way the revenue tide was going when that FY2009 budget was finally passed and she chose for her own selfish political reasons to do nothing substantive to solve it, but rather hope she could push it onto her successor.

2009-01-01T09:32:00.000-08:00

2009

I have been inspired by ExurbanKev to write up predictions for 2009. Much like him, I I think this will be my first and last attempt. However I promise that no matter how bad my predictions, I will not delete them from the archives because you won’t be able to find them in the archives anyway

First things first…. Sports

The Suns will make the playoffs but lose in the first round, thereby returning to their late 1990s mediocrity. Steve Nash and his back will finally break down. Sarver rejoices he won’t have to pay luxury tax.

The Coyotes will leave town and move to Toronto… this narrowly beats out the prediction that due to lease problems they won’t be able to leave and will fold thereby becoming the Cleveland Barons of the 21st Century.

Diamondbacks will miss the playoffs as the younger players fail to produce at the plate; due to economics the team contemplates more cutbacks they realize paying Haren and Webb market value means that over half their payroll might go to 2 players

Cardinals will miss the playoffs due to a resurgent 49ers squad, continue decades long search for a running game.

ASU will return to prominence by going to the Holiday Bowl (what you thought that the Rose Bowl was going to happen?) Erickson gets itchy to leave, fields offers from Phoenix College.

Arizona scene…

Brewer and the Republican Legislature solve the budget the only way still available, through heavy budget cuts and throw in some tax increases. Attempts to reach out to the Democrats fail as the Dems are more than happy to allow the Republicans to do the heavy lifting on budget cutting while proposing new and innovative ways to borrow and sell state assets in order to maintain spending… proposes selling naming rights to Wesley Bolin Plaza.

Napolitano’s local star will diminish after she leaves for Washington due to sudden realization that she didn’t do squat on the budget; not enough of a realization to permanently damage her but only to open the pathway to pound on Brewer. Also there will be a scandal arising from her administration. Linda Valdez continues to call her a genius.

The Arizona economy will continue to wallow in the doldrums due to a weak housing market. Google decides to come back to ASU, bringing with it 5 additional jobs. Arizona Republic calls it the light at the end of the tunnel and a new age for the economy.

Light rail will prove to be a technical success but ridership will decline from initial highs creating massive holes in the business plans. Local politicians will say that the only solution to declining ridership is to build more rail lines and restrict use of cars.
National scene…

Between his decisions to not close Guantanamo and not withdraw from Iraq, President Obama will have managed to piss off everyone in the country. Calls to save his presidency will abound, David Gergen will step forward. Obama’s rebound strategy revolves around getting the Republicans to win the House in 2010 and making John Boehner the new Newt Gingrich which has the added benefit of getting Nancy Pelosi out of his hair.

Economy rebounds, modest growth. No snarky remarks here by me, just keeping fingers crossed.

Henry Paulson piñatas sell like hot cakes. Lawrence Summers finds a unique interpretation of eminent domain which allows the feds to “repurpose” Harvard’s endowment.

During Putin’s trip to Washington, the Obama’s new dog peers into the Russian’s soul, bites leg.

Thomas Friedman will write yet another unbearable book. Paul Krugman will preface every column by reminding us he now has a Nobel Prize. The New York Times declares bankruptcy.

International scene…

Pakistan collapses sparking a small nuclear exchange in the region. Once again no snarky comment by me, just keeping fingers crossed and whistling past the graveyard

The collapse in oil prices leads to financial implosions among a number of nasty oil producing countries (Iran, Venezuela, Russia…) leading to all sort of foreign adventurism. Iceland, which has financial problems of its own, starts to build Viking longboats…

World economic crisis solved through sudden increase in consumer spending generated by Nintendo’s decision to actually produce enough Wii game consoles

There.

If I’m wrong may we all be crushed by some sort of world financial crisis, nuclear war, or exploding caldera out of Yellowstone.

2008-12-31T10:12:00.000-08:00

Ho Ho Ho

Well the Griswolds have returned to Phoenix after a fascinating trip to New Mexico....

It's funny how a family acquires Christmas traditions. We made the same trip 3 years ago and due to meal time and gas tank requirements, we ended up opening Christmas presents at a truck stop in Winslow. This year I was up for the same modus operandi but I wanted to do it instead at a truck stop by Holbrook where gas was about 18 cents cheaper. Nope, because of tradition it had to be in Winslow in almost in the same spot in the parking lot as 3 years ago.

I should add that the kids wanted to get in a few viewings of a "Christmas Story" on TBS because "it's a Christmas tradition."

Of such traditions memories are made.

Other observations...

What ever happened to shopping mall Christmas trees? Back when I was a wee lad, you could always find Santa in the central meeting spot of the mall under a Christmas tree. Now not only has Santa been shunted over to the side somewhere, usually by a Mervyn's undergoing a liquidation sale (Santa, for Christmas I would like some of those store fixtures at 60% off) but he's no longer under a tree. At the Scottsdale Fashion Square, he's at some sort of "fantasy garden" and I think in Christown he reigns from top of the soft serve machine at the Orange Julius. So what happened to the Christmas tree? Did it go the politically way way of saying "Merry Christmas"?

Speaking of Holidays... I always thought the term "Happy Holidays" was a fairly innocent term. For us, the "Holidays" started with the family trip for Thanksgiving and ended after the Super Bowl when Mom took down the Christmas tree. So there you had it... Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, the Super Bowl... the "Holidays." Little did I know that it was all a plan to eliminate the use of "Merry Christmas" and shunt Santa off to a fantasy garden.

Oh and one more thing...

To the idiot driver in front of me who was going through Flagstaff on Christmas Day in the snow when the visibility was cut to a few hundred feet on I-17. If you decided against the use of any vehicle lights in order to camouflage your vehicle against an air attack or an insurgent ambush your strategy was brilliant. Likewise if you were trying to get me to use as many swear words as possible in front of my children on the day where we celebrate the birth of our Savior, I must say you were incredibly successful. Otherwise... well... I hope you survived to see the New Year.

2008-12-24T15:03:00.000-08:00

Sippin' Whiskey

A wise man once told me that forget barrels and single malts, forget grains and peats; whiskeys are divided into two types, those for fightin' and then there are those for sippin'. I have been too much into the sippin' kind today for much good, in fact based on the lack of posts over the past week, I guess you can say I have been sippin' for a while.

So some thoughts here on Christmas Eve.

I have found the papers to be almost unreadable over the past few months. The TV and the papers tell me that depression and ruin fill the land, every day bringing bad news, every day bleaker than the last. We're all going to die.

I would go into our political leadership. How it has become feckless and corrupt, but now is not the time for doing that... plus if I started writing on that issue I would have to switch to the other type of whiskey, put away the Maker's Mark and bring out the Old Heaven Hill. As I said one whiskey is for sippin' and the other....

The point is that fear and despair seem to have infected the land. Things aren't good right now, but things have been worse in the past. You really wonder how we made it through things like the Great Depression, WW II, the Civil War, the Revolution. Actually what right now sounds like is the 1970s where the theme was civilization decline and demise from rampant crime, stagflation, depletion of resources, bad fashion and too many clothes made out of synthetics.

Gee whatever happened after that? Strangely enough we are still here

A wise man told me once that I would have better days than this and I would have worse days, that man was my boss and he told me that over dinner at a KFC after I gunked a major project. I never forgot that lesson, that you need in life to take the rough with the smooth and most of all not to learn to panic. That was some sound leadership on his part that evening as I stared at my Original Recipe.

So anyway take it easy have a drink this Christmas. If you have the time go over to Sonoran Brewing this Sunday, Vox is having a bloggerama blow-out and Thomas is coming back from North Carolina just for the occasion.

I'll see you early next week.

2008-12-21T16:44:00.000-08:00

The Frogurt is (Still) Cursed

Long ago I wrote that the Arizona Cardinals was a cursed franchise, forever damned to wander the wasteland of disappointment. I warned about getting sucked in to a "rebirth" that we periodically hear about; a new coach, a new stadium, a high draft pick that finally pans out (or at least signs early.)

As a Philadelphia sports fan, I know about long patches of disappointment. I have also learned to hate sports writers with a passion (in the heart of every Dan Bickley there is John Feinstein fighting to get out), so I used to dismiss all the crying about the sad sack nature of the Cards.

That was until 2002. The coach was Dave McGinnis whose rah-rah nature would inspire us all to a fabulous new world where every season would be above .500 and draft picks would be signed before training camp started and not after it ended. I took one look at that and didn't like it, no sir not one bit. When the team started 4-2 that year and everyone was predicting the New Age I predicted disaster, I predicted the team wouldn't win another game.

I was wrong, they won one more game and finished 5-11, right then and there I knew they were cursed.

Now has this year's team sucked you in? The rebirth of Kurt Warner? The winning of a division title? I had to admit I was starting to believe. I like the coaches, I like the draft picks, everything smells right... execpt that it was the Cardinals. Sure enough, on Monday Night Football, a national stage, they struggled to beat the lowly 49ers and right then and there I knew there was trouble.

Quick aside, when have the Cards ever played well on Monday Night at home? In 1995, they got pounded by the Cowboys on Christmas night with Buddy Ryan running off the field before the game was even over. Two years ago they folded like a cheap suit against the Bears in an epic collapse giving us Dennis Green's forever You-Tube moment. In 1999, they ended Steve Young's career. Let's face it, they haven't played well at home since Jerry Maguire.

Then came that pounding by a down-and-out Eagles team on Thanksgiving. Last week they get torched by Tavaris Jackson, that just about it says it all. Today they got crushed by the Patriots in the snow. I think we all know where this is going in two weeks when they end up playing someone like Atlanta in the first round, they best we can hope is that they don't mangle the turf too bad for the Fiesta Bowl that comes a few days later.

This is how a cursed team works. A fan will build up his immune system to certain disappointments, it's only by creating new ways to throttle the emotions of the fans that a cursed team can manintain its evil ways. We've been through pre-season hype that doesn't materialize, new coach that heralds a new era only to spend the remainder of his contract at home (Bugel, Ryan, McGinnis, Green...), a new stadium that allows a revenue stream.... been there done that and we've built up resistance. So what else can the Cards do? Fast start and fall on their face? Nope done that too, see 2002....

Nope the new wrinkle is to get into the playoffs and clinch so early that they have a month to ruin the experience for us. Didn't see that one coming did you? That's what a cursed team does, finds new ways to ruin life for you. After the way the team has played the past 4 weeks, are you looking forward to that home playoff game or are you going to hide behind the couch or do something productive with that day like go out and shoot squirrels or something?

At least we have the Rattlers to look forward to... oh wait, I guess we don't any more.

Sigh

2008-12-18T12:15:00.000-08:00

Best Comment Yet...

