Saturday, June 12, 2010

Tom Friedman's Giant Mansion

I'm not someone who lectures people about their lifestyle choices. Personal conservation is nice, but ultimately most environmental issues require government policy changes. But Tom Friedman is someone who regularly suggests that people should live in slightly smaller mansions than Tom Friedman does, or something.

Saturday Night

It's alright.

The Quiet Norwegian

These types of things always work out so well for the local populations.

You Know What Else Runs In Traffic? Buses. Also, More Traffic

Had quick trip out to West Philly today, where most of the city's surface trolley lines are, and was reminded again how silly it is that people have such massive safety concerns when there are proposals to run light rail lines on streets with traffic. There are other reasons why it's nice to have grade separation and own right of ways, but safety just isn't a concern.

People On The Internets Are Mean

One of those things you learn very quickly when you start blogging and get a commenting audience is that if you can't take a steady stream of not necessarily friendly criticism then blogging really isn't for you.

We'll Always Be The Greatest Country In The Universe

Benen writes:

It's tempting to think that conservative policymakers, if nothing else, would care about American competitiveness on the global stage -- a concept that has no ideological bias.

I long ago concluded that America is great because we say it is, and it doesn't really matter if we fall behind other countries on whatever measures you can construct. We are awesome because we are. Suck on that!

Or Else

I get that this cleanup will require a massive operation and it's difficult to scale up such a thing very quickly both in terms of manpower and supplies, but it really does not seem that BP is doing all that they can do. Sternly worded letter to the rescue!
Coast Guard Rear Adm. James Watson has written a letter to BP, giving the company 48 hours to come up with additional "leak containment capacity" to deal with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Accounting Fun

Think how easy it would be with 40-1 leverage.

Lunch Thread

enjoy

Destroying The Gulf

It's the weekend so I get to make obvious points that I've already made, but I really don't get the sense that the Very Serious People who rule us have yet to comprehend the magnitude of the disaster in the Gulf. I'm not talking about wanting Obama to grab a bullhorn and talk about more asskicking, I'm just talking about how the general conversation is about how this problem is going to be solved. It really isn't.

Why Isn't The Government Buying My Magic Oil Disappearing Machine Thingy

It's always a bit weird when people like this pop up in the media. How exactly do they manage it?

Meanwhile

What's the point?
KABUL — A NATO soldier was killed in a bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan Saturday, the military said, the 28th to die in the troubled country this week.

Late Night Feast

Washington First International Bank, Seattle, WA gets eated.

First one I noticed with Chinese language guide.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Evening Thread

Have fun

Demand

This afternoon the NPR (unexpected drive to the burbs) informed me that the administration is pushing for Congress to support various tax breaks for new startups and small businesses so they can continue to try to sell products that people don't have any money to buy.

Very, Very Modest

Major slick hitting shores...

Don't Tease The Panther

A line I regularly use.

Afternoon Thread

Nobody Tell Him About The Transit Unions

It's depressing about how big a fight you have over such tiny amounts of money, but kudos to Schumer for supporting money for transit agencies. Oddly my local transit authority is actually doing fine (at the moment) with its operating budget, it's the capital budget that is completely screwed.

I Don't Have A Crystal Ball Either

The point of the post below isn't that they failed to accurately predict the depths of the recession, though by their own numbers the stimulus that was enacted was too little, but that 9% unemployment was once a ZOMG WE'RE ALL DOOMED scenario while there's an odd complacency in the face of continuing 9.7% unemployment.

A Nightmare Scenario Requiring Unprecedented Action

I've mentioned a few times recently that in January of 2009, the incoming Obama administration projected that if the stimulus bill passed, unemployment would be at about 7.5% in May of 2010. Along with that, they projected that without the stimulus, unemployment would reach a whopping NINE percent and remain there until the third quarter of 2010 before dropping. In January of 2009, a projected extended period of 9% unemployment prompted the administration and Congress to pass an unprecedented stimulus bill. Unemployment is currently at 9.7%.

