Worse Than Denkinger

This is saying a lot coming from the kind of Cards fan I am, but the call in the 9th inning of tonights Angels/White Sox game is the worst I have ever seen in a Major League Baseball game. It was as if the umps were bound and determined to see the White Sox win. It was completely baffling and totally inexcusable. I blame not only the Home Plate umpire for making the bonehead call in the first place, but I also blame every other ump on the field for being more interested in covering the ass of the Home Plate ump than they were in getting the call right.

The Angels mean nothing to me, I dislike American League baseball as a matter of course, but I can see when someone was robbed. The Angels were robbed.

It is enough to make one wonder if anyone is keeping track of the umpires bank accounts. Maybe they ought to be.

First Step: Admitting It

Alright, alright....I have a problem. I'm suffering from something that might be called "Competition Stress Disorder." It is all the St. Louis Cardinals fault. The thing is, when they get themselves into the post-season I go nuts. On game days I get very extremely gut-wrenchingly nervous, which makes it difficult to read, write, talk, eat, sleep, breathe, etc. If they win that day's game I get a short respite, from the time the game ends until the time I wake up on the next game day. If they lose that day's game I simply remain in a state of high anxiety and misery until they win again.

When you think about it, it is all rather miserable. If you have ever seen the movie Fever Pitch you can get a good idea of what I'm talking about. (I'm talking about the proper English version here, and not the truly horrific and abysmal Americanized one.) There can be moments of unreserved joy, but the vast majority of the time you are faced with uncertainty, anxiety, anger, heartbreak and misery. Sounds like fun, right?

Part of me would really like to jump off of this rollercoaster, but I know I never will. It would be nice to avoid the depressions that descend upon me whenever the season ends in failure (as it has in every baseball season of my life except one.) But the truth is I'm hooked. The depressions are really of a minor variety, and they are easily dispelled after a few weeks by the knowledge that Spring Training is only a winter away, and the promise of victory is just too sweet to pass up.

Such are my thoughts at Noon on game day.

Maybe I should go out and get some Rolaids.

The No-Brainer Of All No-Brainers

You can consider this "home cooking" if you want, but I think Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has the National League MVP "race" nailed. It's Albert Pujols in a land-slide.

Pujols was honored Saturday as the first baseman on the all-time Busch Stadium team. With this final-weekend blast of offense, Pujols seems determined to strike the first wrecking-ball blow to the old ballpark.

Perhaps this late explosion will be noticed by the MVP voters, who must submit their ballots by late Sunday. Remarkably, Pujols may be denied the MVP again if voters transfix on Atlanta's Andruw Jones and his 51 homers and league-leading RBI total while ignoring his mediocre overall batting average (.262) and his comically inferior .207 average with runners in scoring position.

If Jones receives the MVP, it'll be with the lowest batting average in the history of the award. And Jones' batting average with runners in scoring position ranks 64th in the National League.

"Albert is the MVP, and with no disrespect to Andruw Jones, it's by a healthy margin," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said. "Just put together everything he does: the hitting, the leadership, the defense, the way he runs the bases. The whole game."

Of course Pujols lacks that one thing needed for true baseball greatness: An East coast or West coast address.

Fashion Fascists

Thinking of painting that spare bedroom? Well you might want to first run your color scheme by the self appointed Gestapo of Interior Design, Jill Gaulding and Erin Buzuvis to make sure you don't run afoul of any politically correct standards.

The pink visitors' locker room at the University of Iowa's stadium is making some people see red.

Several professors and students joined the call Tuesday for the athletic department to do away with the pink showers, carpeting and lockers, a decades-long Hawkeye football tradition.

Critics say the use of pink demeans women, perpetuates offensive stereotypes about women and homosexuality, and puts the university in the uncomfortable position of tacitly supporting those messages.

"I want the locker room gone," law school professor Jill Gaulding told a university committee studying the athletic department's compliance with NCAA standards, including gender equity.

For decades, visiting football teams playing at Kinnick Stadium have dressed and showered in the pink locker room. The tradition was started by former Iowa coach Hayden Fry, a psychology major who said pink had a calming and passive effect on people.

I'll admit, it's a silly little story, but it does prove a point: There is no aspect of your life that these people do not want to control. The entire world must be changed to suit their sensibilities and their sensibilities alone. These are the same people who complain all the time about religious folks trying to "impose their beliefs on the rest of us." That's fine. Just look in the mirror the next time you utter that phrase. It applies equally well, sister.

Tomorrow Never Knows

For those wondering, yes, I'm still gonna go on about that Time piece on "hurricanes and global warming." I think, if you read the article closely, you can see a harbinger of the future path of the debate. The article abruptly changes focus near the end to tell us all the following:

Some scientists are studying not just climate change but the even more alarming phenomenon of abrupt climate change. Complex systems like the atmosphere are known to move from one steady state to another with only very brief transitions in between. (Think of water, which when put over a flame becomes hotter and hotter until suddenly it turns into steam.) Ice cores taken from Greenland in the 1990s by geoscientist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University show that the last ice age came to an end not in the slow creep of geological time but in the quick pop of real time, with the entire planet abruptly warming in just three years.

"There are thresholds one crosses, and change runs a lot faster," Alley says. "Most of the time, climate responds as if it's being controlled by a dial, but occasionally it acts as if it's controlled by a switch." Adds Laurence Smith, an associate professor of geography at UCLA who has been studying fast climate change in the Arctic: "We face the possibility of abrupt changes that are economically and socially frightening."

Movie fans will recognize this immediately as the Day After Tomorrow scenario, a big hit with the "Coast-to-Coast AM" crowd. Those with some background in game theory will also recognize something else. There seems to be a shift away from the view of climate change as an incremental process and towards a view of climate change as a movement towards an unknowable catastophic tipping point; in game theory parlance what is known as "The Tragedy of the Commons." (TOTC)

The classic version of this multi-iterated game postulates a village common upon which the villagers can choose to either add a cow or not. The villager that adds a cow to the common will recieve a benefit, while those that do not will gain nothing. However, there is a catch. The common can only support so many cows, after which the ecosystem collapses and ALL the cows die and every villager loses big time. Another aspect to the game is that tipping point is unknown and unknowable to the villagers. In the classic two-player version of the TOTC there are two payout structures, one pre-tipping point, the other post-tipping point. Because of the two payout structure of the game, in most instances it is more worthwhile to keep adding cows, thus the poor dumb villagers push there luck further and further until the ultimate collapse happens and they all die of starvation. Serves them right.

Now, there are many problems that arise when you try to view real life situations as a version of TOTC. The most basic problem, with regards to this discussion, is the very artificial rule that requires the tipping point to be unknowable. This has to remain, or the psychological impulse that drives people to the ultimate collapse will be absent. However, it is difficult to find a real world example of this type of situation. There have been attempts to view, for example, fishing areas as examples of TOTC, but these do not work so well. In all of those cases fishermen can see a diminishing return and catch that will clue them in when an area is being overfished. Thus the impulse to add another boat to the fishing fleet can be tempered by the fact that you wont break even if yeilds fall too greatly. In any event, whatever is being played out it is not TOTC.

However, that doesn't keep folks from trying to maintain that this or that situation in the real world is really a TOTC scenario in the making. And such it will be with global warming. The people who want to impose drastic changes to our economic system and way of life in the name of global warming have come across a problem or two in pushing the incremental global warming model. One of the most pressing comes from the likes of Bjorn Lomborg, who compltely accepts global warming AND the human causation of the same, but who argues against the changes to our economic system and way of life. Instead, Lomborg argues that we should be supporting our economic system as being the best possible model to maintain the wealth needed to combat any problems arising from a warmer climate. This kind of argument drives the global warming crowd batty. Based on the piles of derision heaped upon Lomborg one would have thought he was a global warming dissenter, but he isn't. He just differs from them on what he thinks the proper political solution is to the problem. If you come across any of the anti-Lomborg material don't make the mistake of thinking it has anything to do with science, because it doesn't.

If the global warming crowd can get folks to accept that this is really a TOTC situation and NOT incremental change they can avoid all of these types of difficulties. For starters, they wouldn't be required to prove that a TOTC model correct. The tipping point is unknowable by definition. If anyone asks them how they know we are nearing the tipping point and what that point is exactly, they can throw up their hands and say, "But that is impossible! You are asking the impossible of me!" And thus endeth the debate.

Which brings up another, more sinister aspect, of making of global warming a TOTC. If you get enough people to go along with the idea it truly is a path to dictatorial power. The psychological implications of the game are profoundly anti-democratic. In order to keep the tipping point from being crossed you would have to give power to someone (going back to the village common) who will keep people from adding cows, or in this society tell us who may or may not have an automobile or who might engage in any activity that is deemed potentially harmful. And by the logic of the game that would be correct. It would spit in the face of the Constitution, but it isn't as if that hasn't happened before.