... on the possibility of Caroline Kennedy being appointed to the US Senate. In the comments section from a NY Daily News column:

I think it's great that the son of Basil Paterson gets to choose between the daughter of JFK or the son of Mario Cuomo in order to replace the wife of Bill Clinton in the Senate. Thank God for democracy.

(h/t Small Dead Animals)

2008-12-17T11:56:00.000-08:00

On a Three Hour Tour

Reading that El Gringo has taken the Carnival Elation cruise down along the Baja brings up memories of my cruise from last year… which just happened to be on the Elation down along the Baja.

Carnival advertises itself as the “fun” cruise line; the current slogan is “Fun for all. All for Fun.” In fact the quest for “fun” permeates everything that happens on board: songs and skits during dinner, bath towels folded up as various animals, the provision of a video arcade with games that date back from the time when Tom Foley was House Speaker. You get the picture. In fact Carnival makes sure that the fun-meter is always turned up to 11; I’m surprised they didn’t carry out regular mockings of sour-pusses on the Lido Deck just to encourage the others.

Leading the fun patrol was our cruise director, Stewart, who would regularly get on the PA system and inform us in his Aussie accent of the next fabulous, fun event for we which we had to get ready. Fun apparently began the moment the life boat drill was over when waiters started to cruise the decks with trays full of cocktails which of course were available at $6.75. In fact the ship was so attuned to fun that if you wanted soda, you had to pay for that as well. Free food 24/7 but if you wanted some carbonated sugar water they were going to pop you.

Our cruise had two full days at sea and two days of shore excursions. The trick to enjoying the shore excursions is to ignore everything the ship’s crew tells you. My wife and I attended the pre-excursion orientation for Cabo led by none other than Mr. Stewart. Maybe he got an employee discount on booze or soda because the man always seemed stoked to the hilt and that morning he seemed especially on as he told of all the “fabulous” finds and deals that were available for in Cabo, in fact I lost count after his 15th use of the word “fabulous.” Needless to say once on the beach in Cabo, we found nothing “fabulous” about Stewart’s recommendations

Nope the trick to enjoying the shore excursions is to go blind into the city and cut your own deals with the locals, not only is it cheaper but is so tinged with the absurd that it proves a far better time than anything than the Carnival people could engender. In Ensenada, we ended up in a tour van with a young couple from Gilbert who were on their honeymoon, luckily the husband had done his mission somewhere in South America and therefore spoke Spanish. Instead of making a simple trip to see the famous “Blowhole” which isn’t very fabulous at low tide, we managed to negotiate a deal with the driver to go horseback riding on a “white sandy beach.” The beach had sand that might have been white at one time and the horses might not have been decrepit beasts for their entire lives; actually the horses had plenty of life in them because the father and son time leading the ride would make all of them run as fast as possible just to see if they could unseat the Americans. Believe me this was a lot more fun than it sounds.

Our cruise occurred over New Year’s so we celebrated New Year’s on board. In typical Stewart fashion, the good man informed us for days ahead of time that we had barely enough time to reserve our own champagne from the ship’s very limited stocks. What we found out that night was that free champagne abounded and believe me a good time was had by all. Having to buy your own champagne ranked right up there with the need to buy Tanzanite

I sound too harsh. I really did enjoy the cruise, though when it came time to disembark I was glad I didn’t have to spend one moment longer on that ship. It really does make for a great trip for kids, I mean nothing lights up a kid’s eyes more than the realization that they have 24/7 access to the free ice cream machine.

2008-12-16T17:53:00.000-08:00

What's Good for the...

With the news that Governor Napolitano intends to sign an executive order allowing state workers to select union representatives to sit at the bargaining table and discuss personnel issues with state officials ("meet and confer"), I have some questions.

First the obvious one everyone is asking... if this was such a good idea why did the Governor wait for 6 years and then try to sign it when she has announced she's leaving?

Then... Democrats are yelping over the fact that the person who will replace Napolitano is coming from a different party and may reverse many of her policies (leave aside the fact that Napolitano will leave the state in a deep fiscal hole), then why should we accept the fact that while she's in her lame duck status that she is making major changes in how the state is run? I mean the state is in one of its fiscal crisis ever thanks in her part to her policies and she just waved good bye to the state and said "smell you later" but only wants to stay around long enough to make sure she's solid enough in her next gig. So while she waits she's going to start gumming up the works? What's next? Removing the letter "J" from the keyboards?

What's the practical benefit to having union representatives sitting at the table? I have always heard, preached, and practiced that good management involves directly listening to what your employees' need and concerns and getting them addressed... is there a problem with agency personnel management that "meet and confer" will solve?

Finally... what's been on the news lately? The auto bailout and how in part the UAW has screwed up the industry, not to mention that they want billions in tax payer money so they can keep some of their sweet contracts until they expire in 2011. Second, if you have been following the budget messes in New York and California over the last several years you realize how much of those states' budgets have been in hock to the public sector unions. Remember in 2003 how Schwarzenegger wanted to reform California until he realized he could either take on the unions or be re-elected but not both?

So why again do you want unions, at a time when there are stories galore about how they are trundling up to the taxpayer teat, sitting at the table when there is going to have be some serious budget cutting? Where's the value-added for the tax payer by allowing clowns like SEIU and AFSCME to be part of the process?

2008-12-15T18:09:00.001-08:00

Belling the Cat

This is a story getting some play on the Internet. The other week Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, who won this year's Nobel Prize winner in Literature, stated in his Nobel lecture that:

Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded—ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day.

Now I think it would unfair of me to cherry-pick a single sentence from a long lecture given by a man who just won one of the greatest prizes in literature. However as my kids will most certainly attest, I am not a fair person. So here goes.

It may seem unbelievable to 20-somethings, but there was quite a free flow of information and images before the Internet. While done in a more hierarchical fashion and with more filters than you will find today, a person of just modest means but sufficient ambition could be up to speed on the issues and news of the day. Don't think so? Think Somalia in the early 1990s. Images of the famine in that country and the criminal role the various militias played in the tragedy is what drove a lame duck George H.W. Bush to make a major commitment of not only American humanitarian aid but also the military firepower to make sure the chow got into the right hands. Those weren't UN peacekeepers guarding the food convoys, but rather the 7th Marines. People saw the criminal nature of what was happening and applied the pressure to make sure something was done.

The technology at the time was of course television; combined with satellite communications and air travel meant that even events in the farthest corner of the globe could be beamed into your living room.

Now let's go back further in time, to the Europe of the 1920s and 1930s as Hitler began his march to war.

Now of course television hadn't been invented yet, but there was a thriving newspaper industry in France and Britain that could provide plenty of information for the common person in the street. Even more importantly the elites, especially in Britain, who had a much more insulated position in power than today had a very clear view of what was going on. Anybody who paid attention to what Hitler was saying knew exactly what he wanted to do. It wasn't like Mein Kampf was a hard to find book in Europe and Hitler took numerous opportunities to broadcast his intentions.

In short people knew.

What people didn't have was the determination to actually do something about it. Hitler's domestic enemies misunderestimated him; political leaders like Papen and the industrialists thought he could be made a pawn of their interests, the military only saw the glittering opportunity to re-arm. Accordingly, instead of killing Nazism in its cradle, they kept Hitler and his party in play until it was too late.

If you read the history of Britain's interactions with Hitler during the 1930s, you see the problem wasn't one of information but rather of analysis of intent. Figures of appeasement such as Baldwin and Chamberlain looked at the exact same information as Churchill regarding Hitler and his rearmament program but came away very different conclusions of what it actually meant. It was if they were looking at clouds in the sky, trying to ascertain their shape; while Churchill saw a given cloud as being in the shape of a murderous Hun, the appeasers saw the same cloud as being in the shape of a puppy.

That was Churchill's special genius and why he in part occupies his special place in history. Before Hitler even came to power, Churchill had him pegged for what the German truly was and Winston made himself Hitler's nemesis. Churchill paid a tremendous political price for this stance, essentially living in political exile until the start of WW II. That's is why Manchester's famous second volume of Churchill during this time is entitled "Alone."

So let's go back to Mr. Le Clezio's statement.

To act is not just a matter of information, whether in text or images. It is also a matter of analysis and leadership. One of the terrible achievements of the 20th Century was the perfection of propaganda, which is the manipulation of known facts and images to create a picture of reality suitable for political action. A close cousin of propaganda is the natural human tendency to self-manipulate information to meet a preconceived notion; after all we don't necessarily believe what we see as much as we see what we already want to believe.

To know about Hitler's "criminal plot" is necessary to stop it, but it is not only not sufficient but not even the most difficult part. Proper analysis of the information and leadership to act on it is necessary and those factors are rare commodities.

LONG ago, the mice had a general council to consider what measures they could take to outwit their common enemy, the Cat. Some said this, and some said that; but at last a young mouse got up and said he had a proposal to make, which he thought would meet the case. “You will all agree,” said he, “that our chief danger consists in the sly and treacherous manner in which the enemy approaches us. Now, if we could receive some signal of her approach, we could easily escape from her. I venture, therefore, to propose that a small bell be procured, and attached by a ribbon round the neck of the Cat. By this means we should always know when she was about, and could easily retire while she was in the neighbourhood.” This proposal met with general applause, until an old mouse got up and said: “That is all very well, but who is to bell the Cat?”

2008-12-11T19:00:00.000-08:00

Blago the Magnificent

Lee asked me why I hadn't commented on Illinois yet, well he's not the only one. So here are some random thoughts...

I wasn't overly shocked or appalled by what Governor Blagojevich did, but that's just me and my upbringing. I grew up in New Jersey where pay-to-play is a fact of life. Not to say if it happened in say, Arizona, I wouldn't be heading down to the Wesley Bolin with pitchforks and torches but I just come to expect to such things about Illinois

Will this hurt Obama? Oh yes if only because this story will follow him around like a leech, sucking the oxygen out of the room from now until Christmas. Do I think Obama was part of any monkey business? No. Do I think his staff was directly involved? No. However in both the president-elect and his staff's contacts with Blagojevich, it seems to be me they had to be aware of what the creep was up to or at least caught wind of it. How much further it goes than is anybody's guess. So I think there are two possible effects.

First the question is going to be raised when did Obama and his staff get an idea of what was happening and what did they do about it. After that glorious first Tuesday in November, the good man Obama ceased to be a Senator and became a Head-of-State-elect which has a very different set of responsibilities. How much did they know? All of it? Were they going to sit back and let a US Senate seat be sold like a high school prom date? Not a good place to be in and I don't envy them, but those are the bresks. You think it's bad now wait until you get blamed for what some deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Veterans Affairs writes in a memo.

Second, it just refocuses attention on where Obama came from, the biggest political sewer in the country. Yeah I'll give it a top ranking, right above New Jersey, and light years above number 3 which was Arkansas. Remember Whitewater? Remember the cattle futures? Just a sign of the political mudpit the Clintons spent all those years marinating in while living in Little Rock. My guess is this will end up being just a small chink in Obama's armor but if another like story comes up, like something from the Rezko song sheet, then this will be seen as part of a pattern and then who knows?

