The Hill’s Revolving Door

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Live in D.C. long enough you'll realize that there's a fairly standard playbook for the ambitious:

  • Get a job, no matter how lowly, in a Congresscritter's office.
  • Pay your dues.  Work insane hours for pretty low pay, at least by D.C. cost of living standards.
  • Build connections.
  • Go to work for a lobbyist, or start your own lobbying firm, and continue to work insane hours but now make some insanely good money in the process.
  • Pray that your people stay in power.
  • If necessary repeat the process to rekindle your connections/influence.

One guy I knew worked for a Republican senator, left working for him to partner with a couple of guys in a new lobbying firm, and his first year was close to earning seven figures.  I heard through the grapevine that subsequent years were even better, but I lost touch over the last few years so I have no idea how the rise of the Democrats in 08 affected his business.  I suspect it wasn't good, especially after seeing this research (found via Freakonomics blog)about the direct correlation between influence and income of ex-staffers from the Hill.  From the summary:

While there is no scarcity of anecdotal evidence, direct econometric evidence on the extent to which previous ocials are able to convert political contacts into lobbying revenue remains, to the best of our knowledge, non-existent. In this paper we provide such evidence. In particular, we study how the lobbying revenue of congressional sta ers turned lobbyists depends on the power of the congressional politicians for whom they have worked in the past…

Our main nding is that lobbyists connected to US Senators su er an average 24% drop in generated revenue when their previous employer leaves the Senate. The decrease in revenue is out of line with pre-existing trends, it is discontinuous around the period in which the connected Senator exits Congress and it persists in the long-term. The sharp decrease in revenue is also present when we study separately a small subsample of unexpected and idiosyncratic Senator exits. Measured in terms of median revenues per ex-sta er turned lobbyist, this estimate indicates that the exit of a Senator leads to approximately a $177,000 per year fall in revenues for each aliated lobbyist. The equivalent estimated drop for lobbyists connected to US Representatives leaving Congress is a weakly statistically signi cant 10% of generated revenue. We also nd evidence that ex-sta ers are more likely to leave the lobbying industry after their connected Senator or Representative exits Congress.

Here's a nice synopsis of the research:

Katy Perry vs. Little Mermaid

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Some people are making a big stink about Katy Perry's attire in a video shot for Sesame Street.  Basically they're taken aback by her cleavage and are afraid that their rugrats might be scarred for life by the hint of booby existence.  I understand what they're saying but I have to ask: how do they feel about their kids watching a cartoon with a scantily clad fishwoman?  For that matter do they cover their children's eyes when they go to the pool and subject them to young ladies, and some not-so-young ladies, prancing around in dental floss?  I'm gonna call hypocritical BS on this one, but judge for yourself (click on the images to enlarge them):

Katyperry  
Littlemermaid  

Here's the video:

Who Are These People?

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Ever wonder who the people are that leave lots of comments on local news websites?  The folks at the Las Vegas Sun obviously did because they profiled four of their more prolific commenters.

I'm wary to suggest the same type of project for our local news sites, because quite honestly many of their commenters flat out scare me. Still, if they were to profile some of their commenters here are some questions I'd like them to ask:

  • Were you absent that day in fourth grade when they went over the difference between there, their and they're?
  • Were you absent the day they went over the difference between lose and loose?
  • Did you know that insulting subjects of an article, or other commenters, while hiding behind an alias is the definition of a coward? Aliases are for people who are doing courageous things, like blowing the whistle on corrupt politicians. I understand if you want to use an alias due to concerns like people at work seeing what you write, but don't use that as a shield to throw personal bombs at others.
  • Did you know that invoking Hitler in an argument makes you the loser of said argument by default?
  • Are you aware that the statement "we Americans are guaranteed freedom of religion, not freedom from religion" is nonsense?

and finally

  • Did you know that when you're leaving a comment on a story you're not blogging, you're commenting?  Blogging requires setting up a blog, writing something on your blog, having people write a comment on your blog and then replying to those comments.  Go ahead and try it, you might like it.