Blogger Ethics Panel

Just about everyone who has spent time at a "smaller" news outlet has stories about how larger news outlets regularly rip them off without credit.

I, at least, provide a link.

The Rural Poor

I often roll my eyes a bit at the "elites are out of touch with the Real American Heartland" stuff, not because I think it's entirely wrong, just that it's usually said elites who are making the claims and then still remaining out of touch, not just with the Real American Heartland but with just about everything that's more than six inches from their noses. In other words, they're still getting it wrong but trying to make it better by pretending they care.

But more seriously I do think that one completely under addressed issue, in politics, media, and pop culture, is rural poverty. Poverty in this country tends to be associated with cities and by extension racial minorities, but there is a lot of deep poverty in rural areas experienced by both whites and minorities.

Catfood Commission

Basically it's morality to them, the old and the poor and the infirm aren't working quite hard enough to get into rich peoples' heaven.

Fornication

What year is it again?

In April 2009, Hamilton told her boss at Southland Christian School in St. Cloud, Fla., that she was pregnant and planned to take a six-week leave in October. When asked when she conceived, Hamilton answered honestly: She became pregnant just three weeks prior to her Feb. 20 wedding.

That was enough to get her fired under the school's strict morality rules, which prohibit teachers from "fornication," engaging in sex before marriage.

Pushing The Boundaries

Whatever the law is or should be, it's quite fascinating (if unsurprising) that BP execs appear shocked that they might be responsible for everything they destroyed. UnAmerican!

Very, Very Modest

Nobody could have predicted...
A government panel on Thursday essentially doubled its estimate of how much oil has been spewing from the out-of-control BP well, with the new calculation suggesting that an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10 days.

The new estimate is 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil a day. That range, still preliminary, is far above the previous estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.

Morning Thread

What's happening? Haven't had a chance yet to read around.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

3 Weeks

Dare to dream.

I need a long nap.

Evening Thread

We Are All BP Now

Well, except for maybe the wildlife and the shrimpers and fishermen and Gulf tourist industry employees...

Happy Hour Thread

Having some tech issues.

Somehow I Doubt That's Just A "Job"

NYT:
On Friday, Mr. Nguyen finally landed a job that promises $2,300 a day and something of a future: cleaning up oil for BP.

The guy owns a boat, so they may be contracting with him for his boat, but I doubt they're just paying him $2300/day for his labor...

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

When Big Corporations Destroy Everything

It's taxpayers who should pay the bill.


But of course we can't raise taxes to do it. Or something.

Plenty To Do

Yglesias:
It’d probably be more expensive to mount a real jobs program—like a program where you show up somewhere and they give you a job—than to simply keep extending UI, but it’d be better to establish something for folks who’ve been out of a job for over a year where we actually employ them doing something. We should give Paoletti money, and we should also give her something to do. It just can’t be that there’s absolutely nothing of public use that could be done in-or-around Salina, New York.

I don't think UI benefits should be linked to any kind of public work plan, but, yes, there is plenty of work to be done. I really want to go back in time and be in the meetings of Obama's economic advisers back in January in 2009. I want to say, what's the plan 'B'? I want to say, what if, contrary to your predictions, unemployment is not at 7.5% 16 months from now, but is instead at 9.7%? What will you do then? What would you do differently now?

Austerity

It's important to remember that a big contributor to the current deficit is... the recession. No jobs=lower tax revenue. Sure those who have no jobs and therefore don't pay federal income taxes are the luckiest of duckies, but that doesn't help the budget picture.

Why Don't You Love Us More

One simple reason is that the dirty fucking hippies are much more supportive of the stated Obama agenda than the people they spend time and money supporting.

Now I'm a big boy and I get that the stated agenda (public option, Volcker rule) isn't always the actual agenda, but people in the administration shouldn't be surprised when people who go out on a limb and support them get a bit upset when their branch gets sawed off.