As for myself, I hope this all passes and we can move on to more important business, but then again when did anybody listen to me anyway?

2008-12-09T17:16:00.000-08:00

Senator Kennedy... from New York

I am still cleaning up the monitor from reading this, I don't know what drew me to it, but more than 12 hours later I'm still shaking my head about this Ruth Marcus column promoting Caroline Kennedy for the open New York senate seat. Not only I do find the material retching, but I'm a bit dazed from reading how Ms. Marcus talks herself into supporting Ms. Kennedy's candidacy

Now I'm not up to speed on the inside odds regarding who will get picked to replace Hillary Clinton, I guess Andrew Cuomo makes as much sense as anyone considering he may be a rival for Patterson in the 2010 gubernatorial. I also don't have any great insight regarding Ms. Kennedy's political abilities outside of the fact that her anointment of Senator Obama with her father's legacy sure helped.

However let's face it... if her name wasn't Kennedy she wouldn't even be mentioned in all of this. She has no experience in elected office and it appears that her advancement in Democratic politics is based largely on her trading on her father's name.

Okay I'll admit it. I'm just sick of the Kennedys; the soap opera nature of the family, the "martyrdom" of the two brothers, and not to mention the non-stop coverage when JFK Jr. rammed his plane into the ocean. Look I can accept the fact that if you were born into the family then you are already on 3rd base when it comes to the public stage, how else to explain RFK Jr.? However do we have to accept that public office is something a Kennedy is entitled to upon demand? I mean didn't Hillary at least have to run for her seat?

As an aside I find it more than amusing this modern-day Democratic reverence, near-worship in fact, for JFK. After all the man was elected in part on a policy of building more nukes, had a hawkish foreign policy that included the sending of military forces around the globe, and the man cut taxes. Should I also mention JFK's lack of enthusiasm for the civil rights movement? How does all of that square up with the President-elect (pull troops out, no more new nukes, raise taxes) on whom Ms. Kennedy bestowed her father's legacy? Would she today bestow her father's legacy on the man who was truly her father?

So who was JFK closer to? Bush or Obama? Maybe it's the latter but I bet you'll have to think about it for a bit.

2008-12-07T08:27:00.000-08:00

Wesley Bolin Plaza

The other day I had some time to kill between appointments so I did something I hadn't done for a while; I wandered through Wesley Bolin Plaza and looked at the various memorials.

If you haven't been to the Plaza, it's a large open-air public space located just east of the Capitol and surrounded by the state office buildings and has numerous memorials and monuments. So think Washington Mall but a bit less striking.

There are times where I feel like Lileks, getting caught up in the various minutiae of everyday life, and this is one of them. Each of those memorials and monuments represented a significant effort by someone to get it funded, approved, and constructed; someone really had to care to build that police dog memorial, someone had alot of passion and drive in them to get that one for Arizona Confederate Veterans or whatever. I may not care but someone else did.

But why? There's a story behind each of these and whatever I may think of the worthiness of the cause there is that passion behind it and therefore in the hands of a skilled researcher and writer, a nice story could be drawn out. However outside of the 9/11 Memorial and perhaps the Code Talkers, it's hard to find anything about the history of any of those effort.

So here's my suggestion... cost-effective and just a plain win-win for everybody.

Go to ASU (or UA and NAU) and look up the History Department. Stumbling around that department are a bunch of grad students looking for thesis and dissertation topics, put them on the case. Heck throw them a small stipend or some other bennie. Have them research the various memorials, interview the benefactors or supporters, the members of the commission that approved that particular project.

It works for everyone. We get a piece of our history documented, the people behind the projects get recognized, and a bunch of grad students will be rescued from writing their dissertations on socially transgendered relations in 19th Century Yuma.

I mean come on, don't you want to know the history behind the "Arizona Law Enforcement Canine Memorial"?

2008-12-05T09:11:00.000-08:00

Pro-rouge or Prorogue?

If you follow the Canadian Football League , the place where NFL players who are either too short (Flutie) or too high (Ricky Williams) go to make a living, you know all about the rouge... that one point the other teams gets when you cannot run the ball out of the end zone. There are alot of rules like that in the CFL, like 3 downs, the 55-yard line, and once having two teams called the Rough Riders; I think they do it just to make it different from the NFL.

So imagine my surprise when I heard that the great Canadian political crisis that I wrote about earlier this week was solved when the Governor General agreed to prorogue the House of Commons. I mean that was all it took? Who knew this great constitutional crisis could be solved by downing the ball in the end zone?

Oh you mean prorOGUE and not pro-rOUGE, I see now. She basically closed the House of Commons down and told them not to come back until late January.

As an aside... did you know that in the 1990s the CFL expanded to the US with teams in such places as San Antonio, Memphis, and Shreveport? Wow I wonder how that worked out in Louisiana... was there a heated rivalry between Shreveport and say Edmonton.? Also apparently the Baltimore franchise won the Grey Cup, the CFL championship, in 1995 right about the time NHL teams like Quebec and Winnipeg were moving to the US. No wonder they hate us.

Back to politics...

If you remember, the whole constitutional crisis was coming to head this Monday when the Conservative government was going to lose a vote in the House of Commons and then be replaced by a NDP-Liberal-BQ coalition. The problem was that there was an election just 6 weeks ago and the parties that formed the coalition were told by the voters to take a hike, so it didn't seem fair for them to sneak into power through the back door. Another alternative was to dissolve Parliament and hold another election, just weeks after the last one. That didn't seem too bright as well, plus that meant holding an election campaign during Christmas and Boxing Day, apparently there is some Canadian superstition regarding campaigning on Boxing Day.

So the Governor General, who is the Queen's representative in Canada, decided on another alternative- to prorogue. Since the only thing that would come out of Monday's vote in the House of Commons were problems, she decided to lock everyone out of the House of Commons and not have any vote at all. Keep in mind that the Governor General isn't elected, she was appointed by a prime minister who held office like three prime ministers ago, and represents a queen who as any red-blooded American will tell you isn't elected at all.

So an unelected representative of an unelected queen solved a constitutional problem in a democracy by locking the doors of the country's pre-eminent democratic institution and telling the people's elected representatives to go away for a couple of months. Sounds very un-democratic, in fact sounds more like Chicago than Canada.

Did I mention the queen in question is descended from ole George III of American Revolution days? Coincidence? I think not.... hey Canada you should have joined up with us back in 1775 when you had the chance and so instead of still being pushed around by British royalty you could have Nancy Pelosi and President Obama's puppy

2008-12-05T07:19:00.000-08:00

The Napolitano Bubble

Okay I've been through the tech bubble, the real estate bubble, and now the oil price bubble; maybe we can start talking about the Napolitano bubble.

I feel like one of those people who writes a biography of an athlete who is still in mid-career but I'm going to take a crack at trying to write-up the Napolitano legacy as far as Arizona; who knows it could also be her political epitaph. I think you break her career into 3 stages:

Part 1, The Rise: 1998 or so to 2006

Part 2, The Plateau: 2007-2008

Part 3, The Future: November 2008 onward

Let's do the easy part first, The Rise.

Her's was the meteoric rise. We forget with her crushing 2006 gubernatorial victory that she was barely elected for attorney general in 1998 and governor in 2002 winning both by narrow margins. That 2006 election was almost anti-climatic because she was such a dominant figure in Arizona that no one of any significance in the Republican Party wanted to run against her. I mean come one, Don Goldwater was a serious primary candidate and while probably a great guy had as his dominant qualification that he was Barry's nephew. It got to the point that the Republican-dominated Legislature sent her a budget that allowed her to claim during the election that she was both a tax cutter and spender. She was truly the Sun God because the whole of the Arizona political world revolved around her.

The Plateau.

Look you crushed your opponents, winning your election handily and bringing Republican margins down in the Legislature, where do you go from there? I mean you are so far up that you had to come down a bit right? So she didn't lower the sea levels, get us all Google-like jobs, and turn our fine state into the land of milk and honey. On top of that, whether it was too high expectation, staff departures, or just sheer political exhaustion her two main attempts to build a lasting political legacy- TIME and the state trust land ballot initiatives- were horribly bungled not even making it to the ballot. Worst of all, the political agenda of the last 12 months was dominated by the budget deficit, that's no way to generate warm fuzzies.

The Future

She's half-way out the door with her resignation promised as soon as she's confirmed as Homeland Security Secretary, probably as soon as late January. She will leave a state with the worst budget crisis in the country in terms of percentage of deficit and with expected revenues only returning to FY2007 levels in 2011. Her opportunity to run for Senate in 2010 has been dimmed by McCain's decision to run for re-election. Her political coat-tails were shown to be short by the fact that the Democrats lost seats in the Legislature.

So what is her legacy?

I am going to argue that her rise, or "The Rise" from 1998 to 2006, was in part a bubble. I don't think anyone will doubt she is a capable politician but it's a long way from 2-term governor to political collossus and while the former is fact I don't think the latter is necessarily deserved. First because her timing was extremely fortunate. If the Republicans didn't commit fatricide during the AG primary race in 1998, does she squeak through? If the Hull Administration didn't seem so tired, both her and Groscost tainted with the alt-fuel fisaco, and the downturn in the economy does she get by Matt Salmon on the slimmest of margins? If she doesn't win either election, and though she ran smart campaigns both times I think her fate rested on the events I mentioned above, none of the rest matters.

Look at her first term as governor. Her reputation relies on two foundations. First was stewardship, that she brought Arizona from a massive budget deficit to massive budget surpluses. Second was her control of the border. In the first case, the downturn that caused the deficit was short-lived and could be largely managed through one-time measures, the surpluses started rolling in long before the bag of tricks was used up. To top it, it has become clear that the massive increase in revenue that fueled those surpluses was largely one-time monies and not sustainable; however by treating that money as recurring allowed her to be that tax-cutting, high-spending politician running for re-election in 2006. In short a major part of her popularity was not sustainable.

The second part, immigration and border control, is a head scratcher. Over the past 6 years, she has been a true political genius because she has been on the wrong side (in terms of popularity) of the debate; she only sent the National Guard to the border to forestall the Legislature, she was against the successful ballot initiatives on the issue. However she's managed to develop a solid national reputation on the issue by seeing which way the parade was going in Arizona and then jumping to the front in order to claim the credit

I think that probably brings up a possible third part of her popularity; the fact that she was able to portray herself as a moderate and never got pushed against her base. Democrats accepted her relatively strong (for a Democrat) enforcement measures because they understood that she was politically triangulating herself in relation to the likes of Russell Pearce. When she was the height of her political power, they accepted the relatively incrementalist agenda because she spent the surpluses and vetoed symbolic bills such as abortion restriction proposals; in short her centrist measures were seen as stoppoing much worse (for them) initiaitives from the Legislature. I guess that's the other story from the last 6 years, low expectations from Democrat rank-and-file. Well it helped her because I didn't recall her once having to be pulled left to satisfy her base; as long as she was seen as just slightly to the left of the Legislature she was okay and could still operate as a centrist.

