Category Archives: Current Affairs

Wisdom of Crowds?

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Here’s a story that helps point out the danger of vigilante justice: a New York city cab driver lost control of his car and hit an 8-year old kid riding a bike.  A crowd of onlookers pulled the driver from his car and proceeded to beat him silly until he managed to tell them that he lost control of his car because his passenger smacked him in the head with a metal bar in an attempt to rob him.  That’s when the mob turned on the passenger and started beating him and tightened a belt around his neck thus becoming a form of lynch mob.  The police eventually arrived and arrested the passenger and got the driver and the boy to the hospital.  There’s no mention of anything happening to the members of the crowd who took justice into their own hands.

Sen. Stevens Should Fire the Aid that Prepped Him for This

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Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the champion of the "Bridge to Nowhere," got up in front of God and country to defend his stance on the telecommunications bill working its way through Congress.  Here’s a brief excerpt from Wired:

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10
o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially…

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And
again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s
not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t
understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by
anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous
amounts of material.

Huh?  Seriously, if the Senator doesn’t mind coming off looking like a dumbass then he’s fine, but if he does mind then he ought to fire whoever got him ready for this appearance.  No one expects him to understand all the technical nuances of the internet, but he should at least know the difference between "email’ and "internet".

In Case You Were Wondering Why the US is Running a Deficit

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I know it’s peanuts in the grand scheme of things, but I think this article in the Washington Post is indicative of what’s wrong with our government these days.  It’s all about farm subsidies being paid to people who live in sub-divisions built on old farmland.  Here’s an excerpt:

Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post.

Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709.

"I don’t agree with the government’s policy," said Matthews, who wanted to give the money back but was told it would just go to other landowners. "They give all of this money to landowners who don’t even farm, while real farmers can’t afford to get started. It’s wrong."

The checks to Matthews and other landowners were intended 10 years ago as a first step toward eventually eliminating costly, decades-old farm subsidies. Instead, the payments have grown into an even larger subsidy that benefits millionaire landowners, foreign speculators and absentee landlords, as well as farmers.

Most of the money goes to real farmers who grow crops on their land, but they are under no obligation to grow the crop being subsidized. They can switch to a different crop or raise cattle or even grow a stand of timber — and still get the government payments. The cash comes with so few restrictions that subdivision developers who buy farmland advertise that homeowners can collect farm subsidies on their new back yards.

The payments now account for nearly half of the nation’s expanding agricultural subsidy system, a complex web that has little basis in fairness or efficiency. What began in the 1930s as a limited safety net for working farmers has swollen into a far-flung infrastructure of entitlements that has cost $172 billion over the past decade. In 2005 alone, when pretax farm profits were at a near-record $72 billion, the federal government handed out more than $25 billion in aid, almost 50 percent more than the amount it pays to families receiving welfare.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; both political parties bear responsibility for building our "nanny government" but the Republicans have been getting away with pointing the finger at the Democrats for their support of entitlement programs like welfare.  I’d love to see someone call the Republicans on their support of corporate subsidies like this and watch them squirm.  It kills me that the Republicans’ staunchest supporters are the same people who are being screwed by Republican economic policies, and it kills me even more that the Democrats are so ineffective that they can’t get that point across to the electorate.  Helps explain why I’m neither!

Better Safe Than Sorry?

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There’s a pretty long and important article from the New Yorker about David Addington, Vice-President Cheney’s chief of staff and the purported architect and chief-defender of the Bush administration’s legal strategy in the "war on terrorism."  Reading this piece reminded me of Benjamin Franklin’s famous and oft-quoted statement that "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

The article isn’t important just because it highlights a head henchman in the current regime, but also because it exposes exactly how far past historically established bounds our President has pushed his power.  Most astonishing to me is how quickly these incursions occured because in my mind a lot of what had happened seemed to be incremental over the years since 2001.  That was decidedly not so; the administration moved quickly and aggressively to exert expanded executive powers in 01-02 and most frighteningly did not seem to care whether or not is was legal.  Bush, Cheney and their confidantes seemed to say "it’s legal because we say it is so, no matter what anyone in Congress thinks or for that matter what some of our own lawyers think."