Before I give off I want to direct folks to this link from the blog DADvocate. He comes up with the following analysis on the history of hurricane intensity. It is very well done. His findings are summarized below:

Year Avg. WS Min Avg WS Max
1851-1860 92.53 111.32
1861-1870 85.27 103.33
1871-1880 93.55 111.75
1881-1890 92.32 110.23
1891-1900 96.19 115.48
1901-1910 87.11 106.11
1911-1920 93.38 113.10
1921-1930 96.38 115.77
1931-1940 101.11 118.95
1941-1950 95.75 114.38
1951-1960 96.24 116.76
1961-1970 102.36 120.36
1971-1980 90.00 109.17
1981-1990 89.13 109.33
1991-2000 99.86 117.14
2001-2004 93.44 112.78

If you can find "dramatic increases in intensity" in there you really must be good with the old divining rod.

Blaming The Tiny Dwarf

There is a classic Saturday Night Live sketch wherein Steve Martin plays the Medieval Barber, who is doing his best "barbering" for a variety of peasant ailments. When someone questions the wisdom of one of his "cures," Martin looks at them shakes his head and says "Who's the barber here?" At another point Martin's character pats himself on the back for the vast strides his profession had taken from years past. To a woman concerned about her daughter's illness he states, "In the past we would have thought that your daughters condition meant she was possessed by demons. [laughs] But, now we know her condition is caused by a tiny dwarf living in her stomach."

This sketch was brought to mind after I read this scandalously misleading article in Time about hurricans and global warming. There is so much wrong with the article that a full scale fisking is beyond me. (I simply do not have THAT much time.) But read the thing yourself with a few of these points in mind.

A) How well does the theory presented stand-up to the generally accepted methods of scientific discovery? One example, do they have good sample sizes for the data they are looking at? Is basing your claims on 10 years of hurricane data acceptable? How about 20? How about 50?

Another example: Are they making claims that are either I) testable, or II) falsifiable? Making claims that Katrina and Rita prove storms are "more intense" than storms from previous decades because they were at sea large Category 5 storms, although they struck land at Category 3 intensity, is a spurious claim. We have no idea what the intensity levels were at sea for the thousands of Atlantic hurricanes from 1850-1960. Therefore, there is nothing to compare these storms to except the last 20-30 years worth of data. (And even in the Time article a meterologist insists that satellite data until 1989(!) is suspect. I'm not sure I buy that, but if even this is an open question, how much "confidence" should one place in these definitive statements?) No one can either prove or disprove the intensity levels ascribed to pre-1960 hurricanes while they were still at sea. Therefore a claim that storms are more intense now is neither testable nor falsifiable, barring access to a time machine of course.

B) Are they cherrypicking data? You have to ask yourself this especially if you are not up on all of the data involved. For example, from the Time article:

On the whole, they found, the number of Category 1, 2 and 3 storms has fallen slightly, while the number of Categories 4 and 5 storms--the most powerful ones--has climbed dramatically. In the 1970s, there were an average of 10 Category 4 and 5 hurricanes a year worldwide. Since 1990, the annual number has nearly doubled, to 18.

This would all be fine and dandy if the 1970's were a representative decade. It very clearly isn't. Since 1870 (!) no decade, except the 1980's, had fewer hurricanes in general or fewer large hurricanes in particular than the 1970's. (See this NOAA data, for example.) But even aside for that picking one decade (say the 1970's) and saying "this is normal, any deviation from this is abnormal" is ludicrous. Look at ALL the data and you won't wind up making false comparisons. However, they don't want you to look at all of the data because it doesn't support their findings. For example this is the data for the entire Atlantic Basin from 1950 to 2000:

Decade-Tropical Storms-Hurricanes-Hurricanes As % of Storms-# Large Storms (Cat 3+)

1950's - 104 - 60 - 57.7% - 13
1960's - 95 - 50 - 52.6% - 14
1970's - 95 - 38 - 40.0% - 5
1980's - 93 - 37 - 39.8% - 7
1990's - 111 - 50 - 45.0% - 13

The choice of the 1970's, in this case, seems simply dishonest, doesn't it?

C) Are the claims internally consistent? The claim is but forward that we are witnessing sudden dramatic change of an unprecedented nature. However, at the same time any conflicting data is explained away as being within the parameters of "normal" climitalogical conditions. Well, which one is it? How can you have "huge unprecedented changes" that result in "normal climitalogical conditions"? I'm not saying that it cannot work that way, I am saying there is no reason to assume it works that way. Show me WHY warmer water will not help tropical depressions and lows become category 1 or 2 hurricanes but will help category 2 or 3 hurricanes become 4 or 5's. Don't just say, "Oh we have fewer hurricanes now because that is natural."



D) This brings me to the point of postulating unknown forces to back up your theory. A good rule of thumb is never subscribe to any theory that relies on such a rhetorical device. From the Time article:

So that ought to mean a lot more hurricanes, right? Actually, no--which is one of the reasons it's so hard to pin these trends down. The past 10 stormy years in the North Atlantic were preceded by many very quiet ones--all occurring at the same time that global temperatures were marching upward. Worldwide, there's a sort of equilibrium. When the number of storms in the North Atlantic increases, there is usually a corresponding fall in the number of storms in, say, the North Pacific. Over the course of a year, the variations tend to cancel one another out.

Notice how all of this is contigent upon the existence of something we might call the "Hurricane Equilibrium." The trouble is we don't know if it exists. (Not to mention the sticky problem of correlation v. causation implied in the scenario.) So, in order not to have to deal with conflicting information (i.e. the relative paucity of actual hurricanes while conditions are ripe for starting them) we are supposed to believe that this unknowable "Equilibrium" exists AND that instead of the "Equilibrium" being affected by by the "sudden unprecedented change" of global warming it is in fact functioning normally and regulating the number of hurricanes. I hear that and I can only think they are blaming the dwarf instead of the demon.

Hysteria Redux

Why am I not surprised about this?

Some Reports of N.O. Violence Exaggerated

I'll add right away that I find this headline to be itself a vast understatement.

On Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten."

Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

The ugliest reports - children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement - soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans.

The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including The Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.

But now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.

Many? How about most. How about nearly all.

They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered.

One of those victims - found at the Superdome - appears to have been killed elsewhere before being brought to the stadium, said Bob Johannessen, the agency spokesman.

"It was a chaotic time for the city. Now that we've had a chance to reflect back on that situation, we're able to say right now that things were not the way they appeared," said police Capt. Marlon Defillo.

Well I, for one, am not sure it was a matter of how it "appeared" as much as how it was "portrayed" by the media. The media created this myth of barbarism out of whole cloth. I say it that boldly because they were there. No one on earth was in a better position to get this right and they got it exactly wrong. And they got it wrong on purpose. Rape and murder sells, evidently. Brian Williams fleeing for his life from "hell on earth" New Orleans, sells.

Now, I'm not saying that reporters didn't get bad information, but it is their job to fact check all the time. You don't get to skip it if it would interfere with really good copy.

A week after the floodwaters poured into the city, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans quoted an Arkansas National Guardsman as saying that soldiers had discovered 30 to 40 bodies inside a freezer in the convention center's food area. Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the newspaper that some of the dead appeared to have met violent ends, including "a 7-year-old with her throat cut."

When the convention center was swept, however, no such pile of bodies was found.

Lt. Col. John Edwards, the staff judge advocate for the 39th Infantry Brigade of the Arkansas National Guard, said Tuesday that Brooks told the Times-Picayune reporter only that he had heard rumors of bodies in the freezer, not that he had actually seen them.

"We have never found anybody who has any first-hand knowledge of dozens of bodies in the refrigerator," Edwards said.

Frankly, the whole thing smacks of racism. The media all to readily accepted as fact that poor African Americans would descend into a violent, brutish, Hobbesian state at the drop of a hat. Lots of Americans bought that story too, hook, line and sinker. It helps the bottom line better than hearing that,

"For the amount of the people in the situation, it was a very stable environment."

From The Shake Your Head Files

Via The Dayton Daily News: Unbowed by handicap, legless player sidelined by ref (Free Reg. Req.)

Bobby Martin was born without legs, but the only thing that kept him from playing high school football last Friday night — as he had the three previous weekends — was a Cincinnati game official who told both the coaches and athletic directors that the Colonel White senior wasn't wearing proper equipment.

"He said Bobby couldn't play because he didn't have shoes on," Colonel White assistant Kerry Ivy said. "He told me the rule says a player must wear shoes, thigh pads and knee pads. I told him, 'He needs feet before he can wear shoes. He needs legs before he can wear those other pads. What are you thinking? Then he said Bobby needed a medical waiver. I told him he'd already played three games, but he said those were the rules."

The decision in the game at Mount Healthy left Martin in tears.

"It's the first time in my life I ever felt like that," Martin said Monday as he readied for practice after school. "Everybody was looking at me, talking about what I didn't have. I felt like a clown. I hated it. I just wanted to know why it was different this game than all the rest."

Dennis Daly, the officials' crew chief who announced the decision, wouldn't discuss the matter Monday night: "I have no comment. Talk to the Ohio High School Athletic Association."

Colonel White Athletics Director Carolyn Woodley and Jonas Smith, Dayton Public Schools AD, did Monday.

"Sometimes common sense has to prevail," Woodley said. "The doctors have said it's OK for Bobby to play, so have his parents, and he has the necessary grades. That's all he needs. Officials at the first three games had no problems. The way he was denied Friday, I thought it might be some kind of violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act."