OBAMA MIGHT DESTROY BP

That's the sentiment in various places in the business press, where they seemed unaware of the possibility that maybe BP will be responsible for destroying itself, along with the Gulf.
BP said there would be just a 21 percent chance that oil would reach Louisiana's coast within a month; in fact the first sheen hit the state in nine days after the rig exploded. The company also said it had more than enough equipment in place to capture any oil before it would hit shore.

If the documents downplay risk to the Gulf coast, they completely ignore the threat beyond. There's no mention of the much-discussed loop current, for example, which could send oil around the Florida peninsula and up the Atlantic Coast.

The 52-page plan BP submitted early last year covering Mississippi Canyon Block 252, the location of the busted well, is particularly disheartening to read in hindsight, after seeing all those pictures of oiled birds and turtles and gunky wetlands and beaches.

Out in the Gulf, a spill might cause "some detrimental effects" on fish habitats, the report concedes, but it would likely be "sub-lethal." Both finfish and shellfish, the company pointed out, can swim away.

They can swim away.

The Bond Vigilantes

They've change their minds.
After months of deriding U.S. Treasury bonds, Bill Gross and his fund managers at Pacific Investment Management Co. have switched sides. Pimco had been the biggest and most vocal of a large group of Treasury bears, predicting that Treasury prices would fall, and yields rise, as the U.S. economy strengthens and the government borrowing binge continued.

With interest rates this low, it would be crazy not to borrow an immense amount of money.

Thursday Is New Jobless Day

456K new lucky duckies.

Still high.


...the number "fell" but only from the revised number, which was revised upwards...

Morning

Still working on the first cup.

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Your Moment of Seder

It's Been 51 Days

I don't think they know what they're doing.

On Wednesday, the cap was collecting 630,000 gallons of oil – but it could be capturing more oil if BP had decided to put more ships on the surface to hold and process the collected oil. That means the cap will have to continue venting excess oil into the Gulf until another two ships – one which can sift gas and water out of the crude and another which will shuttle oil to shore – arrive next week.

Or

How about if you'd asked them that question in January of 2009? Specifically, "...if unemployment remains near 10% in May 2010?"

Would really like an answer to the "if we knew then what we know now what would have done" question.

Happy Hour Thread

Too tired to blog.

Progress

The urban hellhole just got a bit more sensible, effectively decriminalizing first time pot busts under an ounce.

Also

They talked about it on the Sunday shows because... Obama was going to be there that day.

I'm not sure if the administration is doing all that it can or should given the completely messed up underwater drilling regime we have. I suspect that leaving BP in charge of the cleanup is a really bad idea. But Kurtz's "wrong" is idiotic.

Perhaps A Sternly Worded Letter?

Might help.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — The US tightened pressure Wednesday on BP, setting a 72-hour deadline for the battered British energy titan to present updated plans for battling the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, charged with leading the government's response to the nation's worst environmental disaster, demanded BP produce records of compensation claims filed by individuals and businesses.

How About Off The Coast Of Your State?

Progress.

Just a quarter of Americans back expanding offshore drilling in the wake of the BP oil spill, and most fault federal regulators for the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Before the spill, the Obama administration lifted the moratorium on drilling in U.S. coastal waters as a way to address the country's energy needs. But most Americans now want fewer offshore wells (31 percent) or the amount kept at current levels (41 percent).

...

The new Post-ABC poll reveals a widespread perception that poor federal regulation was at fault in the Gulf spill. Some 63 percent point a finger at inadequate enforcement of current regulations, and 55 percent see an overall weak regulatory structure. Even more, 73 percent, blame BP and its drilling partners for the accident. And the same number now call the spill a major environmental disaster.

Morality Play

This column by Martin Wolf is otherwise good, but it's important to provide a small addendum to this:

Premature fiscal tightening is, warns experience, as big a danger as delayed tightening would be. There are no certainties here. The world economy – or at least that of the advanced countries – remains disturbingly fragile. Only those who believe the economy is a morality play, in which those they deem wicked should suffer punishment, would enjoy that painful result.


