Silly Bits VIII

The end of the year (and that of 'Just Blowing Smoke') is apparently not one which provides a break for much of the silliness going on in the world today.  So while the calendar is winding down here, I thought it might be amusing to take one last shot at pointing out a rather glaring one.

In the Antarctica, there's a true bit of international silliness going on.  It seems that a Russian ship, the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, became trapped in the ice on Christmas Eve about 185 miles east of the French research station Dumont D'Urville.  A search and rescue mission was mounted, and a Chinese ice-breaking ship, the Snow Dragon; was expected to reach the beleaguered vessel a couple of days ago.  That mission was put on hold however, when the Snow Dragon was unable to reach the Shokalskiy due to ice that was more than ten feet deep.  An Australian ice-breaking vessel, Aurora Australis, is now on the way and closing in on the site in the hopes of completing the rescue mission.

Not to worry for the crew and passengers, who appear to be in good spirits with plenty of supplies on board to keep them content during their icy internment.  Some of the scientific experiments that they set out to complete are ongoing while they wait for their would-be rescuers.  The silliness of this particular situation comes in two parts:

1. The silence of the 'Climate Change' crowd over the stranding of a scientific vessel in an expanding ice pack at a time when the 'Chicken Little' cry is over the melting of such packs and glaciers around the world. 

2. While you're contemplating these 'sounds of silence' on the Global Warming issue, consider further that the Antarctic continent is currently experiencing its SUMMER.


    

Silly Bits V

Since the Administration has had a couple of problems with spying on the US press (the Associated Press and Fox News to be specific).  It therefore seemed only fitting that the latest leak of information (ill-timed for the Administration) that the NSA is collecting data on many of the rest of us came from "The Guardian", an English paper.  Good show old boys and welcome to the party! Tea anyone?

Congratulations on not only scooping your American counterparts on yet another potential PR nightmare for the current Administration, but for creating a new level of national paranoia that we can only be hoped will be covered under the Affordable Care Act.  According to responses from the President and other Administration spokespeople, all of this has been done according to law and under the auspices of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court.  (Evidently FISA is like VISA, 'everywhere you want to be'.) 

*  According to information being touted on the Sunday talks shows, over 99.9% of FISA warrant requests have been approved by its judges.  Can you say 'rubber stamp'?

Now I'm a Verizon customer and a Google user, so I probably don't have anything left in the way of secrets where the government is concerned.  No wait, I forget that I was told that they weren't listening in on my calls or reading my emails by the same government who lied about a reporter being a 'co-conspirator' and went to three judges before they could get a warrant issued and also lied when they told me that they weren't having the IRS target conservative groups.  So naturally I believe them when they tell me that they aren't going to intrude on my privacy or keep any private data from my phone or Internet use at the same time that they're building a massive new data storage facility in Utah.

Jesse Jackson Jr may be getting four years in prison after pleading guilty to engaging in a scheme to misuse $750,000 of his campaign contributions on personal items.  Not only is the government looking for that same $750,000 in the way of restitution, but they're also looking for $168,000 in re-imbursement from his wife Sandra; who was receiving a $5,000 per month consulting fee on top of her six-figure salary as a Chicago alderman.  On the bright side, Jesse and his wife may not have to serve their prison sentences at the same time, which would keep their two children from being parent-less, even temporarily.  

With the example of 3 of the last 4 Illinois governors serving or having served time (including Rod Blagojevich,  in a case in which Rep Jackson was at least incidentally involved, though no charges were filed), Jesse Jr was apparently incapable of finding someone in this capital of malfeasance to create a workable paper trail to hide behind.  (What is Chicago coming to these  days?)  His dramatic attempt to drop off the radar and hint at a breakdown was a fair enough strategy, but it came far too late in the game and was poorly played.   

One can only imagine how disappointed that his father is.  After all, Jesse Jr was not only raised in one of the greatest schools of political corruption anywhere in the world ... Chicago, but apparently either didn't apply himself to his lessons or was simply incapable retaining successful strategies while being mentored by an expert on living with dubious expenses.  Jesse Sr has lived, after all, rather well for longer than Jr has been alive, in spite of a holding politically commendable, but financially questionable jobs which earned him a lavish lifestyle that would be the envy of many CEO's.  