Hank Zaborniak, an assistant OHSAA commissioner, talked to all parties involved Monday: "It's unfortunate this happened. The officials should have let him play."

It is hard to imagine how anyone could, like the ref involved here, have such sushi for brains. I also do not think the question about whether this was a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act is an idle one. The act has been so broadly interpreted in the past (often too braodly IMO) that I fail to see how this couldn't fall under it.

But what really gets me is the mindset of the ref. I just don't have it in me to be cruel to a kid and then shrug my shoulders and say "Those are the rules." It is sad that anyone does have that in them.

Blogging With The Data You've Got

While looking over who has been dropping by TIM lately I came across this discussion about my post on Hurricane Myths.

In an attempt to refute my work the following was stated:

Misleading Because he limits his analysis to Hurricans that hit the United States," and not the sum total of ALL Atlantic hurricanes, many of which never strike the US.

I didn't address this issue in my original post because I believed the answer to that question was self-evident, but maybe for many it isn't. If one wants to compare data on hurricanes into the 19th century it makes sense to limit the discussion to only landfalling hurricanes. Why? For many reasons:

A) Without benefit of satellite imagery many non-land falling hurricanes in the 19th century would have been unknown. Failing to take this into account would seriously skew results in favor of saying there were many more post 1950 hurricanes. A similar thing happens when you hear of a "record number of tornadoes" striking the U.S. Well, with the tremendous increase in the number dopplar radar sites finding storms that might have never been seen by human eyes (e.g. remote rural areas, or in the dead of night), that should come as no surprise. It certainly doesn't indicate that the number of tornadoes are increasing.

B) Logically, there is no reason to think that the incidence of U.S. landfall should change statistically speaking from the 19th century to today. In other words, if there are more hurricanes across the Atlantic basin as a whole, there should be a corresponding increase in the number of U.S. land-falling storms. Why one would wish to believe otherwise escapes me.

My First Hate Mail!! Now I'm Rolling!!

I recieved the following missive last week from a well informed reader of The Moderate Voice:

Shut up, asshole.

mguyot at sisna.com


I'm just beaming because I couldn't have had a stronger confirmation that I was absolutely correct unless God himself were to come down, throw an arm around me, and say, "Rich, you're doing a bang up job! How about them Cardinals?"

Asking Questions Later....Or Not.

Over at The Moderate Voice they are making a big deal about a memo that says, in part, the following:

The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.

TMV then goes on to speculate about what this means about Chertoff and Bush and whether they were negligent, dumb, out-to-lunch, etc.

Hey, let's back up a second. Maybe I missed something, but wasn't the whole bitch-fest about Brown that he didn't do something he was (so we were told repeatedly) supposed to be doing? If so, then how can Brown have been supposed to be doing something which he had no authority to do?

This is the problem with hysteria. People kept screaming that this was the worst disaster in American history. It isn't, at least in terms of loss of life. The final terrible numbers are not in, but it seems they will be WAY below the 8,000 - 12,000 lost in the Galveston hurricane of 1900. Now, it may be the most expensive, but calling it that doesn't raise apprehension levels high enough I suppose. Because people got themselves so worked up about headlines that read "10,000 Dead" they felt they were justified in turning their minds off and taking it out on whoever they felt deserved it. The facts of the matter be damned.

It's too early to say anything definitively, but it might just be that Michael Brown was treated unfairly by the media and by most bloggers. A lot of them will excuse themselves by saying "Well, Brown shouldn't have had that job in the first place." That may be true, but it has nothing to do with evaluating his performance or excusing an hysterical witch-hunt.

A Cross Posted Comment

I actually wrote the following in the comment section for this Doug Petch post. It sums up a lot of how I'm viewing things today, so I thought I'd share it more generally. (Aren't you lucky!)

That has been my big problem with the coverage of katrina by 90% of the blogs left and right. They are all basing their view on emotional reactions to the scenes from New Orleans. There has been no effort to attempt to analyze the relief effort in a general sense; no attempt to compare these efforts with previous disaster relief operations; no attempt at contextualization....shit to hear tell every single one of these bloggers were experts on Disaster Relief who didn't need to be brought up to speed on ANYTHING. Its amazing.

Instead of looking at actual data relevant to disaster relief we here complaining about:

A) Bush ending his vacation 12 hours too late! (The "Proof I've Watched Farenheit 9/11 Too Often" award.)

B) Brown ends his memos too cheerily! (Which has to take the "Nit That Has Been Picked To Death" award.)

C) Bush is blamless, but Blanco & Nagin are criminally negligent assholes. (The "How Convienient" Award - Republican Division)

D) Blanco & Nagin are blameless. It's all Bush's fault. (The "How Convienient" Award - Democratic Division)

E) Anything that criticizes someones choice of wording over and above ANYTHING substantive. (The "I Don't Know What I'm Talking About, But I Have To Complain About SOMETHING" award.)

You will have to excuse me. I've got to go take an aspirin.

Political Opportunism

If we are to believe everything we read in the LA Times we would have to believe that the Democratic Party has long held that FEMA should be the "first responder" when disaster strikes. What a bold departure from established ways of thinking! How prescient those Democrats are! Unfortunately, this long held belief seems to have taken holdonly last Wednesday. Looking at the Democratic Party Platform of 2004 FEMA is never mentioned. Hurricanes are never mentioned. Natural disasters in general are never mentioned. When emergency situations are mentioned at all they are in the context of terrorist attack.

Domestic readiness. We need to improve domestic readiness so people on the frontlines have the training and equipment to respond to any attack with all the speed, skill, and strength required.

Our first responders are the first ones up the stairs in the event of the emergency, and it is wrong that today they are last in line when it comes to this administration's budgets. Under the Bush Administration, police departments in small cities have lost more than 15 percent of their full-time paid police and employees. And today, two-thirds of our nation's fire departments are not fully staffed. We can do more for the heroes of 9/11 and we can do more for our fellow citizens. And we will. We will provide direct assistance to our police officers and firefighters on the frontlines.

So, first responders for emergencies caused by terrorist attack (including nuclear, chemical and biological attack scenarios) is assumed to be local officials. This makes sense. After all you never know when or where terrorists might strike. A hurricane you can see coming days beforehand. So the federal government can be the organization to handle first response to natural disasters, right?

Wrong. First of all, not all natural disasters give you warning of their striking. Relying on a federal agency to provide first response services after an earthquake, for example, would be unworkable. The government would have to pre-position disaster teams in earthquake prone regions year in and year out and hope they were not rendered ineffectual (or killed) by the earthquake themselves when it finally did strike. Plus, if you consider that nearly 2/3 or 3/4 of the United States runs some risk of earthquake activity, such an undertaking just becomes too massive to contemplate.

O.K. Maybe, the feds could just handle hurricanes? Well, I suppose so. It might be possible to set up a special "Hurricane Relief Unit" that could be sent to regions to supplement or take over first response duties from local authorities. But, as far as I can see no one in the Democratic party has ever advocated such a thing before last Tuesday. Implying that the Democrats had "a plan" to keep this loss of life from occuring is simply a lie, and political opportunism of the crassest nature.

Katrina Report Cards

Over at The Moderate Voice I've been advocating getting all of the facts before pronouncing any edicts about disaster relief efforts....and enduring a round of name calling for my efforts. (*sigh* And on my birthday no less. How uncouth!)

Real Clear Politics hasn't felt the need to hold back on their evaluations, and I think its wrong. I don't believe they, or anyone else, have enough information to make informed overarching verdicts on federal, state or local officials. For example, what could you say about FEMA efforts in Mississippi or Alabama? I could say almost nothing about them because they haven't been covered by the press. For the same reason I couldn't tell you how state or local officials did either. Now we have all seen New Orleans, but again I don't feel like I have a depth of knowledge to make an informed opinion on how the city or state performed. I can say that FEMA's response in New Orleans (and in New Orleans alone) seemed lacking.

But here is the point: Everyone can see that FEMA's response was lacking in terms of the need of the people requiring assistance. What I do not know, and what no one has (or can?) tell me is if FEMA's response was short of its own capabilities. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be many who think that is an important question.

QandO has a great post looking at the RCP report card as well. I disagree with them, but it is good reading.

The News From Houston

The human aftermath of Katrina has stirred one of my favorite blogs back into life. The Eclectic Refrigerator has a number of great posts about how things are looking in Houston.

Why Hindsight Is Short-Sighted

Everyone who claims to have a "knowledegable opinion" about hurrican Katrina and its aftermath should head on over to Columbia University's Center For Hazards & Risks Research. In particular they should read the reports and maps presented in their Hotspots page, which, coincidentally, were featured in September's issue of The Atlantic. What becomes clear from looking over this research is that New Orleans is hardly unique. There are dozens and dozens of areas across the United States that also have Moderate or High mortality risks from natural disasters associated with living there. These areas include places like New York, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, Memphis, St. Louis and San Francisco. For every single one of these places (as well as many others) it is simply a matter of time until something horrific happens to them. In every single one of these places as well, throwing a nearly unlimited supply of money at them would go some way towards alleviating the mortality risks involved. Unfortunately, our resources are not unlimited. At the federal level, giving money to one locale by necessity means keeping resources from another locale. State and local governments are often unable or unwilling to devote the resources themselves. Other uses for the money always clamor for attention. Like it or not, in November of an election year it might seem a hell of a lot more important to your average politician to get a big raise for state employees than it does to allocate that money for levee repairs which might not be called into action for another 50 years or more.