The wicked, of course, aren't bad people like the banksters who have been doing their best to destroy the world. No, the "wicked" are those people who just aren't quite moral enough to be rich.

Go Senate

I guess it's up to the Senate to try to save the jobs of a few more House members. Funny.

Fresh Thread

I'm probably somewhere in Maryland.

The Last Pump

We're probably at the end of all of the efforts to reinflate the housing bubble, so now we'll see what happens...

Meanwhile

How many has it been this week already?


KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents shot down a NATO helicopter in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing four United States soldiers on board, according to Afghan and NATO officials.



What are they doing there?

Travel Day

And no wireless broadband might equal no blog posts for a bit. Back in the early afternoon if not before.

Morning and Shit

I guess the election results could have been worse.

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

They Have Elections

Arkansas results.

This Has Been The Strategy All Along

Not sure why anyone is surprised that the Republicans keep trotting out a designated football holder for every bill to water it down and delay and then ultimately withdraw support.

Only surprise is that Lindsey has done this without nearly as much of his usual trademark hissy fit.

Also, Not The Market

Had not realized that until recently developers around BART stations would have to replace all surface parking with expensive and of course still not tiny parking decks if they wanted to develop around them.

Need to move away from the park-n-ride model where possible and provide walkable living near good transit links.


...adding, for those who don't like to click through, lots of places don't have decent transit and some places which have decent transit in some sense have built it, suburban DC Metro-like, in highway medians and similar which don't really allow for decent transit oriented development. But there are also plenty of places, including chunks of suburban Philadelphia, where you do have a decent transit system except for the fact that for various reasons including zoning laws there has never been appropriate development around the stops.

More Thread

Lost my wireless broadband thingy, so blogging on the road a bit more difficult at the moment.

Jobs

I'm at America's Future Now listening to Biden's economic adviser Jared Bernstein. He just praised Bob Herbert, sitting next to him, for regularly "showing us the way" on the pages of the NYT. I'd like to hear just why the administration isn't actually going that way. He's going into his progressives should realize all the good that's been done schtick, but saying it doesn't take away 9.7% unemployment.


...says White House is working with Congress for more, including renewed COBRA and UI extensions, but also stresses fact that all of this has had little impact on long term deficit. We know! So, you know, do more, and stop worrying about the deficit hawks.

A Little Bit Of Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing

It's something I've long said about economics. In my experience, though things could have changed since then, academic economists tended to be archetypal Republican of yore on lots of economic issues, but were still often Democrats as they went into the social sciences because they actually cared about solving certain problems even if they were skeptical of using government interventions to do so. For example, you can be concerned about poverty yet still be skeptical that a minimum wage increase is a good way to deal with it.

Having said that, for various reasons the public faces of economics, which consists of many who aren't actual academic economists, are overwhelmingly conservative causing the public to have rather skewed view of what "economists" think about things.

Have They Heard Of Email?

I've long known that Fred Hiatt's crayon scribble page is better understood if one sees it as a way for Villagers In Good Standing to send public memos to each other, much more than as a tool for informing and educating readers. Can't they just set up an email list instead and spare the rest of us?

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

People Hate Congress

So the obvious course of action is to do things which increase the likelihood of continued high unemployment [/dcpoliticalconsultant.]

Do You Feel Lucky, Punk? Well do you?

Hayward a week ago:

"The oil is on the surface," Hayward said. "There aren't any plumes."


Reality:

WASHINGTON -- The government says water tests have confirmed underwater oil plumes as far as 142 miles from the BP oil spill, but that concentrations are "very low."


Hopefully the concentrations are low enough so as not to be extremely damaging, but...

Tell BP's Hayward To Make My Day

Please no return to Bush-era fake bluster. It was annoying then, it's annoying now.

