By the end of next week, four of the seven biggest airlines in the United States, U.S. Air, United, Northwest and Delta, will be undergoing Chapter 11 reorganizations under the Bankruptcy Code. Smaller America West is about to merge with bankrupt U.S. Air, while American, Continental and Southwest appear to have avoided bankruptcy for the time being.
Both airlines that provide most of the U.S. service to Asia, United and Northwest, will be bankrupt. Employees at each of the bankrupt airlines have been forced to make major concessions. U.S. Air expects to leave bankruptcy this fall, while United is close on its heels, with operations that are about a third smaller that when the bankruptcy began three years ago. The new operations at United will include a greater share of international flights and a discount division, called Ted.
A variety of factors including 9-11, rising fuel prices, unsustainable labor costs (particularly those related to pensions and health care), and the rise of the discount airline phenomena have all been blamed for the industrywide collapse. The brunt of the impact of these events is born by airline shareholders, airline bondholders and employees who face pay cuts, lost jobs and broken pension promises.
The airline industry has been notorious for the large number of bankruptcies in the industry, particularly after deregulation, but next week will be a historic low point for the industry.
The big question is whether the excess capacity in the industry will be removed through piecemeal cuts at each of the airlines, or through the demise of one or more of the current major players? Emerging airlines should be stronger, with far less debt burdening their cash flow, far smaller payrolls, and cuts is competing airlines reducing the supply of travel resources, but an outright airline collapse still seems like a plausible option.
The constant cycle of bankruptcies in the industry also calls into question the entire form of organization of the typical airline. Are we seeing the classic problem of heads I win, tails someone else loses management? Similar cycles were endemic in commercial banking and the insurance industry until adoption of a mutal form of ownership and regulatory action in the form of the FDIC (and later its sister agency for S&Ls) restrained unnecessary risk taking. Does the country need a new airline organized on a mutual basis as a consumer co-op, with business customers paying a predictable high price for tickets and then receiving a share of any resulting profits proportionate to their patronage at the end of each year?
On the other hand, maybe the problem is one of business models and not organizational forms. The big airlines traditionally operated on the basis of exceedingly high fares for short notice business travellers through monoply hubs (often with mostly empty flights), discount fares for vacationers, a cumbersome (for passengers) hub and spoke system that greatly reduced the number of available direct flights, heavy debt loads, and well compensated union employees. Discount airlines shook up this model by focusing on full direct flights full of discount travellers on profitable routes with less well compensated non-union employees. Will a post-bankruptcy business model for ex-legacy airlines of low debt, poorly compensated union employes, heavy on international flights emerge?
Of course, some of the business models are, in part, technological issues. While the Concorde have proven that there is not much of a market for supersonic passenger travel, we have yet to see if the big jet will continue to rein supreme, or whether it will be supplanted by the smaller regional jet, which is able to offer more frequent and more direct flights, or by the even smaller air taxi, which gives VIP travellers an intermediate option between first class and a private jet, shuttling them between general aviation airports.
For now, we will wait and see what emerges from bankruptcy courtrooms across the country. But, this is unlikely to be the last major upheaval in the industry.
13 September 2005
Presidential Appointments.
There are lots of people appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate in the U.S. Government. There are 1137 in the Executive branch and there are 9 Justices on the Supreme Court, 179 Court of Appeals judgeships, and 662 district court judgeships, in the Judicial branch for a total of 2,287 civilians. All military officers also have their commissions approved by the Senate upon Presidential nomination. There are more than 190,000 of them.
The civilian executive branch appointees include:
A U.S. Attorney and U.S. Marshall in every judicial district (178);
At least 144 ambassadors;
446 Executive Schedule officials; and
339 unclassified employees (most of whom are commission members who serve without compensation or with nominal compensation).
The Executive Schedule officials are made up of:
17 Level I (Cabinet Members).
36 Level II (Deputy Secretaries).
99 Level III (Under Secretaries and Agency Chiefs).
275 Level IV (Assistant Secretaries, Deputy Undersecretaries, General Counsels).
19 Level V (Deputy Assistant Secretaries, Administrators, Commissioners and Directors).
The reality is that no more than a handful of executive branch appointments are ever contested, creating an institutional norm that the job of the Senate is to rubber stamp appointments. Each Senator has only a handful of staffers available to review the qualifications of nominees, and as a result each nominee receives a less than through review. The appointment of Michael Brown as FEMA director, with Senators praising him in prepared comments, despite the fact that his resume was fraudulent and his experience in the field was negligable, shows how unqualified people can slip through the cracks when the Senate is overwhelmed by nominees to vet, as it is now. Moreover, even the President is often ill equipped to fill the bonanza of executive branch positions available for him to fill upon taking office, without resorting to the sort of cronyism that makes being a college friend of a political insider more important than qualifications. One would hope that cabinet secretaries, by virtue of their expertise in a subject area and smaller number of appointments available to them, would be a better job in this regard.
The easiest way to free up Senate resources to give important appointments adequate review, and to speed up the process of getting a new government into place when a new President takes office (which takes massive quantities of forms, FBI background checks and the Congressional process), would be to remove Congress from review of less important positions.
Specifically, in an ideal world, I would favor ending Senate appointment of the following executive branch officials:
* 178 U.S. Marshalls and U.S. Attorneys for judicial districts, which would be vested in the Attorney General.
* 294 Level IV and V Executive Schedule positions, which would be vested in the supervising cabinet officers.
* All but about 200 military commissions of ranks O-8 to O-10 (senior generals).
Many of the less significant commission posts would also be appointed by the President (e.g. the National Council on Library and Information Science) without Senate input.
This would greatly reduce the number of civilian and military appointees going through the Senate confirmation process, bringing the number reviewed to a manageable level, while retaining almost all positions receiving real Senate scrutiny. Thus, there would be more time to consider agency heads, like the FEMA director, and less time spent on a cursory review of officials like Deputy Undersecretaries and Deputy Assistant Secretaries.
I would also end the process of having FBI background checks for appointees whose fields are not in the national security area, a cumbersome process that shifts responsibility when poor judgment is exercised in an appointment and which greatly delays the appointment process.
These modest changes, which would not require a constitutional amendment, maintain an orderly process of government, while strengthening the Senate confirmation process by making it more than a rubber stamp.
The civilian executive branch appointees include:
A U.S. Attorney and U.S. Marshall in every judicial district (178);
At least 144 ambassadors;
446 Executive Schedule officials; and
339 unclassified employees (most of whom are commission members who serve without compensation or with nominal compensation).
The Executive Schedule officials are made up of:
17 Level I (Cabinet Members).
36 Level II (Deputy Secretaries).
99 Level III (Under Secretaries and Agency Chiefs).
275 Level IV (Assistant Secretaries, Deputy Undersecretaries, General Counsels).
19 Level V (Deputy Assistant Secretaries, Administrators, Commissioners and Directors).
The reality is that no more than a handful of executive branch appointments are ever contested, creating an institutional norm that the job of the Senate is to rubber stamp appointments. Each Senator has only a handful of staffers available to review the qualifications of nominees, and as a result each nominee receives a less than through review. The appointment of Michael Brown as FEMA director, with Senators praising him in prepared comments, despite the fact that his resume was fraudulent and his experience in the field was negligable, shows how unqualified people can slip through the cracks when the Senate is overwhelmed by nominees to vet, as it is now. Moreover, even the President is often ill equipped to fill the bonanza of executive branch positions available for him to fill upon taking office, without resorting to the sort of cronyism that makes being a college friend of a political insider more important than qualifications. One would hope that cabinet secretaries, by virtue of their expertise in a subject area and smaller number of appointments available to them, would be a better job in this regard.
The easiest way to free up Senate resources to give important appointments adequate review, and to speed up the process of getting a new government into place when a new President takes office (which takes massive quantities of forms, FBI background checks and the Congressional process), would be to remove Congress from review of less important positions.
Specifically, in an ideal world, I would favor ending Senate appointment of the following executive branch officials:
* 178 U.S. Marshalls and U.S. Attorneys for judicial districts, which would be vested in the Attorney General.
* 294 Level IV and V Executive Schedule positions, which would be vested in the supervising cabinet officers.
* All but about 200 military commissions of ranks O-8 to O-10 (senior generals).
Many of the less significant commission posts would also be appointed by the President (e.g. the National Council on Library and Information Science) without Senate input.
This would greatly reduce the number of civilian and military appointees going through the Senate confirmation process, bringing the number reviewed to a manageable level, while retaining almost all positions receiving real Senate scrutiny. Thus, there would be more time to consider agency heads, like the FEMA director, and less time spent on a cursory review of officials like Deputy Undersecretaries and Deputy Assistant Secretaries.
I would also end the process of having FBI background checks for appointees whose fields are not in the national security area, a cumbersome process that shifts responsibility when poor judgment is exercised in an appointment and which greatly delays the appointment process.
These modest changes, which would not require a constitutional amendment, maintain an orderly process of government, while strengthening the Senate confirmation process by making it more than a rubber stamp.
Christians and the Democratic Party
The Democratic Party has a love hate relationship with Christianty. On one hand, it hates the Pat Robertsons of the world (the feeling is mutual). On the other hand, it would like to love liberal and mainline Protestants, Catholics, black Christians, and even those evangelical white Christians who can see beyond the twisted ideas of their most prominent leaders. In many of these cases, however, the feeling is not fully reciprocated.
The Republican Party is pretty much the white straight Christian party. They make some token concessions to the contrary, but tokenism is about as far as it goes. Republicans open their events with Christian prayers, and adopt policies that drive out any sane gay man or lesbian woman (who isn't so filthy rich that tax cuts don't override everything else), as well as most people who aren't white. Even the Joe Lieberman's of the world (he is an Orthodox Jew from Connecticut with strong bipartisan inclinations on high profile issues), who sympathize with Republicans on many moral and religious issues, ultimately, as non-Chrisians, feel more comfortable as part of the Democratic party. The Democratic Party is far more pluralistic. It is ethnically diverse, embraces gays and lesbians as well as straight people and is not a Christian party. It isn't anti-Christian, but as the party the embraces a supermajority of American Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus and Wiccans, as well as many Christians, it has to have a big tent when it comes to religion. Even Orthdox Christians find it pretty hard to find acceptance on the red side of the fence and tend to turn to the Democrats. As a result, the Democratic party can not adorn its functions with religious trappings to any great extent and must adhere to a strong policy of separation of church and state to hold its coalition together.
This love hate relationship makes the question of how Democrats should reach out to Christianity a perennial topic of discussion in liberal circles. I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that this is not an issue that the non-Christian wing of the Democratic party can fruitfully address affirmatively. Simply put, non-evangelical Christianity is a little confused about its direction in life at the moment, which makes appealling to it difficult. The partisan divide in our country is playing out within every mainline denomination in the country. Gay rights is often the issue used to provoke the fights, but it the divisions run deeper to fundamental understandings about what the Christian endeavor means. The Presbyterians (USA), ELCA Lutherans and Episcopalians are all deeply enmeshed in the issue right now. The United Church of Christ has basically reached a point where the liberals have won. The Southern Baptist Convention has basically purged itself of moderates in the images of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
Until liberal and moderate Christianity can develop enough of a distinct public persona of its own to itself address the failings of the Christian Right, and until it is comfortable setting itself apart from them instead of feeling lumped in with them, there is very little that the Democratic party can do to resolve its love hate relationship other than advance the policies of economic and social justice which are at the Democratic party's core. Right now, moderate and liberal Christianity has no public persona, has no prominent leaders (and no, some committee chair chosen by the National Council of Churches doesn't count), and is struggling with its own identity. Mainline Christians both want to copy and want to define themselves against far more politically prominent evangelical Christianity. In the meantime, in the context of politics, Democrats seperate church and state, as individuals look for the party and church they are most comfortable with, rather than making their party a religious movement.
The Republican Party is pretty much the white straight Christian party. They make some token concessions to the contrary, but tokenism is about as far as it goes. Republicans open their events with Christian prayers, and adopt policies that drive out any sane gay man or lesbian woman (who isn't so filthy rich that tax cuts don't override everything else), as well as most people who aren't white. Even the Joe Lieberman's of the world (he is an Orthodox Jew from Connecticut with strong bipartisan inclinations on high profile issues), who sympathize with Republicans on many moral and religious issues, ultimately, as non-Chrisians, feel more comfortable as part of the Democratic party. The Democratic Party is far more pluralistic. It is ethnically diverse, embraces gays and lesbians as well as straight people and is not a Christian party. It isn't anti-Christian, but as the party the embraces a supermajority of American Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus and Wiccans, as well as many Christians, it has to have a big tent when it comes to religion. Even Orthdox Christians find it pretty hard to find acceptance on the red side of the fence and tend to turn to the Democrats. As a result, the Democratic party can not adorn its functions with religious trappings to any great extent and must adhere to a strong policy of separation of church and state to hold its coalition together.
This love hate relationship makes the question of how Democrats should reach out to Christianity a perennial topic of discussion in liberal circles. I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that this is not an issue that the non-Christian wing of the Democratic party can fruitfully address affirmatively. Simply put, non-evangelical Christianity is a little confused about its direction in life at the moment, which makes appealling to it difficult. The partisan divide in our country is playing out within every mainline denomination in the country. Gay rights is often the issue used to provoke the fights, but it the divisions run deeper to fundamental understandings about what the Christian endeavor means. The Presbyterians (USA), ELCA Lutherans and Episcopalians are all deeply enmeshed in the issue right now. The United Church of Christ has basically reached a point where the liberals have won. The Southern Baptist Convention has basically purged itself of moderates in the images of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
Until liberal and moderate Christianity can develop enough of a distinct public persona of its own to itself address the failings of the Christian Right, and until it is comfortable setting itself apart from them instead of feeling lumped in with them, there is very little that the Democratic party can do to resolve its love hate relationship other than advance the policies of economic and social justice which are at the Democratic party's core. Right now, moderate and liberal Christianity has no public persona, has no prominent leaders (and no, some committee chair chosen by the National Council of Churches doesn't count), and is struggling with its own identity. Mainline Christians both want to copy and want to define themselves against far more politically prominent evangelical Christianity. In the meantime, in the context of politics, Democrats seperate church and state, as individuals look for the party and church they are most comfortable with, rather than making their party a religious movement.
12 September 2005
Tancredo On Compassion.
According to Tom Tancredo (the Republican Congressman from the 6th Congressional District in Colorado), in a post-Katrina vote interview (he was one of eleven Republican Congressmen to vote against Katrina aid in the House):
GOP politicians should not heed "the political dynamic that says if we don't show that compassion, people will think the Republicans in power are not compassionate."
GOP politicians should not heed "the political dynamic that says if we don't show that compassion, people will think the Republicans in power are not compassionate."
Take Them At Their Words
These quotes can be found in a new book by Bruce Miller and Diana Maio titled "Take Them At Their Words." Because some books deserve to be shilled. (I receive nothing from the authors, their publisher or anyone else for writing this blog, by the way).