The article was written well before the Supreme Court ruling last week that declared Bush’s military commission system illegal, so it will be interesting to see if this is just the first in a series of events that will reassert the balance of power between the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government or if it’s merely a hickup in the Bush/Cheney march to extreme executive power.

I’ve heard many of the administration’s supporters say that this is a time of war and extraordinary circumstances require the president to assert extraordinary war-time powers.  This quote from Bruce Fein, who as an associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department during the Reagan Administration I think best refutes that argument:

This President has made claims that are really quite alarming. He’s said that there are no restraints on his ability, as he sees it, to collect intelligence, to open mail, to commit torture, and to use electronic surveillance. If you used the President’s reasoning, you could shut down Congress for leaking too much. His war powers allow him to declare anyone an illegal combatant. All the world’s a battlefield—according to this view, he could kill someone in Lafayette Park if he wants! It’s got the sense of Louis XIV: ‘I am the State.

Scary ain’t it?  Hopefully the Supreme Court ruling signals that the balance of power is truly beginning to be corrected.

Bookies at Wimbledon Think a Fix Was In

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Color me naive, but I never thought of wagering at Wimbledon as a big deal, especially in the early rounds.  Then I came across this on Freakonomics via AP:

“British media said up to $546,000 of wagers were placed on No. 89 Carlos Berlocq of Argentina to lose the match Tuesday. He lost 6-1, 6-2, 6-2 to Richard Bloomfield, who is ranked 170 places below him and got into the draw as a wild card.”

“London media said the bets on the match were about 30 times more than had been placed on similar British players and foreign opponents.”

I love tennis and think it’s a great game, but as I’ve told many people the sport attracts some true wankers in both the recreational and professional ranks.  Still, if this story is true then Berlocq has redefined the level of wankerism to which tennis players can fall.  I mean if you’re gonna fix a match wouldn’t you make it look at least a little more competitive?  Even boxers cheat better than that.

Forsyth County Commissioners Show Thin Skin

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After the recent Forsyth County budget was announced the number one issue in terms of publicity was the fact that the Downtown Health Plaza lost all county funding (about $600k).  That caused a bit of a stink because of the politics involved, but it got even stinkier when the county’s director of health, Dr. Tim Monroe, wrote an opinion column for the Winston-Salem Journal that basically said the county’s policy, and by association the commissioners themselves, does not fit with the Christian values of compassion and charity.  In Winston-Salem those are fightin’ words!

Two of the commissioners replied in the Journal:

"I think he’s very
disrespectful to the commissioners. I think he’s being misleading to
the community," said Gloria Whisenhunt, the chairwoman. "Tim has never
been a team player."

Debra Conrad-Shrader, the vice chairwoman, agreed.

"I thought it was
inappropriate, and I’m sure the board of health will take care of it,"
Conrad-Shrader said. "He’s their responsibility, and they are in charge
of who the health director is."

Well, pardon me but I think the Bush administration has shown what a mess you can make of things if you insist that everyone be a "team player."  The public is not served well if our public servants just sit on their hands when they feel an injustice has been done.  We don’t have to agree with what is said but we do deserve to hear all sides of the debate.

For what it’s worth I don’t like higher taxes any more than the next person but I think it is perfectly legitimate to question how our government spends its money.  Quite frankly the healthcare system is tough on more people than just the desperately poor.  Every day more people go without health insurance and every day it costs more and I think that you’ll find more people needing the services of places like the Downtown Health Plaza.  Public health policy is one area that deserves heated debate, not meek acceptance by "team players."

And for the record, Dr. Monroe really points the finger at us, the citizens of Forsyth County.  Here’s what he wrote:

But we should not
judge the commissioners. We placed them there, and we sent them the
unmistakable message of our true values – that they would not be
re-elected if they raised taxes. We must judge ourselves. Would it be
an unreasonable burden on property owners to pay a 1-cent increase so
that the disenfranchised might enjoy an incremental improvement in
needed services? Would it damage our economy, as is so often argued by
the no-more-taxes-for-nothing-never-no-how contingent? Below are some
county property tax rates for comparison. Are the property owners of
Mecklenburg, Durham and Cumberland Counties reeling under their burdens?