The notion that there was something unique about New Orleans that required unique action to protect New Orleans and New Orleans alone from natural disasters is simply false. The Colubia University study makes it clear, New Orleans is not uniquely vulnerable in a way other places in the United States are not. New Orleans is just one of many risky places whose luck ran out.

Now it is also clear that FEMA is not capable of handling a disaster area as large as this one without 3 or 4 days of lead-in time. However, it also hasn't been shown that FEMA is either designed or funded to be able to handle such a disaster any more quickly. No one can point to another disaster and say "Here is a disaster of the same size and degree of severity as Katrina that FEMA handled speedily in the past." Until push comes to shove I'm not sure how anyone can know in advance the performance limitations of an agency such as FEMA. Maybe someone can look at some operation in the past and see how the FEMA system might have been straining to reach its goals, but I haven't heard word one on such an investigation.

I guess what I'm asking people to do is get enough information to put these events into their proper context and don't let emotion get the better of you. That is the only way we can ensure that things will go more smoothly when the next disaster strikes.

Its only a matter of time. Why waste any more of it?

A Question For Blog Readers

From the early days of this blog (alright, alright...last autumn) I've considered The Moderate Voice to be one of my main "goto" blogs. Joe Gandleman always had a knack for having a point of view that wasn't wishy-washy or unchallenging, and yet was still approachable from wherever you were coming from. And, from a more personal perspective Joe was the first blogger of note to ever drop me a line telling me he likes what I was doing here at the Iconic Midwest.

I don't know if it is because of all the new writers they have over at TMV, or if I'm going through some sort of ideological drift myself, but I'm having an increasingly difficult time seeing what distinguishes TMV from a site like The Daily Kos. Now the DK is what the DK is, and I don't have a problem with it...hell, I blog roll it (just as I do NOT blog roll Little Green Footballs)...but one thing the DK is not is accessable for everyone politically. So the change I see in TMV is really a change in philosophy. If TMV wants to becomes yet another "It's us against THEM!" sort of site they are more than welcome to...but I would consider it a crying shame. We really don't need anymore "US against THEM sites" where "Them" are fellow Americans. We've got plenty.

My question for you blog readers out there is: Am I crazy to think I see this change in TMV? Does anyone else feel the same way?

The End Of The Rehnquist Court

The Chief Justice has finally succumbed to the cancer he had been fighting for so long. We should all take a moment to say a silent word of thanks for his many years of public service.

That's what we should do...that ain't what's gonna happen.

If Bush stays true to form I think we can expect the elevation of Scalia to Chief Justice, which will cause one hell of a bitch-storm from the left. It's weird. There has been so little movement in the makeup of the court for so long and now change is coming fast and furious. The political climate is so ugly in general these days that I can see nothing positive coming out of Washington for a few months.

Oh! for some real substantive political discourse in this country. The more I read the political blogs, from the right and the left, the more I am put in mind of the old Monty Python argument sketch. At one point an exasperated Michael Palin says "I don't want to argue about that!" as John Cleese insists on arguing about something completely uninteresting. In any event...I digress.

I would have to say that the Rehnquist era of the Supreme Court will probably be remembered as a lackluster affair. The Court didn't move with a purpose so much as drift along with the breeze. Of course the elevation of Rehnquist was supposed to be the end of the world, or so the left in the 1980's would have had us believe. Who would have thought that what would follow would have been so tame. Maybe we could all remember that as we gear up for the hyperbole of the Roberts hearings and the new Chief Justice confirmation battle.

Wouldn't that be better than engaging in the same old boring argument?

Yes. it is.



(No. It isn't.)

A Public Service

If you have ever been tempted to take anything Paul Krugman says seriously QandO has a good example of why you really shouldn't.

It is too bad the Times insists on wasting space for his ill considered drivel.

More Hurricane Common Sense

Kathy over at Big Cat Chronicles had the same idea I had to actually look at the hurricane data to see if there is anything unusual going on in the Atlantic. She comes to the same conclusion as I do, but does so with some snazzy tables and graphs.

Note: She IS using the same data set as I am. I tabulated decades going from, for example, 1910-1919 and calling that the 1910's, while hers run from 1911-1920.

Global Warming Hurricane Myths

Over the last two days I've been sickened by some I have seen on the cable news outlets attempting to use the tragedy in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to further this or that environmental cause. Mostly they claim that global warming caused or contributed to this storm. Unfortunately, for them, the facts do not back them up, although you are hardly likely to hear that on CNN these days. Using the latest research from NOAA (which even they admit probably still UNDER-estimates 19th century hurricane frequency and intensity) I will show how the claims that global warming is changing hurricane patterns in the Atlantic basin is simply wrong.

Myth One: "We have more hurricanes today than in years past."

In many ways this is the easiest to demolish. From the 1850's to the 1940's we had four different decades (1880's, 1890's, 1910's & 1940's) when 20 or more hurricanes hit the United States. Since 1950's no more than 18 storms have hit the U.S. coastline in any decade. From 1851 to 1939 an average of 1.87 hurricanes hit the U.S. every year. Since 1940 the average is down to 1.66 per year.

Average of Hurricanes Per Year, Per Decade:

1850's 1.8
1860's 1.5
1870's 1.9
1880's 2.6
1890's 2.0
1900's 1.7
1910's 2.1
1920's 1.5
1930's 1.7
1940's 2.3
1950's 1.8
1960's 1.6
1970's 1.2
1980's 1.6
1990's 1.4
2000's 1.8

Myth Two: "More hurricanes are hitting closer together."

It is true that 2004 was a very active years for hurricanes with 6 hitting the U.S. coast. However it is far from unprecedented. In 1893, 1909 & 1933 five storms hit; in 1916 & 1985 six storms struck; and in 1886 seven hurricanes walloped the United States. It is hard to see that 2004's 6 storms make it anything all that unusual statistically speaking.

Myth Three: "We are getting more early hurricanes because of global warming."

This is also easy to demolish because we are not in fact getting more hurricanes early in the storm season. Since 1851 we average 2.62 storms per decade that strike the U.S. before August. From the 1850's to the 1920's we averaged 3.12 early hurricanes a decade, and from the 1930's to 2000's we averaged 2.30 early hurricanes a decade. So, there are in reality fewer early hurricanes now, although I find it difficult to believe the decrease would be considered statistically significant.

It is interesting to note that if global warming was producing a noticeable effect on hurricane formation we might expect that the hurricane season would extend longer into the calendar year. This has not been the case. From 1851 to 1939 a grand total of four (4) late hurricanes (after Oct. 31st) struck the U.S. shore. Since 1940 only one (1) has ("Kate" in 1985.)

Myth Four: "More large hurricanes are striking the U.S. than in the past."

On average 6.2 large hurricanes (i.e. category 3 or higher) hit the U.S. every decade. Only five decades have seen more than six major hurricanes, the 1890's, 1910's, 1930's, 1940's and 1950's. From 1960 to 1999 we averaged only 5.25 per decade. With half the decade gone (2000-2004) we are on pace to have 8 major hurricanes this decade, a lot but not a record or that unusual. It certainly doesn't look like an outlier (as does the 1860's with only two (2) major hurricanes.)

Major hurricanes as a percentage of all hurricanes looks like the following:

1850's 31.25%
1860's 13.33%
1870's 31.57%
1880's 23.08%
1890's 35.00%
1900's 29.41%
1910's 33.33%
1920's 33.33%
1930's 47.06%
1940's 34.78%
1950's 50.00%
1960's 37.50%
1970's 33.33%
1980's 37.50%
1990's 35.71%
2000's 44.44%

The overall average of major hurricanes to all hurricanes is 33.94%. Since the 1940's 7 out of 8 decades are above that average. Before 1940 only 2 decades are above the average. This is the only measure that supports the idea that stronger happen more frequently, not in an absolute sense, but as a ratio of all hurricanes. However, this is not unambiguous. Chances are the strength of pre-1930's hurricanes are under-estimated. There was very little equipment that could measure wind-speeds over 100+ miles an hour. Estimated wind speed (based upon barometric pressure readings) are dependent upon actual readings that may have been quite far from the lowest point of pressure for the storms involved. It isn't until the 1890's that an attempt at scientific monitoring of weather conditions nationwide is made. While researchers have an easier time identifying cyclonic storms from historical material, accurate portrayal of storm intensity is another matter.

All of this begs us to remember that we only have about 50 years of top quality data for these storm systems. That is not a lot of information to work with. So to claim that you already see a radically divergent trend emerging from the data would require a very drastic change indeed. No such drastic change is evident from the evidence. So the next time someone tries to bolster their environmental cause by exploiting the death and destruction wrought by Katrina, tell them to stick it where the sun don't shine.