"I'm a firm believer in feeding people their own words back to them, when it's appropriate." – Trent Lott
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." - George W. Bush, discussing Kosovo, Houston Chronicle, 04-09-99
"I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again." - Bill O'Reilley, on ABC's Good Morning America, 03-18-03
"I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for." - Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95
"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual gay sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family and that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, the right to privacy that doesn't exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution." - Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Associated Press, 04-22-03
"I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you. This is not a message of hate; this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor." - Pat Robertson, speaking of organizers putting rainbow flags up around Orlando to support sexual diversity, Washington Post, 06-10-98. For the record, Orlando remains undestroyed by meteors.
"Environmentalists are a socialist group of individuals that are the tool of the Democrat Party. I'm proud to say that they are my enemy. They are not Americans, never have been Americans, never will be Americans." - Rep. Don Young (R-AK), Alaska Public Radio, 08-19-96
"When you strip it all away, Jerry Garcia destroyed his life on drugs. And yet he's being honored, like some godlike figure. Our priorities are out of whack, folks." - Rush (currently under investigation for drug use) Limbaugh, on the death of Jerry Garcia, 08-20-95.
"I don't understand how poor people think." - George W. Bush, confiding in the Rev. Jim Wallis, New York Times, 08-26-03
"Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him." - Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton, as reported by journalist Steve Miner of KSUB radio who overheard his conversation, 11-01-98
"We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." - Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building." - Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02
"Homosexuals want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers." - Pat Robertson again, The 700 Club, 01-18-95
"And there is, I am certain, among the Iraqi people a respect for the care and the precision that went into the bombing campaign." - Donald Rumsfeld, defenselink.mil, 04-09-03
"Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist." - Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), House Majority Whip, during a debate on increasing the minimum wage, Congressional Record, H3706, 04-23-96
"Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an 'enemy of the people.' The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, 'clan liability.' In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished 'to the ninth degree': that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed." - John Derbyshire, National Review, 02-15-01
"I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period." - Pat Robertson again, The 700 Club, 01-08-92
"Probably nothing." - Jeb Bush, during his losing 1994 bid for Florida Governor, when asked what he would do for black people, quoted by Salon on 10-05-02
"The homosexual blitzkrieg has been better planned and executed than Hitler's." - Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-CA), The New Republic, 08-01-94
"When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together." - Pat Robertson again, The 700 Club, 01-21-93
"Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this." - Lt. General William G. Boykin, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, New York Times, 10-17-03
"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." - Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02
"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." - Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, NPR Morning Edition, 05-25-01
"I don't agree that you need an enormous number of American troops. Saddam's army is down to one-third than it was before, and I think it would be a cakewalk." - Kenneth Adelman, Defense Policy Board, to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, 12-06-01
"The fact of the matter is that this (increased American casualties) is a sign of the success of our operation, not its failure." - Ralph Reed, GOP strategist, on MSNBC's program 'Hardball,' 10-28-03
"There are some who feel that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation." - George W. Bush, Chicago Tribune, 07-03-03
"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." - Paul Wolfowitz, quoted by Tim Russert on 'Meet The Press, NBC, 06-01-03
"Quit looking at the symbols. Get out and get a job. Quit shooting each other. Quit having illegitimate babies." - State Rep. John Graham Altman (R-SC), addressing African-American concerns about the 'symbol' of the Confederate Flag, New York Times, 01-24-97
"Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God's Law and the disenfranchisement of White men." - State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC), emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, reported by the Fayetteville Observer, 08-22-01
"NOW is saying that in order to be a woman, you've got to be a lesbian." - Pat Robertson again, The 700 Club, 12-03-97
"My biggest fear is going to be going to the funeral of some young Iowa man or woman who dies in this conflict and having their mother or father come up to me and ask whether or not their son or daughter died for America, or died to save Bill Clinton's presidency. I don't know what I would say to those grieving parents. For that reason I believe the President must resign immediately." - Rep. Jim Nussle (R-IA), Congressional Record, H11963, 12-18-98
"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" - Barbara Bush, said on 'Good Morning America' the day before the Iraq war started, New York Times, 01-13-03
"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I don't need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." - George W. Bush, Washington Post, 11-19-02
"I'm a firm believer in feeding people their own words back to them, when it's appropriate." – Trent Lott
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." - George W. Bush, discussing Kosovo, Houston Chronicle, 04-09-99
"I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again." - Bill O'Reilley, on ABC's Good Morning America, 03-18-03
"I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for." - Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95
"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual gay sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family and that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, the right to privacy that doesn't exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution." - Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Associated Press, 04-22-03
"I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you. This is not a message of hate; this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor." - Pat Robertson, speaking of organizers putting rainbow flags up around Orlando to support sexual diversity, Washington Post, 06-10-98. For the record, Orlando remains undestroyed by meteors.
"Environmentalists are a socialist group of individuals that are the tool of the Democrat Party. I'm proud to say that they are my enemy. They are not Americans, never have been Americans, never will be Americans." - Rep. Don Young (R-AK), Alaska Public Radio, 08-19-96
"When you strip it all away, Jerry Garcia destroyed his life on drugs. And yet he's being honored, like some godlike figure. Our priorities are out of whack, folks." - Rush (currently under investigation for drug use) Limbaugh, on the death of Jerry Garcia, 08-20-95.
"I don't understand how poor people think." - George W. Bush, confiding in the Rev. Jim Wallis, New York Times, 08-26-03
"Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him." - Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton, as reported by journalist Steve Miner of KSUB radio who overheard his conversation, 11-01-98
"We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." - Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building." - Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02
"Homosexuals want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers." - Pat Robertson again, The 700 Club, 01-18-95
"And there is, I am certain, among the Iraqi people a respect for the care and the precision that went into the bombing campaign." - Donald Rumsfeld, defenselink.mil, 04-09-03
"Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist." - Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), House Majority Whip, during a debate on increasing the minimum wage, Congressional Record, H3706, 04-23-96
"Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an 'enemy of the people.' The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, 'clan liability.' In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished 'to the ninth degree': that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed." - John Derbyshire, National Review, 02-15-01
"I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period." - Pat Robertson again, The 700 Club, 01-08-92
"Probably nothing." - Jeb Bush, during his losing 1994 bid for Florida Governor, when asked what he would do for black people, quoted by Salon on 10-05-02
"The homosexual blitzkrieg has been better planned and executed than Hitler's." - Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-CA), The New Republic, 08-01-94
"When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together." - Pat Robertson again, The 700 Club, 01-21-93
"Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this." - Lt. General William G. Boykin, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, New York Times, 10-17-03
"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." - Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02
"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." - Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, NPR Morning Edition, 05-25-01
"I don't agree that you need an enormous number of American troops. Saddam's army is down to one-third than it was before, and I think it would be a cakewalk." - Kenneth Adelman, Defense Policy Board, to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, 12-06-01
"The fact of the matter is that this (increased American casualties) is a sign of the success of our operation, not its failure." - Ralph Reed, GOP strategist, on MSNBC's program 'Hardball,' 10-28-03
"There are some who feel that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation." - George W. Bush, Chicago Tribune, 07-03-03
"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." - Paul Wolfowitz, quoted by Tim Russert on 'Meet The Press, NBC, 06-01-03
"Quit looking at the symbols. Get out and get a job. Quit shooting each other. Quit having illegitimate babies." - State Rep. John Graham Altman (R-SC), addressing African-American concerns about the 'symbol' of the Confederate Flag, New York Times, 01-24-97
"Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God's Law and the disenfranchisement of White men." - State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC), emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, reported by the Fayetteville Observer, 08-22-01
"NOW is saying that in order to be a woman, you've got to be a lesbian." - Pat Robertson again, The 700 Club, 12-03-97
"My biggest fear is going to be going to the funeral of some young Iowa man or woman who dies in this conflict and having their mother or father come up to me and ask whether or not their son or daughter died for America, or died to save Bill Clinton's presidency. I don't know what I would say to those grieving parents. For that reason I believe the President must resign immediately." - Rep. Jim Nussle (R-IA), Congressional Record, H11963, 12-18-98
"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" - Barbara Bush, said on 'Good Morning America' the day before the Iraq war started, New York Times, 01-13-03
"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I don't need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." - George W. Bush, Washington Post, 11-19-02
Breakfast and Obesity.
Many teenage girls skip breakfast in an effort to keep their weight down. This is a bad strategy.
Why?
In short, eating good food prevents people from eating bad food. I suspect that the lesson is a generally applicable one. Teenage girls aren't the only people who skip breakfast and probably aren't the only ones who get fat from the snacks that follow.
Girls who regularly ate breakfast, particularly one that includes cereal, were slimmer than those who skipped the morning meal, according to a study that tracked nearly 2,400 girls for 10 years.
Why?
Breakfast consumption dropped as the girls aged, the researchers found, and those who did not eat breakfast tended to eat higher fat foods later in the day.
"We think it kick-starts your metabolism because you've eaten something," Barton said. "When you get to lunch you're not starving and you can make reasonable choices for lunch and dinner."
John Kirwan, a professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University's Schwartz Center for Nutrition and Metabolism, said the findings may be "more reflective of overall eating habits and quality of food consumed."
"Those who eat breakfast on a regular basis are more likely to have a structured eating plan throughout the day and consequently are less likely to snack between meals and consume empty calories," said Kirwan, who has studied the effect of breakfast consumption on exercise performance and was not involved in the study.
In short, eating good food prevents people from eating bad food. I suspect that the lesson is a generally applicable one. Teenage girls aren't the only people who skip breakfast and probably aren't the only ones who get fat from the snacks that follow.
Foreclosures.
Colorado has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation. This is not a good thing.
A Cool Evening in the Park
Activity in Washington Park flows from one phase to another through the days, weeks and seasons. On a cool Sunday evening in September, it is full of families, couples, small groups of friends, adult soccer teams and dispersing birthday parties. Half a dozen languages from around the globe fill the air: German, Spanish, Urdu, and others. A young couple with a baby has a picnic in the formal garden, drinking wine (illicitly, but quietly) in plastic martini glasses. A dad plays catch with his pre-teen daughter. Tennis players bat balls under park lights. A cloud shrouded half moon lingers overhead making the waters below glimmer. Dogs fetch sticks in Grasmere Lake (the Southern pond) scaring the geese. An ice cream truck heads home for the night. A group of shawl covered middle aged women from South Asia slow as recumbent bikes speed along the loop road. A fashion model poses for pictures of the latest shorts and blouses in front of the formal gardens you see on this blog. Blue paddle boats criss cross Smith Lake (really a pond). Firefighters lounge on lawn chairs in front of their fuel cell powered station at the Northeast corner of the park. People come to the park on cool September evenings to appreciate how lucky they are to be in Denver. Despair is absent. There are no harsh words in the air, just camaraderie and fellowship. Children fill the playgrounds under the watchful eyes of their parents. Most of the people in the park have driven in a car to come there. Washington Park is one of the jewels of the city.
The harmony isn't visibly enforced. There isn't a policeman or police car in sight. Almost all the grounds keepers and recreation center staff are at home. Even signs posting rules (other than which lane is which on the road around the park) are not prominent. When a car goes the wrong way down a one way street, it is set right by pedestrians motioning to and calling out to the driver. Washington Park has no walls, no admission fees, and no limitations on who may enter its grounds. It maintains its harmony with a reverse broken windows effect. It is visibly well tended. Its formal gardens are neat and in blossom. There is no graffiti anywhere, not even in the portapotties that dot the park. The houses that surround the park are showpieces. The people in the park model appropriate behavior, and others who come into the park try to blend in. People who want to scream, fight and get drunk go elsewhere, where they will be more welcome.
The trick of urban design, and it isn't simply a matter of landscaping or architecture, is to create physical and cultural spaces that naturally promote this kind of harmony. Even those who designed the park probably don't fully understand how it happens, but it works, which is why the park remains little changed from the way it was when it was built about eight decades ago.
The harmony isn't visibly enforced. There isn't a policeman or police car in sight. Almost all the grounds keepers and recreation center staff are at home. Even signs posting rules (other than which lane is which on the road around the park) are not prominent. When a car goes the wrong way down a one way street, it is set right by pedestrians motioning to and calling out to the driver. Washington Park has no walls, no admission fees, and no limitations on who may enter its grounds. It maintains its harmony with a reverse broken windows effect. It is visibly well tended. Its formal gardens are neat and in blossom. There is no graffiti anywhere, not even in the portapotties that dot the park. The houses that surround the park are showpieces. The people in the park model appropriate behavior, and others who come into the park try to blend in. People who want to scream, fight and get drunk go elsewhere, where they will be more welcome.
The trick of urban design, and it isn't simply a matter of landscaping or architecture, is to create physical and cultural spaces that naturally promote this kind of harmony. Even those who designed the park probably don't fully understand how it happens, but it works, which is why the park remains little changed from the way it was when it was built about eight decades ago.
10 September 2005
9-11
September 11, 2001 was a defining date in American history. Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of that fateful day.
Four year later:
- The U.S. military is still in Afghanistan, mopping up the defeated remnants of the Taliban and helping a new regime in Afghanistan, which is expressly subject to Islamic law, establish itself.
- The United States has adopted anti-terrorism policies including an "enemy combatant" policy governing individuals like the Guantanamo Bay detainee and Jose Padilla, and a policy of extraordinary rendition of individuals to nations that tourture people, that have done grevious harm to the reputation of the United States as a defender of human rights. The Republican controlled Congress has taken no action to address these policies.
- Osama bin Laden is still at large, despite a near miss in an attempt to capture him in Tora Bora. Many other senior leaders of al-Queda as of 9-11 have been captured or killed, but it isn't clear that this has weakened the organization.
- The U.S. strengthened our ties with the torture using totalitarian dicatorship of Uzbekistan, only to be ejected by the government of Uzbekistan, in order to have airbases available to fight in Afghanistan.
- The U.S. military is in Iraq, an event which was politically possible, in part, because many Americans mistakenly thought that there was a link between 9-11 and Iraq.
- Any vestige of a U.S. reputation for respecting human rights was destroyed by the manner in which the United States at Abu Grahib prison and other detention facilities in Iraq mistreated detainees in the worst ways imaginable. Discipline in these incidents has been restricted to low level figures despite strong evidence that the causes for these incidents extent all the way to cabinet level and White House Office level figures.
- al-Queda, which was previously largely absent from Iraq, has since our invasion, gains a strong base there.
- There have been terrorist attacks on transit systems in London and Madrid, linked in part to the Iraq War.
- The United States has not in any visible way sanctioned or secured change in Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that this was the source of most of the 9-11 terrorists (and much of their funding), most of the suicide bombers in Iraq, and much of the funding that provided a basis for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia has seen a new monarch take office and has engaged in gun battles with groups in the country. Saudi Arabia remains an undemocratic nation which treats women more poorly than almost any other in the world, which has a large class of unemployed young men inclined to radialism (often trained in theology), and which is among the most brutal in the world in applying the death penalty.
- Kuwait, which owes its very existence to U.S. military intervention, is not significantly reformed from its Saudi Arabian style practice that were in place prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
- Northern Nigeria is on the verge of becoming a hardline Islamic state.