Pakistan summoned US Ambassador Richard Hoagland to its Foreign Office today.  Evidently the new Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif wasn't happy over the fact that the US decided to pop off a couple of missiles launched off a drone into his country, killing seven people, without letting bothering to let his government know about it. But what the heck can concepts like national sovereignty mean when you're fighting a war on terror that actually hasn't existed for some time according the same Administration pulling the trigger? 

Now normally I would be concerned over the contradiction of terms involved with such an act and terrified over the long term implications of any government's use of such technology.  Fortunately, MY government has told me that while it's the same government which has come to heavily rely on the concept of remote control 'rub-outs'; it's now going to review the use of such technology.  (Though perhaps the review has more to do with a NBC story revealing that of a review of CIA records concludes that our government couldn't confirm the identity of 25% of the people they killed in drone strikes.)  I know that I, the 25% we can't identify, and the 'incidental casualties' will certainly be comforted by the idea that someone in our government is gong to get to the bottom of this.

Hey!  Maybe they could get the same people in the Administration who are going recommend legislation to Congress to protect the press from the DOJ that has recently targeted them from the DOJ itself to help on this other project before somebody escalates the war on AP and Fox News into drone attacks.

Really Silly Bits

I had a couple of things that I was debating in writing about for a weekend rant and some of them seemed very serious indeed.  While they may be important, I now clearly recognize that most of them are clearly in fact, quite silly.  Besides, I was having a great deal of difficulty in deciding which of them to choose, and by treating them as they deserve, I don't need to choose at all.  So here they are in no specific order.  All by the way, relate to fairly simple ma mathematical computations.

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Now I may not be an economist and I've never played one on TV, but even I can figure out that the approaching Fiscal Cliff is a big deal for this country.  Since the last couple of the Bush Administration, the federal government has been pursuing the policy of a reduction of taxes and an increase in spending; and when the Obama Administration took the reins of power, they accelerated the process (at least on the spending side).  Now it doesn't take a degree in advanced mathematics to see that neither the trends for revenue generation or spending add up very well for the American people and that they never will.  

What also doesn't add up is that a bunch of people who make a very good living were sent to Washington DC to address situations exactly like this, and seem to have no interest in taking on this problem, though they've been perfectly willing to kick the can down the road before going on to talk about how important addressing it is on cable news networks.  The President is in fact pulling down $400K, the Speaker and Majority Leader earn $223K, Cabinet members are at $200K, and Senators and Congressman see $174K in annual salary.  Now normally when people get paid that much, it's because they have the ability to solve problems or steer companies away from them.  All of these high priced politicians however seem to think that solving this problem means putting off til next year, what you shouldn't have put off til tomorrow.

At the invitation of the President, Representatives of this august group met this week in the White House on Friday to talk about this very serious situation for an hour.  REALLY?  A WHOLE HOUR!  Why that's 1/4 of the time that it would take the President to play a round of golf. That's less time that it would take Speaker Boehner to fly back from Washington to his home in Ohio.  And not only did they spend less time in this doomed effort of national importance than Jerry Springer spends on the average day talking about brothers who cheat with each other's wives, but they did it late enough on a Friday so that their all but planned failure to make any real progress could come light barely in time to make it into the Friday 'take out the trash' news cycle and go all but unnoticed.

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Speaking of modern math, the next time I hear from a Democrat about big business pouring too much money into political campaigns, I'm going to (as they say in Python's 'Holy Grail'), "fart in their general direction".  Labor unions poured $400 million into the President's re-election, and still had enough money to pour hundreds of millions more in state and local initiatives.  According to the Wall Street Journal, in the case of California's Prop 32, an initiative which would have banned using automatically deducted dues for political purposes, in fact "Labor contributed about 90% of the $62 million spent to defeat Prop 32, including $21 million from the California Teacher's Association and $13 million from SEIU." 

They successfully bankrolled a school collective bargaining reform initiative in Idaho with $3.4 million, a South Dakota initiative to overturn a law installing merit pay for teachers by outspending them 5 to 1, and set aside $2 million to roll back an emergency financial manager's law in Michigan because it allowed contracts to be restructured in troubled cities like Detroit.  