So I'll argue, again, that her Rise had to do with being dealt extemely favorable ground, both fiscally and politically, and enough political smarts to capitalize on it. That's not a bad thing and there are alot of people who have had their careers buried in the political graveyard because they lacked her skills, but that's a long way from her being the transformational figure some claim.

I think the Plateau and the Future have to be dealt with together because they are intertwined. Yes, some of the inertia and mistakes could be attributed to the staff departure and mistakes or just the realization that the fun fiscal times were over, but I think a good deal was due to Napolitano looking to her future. The only question was which one? US senator or cabinet officer? Up until the late Spring, it could be either or but I think once she started to stump hard for Obama her heart was set on the cabinet officer job. As the year wore on and she travelled more on the campaign trail, taking her out of the state, you could tell her heart wasn't in it. Here's why...

If she was going to run for senator, say planning for 2010, then she would serve out her term as governor. If she was going to serve her term out as governor, then she would have to solve the budget problem. By late Spring 2008, no one could think that budget was going to be a short-term dip as in 2003; it was going to take time and political capital to solve. However her solution was to scrape some Republican moderates and get a FY2009 budget passed that was based on 6% growth in revenue at a time when revenue was shrinking; it was an extreme act of fiscal dishonesty and everyone knew that it would have to overhauled. However it was to buy her time at the cost of Arizona's fiscal health. Rather than working on ways to get Arizona back on the way to that health, she then committed her Summer and Fall to stumping for Obama.

Let's face it she might not have yet resigned as governor, but she emotionally vacated the position a long time ago. Whether you wanted to trace it to the post-election doldrums, the excitement of possibly going to Washington, or whatever... If she wanted to stay and finish out her term then she would have approached the past 8 months on the budget from a much different standpoint understanding that restoring the state to fiscal health as early as possible was the key to her political future.

Now her legacy in this state and any future she may have here is in the process of being formed right now and this will continue through the Spring as we try to grapple with the deficit. If you think a budget deficit is a short-term phenomena, then you can try and solve it with some gimmerckery like the roll-over and tapping cash funds, however those don't work long term and can only paper over a structural deficit. If you think the deficit is going to be a multi-year mess then you look long and hard at reducing that structural deficit. Governor Napolitano has had two deficit budgets, looked at them as only short-term problems, and right we hava structural deficit of $2 billion which as a percentage of the budget is one of the highest in nation. Her legacy depends on the next several months, as the Republicans work to close that structural deficit, that this is what a Governor Brewer inherited and not made.

In a perfect world, I am sure Governor Napolitano would have wished that all of this came 12 months sooner. If she was going to Washington in December 2007, before the deficits, before the Democrat reverals in the Legislature, she would have a different sheen to her reputation

2008-12-03T09:12:00.000-08:00

Apple delenda est

I am a reasonable man, kind and considerate. I can see you nodding right now and saying to yourself, "Mike, you are the epitome of kindness and understanding." So because of these virtues it is only fair to warn you ahead of time of what about I am about to say, please turn away if you are easily shocked or wish to continue in your innocence.

Okay you had your chance. Here goes...

Apple must be destroyed.

I have not said that about any other bete noire; not Governor Napolitano, not Jon Talton, not my neighbor, not anyone else on my enemies list. Why is Apple different?

A little while ago, a kind and considerate person sent me an iPod for my birthday. The person in question knew I used my Palm Centro as an MP3 player and that while a wonder machine, the Centro is a little unwieldy. So in came a nice shiny, wafer-thin 8GB iPod Nano. Much smaller and 4x the storage space as the Centro. Smooth sailing for you Mike, your life is just now peaches and cream.

One problem.

To sync the iPod you need to use the iTunes management interface. Not just any iTunes for the new Nano but their latest and greatest, iTunes 8, which only works on Windows XP SP2 and above. Sorry I live in a house where we still use Windows 2000, heck my 12-year old still uses NT 4.0 (an OS almost as old as he is.) Why? Because well the crap still works for the limited uses we need it for and if I need serious power I'll just fire up the Linux box.

So basically I have a brick; a nice, shiny, thin brick that I cannot load. I call Apple support, I go down to the Apple Store - several different ones - and beg for help, a work-around, an explanation.

None. Should I add that of all the people I talked to, all the so-called "whizzes" or whatever they call them at these places treated me with contempt? That "You should get with the times", that "We cannot possibly support every operating system, I mean you don't expect us to support DOS" When I mentioned to them that they supported Windows 2000 until recently and then asked what features they gained in the recent version of iTunes that abandoned 2000 I was met with a blank stare.

I know that stare, I know that attitude because that was my modus operandi when I ran tech support, those who didn't want to run the latest and greatest were beneath contempt and just not worth more thought than "upgrade your computer." Oh yeah when I asked if them if they had something that could run under Linux, they had no resposne to that one either. So much for the bleeding edge.

Should I have taken the oh so subtle hint and laid out the relatively moderate amount of cash and buy a new computer that could have run XP? Or perhaps just got a copy of Vista or XP and partitioned the hard drive of my Linux box? I guess but why should I got through all of that so I could run Apple's software to load my Apple brick?

Here's what got me about all of it... besides the fact that Apple treated me more as a tech support supplicant than a paying customer. I found out later, after I gave my buddy a six pack of delicious Sierra Nevada Celebration to use his computer to load my iPod, that I didn't even need to use iTunes. There are plenty of solid 3rd party applications that work just as good if not better than iTunes, I mean even ole Winamp does a better job, and a bunch of them do Linux.

So they lied to me when they said there were no other options... either that or those tech whizzes who held me below contempt and smirked at me didn't know what they were talking about. Hey I'll eat alot of crap if the person who is dishing it out knows what they are talking about and I can learn a thing or two, I will definitly hold General McClellan's horse.

However when you dish it out and you are full of it? Say it with me...

Apple delenda est

2008-12-02T17:14:00.000-08:00

Oh Canada....

Two months ago, Canada had an election. I am sure I told you about it... oh wait I did right here. However I didn't tell you how it ended; the Conservatives were returned to office with a minority government which means with the recent election of Obama and the hammerlock that Pelosi has on the House that Canada may have a more right-wing government than the US. Who would have thunk?

Well then again maybe not...

You think with their election over and it being a nice and peaceful country, that it would be safe to pull your attention away from Canada and focus on more useful things... like the disagreement within the Obama family on what sort of puppy to get. However right when you thought you were out, those Canucks just pull you right back in because by Monday, the Conservatives might be out on their ear a mere two months after they were elected.

Let's see if I got this straight....

The Conservatives have a minority government which means they have less than half the seats in Parliament... almost a majority but about 10 seats short. That means they need to get the votes of somebody else. This they managed to do for their last minortiy government, with fewer seats, for the past 2 1/2 years. Shouldn't be a problem right? Well I need to explain some Canadian political workings first but you can just skip ahead to the end for the punch line if you want.

This all started when the Conservatives attached a provision in a major financial bill that would eliminate public funding for political parties. Instant uproar and just not a smart move. The 3 main opposition parties (Liberals, Bloc Quebecois, and New Democrats) all got together and decided two things. First they would vote down the bill on Monday, supposedly because there wasn't enough fiscal stimulus but in reality because they wanted to keep their public funding; if a major bill goes down so does the government so the Conservatives may fall at tha time. The second thing they decided was after the Conservatives fell to agree to form their own governement with the Liberals and the New Democrats sharing cabinet seats and the Bloc agreeing to help legislation.

So what's the fuss? All normal British parliamentary stuff right?

Uh Uh

First look at the proposed alternative government. The leading party will be the Liberals who lost their majority government in 2006 after 13 years in power and lost even more seats two months ago. Their performance was so dismal that the Liberal leader, Stephane Dion, had to resign because he had no credibility. However since his replacement won't be picked until May, if the alternative government takes power he will be the new Canadian prime minsiter. in the mean time he would be prime minister. The New Democrats have been on the outside of government since forever, they have never tasted power because they just think Canada isn't left wing enough; they are like the Bernie Sanders and Cynthia McKinney of Canadian politics. Then you have the Bloc... these are the guys who want to break up the country by taking Quebec out of Canada.

Whatever you want to say about the Conservatives and a mandate or lack thereof, these guys have that much less. After all just two months they got smacked around hard in the polls, but now they are on the verge of power; their leader just got called from packing his office to picking out drapes for his prime minisieterial office and all thanks to the decision to the throw the keys of power to a bunch of socialists and traitors.

Okay enough of the trivia because right now your head is hurting, here's the key thing to know...

Canada is headed for a constitutional crisis with the likes unseen since... gosh ever. Well maybe up there with the separatist votes in 1980 and 1995. By Monday the Canadian Governor General is going to be faced with a decision on whether to accept the Frankenstein of an alternative government which has no popular support and no reason besides power during perhaps the most critical financial time over the last 75 years. Or she can call another election, two months after the last one and the third in 3 years.

So let's see... governments falling two months after election. Three elections in three years. Frankenstein coalitions that have no popular support cobbled together to take power. What does that sound like to you? Post-war Italy? Third Republic France?

This isn't good.

2008-12-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

A Tale of Two Guns

In reading about New York Giant Plaxico Burress shooting himself with his own handgun, it's hard to feel sympathy for him because:

1) His gun went off accidentally

2) He did it in a night club while carrying a drink

Remember kids, drinking and firearms with the safety off don't mix.

Still the fact that the man faces a mandatory 3 1/2 year prison sentence on each of 2 counts for carrying a handgun without a license seems a bit excessive. 7 years in the slammer for self-defense? It does however show the differences in gun laws across our great land.

I'm a big believer in federalism, different strokes for different folks. If you want to live in an emerging nanny state where the mayor of your largest city bans trans-fats for "your own good," the state government jacks up taxes to pay huge salaries and bennies to unionized state workers, and you have to jump through more hoops than a circus lion to get a gun permit then New York is your cup of tea. If you like living in a state where it's "right to work," the gun laws are shall-issue, and there's an abundance of earth-toned stucco; might I suggest Arizona.

Now once again Mr. Burress is not exactly a sympathetic person and let's face it besides being a candidate for the Darwin Award he broke the law; Ignorantia juris neminem excusat. Amen

However judging from the remarks of Mayor Bloomberg and his almost fanatical glee in pursuing both Mr. Burress and the hospital that treated him, you have to ask from what emotional bearing the city is being run. While New York has improved, the Thin Blue Line has not yet made it a crime-free utopia. Mr. Burress works in a profession that was chronicled in a recent issue of the ESPN The Magazine about how professional football players fear for their safety a year after Sean Taylor's death. New York does not allow non-residents to hold gun permits, Mr. Burress resides in New Jersey, and both the city and state make any gun permit process onerous.