- The sister party of the party of the Islamic Revolution in Iran is now, with our blessing, one of the leading political forces in Iraq, which was previously a secular dictatorship.
- U.S. ships have faced al-Queda rocket attacks near the Red Sea.
- The airline industry is still crippled, although 9-11 is not the only reason that this is the case.
- The City of New York appears to be well on the way to recovering from 9-11 economically, if not psychologically.
- There are plans to rebuild at the World Trade Center site in New York.
- Most of the families of the more than 3,000 people killed on 9-11 have received compensation.
- Federal buildings everywhere are being reinforced against possible terrorist attacks.
- Congress is debating whether Patriot Act anti-terrorism measures enacted without much discussion should be renewed.
- A Department of Homeland Security was created, in a move that is partially credited with the ineptitude of FEMA in dealing with Hurricane Katrina.
- Fire and police departments in places which are at low risk for terrorism have received substantial anti-terrorism federal grants.
- Port security has received less funding than most observers think is appropriate.
- Security at airports has been federalized into the Transportation Security Administration (the biggest new federal agency in decades) and terrorist watch lists have been established, but neither effort appears to have been terribly useful in making air travel more secure.
- The intelligence services have been reorganized under a single national intelligence czar whose importance is not yet clear. The CIA Director has been replaced by a highly partisan Congressman who has alienated many in the agency.
- "My Pet Goat", remains a symbol among liberals, of a President unable to get his priorities straight in a time of crisis.
- Thousands of people have been deported, often on non-terrorism related charges, in the hope of disrupting terrorist activity in the United States.
- Several individuals who engaged in terrorist activity or had terrorist links have been successfully prosecuted through the criminal justice system and sentenced to long terms in prison. One faces the possibility of receiving the death penalty.
- Ward Churchill, a tenured professor at the University of Colorado, is facing a lengthy examination of his tenure status driven by insensitive remarks he made about 9-11.
- The FAA is considering whether civilian jetliners need to be fitted with anti-missile laser systems.
- A color coded threat level system for the United States has proved itself to be a failure.
- No serious efforts have been undertaken to identify or address root causes of terrorism against the United States and its allies.
We all grieve the losses that were suffered four years ago. I also wonder if the actions that have been taken in response to that event have been wise ones.
Four year later:
- The U.S. military is still in Afghanistan, mopping up the defeated remnants of the Taliban and helping a new regime in Afghanistan, which is expressly subject to Islamic law, establish itself.
- The United States has adopted anti-terrorism policies including an "enemy combatant" policy governing individuals like the Guantanamo Bay detainee and Jose Padilla, and a policy of extraordinary rendition of individuals to nations that tourture people, that have done grevious harm to the reputation of the United States as a defender of human rights. The Republican controlled Congress has taken no action to address these policies.
- Osama bin Laden is still at large, despite a near miss in an attempt to capture him in Tora Bora. Many other senior leaders of al-Queda as of 9-11 have been captured or killed, but it isn't clear that this has weakened the organization.
- The U.S. strengthened our ties with the torture using totalitarian dicatorship of Uzbekistan, only to be ejected by the government of Uzbekistan, in order to have airbases available to fight in Afghanistan.
- The U.S. military is in Iraq, an event which was politically possible, in part, because many Americans mistakenly thought that there was a link between 9-11 and Iraq.
- Any vestige of a U.S. reputation for respecting human rights was destroyed by the manner in which the United States at Abu Grahib prison and other detention facilities in Iraq mistreated detainees in the worst ways imaginable. Discipline in these incidents has been restricted to low level figures despite strong evidence that the causes for these incidents extent all the way to cabinet level and White House Office level figures.
- al-Queda, which was previously largely absent from Iraq, has since our invasion, gains a strong base there.
- There have been terrorist attacks on transit systems in London and Madrid, linked in part to the Iraq War.
- The United States has not in any visible way sanctioned or secured change in Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that this was the source of most of the 9-11 terrorists (and much of their funding), most of the suicide bombers in Iraq, and much of the funding that provided a basis for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia has seen a new monarch take office and has engaged in gun battles with groups in the country. Saudi Arabia remains an undemocratic nation which treats women more poorly than almost any other in the world, which has a large class of unemployed young men inclined to radialism (often trained in theology), and which is among the most brutal in the world in applying the death penalty.
- Kuwait, which owes its very existence to U.S. military intervention, is not significantly reformed from its Saudi Arabian style practice that were in place prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
- Northern Nigeria is on the verge of becoming a hardline Islamic state.
- The sister party of the party of the Islamic Revolution in Iran is now, with our blessing, one of the leading political forces in Iraq, which was previously a secular dictatorship.
- U.S. ships have faced al-Queda rocket attacks near the Red Sea.
- The airline industry is still crippled, although 9-11 is not the only reason that this is the case.
- The City of New York appears to be well on the way to recovering from 9-11 economically, if not psychologically.
- There are plans to rebuild at the World Trade Center site in New York.
- Most of the families of the more than 3,000 people killed on 9-11 have received compensation.
- Federal buildings everywhere are being reinforced against possible terrorist attacks.
- Congress is debating whether Patriot Act anti-terrorism measures enacted without much discussion should be renewed.
- A Department of Homeland Security was created, in a move that is partially credited with the ineptitude of FEMA in dealing with Hurricane Katrina.
- Fire and police departments in places which are at low risk for terrorism have received substantial anti-terrorism federal grants.
- Port security has received less funding than most observers think is appropriate.
- Security at airports has been federalized into the Transportation Security Administration (the biggest new federal agency in decades) and terrorist watch lists have been established, but neither effort appears to have been terribly useful in making air travel more secure.
- The intelligence services have been reorganized under a single national intelligence czar whose importance is not yet clear. The CIA Director has been replaced by a highly partisan Congressman who has alienated many in the agency.
- "My Pet Goat", remains a symbol among liberals, of a President unable to get his priorities straight in a time of crisis.
- Thousands of people have been deported, often on non-terrorism related charges, in the hope of disrupting terrorist activity in the United States.
- Several individuals who engaged in terrorist activity or had terrorist links have been successfully prosecuted through the criminal justice system and sentenced to long terms in prison. One faces the possibility of receiving the death penalty.
- Ward Churchill, a tenured professor at the University of Colorado, is facing a lengthy examination of his tenure status driven by insensitive remarks he made about 9-11.
- The FAA is considering whether civilian jetliners need to be fitted with anti-missile laser systems.
- A color coded threat level system for the United States has proved itself to be a failure.
- No serious efforts have been undertaken to identify or address root causes of terrorism against the United States and its allies.
We all grieve the losses that were suffered four years ago. I also wonder if the actions that have been taken in response to that event have been wise ones.
Nuclear Waste in Utah.
High level nuclear waste storage and Yucca Valley, Nevada are virtually synonymous in the mind of the educated layman. Few people are aware, however, that Utah's Skull Valley is also home to a proposed nuclear waste dump. Despite opposition from Utah's Governor, the proposed Skull Valley site is marching briskly along the path of receiving federal approval. An opening date as soon as 2008 is possible. The site is intended as a stop gap measure until Yucca Valley can open. But, in the nuclear waste world, the temporary status quo has a tendency to linger on longer than originally planned.
This takes some pressure off local high level nuclear waste sites all over the nation. An ultimate outcome is still unclear. When people are talking about 1,000,000 year safety thresholds at Yucca Valley, and equally unlikely scenarios at Skull Valley, it is hard to know what unlikely scenario could ultimately drive a decision. The fact that the Utah site is on an Indian Reservation also puts some teeth into arguments about environmental racism and the odd semi-sovereignty of American Indian tribes in American law.
This takes some pressure off local high level nuclear waste sites all over the nation. An ultimate outcome is still unclear. When people are talking about 1,000,000 year safety thresholds at Yucca Valley, and equally unlikely scenarios at Skull Valley, it is hard to know what unlikely scenario could ultimately drive a decision. The fact that the Utah site is on an Indian Reservation also puts some teeth into arguments about environmental racism and the odd semi-sovereignty of American Indian tribes in American law.
09 September 2005
Jose Padilla Loses in 4th Circuit.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has held by a 3-0 decision that the President has the power to detain an American citizen who was arrested while unarmed in the Chicago O'Hare airport, and then detained in jail by a civilian court, indefinitely as an enemy combatant. Jose Padilla has been in a military brig for three years and four months without a trial or any evidentiary hearing before a court. My Daily Kos diary on the subject is here and received a great deal of discussion as a recommended diary there. He may now appeal to either the full panel of 4th Circuit judges, or the U.S. Supreme Court. He is likely to take the later route.
This is arguably the worst decision ever in the history of American civil liberties jurisprudence, if the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to review it. It all but ends the right to habeas corpus and the right to due process, giving the President the power to detain people indefinitely on his say so, with only limited court review.
I think that the U.S. Supreme Court will take Padilla's appeal. Four justices opined when his case was last before the U.S. Supreme Court (and dismissed on the grounds that it was filed in the wrong court, not on the merits), that he had a right to be freed immediately. It takes just four Justices to grant certiorari. All of the Justices except Thomas had expressed deep skepticism in the Hamdi decision about the propriety of a case like this (including Justice Scalia). I sincerely hope that it rules in his favor and banishes the enemy combatant doctrine, at least in this context, to the wastebin of history. I would have slept better tonight, however, if the 4th Circuit had ruled correctly in this case, as the George W. Bush appointed trial judge, the 2nd Circuit did on exactly the same facts.
This is arguably the worst decision ever in the history of American civil liberties jurisprudence, if the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to review it. It all but ends the right to habeas corpus and the right to due process, giving the President the power to detain people indefinitely on his say so, with only limited court review.
I think that the U.S. Supreme Court will take Padilla's appeal. Four justices opined when his case was last before the U.S. Supreme Court (and dismissed on the grounds that it was filed in the wrong court, not on the merits), that he had a right to be freed immediately. It takes just four Justices to grant certiorari. All of the Justices except Thomas had expressed deep skepticism in the Hamdi decision about the propriety of a case like this (including Justice Scalia). I sincerely hope that it rules in his favor and banishes the enemy combatant doctrine, at least in this context, to the wastebin of history. I would have slept better tonight, however, if the 4th Circuit had ruled correctly in this case, as the George W. Bush appointed trial judge, the 2nd Circuit did on exactly the same facts.
Flood Insurance.
The customary homeowner's insurance policy in the United States has exclusions for floods, earthquakes, war, mold, environmental contamination and intentional acts of the insured. Flood and earthquake insurance are typically purchased seperately by homeowners in areas identified as high risk from federal insurance programs. For flood insurance, high risk is typically identified as locations located in flood plains and not protected by Army Corps of Engineers certified levees.
The flood exclusion turns out to be quite problematic in practice, resulting in considerable litigation, beceause it is one of the most commonly arising departures from the general principal that a comprehensive howeowner's insurance policy will cover everything. It turns out that what constitutes a flood is not a straightforward matter. For example, early in my career, one flood exclusion case involved an irrigation canal far from a flood plain in arid Western Colorado, which was breached by clumsy construction work, causing water to gush into a small subdivision and cause considerable damage to many homes. Later in my career, a similar incident involving a breach in a municipal water supply storage facility took place near a mountainous portion of I-70, several hundred feet above then nearest stream. Many high rise buildings were filled with water a little more than a decade ago when a city worker drilled in the wrong place in downtown Chicago. And, of course, most of New Orleans, while below sea level, was behind Army Corps of Engineers certified levees.
The justification for excluding traditional floods in flood plains from homeowner's insurance, and instead diverting those risks to a federal program, is pretty clear. The flood component dwarfs the rest of the risk, losses in any individual event are usually very high, and you need a large national risk pool to make it work. Private insurance is designed to cover rare, unpredictable, isolated catastrophic events. Floods in a 50 year flood plain are not rare, unpredictable or isolated. But, it isn't at all obvious that the flood exclusion makes sense outside of those areas.
The risk profile for "freak floods" in areas which aren't in flood plains looks a lot like the risk profile of any manner of other insured risk like fires, tornados, and storms. If the freak flood risk were spread across virtually every homeowner's insurance policy in the nation, instead of only among people who elect flood insurance despite living outside a flood plain at a very high cost (typically because those individuals know something that the flood plain designators do not), the additional cost would be modest. And, since judges and juries often frown on insurance company attempts to characterize "freak floods" as falling within the exclusion and instead often look to interpretive techniques (like calling a flood storm damage or some other type of casualty), and as a result, those cases often result in considerable uncertainty and litigation costs.
The "freak flood" exclusion is less a matter of really principled analysis of the risks and benefits, than it is a crude knee jerk reaction to not wanting to bear heavy risks from ordinary floods in flood plains. A removal of this exclusion, outside of flood plains, would give our nation a more seemless safety net against those kinds of casulties at a modest cost per policy.
A similar argument can be made for earthquakes outside of known earthquake zones. The risk is modest, and it results in a number of "freak earthquake" claim litigations (although not as many as in the case of the flood exclusion) involving things like vibrations caused by nearby construction sites or a nearby collapsed mine, which aren't really what justified the exclusion. But, this is less urgent.
The flood exclusion turns out to be quite problematic in practice, resulting in considerable litigation, beceause it is one of the most commonly arising departures from the general principal that a comprehensive howeowner's insurance policy will cover everything. It turns out that what constitutes a flood is not a straightforward matter. For example, early in my career, one flood exclusion case involved an irrigation canal far from a flood plain in arid Western Colorado, which was breached by clumsy construction work, causing water to gush into a small subdivision and cause considerable damage to many homes. Later in my career, a similar incident involving a breach in a municipal water supply storage facility took place near a mountainous portion of I-70, several hundred feet above then nearest stream. Many high rise buildings were filled with water a little more than a decade ago when a city worker drilled in the wrong place in downtown Chicago. And, of course, most of New Orleans, while below sea level, was behind Army Corps of Engineers certified levees.
The justification for excluding traditional floods in flood plains from homeowner's insurance, and instead diverting those risks to a federal program, is pretty clear. The flood component dwarfs the rest of the risk, losses in any individual event are usually very high, and you need a large national risk pool to make it work. Private insurance is designed to cover rare, unpredictable, isolated catastrophic events. Floods in a 50 year flood plain are not rare, unpredictable or isolated. But, it isn't at all obvious that the flood exclusion makes sense outside of those areas.
The risk profile for "freak floods" in areas which aren't in flood plains looks a lot like the risk profile of any manner of other insured risk like fires, tornados, and storms. If the freak flood risk were spread across virtually every homeowner's insurance policy in the nation, instead of only among people who elect flood insurance despite living outside a flood plain at a very high cost (typically because those individuals know something that the flood plain designators do not), the additional cost would be modest. And, since judges and juries often frown on insurance company attempts to characterize "freak floods" as falling within the exclusion and instead often look to interpretive techniques (like calling a flood storm damage or some other type of casualty), and as a result, those cases often result in considerable uncertainty and litigation costs.