So for all of you standing on your tired soapboxes complaining that the Supreme Court's 'Citizen's United' decision has handed politics over to rich white guys and major corporation, maybe you should take a closer look at who is actually giving and to what ends.  The numbers don't seem to add up.

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Most of you not living in a cave this week are now well aware that Hostess bakeries has all but shut down and that it plans to liquidate its assets.  Most of you have likewise heard the story that the tasty snack treats this company manufactures have fallen on hard times due to the changing eating habits in this country, multiple bankruptcies, and in the fine print, a strike from their bakers union.

It's true that Hostess is going through it's second recent bankruptcy in a decade and that eating habits in this country are changing. (Though to hear politicians speak, they're getting worse; which should have been good for Hostess.)  Some are now instead trying to get the message out that the Hostess demise comes not from the way it operated, but because greedy management and private equity funds were draining it of profits.  I guess the fact that Hostess did $2.5 billion in sales, but lost $341 million last year is equally lost on anyone attempting to define the concept of profits.  Apparently a company that just lost $341 million asking its employees for pay cuts (also for the second time this decade) is likewise unreasonable under the circumstances.  

According to a Wall Street Journal article from the November 16th however, what you haven't heard is,  "The snack giant endured $52 million in workers' comp claims in 2011, according to its bankruptcy filing this January. Hostess's 372 collective-bargaining agreements required the company to maintain 80 different health and benefit plans, 40 pension plans and mandated a $31 million increase in wages and health care and other benefits for 2012."  On top of which, existing collective bargaining agreements prevented bread products (like Wonder Bread) and cake products (like Twinkies) from being delivered to the same location by the same truck, nor could the guys who loaded cake products into trucks also load bread products.  It should go without saying therefore (but won't) that the drivers of neither the cake or the bread product trucks could have anything to do with loading their own vehicles.

I should stop here and also point out that a company management that is constantly seeking bankruptcy protection is as bad as a Union constantly seeking more from a company that doesn't have it.  Teamsters had already settled, and perhaps this Union might have sought a greater stake in the company's future than a bigger piece of a pie that was long gone, but they didn't.   And for those of you who might be wondering about Hostess's biggest competitor, Little Debbie....   Well, they're actually able to offer similar products in larger portion sizes than Hostess while still managing to remain profitable.  Of course Little Debbie's is a company consisting of  non-union bakeries.

Fortunately however, the 18,500 layoffs that will be caused by this layoff and liquidation did not happen before the election, and will not therefore be counted until long after any recall ballots already have.  From the sounds of things, Hostess will probably not have much of an impact on unemployment numbers anyway, since so many firms are likewise sending people home in the wake (pun intended) of the election.

                                    

Silly Bits IV

It's sometimes amazing how you can barely get the thoughts in your head on a page fast enough (especially when it's my head we're talking about), and at other times the well seems to become more parched than it's been in Kansas this summer.  This isn't to say that there's nothing going on, just nothing that seems worthy of working up a good rant over.  Besides, I haven't attempted to do a bit of catching up in a while, and another 'Silly Bits' certainly allows me to.  Of course nothings exemplifies the concept of 'Silly Bits' more in the upcoming election season than one mentioning the hijinks of a couple of the local political candidates.

Todd Akin probably has to top the list, being both by a Republican Senate candidate (from Missouri and not Kansas, thank goodness) and for his recent rape / abortion comments.  Forget whether this narrow-minded cretin can now win an election or not.  This is no longer about the courage of one's convictions as much as it's about someone being too stupid to hold public office (or perhaps even a sharp object).  I know that the jackass is the symbol of his opposition's party, but it would be hard to prove it after seeing someone seeking office in the more deliberative branch of the legislature leaping into a minefield of his own creation with his 'legitimate rape' and 'a woman's body shutting down' comments.  Akin no longer appears to have any friends in the Republican Party (or funding from it), and even the 'cross-over' Democratic support he got in the primary seems to have evaporated (Democratic groups even supported him financially). His refusal to withdraw his bid could hand Claire McCaskill her much-in-jeopardy seat back with a pretty bow tied on it, in spite of her own image problems  (Hmmmm ....).  It's too bad Chuck Barris of "Gong Show" fame isn't still around to give this guy the big hook.