A Minor Milestone

This post is coming to you from my home office. Yes, believe it or not, that is the "milestone" in question. After the last five or six weeks of being a semi-displaced person I am actually in a position to write regularly. This should be good timing. Nothing of real political import happenes during August. Good God, I saw a page 3 headline in my local paper informing us of Joan Baez joining Cindy Sheehan's protest. If that doesn't speak of a slow news month I don't know what does. (Maybe next week they will let me know what Leo Sayer's opinion is on gasoline prices. I can't hardly wait.)

And a quick word of thanks to everyone who has been checking up all through these weeks looking for new content. To paraphrase a favorite movie of mine, it makes me believe that it ain't all been in vain for nothing.

Mille grazie.

New Family Member

I know I've missed Friday pet blogging, so you can consider this an early preview. This weekend we added little Lillie to the menagerie.

She is still getting acclimated and she is small enough to fit into the most unlikely places, so we are not seeing a lot of her yet. She should give our other cat fits though.

The New MTV (Not A Good Thing To Be)

ESPN seems to be in the process of becoming to "sports" what MTV is to "music", that is, only distant relations at best; a part of their past, not a part of their present or future. You can see it in their flagship program SportsCenter which looks less and less like a sports news program and more and more like (ironically enough) a music video.

And the process continues:

ESPN formally announces pickup of 'The Contender', second season to premiere in April 2006

Confirming the recent public statements of ESPN executives, Mark Burnett Productions, DreamWorks Television, and the cable sports giant announced today that the network will become the new broadcast home of The Contender, last winter's critically-acclaimed but low-rated reality boxing series that NBC canceled after only a single season.

"The Contender has all of the elements that make it the right fit for ESPN: compelling storylines, dynamic characters and suspense over the outcome," said Mark Shapiro, ESPN executive vice president, programming and production. "This series speaks to our viewers' love for competition and their appreciation for triumph over adversity, and it goes without saying that the track record of Mark Burnett is exemplary -- a perfect match for the critical and ratings successes EOE has delivered in both scripted and unscripted drama."

What is telling is that people like Mark Burnett don't seem to think there is a qualitative difference between sports and a reality based novelty program. Once upon a time ESPN recognized that the commitment sports fans exhibit towards their teams exceeds mere voyeurism or the quest to be "entertained." Now ESPN increasingly acts like they just don't get it, as if the rationale of sports fans is completely alien to them.

The result is we get third rate dramas about Poker, ESPN manufactured "competitions" like the "X Games" and "The Great Outdoor Games" (that basically are just even less interesting versions of those "World's Strongest Man" programs ESPN used to broadcast incessantly,) celebrity bowling (!), etc...

Meanwhile their sports programming gets thinner and thinner. They no longer even have a full fledged Baseball Tonight to show the days highlights. PTI and Around The Horn are actual programs about sports (mostly) but if you have a regular job you won't be seeing much of them. Only the NFL gets real and comprehensive coverage, and even that is so heavy handed that I feel myself starting to resent the NFL's monopoly.

However, maybe there is hope for the future...

Will Comcast use NHL to battle ESPN?

The NHL's shifting of its U.S. national cable television package from ESPN to OLN, which was announced Thursday, could have a major impact on the cable television industry because OLN's parent company might be gearing up to make a run at ESPN.

Comcast, which owns what formally was called the Outdoor Life Network, is the largest cable operator in the country. It has about 21.4 million subscribers and owns several cable networks, including The Golf Channel, E! and Style. And there is talk that it might make a run eventually at purchasing a package of Thursday night NFL games and growing from there.

Admittedly, the NHL is a pretty modest beginning for any network, but it exactly the same beginning used by ESPN in the early 1980's to gain legitimacy with fans. Now all Comcast has to do is sell themselves as the "Real Sport's Fans Network" and they should succeed.

A Long Long Long Time

Things are not quite back to normal I'm afraid. The Midwest relocation has gone pretty smoothly, but it is taking forever to get our digital phone hook-up. My computer is acting up anyway so God only knows if I'd be able to post even if the house was web ready.

I've missed writing for the blog, I build up things to complain about and the girlfriend isn't always too interested in my blather.

I shall return....I better or my girlfriend might slug me.

A Note For Loyal Readers

Sorry it has been so quiet around here of late. Summers tend to make a lot of extra demands on my time and it is quite a bit worse this year. For starters, the home office for the Iconic Midwest will be moving from west-central Minnesota to Dayton, Ohio at the end of this month. As I only found out about this yesterday it will be a bit of a scramble I'm afraid.

But I'll do my best to keep the place going until mid-August when things should be back to normal, or maybe even a little bit better than normal.

For those who might find it hard to go on without a bit of my patented complaining I'll just add:

I hate it when I hear reporters acting like they are granting me (or anyone else) a favor by doing their jobs. Last time I checked they were getting paid better than most to do their jobs (particularly the T.V. "reporters" who are the worst of the sanctimonious windbags.) So, you can forgive me if I don't feel they deserve a special "Noble Prize for Adopting a Holier Than Thou Attitude."

There. Don't you feel better?

Take The Party Back From Fat-Cat Developers

That goes for Democrats and Republicans alike.

First, it's the Dems turn. Voters in Tennessee have a clear choice when it comes to their Senate candidate in 2006.

Democratic candidate Rosalind Kurita states in a press release:

One day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against private property owners in a case that has far-reaching implications for the future of property rights, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rosalind Kurita said the court was wrong in its decision and that she would fight for federal action to preserve the rights of private property owners.

"The Supreme Court got it wrong," Kurita said. "The unusual interpretation of the 5th Amendment by a majority on the court means private property rights are subject to the will of the powerful with no checks and balances. America was built on the principle of private property, and this decision flies in the face of what our Founding Fathers intended."

While, fellow Democratic candidate Harold Ford Jr. believes:

"I've always believed individual rights are a big thing..... but, I find value in the court's decision. As long as people are compensated fairly, I can appreciate the decision. Certain areas in our state are crying for development, if this decision helps - it's a positive."

(Gee... it's nice to know Ford thinks individual rights are a "big thing." I guess actually upholding them is less important.)

Well, at least this is a no-brainer decision for Democrats.

Go Kurita!

(Gleaned from QandO)

Opinions, Good And Bad

More on Kelo from the press:

Michael Kinsley-

The "takings" clause of the 5th Amendment is for conservatives what the equal protection clause of the 14th is for liberals. It wouldn't be fair to say that conservatives cherish property the way liberals cherish equality. But it would be fair to say that the takings clause is the conservative recipe for judicial activism - imposing their agenda through the courts, rather than bothering with democracy - the way they say liberals have misused the equal protection clause.

Of course, conservatives always claim to be against judicial activism. Liberals have long suspected that this was a decoy, and that once conservatives had control of the federal courts, they would twist their mustaches, laugh contemptuously and reveal the various policies they planned to impose by judicial fiat.

I cannot tell if Kinsley is being deliberately obtuse here, or if he really is this big an idiot. It would seem clear that in order for something to qualify as "judicial activism" it would require some deviation from long standing practice or precedent. That would mean there existed some case, say in the 1830's, where the Court upheld, for example, taking someone's rowboat making business and giving it to someone who makes clipper ships because that would be better for society. If it were long established by such cases that this was within the government's purview Kinsley would have a point. However, it isn't and he doesn't. It was clearly believed that the Bill of Rights curtailed this type of governmental taking. By Kinsley's "standard" upholding any portion of the Constitution would be "judicial activism" if one political party liked it more than the other. That is nonsense. Kinsley would have us believe that the "Takings Clause" was never meant to protect private property from governmental action. How could it be any other way? Kinsley tells us that the government can take your property for "public use" AND the government gets to define what counts as "public use." If this is so, obviously the "takings" clause is contentless. (Please, Michael, show me where any protection for private property remains.) So Kelo v New London effectively erases this part of the Constitution and Kinsley has the gall to tell us it was the other side that was being judicial activists?!

And Kinsley "bothering with democracy" line is the worst sort of demagoguery imaginable. The entire purpose of having a "Bill of Rights" was to protect individuals from the excesses of popular government, from the excesses of democracy. We don't let legislatures decide what religion you can be, what you are allowed to say or print. And we do not let legislatures decide what does and what doesn't count as free speech or free exercise of religion precisely because that would destroy them as rights.

Going back to my earlier "either/or" question...I'm finding it difficult to believe anyone could be deliberatelyly this obtuse.

Robert Robb-

Last Thursday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that private property can be confiscated by government for private development stands the Constitution, as written by the founders, on its head.

Sandra Day O'Connor's dissent quotes Alexander Hamilton as saying that the "security of property" was one of the "great objects of government." That was a universally shared view among the founders. In fact, it's fair to say that the founders agreed on that principle more than any other.

That protection was given concrete reality in the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, which states: "nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."

As Clarence Thomas painstakingly points out in his dissent, by this the founders did not mean that private property could be taken for private use without just compensation. They meant that private property could not be taken for private use, period.

The majority opinion, written by John Paul Stevens, contends, however, that private property can be taken for private use so long as government perceives that the public will benefit from the change in use. Moreover, the court isn't going to get into the business of second-guessing local governments about what constitutes a public benefit or whether the change in use will result in one.