Experimenting with Pro Sports

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Here's a very interesting article about the NHL's R&D program:

The truth is, such a mess would be improbable at best on Bettman’s watch. Under him, the NHL, sometimes under fierce criticism, has become perhaps the most research-friendly of the major professional team sports leagues in North America when it comes to the conduct and rules of the game. It wasn’t always so. In 1998, when the league had a Fox TV contract and arranged for a Las Vegas IHL game to be played in a four-quarter format, the experimentation was met with catcalls. The improvised research and development camp held toward the end of the 2004-’05 lockout was viewed as a desperation measure.

But the more carefully planned R & D camp held last month has mostly been welcomed and applauded. The scrimmages, held at the Maple Leafs’ practice facility on Aug. 18 and 19, featured some jarring, Martian-looking innovations. The players—who were, in an attention-getting wrinkle, mostly top junior stars eligible for the 2011 draft—road-tested everything from two-on-two overtime to shallower nets to having the second referee view the play from an elevated off-ice platform. On day two, viewers were confronted with the bizarre spectacle of the traditional five faceoff circles being replaced by three, running up the middle of the rink.

Such an exercise is unique among the staple North American sports. If major league baseball’s powers-that-be ever got a notion to play experimental games using five bases and four strikes, they would surely do so on a closely guarded Pacific atoll.

My roommate in college once stated that the NBA would be infinitely more interesting if they put circles on the floor at various places between the three point lines and were rewarded with higher points the farther away the circle was from the basket.  So if you hit a shot from beyond half court you'd get six points.  I laughed at first, but the more I thought about it the more I liked it.  Actually I thought that you could set up zones in between the three point lines (circles being a little to easy to guard). I really think it would bring about the rise of the "designated heaver" which might keep some old guys in the league much like the designated hitter does in baseball.

Oh, and don't get me started on baseball.  Anything they can do to keep me awake past the third inning would be welcome.

Unleashing the World’s Creative Types

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I have no idea what the future holds, but I have an inkling that technology is going to unleash the creative types.  I know, I know the changes being wrought upon the publishing industry are well documented, but sometimes it's hard to grasp what's going on until you see small examples of those changes.  For instance, yesterday at lunch my Mom handed me a "proof" of a book she's been editing and was written by a fascinating man from the Blacksburg, VA area.  The proof was as professional-looking a book as you're going to find and a publisher wasn't involved; it's being self published via Amazon.  (FYI,when it's ready for sale you'll find it here).

But the sea-change that's occurring in the world of the arts really hit home with me when I saw this short done by an amateur Russian filmmaker that's described thusly by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing:

A Russian amateur filmmaker called Alexander Semenov produced this 2.5 minute bootleg Transformers short with a couple of sub-$1,000 cameras, two hours' of footage and a month in the editing suite. It is insanelybadass: a perfect vision of an alternate universe where shirtless Russian thugs go bot-to-bot on dusty distant roads; more fun that the big-budget Hollywood equivalent.

Transformers from repey815 on Vimeo.

I'm really very excited to see where this explosion in artistic availability will take us.

DC Metro System Taken for a Ride

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Technology can be annoying.  Just ask anyone who's dealt with a Blue Screen of Death on their PC, or had to take the car to the mechanic 86 times because the wrench light won't turn off, and they'll tell you just how annoying it is.  I'm thinking that the folks running the DC Metro systems would take those problems over their own situation any day:

"The Washington, DC transit authority contracted with a proprietary company for their RFID-based fare card system,SmarTrip. Now, just six years after getting the system fully installed, the DC Metro system says that their contractor Cubic will no longer sell them the farecards, and they only have enough stockpile to last until 2012. The best solution they've got is replacing every fare box and farecard… again. Kicker: they're paying more than $3 each for bog-standard 13.56MHz RFIDs, which can be purchased singly by normal folks for $.25."

Apparently this is all coming to light because the Metro Board recently passed the largest fare hike ever and at that time promised significant discounts for SmarTrip users, but those discounts are not likely doable because the SmarTrip system can be gamed by riders and it could end up costing the system $1 million a month.  It was during the discussion of this matter that the whole "we're not making the cards anymore" situation came to light.