On the Kansas side and largely over-shadowed by candidate Akin, we had freshman Congressman Kevin Yoder's apparently alcohol-fueled behavioral lapse coming out in the last week.  It seems that last August after a number of first-time national legislators were over-served in hotel along the Sea of Galilee while on an all expenses paid junket, Rep. Yoder was among seven who decided to take a little late night swim.  While apparently a decent enough swimmer, the lack of swimming apparel was troubling enough to earn the seven a stern lecture from den mothers Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy (the second and third highest ranking Republican members).   

Personally, I'm shocked ... shocked I tell you; to discover that members of our national legislature indulge in intoxicating beverages while on all expenses paid junkets.  I am shocked still more that they would indulge in these unseemly late night freshmen fraternity antics, none of which involved Congressional pages, hookers, or even illegal drugs or gambling.  Most especially, I'm shocked that something that occurred a year ago is only now (less than 80 days before the election) coming to light in the mainstream media.  It seems incredible that a government that can't keep a foreign policy secrets for as long as it takes to cook a Quarter Pounder with cheese can manage to keep the lid on this one until it might have some impact on the election.  I have yet to see any art on the event (evidently no one's cell phones were working), but there's still time before we vote.  If I see anything, I post it for you.  I'm reminded that one of my distant relatives, John Quincy Adams, used to skinny dip in the Potomac while President (scary if you've ever seen a picture of him); something I believe would require a great deal more courage than intelligence these days. 

(This also inevitably reminded me of a great Lyndon B Johnson quote:  "If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read:  President Can't Swim.") 

Of course no discussion of candidate news would be complete without that of Vice Presidents.  It started over Republican Mitt Romney's 'risky' choice of Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his potential VP.  You know, someone's going to have to redefine 'risky' for me.  In an election that the Republicans have been saying for some time is all about the economy and the budget, why would it be a bad idea to pick someone who has been focusing on it since he came to Congress?  You may not like his ideas (and I'm not sure I do), calling them either 'too soft' or 'too draconian', but it's hard to dispute that the man can argue his case with logic, reason, and passion; with the facts to back up his arguments at his fingertips.  The fact that he's a good looking, apparently likeable guy who looks good in slacks and a golf shirt probably doesn't hurt him by comparison either. 

Speaking of comparison, we certainly can't look at VP's without giving a shout out to the Joe Biden gaffe fest.  It's seems amusing to me that in an election when so many are comparing President Obama's first term to that of Jimmy Carter, that more haven't jumped on the Dan Quayle bandwagon where Joe is concerned.  We all know the recent list of faux pas by the current second-in-command, so I won't repeat them; but did you know that things have gotten so bad that the Los Angeles Times recently reported that the White House no longer provides transcripts from 'Jokin' Joe's' events.  If this keeps up, they're going to have to hold a daily press conference to translate what VP Biden was trying to say around the foot perpetually stuck in his pie hole.

So perhaps we can end the silliness today by paraphrasing an ad campaign from 2008's Democratic presidential primary:  

'If the phone rings on 34th Street and Massachusetts Avenue (where the VP lives on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory) at 3 AM to tell it's occupant that the President of the United States is dead, who would you rather take the call before taking the helm of the nation?'  

 

Silly Bits II

I've been trying to follow the results of the "Super Tuesday" voting with some degree of interest beyond a lingering yawn, but find my fervor for the process, and with it my attention span for endless coverage of the minutiae around them are flagging.  As a consequence of this general feeling of listlessness, I find myself without a desire to go into the pontifical rage on any particular subject required for a mid-week effort.  This does not mean that I haven't got a few things on my mind however, or that I'm willing to share them.  I am therefore going to attempt another 'Silly Bits' effort instead.

Rush Limbaugh, the self-appointed savior of talk radio, has stepped in it once again; though I at least give him credit for an apology that was not entirely self-serving.  Unfortunately in spite of a valiant attempt at 20-20 hindsight, the damage has already been done.  Ms Fluke has managed to do exactly what she set out to do, draw attention to herself and change the discussion on the Obamacare mandate which tells the Catholic Church that its health insurance must provide treatments that violate its own doctrine on birth control.  