Glenn Beck's America

I suppose a promoter of a pro-Nazi racist deserves his own teevee show.

Propserity Through Poverty

I suppose we're entering the broken record era of 'need more government money for jobs stimulus,' but, you know, we do.

For all the money that has been spent so far, the Obama administration and Congress have not made the kinds of investments that would put large numbers of Americans back to work and lead to robust economic growth. What is needed are the same things that have been needed all along: a vast program of infrastructure repair and renewal; an enormous national investment in clean energy aimed at transforming the way we develop and use energy in this country; and a transformation of the public schools to guarantee every child a first-rate education in a first-rate facility.


Back when all this started I had a bet with a meatspace friend over whether unemployment would go over 7.8%. I took the over, of course, but he thought it was crazy to think it would go that high because at the time 7.8% seemed like crazy levels of unemployment. I would have thought that extended periods of near 10% unemployment would be seen as a crisis to address, and we've had several worse than expected jobs report moments which should have provided openings to do that. And yet...

The Oil Spill Is Excellent News For Republicans

I was going to give this a pass as it was from a local paper, but then I saw it was an AP piece.

Could the spill restore Jindal as a GOP whiz kid?


Guess anything's possible. 9/11 did wonders for Bush.

Meanwhile

What are they doing there again?

NATO says two more soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, just one day after 10 service members died in a string of attacks across the country.

NATO says those killed Tuesday died in a bomb attack.

In Monday's violence, seven American, one French and two Australian soldiers were killed in five separate attacks in the south and east of the country. It was the deadliest day this year for international forces in Afghanistan.

Morning

Virtually Speaking Blog Talk Radio had Watertiger and Culture of Truth on this past Sunday. Worth a listen.

Monday, June 07, 2010

Evening Thread

Rockon

Halt

I wonder how many accidents it'll take before they halt all of it. Fewer than infinity?

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Pennsylvania regulators are halting work at dozens of unfinished natural gas wells being drilled by the company whose well spewed out explosive gas and polluted water for 16 hours last week.

Gov. Ed Rendell said Monday the order against EOG Resources Inc. will remain in place until the Department of Environmental Protection can finish its investigation and until after the company implements whatever changes may be needed.


The move from discovery to fracking everywhere without appropriate attention to possible environmental consequences was very fast. Hopefully this slows things down a bit.

Afternoon Thread

Reasonably exciting day at the dog track today. Maybe if it plunges another 10% we'll get a decent bailout jobs bill.

New Thread

Maybe it'll goose Echo. If not, I'm sure the geniuses at JS-Kit will get to it eventually..

...from their twitter:

We've been having longer than expected delays in posting comments, engineers are on it and should be back to normal very soon

Going Backwards

I've been cranky lately, because I think we're starting to retreat.

Having counted on Washington for money that may not be delivered, at least 30 states will have to close larger-than-anticipated shortfalls in the coming fiscal year unless Congress passes a six-month extension of increased federal spending on Medicaid.

Governors and state lawmakers, already facing some of the toughest budgets since the Great Depression, said the repercussions would extend far beyond health care, forcing them to make bone-deep cuts to education, social services and public safety.


Congress is encouraging 50 little Hoovers. It's going to work out so well.

HULK SEE

An anecdote which does not give me much confidence that in dealing with BP they're dealing with geniuses.

Doing It Wrong

I just had a conversation about this with someone here, about the fact that while in purely cynical terms it makes sense that safe seat Dems are less concerned about the jobs issue than they should be, it's the Blue Dogs who tend to be in less safe seats and who are actually standing in the way of legislation which make might voters a bit less cranky in November.

Never fear. If these people lose in November, they will be comforted by the fact that it wasn't their fault. It'll have nothing to do with the fact that all of their constituents are unemployed, and instead will be because Obama increased the deficit.