The "freak flood" exclusion is less a matter of really principled analysis of the risks and benefits, than it is a crude knee jerk reaction to not wanting to bear heavy risks from ordinary floods in flood plains. A removal of this exclusion, outside of flood plains, would give our nation a more seemless safety net against those kinds of casulties at a modest cost per policy.
A similar argument can be made for earthquakes outside of known earthquake zones. The risk is modest, and it results in a number of "freak earthquake" claim litigations (although not as many as in the case of the flood exclusion) involving things like vibrations caused by nearby construction sites or a nearby collapsed mine, which aren't really what justified the exclusion. But, this is less urgent.
Air Conditioning in Toronto.
Engineers have developed an air conditioning alternative that keeps buildings cool in an environmentally friendly way at just 10% of the energy costs of conventional air conditioning. The downside, you need to tap into the deep waters of one of the Great Lakes to make it work. It draws cool waters drom the depths of Lake Ontario and circulates them, rather than directly cooling the air. This is fine for downtown Toronto where the system is being built, but with average high temperatures in July of 80 degrees Fairenheit (and just 3 cooling degrees per day on average in the hottest month of the year), air conditioning isn't exactly the most urgent energy issue. Cornell University has a similar system.
I was going to simply stop with this irony. But, I won't because this story illustrates one of the wonders of capitalism. This project is going to save downtown energy consumers in a single Toronto building something on the order of $400,000 a year. Several dozen buildings are going to be involved in the project. And, there are major American cities, Seattle, Portland, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo come to mind, where similar systems could be practical. Systems like this make a meaningful impact on pollution emissions. And, they are problems that someone looking for a technology to maximize air conditioning expenditure savings would never have considered. But, capitalism allows niche opportunities to be identified without regard to a master plan, and cost savings and energy conservation often go hand in hand. If Canada ever institutes a significant carbon tax in order to meet global warming treaty goals, the Toronto customers could end up saving even more in the long term.
We have barely scratched the surface of energy conservation measures, and many of those opportunities will be more attractive in the long term than exploration for new sources of fossil fuels, because they are sustainable and reduce pollution.
I was going to simply stop with this irony. But, I won't because this story illustrates one of the wonders of capitalism. This project is going to save downtown energy consumers in a single Toronto building something on the order of $400,000 a year. Several dozen buildings are going to be involved in the project. And, there are major American cities, Seattle, Portland, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo come to mind, where similar systems could be practical. Systems like this make a meaningful impact on pollution emissions. And, they are problems that someone looking for a technology to maximize air conditioning expenditure savings would never have considered. But, capitalism allows niche opportunities to be identified without regard to a master plan, and cost savings and energy conservation often go hand in hand. If Canada ever institutes a significant carbon tax in order to meet global warming treaty goals, the Toronto customers could end up saving even more in the long term.
We have barely scratched the surface of energy conservation measures, and many of those opportunities will be more attractive in the long term than exploration for new sources of fossil fuels, because they are sustainable and reduce pollution.
08 September 2005
The Health Gap.
On measures of public health, the United States does an abysmal job considering the wealth of this nation.
The CIA thinks that there is a bigger gap between infant mortality in the U.S. and Malaysia, but still agrees that the Cuba does a better job of reducing infant mortality than the United States.
The problem is inequality. A UN report lays it out well.
Our society's gains are not shared on an inclusive basis, and the fault lines still have a lot to do with the color of your skin in the United States. The health insurance gap kills as many people as a Hurricane Katrina class disaster every single year. But, because it happens quietly, we don't notice. This is a preventable problem. No one in the United States should be so worthless that their life isn't worth a health insurance premium during the years that they can't afford one.
Hat tip to tiggers thotful spot at the Booman Tribune.
The CIA thinks that there is a bigger gap between infant mortality in the U.S. and Malaysia, but still agrees that the Cuba does a better job of reducing infant mortality than the United States.
The problem is inequality. A UN report lays it out well.
... A baby boy from a family in the top 5% of the US income distribution will enjoy a life span 25% longer than a boy born in the bottom 5%.
... The Institute of Medicine estimates that at least 18,000 Americans die prematurely each year solely because they lack health insurance. Being born into an uninsured household increases the probability of death before age 1 by about 50%. Unequal access to healthcare has a powerful effect on health inequalities linked to race, which are only partly explained by insurance and income inequalities. One study finds that eliminating the gap in healthcare between African Americans and white Americans would save nearly 85,000 lives a year.
Our society's gains are not shared on an inclusive basis, and the fault lines still have a lot to do with the color of your skin in the United States. The health insurance gap kills as many people as a Hurricane Katrina class disaster every single year. But, because it happens quietly, we don't notice. This is a preventable problem. No one in the United States should be so worthless that their life isn't worth a health insurance premium during the years that they can't afford one.
Hat tip to tiggers thotful spot at the Booman Tribune.
More Katrina Lessons Learned.
God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
courage to change the things we can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
-- Attributed to Roman Philosopher Boethius and popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous.
I don't believe in God, but do agree with the sentiment behind the serenity prayer. Preventable misfortune needs to be stamped out. Unpreventable fortune needs to be accepted serenely.
I've ranted at some length on the abject failure of FEMA to handle the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina well, and the lack of leadership provided by the Bush Administration.
There is, of course, blame to go around.
The biggest federal mistakes before the disaster were (1) a failure to fund levee maintenance and improvement projects, despite the fact that what New Orleans experienced was one of the top three most likely disasters to occur, (2) the development of a plan (based on a "Hurricane Pam" scenario) which simply assumed that 100,000 people or so would remain in the city and suffer, instead of recognizing that this status quo was unacceptable and trying to address it, and (3) a failure to mobilize resources and get them moving to the scene in advance of the storm actually hitting (a failure exacerbated by the fact that many Louisiana National Guard troops were in Iraq). Naval ships and trucks could have been en route before the Hurricane even made landfall, instead of days later, as actually happened.
Even one less levee break would have dramatically reduced the danger to the city. But, the funds that could have prevented that were intentionally diverted elsewhere by the Bush Administration over local protests.
Likewise, a mandatory evacuation isn't very meaningful when it isn't enforced and people aren't given the means to evacuate. Local officials do share blame for not doing a better job of enforcing the mandatory evacuation order before the Hurricane hit, or at least making it easier for people to comply. But, the Mayor's failure to do this is understandable, because efforts like city sponsored buses to get people out weren't part of the Hurricane plan. Still, we need to learn from this for all future predictable disasters. If even two-thirds of those who stayed in New Orleans and other hard hit areas had been bussed to shelters a hundred miles inland in advance of the storm, the amount of suffering from this disaster would have been an order of magnitude smaller. It is clear, after the fact that at least, that many stayed, not because they were determined to sit out the storm, but because they were unable to leave, either due to health problems, or poverty. Allowing pets to be evacuated in advance of the storm with their owners or caretakers, would have induced even more people to leave.
Sure, not everyone would have left without intense use of force. The 15,000 who are still in New Orleans now, wouldn't have left. Perhaps twice as many wouldn't have left without seeing the devastation wrought by the storm and the subsequent broken levees.
But, evacuations of even two-thirds of those who ended up staying would have helped not only those who left, but those who stayed. Rescue and supply resources would have been less strapped. Shelters of last resort would have been less full. Those who remained would have been less overwhelmingly composed of the weakest members of society, like the elderly and poor single mothers with young children.
The issue of lawlessness in the city after the storm mostly goes to the third issue, failure to dispatch help as soon as possible. Violence comes from desperation and an impression that civil authority has vanished. The city should have been swarming with relief boats, national guard troops and rescue helicopters hours after the eye passed, not several days later. National Guard officers should have been appropriating supplies from damaged groceries and pharmacies for public use and supervising their distribution within twenty-four hours, leaving potential looters without the desperation that would drive them to take those goods in the first place. People are more reasonable when they haven't gone without food, water, dry shelter and medical care for two or three days.
The biggest local failure was again, a long term one, rather than one attributable to this particular Mayor (unlike the failures at the federal level, which were mostly attributable to the ineptitude of our current leaders). Indeed, the near universal fact that land use decision making is not coordinated meaningfully at a metropolitan area level was an important part of the problem. The region's building codes and land use patterns exacerbated the risk.
These steps weren't taken, and there were other failures after the fact as well, as discussed before, most notably, failure to use resources that were available to be used, especially from volunteers, the military and distant governments. As a result, Hurricane Katrina will likely be the most deadly disaster in U.S. history, and cause more property damage than any other disaster in U.S. history. The best we can do is punish those officials who failed, mitigate the damage that has already been done, and learn our lessons from this disaster so that these consequences will never be experienced again.
There will be natural forces of comparable capacity to do harm in the future. Global warming and the proximity of so many major cities to coastal areas makes the future risk from hurricanes like this one a near inevitability. New Orleans itself could easily be hit again, even this season. But, we can improve the measures we put in place to plan for these disasters so that when they happen again they are not so catastrophic. Toughening the infrastructure in place to mitigate risk, planning development with risks in mind, improving mechanisms for evacuating people and pets to distant shelters in advance of disasters, and improving the extent to which relief forces are pre-deployed and then immediately get to the scene, would go a long way towards achieving those ends. It is hard to imagine that these costs could possibly exceed the costs of suffering another disaster like this one.
courage to change the things we can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
-- Attributed to Roman Philosopher Boethius and popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous.
I don't believe in God, but do agree with the sentiment behind the serenity prayer. Preventable misfortune needs to be stamped out. Unpreventable fortune needs to be accepted serenely.
I've ranted at some length on the abject failure of FEMA to handle the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina well, and the lack of leadership provided by the Bush Administration.
There is, of course, blame to go around.
The biggest federal mistakes before the disaster were (1) a failure to fund levee maintenance and improvement projects, despite the fact that what New Orleans experienced was one of the top three most likely disasters to occur, (2) the development of a plan (based on a "Hurricane Pam" scenario) which simply assumed that 100,000 people or so would remain in the city and suffer, instead of recognizing that this status quo was unacceptable and trying to address it, and (3) a failure to mobilize resources and get them moving to the scene in advance of the storm actually hitting (a failure exacerbated by the fact that many Louisiana National Guard troops were in Iraq). Naval ships and trucks could have been en route before the Hurricane even made landfall, instead of days later, as actually happened.
Even one less levee break would have dramatically reduced the danger to the city. But, the funds that could have prevented that were intentionally diverted elsewhere by the Bush Administration over local protests.
Likewise, a mandatory evacuation isn't very meaningful when it isn't enforced and people aren't given the means to evacuate. Local officials do share blame for not doing a better job of enforcing the mandatory evacuation order before the Hurricane hit, or at least making it easier for people to comply. But, the Mayor's failure to do this is understandable, because efforts like city sponsored buses to get people out weren't part of the Hurricane plan. Still, we need to learn from this for all future predictable disasters. If even two-thirds of those who stayed in New Orleans and other hard hit areas had been bussed to shelters a hundred miles inland in advance of the storm, the amount of suffering from this disaster would have been an order of magnitude smaller. It is clear, after the fact that at least, that many stayed, not because they were determined to sit out the storm, but because they were unable to leave, either due to health problems, or poverty. Allowing pets to be evacuated in advance of the storm with their owners or caretakers, would have induced even more people to leave.
Sure, not everyone would have left without intense use of force. The 15,000 who are still in New Orleans now, wouldn't have left. Perhaps twice as many wouldn't have left without seeing the devastation wrought by the storm and the subsequent broken levees.
But, evacuations of even two-thirds of those who ended up staying would have helped not only those who left, but those who stayed. Rescue and supply resources would have been less strapped. Shelters of last resort would have been less full. Those who remained would have been less overwhelmingly composed of the weakest members of society, like the elderly and poor single mothers with young children.
The issue of lawlessness in the city after the storm mostly goes to the third issue, failure to dispatch help as soon as possible. Violence comes from desperation and an impression that civil authority has vanished. The city should have been swarming with relief boats, national guard troops and rescue helicopters hours after the eye passed, not several days later. National Guard officers should have been appropriating supplies from damaged groceries and pharmacies for public use and supervising their distribution within twenty-four hours, leaving potential looters without the desperation that would drive them to take those goods in the first place. People are more reasonable when they haven't gone without food, water, dry shelter and medical care for two or three days.
The biggest local failure was again, a long term one, rather than one attributable to this particular Mayor (unlike the failures at the federal level, which were mostly attributable to the ineptitude of our current leaders). Indeed, the near universal fact that land use decision making is not coordinated meaningfully at a metropolitan area level was an important part of the problem. The region's building codes and land use patterns exacerbated the risk.
These steps weren't taken, and there were other failures after the fact as well, as discussed before, most notably, failure to use resources that were available to be used, especially from volunteers, the military and distant governments. As a result, Hurricane Katrina will likely be the most deadly disaster in U.S. history, and cause more property damage than any other disaster in U.S. history. The best we can do is punish those officials who failed, mitigate the damage that has already been done, and learn our lessons from this disaster so that these consequences will never be experienced again.
There will be natural forces of comparable capacity to do harm in the future. Global warming and the proximity of so many major cities to coastal areas makes the future risk from hurricanes like this one a near inevitability. New Orleans itself could easily be hit again, even this season. But, we can improve the measures we put in place to plan for these disasters so that when they happen again they are not so catastrophic. Toughening the infrastructure in place to mitigate risk, planning development with risks in mind, improving mechanisms for evacuating people and pets to distant shelters in advance of disasters, and improving the extent to which relief forces are pre-deployed and then immediately get to the scene, would go a long way towards achieving those ends. It is hard to imagine that these costs could possibly exceed the costs of suffering another disaster like this one.
The Media, Blogs and Democracy
There can be no democracy without an informed citizenry. If you don't know who the candidates are, what the issues are and what the state of the nation is, you can't make a meaningful decision at the polls and you are in a poor position to communicate with those who represent you. (Even direct democracies involve some sort of executive branch to carry out the will of the people). Without this information, decisions made in the voting booth are random.
If you live in any polity larger than a village, you need more resources than chance conversations with your neighbors and co-workers can provide. Indeed, in states with millions of people and in a nation of hundreds of millions of people, citzens must rely on third parties, collectively, the media, for essentially all information relevant to their political decision making and involvement.
From this foundation, a number of otherwise counter-intuitive aspects of politics become more clear. For example, decisions in well publicized elections are likely to better reflect the will of the people than less publicized ones. Generally speaking, this means that the people at the top of the ticket are more likely to reflect the will of the people than the people at the bottom of the ticket. The public at large is likely to have more information about the candidates for President or Senate or Governor than they are about the candidates for city council or the state legislature. On the other than, down ticket candidates are likely to be picked primarily by political elites, as the less informed choose not to vote because they don't understand what they need to in order to vote meaningfully in down ticket races. Thus, demogauges will tend to float to the top of the political heap -- since they can appeal to the masses, while understated and thoughtful politicians may linger at the bottom of the heap, since they can appeal to political elites.