This completely reverses the intent of the founders to create a system of private property protected by government. Instead, according to the court, all property is in a fundamental sense communal. Government can take it from a private owner any time government believes that someone else would put it to a use that government prefers.

And if the government prefers wealthy people over poor people, the Supreme Court (and folks like Michael Kinsley) say "So be it."

More from Robb:

Nationally, the unwillingness of the U.S. Supreme Court to do the job the founders envisioned is leading to a crisis of liberty.

The founders intended to create an energetic but limited government. The job of the U.S. Supreme Court was to protect fundamental liberties against an overreaching government.

To the founders, there were no more fundamental liberties than private-property rights and the freedom of political speech.

In this case, the court has abandoned protecting private property against confiscation by an overreaching government. Previously, it had abandoned protecting political speech against government regulation and limitation when it upheld McCain-Feingold.

Meanwhile, the court has aggressively protected rights of its own creation, such as to an abortion or to homosexual sex.

Now, an intellectually honest argument can be made that the new rights the court has created are logically derived from the explicit rights the founders clearly established in the Constitution, and created the Supreme Court in part to protect.

But no intellectually honest defense can be made of a court that aggressively protects the derivative rights while abandoning protection of the explicit rights.

In our system of government, if the U.S. Supreme Court is unwilling to protect fundamental liberties against an overreaching government, what are a free people to do?

One thing I would advocate is for lower court judges to ignore this ruling. Treat it as being the morally indefensible position it is. Were I a judge, I would treat this ruling the same way I would have treated the Dred Scott ruling. We are all morally obligated not to follow someone else's orders to engage in fundamentally unjust activities. Were I a policeman in New London I would not follow orders to remove these people from their homes. Hell, I'm half considering going to New London and chaining myself to these people's homes. And yes, from what I have heard on the news from some of the people affected, I believe it will come to that.

I cannot fathom that self-proclaimed liberals would really sell their fundamental liberties for a place to get a latte and do pilates.

What is wrong with these people?

SCOTUS: Good For Something (Really!)

For the present the Court has decided they don't feel like creating a Constitutional right for reporters to be above the law...at least not today. Try them again next year, maybe. This all goes back to the supposed "leak" involved in the whole Joe Wilson debacle.

It will come as quite a shock to some journalists to discover they actually have to follow the same laws as the rest of us poor schmucks. I'm sure they will find this much more outrageous than Kelo.

Self-interst is tricky stuff, no? Not that your average reporter would admit it.

A Rallying Cry?

From the Chicago Tribune: There's No Such Thing As Home, Sweet Home

So, here's the irony: A liberal Supreme Court now makes possible the destruction of human-scale neighborhoods, with their ma-and-pa stores and affordable housing, in order to build despised, but revenue-generating, shopping malls and office parks--usually at the expense of poor people.

As O'Connor said in her strongly worded dissent: "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The founders cannot have intended this perverse result."

How have we gotten to this point, where conservative judges are standing up for persons with fewer resources and liberal justices are backing the play of the powerful and influential? Perhaps the cynic would say it's because liberals salivate over any chance to enlarge government power, and because conservatives are willing to go to any lengths--even to backing the little guy--to advance property rights.

The more important question, though, is: Is it right? The court has denied homeowners a constitutional protection against assaults by out-of-control local government. In response, those wishing to protect the little guy will have to be more vigilant at the local level, and ultimately fight to replace those elected officials who don't respect the basic right of domicile.

Or, better yet, to replace the Supreme Court justices who endorsed this assault.

Well, this cynic might disagree with the writer on some specifics (e.g. name a way in which the conservatives of this Court have "advanced" property right an iota,) but there is a much broader area where consensus is the rule. As things exist today, there is no way to resist the forces of "central planning" that will be deciding to rip the heart out of neighborhoods for the benefit of the already wealthy. What I'd ask my liberal friends to do is imagine, as proposed by reader Walt in the comments, how they would feel if working class people were being driven from their homes for the purpose of putting in a Wal-Mart on their land. They would be outraged, right? Now, ask yourself if it is in principle any different if instead of a Wal-Mart they put in a Whole Foods, a Bed, Bath & Beyond or a Crate & Barrel?

Another point to remember is that suburban areas, which most liberals despise as soul-less cultural deserts (and they have a point), were not the product of "rampant capitalism" but of central planning. The post-World War II era of the suburbs was clearly the product of Levittown syle social engineering, and to think it was anything other is to engage in a rather massive case of self-delusion. Real urban renewal has always been neighborhood based, the work of countless individuals that make homes for themselves and their families and who band together to stabilize their area more and more and attract new neighbors. "Central planning" isn't involved. You allow people to create their vision of a good neighborhood for themselves. If you have seen any of the great urban neighborhoods in cities all across the country, you should know they are damn good at doing it themselves. We don't need to steal their homes away fom them to prove that some bureaucrat could do it better. There is already a long track record proving that they cannot.

The Washington Post: Totalitarian Bastards

Here is what the benighted paladins of the WaPo have to say about Kelo v New London:

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution requires government to pay "just compensation" whenever it takes private property, and the Fort Trumbull residents will be compensated. But it further requires that "takings" be for "public use," and it was this requirement that residents cited in their lawsuit. They contended that the city was taking their land not for any legitimate public use but for the benefit of businesses -- essentially that the government was exchanging one set of private owners for another that would pay more taxes and bring jobs to the city.

The trouble is that there is no good way to distinguish New London's use of eminent domain from assertions of the power that local governments depend on all the time for worthy projects. Railroads, stadiums, inner-city redevelopment plans and land reform efforts all have involved taking land from one owner for the apparently private use of another. As Justice John Paul Stevens noted for a five-justice majority of the court, the justices' response has long been to avoid "rigid formulas and intrusive scrutiny" of legislative determinations "in favor of affording legislatures broad latitude in determining what public needs justify the use of the takings power."

This is not to say that a "public use" is anything government says it is. If the supposed public use were plainly a pretext for a simple private-sector land transfer, the court would presumably step in.

Really? If this was true how could you possibly state IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH,

However unfortunate New London's plans may prove, stopping the city based on a standardless judicial inquiry into how "public" its purpose really is would be far worse.

So, let me get this straight, you say "Don't worry about government abuse because if they go to far the courts will step in." And in your next breath say "It's not the job of the Court to decide if any Use is public enough." THOSE TWO POSITIONS ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE YOU MORONS! If you are not allowed to inquire about how public its purpose is how could you ever stop abuse? The answer is you never could. Which is exactly what the WaPo wants. They are not an advocate for regular citizens and their rights. How could anyone claim otherwise? (It also makes you wonder what the WaPo really thinks about other "standardless" rights we have, like Freedom of Speech or Religion. Today they willingly sign away our property rights in the name of public expediency. What goes tomorrow?)

The Washington Post's attitude can be summed up thusly: "C'mon! The government would never do anything bad."



Were an angry mob of torch bearing citizens to descend upon the offices of the Washington Post and burn them to the ground it would be nothing more than simple justice.

It is too bad simple justice isn't all that likely in our new America.

You Don't Have To Be A Lawyer...

...to have a valid opinion.

I say this because in my looking over commentary on Kelo v New London I have come upon quite a few folks who claim that they cannot have a "real" opinion about the case because they are not lawyers. I feel like giving these people a good shaking (or a thrashing...I'm pretty worked up.) Our Constitution is not a document "of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers." Its meaning is every bit up to all of us. It really pisses me off that A) the Supreme Court is all lawyers, and B) If anyone else is ever suggested for the job they are lawyers AND politicians. (Like that is a better mix or something.)

The founding of our nation was not only an exercise in law, although that was obviously an important component. It was primarily an exercise in political philosophy. This court has proven time and again that they know next to nothing about our founding philosophy. Really. The Supreme Court, as a group, is as ignorant as dirt about the subject. Scalia is the only one I ever heard speak intelligently on the subject. Anyone else I've heard has been an utter embarrassment. The truth is law is not necessarily an intellectually demanding field of study. Any idiot can be a lawyer. (If you have spent any time around law students you know what I say is gospel truth.) In the same manner any idiot can be an elected official. (Everyone knows this to be a fact.) What do you get when you mix idiot lawyers with idiot politicians? Idiot judges, of course. Now who, in this day and age, can honestly believe that near complete idiots cannot reach the very top of American political life? So, you shouldn't be amazed or worried to find out there are idiot Supreme Court justices. There always has been and there always will be idiot Supreme Court justices.

What you should be worried about is what political philosophy these particular idiots are substituting for that of the founding. It doesn't seem to be one that thinks much of your rights.

Enjoy.

The Disappointing Blogosphere

On a day like this it is quite disheartening to see most blogs more interested in the flag burning amendment or in calling Karl Rove a bastard than in the fundamental change in our society wrought by the Supreme Court.

I was going to try and do a Kelo v. New London roundup, but it is depressingly slim pickings:

Doug Petch always keeps on top of just about everything;

QandO never passes up the chance to talk about our disappearing property rights;

Jack Grant over at The Moderate Voice pushes TMV to somethig that is actually important; (Yes. That is a bit of a criticism.)