So if anyone should feel disrespected it is us, but to be honest I’m glad we have at least one public servant with the cajones to stand up and be counted.  Good on ‘ya Dr. Monroe.  And to our esteemed councilwomen I can only say, "Grow up."

Homeless on the Net

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Anyone who has lived anywhere near an American city has had some contact with the homeless.  My first real experience with the homeless was in Washington, DC in the summer of ’84 when I was working as an intern for NASFAA in their old offices just off of Dupont Circle.  I spent a lot of time running errands, taking the Metro to Capitol Hill and walking the city in general.  I don’t remember if it was ’84 or ’85 but the homeless situation got really bad when the city had to reduce crowding at Saint Elizabeths, the city’s mental institution, and so one day they just opened the gates and pushed a bunch of patients through.  I vividly remember sitting in a park eating lunch with a bunch of other office workers and looking up to see a flood of the recently expelled patients walking towards us.  To a person we all grabbed our stuff and walked as quickly as possible in the other direction.

I bring this up only to provide the context of my experience with the homeless.  Most that I ran into in DC would fall into the category of people with severe problems that led to their homeless status: mental or physical disease, drug abuse, alcoholism.  It was rare that you saw someone panhandling who looked like they were temporarily down on their luck and homelessness was their sole problem; almost all were homeless because of their primary problem.  So when I came across this piece on WiredNews I was intrigued, especially by this quote from Michael Stoops, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless:

“More have e-mail than have post office boxes,” Stoops said. “The internet has been a big boon to the homeless.”

This is fascinating to me because I wouldn’t have thought that a majority of the homeless would have the capability to work online given many of the aforementioned mental and emotional limitations I personally observed.  Is this because I’ve had a very limited view of the homeless?  Have I only seen a “hardcore” segment of the homeless population and missed a larger, less “damaged” homeless segment?  Or is it that a majority of the homeless population can function intellectually for limited amounts of time but cannot do so consistently enough to hold down a job and function effectively in our increasingly complicated society?

Now I’m not surprised that more people have email addresses than PO boxes.  They’re free and they can “move” with the individual.  But I know many very successful people, the polar opposite of homeless, who become extremely flustered the moment they get in front of a computer or are asked to do something online.  They can navigate modern society with the best of ’em but can’t figure out how to attach an image to an email if their lives depend on it.  So how is it that these people who have such a hard time succeeding in our society can function online? 

If nothing else reading this has caused me to question my preconceptions about homelessness.  The issue is more complex than I thought and quite honestly it is slightly disturbing to me that I haven’t had cause to think about this in years.  The phrase, “out of sight, out of mind” probably summarizes it well and that’s shameful.  But what to do?

Somebody at UVA is Having Fun at Ann Coulter’s Expense

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Someone at UVA put up this “Hitler vs. Coulter Quiz” and I’m not sure if it’s funny or creepy or both. Someone needs to give that woman an island on which she can roar to her hearts delight and stop bothering the rest of us.  She could also use a couple of slices of bread since she kind of looks like a pissed off Q-Tip these days.

Thankfully He’s Not From Ohio

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We the people in Forsyth County, NC have a new director for our elections office.  His name is Rob Coffman and he headed the elections board in Genesee County, Michigan.  Thankfully he isn’t from Ohio as, according to this article in Rolling Stone, the folks in the Buckeye state had elections in 2004 that made the elections in Chicago in the old days look positively pristine by comparison.

Hopefully the Ohio stink didn’t rub off on Mr. Coffman since Ohio and Michigan aren’t that far apart.  Of course with the well known hatred that Michigan and Ohio State fans have for each other I’m thinking that he would probably do the opposite of whatever they do in Ohio anyway.

Welcome Mr. Coffman and good luck!

Lawyers of the World Unite?

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You know you’ve trod on some serious toes when you motivate a bunch of lawyers to get together and decide to question your authority.  That’s what the American Bar Association is doing to President Bush and his administration.  Next thing you know Congress might even stand up to these jokers (the Bushies).  Well that might happen if congressmen ever showed the moral fortitude of lawyers…oh, Lord we’re in trouble.