This also means that the quality of information people receive, and the spin that comes with it, does matter. Opinion polls don't determine truth. Opinion polls are like classroom quizes. They determine what people have learned from what has been presented to them by the media. When politicians respond to polls, they are really responding, indirectly, to media coverage. And, since ultimately politicians rise and fall based on one big poll on election day, politicians are, to a great extent accountable to the media.
The media, of course, is not unchecked. Any particular media outlet has power only to the extent that it can influence the opinions of its consumers. If a media outlet loses its credibility, it loses influence. This influence, however, is basically a zero sum game. Since citizens receive almost all of their information from one media outlet or another, citizens who want to participate in the political process have no choice but to listen to something. In the absence of meaningful information, again, there is no democracy.
Unfortunately, the media, collectively, have a tendency to be lazy and take the press releases that they receive from political leaders at face value, even if they aren't accurate. The media have an interest in keeping the channels of communication open with news sources, and that isn't enhanced by calling out news sources you need as liars on a regular basis. Likewise, in an effort to avoid alienating consumers of the media, the mainstream media tend to present different opinions as equal, even when the facts clearly favor one side or the other.
Blogs are both an independent media source -- with some original information, and a filter, that mediates the never ending credibility battle within the media. They are far less beholden to media sources and media consumer markets, and thus don't have those institutional barriers to presenting the straight story. At their best, they make it harder for the media to deceive or mislead people, by checking facts and questioning assumptions in the mainstream media. It isn't by accident that bloggers stridently claim to be part of the "reality based community". At their worst, they make it easier for people to reinforce their own cognitive biases, by filtering or explaining away news that doesn't agree with their views, or by simply allowing rumors and mistruths to propogate. Blogs have consumers too.
The balance between the good and the bad potential of blogs is governed, to a great extent, by the norms of blogging community.
Some of those norms promote accuracy. The norm of backing up assertion with hyperlinks brings standards of proof parallels the academic tradition of footnoting sources to public discourse. The norm of skepticism and challenging assertions made by bloggers in comments parallels the benefits of peer review in the academic tradition. The norm of disciplining trolls in blog forums parallels the academic credentialing process.
On the other hand, blogs are also marked by a norm of partisanship. Hyperbole is common, and most bloggers, in the political sphere, are advocates, not neutrals. The same mechanisms that drive out idiot trolls also drives out what is often rational, if obnoxious dissent. Some claims receive more scrutiny than others. And partisan blogs typically have their own informal credibility ratings for mainstream media outlets that can unnecessarily prejudice information from disfavored sources. Alleged first hand accounts can turn out to be wrong.
To the extent that blogging norms create an incentive for rest of the media to be more informative and accurate, democracy is profoundly enhanced, because the opinions to which politicians respond will tend to be better founded. If blogs had been more successful at debunking mainstream media outlets like Fox that led people to wrongly believe that there was a connection between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam Hussein, the Iraq War might never have been fought. But, to the extent that blogging simply makes the news more partisan, it can become just another part of a political spin machine, and can aid the process of propogating the "Big Lies".
Blogs do have a vital role in our democracy, because they mediate the media sources that drive our democracy's political decision making process. But, they will only enhance that process if we emphasize the norms that keep the media honest, and suppress the urge to follow norms that can shelter us from unpleasant truths. Gullability and believing your own hype are the greatest sins of blogging.
If you live in any polity larger than a village, you need more resources than chance conversations with your neighbors and co-workers can provide. Indeed, in states with millions of people and in a nation of hundreds of millions of people, citzens must rely on third parties, collectively, the media, for essentially all information relevant to their political decision making and involvement.
From this foundation, a number of otherwise counter-intuitive aspects of politics become more clear. For example, decisions in well publicized elections are likely to better reflect the will of the people than less publicized ones. Generally speaking, this means that the people at the top of the ticket are more likely to reflect the will of the people than the people at the bottom of the ticket. The public at large is likely to have more information about the candidates for President or Senate or Governor than they are about the candidates for city council or the state legislature. On the other than, down ticket candidates are likely to be picked primarily by political elites, as the less informed choose not to vote because they don't understand what they need to in order to vote meaningfully in down ticket races. Thus, demogauges will tend to float to the top of the political heap -- since they can appeal to the masses, while understated and thoughtful politicians may linger at the bottom of the heap, since they can appeal to political elites.
This also means that the quality of information people receive, and the spin that comes with it, does matter. Opinion polls don't determine truth. Opinion polls are like classroom quizes. They determine what people have learned from what has been presented to them by the media. When politicians respond to polls, they are really responding, indirectly, to media coverage. And, since ultimately politicians rise and fall based on one big poll on election day, politicians are, to a great extent accountable to the media.
The media, of course, is not unchecked. Any particular media outlet has power only to the extent that it can influence the opinions of its consumers. If a media outlet loses its credibility, it loses influence. This influence, however, is basically a zero sum game. Since citizens receive almost all of their information from one media outlet or another, citizens who want to participate in the political process have no choice but to listen to something. In the absence of meaningful information, again, there is no democracy.
Unfortunately, the media, collectively, have a tendency to be lazy and take the press releases that they receive from political leaders at face value, even if they aren't accurate. The media have an interest in keeping the channels of communication open with news sources, and that isn't enhanced by calling out news sources you need as liars on a regular basis. Likewise, in an effort to avoid alienating consumers of the media, the mainstream media tend to present different opinions as equal, even when the facts clearly favor one side or the other.
Blogs are both an independent media source -- with some original information, and a filter, that mediates the never ending credibility battle within the media. They are far less beholden to media sources and media consumer markets, and thus don't have those institutional barriers to presenting the straight story. At their best, they make it harder for the media to deceive or mislead people, by checking facts and questioning assumptions in the mainstream media. It isn't by accident that bloggers stridently claim to be part of the "reality based community". At their worst, they make it easier for people to reinforce their own cognitive biases, by filtering or explaining away news that doesn't agree with their views, or by simply allowing rumors and mistruths to propogate. Blogs have consumers too.
The balance between the good and the bad potential of blogs is governed, to a great extent, by the norms of blogging community.
Some of those norms promote accuracy. The norm of backing up assertion with hyperlinks brings standards of proof parallels the academic tradition of footnoting sources to public discourse. The norm of skepticism and challenging assertions made by bloggers in comments parallels the benefits of peer review in the academic tradition. The norm of disciplining trolls in blog forums parallels the academic credentialing process.
On the other hand, blogs are also marked by a norm of partisanship. Hyperbole is common, and most bloggers, in the political sphere, are advocates, not neutrals. The same mechanisms that drive out idiot trolls also drives out what is often rational, if obnoxious dissent. Some claims receive more scrutiny than others. And partisan blogs typically have their own informal credibility ratings for mainstream media outlets that can unnecessarily prejudice information from disfavored sources. Alleged first hand accounts can turn out to be wrong.
To the extent that blogging norms create an incentive for rest of the media to be more informative and accurate, democracy is profoundly enhanced, because the opinions to which politicians respond will tend to be better founded. If blogs had been more successful at debunking mainstream media outlets like Fox that led people to wrongly believe that there was a connection between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam Hussein, the Iraq War might never have been fought. But, to the extent that blogging simply makes the news more partisan, it can become just another part of a political spin machine, and can aid the process of propogating the "Big Lies".
Blogs do have a vital role in our democracy, because they mediate the media sources that drive our democracy's political decision making process. But, they will only enhance that process if we emphasize the norms that keep the media honest, and suppress the urge to follow norms that can shelter us from unpleasant truths. Gullability and believing your own hype are the greatest sins of blogging.
07 September 2005
Bush Anti-Terrorism Advisor Has No Clue.
A first hand account of a speech at an anti-terrorism conference given by Juan Zarate, the Deputy National Security Advisor for terrorism in the Bush Administration, strongly suggests that the man is absolutely clueless when it comes to what terrorism is about or how to address it. I just thought that you might want to know. Have a nice evening.
Intolerant Ramah Colorado
The people of the front range hamlet of Ramah are very worked up over the fact that a Wiccan coven is trying to organize a fundraiser for a children's hospital on Halloween at the local American Legion Hall.
Disgusting. I'm ashamed that my state is home to such intolerance. There is a religion whose scriptures call for religious gatherings to be held in private. Perhaps Rev. Tucker is familiar with the passage:
Matthew 6:5-6.
A Baptist minister tried to rally the town board to stop the gathering, and one woman is circulating a petition demanding that the festival be stopped. . . . Annette Manchego . . . said, “I do not want it in our town or anywhere around our town.” . . . . The Rev. Tim Tucker of Ramah Baptist Fellowship asked the town board to meet about the matter, and Town Clerk Cindy Tompkins scheduled a workshop Aug. 25 at Town Hall. . . . Doucette-Johnson [the organizer] said some residents thought the pagans would slaughter animals and one man said he didn’t want the pagans pushing their religion down his throat. He then asked whether she would be open to a Ku Klux Klan meeting in her front yard, she said.
“That to me was like a threat,” Doucette-Johnson said.
The same man also said he could organize a cattle drive through the area to ruin the festival, Allen said. . . . Now Manchego is circulating a petition asking the American Legion Hall not to allow the rental. She said she’s collected more than 100 signatures from residents in the area and plans to present the petition to the American Legion. If that fails, Manchego said, she’ll hold a protest Oct. 29. She said pagans have the right to practice and gather privately, but shouldn’t do so in public.
“We have vulnerable young people that don’t need this put upon them,” she said. “The festival is a pulling to get people in. Then they can work with the devil himself, which they worship. It is powerful, believe me. They can brainwash you, and before you know it, you’re staying for the midnight ritual.”
Disgusting. I'm ashamed that my state is home to such intolerance. There is a religion whose scriptures call for religious gatherings to be held in private. Perhaps Rev. Tucker is familiar with the passage:
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men....when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret....
Matthew 6:5-6.
The Changing American diet.
Perennial favorite Science News has called attention to the virtues of the Mediterranean diet and particularly research that shows that extra-virgin olive oil may act as an anti-inflammatory, much like ibuprofin. The Denver Post is also on the story in its food section: "Once exotic, Mediterranean ingredients are now standard in our kitchens: olive oil, garlic, fresh herbs", the paper proclaims. Science is telling us what is healthy, with solid empircal evidence to back it up, and we are listening to the sometimes confusing message.
I am personally not an olive oil fan. Consumption of large amounts of it does not agree with my digestive system. But, there is no doubt that the American diet is changing. The United States has gotten the message about removing saturated and transfats from our diets. Lard is no longer found in every other recipe. I may not consume Mediterranean quantities of olive oil, but I do buy products that lack fats and trans-fats, do drink skim milk, have largely removed butter and margarine and lard from my diet, and do cook with other relatively healthy liquid vegetable oils that agree better with my system. I'm not the only one taking these steps.
According to the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, since 1970, per capita U.S. consumption of whole milk has dropped about 70%, while low-fat and skim milk consumption up almost three fold (total milk consumption per capita is down by about a third). Per capita butter consumption is down about 75% since 1940. Margarine consumption replaced most butter consupmtion initally, but has now fallen off has the public has become aware of the dangers of trans-fats.
The average American consumes less red meat per capita than in either 1910 or 1940. Red meat consumption is down more than 10% since 1970, although we do consume 33% more fish per capita than we did in 1970, and twice as much poultry.
This isn't to say that Americans have mastered the diet and exercise puzzle. Obesity levels remain at record highs. But, it isn't for want of trying to take, at least, easy steps to address it.
We are also seeing a shift in how we view asprin. A decade or two ago, we thought of it as primarily a headache and flu medicine. Now, as studies have shown that an asprin regime can cheaply and dramatically reduce cardio-vascular disease incidence, we are increasingly seeing asprin not as a medicine, but as a vitamin.
Ditto alcohol. Less than a century ago, our nation was convinced that prohibition was the solution. Now, epidemiology has taught us that regular moderate alcohol consumption is comparable in importance to heart health to cutting down on butter.
I'm optimistic. U.S. society has very rapidly become less active. People drive to get around and do sedentary work, something that was far less common half a century ago. Modern appliances like washing and drying machines, which are now ubiquitous, have even reduced the amount of physical labor associated with housework. Meanwhile, food has gotten a lot less expensive. In the Depression, the political slogan was a chicken in every pot. People were worried about simply getting enough food to eat on the table. Getting enough to eat is now rarely the biggest problem even for the very poor- although nutritional quality is often still lacking. Of course, it is goint to take time for our society to adjust to such a dramatic change, and while we are adjusting our habits, obesity is a natural consequence. But, the change is taking place.
Today's largely a middle class health craze is well on its way to become the standard American diet. All of us are slowly learning that if we do sententary work that we need to put exercise into our daily and weekly routines. This are hard lifestyle changes to make, and the people on the front lines of telling us what we need to do to be healthy, primary care physicians, are ill suited for changing lifestyles as opposed to treating infectious and accute conditions. They didn't sign up to be cultural innovators. But, despite a profusion of scientific idiots, a sufficient critical mass of Americans does care enough about their health to try to sort through the evidence and over time a consensus culture of food which is far more healthy is emerging.
I am personally not an olive oil fan. Consumption of large amounts of it does not agree with my digestive system. But, there is no doubt that the American diet is changing. The United States has gotten the message about removing saturated and transfats from our diets. Lard is no longer found in every other recipe. I may not consume Mediterranean quantities of olive oil, but I do buy products that lack fats and trans-fats, do drink skim milk, have largely removed butter and margarine and lard from my diet, and do cook with other relatively healthy liquid vegetable oils that agree better with my system. I'm not the only one taking these steps.
According to the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, since 1970, per capita U.S. consumption of whole milk has dropped about 70%, while low-fat and skim milk consumption up almost three fold (total milk consumption per capita is down by about a third). Per capita butter consumption is down about 75% since 1940. Margarine consumption replaced most butter consupmtion initally, but has now fallen off has the public has become aware of the dangers of trans-fats.
The average American consumes less red meat per capita than in either 1910 or 1940. Red meat consumption is down more than 10% since 1970, although we do consume 33% more fish per capita than we did in 1970, and twice as much poultry.
This isn't to say that Americans have mastered the diet and exercise puzzle. Obesity levels remain at record highs. But, it isn't for want of trying to take, at least, easy steps to address it.
We are also seeing a shift in how we view asprin. A decade or two ago, we thought of it as primarily a headache and flu medicine. Now, as studies have shown that an asprin regime can cheaply and dramatically reduce cardio-vascular disease incidence, we are increasingly seeing asprin not as a medicine, but as a vitamin.
Ditto alcohol. Less than a century ago, our nation was convinced that prohibition was the solution. Now, epidemiology has taught us that regular moderate alcohol consumption is comparable in importance to heart health to cutting down on butter.
I'm optimistic. U.S. society has very rapidly become less active. People drive to get around and do sedentary work, something that was far less common half a century ago. Modern appliances like washing and drying machines, which are now ubiquitous, have even reduced the amount of physical labor associated with housework. Meanwhile, food has gotten a lot less expensive. In the Depression, the political slogan was a chicken in every pot. People were worried about simply getting enough food to eat on the table. Getting enough to eat is now rarely the biggest problem even for the very poor- although nutritional quality is often still lacking. Of course, it is goint to take time for our society to adjust to such a dramatic change, and while we are adjusting our habits, obesity is a natural consequence. But, the change is taking place.