Perhaps the obvious solution is for Mr. Burress to hire an armed security gurard, with proper permits of course, so he wouldn't fear for his safety. You and I get to hope and pray and hope there is a lead pipe laying around.

That reminds me of an amusing story. I used to frequent a sushi place when I lived in Chandler; great place, a dive, where I thought they kept the lights low so you couldn't see how bad the carpeting was. Anyway one night as they were closing, I was watching the local news on TV with some of the staff when one of them recognized an (now ex) Arizona Cardinal player who was in court on a DUI (a number of Cardinal players would go there.) The staff member in question mentioned what a great guy he was, how neat his fiancee was, and how shocked she was to see him in such a situation. Thereafter when the player would go out to this place, he would rent a limo; I on the other hand made sure I stayed within the DUI laws by walking home.

See the ultimate solution for the Plaxicos of the world is to hire the limo, the rest of us have to get by with walking. When it comes to personal safety on the streets, that's what a Mr. Bloomberg run city will get you.

2008-11-29T16:31:00.000-08:00

Under the Bus

I have been asked by my friends of opposite political persuasion of my opinion of the initial Obama cabinet picks. I have to say that so far so good, not perfect but the best that could be hoped for given that my side lost the election. Serious men and women who will take their job seriously. As far as picking Senator Clinton I find the selection foolish for the President-elect but that's a matter for another day.

I had often wondered which person a President Obama would be. Would he be the leftist New Party candidate who spoke glowingly of redistribution, had a positivist view of liberty, and wanted a piece of Joe the Plumber's pie? Would he be a moderate, DLC-type of Democrat? Would be be true to his Chicago roots and do whatever was necessary to further himself?

I didn't know before the election and my guess is neither did anyone else. Disgusting that it worked out that way given that the man was on the campaign trail for 20 months but take it up with the media. Hey don't blame Obama because if you can get away with being an engima wrapped up in a handsome smile then more power to it

Now the people who thought they knew Obama were the progressives and the Kos kids who thought the election of Obama would usher in a new era of peace, happiness, and the end of capitalism. Surprise... Obama's economic and national security picks aren't too far off from those who sat in Bush's cabinet over the last few years. So add the wild-eyed progressives, for now, to those who got thrown under Obama's electoral assault vehicle.

Before we all get giddy about this moderate-tint to the Obama presidency and for us Republicans an escape from the Obapocalypse, keep in mind that this isn't the first time the man has thrown people under the bus. What do you call a man who acts one way during the sales pitch and another after you buy the product? As Wretchard might say, we may rub our hands with glee as the man shoves the knife into the back of campaign promises without realizing that if he treats his supporters this way what will he do to those who are not?

Sit back, have a beer, and keep an eye on the appointments and policy. It's going to be wild.

2008-11-28T06:56:00.000-08:00

Ode to Pie

Before I was married, I took no small measure of pride in my cooking. Perhaps my efforts were not worthy of mention in a Michelin Guide of Chandler fine dining, but it was a source of self-satisfaction.

Since those days, I have lost my grip on the kitchen. My wife, fueled by inspiration from The Food Network and a sense of innovation worthy of a mad scientist, has launched continued assaults on my culinary domain. Over the past few years, I have suffered continued defeats to the point where my rout is almost complete in that I have been laregely exiled outside to the grill. Make no mistake, one can do wonders with a simple Weber; however such a device lacks both the necessary electrical outlets and space for cutting boards.

I am left with only one redoubt in the kitchen, one reminder left of what had been. However much like the Byzantine Empire relegated to the city of Constantinople awash in a sea of Turks, my one island is very beautiful and in its magnificence almost equals all that was lost...

... that island is pie.

During the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas stretch of holidays, when guests arrive for summer pool party, when the wife throws a gathering for her prayer group... then I'm summoned back into the kitchen to perform pie. Yesterday I served up a blackberry crumble with ginger and cardamom; the fruit soaked overnight in cassis. I added a pumpkin with some cream cheese and a bit of Bailey's mixed in.

It's all fun now but when Christmas finally comes and passes and pie no longer needed, my kitchen talents will again be placed into hibernation, to sleep and perchance to dream.

2008-11-26T08:33:00.000-08:00

The Lost Cause

Man you wait a day or two to do a blog post and events over-take it....

From The Republic's Political Insider:

Burns said he's fairly confident there will be agreement on some level of cuts. That could set the Legislature up for a special session the second week of December...

Burns also confirmed that Napolitano told him she intends to stay in the governor's seat until if and when she is confirmed as secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration. That could mean lawmakers will get a state of the state address from Napolitano on Jan. 12, as well as a budget plan for 2009-10.

I found that encouraging and for the Governor, honorable.

If you have been reading the papers and blogs, you notice that there is a great deal of Democratic angst about what will happen when Napolitano leaves for Washington and Brewer gets the 9th Floor; a veritable budgetary Armageddon where our normally dry rivers will run with the blood of a thousand cut programs and the innocents such as all-day kindergarten programs will tossed into the fire as the Republican barbarian hordes do their pagan small-government dance at Capitol.

Democrats are already being maudlin about what could have been if only the good Governor Napolitano would stay. Why we could have had a Golden Age as those cuts never would have happened and we would be on our way to a utopia (East Valley excluded) that would make us Arizonans proud whenever we travelled to the East coast.

The thing is... the cuts are going to happen whether Governor Napolitano stays or not. The only question is how the blame is going to get spun.

$1.2 billion this current fiscal year and counting, $2 to $3 billion for next year; out of a total budget of about $10.5 billion. Cash reserves gone, accounting gimmicks used up, with only the promise of spending cuts and/or tax increases to come. Out of that budget, about 1/3 is voter-protected (give or take depending on how you look at it) which means you could have to make those cuts out of only say... $6.5 billion. Ouch babe.

My fear was that Napolitano would skip town before being confirmed as a cabinet officer; that means confirmed before having to come up with a proposal for dealing with the 2 big budget deficits. After all she consistently underestimated the problem for the last 2 budgets, so why would this be any different? If she left town without a proposal then the Democrats could spin any massive budget cuts as the fault of the heartless Republicans and use it as a campaign issue for the 2010 gubernatorial.

Now if Napolitano has her own budget proposals, they will have to be chock-full of budget cuts. Maybe not to the level of what Senate President-elect Bob Burns would like or that approaches the level of real solutions, but it should take some of the fuel out of any latter Democrat attempts to lay the ensuing budgetary blood bath at the feet of the Republicans.

If this goes down like that article intimates it will, then I say good for Governor Napolitano.

2008-11-23T17:55:00.000-08:00

For a Few Movies More... The Top 5

My top 5 war movies in reverse order with some commentary about those which missed the cut and those movies that have yet to be made.

5: Ran: Okay so it's really King Lear and maybe it stuck with me because it was the first Kurosawa movie I ever saw and I was just blown away about it... but the battle scenes are shot and scored in a way that have left me speechless by their power. You feel instantly transported to feudal Japan.

4: Where Eagles Dare: The best WW II adventure movie... Kelly's Heroes was ruined by the goofiness of Donald Sutherland, trying to bring a touch of hippie madness to the 1940s. Dirty Dozen might have made it but Telly Savales with a southern accent? That's just the start of the problems.

No problems here... a plot with twists and turns, Richard Burton playing yet again a hard-boiled British vet, and with both he and Eastwood mowing down Nazis with an everlasting supply of submachine gun ammo. Not to mention one of the great war movie of all time.

3: Black Hawk Down: This should be #2, but for reasons that will become clear I want to treat #1 and #2 together. The critics lambasted the movie for its wooden characters and that's true. It's also true that there are some awful American accents... Jason Isaacs?

On the plus side, the movie is beautifully edited and scored. As you follow the flow of the movie... from hubris, to Stoicism, to finally acceptance... you see how the movie was put together in post-production to bring forth themes that make it stand larger than a botched afternoon mission in Somalia.

After you see the movie once or twice, make sure to listen Hans Zimmer's soundtrack and you can pick out those themes, and the virtues, from the extended tracks.

If you want to read the book before you watch, go ahead, but be forewarned the movie does take liberty with it. However by reading it, you gain appreciation for the character of the men that composed the Delta Force unit stationed there. I am pretty sure Eric Bana didn't get an Oscar nomination for his depiction of a Delta non-com but I think he perfectly captured those men in Mark Bowden's book.

#1 and #2: Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan Okay I know Band of Brothers is a miniseries and not a movie but bear with me here.

Saving Private Ryan will probably get the #1 slot. It really did change not only how war movies are made but most importantly what viewers expected from war movies. When you watch the first 20+ minutes as Tom Hanks' company storms Omaha Beach keep in mind that military censors blocked from the papers all but the most saccharine types of pictures; there was a famous picture of 2 dead GIs rolling in the New Guinea surf covered with maggots that was blocked. WW II movies came a long way from the Sands of Iwo Jima.

The reason I put the two films together is because of two men; Captain Miller and Major Winters. You know the first character, that's the Ranger captain played by Tom Hanks. The second character is Band of Brothers and is real-life.

This is a case where you will first need to read the book Band of Brothers to gain appreciation for Winters. The popular historian Stephen Ambrose sat down with WW II veterans of Easy Company, 101st Airborne and wrote what amounted to a unit history stretching from their formation in 1942 through the end of the war. Winters, who started out as a platoon commander and rose by war's end to be battalion XO, stands out in Ambrose's book for 3 reasons.

The first was his assault on a German battery position at Brecourt Manor on D-Day when he led a hodgepodge group of only 13 paratroopers. The attack was a complete success, Winters was awarded the Army's Distinguished Service Cross, and the assault is still taught as a classic example of small group infantry tactics at West Point.

The second happened soon after D-Day when Winters' unit assaulted the town of Carentan. In the initial phase of the assault, hidden machine guns pinned down a large part of Winters' unit on an access road creating the possibility of a debacle. Winters stood up in full view of the German gunners and kicked and cursed his men to continue the assault; which they did.

The third is toward the end of the book in the present day when Winters and Ambrose were walking by the Winters' house in Pennsylvania. Ambrose noticed an injured duck and suggested to Winters since the duck was doomed to be killed by a predator anyway, that Winters should kill and freeze the animal for his own use. To which Winters replied with shock and dismay, saying that he could never do such a thing.

The first two reasons are depicted in the first two hours of the mini-series and while the film takes alot of liberties with the book, the assaults on Brecourt Manor and Carentan are both true-to-life and breathtaking. In the assault on Carentan you see Winters from the perspective of the German gunners, standing in the clear and kicking his men laying in the safety of the ditches. In the assault on Brecourt Manor, the footage shows the translation of classic infantry tactics (Winters read widely on the subject) into the reality of a brutal combat assault. In both reasons brought to life through masterful film-making, you understand what an elite American infantry officer both looks and acts like.