We're not asking any longer why such treatments must now be provided by any employer for free (and with no co-pay) when they're not that expensive to start with. We're not asking any longer how the government is able to tread over the fine line on the First Amendment or why disaffection with such care should be restricted to only the Church and not to any employer who feels that such mandates violate their personal beliefs. (Though perhaps it would be easier to get waivers if such organizations were simply to unionize.) We're not even asking where the president's executive order (the Stupak promise) that abortions would not be provided under the Obamacare compromise went to.  

Instead we're talking about Limbaugh impugning the character of a woman who's obviously a political activist, and who made her college choice by her own admission, in order to make a policy change at that university.  We're talking about access to women's health care that already exists as if it didn't, because Rush couldn't stop banging an out-of-tune drum that he thought would resonate with his audience.  Maybe his hearing is worse that he thinks, and he suffers from occasional bouts of being politically tone deaf.

(I won't even begin to talk about the disingenuous behavior of the progressive voices in the media, who want Rush's dismissal and an advertiser boycott for using some of the same language that they have in equally public venues when talking about their ideological opponents.)

Gas prices continue to go up, and the president goes out on the campaign trail to tell us that the problem can't be solved by drilling.  Really!  I can't and won't assign any particular blame to this chief executive; like most politicians running for office, he manages to pick and choose the stats he likes to back up his rhetoric, but the 'facts' are often contradictory.

Our president tells us that more oil is being produced in the US now than ever before ... and that this is to his credit.  Really!  What happened to the days not so long ago when he and other politicians told us that it takes 5-7 years for drilling to result in production; and if this is the case, how should he expect credit for drilling that began before he took office?  Meanwhile drilling permits remain at an all-time low, the pipeline from Canada can only be begun by going around presidential approval in an election year, and no new refinery has been built in over 30 years.

Hybrids must certainly be contributing to our ability to stretch the existing production, but the Middle East is becoming a scarier place week-by-week; so counting on them for our future oil seems like a worse plan than usual.  Increasing debt and Fed policies continue to make the dollar diminish in value against a barrel of oil (oil is currently only traded in dollars, though how long that will last is anybody's guess), which likewise contributes to its increased costs in the long term.  

As for electric cars, I am once again forced to point out what seems to escape those inside the Beltway in DC.  Even if we start buying fully electric cars, the electricity has to come from somewhere.  Coal burning power plants are closing, since they can't meet new EPA regulations.  Only one nuclear plant has been approved for construction since the Carter Administration, and it hasn't begun construction.  Solar and wind power generation can help but little (especially when solar panel manufacturers in this country are going down faster than the Titanic), and will never be able to fill the gap created by the impending loss of these coal plants, let alone provide us with the cheap energy which most economists agree is required to stimulate economic growth.  I guess that leaves us with further demands on oil and natural gas, which brings us back to where we started.  

(Then again, maybe the plan is to get us all into Chevy Volts that we can't afford, and with batteries catching fire for no apparent reason, keep us too scared to get into our cars in the first place and thereby reduce consumption.)
 
Super Tuesday winds to a close, and the winners (kind of) and losers (sort of) are both congratulating themselves on the job that they did (even if they didn't really do it).  And while they're patting themselves on the back, and thanking their staffs, their fundraisers, and their supporters; not one of them thinks to thank the American taxpayer; not for their vote, but for picking up the tab.  It is they after all, who are footing the bill for this state-by-state beauty contest; with many educated estimates holding the cost of these candidate benedictions  at $3,000,000 per state. 

Like the broken promises of most of candidates leave behind after an election, this bit of taxpayer largess goes largely unrecognized; something I find especially troubling when so many state budgets are being slashed left and right (pun intended) to at least attempt to meet the mandated responsibilities of a balanced budget.  When are we going to make these political parties pay for their own political parties?

It's a sad commentary on the political process indeed when 'hard working Americans' have to foot the bill so that the self-appointed political elite in this country can decide who's turn it is move up the political food chain.  Regardless of who gets the delegates, once again the American taxpayer has lost.