I'd have posted something from The Daily Kos, but they thought it was more important to post 9 things about how much they despise Karl Rove. The DK is quickly becoming little more than a waste of bandwidth.

Liberalism Repudiated

It's official. None of us live in a Liberal republic anymore. Welcome to the Socialist Republic of the United States of America ruled by politburo members Stevens, Kennedy, Ginsberg, Souter and Breyer. Official Motto: "Waterfront property for party members only."

Today the Court decided the government can take away anything you own, even if all they want to do with it is give it to another (wealthier) individual. Oh, you have to first give it window dressing and claim it will "produce a public benefit", but in the end it winds up the same.

"You're a poor person who happens to live in a home that yuppies want? Well you are shit out of luck my friend, because the yuppies have a CONSTITUTIONALLY ENSHRINED RIGHT to take your home away from you (with the help of the government, of course.) Why? Well, bucket of scum poor people like you don't pay as much in taxes as yuppies do. Go and die under an overpass somewhere."

Makes you proud to be an American, don't it?

In his opinion Justice Stevens goes out of his way to prove beyond a doubt his is the worst kind of jurisprudence imaginable. Get this:

Two polar propositions are perfectly clear. On the one hand, it has long been accepted that the sovereign may not take the property of A for the sole purpose of transferring it to another private party B, even though A is paid just compensation. On the other hand, it is equally clear that a State may transfer property from one private party to another if future "use by the public" is the purpose of the taking; the condemnation of land for a railroad with common-carrier duties is a familiar example. Neither of these propositions, however, determines the disposition of this case.

As for the first proposition, the City would no doubt be forbidden from taking petitioners' land for the purpose of conferring a private benefit on a particular private party. See Midkiff, 467 U.S., at 245 ("A purely private taking could not withstand the scrutiny of the public use requirement; it would serve no legitimate purpose of government and would thus be void"); Missouri Pacific R. Co. v. Nebraska, 164 U.S. 403 (1896). Nor would the City be allowed to take property under the mere pretext of a public purpose, when its actual purpose was to bestow a private benefit. The takings before us, however, would be executed pursuant to a "carefully considered" development plan. 268 Conn., at 54, 843 A. 2d, at 536. The trial judge and all the members of the Supreme Court of Connecticut agreed that there was no evidence of an illegitimate purpose in this case. Therefore, as was true of the statute challenged in Midkiff, 467 U.S., at 245, the City's development plan was not adopted "to benefit a particular class of identifiable individuals."

Really? Really? REALLY? That's funny, because I can quite easily identify a particular "class of individuals" that benefit from this taking. They are ALL WEALTHIER THAN THE POOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE JUST HAD THEIR HOMES TAKEN AWAY FROM THEM. It is amazing that Stevens can't identify rich people as an identifiable class. Most Americans don't have that difficulty. Justice Steven's riposte (if such it can be called) that this is a "carfeully considered development plan" and so must be bowed before, has to be just about the dumbest legal "principle" ever proclaimed by the Court. Now our courts have to decide what is and what isn't a "carefully considered" plan? What complete and utter bullshit. It will never happen. The courts will simply defer to the State whenever they say "We did a study that said X." I know it, you know it, and Justice Steven's and his cronies know it.

This decision represents a complete repudiation of the political philosophy that underlied the founding of this nation. Nobody who lived in the first 175 years of our country's existence would recognize a single thing about the political philosophy motivating Stevens and Company. You know the whole "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" thing? Well, Justice Stevens today has said, "F*ck that shit" and a whole lot of our fellow countrymen will applaud him for it...at least the wealthier ones.

The rest of us realize a right we used to enjoy against the rich and powerful has just been taken away by a pen stroke.

Justice Thomas dissented:

Long ago, William Blackstone wrote that "the law of the land postpone[s] even public necessity to the sacred and inviolable rights of private property." 1 Commentaries on the Laws of England 134-135 (1765) (hereinafter Blackstone). The Framers embodied that principle in the Constitution, allowing the government to take property not for "public necessity," but instead for "public use." Amdt. 5. Defying this understanding, the Court replaces the Public Use Clause with a " '[P]ublic [P]urpose' " Clause, ante, at 9-10 (or perhaps the "Diverse and Always Evolving Needs of Society" Clause, ante, at 8 (capitalization added)), a restriction that is satisfied, the Court instructs, so long as the purpose is "legitimate" and the means "not irrational," ante, at 17 (internal quotation marks omitted). This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a "public use." [Emphasis Added]

I cannot agree. If such "economic development" takings are for a "public use," any taking is, and the Court has erased the Public Use Clause from our Constitution, as Justice O'Connor powerfully argues in dissent.

So, the State can do whatever it wants to your property as long as it isn't irrational. (Real comforting, eh?) I must have missed that part of the Constitution.

Justice O'Conner dissented:

Over two centuries ago, just after the Bill of Rights was ratified, Justice Chase wrote:

"An act of the Legislature (for I cannot call it a law) contrary to the great first principles of the social compact, cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority . A few instances will suffice to explain what I mean . [A] law that takes property from A. and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a Legislature with such powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it." Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 388 (1798) (emphasis deleted).

Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power. Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded-i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public-in the process. To reason, as the Court does, that the incidental public benefits resulting from the subsequent ordinary use of private property render economic development takings "for public use" is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property-and thereby effectively to delete the words "for public use" from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.


I don't care how much of a Democrat you are, if you care about Liberalism at all you should be advocating more "conservative" (and therefor more Liberal) justices. If not, you should come forward and admit to being the socialist you without a doubt are.

The "Real" Problem, Post Style

From the Washington Post:

At a Starbucks across the street from Seattle University School of Law, Kirsten Daniels crams for the bar exam. She's armed with color-coded pens, a don't-mess-with-me crease in her brow and what she calls "my comfort latte."

She just graduated summa cum laude , after three years of legal training that left her $115,000 in debt. Part of that debt, which she will take a decade to repay with interest, was run up at Starbucks, where she buys her lattes.

Only the Washington Post could do a story about law schools and discover that the real problem is $3.00 lattes and not $40,000 a year tuition bills. If the WaPo wants to do us a real favor maybe they can do a story about what cash cows and rip-offs law schools are. Students are herded into huge (and cost efficient) lecture halls; the simple fact that all you need to learn law is high-tech gadgets called "books" (which students pay for in any event); law schools taking huge portions of University budgets to first class facilities while other parts of the Univeristy languish.; etc., etc. etc.

But all the Post feels the need to say is, "Holy Mother of God!! These kids are getting extra foam with their coffee!"

Way to take the pulse of your community.

No News Good News?

The Supreme Court issued six rulings today, but there is still no word on Kelo v. New London. (In case you don't remember that was the eminent domain case. The court is deciding if it is ok for the government to seize property from poorer people in order to give it to wealthier people. Nice, eh?) It seems they are taking a good long time to decide this one. After the oral arguments back in February it looked like the court wasn't gonna waste much time and affirm the state's power of eminent domain as damn near asolute. So I'm a little bit surprised a ruling hasn't been handed down yet.

It might be a slender thing on which to hold out much hope, but last winter things looked hopeless.

C'mon SC! Shock the hell out of me... Do the right thing.

Promoting Democracy

INTRODUCTION:

Over at the Daily Demarche a challenge was issued for right and left leaning bloggers to engage each other in a great debate on the merits of the U.S. promoting Democracy around the world. With the encouragement of Marc Schulman of American Future I decided to throw my voice into the fray. I have asked David Leftwich of the blog Eclectic Refrigerator to handle things coming from the left-of-center perspective, while I handle duties from the right-of-center. It is probably safe to assume David and I are both more centrist than anything else, but I believe there will be enough variation in our starting points to make this a worthwhile endeavor. As a bonus I thought it would also be a good thing to get David's voice back in circulation after a few months away from the world of blogging.

THE QUESTION:

Should the U.S. support foreign pro-democracy groups around the globe?

It might seem, in a post 9-11 world, that this question is a bit superfluous, but I think it is worthwhile to take a moment to consider the arguments one could make against U.S. involvement with any foreign pro-democracy groups.

One strand of thought often used, in certain circles, stresses a culturally relativistic view of the world. In such a view the U.S. promoting democracy around the world is just another example of a kind of Imperialism. Whether it stems from a sense of cultural superiority or the desire to dominate others economically, it all comes as one in the end. "Promoting democracy" is, for such folks, just another way the hegemonic nations exercise their power over weaker nations.

As an explanation of the world, such a view is seriously lacking. It requires a rather stolid caricature of the "democracy promoter" straight out of Marxism's Central Casting that bears little relation to anything actually existing. As such this view can be safely disregarded.

However, a milder form of the same argument is a little more interesting. It can be argued that the U.S. should allow pro-democratic groups to spring up on their own accord. Such "homegrown" groups, it can be argued, would be more attuned to cultural differences within a given society that could aid it in taking root deep within that society. What happens when we try to export democracy abroad is that we wind up trying to make folks American democrats instead of simply democrats.