Note many US combat units in WW II were assigned redundant platoon officers because lieutenants were killed in such abundance. After watching Winters in the Carentan episode, I now know why.

The third reason comes out in the later episode "Crossroads" where Winters surprises a company of SS troopers; in the opening moments of the battle, Winters surprises and coldly shoots an unarmed and young German soldier. The act haunts Winters through the rest of the episode.

At this point it's useful to bring in Saving Private Ryan, who does Winters resemble? Yep... Hanks' Captain Miller, the mild-mannered Pennsylvania boy turned into a coolly-efficient killer. After the war as we can see from the story of the injured duck, Winters seems to revert to the man he was before the war. We don't know about his conscience or his dreams at night, but that day with Ambrose he seems miles away from the killer who shot down the young unarmed trooper or stood up in a hailstorm of gunfire to lead his men to take a town and kill Germans.

In the scene where his small squad is on the point of killing one another over letting a German prisoner go, Captain Miller reveals to his men what he was before the war, a school teacher. He wondered if his wife will even recognize him when he gets home. We know, from watching his nerves fray and hands shake, that in a sense he can never go back.

It's not a coincidence that Ambrose was involved in both films; a common theme throughout his long work of histories and biographies was common American men and women selected to do uncommon things.

Both films tell two stories.... the first is the murderous nature of life as an American combatant in the European Theater of Operations. By the February 1945, most front-line units had suffered a horrific rate of casualties and there was a dire need for trained infantrymen. Second, was the fact that the people who had to fight those murderous battles were citizen soldiers, plucked from their teaching jobs or life on the farm, to fight a war and to hopefully return to that same life afterwards. After seeing war, after being a hero and a successful infantry officer in history's greatest war, after seeing Paris... Winters returned home; Miller did not.

Some movies that didn't make the cut....

Patton, I go back and forth on this. Maybe I should make room for a pretty good character story about one of America's greatest warrior who wasn't cut out for peace. A good depiction of Patton's 3rd Army can be found in Victor Davis Hanson's The Soul of Battle.

Gettysburg. The dialogue is awful, forced; the story-line forced. However it almost makes the list if only for its depiction of Pickett's Charge which is magnificent. One of the items on my bucket list is to go to the battlefield and walk that ground.

When We Were Soldiers. Good movie but the end ruins it for me. Not only is ending wrong and hackneyed but it ends too soon. More on that in a bit.

Movies that should be made...

Afghanistan. Where to begin? A movie about the opening months from the perspective of CIA operations officer and special warfare NCO leading perhaps through Tora Bora? Operation Anaconda, the March 2002 assault into the Shahi-Kot Valley? Story based on the recent assault on the forward combat base? Operation Red Wing when 16 SEALs and special warfare personnel were killed trying to rescue one lone SEAL?

Iraq. The November 2004 assault on Fallujah from the perspective of a Marine or soldier? The story of the Punishers in Mosul, as depicted by Michael Yon? As with Afghanistan, the material here is rich and varied and open to all viewpoints.

Ia Drang. The problem with the movie "When We Were Soldiers..." was that it only dealt with the first part of the book. After the initial battles, American units marched out to other landing zones in order to leave the area before B-52 strikes on the battlefield. On the way, while strung out in column, the Americans were attacked and nearly crushed by Viet Cong and NVA units. Read the book and you find it to be an amazing story. One of the amazing characters is the guy who's on the cover of the book as well someone I've mentioned before, Rick Rescorla. Heck... why not make a movie on "Heart of a Soldier"

2008-11-21T19:18:00.000-08:00

War! What's It Good For? Movies....

Four months ago at some bloggerama involving beer, the topic came up about favorite war movies. I put the theme in the deep freeze and decided to take out and defrost in order to avoid a discussion of politics (but I do appreciate the SecTres pick.) I guess we call it "Zonitics: Weekend Edition" or something.

Anyway I'll list my top 10 war movies and give you the reasons for it. You may agree, but you probably won't. If you think the topic is weird then hey move on and come back Sunday... in the mean time why don't you go read Tedski freak out about the coming Brewapocalypse and then come back and tell me who is being freaky. That's how we fly here, throwing some link love to other Arizona bloggers.

I'll go through the picks in reverse order and get through the 5 today and then the next 5 tomorrow. The reason is that I have some commentary and let's face it these posts are long enough anyway.

10. A Bridge Too Far. The story about the ill-fated Operation Market Garden and based ont he book from Corneillus Ryan. One of the last of the great ensemble war movies: James Caan, Robert Redford, Elliot Gould, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, and a young Anthony Hopkins. Also a watershed movie in how it looked at WW II, contrast it with another film based on a Ryan book The Longest Day which was filmed 15 years earlier; the latter is a gung-ho movie that could have been shot during the war itself for homefront purposes while the former has a grim, bitter take.

Well of course it's grim because the battle was one we lost (sorry for the spoiler) but I couldn't see this filim being made in 1962; people weren't ready for it, it wasn't what they expected for a WW II film.

The other reason I picked the film is because of some of the great characters. You'll notice a theme in my picks in that they are often based on or related to some book or movie and that also there are great characters involved. In this case it's Hopkins' character; Lt. Colonel John Frost who led the doomed 2nd Battalion that was trapped at Arnhem Bridge. Read the book first and you get the impression that this was a man who should have been born 60 years earlier, perhaps to stand shoulder to shoulder with Gordon at Khartoum or to fight river pirates in China. Years after the battle, Frost is at the Bridge with the author and the old man looks south as if searching for XXX Corps but instead he shakes his fist and yells "Do you call that fighting?"

That's the man Hopkins brings to life.

9. Das Boot: A movie that perfectly captures the rottenness of life as a WW II German submariner: boredom, terror, and stinky conditions

8. Full Metal Jacket: In his 1985 book "War", Gwynne Dyer takes a chapter to discuss the US Marine Corps. Remember this is your typical 1985 anti-war book that assumes we are going to incinerate ourselves in a nuclear holacaust for re-electing Reagan. However Dyer casts an approving eye on the Marines for the simple reason that they are honest about what they do; they train men to survive combat and to ensure their enemies do not.

I think about that every time I see the first half of the movie as it deals with the experiences of a training platoon as it undergoes basic training with a sadistic DI. The thing about "sadistic" is that the DI, played by Lee Ermey, was training the young men for Viet Nam. You don't have to admire Ermey's character for what he did but it does help to appreciate what he was trying to do, train young men to survive a brutal and sadistic environment.

The other part of the movie I found memorable was the combat. The entire film was shot in Britain and that meant recreating elements of the Battle of Hue, South Vietnam in an old abandoned gas works located in Greater London. It gave some of the shots an almost theatrical look as if instead of sprawling urban combat this was in fact a tragedy taking place on a stage.

7. The Wild Geese: No deep reasons, it's a straight adventure movie about a group of mercenaries who go on a mission to Africa and have to fight their way out. One of those ensemble casts: Roger Moore, Hardy Kruger, Richard Burton, Richard Harris.... you sort of wish they did The Dogs of War this well.

6. Master and Commander: Russell Crowe is the spitting image of what a 18th Century British frigate commander should look like; reckless, dashing, and just a bit too intense. He dominates the movie through his portrayal of the twin obessions of duty and a French frigate

More later.

2008-11-20T05:34:00.000-08:00

Smell You Later

With news that Governor Napolitano has been offered Homeland Security, I guess we'll find out whether she'll choose an outer-tier cabinet position or whether she'll do what the local Democrats hope for and stay to keep the Republicans out of the 9th Floor.

My guess is that she'll waving from a jet plane saying "Smell you later!"

On one hand if you are a national Democrat it could be worse... Obama could have selected Richard Clarke marking yet another Clintonista appointment. Of course if you are a national Democrat, Obama could have made a better selection.

Let's see about Governor Napolitano's cred...

Knowledgeable about international terrorists? Nope

Experience in busting local extremist groups up to no good? Nope

Demonstrated ability to get disparate and unwieldy bureaucracies to work together combined with ability to work with the legislature and all levels of government? Janet "The Screamer" Napolitano?

Hey but she's governor of a border state, that counts for something right? Well it does if you equate homeland security with defending the border against illegal immigration which I don't remember being an Obama campaign focus. Anyway let's look at her record on illegal immigration/border control:

Sent National Guard to the border? Yes, after the Republican-Legislature forced her hand

Supported building fence? Janet "15 foot ladder" Napolitano? I think not

Showed initiative in solving border issues using local resources? She's well-known for her local policy of "illiegal immigration is a federal issue."

In fact we may want to send her congratulatory telegrams with that slogan embossed on the front. Funny how life turns out.

Yeah sweet pick

2008-11-19T16:05:00.001-08:00

Beyond Barneydome

We're two weeks after the election and let's see how the Obapocalypse is faring for the Republicans...

Hope and Change front: Clintonistas populate the White House staff and AG's office. Good thing Hillary didn't win because then Clintonistas would populate the.... oh never mind.

Kinder, gentler foreign policy: looks like the guy who did such a good job prosecuting the Iraq War is going to come back to the same post. That Clinton person? The one that voted for that Iraq War? The one that said she would "...totally obliterate Iran"? Leading candidate for State. Good thing McCain because otherwise he would just re-appoint that guy at Defense and lead a more bellicose foreign policy in regards to Iran...

Next thing you'll tell me is that the President-elect will nominate for Treasury someone who wants a strong dollar policy... well one can hope.

Turning to Congress and the auto bailout.

I have a theory. Look come January, everyone knows that the Democrats will give the Big 3 what they want as far as a bailout, but the auto makers say they'll go under before then. To top it, it seems they haven't even fully tapped into the loans approved back in September, why the Bush Administration wants to speed up in lieu of approving a larger bail out. So why the rush to steamroll the larger bailout before Obama takes over? Come January the Democrats will be even more entrenched in power...

My theory is political cover. We're going through the same mechanics as we did during September and early October when the topic was the financial industry and Speaker Pelosi said whe wanted 100 Republican votes but then refused to whip her own caucus. The bailout as currently constructed stinks: it leaves in place the management that drove the companies into ground, it keeps in place the union contracts and cost structure that has made the Big 3 uncompetitive, and the only pro quid pro is to build more efficient cars which their competitors have been doing for years.

It's like it hasn't occured to the Big 3 to build those cars, they just have the management and cost structure which have stopped them from doing it in a way that would make these companies profitable. You can build all the hybrids and green cars you want but if they aren't better or cost less than Toyota or Honda then they wouldn't sell.