Today's largely a middle class health craze is well on its way to become the standard American diet. All of us are slowly learning that if we do sententary work that we need to put exercise into our daily and weekly routines. This are hard lifestyle changes to make, and the people on the front lines of telling us what we need to do to be healthy, primary care physicians, are ill suited for changing lifestyles as opposed to treating infectious and accute conditions. They didn't sign up to be cultural innovators. But, despite a profusion of scientific idiots, a sufficient critical mass of Americans does care enough about their health to try to sort through the evidence and over time a consensus culture of food which is far more healthy is emerging.
About Unemployment.
My former blog partner Blogicus Maximus over at a Political State Report has given Wash Park Prophet a welcome shout out and also noted some bleak economic numbers for Colorado, which being a GOP fellow, he is naturally inclined to attribute to the Democrats. The most politically sensitive economic number, of course, is unemployment. His post got me thinking about the issue of unemployment, which had already been buzzing in my head in the wake of the biggest one week job loss since the Great Depression in the form of Hurricane Katrina, something that National Public Radio also discussed this morning.
What is unemployment? Fundamentally, it is a failure of entraprenuership. Unemployment happens went our society lacks the creativity necessary to put everyone who is available to work to work. Of course, sometimes this creativity fails for good reason, and Hurricane Katrina, which I'll discuss in a moment, is a dramatic example of the problem.
Economists speaking to the public often talk about a supply of employees, and a supply of jobs, but that isn't a very helpful way to think about it. Jobs are not wigets. They can be created at a moment's notice and disappear just as fast. The Commerce Department, for example, goes from having fewer than 30,000 employees to more than 500,000 employees every decade to conduct the census. Some entire industries, like the film industry and the construction industry, have virtually no permanent jobs at all -- almost everyone in each industry flits from project to project on an ad hoc basis, with at most a fragile small employer looking for work for them. Raw materials don't create their own wigets, but people can create their own jobs, through self-employment, and a significant proportion of our working population does just that. Indeed, many professions, accounting, law and medicine among them, have ethical rules that prohibit people outside the profession from owning enterprises within the profession.
Also, the creation of one job does not necessarily prevent others from creating the same job. In 1990, there were virtually no shops serving the Vietnamese soup "pho" outside of immigrant communities which they served in a handful of major metropolitian destination cities, and in 1980, there were virtually no Thai restaurants in the United States. Now, every city that is worth mentioning has several Vietnamese Pho shops and Thai restaurants. To my knowledge there is only one significant franchise, Swing Thai, among them. Traditional thinking about the supply and demand for jobs would lead you to think that the people who created the first Vietnamese Pho shops and Thai restaurants would have been jealous of their business methods so that their jobs in an economy with limited demand would be safe. But, that isn't what they did. They taught fellow immigrants the business model they were using, and it was widely replicated, creating thousands of jobs across the nation. Thai and Vietnamese immigrants created a niche where typical immigrants could do something useful in the economy and rapidly filled it. This isn't atypical. Los Angeles is full of Korean grocers serving communities too poor to have supermarkets. The nation is full of Korean wig shop owners. Centuries ago, in Europe's Jewish ghettos, a diamond industry was created. Once someone comes up with a way to take people whose skills are abundant and finds something worthwhile for them to do, this can typically be replacated and dramatically enhance economic growth. Detailed recent research on economic growth has shown that it comes in spurts based on specific technological or cultural innovations, rather than through the gradual accumulation of savings and capital, as previous economic theories of growth had assumed.
This isn't just a matter of immigrant communities either. Who would have guessed in the days when United, TWA, Delta and PanAm dominated the airports of the country, that someone would invent a new kind of airline called a discount carrier (exemplified by Southwest Air now)? Schumpeter aptly noted that the firms that triumph from revolutionary new ways of producing are rarely the firms that led the economy before the revolution. It is a lesson my own family knows from personal experience. My children are distant heirs of one of the great general trading companies that dominated the Korean economy before the Korean War. That company is now an economic nothing, if it exists at all in modern South Korea. But, some of their Korean cousins have now made themselves leaders in the new Korean industrial conglomerates, founded by others, which now dominant the Korean economy, while other members of their extended family have joined the American professional class, in each case jumping ship to ride new economic waves. Korean unemployment shrunk, and its economy grew, despite the loss of vast numbers of jobs at Korean general trading companies, because a better educated population was able to create new opportunities for themselves that didn't exist before.
Hurricane Katrina has left our society will all sorts of work to do. We have an entire city to rebuild, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, who need new housing (at least temporarily), and services that must be provided to all those people which were previously provided by enterprises which are no longer functioning.
The problem is that the work that needs to be done is not necessarily the work that all the people displaced by the Hurricane are accustomed to doing. To take just one example, we have hundreds of displaced jazz musicians who are useless in restoring the devistated electrical system. Similarly, while it is a relatively easy matter to squeeze tens of thousands of displaced university students into classrooms at other institutions across the country, it is more cumbersome to find work for the thousands of displaced professors and administrators who planned to teach classes at New Orleans universities this semester.
The same issue comes up when a factory shuts down. Even when our economy does create replacement jobs in other sectors, they are rarely jobs that the factory workers would be qualified to do. A production line worker may be ill suited to managing an office computer network.
Sometimes, unemployment can be a good thing in the long term. A chemical engineer may be able to find a job quickly as a barrista at Starbucks, but we'd prefer that she took her time and found a position that made better use of her skills. At other times it is tragic. Our nation has lost tens of millions of low skilled factory jobs in the past three decades, and has created jobs that those individuals can't fill. Even worse, our efforts to retrain those workers, or at least, to redesign our education system so that it isn't sending millions of new unskilled workers into the work force every year, which worked when factory jobs were abundant, have been negligable.
The Arabic empire swept across North Africa, Spain, the Balkans, the Middle East, Central Asia and Indonesia about 1300 years ago to a great extent on the strength of their ability to handle unemployment problems. The societies they displaced had been stagnant and disorganized, relying on tradition to carry them through from generation to generation. The Muslim conquerers put a single individual in charge of villages or communities. This individual was in a position to see what could to be done to improve the community and dispatch people to address it as needed, bringing new flexibility and vitality to previously rigid responses to the basic questions what the community would produce and how it would do it. It supplanted traditional elites who had subsisted on inherited wealth with a society based on current ability to meet community needs. Anglo-Saxon barbarians did much the same thing in the Norman invasion of England a thousand years ago, where military officers with proven leadership abilities were given rulership over whole communities and displaced an older aristrocracy.
In the last great wave of American immigration, the role of the community organizer who took idle people and found them something worthwhile to do, was filled by Tammany Hall and other political machines. In the Great Depression, massive public works programs filled the same role. In the 1950s and 1960s, union halls often filled this role.
One of the gaps in our current economy is the lack of people at a sub-elected official, community level to match resources to needs in a non-bureacratic way, informed by common sense and immediate exposure to local economic conditions. We've managed to keep unemployment at modest levels in an economy marked by peace and gradual change, but unless our economy develops new institutions and institutional roles to connect people and societal needs, future economic upheavals could lead to great unemployment. Let's hope that Katrina serves as a dry run that helps develop those kinds of institutions.
What is unemployment? Fundamentally, it is a failure of entraprenuership. Unemployment happens went our society lacks the creativity necessary to put everyone who is available to work to work. Of course, sometimes this creativity fails for good reason, and Hurricane Katrina, which I'll discuss in a moment, is a dramatic example of the problem.
Economists speaking to the public often talk about a supply of employees, and a supply of jobs, but that isn't a very helpful way to think about it. Jobs are not wigets. They can be created at a moment's notice and disappear just as fast. The Commerce Department, for example, goes from having fewer than 30,000 employees to more than 500,000 employees every decade to conduct the census. Some entire industries, like the film industry and the construction industry, have virtually no permanent jobs at all -- almost everyone in each industry flits from project to project on an ad hoc basis, with at most a fragile small employer looking for work for them. Raw materials don't create their own wigets, but people can create their own jobs, through self-employment, and a significant proportion of our working population does just that. Indeed, many professions, accounting, law and medicine among them, have ethical rules that prohibit people outside the profession from owning enterprises within the profession.
Also, the creation of one job does not necessarily prevent others from creating the same job. In 1990, there were virtually no shops serving the Vietnamese soup "pho" outside of immigrant communities which they served in a handful of major metropolitian destination cities, and in 1980, there were virtually no Thai restaurants in the United States. Now, every city that is worth mentioning has several Vietnamese Pho shops and Thai restaurants. To my knowledge there is only one significant franchise, Swing Thai, among them. Traditional thinking about the supply and demand for jobs would lead you to think that the people who created the first Vietnamese Pho shops and Thai restaurants would have been jealous of their business methods so that their jobs in an economy with limited demand would be safe. But, that isn't what they did. They taught fellow immigrants the business model they were using, and it was widely replicated, creating thousands of jobs across the nation. Thai and Vietnamese immigrants created a niche where typical immigrants could do something useful in the economy and rapidly filled it. This isn't atypical. Los Angeles is full of Korean grocers serving communities too poor to have supermarkets. The nation is full of Korean wig shop owners. Centuries ago, in Europe's Jewish ghettos, a diamond industry was created. Once someone comes up with a way to take people whose skills are abundant and finds something worthwhile for them to do, this can typically be replacated and dramatically enhance economic growth. Detailed recent research on economic growth has shown that it comes in spurts based on specific technological or cultural innovations, rather than through the gradual accumulation of savings and capital, as previous economic theories of growth had assumed.
This isn't just a matter of immigrant communities either. Who would have guessed in the days when United, TWA, Delta and PanAm dominated the airports of the country, that someone would invent a new kind of airline called a discount carrier (exemplified by Southwest Air now)? Schumpeter aptly noted that the firms that triumph from revolutionary new ways of producing are rarely the firms that led the economy before the revolution. It is a lesson my own family knows from personal experience. My children are distant heirs of one of the great general trading companies that dominated the Korean economy before the Korean War. That company is now an economic nothing, if it exists at all in modern South Korea. But, some of their Korean cousins have now made themselves leaders in the new Korean industrial conglomerates, founded by others, which now dominant the Korean economy, while other members of their extended family have joined the American professional class, in each case jumping ship to ride new economic waves. Korean unemployment shrunk, and its economy grew, despite the loss of vast numbers of jobs at Korean general trading companies, because a better educated population was able to create new opportunities for themselves that didn't exist before.
Hurricane Katrina has left our society will all sorts of work to do. We have an entire city to rebuild, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, who need new housing (at least temporarily), and services that must be provided to all those people which were previously provided by enterprises which are no longer functioning.
The problem is that the work that needs to be done is not necessarily the work that all the people displaced by the Hurricane are accustomed to doing. To take just one example, we have hundreds of displaced jazz musicians who are useless in restoring the devistated electrical system. Similarly, while it is a relatively easy matter to squeeze tens of thousands of displaced university students into classrooms at other institutions across the country, it is more cumbersome to find work for the thousands of displaced professors and administrators who planned to teach classes at New Orleans universities this semester.
The same issue comes up when a factory shuts down. Even when our economy does create replacement jobs in other sectors, they are rarely jobs that the factory workers would be qualified to do. A production line worker may be ill suited to managing an office computer network.
Sometimes, unemployment can be a good thing in the long term. A chemical engineer may be able to find a job quickly as a barrista at Starbucks, but we'd prefer that she took her time and found a position that made better use of her skills. At other times it is tragic. Our nation has lost tens of millions of low skilled factory jobs in the past three decades, and has created jobs that those individuals can't fill. Even worse, our efforts to retrain those workers, or at least, to redesign our education system so that it isn't sending millions of new unskilled workers into the work force every year, which worked when factory jobs were abundant, have been negligable.
The Arabic empire swept across North Africa, Spain, the Balkans, the Middle East, Central Asia and Indonesia about 1300 years ago to a great extent on the strength of their ability to handle unemployment problems. The societies they displaced had been stagnant and disorganized, relying on tradition to carry them through from generation to generation. The Muslim conquerers put a single individual in charge of villages or communities. This individual was in a position to see what could to be done to improve the community and dispatch people to address it as needed, bringing new flexibility and vitality to previously rigid responses to the basic questions what the community would produce and how it would do it. It supplanted traditional elites who had subsisted on inherited wealth with a society based on current ability to meet community needs. Anglo-Saxon barbarians did much the same thing in the Norman invasion of England a thousand years ago, where military officers with proven leadership abilities were given rulership over whole communities and displaced an older aristrocracy.
In the last great wave of American immigration, the role of the community organizer who took idle people and found them something worthwhile to do, was filled by Tammany Hall and other political machines. In the Great Depression, massive public works programs filled the same role. In the 1950s and 1960s, union halls often filled this role.
One of the gaps in our current economy is the lack of people at a sub-elected official, community level to match resources to needs in a non-bureacratic way, informed by common sense and immediate exposure to local economic conditions. We've managed to keep unemployment at modest levels in an economy marked by peace and gradual change, but unless our economy develops new institutions and institutional roles to connect people and societal needs, future economic upheavals could lead to great unemployment. Let's hope that Katrina serves as a dry run that helps develop those kinds of institutions.
06 September 2005
100 Posts
The Wash Park Prophet is pleased to celebrate this, my 100th post on this blog. Traffic is up. Comments are up. A number of blogs have added Wash Park Prophet to their blog rolls. Search engines are sending people here on every conceivable topic. It is still fun. The subjects set forth in the sidebar are still being covered. I have archives from three different months. I only hope that the next 100 posts will be as good as the last 100 posts. Thank you all for reading and commenting on this site. I hope it has been a service to you.
Racial Discrimination in Mortgage Lending
Blacks and Hispanics are being steered towards subprime lenders who charge high interest rates on the basis of race, causing them to pay unnecessarily high interest rates far too often.
The print edition of the story in the Denver Post notes that the study referenced above closely confirms a prior Denver Post study of subprime lending patterns in Denver.
Lenders blame credit scores and down payment amounts, which, conveniently, they don't have to disclose (despite the fact that down payment amounts can easily be determined from matters in the public record and credit scores are available to any credit card company considering making an unsolicited credit offer that will end up in your junk mail), but it is hard to call that anything but bullshit. Blacks making $100,000 a year do not have much less money available for down payments and much worse credit on average than whites with incomes of less than $40,000. Even in the highly unlikely event that blacks making $100,000 a year had the same amount available for down payments and the same credit scores on average as whites with incomes of less than $40,000, they should still be entering into fewer subprime loans because they have higher incomes. Race neutral explanations simply aren't credible in this case.
People concerned about non-discrimination in this country need to stop worrying about the 1-2% of prospective white law school students at the most elite institutions who may attend a slightly less prestigious law school because of affirmative action, and start worrying about the nearly 80% of high income blacks and nearly two-thirds of middle class blacks who are paying several thousand dollars a year too much to mortgage companies on the basis of race.