Lunch Thread

enjoy

The Second Lien Problem

Again, this is yet another reason why allowing mortgages in bankruptcy proceedings would have been preferable. Obviously people who are staying in their homes without paying mortgages are at least temporarily not having such a bad time of it, but the system is just maintaining both fantasy housing and financial markets.

Foreclosing would require that the mortgage owners re-estimate downward the value of the second liens to what Morgenson calls "fantasy levels." That, in turn, would require them to admit that the loans had gone bad and, therefore, require that they repurchase the loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.



I imagine the grand thinking behind all of this, to the extent that it exists, is that if you just kick the problem down the road far enough a recovering economy will start to magically solve the problem. But the recovery isn't happening, so...

Disaster

Matt has been making this point for awhile, but to repeat, when state and local government spending is taken into account, there has been no net government stimulus recently. The federal government is offsetting the state and local cuts mostly, but overall the government is not a source of stimulus. It's good that the feds stepped in, but they should have done more.

Sniff This

Very, very modest.

(ht aterkel)

They Write Books

Hey, Amato and Neiwert wrote a book.

Sniffers

I'm a bit skeptical. And it isn't just oil, it's the dispersants.

PASCAGOULA, Miss. -- William Mahan bends over a bowl of raw shrimp and inhales deeply, using his left hand to wave the scent up toward his nose. Deep breath. Exhale. Repeat. He clears his palate with a bowl of freshly cut watermelon before moving on to raw oysters. Deep breath. Exhale. Repeat.

He's one of about 40 inspectors trained recently at a federal fisheries lab in Pascagoula, Miss., to sniff out seafood tainted by oil in the Gulf of Mexico and make sure the product reaching consumers is safe to eat.

Go-Kart

The military budget can never be cut.

The cost of the marquee, along with a smaller sign positioned near the airfield: $188,000. Among other odd legacies from war-on-terror spending since 2001 for the troops at Guantanamo Bay: an abandoned volleyball court for $249,000, an unused go-kart track for $296,000 and $3.5 million for 27 playgrounds that are often vacant.


I get that people need some entertainment, but a go-kart track?

Sunday, June 06, 2010

Sounds Like An Excellent Idea

I plan to run on a platform of completely destroying our current way of existence.

David Cameron will warn tomorrow that Britain's "whole way of life" will be disrupted for years by the most drastic public spending cuts in a generation. The cuts, he will say, will have an impact on Britain's entire population.

In his most gloomy remarks since taking office, the prime minister will declare that Britain's public finances are worse than expected and are forcing him to take "momentous decisions".

Cameron will say: "How we deal with these things will affect our economy, our society – indeed our whole way of life. The decisions we make will effect every single person in our country. And the effects of those decisions will stay with us for years, perhaps decades to come."

Late Night

In DC for TAKE BACK AMERICA'S FUTURE NOW FOR THE FUTURE.

Hoping it's futurific... NOW.

Curly

Eight years old. Still handsome.

Miss Something?

CoT translates This Week.

On The SUPERTRAIN

Family in line behind me was having a difficult time coping with the whole concept. Those SUPERTRAINS are alien technology!

Afternoon Thread

Too hot and muggy for a bike ride.

Lunch Thread

Dim sum then bike race for me.

Sunday Bobbleheads

Dancing Dave's Meet the Press has the French Open.

Face the Nation has Thad Allen and Bill Nelson

This Week has Kerry, Cornyn, a roundtable with Liz Cheney, George Will, Arianna, and the Great Orange Satan.

Document the atrocities!

Grim

The planet is ruled by idiots.

Yet the conventional wisdom now is that these countries must nonetheless cut — not because the markets are currently demanding it, not because it will make any noticeable difference to their long-run fiscal prospects, but because we think that the markets might demand it (even though they shouldn’t) sometime in the future.

Utter folly posing as wisdom. Incredible.

And Where Is It Traveling From?

Love this headline.

Crime can travel to the Jersey Shore as recent violence shows

Media

Overnight

enjoy