So we're going to throw money at an industry without asking that industry to make the changes necessary to be profitable. We'll just assume that now their wallets are full of taxpayer cash that by magic their management will become smart, their cost structure competitive, and that they will build the cars that everyone wants to buy. Of course that won't work and the Big 3 will be back, perhaps in a year or two, asking for more money and then the crap will really hit the fan. When that crap hits the fan, the Democrats will want to have the Bush Administration's fingerprints on the first bailout because then they can say... "We all know the Bush was a fascist war-mongering idiot in the pockets of Big Oil who wants to break unions and throw little Timmy O'Toole down the well (or something like that), you cannot expect him to get have gotten this right. Now that he's gone, we'll do better on the next $50 billion bailout"

Rinse and repeat.

So here's my solution.

Let's have a cage match... we can build Thunderdome right on the Mall and have Speaker Pelosi lord over it like Tina Turner. For every industry wanting a bailout there will only be enough money for a certain fraction of the companies asking. To get the moolah, the CEOs will have to enter Thunderdome (let's call it Barneydome) and then have a fight to the death. So for the Big 3, only 2 of them are getting the cash with the money going to the comapanies whose CEOs survive. Schumer, Frank, and Reid can all chant "Three men enter, two men leave"

Not fair? I mean the Ford CEO looks like a big wimp. Okay we'll expand the teams to include the C-level executives for each company and they can fight it out like the brawl in "Anchorman."

Think about it... it will be fun and at least we'll get something approaching surivial of the fittest. Look it's either that or mass executions.

2008-11-18T14:53:00.000-08:00

Laughing All the Way

It looks Eric Holder and not Napolitano will be Attorney General.

A few reasons to laugh on this one:

1) Those Democrats who were voting for Obama over Clinton in the interest of "hope and change" have to be delighted to see the guy who was Bill Clinton's deputy AG and green-lighted the Marc Rich pardon.

2) While Napolitano is still in the running for other cabinet posts, AG was the big one. Plus she's a lower-tier candidate for Education and Homeland Secretary, what sort of cred would she bring to either? All day kindergarten? Having the Legislature push her into sending the National Guard to the border?

3) I find the idea that she wouldn't go to Washington for anything less than AG because a Republican would replace her to be window dressing. So she won't leave the 9th Floor in the hands of the Republicans who could undo her legacy.... unless she got a really good job? Huh?

With a chance to turn the Legislature Democratic how much time did she spend in Arizona supporting the local races versus going national campaigning for Obama? To say you aren't going to leave the Democrats here in Arizona in the lurch for "anything less" is like a guy leaving the girl he just seduced after he told he would love her forever because he has "...an important meeting in the morning."

Trust me, if she got a lower-tier cabinet post she will go because as she will state at her teary-eyed news conference before she departs for the capital "When the President-elect calls you to serve your country..."

4) If she doesn't get any cabinet appointment, I hope that Senator Bruns will send her a condolence card attached to the latest JLBC fiscal highlight with a note for her to call him.

2008-11-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

Team of Rivals

I knew I should have sworn off cable news, but just when I thought I was out....

One of the current spins surrounding the possible nomination of Senator Clinton to be Secretary of State is "Team of Rivals." This is a direct references to the recent Doris Kearns Goodwin's book of the same title which dealt with President Lincoln's incorporation into the cabinet of his rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination.

The common theme between 1860 and 2008 is supposedly that a little presidential diplomacy is necessary to strengthen intra-party coalitions. Leave aside that essentially diplomacy is saying "nice doggy" until you find a rock (France is still looking for one); there are things which don't match up.

Let's start with the fact that between his election and inauguration, Lincoln watched the country break apart and slide toward war; times were tough and the last thing Lincoln and the Republicans needed were intra-party disputes. Second at the time of Lincoln's inauguration, the last three presidents had failed to secure their party's nomination. Third, Lincoln's position within the Republican Party, while a successful nominee, wasn't as the consensus candidate entering his convention and instead depended on his four rivals (the four he brought into the cabinet) beating on each other during the first ballot.

Which of these factors is similar to what Obama is facing tofay? A secession crisis sliding into civil war? Previous presidents unable to achieve renomination let alone re-election? Shaky nomination? Maybe that but how much did that come up in October? A Clinto appoitnement would at best a calculated risk to defang any potential rival for a contested nomination for 2012, by brining her into the cabinet it would either make her a team player or tar her with the indelible brush of Obama.

However there are dangers to the strategy. Let's look at Lincoln's rivals:

Senator Cameron and Representative Bates tenure in the cabinet had both headed to oblivion; the former due to corruption scandals in the War Department which resulted in his resignation and the latter became irrelevant due to the demands of the war.

Salmon Chase was appointed to the Treasury and from there never shed his ambotion to replace Lincoln for the 1864 election and constantly schemed. In fact only his indispenability in maintaining the nation's finances during the Civil War kept from his being purged earlier than he was.

The only high note in all of this was William Seward who was appointed as Scretary of State but who early on tried to usurp Lincoln's authority by becoming de facto prime minsiter of the administration. He later formed a fast friendship with Lincoln, becoming his loyal confidant, largely based on his admiration of skills as a war leader.

So the historical precedent that people want Obama to follow in appointing Clinton as Secretary of State rests on the results of Lincoln following a similar path in that of the four rivals he selected: one was cashiered for corruption, one tried to constantly submarine his administration, one became a historical non-entity, and the best one also tried to undermine but later came to admire his abilities in leading the most murderous war this country ever fought.

Yeah a perfect parallel for Obama to follow. Taking bitter rivals into your cabinet is a last resort, not a first option.

What do I think will happen? Obama will learn from his mistake about the vice presidency and lead Clinton on about her being a serious candidate for Secretary of State in order to show her supporters that he is treating her with respect. Meanwhile he'll find reason to scuttle the proposed nomination, through proxies of course, due to her husband's various business dealings

2008-11-17T13:59:00.000-08:00

Choice

I had a neat post about Obama and Christianity but I'll save that for another day.

Instead I want to look at choice. I think the average person when presented with a choice will think that the most important thing to do is to gather all the information needed to make the correct decision. Instead I think the most important thing is to make sure you are framing the choice correctly.

Alot of ink has been spilled in the field of rational actor theory on single-shot vs. supergames. The distinction is simple and is often described in introductory political science classes.

A single-shot game (or interaction) is a game that is played only once. You meet a guy on the street, he offers to sell you a apple, you agree and make the transaction, and then part company never to see each other again. A supergame is a game played time and again; you have a purchasing contract with a fruit vendor from whom you buy fruit on a daily basis. In the single-shot game, the seller may not mind off-loading on you a worm-ridden apple because he'll never see you again while in the supergame the fruit vendor knows that your satisfaction will dictate whether there are any future transactions.

Now let's look at the Arizona budget. The Governor's approach has two interlocking elements. The first is to low-ball the projected deficit: she did it for FY2008, for the original FY2009 budget, and for the current size of the hole in the FY2009 budget. One of the great communications from her office is an October 1st document from OSPB which outlines the pessmistic case for the FY2009 deficit as $800 million and then come back 5 weeks later and agree that the budget gap is actually at least $1.2 billion. Ooops.

The second element is to treat each problematic budget year separately; in short to treat each fiscal year is a single-shot game. The public reason is that recovery is just around the corner; revenue will recover in Spring 2008, for FY2009 revenue will increase 6.1%.... The two elements inter-lock because it allows her to push the idea that spending can be maintained on the current year budget because revenue will increase for next year's budget; all we have to do is get through this little rough spot.

Contrast that with viewing budgeting as a supergame. When the solution was devised for the FY2008 budget back in April, the basic outlines for the FY2009 were already clear. How much money should be borrowed through school financing and accounting tricks versus how much should be cut for FY2008 should have been based on the realization that several lean years were ahead. Spending cuts deferred were just that, deferred with compounded interest and not avoided. However the Governor was allowed to push the idea that recovery was around the corner.

So as we near a special session to deal with the FY2009 budget hole, which exists because of Democratic can kicking back in June, 6.1% revenue growth!, let's please look at the solutions through the prism of this being a multi-year problem. Arizona is heavily dependent on the housing market and the surplus inventories of housing may not clear until 2011. JLBC is not projecting revenue growth until 2011. To top it, the national economy is sliding into recession. So we're looking not just at FY2009, but also FY2010 and 2011 as well.

Let's get a number on how much we're in the hole for the next 3 years and then come up with the 3 scenarios ranging from optimistic to pessmistic of how large that number may be. Then let's find ways of attacking that number over that time period. We find there is simply not enough money to cut from the 55% of the budget that the Legislature can touch... what happens after that is anyone's guess but at least we would be working in the light.

Single shot games are for con artists, supergames are for leaders.

2008-11-16T18:41:00.001-08:00

City of Obama

I read with amusement Vox's link to the recent cover of New York Magazine with the lede of:

In New York, reverence for Barack Obama has long been approaching the level of worship, and last week’s spontaneous eruption over his election had the feel of an ecstatic religious celebration. But the peculiar thing about this faith is that it is rooted in a belief above all in reason—and underlying all the excitement on the streets was the wonder of what it might be like to belong to a reality-based nation again.

Faith rooted in a belief of reason? Ecstatic religious-like celebration over an election?

Where to begin?

About 400 AD with Augustine of Hippo

Augustine was one of the first to try and integrate the rationality of the Ancient Greeks with the faith and revealed word of Christianity, so I feel he would have much to say about our times. The Greeks, starting with Pythagoras and continuing through Plato, trumpeted the rationality as a tool for discovering truth. Augustine in turn accepted the validity of the Greeks in that their rationality could be used as a tool to fight fanaticism, but found their world view lacking in the larger theological truths.

For a Christian, to ascend in truth one must at some point turn to faith and strive for the ability to know an immaterial God. For Augustine, while one couldn't perceive God, one could come to know him because the individual could conceive of him through the use of faith. In defining this perspective, Augustine provided a strong intellectual foundation for the early church, one on which today's Christian apologists construct their own arguments.

Now I'll admit that "faith ... rooted in ... above all in reason"smacks of the anti-clerical elements of the French Revolution. Even more distressing their supposedly unique and superior linkage of faith and reason, is as such is culturally illiterate. You get the feeling that the writer uses the laden terms of Western Civilization much like a child would use a sword and with about the same result.

I try not to cherry-pick articles to make larger points, but it's hard to top this piece as a neat summation of the cultural contradictions and national self-loathing (and it is self-loathing) of those who have treated the election of Senator Obama as a transcendental, as opposed to historical, moment.

You wonder if people like the writer, as they pass the chruches and cathedrals of their city, wonder if the religion contained therein would have anything to say about their feelings over the last 2 weeks

2008-11-15T20:23:00.000-08:00

Mayor with Hands Out

It started with the financial industry, continued through the auto industry, and now it looks like state and local politicians want some federal monetary love.

Now I'm a resident of both Phoenix and Arizona so perhaps I should just avert my gaze as my mayor and governor are out trying to get money out of Washington. Well, outside of any feelings of shame over handouts, I'm also a federal taxpayer; let's hear it for James Madison and shared sovereignty.