The silence of regulators who should be enforcing the existing laws against discrimination by lenders on the basis of race in this area is deafening. The data we already have should be driving a wave of high level prosecutions, not mere requests for more data.
Merit driven mortgage lending is an important part of the bootstap mechanism that allows families to move up the socio-economic ladder. It also is a critical means of breaking down the racial segregation in housing that bedevils almost every American city. This is a key pressure point in the remaining edifice of racial discrimination that exists in the United States and it needs to be squeezed. Otherwise, we will delay for another generation the dismantling of the race based caste system that has been permitted to persist in this country, despit the progress made in the 1950s and 1960s to enhance racial equality.
Even blacks with incomes above $100,000 a year were charged high rates more often than whites with incomes below $40,000. . . .
In 2004, interest rates of about 8 percent and higher were considered high rates under a federal standard.
Lenders charged a high rate to 27 percent of black borrowers, 14 percent of Hispanic borrowers and 6 percent of whites.
The pattern of disparities was similar in the Charlotte metropolitan area and across the Carolinas.
A borrower's income did not explain the disparities, the Observer's study showed. Blacks got high-rate loans much more often than whites with similar and smaller incomes.
The gaps increased with income. Among lower-income families, blacks received high-rate loans 3.3 times as often as whites. Among higher- income families, blacks received high rates 4.8 times as often.
Higher-income blacks living in white communities got high rates much more often than their white neighbors.
The print edition of the story in the Denver Post notes that the study referenced above closely confirms a prior Denver Post study of subprime lending patterns in Denver.
Lenders blame credit scores and down payment amounts, which, conveniently, they don't have to disclose (despite the fact that down payment amounts can easily be determined from matters in the public record and credit scores are available to any credit card company considering making an unsolicited credit offer that will end up in your junk mail), but it is hard to call that anything but bullshit. Blacks making $100,000 a year do not have much less money available for down payments and much worse credit on average than whites with incomes of less than $40,000. Even in the highly unlikely event that blacks making $100,000 a year had the same amount available for down payments and the same credit scores on average as whites with incomes of less than $40,000, they should still be entering into fewer subprime loans because they have higher incomes. Race neutral explanations simply aren't credible in this case.
People concerned about non-discrimination in this country need to stop worrying about the 1-2% of prospective white law school students at the most elite institutions who may attend a slightly less prestigious law school because of affirmative action, and start worrying about the nearly 80% of high income blacks and nearly two-thirds of middle class blacks who are paying several thousand dollars a year too much to mortgage companies on the basis of race.
The silence of regulators who should be enforcing the existing laws against discrimination by lenders on the basis of race in this area is deafening. The data we already have should be driving a wave of high level prosecutions, not mere requests for more data.
Merit driven mortgage lending is an important part of the bootstap mechanism that allows families to move up the socio-economic ladder. It also is a critical means of breaking down the racial segregation in housing that bedevils almost every American city. This is a key pressure point in the remaining edifice of racial discrimination that exists in the United States and it needs to be squeezed. Otherwise, we will delay for another generation the dismantling of the race based caste system that has been permitted to persist in this country, despit the progress made in the 1950s and 1960s to enhance racial equality.
05 September 2005
Getting out of the way.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency could probably have done more good in Hurricane Katrina by simply not existing. How else can you explain an organization which is charged with facilitating emergency action, and instead turns it away, en masse?
Command and control style management isn't appropriate or useful in situations such as this one where the command elements don't appear to know anything more than the average person, and where vast numbers of volunteers willing to help share a common purpose. FEMA's job is not to say no to people who want to help. It is to encourage as many people as possible to get to places that need help.
Ordinary people with boats can save hundreds or thousands of lives in a flood. Sometimes a county supervisor in Northern Wisconsin is somehow more able to get a bus to evacuate people to the scene than a federal agency. Ordinarily, stealing a bus is a bad idea, but when it is a means of rescuing a bus load of people from a dangerous situation and it has been abandoned, it is an act of heroism.
Also, rather than universally decrying looters, we should, in times of disaster, recognize a general rule that property rights are subordinate to the needs of the community to perserve life and health and safety. Stealing food from grocery stores that would otherwise throw it away months later upon returning is no crime. Grabbing vehicles to get people to safety is acceptable. This doesn't mean that armed gangs grabbing television sets need to be protected, but the need for balance in situations like these is real.
Even in ordinary times good management often involves giving people a common purpose and doing your best to keep bureacracy and interference and hold ups out of the way. Wikis and open source software projects have taught us that it is possible to harness the efforts of thousands of strangers in a manner that does more good than harm.
Many people who praise laissez-faire capitalism fail to understand its real genius. There is no one in charge. There are simply some basic ground rules and common objectives which produce good results in a decentralized fashion. Our emergency management agency needs to learn to get out of the way of other people and countries who are doing good and focus instead on doing good itself.
Command and control style management isn't appropriate or useful in situations such as this one where the command elements don't appear to know anything more than the average person, and where vast numbers of volunteers willing to help share a common purpose. FEMA's job is not to say no to people who want to help. It is to encourage as many people as possible to get to places that need help.
Ordinary people with boats can save hundreds or thousands of lives in a flood. Sometimes a county supervisor in Northern Wisconsin is somehow more able to get a bus to evacuate people to the scene than a federal agency. Ordinarily, stealing a bus is a bad idea, but when it is a means of rescuing a bus load of people from a dangerous situation and it has been abandoned, it is an act of heroism.
Also, rather than universally decrying looters, we should, in times of disaster, recognize a general rule that property rights are subordinate to the needs of the community to perserve life and health and safety. Stealing food from grocery stores that would otherwise throw it away months later upon returning is no crime. Grabbing vehicles to get people to safety is acceptable. This doesn't mean that armed gangs grabbing television sets need to be protected, but the need for balance in situations like these is real.
Even in ordinary times good management often involves giving people a common purpose and doing your best to keep bureacracy and interference and hold ups out of the way. Wikis and open source software projects have taught us that it is possible to harness the efforts of thousands of strangers in a manner that does more good than harm.
Many people who praise laissez-faire capitalism fail to understand its real genius. There is no one in charge. There are simply some basic ground rules and common objectives which produce good results in a decentralized fashion. Our emergency management agency needs to learn to get out of the way of other people and countries who are doing good and focus instead on doing good itself.
Smoking down 60% in Utah in 6 years.
At times I scorn Utah. Its handling of raves is backwards, it attitudes towards alcohol are nuts, and its women marry and have children too young. But, Utah, because it is so different from the rest of the United States, is also able to bring about some remarkable achievements. A few years ago it made headlines by finding the will to reduce student-teacher ratios for elementary school students to record low levels.
Now, it has reduced its smoking rate from 25% to 10.5% since 1999. The high school smoking rate is a mere 7.3%. Can it be reproduced elsewhere? Who knows? But, it is good news.
Now, it has reduced its smoking rate from 25% to 10.5% since 1999. The high school smoking rate is a mere 7.3%. Can it be reproduced elsewhere? Who knows? But, it is good news.
04 September 2005
Denver Cops Bite and Brawl.
Nothing inspires confidence in your local police force so much as them biting each other and brawling over a softball match. I've heard it said that the psychological profiles of police and the people who commit crimes differ very little. Usually, I am inclined to discredit that claim, but every once and a while something like this happens and your left wondering if it might contain a shred of truth.
Also, why are our city's cops not up to playing hardball?
Also, why are our city's cops not up to playing hardball?
Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies.
Chief Justice Rehqnuist has died, leaving two vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court (actually Justice O'Connor's resignation is only effective upon the appointment of her successor, but she has tendered her resignation).
My second post on this blog remains on target. The swing vote in the Court will still become Justice Kennedy. This does add one twist, however. Until successors to O'Connor and Rehnquist are appointed, there will be four "liberal" justices (Stevens, Ginsberg, Souter and Beyer), two "moderate" justices (O'Connor and Kennedy) and just two conservative justices (Scalia and Thomas) on the Court. This would result in a number of 4-4 votes on close issues in the term that begins in three weeks. The Court could easily have six months to a year with only eight members. Also, it isn't clear if nominee John Roberts would feel compelled to recuse himself from a critical appeal unfavorable to Guantanamo Bay detainee which he ruled upon in a Circuit Judge. If he took office and did recuse himself in that case, and that case was heard prior to the appointment of Rehnquist's successor, that case could be heard by a 4 liberal, 1 moderate, 2 conservative member court (the quorum for the U.S. Supreme Court is six Justices).
John G. Roberts, Jr., an extremely conservative man, most of whose career has been deeply meshed with conservative politics, has been nominated to replace moderate Justice O'Connor, and while some Democrats will object, the likelihood of his nomination being approved is significant. There is little likelihood that the individual appointed to replace Justice Rehnquist will be more moderate as a result.
Elections matter. The election of 2004 determined who would appoint the next two Supreme Court Justices. The nominees would have been very different had Senator Kerry been elected. But, he wasn't, and so our nation's jurisprudence will take a turn to the right for the next few decades. Justice Rehnquist served 33 years on the U.S. Supreme Court. John Roberts, Jr. is a comparatively young man, and I expect that the individual nominated to replace Justice Rehnquist will likewise be relatively young.
Effectively, no matter who wins the next Presidential election, the U.S. Supreme Court has ceased to be a meaningful venue for vindicating constitutional rights.
My second post on this blog remains on target. The swing vote in the Court will still become Justice Kennedy. This does add one twist, however. Until successors to O'Connor and Rehnquist are appointed, there will be four "liberal" justices (Stevens, Ginsberg, Souter and Beyer), two "moderate" justices (O'Connor and Kennedy) and just two conservative justices (Scalia and Thomas) on the Court. This would result in a number of 4-4 votes on close issues in the term that begins in three weeks. The Court could easily have six months to a year with only eight members. Also, it isn't clear if nominee John Roberts would feel compelled to recuse himself from a critical appeal unfavorable to Guantanamo Bay detainee which he ruled upon in a Circuit Judge. If he took office and did recuse himself in that case, and that case was heard prior to the appointment of Rehnquist's successor, that case could be heard by a 4 liberal, 1 moderate, 2 conservative member court (the quorum for the U.S. Supreme Court is six Justices).
John G. Roberts, Jr., an extremely conservative man, most of whose career has been deeply meshed with conservative politics, has been nominated to replace moderate Justice O'Connor, and while some Democrats will object, the likelihood of his nomination being approved is significant. There is little likelihood that the individual appointed to replace Justice Rehnquist will be more moderate as a result.
Elections matter. The election of 2004 determined who would appoint the next two Supreme Court Justices. The nominees would have been very different had Senator Kerry been elected. But, he wasn't, and so our nation's jurisprudence will take a turn to the right for the next few decades. Justice Rehnquist served 33 years on the U.S. Supreme Court. John Roberts, Jr. is a comparatively young man, and I expect that the individual nominated to replace Justice Rehnquist will likewise be relatively young.
Effectively, no matter who wins the next Presidential election, the U.S. Supreme Court has ceased to be a meaningful venue for vindicating constitutional rights.
02 September 2005
DOD Serious About Airships.
The Department of Defense is getting serious about using airships as military transports. The project, called "Walrus" is supposed to have a prototype with a capacity comparable to the C-130 ready for delivery in 2008, and ultimately plans call for a transport capacity comparable to a Navy troop transport ship (i.e. able to carry 1,800 troops and their gear).
Why airships?
1. They are about three times as fast as a typical transport ship, are almost twice as fast as an off road military convoy overland, and are also faster overland than a military convoy travelling by road or rail.
2. They can travel point to point without an airstrip at either end. In contrast, heavy forces must now be loaded onto railroad cars, unloaded from the rail cars and put on ships, transported via ship to a port, be unloaded at port, and driven to their destination.
3. They are truly all terrain vehicles and can't be harmed by IEDs, land mines, traps, destroyed bridges or barricades on roads. Similarly, they can easily traverse jungles and other densely forested roadless areas at full speed.
4. Cutting edge technological advances aren't required to make it work.
5. They are cheaper to operate, and can carry much more cargo, than airplanes or helicopters.
6. The problems that led to the Hindenberg disaster in 1937 are easily overcome. The Hindenberg was filled with hydrogen gas and more importantly its exterior was coated with a jet fuel variant. Modern airships usually have non-flammable helium in them and have fire resistant components.
Obviously, you don't want an airship flying within the line of fire of hostile troops. But, it is an attractive intermediate option between the expensive and low capacity traditional airlift, and the cheap but slow traditional sealift.
Airships also have significant commercial potential, particularly if the military ends up bearing most of the expensive development costs. For example, commercial airships could be an excellent alternative to ferries in island chains, an excellent means of supporting larger communities (or oil exploration efforts) in the Alaskan interior without having to build ecological damaging and expensive roads, and a good intermediate option for shipping time dependent but not overnight urgent mail and airfreight. Airships are already used for tourism, and are particularly attractive in places where it would be expensive and ecologically damaging to build road and/or bridges for tourists. And, of course, it isn't hard to imagine a Walrus airship swooping down over a pier in St. Bernard Parish, Lousiana that I heard about on NPR this morning with 1,500 people stranded and awaiting a sea rescue, and carrying them all away directly to safety dozens of miles away in a single trip.
Why airships?
1. They are about three times as fast as a typical transport ship, are almost twice as fast as an off road military convoy overland, and are also faster overland than a military convoy travelling by road or rail.
2. They can travel point to point without an airstrip at either end. In contrast, heavy forces must now be loaded onto railroad cars, unloaded from the rail cars and put on ships, transported via ship to a port, be unloaded at port, and driven to their destination.
3. They are truly all terrain vehicles and can't be harmed by IEDs, land mines, traps, destroyed bridges or barricades on roads. Similarly, they can easily traverse jungles and other densely forested roadless areas at full speed.
4. Cutting edge technological advances aren't required to make it work.
5. They are cheaper to operate, and can carry much more cargo, than airplanes or helicopters.
6. The problems that led to the Hindenberg disaster in 1937 are easily overcome. The Hindenberg was filled with hydrogen gas and more importantly its exterior was coated with a jet fuel variant. Modern airships usually have non-flammable helium in them and have fire resistant components.
Obviously, you don't want an airship flying within the line of fire of hostile troops. But, it is an attractive intermediate option between the expensive and low capacity traditional airlift, and the cheap but slow traditional sealift.
Airships also have significant commercial potential, particularly if the military ends up bearing most of the expensive development costs. For example, commercial airships could be an excellent alternative to ferries in island chains, an excellent means of supporting larger communities (or oil exploration efforts) in the Alaskan interior without having to build ecological damaging and expensive roads, and a good intermediate option for shipping time dependent but not overnight urgent mail and airfreight. Airships are already used for tourism, and are particularly attractive in places where it would be expensive and ecologically damaging to build road and/or bridges for tourists. And, of course, it isn't hard to imagine a Walrus airship swooping down over a pier in St. Bernard Parish, Lousiana that I heard about on NPR this morning with 1,500 people stranded and awaiting a sea rescue, and carrying them all away directly to safety dozens of miles away in a single trip.