 

Silly Bits I

I was getting some grief over the title of some of the previous entries to this blog (Stabilizing the MCP).  Evidently there were some that thought that instead of writing about miscellaneous crap, I was writing like crap instead. (Personally, I was surprised that anyone could distinguish the difference.)  But as Gene Autry once said: "How come you know me so well, when I'm just a stranger to myself."  Nevertheless, from this day forward such posts will henceforth be known as “Silly Bits” in homage to the Monty Python “Ministry of Silly Walks” skit.  (I won’t bore those of you not interested with the entire piece, but for those who would like to travel down memory lane, or have never seen it before, you will find it here.)  Now for the other silly bits:

The National Right to Work Foundation and the National Federation of Independent Business, along with other business groups have filed suit over the recess appointments made by President Obama to the National Labor Relations Board and the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  It appears that this President didn’t like the tactics used by the ‘Democratically Controlled’ Senate to ostensibly stay in session in spite of the fact that he was a part of the very same tactics being used to prevent his predecessor from making recess appointments when he was in the Senate. 

Having gotten a paper from the Department of Justice saying that he was within his rights to do so (The President’s lawyers agreed with him, imagine that!), the appointments were made in what many are calling a violation of the separation of powers in the Constitution. Speaking on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Republican Senator Rand Paul of KY announced that he was joining the suit.  Now while this might appear to be little more than two male children squaring off in childish comparison of linear measurement, let me say that there are two important things to take note of here.  The first is that this is a serious question of executive authority in this country, and the decision here will be far-reaching no matter which way it goes.  The second is that having long believed that emasculation was a requirement for the national legislature, it could be considered even more startling that a member of Congress in fact has the equipment required for such a comparison (though the fact that it’s Rand Paul goes a long way to explaining it).  

Indiana became the 23^rd state (and first in the Rust Belt) to become a ‘Right to Work’ state.  Similar efforts are under way in Michigan and Ohio, both traditional strongholds of the union movement, as they are in New Hampshire and Montana.  None of these laws prohibit Unions from forming and representing workers; but their passage means that Unions may no longer demand that workers join such a Union nor must they pay dues to the Union in order to work at that profession.  With the Super Bowl coming up in Indianapolis this Sunday, the timing of this bills signing means that the potential for gamesmanship is as likely outside of the field as inside it.  Union representatives have called passage of such laws ‘the beginning of the race to the bottom’ (in spite of the fact that almost half of the nation now has them).  No one knows whether they are right, but regardless of the answer to the question the race is unquestionably on; and those states who will compete in the coming economy had better decide whether they will run in it, or merely stand by in the pits (that's an Indy 500 reference).

For the first time that I can remember, a municipal government representative in the nation has admitted that the placement of red-light cameras were for revenue and not driver safety.  (I guess he’s seen the same statistics that I have and couldn’t say otherwise with a straight face.) As I pointed out in a column for the Toledo Free Press on Tuesday, Toledo’s Finance Director Patrick Mclean said that they wanted to install the new cameras in order to generate $320,000 that the city would use for youth recreation programs that the city could not otherwise likely fund. 

Setting aside the ramifications of any government finally admitting that these red light robo-cops have become a next generation tax collector in a ‘scofflaw tax’, there’s that pesky bit of how these laws are enforced.  You see in these cases, the presumption of innocence central to American justice is tossed out the window.  The evidence that a car you own committed the offense is enough to convict you whether it can be proved that you were driving it or not.  The only alternative to a guilty plea is to rat out whoever else might have been driving; an alternative that seems as unpalatable as paying the $130 fine.

And finally, from the land that brought you the promising beginning (allegedly) of Arab Spring, we have news today that riots broke out once again in Egypt.  This time however, the goals of those taking to the streets seem not so lofty, nor can the cause be deemed worthy of praise.  Apparently this violence broke out as part of a long rivalry between fans of local football (soccer) teams Port Said and Cairo.  When Port Said won the match 3-1, fans of the Cairo team stormed the field.  According to the latest counts released, 73 are known dead and over 200 injured so far in the riots that ensued.

Now I don’t know about you, but I've personally found soccer matches to be so boring that I might consider storming the field at the end of the game myself, but only in protest of the lack of entertainment provided for the ticket price charged.  I do know however, that the next time I hear about football fans turning out into the streets after an Ohio State – Michigan game, turning over a couple of cars and setting a few dumpsters on fire, my reply is going to be:  “That’s nice…”