A quick point to be paid here...

The argument against the financial and auto industry bailouts is that they leave the existing management and shareholders in place; the same clowns who got a number of these firms in trouble will receive the federal money and continue to operate these companies. Focusing on the auto industry, the problem is compounded because the fundamentals of the Big 3 are left unchanged by the bailout and it's likely that after the auto makers burn through the money they will be back on the edge of the abyss; afterall if they went Chapter 11 at least they would have a chance to reorganize.

So why is it any different than with the states and cities?

States like California and New York, and I'll assume the cities as well, spent the recent gushers of tax revenue like drunken sailors. Both Phoenix and Arizona dramatically increased spending in the years leading up to the current fiscal crisis. In fact as evidenced that the growth in tax revenue far exceeded the growth in personal income, that revenue gusher was probably based on one-time money. However my state and city government spent the money like it would keep on like that forever, which was a bad decision, and now they want help.

Sounds alot like the auto and financial industry.

Where the states and cities differ is that not only do they have the power to cut their spending, but also to raise revenue through taxes. Both are politicaly painful and will probably mean the political kiss of death for more than one politician, but both haven't really been tried on a level necessary to meet the crisis on hand and since when should federal dollars be used to keep local politicians afloat?

The other issue is that any city and state bailout, just like the one proposed for the auto industry, leaves the same people and the same basic fiscal structure in place that got these governments in trouble in the first place. At least when a country has to go to the IMF for a bailout, there are "austerity" measures which are imposed.

So what will the feds ask in return for the bailout or is it considered rude to even ask?

2008-11-13T14:34:00.000-08:00

Speed for Your State

Over the last month or so, you've probably noticed around town the photo radar sites going up along the highways as part of the Governor's plan to raise state revenue. Controversial at the best of times, these new sites are even more so because speeders will only be assessed a fee and not points on their license. It really is just about the money and not safety.

Make of it what you will. Actually I'm surprised they went up as fast as they did, if only MVD worked as fast.

Other bloggers have speculated that if the photo radar sites don't make their mark, that is catch enough speeders, the Governor will direct that the system be gained by lowering the 10 mph buffer over the speed limit. From my personal experience, I think it's worse than that.

I have noticed that for all fixed sites, that there is ample signage indicating to passing motorists that they are nearing an enforcement zone, in some cases there are two sets of signs. The other day while on SR-51, every car around me was braking a good 1/2 mile before the cameras so I have real doubts that the cameras are going to clear anywhere close to the projected $90 million.

I guess they could take the signs down, but whatever the legality of that everyone would still know where the fixed sites are so that won't do it.

Here's my suggestion to keep revenue flowing in... start placing items along the highway in front of the cameras that will cause drivers to speed up. Some ideas would include:

1) Based on the number of people who run red lights, put traffic lights that are continually going from green to yellow. I bet a number of drivers will just floor it out of some Pavlovian reaction.

2) Put up a sign announcing a school crossing zone

3) Put up billboards of Joe Arpaio in a bikini

The $180+ you'll pay for tripping the cameras would be a small price to pay to escape the sight of that.

2008-11-12T16:40:00.000-08:00

In the Cross Hairs

Nothing like taking advantage of a tragedy to push an agenda...

This morning, PETA sent an urgent letter to Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano urging her to push for legislation that would ban hunting by anyone under the age of 18. PETA's letter comes in the wake of allegations that an 8-year-old boy intentionally shot and killed his father, St. Johns resident Vincent Romero, and Romero's friend Timothy Romans on November 5. The boy had previously hunted prairie dogs with his father.

Oh dear where to begin... because we all know it's a short distance from plunking prairie dogs with a .22 to shooting up your classmates. I kid of course, but apparently not PETA (emphasis below is mine):

We should be teaching our children kindness and respect, not that it is fine to harm and kill others simply because they are different....

...Experts agree that it is the severity of the behavior--not the species of the victim--that matters. FBI interviews with murderers showed that 36 percent had tortured and killed animals as children and 46 percent had done so as adolescents. Cruelty to animals is common in the violent histories of our nation's serial killers and school shooters.

I love the use of "others" and "species" to put humans and animals on the same plane. No seriously, I grew up in an area where hunting was an excused absence from school. Lot of classmates were out during the first day of gun season and then on doe day, only to show up at lunch with tasty venison sandwiches. Come to think of it alot of those kids went into the military out of high school, more than a few into the Marines. I am sure that will be the subject of another PETA press release.

I mean they have a point here, because today's hunters could grow up to do unspeakable things like.... become governor of Alaska or run for vice president on the GOP ticket. Today's hunters are tomorrow's war criminals.

There are some who would like to see PETA go away. I say nonsense because having PETA around makes it far easier for us to flush the idiots out into the open... just like flushing quail

Dick Cheney would understand

2008-11-11T05:48:00.000-08:00

Musical Chairs

Governor Napolitano, after spending the past few months out on the national trail campaigning for Obama, somehow found time from her day job as member of the Obama transition team to call for a special session of the Legislature to deal with the FY2009 budget crisis.

I know what you are saying; we've heard all of this before. However let's look at it from a political angle.

JLBC is projecting a FY2009 deficit of $1 billion+, expect that to go up. They are also projecting, depending on the assumptions used a FY2010 deficit of $2 to $3 billion.

Let's look at some other facts. We're already into FY2009 and the slip-shod budget the Democrats put together last June (proposed by the Governor and passed with unanimous Democrats support along with a few Republican defectors) tried to bridge the gap by using up most of the remaining cash reserves, accounting tricks like K-12 rollover, and financing. The budget ended up blowing up because that budget fix relied on an unrealistic rate of revenue of growth; everyone knew that the deal was unworkable and that this special session was coming.

So in dealing with the new FY2009 gap, all the previous tricks are all used up. So we're back to either budget cuts or tax hikes. The problem with budget cuts is that nearly half the $11 billion budget is untouchable because of ballot initiatives, so do you take a 20% whack out of prisons? Universities? Now move on to FY2010 and the necssary cuts get even larger.

Don't want to do cuts of that magnitude? Then either raise taxes or propose a ballot initiative to open up K-12 and ACCHS. It all comes down to money and just like robbing banks, you can only cut where the money is.

Oh I guess there is another way and that is to securitize the Lottery and the tobacco settlement to try to get through FY2009. The problem is that Arizona is currently spending about $2 billion more than it takes in, to liquidate assets to prop up spending does nothing to close that gap and only postpones the day of reckoning.

Hey it took 8 months longer than I thought but now fiscal blood is going to be on the floor (or the wall, depending on your metaphor)

So the music is going to stop and politically speaking who's going to be left standing?

Governor Napolitano? Nope... because the worst-kept secret in Arizona is that she doesn't want to be governor anymore and has been working for the past 9 months to get a job in an Obama Administration. Her appointment, whether to AG or Homeland Security, should come well before Christmas or in other words well before a budget deal on FY2009 is reached. From her DC office, Napolitano can watch as it's Governor Jan Brewer's name that goes on the budget cuts and/or tax hikes.

The Democrats in the Legislature? Nope... not only are they still in minority but their numbers have actually shrunk. They can sit back and let the Republicans try to figure it out. If the Republicans ask for some bipartisan cover on the necessary budget wet work that needs to be done, the Dems can point to the original FY2009 budget that was passed on almost straight party-line votes.

No, it's going to be the Republicans who will take the blame for cleaning up the budget mess and Napolitano's can kicking. The Republicans who will be blamed for the large cuts in state agencies or proposed tax increases, Republicans who will be blamed for trying to close that $2 billion structural deficit.

Hope you had a nice break from the end of the 2008 Election because the 2010 gubernatorial election has just begun.

2008-11-10T04:08:00.000-08:00

Auto Industry Bailout

I'm trying to follow the details here and I'm a bit mystified... now let's leave aside the fact that we're bailing out yet another industry and just move to the details.

First we are going to throw another $50 billion at Detroit to help the Big 3 transition to making more energy-efficient cars because if we don't do that they'll go bankrupt.

The thing about bankruptcy is that it is a vital part of "creative destruction." Companies that undergo reorganization as opposed to liquidation are put on sounder footing. If the company does liquidate then the remaining productive assets liberated from the corpse of bad management and are then able to be picked up by more talented companies and put to better use. Yes in either case the stockholders are wiped out, but if poorly run companies are left to go under then perhaps stockholders and management would be put on notice.

Second, the companies at which we'll throw money at will keep the same management, outrageous labor contracts, and clunky distribution system that helped get it into trouble the first place. The failure to produce desirable products is a symptom of poor management, after all it's not like those products aren't being produced by other companies.

Third, the money will be primarily directed at the Big 3; the domestic plants of foreign auto makers don't seem to be having quite the same problems with either poor management or in creating a desirable product that consumers want to buy.

To sum it up, we're going to throw alot of taxpayer money at companies that are in trouble because they have been run into the ground by poor management and outrageous labor contracts, but then not insist that those contracts and management be changed. So what exactly will the taxpayer money accomplish?

If we are going down this route then at the very least, for the sake of honest advertising, GM should have to change its name to Leyland.

2008-11-09T18:32:00.000-08:00

The End.... Again

Closing up the election port-mortem....

Last night I received a surprise call from my good friend Thomas, who to his eternal benefit is slowly transforming into a Tar Heel. We talked a bit about the election and reflecting on Thomas' experience on Capitol Hill I remarked on how I could empathize with Democrats and how they felt over the past week because I was in the almost exact same position when the Republicans took Congress.

Okay not quite the same because Clinton was in the White House but he was tottering. We just took over both houses for the first time in forty years and did so not just because out of voter disgust with the Democrats but also because we had an explicit conservative manifesto for transforming Washington. None of that Obama waffling and vague "hope" and "change", nope we laid it all out in the Contract with America and still won.

How well did that work? Of the 95 major programs that the Contract had promised to eliminate, by 2000 those budgets had increased by 13%. Ask a Democrat how fast you got from "Cannot Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" to scaling back your agenda to mollify the bond markets and how much longer was it until Clinton signed on for welfare reform.

Oh one final thing, this time on the death of the Republican Party. The first time I came across that phrase was when I was digging around in the library doing research and came across a newspaper column from 1974. Since that time I have read similar articles written in 1988 and 1992. Maybe this time the doomsayers will be right, after all even Krugman gets it right in his columns every now and then. Then on the other hand I seem to remember quite a few columns over the last 25 years regarding the imminent death of the Democratic Party as well.

Once again... everyone have a beer or gin or whatever your drink of choice is and calm down. Please oh please stop writing op-ed pieces like this in which the writer seems to think Obama is reliving the Kennedy Administration, from New Frontier and Camelot all the way to martyrdom. The good man hasn't been president-elect for more than a week.

My word.