Labor Day Weekend 2005
The machinists union at Boeing has voted to go on strike and this strike, unlike most in recent years, will bring the company's manufacturing operations to a halt. Perhaps it is fitting that the decision comes on the eve of labor day weekend.
It is not a happy time for the union movement in the United States. Private sector union membership rates are at their lowest levels since the 1920s, before the National Labor Relations Act was passed and continues to fall. Despite a few high profile strikes, labor actions are actually at near record lows. At Northwest Airlines, flight attendant and pilots unions aren't even honoring mechanic's union picket lines, while scab workers and outside contractors permanently replace the striking mechanics; the mechanic's union at NWA has been all but broken. This is also the year that the AFL-CIO finally broke up, with a group of unions frustrated by the current leadership and led by the Service Employees International Union leaving what had been for decades, a united front that had united almost every union in the United States in solidarity. The real wages of high school educated men have remained stagnant since the 1970s. Essentially all of the economic growth in the past generation has accrued to the college educated elite that runs the country. Health care costs are starting to eat away at even this status quo. Union defined benefit pensions funds are suffering from many of the woes experienced by their corporate sponsored cousins (although they are, at least, not at the whims of a single employer's health). The National Labor Relations Board has dealt a major defeat to the movement in not allowing graduate students to organize unions. The 40 hour week has vanished for much of the workforce, as exemptions have swallowed the general rule, and most families now need two workers, instead of one, to sustain a middle class lifestyle -- the American way of life has far less leisure than it once did.
Wal-Mart, one of the biggest companies in the United States, is union free, despite widespread complaints from workers resulting in legal action against it including what may be the largest ever class action gender discrimination suit. Changes in the law that allow the permanent replacement of striking workers have rendered unions impotent. A massive shift of the U.S. economy from a manufacturing based one to a service industry, as technology and off shoring replace manufacturing jobs where unions have traditionally been strong hasn't helped either. Ironically, unions are thriving best in the public sector, where generous employee benefits and merit system protections that provided job security existed even prior to unionization. Of course, part of the growth is also a product of the fact that government is to a great extent a service sector industry itself and by its very nature is ill suited to off shoring its services.
There is no obvious way that this trend can be turned around. Airlines, and the domestic automaker General Motors, are in dire straights and the threat (sometimes exercised) of bankruptcy has left their unions with little bargaining room. Smaller employers have no difficulty replacing striking work forces. For all that I support immigration (and the union movement, by and large favors legalization of immigrant workers itself), it is hard to deny the an influx of immigrant workers in the current economic and legal context has weakend the bargaining power of workers in the once heavily unionized construction industry. Farm workers, an area where unions have never been strong, are still largely not unionized and are often mistreated. Long and bitter grocery workers strikes in Los Angeles were not major triumphs for the union movement.
Admittedly, part of the problem for unions is that a working man's life is not as bad as it was a hundred years ago when they were first being formed. Unions accomplished much of what they set out to do. Worker safety has improved greatly. Now, many, if not most, on the job deaths are from causes that union leaders a century ago wouldn't have even recognized as workplace deaths -- car accidents and homicides. Worker's compensation laws and the Social Security disability program provide at least a fig leaf of care for injured workers and their dependents. Minimum wages may be at record lows in real terms or compared to median wages, but they do exist (and the vast majority of adult full time workers make more than the minimum wage). Health insurance may not be universal, but in both white collar jobs and in industries that have traditionally been unionized, it has become the norm to provide it. Individual retirement accounts provide average workers with the ability to save as much as they would have been able to manage to save in corporate sponsored 401(k)s even if they don't have employer sponsored plans (albeit without matching contributions from an employer). The economy may not be at full employment (especially after Hurricane Katrina), but there have been many times in our history when unemployment has been far more pervasive. Discrimination still exists in the workplace, but attitudes have changed to the point where it is no longer an accepted norm, even in management circles. Sexual harassment isn't gone to the same extent, but it is also less pervasive than it once was. Unlike many industrial workers of a century ago, workers are almost universally paid on or close to pay day (a sore spot here, as my own paycheck came a day late this pay period), and are paid in cash, not scrip. Job security isn't as great, but in our current economy, worker's are also more able to leave in search of employers who will treat them better when they find themselves in a bad situation. Legal rights for individual workers advanced by lawyers and government agencies have supplanted the traditional roles of the union for most American workers.
The traditional private sector union will, in all likelihood, continue to decline. In a nutshell, the movement seems impotent, unable to offer workers as much benefit as they once did. Will a new labor movement of some kind step in to fill the gap? Perhaps. But, the future is too cloudy to see what that new movement might look like.
It is not a happy time for the union movement in the United States. Private sector union membership rates are at their lowest levels since the 1920s, before the National Labor Relations Act was passed and continues to fall. Despite a few high profile strikes, labor actions are actually at near record lows. At Northwest Airlines, flight attendant and pilots unions aren't even honoring mechanic's union picket lines, while scab workers and outside contractors permanently replace the striking mechanics; the mechanic's union at NWA has been all but broken. This is also the year that the AFL-CIO finally broke up, with a group of unions frustrated by the current leadership and led by the Service Employees International Union leaving what had been for decades, a united front that had united almost every union in the United States in solidarity. The real wages of high school educated men have remained stagnant since the 1970s. Essentially all of the economic growth in the past generation has accrued to the college educated elite that runs the country. Health care costs are starting to eat away at even this status quo. Union defined benefit pensions funds are suffering from many of the woes experienced by their corporate sponsored cousins (although they are, at least, not at the whims of a single employer's health). The National Labor Relations Board has dealt a major defeat to the movement in not allowing graduate students to organize unions. The 40 hour week has vanished for much of the workforce, as exemptions have swallowed the general rule, and most families now need two workers, instead of one, to sustain a middle class lifestyle -- the American way of life has far less leisure than it once did.
Wal-Mart, one of the biggest companies in the United States, is union free, despite widespread complaints from workers resulting in legal action against it including what may be the largest ever class action gender discrimination suit. Changes in the law that allow the permanent replacement of striking workers have rendered unions impotent. A massive shift of the U.S. economy from a manufacturing based one to a service industry, as technology and off shoring replace manufacturing jobs where unions have traditionally been strong hasn't helped either. Ironically, unions are thriving best in the public sector, where generous employee benefits and merit system protections that provided job security existed even prior to unionization. Of course, part of the growth is also a product of the fact that government is to a great extent a service sector industry itself and by its very nature is ill suited to off shoring its services.
There is no obvious way that this trend can be turned around. Airlines, and the domestic automaker General Motors, are in dire straights and the threat (sometimes exercised) of bankruptcy has left their unions with little bargaining room. Smaller employers have no difficulty replacing striking work forces. For all that I support immigration (and the union movement, by and large favors legalization of immigrant workers itself), it is hard to deny the an influx of immigrant workers in the current economic and legal context has weakend the bargaining power of workers in the once heavily unionized construction industry. Farm workers, an area where unions have never been strong, are still largely not unionized and are often mistreated. Long and bitter grocery workers strikes in Los Angeles were not major triumphs for the union movement.
Admittedly, part of the problem for unions is that a working man's life is not as bad as it was a hundred years ago when they were first being formed. Unions accomplished much of what they set out to do. Worker safety has improved greatly. Now, many, if not most, on the job deaths are from causes that union leaders a century ago wouldn't have even recognized as workplace deaths -- car accidents and homicides. Worker's compensation laws and the Social Security disability program provide at least a fig leaf of care for injured workers and their dependents. Minimum wages may be at record lows in real terms or compared to median wages, but they do exist (and the vast majority of adult full time workers make more than the minimum wage). Health insurance may not be universal, but in both white collar jobs and in industries that have traditionally been unionized, it has become the norm to provide it. Individual retirement accounts provide average workers with the ability to save as much as they would have been able to manage to save in corporate sponsored 401(k)s even if they don't have employer sponsored plans (albeit without matching contributions from an employer). The economy may not be at full employment (especially after Hurricane Katrina), but there have been many times in our history when unemployment has been far more pervasive. Discrimination still exists in the workplace, but attitudes have changed to the point where it is no longer an accepted norm, even in management circles. Sexual harassment isn't gone to the same extent, but it is also less pervasive than it once was. Unlike many industrial workers of a century ago, workers are almost universally paid on or close to pay day (a sore spot here, as my own paycheck came a day late this pay period), and are paid in cash, not scrip. Job security isn't as great, but in our current economy, worker's are also more able to leave in search of employers who will treat them better when they find themselves in a bad situation. Legal rights for individual workers advanced by lawyers and government agencies have supplanted the traditional roles of the union for most American workers.
The traditional private sector union will, in all likelihood, continue to decline. In a nutshell, the movement seems impotent, unable to offer workers as much benefit as they once did. Will a new labor movement of some kind step in to fill the gap? Perhaps. But, the future is too cloudy to see what that new movement might look like.
01 September 2005
Trust Betrayed After Katrina
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast has dissolved into anarchy while the weak are left to suffer. Read selected posts from the Times-Picayune blog, read about thousands left to die without food or water or any kind of authority on hand at the New Orleans convention center, look at the pictures posted from various sources, read about the devistation in unthinkably poor Plaquemines Parish, look anywhere else you need to look. Mississippi South of Jackson isn't much better.
We have known since 2001, at least, that this was one of the three most likely major disasters to happen in the country. One of the others was a terrorist attack on New York, and the other was a major San Francisco earthquake. We knew that this particular storm was headed towards New Orleans eight days ago.
FEMA and the National Guard (many of whose members are in Iraq right now) have been unable to fulfill the basics of their mission, getting people out of the affected area in advance, maintaining some semblence of order, and getting help and evacuations for people who didn't leave in time. The storm hit five days ago. Getting water and food and rescue a week late is likely to be a death sentence. Private individuals who have sought to provide aid, even the Canadian government's offers of assistance have been rebuked. President Bush stayed on vacation, while Condaleeza Rice decided to buy shoes and take in Broadway shows while Canada begged to provide some assistance.
Authorities seem more concerned about people grabbing perishables out of grocery stores that would otherwise rot, when they are in dire need and no one can sell goods to them at any price, than they do about helping those in need.
The national government has done nothing as panics as a result of broken pipelines have sent gas prices above $6 a gallon (from below $3 a gallon) in Georgia, and spurred similar panic in North Carolina.
I can accept that people who could not be evacuated or refused to evacuate might die from the force of the storm, although the inability of some people who wanted to leave to do so for lack of transportation, many of whom have now spent days of privation in the Superdome, was itself inexcusable. I can accept that any hurricane of this force would have left thousands of people homeless.
But, I cannot accept that our government has let many, many people die after the event because it has bungled the job of providing aid to the victims. I cannot accept that New Orleans has flooded because the Bush Administration postponed levy work to spend the money on Iraq and tax cuts, as documented in nine seperate articles from 2004 and 2005 in the Times-Picayune.
This disaster has been as devistating as it has been because our leaders have failed us and betrayed our trust. This didn't have to be an event with deaths rivaling the Galveston Hurricane in 1900, or the San Francisco Earthquake in 1906, or the Titanic shipwreck in 1912, or the Lake Okeechobee flood in Florida in 1928 or the Johnstown flood in Pennsylvania in 1889, or 9-11, but those are the only events in U.S. history that are comparable. It didn't have to have property damage comparable to the great Chicago fire of 1871. But, it did.
Katrina will cost us thousands of lives, instead of hundreds. There will be hundreds of thousands of refugees for months, instead of thousand of refugees for weeks. The economic damage will be in the hundreds of billions, instead of the billions. This was a catastrophe and it was a needless one. There is nothing wrong with being an estate planning attorney from Colorado, I am one myself. But, that isn't the proper experience base for running the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is charged with responding to national disasters. This disaster was as bad as it was because President Bush and the people he chose to work for him and carry out his policies made decisions that were literally dead wrong.
To learn how to help, click on this link, where they noted this afternoon that: "The word is that in Jefferson Parish and Orleans, FEMA has 'bugged out.' They haven't brought supplies in." They know better than I do. I'm just a Colorado estate planning lawyer.
We have known since 2001, at least, that this was one of the three most likely major disasters to happen in the country. One of the others was a terrorist attack on New York, and the other was a major San Francisco earthquake. We knew that this particular storm was headed towards New Orleans eight days ago.
FEMA and the National Guard (many of whose members are in Iraq right now) have been unable to fulfill the basics of their mission, getting people out of the affected area in advance, maintaining some semblence of order, and getting help and evacuations for people who didn't leave in time. The storm hit five days ago. Getting water and food and rescue a week late is likely to be a death sentence. Private individuals who have sought to provide aid, even the Canadian government's offers of assistance have been rebuked. President Bush stayed on vacation, while Condaleeza Rice decided to buy shoes and take in Broadway shows while Canada begged to provide some assistance.
Authorities seem more concerned about people grabbing perishables out of grocery stores that would otherwise rot, when they are in dire need and no one can sell goods to them at any price, than they do about helping those in need.
The national government has done nothing as panics as a result of broken pipelines have sent gas prices above $6 a gallon (from below $3 a gallon) in Georgia, and spurred similar panic in North Carolina.
I can accept that people who could not be evacuated or refused to evacuate might die from the force of the storm, although the inability of some people who wanted to leave to do so for lack of transportation, many of whom have now spent days of privation in the Superdome, was itself inexcusable. I can accept that any hurricane of this force would have left thousands of people homeless.
But, I cannot accept that our government has let many, many people die after the event because it has bungled the job of providing aid to the victims. I cannot accept that New Orleans has flooded because the Bush Administration postponed levy work to spend the money on Iraq and tax cuts, as documented in nine seperate articles from 2004 and 2005 in the Times-Picayune.
This disaster has been as devistating as it has been because our leaders have failed us and betrayed our trust. This didn't have to be an event with deaths rivaling the Galveston Hurricane in 1900, or the San Francisco Earthquake in 1906, or the Titanic shipwreck in 1912, or the Lake Okeechobee flood in Florida in 1928 or the Johnstown flood in Pennsylvania in 1889, or 9-11, but those are the only events in U.S. history that are comparable. It didn't have to have property damage comparable to the great Chicago fire of 1871. But, it did.
Katrina will cost us thousands of lives, instead of hundreds. There will be hundreds of thousands of refugees for months, instead of thousand of refugees for weeks. The economic damage will be in the hundreds of billions, instead of the billions. This was a catastrophe and it was a needless one. There is nothing wrong with being an estate planning attorney from Colorado, I am one myself. But, that isn't the proper experience base for running the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is charged with responding to national disasters. This disaster was as bad as it was because President Bush and the people he chose to work for him and carry out his policies made decisions that were literally dead wrong.
To learn how to help, click on this link, where they noted this afternoon that: "The word is that in Jefferson Parish and Orleans, FEMA has 'bugged out.' They haven't brought supplies in." They know better than I do. I'm just a Colorado estate planning lawyer.
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