At one level this makes some sense. It is obvious any political group that wishes to influence how their country is governed will need to seem as if they are representing an integral part of that country's society. However, it seems more unclear how promoting the prerequisites of democratic societies could be viewed as necessarily relativistic. A free press is a free press. Its definition will not change depending on if one is in the United States or in Austria or in Indonesia. A "free press" that does not include opposition views is not a free press even if the Iranian government says it is. Likewise, the definition of a "free election" does not change from country to country either. It would seem these concerns could be dealt with by making sure the our efforts do not suffer from having a tin ear when being translated into different societies. It does not strike me as a fundamental difficulty.

These concerns have been largely at a theoretical level to this point. There is however a more practical objection one might posit to U.S. pro-democracy efforts:

The risk of the U.S. seeming too involved in the internal affairs of other nations.

It could be argued that when the U.S. actively supports a specific pro-democratic group within a country they help to in effect de-legitimize that group, particularly in places that are at least nominally democratic to begin with. One can think of the example of Venezuela. It is clear that the Bush administration supports the various middle-class opposition parties against President Hugo Chavez. It is also clear that, strictly from the standpoint of promoting a democratic society, there are legitimate reasons for criticizing Chavez. The heavy handed tactics of the Venezuelan government obviously inhibit the workings of a free and independent press, and present unjust conditions for opposition political groups. However, it also seems clear that the U.S. involvement with these opposition groups has done either side little good. Indeed, it has made these groups susceptible to charges they are nothing more than lackeys for the Americans, and it has made the U.S., at the very least, look responsible for the missteps and illegalities perpetrated by the Venezuelan opposition. What our actual involvement was, is, for this discussion, irrelevant. It is enough to show that U.S. efforts are deemed to be intrusive and are as a result counter-productive.

As presented this argument is convincing. If the U.S. efforts are seen to be intrusive of the internal workings of a foreign country, they will ultimately be of no value. However, it is not evident that all U.S. pro-democracy efforts are doomed to such intrusiveness. Defining them as such does not make them so. What is clear is that however the U.S. goes about promoting democracy abroad it must be seen as neutral vis-a-vis the individual political groups within a country. At this point we are no longer debating whether the U.S. should be promoting democracy abroad but we are debating how they should go about it.

THE QUESTION:

How should the U.S. support foreign pro-democracy groups around the globe?

Roughly speaking there are two general approaches the U.S. can take on this question, one more practical and realistic and the other more principled and theoretical.

The realistic approach basically says the U.S. should pick and choose carefully the spots where it will decide to promote democracy. For example, the U.S. might decide to "promote democracy" in a generally non-democratic regime that assumes an anti-U.S. stance, while democracy might not be promoted in a regime already more favorable to U.S. interests. Such thinking is in many ways a product of the Cold War world. In a bipolar geopolitical situation "promoting democracy" wasn't a policy, it was a tool; a tool not wielded against those in the "friendly" column.

Even in a one super-power system there are still arguments to allow the same sort of distinctions. For example, there is the "devil you know" argument. We might not like a given regime's modus operandi, but, if they are friendly to us at this moment in time, the status quo might just be preferable to what might result after democratic reforms. (One can hear such arguments being made routinely about Saudi Arabia.)

An added benefit of such an approach is that the U.S. could minimize the risk of failure. There would be little chance for a loss of prestige in the world if you don't have to back democracy in tough situations. One cannot help but think of the situation in Hungary in 1956. In that case the inability of the U.S. to support the fledgling democratic movement in Budapest against Soviet aggression, despite the U.S.' democratic rhetoric of the day, resulted in a serious blow to American prestige.

Whatever can be said in favor of such an approach, it is obvious that it is prone to failing the criterion set out earlier of not seeming too intrusive. The capricious nature of choosing only some non-democratic regimes to pressure is enough to cast aspersions on American efforts. Additionally, such policies fail to take into account the democratic nature of American society. Think back to the 1980's. Whether someone in the U.S. wanted to promote democracy in El Salvador or Nicaragua had very little to do with actual conditions in those countries and everything to do with what party the someone belonged to, Democrat or Republican. When U.S. "pro-democracy" efforts can be seen as merely the extension of some American ideological debate or inter-party squabble, it becomes nearly impossible to argue that it isn't intrusive. Whatever our pro-democracy efforts are they have to seem more than mere pawns in a Washington D.C. power struggle.

Another fundamental difficulty with the realist approach is that it becomes nigh impossible for U.S. efforts to look anything other than hypocritical. At any given time the U.S. will be both supporting some pro-democratic forces and some anti-democratic regimes. This fact alone invalidates any principled claim we might wish to make in favor of democracy as being the most morally legitimate form of governance. In the end the realist approach would seem to be self defeating.

This leaves us with the principled or theoretical approach to promoting democracy. Such an approach would focus necessarily on democracy as a process. In such a view the goal is not to ensure that regimes we like will emerge from any given country. Indeed, the U.S. has to view the results of elections as irrelevant to the purpose of spreading democracy. The reason for this is clear. Any attempt to pre-determine who wins an election in another country would be an example of the U.S. being too intrusive in the internal affairs of other nations, and would in fact constitute a large incentive for such governments to become less democratic in the future. On one level the U.S. cannot care if the citizens of Iraq vote for a Shia inspired theocratic party, as long as future elections are still free and open. Indeed it is the continuing character of the election processes, including the workings of a free press and the rights of opposition being respected, that would be the only legitimate concern for the United States.

It becomes clear that the only legitimate help the U.S. can give to pro-democratic groups around the world is in helping to set up a democratic electoral process. Organizations set up to monitor elections would be key. Unfortunately, the United Nations is not an ideal partner for such activities. The U.N., as an organization, has not seem too concerned about the democratic process throughout its history. They will condemn instances of political violence, it is true, but the U.N. has no trouble recognizing governments that are maintained through the most brutal of methods in flagrant violation of the basic tenets of democracy. The U.N. simply does not see its role as that of fostering democratic reform around the world, and there seems to be little reason to think it can reinvent itself in that way in the future.

In many ways a U.S. foreign policy centered around democratic reforms would be akin to the Jimmy Carter initiative to center U.S. foreign policy around Human Rights. Carter's policies were never going to make a lot of headway against the Cold War era realists in Congress or in the State Department, but that doesn't mean they were completely wrong-headed. A foreign policy centered on democratic reforms is in many ways a better bet. For starters, it is less ambitious. Electoral reform is largely a technical exercise. It really doesn’t require a total re-ordering of society in order to implement it. A campaign for human rights is almost always an open-ended process that doesn't allow for the easy delineation of boundaries. Once questions of Human Rights are raised everything is on the table. (It will be argued that a democratic society will, eventually amount to the same thing. I agree, but by limiting the external pressure for reform to the more technical aspects of a democratic polity, you allow the internal political machinations of each country to bring up the larger questions of Human Rights, which, in the long run, is the best way to ensure that progress takes place. Attempting to impose Human Rights from without seems to me a recipe for disaster.)

In addition to supporting election monitoring, the U.S. must also support opposition parties that are being denied the right to operate freely. However, it is important that we support every single party facing such difficulties. We cannot choose a handful of U.S. friendly parties to give support to. In a similar vein we must also support the press rights for every persecuted news outlet, even those highly critical of the United States. Basically the U.S. should function something like the ACLU of thirty years ago: We support the principles upon which every democratic society is founded, even if we disagree with the content of your speech, and every person has the right to participate in the political life of his or her country without governmental interference.

A NOTE ON POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY:

In most respects, I'd argue that the United States is the only country on earth in a good position to advocate democratic reform, with the possible exception of the United Kingdom. I feel this way because the U.S. is really the only democratic country where the principles of a liberal democratic society are still widely embraced across the political spectrum. People on the left and the right in this country will go on and on about, for example, the Bill of Rights, or on the importance of our system of Checks & Balances. We have a rich and continuing history of intellectuals thinking about what it means to live in a liberal democratic state. That is something you just do not see in continental Europe. I'm not saying it isn't visible at all, but it is certainly less of a vital force there. (You can see something of the European attitude in American academics who have little patience with the thinkers of the American founding, but have no trouble spending their time in a quixotic effort to make of Nietzsche a closet democrat or Democrat.)

Considering the troubles we are having presently throughout the Middle East, it is somewhat ironic that I will also argue that the Middle Easterner who is interested in liberal democratic thought will probably get more out of the classic Western statements of liberal thought than would your average American. Someone in Iran who turns to Hobbes or Locke or Algernon Sidney will find lengthy discussions disputing theocratic principles of governance that will speak much more clearly to an Iranian than it ever would for a modern American. Most college educated Americans may have read Locke's Second Treatise on Government but very few have read Locke's First Treatise. We don't read Hooker's or Filmer's defenses of divine right so we just assume questions of theocracy were settled, but of course they weren't in 17th century England, just as they are not settled in 21st century Iran. In a very real sense this is an opportunity for every thinking American to learn something new about the ideas that underlie our society.

I know these thoughts will probably not sway your average American sophisticate, who assumes a certain incommensurability in the world (supported by what examples in history I will never know.) But really it is not the American sophisticate who is important in this process. It is amazing how easy it is to forget that fact.